V

Ice crusted the roofs, dislodged tiles, and dripped dirtily into the private chambers, the music room, the towers. Elphaba took to wearing her hat indoors to avoid the random icy dart on her scalp. The crows were mildewy around the beak and had algae between the claws. The sisters finished their novel, and collectively sighed—for life, for life!—and began to read it again, as they had done for eight years. In the fierce updraft from the valley, the snow seemed as often to be rising as falling. The children adored it.

One glum afternoon Sarima bedecked herself in red woolen wraps and, out of boredom, went wandering through musty, disused rooms. She located a staircase in a trapezoidal, slanting shaft—perhaps this high alcove leaned against the side of the gable you couldn’t see, she wasn’t good at imagining architecture in three dimensions. She mounted the stairs anyway. At the top, through a crude grillwork, she saw a figure in the white gloom. Sarima coughed so as not to startle her.

Elphaba was bent almost double over a huge folio laid out on a carpenter’s work bench. She turned, surprised but not very, and said, “We’ve had the same inclination, how curious.”

“You’ve found some books, I’d completely forgotten,” said Sarima. She could read now, but not well, and books made her feel inferior. “I couldn’t tell you what they’re all about. So many words, you’d hardly think the world deserved such scrutiny.”

“Over here is an archaic geography,” said Elphie, “and some records of usufruct pacts among various families of the Arjiki—I bet there are leaders who would be very happy to see these. Unless they’re outdated. Some texts that Fiyero had in Shiz—I recognize them too, the life sciences course of studies.”

“And this big thing—purple pages and silver ink, how grand.”

“I found it on the floor of this wardrobe. It seems to be a Grimmerie,” Elphie said, running her hand down a page only softly buckled with moisture. It made a pretty contrast, her hand on the vellum.

“What is that, besides beautiful?”

“As I understand it,” Elphie said, “a sort of encyclopedia of things numinous. Magic; and of the spirit world; and of things seen and unseen; and of things once and future. I can only make out a line here or there. Look how it scrambles itself as you watch.” She pointed to a paragraph of hand-lettered text. Sarima peered. Though her skill at reading was minimal, she gaped at what she saw. The letters floated and rearranged themselves on the page, as if enlivened. The page was changing its mind as they watched it. The letters clotted together in a big black snarl, like a mound of ants. Then Elphaba turned a page. “Here, this section is a book of beasts.” There were elegant, attenuated drawings in blood red and gold leaf, on the front and rear elevations of (it seemed) an angel, with notes in a fine hand on the aerodynamic aspects of holiness. The wings flexed up and down and the angel smiled with a saucy sort of sanctity. “And a recipe on this page. It says ‘Of apples with black skin and white flesh: to fill the stomach with greed unto Death.’”

“I remember this book now,” Sarima said. “I do remember how it came to be here, I even put it up here myself; I had forgotten. Well, books are so easy to set aside, aren’t they?”

Elphie looked up, her eyes leveling out under her smooth, rocklike brow. “Tell me, Sarima, please.”

The Dowager Princess of Kiamo Ko was flustered. She went to a small window and tried to open it, but encrustations of ice prevented her. So she sat down in a flump on a packing crate and told Elphaba the story. She couldn’t remember exactly when, but it was a long time ago, when everyone was young and slim. Beloved Fiyero was still alive but he was off in the Grasslands with the tribe. Complaining of a headache, she was home in the castle all alone. The bell at the drawbridge sounded and she went to see who it was.

“Madame Morrible,” Elphaba said. “Some Kumbric Witch or other.”

“No, it was no madame. It was an elderly man in a tunic and leggings, with a cloak badly in need of attention by a seamstress. He said he was a sorcerer, but perhaps he was just mad. He asked for a meal and a bath, which he got, and then he said he wanted to pay by giving me this book. I told him with a castle to run I didn’t have much time for frivolity, reading and such. He said never mind.”

Sarima drew her robes about her, and traced a pattern in the cold dust on a nearby stack of codexes. “He told me a fabulous tale and persuaded me to take this thing from him. He said that it was a book of knowledge, and that it belonged in another world, but it wasn’t safe there. So he had brought it here—where it could be hidden and out of harm’s way.”

“What a load of tripe,” said Elphie. “If it came from another world I shouldn’t be able to read any of it. And I can make out a little.”

“Even if it’s as magic as he says?” said Sarima. “But you know, I believed him. He said there was more congress between worlds than anyone would credit, that our world has attributes of his, and his of ours, a kind of leakage effect, or an infection maybe. He had a long fringy white-and-gray beard, and a very kind and abstracted manner, and he smelled of garlic and sour cream.”

“Indisputable proof of other-worldliness—”

“Don’t mock me,” said Sarima blandly, “you’ve asked me, so I’m telling you. He said it was too powerful to be destroyed, but too threatening—to that other place—to be preserved. So he made a magic trip or something and came here.”

“Kiamo Ko called to him and he couldn’t resist her attractions—”

“He said we were isolated, and a stronghold,” said Sarima, “and I couldn’t disagree! And what did it mean to me to take another book? We just lugged it up here, and put it with the rest. I don’t even know if I told anyone about it. Then he blessed me and left. He walked with an oakthorn staff over the Locklimb Trail.”

“Can you really say you thought the man who brought this here was a sorcerer?” said Elphie. “And that this book comes from—another world? Do you even believe in other worlds?”

“I find it a great effort to believe in this one,” said Sarima, “yet it seems to be here, so why should I trust my skepticism about other worlds? Don’t you believe?”

“I tried to, as a child,” said Elphie. “I made an effort. The mothy, gormless, indistinct sunrise of salvation world—the Other Land—I couldn’t get it, I couldn’t focus. Now I just think it’s our own lives that are hidden from us. The mystery—who is that person in the mirror—that’s shocking and unfathomable enough for me.”

“Well he was a very nice sorcerer, or madman, or whatever.”

“Maybe it was some agent loyal to the Ozma Regent,” said Elphie. “Secreting some ancient Lurlinist tract here. Anticipating a revival of royalism, a Palace coup, worried about the kidnapped, sleep-charmed Ozma Tippetarius, coming in disguise to hide this document far away, but still retrievable… .”

“You are full of conspiracy theories,” said Sarima. “I’ve noticed that about you. This was an elderly gentleman, very elderly. And he spoke with an accent. He surely was a wandering magician from some other place. And hasn’t he been right? The thing has sat here, forgotten, for what, ten years or more already.”

“May I take it and look at it?”

“I don’t care. He never said not to read it,” said Sarima. “At the time I perhaps couldn’t read at all—I forget. But look at that beautiful angel there! Do you really mean to say you don’t believe in the Other Land? In an afterlife?”

“Just what we need.” Elphaba snorted as she picked up the tome. “A post Vale-of-Tears Vale-of-Tears.”