II
In truth, the family was devastated over Manek’s death. There was an unspoken feeling, that somehow Liir’s life had been saved at the expense of Manek’s. The sisters suffered from that most dreadful of losses: the theft of the adult Manek from their lives. Their sad lot had been bearable all these years because Manek was going to be the man Fiyero had been, and maybe more. They realized in retrospect that they had expected Manek to restore the fallen fortunes of Kiamo Ko.
Feckless Irji had no more sense of destiny than a prairie dog. And Nor was a girl, more flighty and distractible than usual. So Sarima, behind her gestures of ecstatic acceptance of life (its joys, its sorrows, its mysteries, as she was fond of elaborating), became more aloof. Never close to her sisters, she began to take her meals alone in the Solar.
Irji and Nor, who had enjoyed a sort of allegiance from time to time against the headstrong malice of Manek, had less to bind them together now. Irji began to moon about in the old unionist chapel, teaching himself to read better by scrutinizing moldy hymnals and breviaries. Nor didn’t like the chapel—she thought the ghost of Manek lingered there, as that was the last place she had seen his body in the unwrapped shroud—so she tried to ingratiate herself with Auntie Witch—but to no avail. “You are out to make mischief with Chistery,” snapped Elphie, “and I’ve work to do. Go bother someone else.” She aimed a kick at Nor, who, whimpering and screaming as if it had hit home, left in a funk.
Nor took to wandering—now that the summer was coming in—down the high valley, the one with the stream at its bottom—and up the other side, where the sheep were nibbling on the best grass they would get all year. In previous years she would either have been with her brothers, or she would have been forbidden to go climbing alone. This year no one was paying enough attention to her to forbid it. She wouldn’t have minded being forbidden, she wouldn’t have minded the strap even. She was lonely.
One day she wandered particularly far down the valley, luxuriating in the strength and endurance of her strong legs. She was only ten, but a strapping, mature ten. She had hiked her green skirt up into her belt, and because the sun was high and strong, she had shucked off her blouse and tied it like a bandanna around her head. She hardly had a swelling here or there on her chest with which to startle any sheep, and anyway she expected to be able to spot a shepherd from miles away.
How in the world did I come to be here, of all places in Oz, she asked herself, freshly treading upon the terrain of reflection. Here I am, a girl on a mountain, nothing but wind and sheep and grass like an emerald brushfire, green and golden as Lurlinemas decorations, silky in the updraft, coarse in the downdraft. Just me and the sun and the wind. And that group of soldiers coming out from behind the rock.
She slid down onto her back in the grass, fixed up her blouse, and raised herself to her elbows, hiding.
They were not soldiers such as she had seen before. They were not Arjiki men in their ceremonial brasses and helmets, with their spears and shields. These were men in brown uniforms and caps, with muskets or something slung over their shoulders. They were wearing a kind of boot rather high and inappropriate for hill walking, and when one of them had stopped and was fiddling with a nail or a stone in his boot, his arm disappeared inside it right up to his elbow.
There was a green stripe down the front of their uniforms, and a bar across it, and Nor felt cold with an unfamiliar sense of anticipation. At the same time she wanted to be seen. What would Manek have done? she asked herself. Irji would run, Liir would puzzle and dither, but Manek? Manek would have marched right up to them and found out what was going on.
And so would she. She checked once again to make sure her buttons were done up, and then she strode down the slope toward them. By the time she had got all their attention, and the man with the boot off had slipped it back on, she was beginning to rethink the wisdom of the plan. But it was too late to run away now.
“Hail,” she said in a formal way, using the language of the east, not her own Arjiki vernacular. “Hail, and halt. I am the Princess Daughter of the Arjikis, and this is my valley you are marching your big black boots along.”
It was broad noon when she delivered them into the castle keep of Kiamo Ko. The sisters were in their summer laundry yard, beating carpets themselves because they didn’t trust the local scrubwives to treat them respectfully enough. The sound of boots on cobbles brought the sisters running through an archway, all flushed and dusty, hair wrapped in cotton scarves. Elphaba heard the noise, too, and threw her window open and stared. “Not an inch farther until I come down,” she called, “or I’ll turn you all to rodents. Nor, come away from them. All of you, come away.”
“I shall fetch the Dowager Princess,” said Two, “if it please you gentlemen.”
But by the time Sarima arrived, drowsy from a nap, Elphaba had descended, her broom over her shoulder, her eyebrows up to her scalp. “You have no invitation here,” said Elphie, looking more like a Witch than ever in her mauntish skirts, “so just how welcome would you like to be made? Who is in charge here? You? Who’s the senior one leads this mission? You?”
“If you please, Madame,” said someone, a strapping Gillikinese man of about thirty. “I am the Commander—the name is Cherrystone—and I’m under the Emperor’s orders to requisition a house large enough to shelter our party while we are in this district of the Kells. We are doing a survey of the passes to the Thousand Year Grasslands.” He produced a sweat-stained document from inside his shirt.
“I found them, Auntie Witch,” said Nor proudly.
“Go away. Go inside,” said Elphaba to the girl. “You men aren’t welcome here and the girl has no right to invite you. Turn around and march yourself out over that drawbridge at once.” Nor’s face fell.
“This is not a request, it is an order,” said Commander Cherrystone in an apologetic tone.
“This isn’t a suggestion, it’s a warning,” said Elphaba. “Go, or suffer the consequences.”
Sarima by now had taken in enough to step forward, her sisters buzzing in a thrill around her. “Auntie Guest,” she said, “you forget the code of the mountains, the same code by which you came to lodge here, and your old Nanny after you. We do not turn visitors away. Please, sirs, excuse our excitable friend. And excuse us. It has been some time since we saw soldiers in uniform.”
The sisters were primping away as best they could at such short notice.
“I won’t have it, Sarima,” Elphaba said, “you’ve never been out of here, you don’t know who these men are or what they will do! I won’t have it, do you hear?”
“It’s the high spirits, the determination, it makes her so much fun to have around,” said Sarima a trifle meanly, as in general she really did enjoy Elphaba’s company. But she did not like having her authority usurped. “Gentlemen, this way. I’ll show you where you can wash up.”
Irji wasn’t sure what to make of military men, and wouldn’t go very near. Whether he was afraid of being conscripted or enchanted he couldn’t say. He dragged a sleeping roll down into the chapel and slept there, now that it was warm enough. It was Nanny’s opinion he was going weird. “Believe me, after a life looking after your dear mother’s devout husband, Frex, and your sister after that, I know a religious lunatic when I see one,” she said to Elphaba. “That boy ought to be taking some lessons from these men in manliness, whatever else is going on here.”
On the other hand, Liir was in heaven. He followed Commander Cherrystone around unless he was turned back, and he fetched water for the men and polished their boots, in a surfeit of ill-concealed romance. The tramping they did, reconnoitering about the local valleys, mapping the places to ford the river, pinpointing spots for beacons, gave Liir more exercise and fresh air than he had ever had before. His spine, which had threatened to become curved like the arc of a mountain harp, seemed to straighten out. The soldiers were indifferent to him, but they were not manifestly unkind, and Liir took this as approval and fondness.
The sisters regained some sense when they stopped to consider what class of men would go into the army. But it wasn’t easy.
Sarima alone seemed unperturbed by the disturbance to their routine. She cast about among the villagers and called in favors to help her feed the host of soldiers, and in mixed resentment and fear her neighbors came up with milk, eggs, cheese, and vegetables. There was stouch or garmot from the fishwell almost every evening. And the summer game, of course—quail, hill pfenix, baby roc—which the men proved a dab hand at bringing in themselves. Nanny suspected that the reconnaissance team was helping Sarima over her grief, bringing her back to the family table at least.
But Elphaba was furious at them all. She and the Commander had words every day. Elphie forbade him to allow Liir to tag along—and she forbade Liir himself—to absolutely no effect. Her first true motherly feelings were of incompetence and of being blithely ignored as inconsequential. She could not understand how the human race had ever managed to develop past a single generation. She continually wanted to strangle Liir, as a means of saving him from smooth-talking father figures.
As Elphie tried harder to ferret out the nature of his mission, with every sidestepping pleasantry Commander Cherrystone grew more icy and polite. The one thing Elphaba had never been able to manage was a parlor manner, and this soldier—of all people—was a master at it. It made her feel as she had felt among the society girls at Crage Hall. “Pay those soldiers no mind, they’ll go away eventually,” said Nanny, who was at the time of her life when everything was either the final fatal crisis or a dismissible matter indeed.
“Sarima says that she has rarely seen any of the Wizard’s forces in the Vinkus. This was always arid, lifeless, of little interest to the farmers and merchants of northern and eastern Oz. The tribes have lived here for decades, centuries I suppose, with nothing but the occasional cartographer passing through and beating a quick retreat. Don’t you think this suggests some sort of campaign in these parts? What else can it suggest?”
“Look at how long it has taken these young men to recuperate from their overland trek,” said Nanny. “This is surely just a reconnaissance mission, as they say. They’ll get their information and then leave. Besides, everyone is always telling me, the whole damn place is swamped in snow or mud for two thirds of the year. You’re a worrier, you always were. The way you gripped the Quadlings we used to proselytize, as if they were your own private dolls! How you went on when they were relocated or whatever! It used to trouble your mother no end, believe me.”
“It’s been well documented that the Quadlings were being exterminated, and we were witnesses,” said Elphaba strictly. “You too, Nanny.”
“I look after my young, I can’t look after the world,” said Nanny, quaffing a cup of tea and scratching Killyjoy’s nose. “I look after Liir, which is more than you do.”
Elphaba didn’t think it worth her while to lambaste the old biddy. She flipped through the Grimmerie again, trying to find some small spell of binding with which she could close the castle gates against the men. She wished she had at least sat in on Miss Greyling’s class in magic at school.
“Of course your mother was worried about you, she always was,” said Nanny. “You were such an odd little thing. And the trials that poor woman had! You remind me of her now, only you’re more rigid than she was. She could really let her hair down. Do you know, she was so upset with having you be a girl—she was so convinced you’d be a boy—she sent me to the Emerald City to find an elixir to ensure …” But Nanny stopped, muddled. “Or was that elixir to prevent her next child from being born green? Yes, that was it.”
“Why did she want me to be a boy?” said Elphaba. “I would have obliged her if I’d had a say in the matter. Not to be simplistic, but it always made me feel horrible, to know how I’d disappointed her so early on. Not to mention the looks.”
“Oh, don’t credit her with nasty motives,” said Nanny. She eased her shoes off and rubbed the backs of her feet with her cane. “Melena had hated her life at Colwen Grounds, you know. That’s why she contrived to fall in love with Frex and get out of there. Her grandfather the Eminent Thropp had made it all too clear that she would inherit the title. The Munchkinlander title descends through the female line unless there are no daughters. The family seat, and all its attendant responsibilities, would go from him, to Lady Partra, to Melena, and then to the first daughter Melena had. She was hoping to have only sons, to keep them out of that place.”
“She always talked about it so lovingly!” said Elphaba, astounded.
“Oh, everything is gorgeous once it’s gone. But for a young person, trained up in all that wealth and responsibility—well, she hated it. She revolted by having sex early and often, with anyone who would oblige, and she as good as ran off with Frex, who was the first suitor she had who loved her for herself and not her position and inheritance. She thought a daughter of hers would find it equally deadly, so she wanted sons.”
“But that makes no sense. If she had sons and no daughters, then her oldest son would inherit. If I’d been a boy without sisters, I’d still have been stuck in the same mess.”
“Not necessarily,” said Nanny. “Your mother had one older sister, who was born with a permanent case of overwrought nerves, maybe also lacking in the brains department. She was housed off-grounds. But she was old enough to breed, and healthy enough, and was just as likely to bear a daughter. If she had borne a daughter first, her daughter would have inherited the title of Eminence, and the estate and fortunes with it.”
“So I have a mad aunt,” said the Witch. “Maybe madness runs in the family. Where is she now?”
“Died of the flu when you were still a small child, and left no issue. So Melena’s hopes were dashed. But that was her thinking, back in those brash, brave days of youthful blunder.”
Elphaba had few memories of her mother, and they were warm, sometimes searing. “But what’s this about her taking medicine to prevent Nessarose from being born green?”
“I got her some tablets in the Emerald City, from some gypsy woman,” said Nanny. “I explained to the beastly creature what had happened—I mean that you’d been born an unfortunate color, and those teeth—thank Lurline your second set were more human!—and the gypsy woman made some silly prophecy about two sisters being instrumental in the history of Oz. She gave me some powerful pills. I’ve always wondered if the pills were the cause of Nessarose’s affliction. I wouldn’t mess with gypsy potions anymore, believe me. Not with what we know these days.” She smiled, having long ago forgiven herself of any culpability in the whole affair.
“Nessarose’s affliction,” mused Elphaba. “Our mother took some gypsy remedy, and bore a second daughter without arms. It was either green or armless. Mama didn’t have very good luck at girls, did she.”
“Shell, however, is a sight for sore eyes,” said Nanny rosily. “Then, who is to say it was all your mother’s fault? First there was the confusion about who was really Nessarose’s father, and then the pills from that old Yackle person, and your father’s moodiness—”
“Yackle person? What do you mean?” asked Elphaba, starting. “And who the hell was Nessarose’s father if it wasn’t Papa?”
“Oh la,” said Nanny, “pour me another cup of tea and I’ll tell you all. You’re old enough now, and Melena’s long dead.” She meandered through a story about the Quadling glassblower named Turtle Heart, and Melena’s uncertainty whether Nessarose was his child or Frex’s, and the visit to Yackle, about whom she could remember nothing else but the name, the pills, and the prophecy, can’t pull teeth from a hen so stop trying. She didn’t mention (and she never had) how depressed Melena became when Elphaba was born. There was no point.
Elphie listened to all this, impatient and annoyed. On the one hand she wanted to throw it out the window: The past was immaterial. On the other, things fell into a slightly different order now. And that Yackle! Was the name just a coincidence? She was tempted to show Nanny the picture of Yakal Snarling in the Grimmerie, but resisted. No sense alarming the old woman, or giving her the nighttime frights.
So the two women poured each other tea and restrained themselves from painful observations about the past. But Elphaba began to fret about Nessarose. Perhaps Nessie didn’t want the position of Eminence, and was just as incarcerated there as her older sister was here. Perhaps Elphaba owed her the chance of liberty. Yet how much really could you owe other people? Was it endless?