The Witches of Oz

After half an hour of waiting Captain Anjeri, who had been expecting the prince and his companion to be in such a hurry to get to the bedchamber that they’d be finished in the bath by now, sent one of the junior soldiers to check on them.

Judging from his expression, he mused, face impassive, as the young man approached him with a bright red face, I’m guessing they didn’t bother waiting.

“Captain.”

Anjeri nodded as the young man saluted.

“The Prince is still occupied I take it?”

“I… err… think so, Captain.”

“You think so?”

“The doors were locked, Captain, and they sounded… busy. I didn’t want to interrupt.”

“Relax,” suggested the Captain. “I can tell from the look on your face when you got back what they are occupied with and I am certainly not going to press you for details. You may return to your duties.”

It is all very odd, decided the Captain. Nothing untoward, probably, but Fiyero hasn’t brought a woman to Kiamo Ko since he left the Vinkus, though the reason for that seems obvious it’s not Oz’s most romantic place. There was something about her as well, Miss Elphaba Thropp. I wish I could remember what the name reminded me of.

“I think I heard someone outside the door a few minutes ago,” remarked Elphaba, leaning against Fiyero’s shoulder as he leaned against the edge of the bath with his hands on her waist. He was about to ask her why she didn’t say anything when it occurred to him they had both been quite distracted a few minutes ago.

“I guess that means we need to keep an eye out for a blushing sentry when we go upstairs,” joked Fiyero.

“Hmm,” Elphaba made a noncommittal noise. “Or listen out for the lewd remarks if it was one of the older men, I expect.”

“Does that bother you?” murmured Fiyero, his words, like the last few sentences, muffled by the fact that he had most of his face buried in her hair.

“Not at all, it would hardly be the worst thing people have said to, or about, me.”

“Like whatever it was that Kalira asked you and made you laugh so much?” suggested Fiyero.

“Oh yes, apparently the information came straight from a press conference – followed by an engagement party – in the Emerald City.”

Fiyero flinched as he remembered the things people had been saying about her that day. It had started with them bemoaning the fact all of Oz was ‘ever on alert’, in fear of being attacked by the wicked Witch, and begging to be protected from her.

It had only gotten worse after Glinda’s surprise engagement party - he supposed he should have seen that coming; she’d certainly dropped enough hints.

“I heard them,” he admitted quietly. “Madame Morrible even spoke to me about you and I said, right in front of all of them, that I didn’t think of you as a wicked witch but none of them seemed to hear it.”

“That doesn’t surprise me, really. I was quite surprised that one rumour was actually partly true – Animals have been giving me food and shelter but they aren’t rebels so much as… survivors.”

“I can see for myself that you like water.”

“I may have been melting just now,” agreed Elphaba with a dreamy smile and subtle emphasis on the word ‘melt’. “But it certainly wasn’t caused by the water.”

“Yes,” Fiyero agreed. “And I, having made a rather… thorough investigation, can say for certain that you don’t have any extra eyes and your skin…”

He ran one hand from her waist to her shoulder to confirm his next observation and smiled as it made her shiver.

“… Is far too soft to resemble anything near snakelike.”

Elphaba smiled and started to say something only to interrupt herself by yawning.

“Time to go to bed,” suggested Fiyero.

“I thank you for the sweet compliments but, yes, it certainly is.”

Since Elphaba seemed extremely disinclined to follow the words with an action Fiyero tightened his grip on her waist with one arm and sliding the other one under the backs of her knees, nearly dropping her before she realised he intended to lift her out of the bath and wrapped her arms around his neck.

“Warn me next time, won’t you?” she muttered irritably into Fiyero’s neck. He grinned as he climbed up the steps that led into the pool and set her down on her feet.

“But it’s so much more fun this way,” replied Fiyero, picking up his towel from the nearby bench.

“Oh ‘fun’ is it?” Elphaba rolled her eyes as she picked up a towel for herself. “I did wonder what the point of it was.”

Tying the towel around his waist Fiyero walked back to Elphaba and ran his fingers over the light green scars, more like small bumps than anything, scattered across her back.

“Another bad landing?” he inquired quietly.

“The same one as my arm, in fact,” answered Elphaba, referring to the incident she’d told him about earlier. “They’re mostly superficial.”

“Mostly?” repeated Fiyero, picking up the distinction. Elphaba shrugged.

“My back aches in the cold sometimes, it’s nothing.”

“It doesn’t look like ‘nothing’,” replied Fiyero mildly as he rummaged through his bag for a dry pair of trousers.

“It’s a short enough story, basically what I told you before. I bounced myself off a mountainside trying to fly in a storm,” explained Elphaba. “I wasn’t thinking, I tried to outrun it. All I could think of was putting as much distance between the Emerald City and myself as I could.”

She fell silent for a moment, busying herself with collecting her wet petticoats and spreading them out over the benches with the intent that they would dry out a bit overnight and she could collect them in the morning.

“I don’t know how much Glinda told you about what really happened… the day I left the Emerald City…”

“Enough that it’s obvious why you were in a hurry to get away, certainly,” responded Fiyero. “And quite different to what she was smiling and nodding to at Madame Morrible’s little press conference.”

She didn’t answer straight away, just stood there smoothing out the same wrinkles from one of her petticoats, to the point where Fiyero was just about to suggest that they go upstairs when she started speaking.

“It all started off so brilliantly,” she began, with bitter regret heavy in her voice. “Glinda and I rushing madly around the Emerald City, trying to see everything there was to see in a single day, can you believe she actually tried to make me get a new dress to meet the wizard in?”

“Actually I can,” remarked Fiyero quietly, making sure he didn’t interfere with the flow of her speech, this was the most he had heard about what Glinda would only refer to as That Day.

“We got caught up in a small groups of fellow tourists and I remember, well of course I do,” she flicked her hand to dismiss the fact of remembering the event she was talking about. “I was so amazed by the fact that nobody was staring or pointing at me, well you know what it’s like there with the green and those glasses they hand out to all the tourists.”

She stopped talking for a moment, as if a thought had just occurred to her, and rummaged through her bag to pull out a pair of round glasses with green lenses.

“See? I kept them, don’t ask me why, they’ve just been in my bag since then and I never got around to getting rid of them I suppose.”

“Oh yes,” replied Fiyero. “They stopped giving those away after…”

“Yes, I know, to make it easier to tell who was the ‘right’ colour or something ridiculous like that.” said Elphaba, when Fiyero’s voice trailed off awkwardly. Putting the glasses back down she turned to face him and made a suggestion in a semi serious tone.

“This is probably a good time for you to stop worrying about offending me by talking about what they say or do because of me. I won’t say those things don’t bother me, because no one is that well adjusted, but you don’t have to not talk to them.”

“I suppose I’m used to those things being something to be ignored,” explained Fiyero, then mentally cursed himself for making even a non-specific reference to Glinda.

“Anyway, you were telling me…?”

“Everything was going wonderfully,” for some reason Fiyero didn’t know she said ‘wonderfully’ with a definite overtone of irony. “Then we went to the Palace for our, or rather my, appointment with The Wizard and even that started off quite well. Naturally I was surprised to see the real him, I expect anyone who is so… privileged is equally so, but he was very friendly and enthusiastic – not overly bothered by the fact there were two of us instead of one. The real shock came, after he claimed to know why we were there, when he said I must prove myself and his new Press Secretary appeared.”

“Madame Morrible?”

“Madame Morrible,” agreed Elphaba with a nod. “And the Grimmerie.”

“The Grimmerie, you mentioned that before, what is it?”

“Glinda didn’t tell you?”

It didn’t show in her voice but Elphaba was just as reluctant as Fiyero to mention Glinda but felt it unavoidable at this point.

“No, should she have?”

“I don’t see how she could have told you about everything without… of course I don’t know exactly what she told you… but still, the Monkeys, I mean how did you think I… you know the wings?”

“She just said that the Wizard asked you to cast a levitation spell and it went wrong.”

“Actually it did exactly what they wanted it to do, gave them a whole flock of winged spies to ‘report any subversive Animal activity’ – like existing, which seems to be enough of a crime these days.”

“You were telling me about the Grimmerie?” prompted Fiyero, when Elphaba stopped to take a ragged breath and started pulling her dress on.

“It’s a book, a book of magic spells, written in a lost language. That last fact is actually rather disturbing because I can understand, but I don’t read it as such. I couldn’t look at a sentence and say ‘this means: I want to make this broom fly’ but I can look at it and know that it will make something fly – it’s not specific about the methods, if I had known how it would work for Chistery and the others I would never have… but sometimes it responds to your will as well.

I think that’s what happened with Nessa, she was thinking about making Boq love her only she used the phrase “lose your heart to me” and even though it seemed like she was just mispronouncing the spell I used to make her walk it actually gave her a different spell. Even when I saved him, such as it was, I was just frantic with the need to do something before he died and the sense I got from the spell was that it would do that.

I still haven’t worked out why Morrible could only learn a few spells, I’d be inclined to disbelieve her except I think it she could control the full power of the Grimmerie she would have used it.”

“You really don’t like her, Madame Morrible I mean, do you?”

Elphaba turned around and stared at him so incredulously that Fiyero was stunned into silence.

“I’m going to assume that descent into complete idiocy is a symptom of extreme tiredness and disregard it,” she replied politely, as if she was overlooking some minor social blunder. “Because I realise if you were in your right mind you wouldn’t even think of being surprised at the fact I completely despise the woman who has almost single-handedly been responsible for most of the disasters in my life so far.”

“No, no, I definitely would not be suggesting any such thing,” agreed Fiyero. “But if it sounded like I was it’s only because I don’t know your side of the situation. Having said that I promise I can believe anything you tell me about her, I’ve never liked her, she’s too false.”

“And you’re the expert on that, of course.”

“I’ve had enough practice being who I’m not to at least recognise when someone else is doing it.”

“I noticed that about her as well, it confused me for awhile when she was teaching me until I ignored it. Now of course it hardly matters who she is when she’s shown well enough what sort of person she is. I only hope she gets what’s coming to her from somewhere, I don’t even mind if it isn’t me.”

“My people, the Arjiki side obviously, believe that everyone gets what they deserve,” remarked Fiyero, in a tone that made it clear he didn’t believe it. “I personally have seen no evidence to prove that yet. On the other hand, and much to my personal disgust, the Gillikinese belief that people get what they take for themselves has proved out a number of times.”

“That seems to be the nature of people in general, the second one that is. It seems to be only how much they are willing to hurt others to take what they want that varies.”

“Do you know,” said Fiyero, suppressing a loud yawn. “I do believe it is far, far, too late in the evening to discuss such difficult topics and you were telling me about what happened when you met the Wizard.”

“I’ll finish with the short version then,” replied Elphaba, towelling her hair dry (well drier than it was) as she spoke. “When I realised what the Wizard, and Morrible, meant to do with the Monkeys I bolted out of the Throne Room and ran all the way to the attic with Glinda right behind me. We started arguing then we heard Morrible making an announcement to the City. Telling them I was an enemy, a liar, responsible for mutilating the Monkeys, in short a distorted, repulsive, and above all wicked witch.”

“Oh Elphaba,” whispered Fiyero, wrapping his arms around her from behind and turning her around to face him. Just hearing the pain in her voice made him feel as if he couldn’t breathe properly, he couldn’t imagine how bad it must feel for her.

Elphaba wrapped her arms around him desperately, fighting back the mixture of anger, despair and endless ‘what ifs’ that always overwhelmed her when she thought about that day.

“I shouldn’t have asked,” whispered Fiyero gently. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s hardly your fault, love,” she whispered back, burying her face in his shoulder.

“Well I can’t let you take responsibility for everything,” he replied, only half joking. The more he thought about it the more he really meant it; he wanted to support her, to give her someone other than herself to rely.

“Do you know how amazing you are?” he asked her sincerely, making her look up at him with wide eyes.

“Me?” she replied in amazement.

“Yes, you!” replied Fiyero earnestly. “There aren’t many, if any, people who could resist what the Wizard was offering you. I know there are other people out there rebelling against the Wizard but could any of them do what you did?”

“They’re probably going to tell me I should have taken his second offer and supported them from the inside, when I tell them what happened,” remarked Elphaba. “But really there’s nothing special about doing what I did, if anything I took the coward’s way out by choosing the path that I could live with. If I had been thinking logically instead of emotionally I would have stayed the first time and worked from the inside. I think it would have done more good.”

“You don’t know that,” protested Fiyero, shaking his head at the fact someone who had stood up to everything she had could call herself a coward. “And I’ll have you know that you are the least cowardly person I have ever met! Not to mention the most…”

“Stubborn?” suggested Elphaba to fill the silence and, she hoped, to stop him from noticing how pleased she was that he seemed to think she was brave. She certainly didn’t think she was brave, not for just doing what she had to do.

“Wonderful,” offered Fiyero with a smile.

“Wonderful?” repeated Elphaba.

“Absolutely, but definitely not in the tone you just said it in!” he replied firmly. “And I wasn’t done yet.”

“Don’t you think you’ve complimented me enough for one day?”

“That’s an interesting suggestion but no, I haven’t. I intend to keep going until one of three things happens.”

“And what might those be?” asked Elphaba wearily.

“I find exactly the right words to tell you why you’re beautiful, you start believing me when I tell you these things, or we both fall asleep from sheer exhaustion.”

“We’re planning to sleep on the floor down here are we then?” said Elphaba, trying to make a joke out of the fact she thought the third option was most likely.

“Funny girl aren’t you?” replied Fiyero. Elphaba looked up at him and smiled.

“I have my moments, it seems.”

“Not to mention beautiful…”

“Fiyero!” protested Elphaba, reminding him of their time in the Gillikin Forest when they had been sitting side by side. She’d said she wished she ‘could be beautiful’ for him and hadn’t believed him when he told her she was.

“You are! And I’m going to keep telling you until you believe me… wait I lie, I’ll be thrilled when you believe me but I’m never going to stop telling you that you’re beautiful.”

“I just don’t see how you can say that, and mean it no less, especially considering how many beautiful women you must have met. I mean Glinda, and I’ve seen women who were at least as pretty as she is.”

“Glinda is beautiful,” agreed Fiyero, a reply that made Elphaba’s stomach twist unpleasantly. “But that’s all she really is. Her whole life is centred on the fact that everyone adores her, she hides behind her beauty, do you see?”

Judging from the way she stepped back with a slight frown on her face she didn’t quite see what he was trying to tell her.

“Obviously not, that’s fine. Here’s my point: you aren’t just physically beautiful, and please don’t disagree with me again I know you don’t think so, everything about you is beautiful.”

“You’ve seen me in a temper,” protested Elphaba. “You can’t possibly mean that!”

“I’m not expressing myself very well here, I’m afraid,” said Fiyero with a sigh. “It makes much more sense in Arjiki.”

“And how would that be?” asked Elphaba curiously. She knew he spoke the tribal language of the Vinkus but she’d never heard him, or anyone, do so.

“It would be: Dhiquaral laqi miah caame da shorhi wali das aeljara ra qee ieria aré iaria.”

“Well,” said Elphaba, smiling now instead of frowning. “I have no idea what it means but it sounds beautiful.”

“It represents a different concept of beauty,” explained Fiyero. “All Arjiki women are attractive, but what we call beauty is more to do with the heart and soul.”

“And naturally it would be intolerably rude to disagree with your cultural interpretation of beauty,” Elphaba graciously acknowledged that he had outmanoeuvred her in this argument.

“Naturally,” agreed Fiyero. “Ready to go upstairs then?”

“Now that we’ve met the condition of you finding the right words?”

“I was hoping we’d also managed the one where you believe me…”

“I do believe that you think I’m beautiful, Fiyero, it’s only that I don’t share the opinion.”

“That will do for now then. Shall I carry your bag back up for?” he offered then recalling her talking about the Grimmerie and guessing it was in the bag. “I suppose it is safe for me to carry the magic book around.”

“Yes, love, the ‘magic book’ is quite safe for you to handle and thank you if you take the bag I can take the broom again.”

Elphaba put her gloves back on and wrapped the cloak around her again.

“If anyone asks, I’m cold,” she suggested with an amused smile.

“Of course,” agreed Fiyero. “You probably will be by the time we get back upstairs. That reminds me, I want to talk to Anjeri when we get back up there but you needn’t wait for me if you don’t want to.”

“If you don’t mind I’ll go upstairs, I wouldn’t want to interrupt.”

“Oh you wouldn’t be, but that’s fine. Once we get to the entrance hall again you just go up the stairs on the left, they lead to the west tower.”

One of the junior officers told Captain Anjeri when her heard the couple’s footsteps coming back up from the baths. Anjeri told the young man to take his place in the gatehouse and waited for them to arrive.

“Good evening again, Your Highness, Miss Thropp. I trust the bathing chambers were satisfactory.”

“Very pleasant,” replied Elphaba formally, not missing the way he emphasised the ‘Miss’ in her title. “Thank you, Captain.”

“Quite fine,” agreed Fiyero. “Could I speak with you, Captain, before we retire for the night?”

“Certainly, Your Highness.”

“Goodnight Captain,” said Elphaba, with a short nod. She brushed her gloved hand over Fiyero’s cheek and whispered: “Don’t take too long.”

“I’ll be up soon,” replied Fiyero with a smile as he watched her walk away and up the stairs.

“I’m impressed.”

Anjeri muttered angrily to Fiyero once Elphaba was out of hearing range, not giving him anytime to speak.

“I beg your pardon?”

“It’s only taken you what? Eleven years? To replace the woman you told me was the love of your life.”

“Anjeri it’s not like that!” protested Fiyero. “I’ve certainly never heard you expressing an opinion like this when it came to all of the other girls you must have heard about!”

“You didn’t bring them home with you – it’s only a betrayal if you care, which you clearly do about this latest one!”

“Elphaba is not the ‘latest’ anything!” snapped Fiyero. “I love her but that doesn’t mean she’s replacing anyone!”

“As you say, my Prince,” replied Anjeri with sarcastic formality. “I’m only your half brother after all, what right could I possibly have to make statements about your life.”

“That has nothing at all to do with this!”

Fiyero tried to protest Anjeri’s assumptions but the Captain would have none of that.

“Goodnight, Your Highness.

Anjeri bowed stiffly and walked back down the passageway to the main part of the hallway. Fiyero sighed and started up the stairs of the tower.

Elphaba was perched, quite precariously, on the edge of the bed still wearing her hood and gloves.

“I was worried this soft mattress might swallow me up,” joked Elphaba when Fiyero entered the room and looked at her questioningly. “I put my hand on there and it sank.”

“It’s quite safe,” Fiyero assured her as he dropped his bag on the floor and barred the door with a heavy piece of wood. Elphaba smiled then peeled off her gloves and cloak.

“Well that and my nightgown is in my bag, which you happen to be carrying.”

Fiyero laughed and handed her the bag so she could get changed.

“I don’t know about you,” she said, when she was done, pulling back the blankets and sliding under them. “But I’m ready to sleep until I’m awake again.”

“What a brilliant idea,” he agreed with tired enthusiasm. “I’ll see you when I’m awake.”

“Goodnight, my love,” murmured Elphaba as he slid into the bed next to her and lay down on his back

“And to you,” he whispered back, listening as her breathing slowed into the deep patterns of sleep.

Exhausted as he was Fiyero found he couldn’t sleep, with Anjeri’s words running through his mind. The accusations of betrayal brought back the feelings he’d had been trying to ignore ever since he realised he was in love with Elphaba.

She wouldn’t want me to not love Elphaba, he tried to tell himself. She told me that if I had the chance to love someone again I should take it. But who wouldn’t have said that under those circumstances? I mean I could say it but would I mean it? If only there was some way I could ask her, of course the paradox there is that if I could I wouldn’t need to. Funny how it was Anjeri who said that but never complained about the others and my parents who never mention her but always commented on my ‘improper behaviour’ as if Anjeri isn’t living proof of my father’s ‘improper behaviour’ as a young man!

Next to him Elphaba shifted in her sleep until she was pressed up against his side with one arm over his chest.

It doesn’t matter what any of them say! This is nothing like any of the other girls. I may feel guilty about loving her but I’m not going to stop loving her!

He sounded quite convincing in his mind; he just wished that he could believe himself. At this point even love and guilt couldn’t keep him awake, he was sleeping before he realised it had happened.

Author's note: Translation of Fiyero’s lapse into Arjiki: “Beloved lady who brings me joy with the strength of her heart and soul.”