Author's note: Apologies for the enormous song quote on this chapter, it’s one I’ve had in mind for a while and this seemed like the place.

Despite his best intentions of staying awake to talk more to Elphaba about… well everything really, Fiyero fell asleep again leaving Elphaba awake on her own. Silently she slid out of the bed and went to sit on the little stool in front of the dusty old dressing table. There was a piece of brittle parchment laying on the table and a piece of charcoal both so covered in dust that they could have been there for years – obviously the sentries duties did not include cleaning. Gently blowing the dust away from both items she picked up the charcoal with the ease of someone familiar with it and began to sketch the picture that had been on her mind from the moment Fiyero told her his dead love’s name.

“Kh’ya,” whispered Elphaba, sending the name into the silence of the night. A moonbeam broke through the clouds, illuminating the picture.

“The moon will be full tomorrow night,” observed Elphaba, speaking out loud but addressing herself – the habit of spending a lot of time alone.

“The Aelja Kilahia dance under the full moon every month, it’s a very special ceremony for us,” remarked Kh’ya.

Elphaba turned her head and felt dizzy for a moment. She was standing in an immense grassland, in full summer sunlight, staring in surprise at the slight red haired woman standing next to her but at the same time she knew she was sitting in one of the Kiamo Ko towers watching the moonlight filter through heavy clouds.

“Kh’ya?”

Kh’ya nearly answered the question as she would if someone was about to ask her something but then it occurred to her that there was something a bit different about Elphaba today and her friend seemed surprised, and a little confused, to see her.

“You’re awake!” she accused Elphaba, sounding harsher than she intended due to her shock.

“You’re dead!” retorted Elphaba.

“I had noticed,” replied Kh’ya dryly. “In this case the fact that you’re here, all here, talking to me is much more sig… are you quite well?”

“No, Ayére Sora, I just remembered everything I know about you and how I know you and it’s making my head spin just a little bit.”

“You should sit down,” said Kh’ya anxiously.

“I am!” protested Elphaba. “I think I am, but I’m not because sweet Oz you are tiny!”

“Oh here we go with the height jokes, you must be feeling better.”

“I mock your height that one time and you hold a grudge for four years, you really need to get over that, my dear.”

Elphaba blinked, several times, and realised that she could remember everything about Kh’ya that she had always known and it wasn’t making her head ache. In fact not only was it not making her head ache but she felt more complete without knowing she had been incomplete.

“You’re awake,” repeated Kh’ya, sensing the change.

“I’m awake,” agreed Elphaba, not voicing the thought that wondered how many other parts of herself were hidden away like knowing Kh’ya had been. “I think I do need to sit down.”

Elphaba dropped down to the ground and started taking deep breaths with her eyes closed. Kh’ya joined her there, a reasonable distance away because she understood the need for personal space, and waited until Elphaba was ready to talk again.

“Just when I think I’ve found a definition of ‘impossible’ that applies to me,” was Elphaba’s surprisingly calm remark after the long silence.

“I don’t know that there is anything I can say to help you through this shock, Ayére Sora, I can’t even begin to imagine what it would feel like to find out that some hidden part of myself was speaking with someone who has moved on. It is strange enough for me that you can do so at all.”

“I have to tell Fiyero about this, of course, I couldn’t possibly keep it from him.”

“I’d be the first to say that keeping secrets does no relationship any good,” began Kh’ya. “But don’t you think all of this is a little… big for someone who doesn’t understand magic to handle, even Fiyero?”

“He handled ‘I remember being born’ fairly well, not to mention those other things I told you about, oh and me levitating his sister after losing my temper with her.”

“You never!”

“Oh I did, Princess Minna was quite rude to me and… well let’s just say I wish I’d remembered this sooner it would have made his family easier to deal with! My point is he seems to have handled these things well so far and I promised myself that I would be honest with him.”

“And have you told him about Emerald yet?” pointed out Kh’ya, knowing perfectly well that the answer was ‘no’.

“Well no but…”

“There shouldn’t be a ‘but’ there, Sora, honesty means saying everything that needs to be said.”

“Quadling honesty, Arjiki honesty,” replied Elphaba. “But I’m not Quadling or Arjiki, at last not entirely and not as much as you are. I wasn’t raised to be honest, I was raised to be invisible and I learned to survive my family by taking advantage of that. By making sure they only saw who they wanted to see when they looked at me.”

“I understand the difficulties you had…” Kh’ya tried to comfort her only to be cut off by Elphaba shaking her head violently.

“Oh my dearest sweetest Ayére Sora, despite all this time we’ve known each other I’m afraid you could never understand what it’s like to be me. I’m a hypocrite and I know it; I claim to be honest and lie with every breath I take, I hide what I am and what I can do, even from myself in some cases as you well know. I tell myself I am stronger than Glinda for standing up for what I believe in when I know it was such a selfish thing to do, to leave her like that. I think myself better than people like Morrible, and the Wizard all the while knowing I could do worse than they have done if it would help my goals.”

Elphaba could feel Kh’ya drawing back from her when she had been trying to comfort her just moments ago, but she couldn’t tell if the other woman’s shock was disgust or surprise.

“But all this deception makes a perfect case for the reasons I should tell him, if it comes to be that he can’t accept who I am that just makes it no different to nearly every other person in my life!”

She took another deep breath and exhaled slowly.

“Now if you will excuse me, I need to get back.”

And just like that the sense of being in two places at once was gone.

Fiyero wasn’t sure how long he’d been asleep but when he woke up the moon had risen higher and the clouds had cleared so that the room was bathed in moonlight. Elphaba wasn’t lying next to him anymore he noticed almost straight away and sat up to see where she had gone. There she was, sitting at the old dressing table, he was surprised the rickety old stool hadn’t collapsed.

“Can’t you sleep?”

Fiyero,” her head shot up and she spun around to look at him. “I didn’t think you would be awake so soon.”

“You sound upset,” joked Fiyero. “Aren’t you cold, sitting over there in just your nightgown?”

“Not terribly cold and not upset precisely...”

“Precisely?”

“It’s either incredibly complicated or the simplest thing in the world, I haven’t quite decided which yet,” replied Elphaba, shaking her head slowly.

He climbed out of bed and crossed the room to stand next to her with his hand on her shoulder.

“You’ve been thinking again haven’t you?” he teased her and was pleased when she actually laughed.

“I have,” she agreed seriously. “I was thinking about the nature of honesty.”

“A weighty topic for this time of the night.”

“It can wait,” she said instantly, almost too quickly.

“If that’s what you want,” replied Fiyero agreeably. He had enough experience in reading female moods to realise that this was a good time to be very agreeable and let her come to a decision at her own pace.

“What would it take for you to not love me?” she asked suddenly, in a very dispassionate tone.

“That’s an unexpected question,” he answered far more calmly than he felt. “Are you having second thoughts? Or is that the question you’re trying to ask me?”

When she didn’t answer he walked around and crouched in front of her, trying to see her face.

“No, don’t,” she protested, when he tried to brush her hair out of her face. “I hate for people to see me cry.”

“Why are you crying?”

“Because I don’t know... I don’t understand how this works...” she made a vague gesture encompassing both of them and he took ‘this’ to mean their relationship. “For the first time in my life I feel like I’ve found someone I feel like I can say anything to but I don't know what the limits are, how much can I say before I frighten you or upset you?”

“Well I don’t know, to be truly honest,” replied Fiyero thoughtfully and in all seriousness. “I haven’t run away yet, obviously.”

“Even though I almost killed you?” she replied, referring he assumed to the incident when he’d come uncomfortably close to having a large rock hit him square in the face.

“Well that was a little bit terrifying but you didn’t exactly do it on purpose and it was partly my own fault for not listening when the Animals tried to tell me not to go in there.”

“‘A little bit terrifying'?” Elphaba quoted his words quietly. “Maybe it affected me more than you then, my heart actually stopped for a moment, but it was quite interesting to find out how fast I can react – magically speaking – to a situation.”

“Now that’s just a little bit... not frightening or anything but the way you can just, I don’t even know what it is. One minute you’re talking about being scared the next you’re being all... scientifical, it’s unusual.”

“Now that particular trick I learned from our dear Miss Galinda Upland – how to distract yourself from the deep and meaningful by thinking about something else or, in my case, how to stop yourself from having hysterics by engaging in logical analysis of things. If it bothers you I will try to stop, it’s just a habit of mine.”

“You’re quite good at getting away from conversation topics you want to avoid as well.”

“Now that I can’t deny, talking in circles is definitely another of my bad habits.”

“A habit certainly, not necessarily bad or inexcusable, and it would probably be harder for you to do it if I didn’t talk when you were trying to,” he frowned slightly. “Like you’re letting me do now.”

“I was trying to decide where to start, at first I thought I could just tell you the one thing that’s on my mind right now but…”

“But there’s more?”

“By the time I answer that question you’ll be thinking that ‘there’s more’ was the understatement of a lifetime. There’s so much more that I hardly know where to begin. There’s a rather charming cliché about beginning at the beginning but I’m not quite sure when that was or if it is necessary.”

“Words can be terribly inconvenient things at times can’t they?”

“Oh yes indeed, it can be so difficult to find the right words to start with.”

“If only there was a way to say it all without words.”

Had that comment been made during the day Elphaba would probably have laughed it off with a second ‘if only’ but in the middle of the night, barely able to see him through her hair she wondered:

Well why not? I can talk to those who are gone, why not show him all I want him to know?

“Do you trust me?” she said suddenly.

“Of course,” he replied straight away, which surprised Elphaba who had at least expected him to ask why she was asking that first. “Does this mean you worked out what you want to tell me?”

“I suppose it does, only it is more ‘show’ than ‘tell’, if you’ll let me...”

“Let you...?”

“Let me touch your mind so I can show you what I want you to know.”

“You want to read my mind?” repeated Fiyero sceptically.

“Oh no just... it’s too simple to explain.”

“Don’t you mean complicated?”

“For you, my dear, for me it’s so easy to understand that I haven’t the first idea how to explain it.”

“That actually makes sense,” replied Fiyero, after a moment.

“Delightful isn’t it?”

“So what does this mind not-reading require?”

“Well I would suggest that you get up from there so you don’t lose the feeling in your toes.”

“Very funny.”

Fiyero took her advice and stood up then held out a hand to help her stand up. She hesitated then accepted and stood up. Fiyero smiled and brushed her hair back from her face, her eyes were slightly reddened but otherwise there was no sign that she had cried.

“Shall we sit down?” suggested Fiyero.

“That would work best.”

Elphaba nodded and sat down on the bed with him.

“Do I need to do anything to help?

“Just relax and don’t... don’t be afraid.”

Impulsively he kissed her then replied:

“I could never be afraid of you!”

Distracted already she smiled and held his hand tightly.

“Now close your eyes,” she whispered, and he did wondering what it would feel like to see her life in his mind.

It was, Fiyero discovered in an abstract sort of way, like one of those dreams where you stand outside of the scene and watch yourself. Except it was Elphaba he was watching and he found he had a deeper understanding of her feelings than a mere observer would.

Elphaba was lying on a blanket, facedown and barely conscious; as if they were miles away instead of next to her she heard voices,

“I bandaged and splinted the arm but she’s still bleeding everywhere else,” said a tall blonde woman, around Fiyero’s age, kneeling next to her and holding cloths against her back. The last thing Elphaba remembered was flying straight into a howling storm, still reeling from the shattering of her youthful illusions and her dramatic reaction.

“I think she's waking up,” replied a deeper voice, growling, it belonged to a Lion. “Maybe now we can find out why she was climbing in this storm.”

The first thing Elphaba did, after waking up in a strange, darkish, place and only realising that she was in pain and being held down, was to move. So quickly that even Fiyero, observing from the outside, barely saw her stand up. The next thing the Lion or the woman knew she had her back not quite flat against the wall and the hand of her unsplinted arm held up defensively.

“Get away from me!” she shouted at the woman, not even seeing the Lion. She was still dizzy from blood loss and jumping to her feet so quickly, the room was so dim she hadn't quite realised the person was a woman until she spoke.

“We’re not going to hurt you,” said the woman. Elphaba had no doubt she intended to be reassuring but she had the sort of cultured Gillikinese accent that instantly made Elphaba feel like a country cousin tramping mud on a carpet.

“Who are you?”

“Fine way to talk to the person trying to stop you from bleeding to death, my girl!”

For one of the few times in his life so far, Fiyero witnessed Elphaba stricken senseless.

“You’re a... you’re a Lion! But then you can’t be, I thought you were... guards.”

“In the Great Kells?” replied the Lion incredulously. “Try another one, human girl.”

“The Kells?” repeated Elphaba, shaking her head in disbelief, and regretting it as it made her dizzier. “That’s impossible, I was going ho...East.”

“East from west is not an easy thing to confuse,” remarked the woman, equally sceptical.

“Try it from several hundred feet up in a howling storm and see how easy it is,” Elphaba snapped back at her.

“So now you claim to fly like a Bird?” said the Lion, clearly caught between amusement at her obvious lie and anger for the same reason.

“No,” replied Elphaba, still snappish but not as forcefully.

“Then you were climbing?” said the woman, shaking her head in disbelief at the same time. “But that wouldn’t explain you ending up here, unless you exceptionally stupid.”

“I don’t see why I should explain myself to you.”

Fiyero shivered at the cold tone in her voice, it wasn’t something he would have expected from the girl he didn’t really know at Shiz and he hadn’t realised she had changed so quickly

“A fine way to speak to those who saved your life,” growled the Lion.

“An act you are quite likely to regret,” replied Elphaba, the memory of her flight from the Emerald City still fresh in her mind.

“Is that a threat?” asked the Gillikinese woman in a tone that clearly showed her contempt for the notion of this ragged creature as a threat to her.

“What is it about Gillikinese girls and thinking themselves superior to everything?” retorted Elphaba, the pain of what she saw as Glinda's betrayal still fresh in her heart.

“I don’t answer you to you, Miss Emerald, and my life is none of your concern!”

Now the Gillikinese woman, to Fiyero’s silent amusement, was surprised.

“How do you know my name?”

“The Lion must have said it,” dissembled Elphaba. “While I was not quite awake.”

“You’re lying,” said Emerald flatly.

“You can tell,” stated Elphaba but Emerald took it as a question.

“I can always tell when people are lying to me.”

“It wasn’t a question.”

“Why would you lie about knowing my name?”

“I didn’t lie about knowing your name,” protested Elphaba mildly. “The Lion did say it, I heard him.”

“Then you did not tell me the whole truth,” insisted Emerald.

“You don’t even know me,” retorted Elphaba, changing tack. “How dare you accuse me of lying?”

“Are you saying I should wait until I know you then accuse you of lying?”

“I think she’s a spy!” declared the Lion fiercely, saving Elphaba from bursting out with laughter at the ludicrous statement. “One who had the misfortune to fall into her enemies hands. We should kill her before she tries to escape!”

“Do that,” replied Elphaba, sounding very calm for a young woman whose life was in danger. “And you will be doing a great favour for those responsible for Animals losing their ability to speak.”

“You would say anything to save your own skin,” accused the Lion.

“No,” disagreed Emerald. “She’s telling the truth. She really does know who did that to so many of our friends.”

“And will she tell us?”

“I owe you at least that for rescuing me,” Elphaba answered for herself before Emerald could think on the question. “Though I doubt you'll like the answer or even believe it for all I can know.”

“You’re a Munchkinlander by speech, if not by appearance,” noted Emerald.

“And genuinely shocked that it took so long for my appearance to be mentioned!”

Fiyero wasn’t very impressed by the woman and the Lion’s attitude. In his mind, even if you had caught a possible spy, a bleeding woman with a broken arm wasn’t a great threat.

“And such interesting taste in hats,” remarked Emerald, the amusement in her tone infuriating Elphaba even as she unwillingly looked down to see her hat on the ground.

“It was a gift, from a friend,” Elphaba made it clear that she didn’t expect Emerald to understand that concept.

“A double sided gift indeed,” replied Emerald, affecting to take no offence. “Tell us then, as proof of your word, who is it who would render the Animals of Oz speechless?”

“A woman who calls herself Morgana Morrible and the only person in Oz with the power to give her permission to do so – the Wizard of Oz himself.”

“By the Blessed Saint!” exclaimed Emerald, referring to the Saint Glinda of legend and confirming herself as Gillikinese.

“We expected that the taint went high in the government,” explained the Lion. “But we took him to be an oblivious bystander and more a puppet ruler than anything. You say it is otherwise?”

“I have no doubt that he is aware of everything that has happened to the Animals of Oz. He has new spies as well now, scouts as he would call them, to ‘seek out subversive Animal activity’ – flying Monkeys.”

“There’s no such thing,” growled the Lion. “See how hopeless they are, sending a city child to spy for them!”

“But the Wizard does have Monkey servants, and the girl certainly believes that what she is saying is true.”

Elphaba fumed silently at being referred to as a child when she was clearly not that much younger than Emerald.

“Perhaps the Wizard has found some magic to make his servants fly.”

“And if the Wizard had any magic to his name that might even be true,” remarked Elphaba. “He does have a book though, a very old very magical book.”

“The Grimmerie?” exclaimed Emerald. “There have been rumours for years that he has it but surely if he could use it he would have before now, back when the ‘troubles’ first began?”

“Yes indeed he had the Grimmerie and it has been used, to make Monkeys fly, as I told you.”

With that statement Fiyero was amazed anew by her ability to adapt, in this case she had figured out very quickly how to tell Emerald the truth without giving away a lot.

“But you believe he has no magic,” said Emerald, picking up on the discrepancy straight away. “Who cast this spell then, this Morgana Morrible you spoke of who is in league with him?”

“She does have some skill at magic,” agreed Elphaba.

“If the Wizard has founds someone who will use the book on his behalf then he is more danger than we imagined,” said the Lion, starting to pace around the room.

“I can assure,” said Elphaba confidently. “The person who has the Grimmerie has no desire to assist the Wizard in any way.”

“But you said this Morrible was his ally.”

The Lion stopped pacing with the closest expression a Lion could manage to a frown.

“So she is,” agreed Elphaba, wondering briefly if she would have been so brave (read: reckless) with these two if she wasn’t half senseless with pain and altogether stunned by what she had done so far this day, or yesterday whenever it had happened.

Probably so, she decided, reasoning that if she had sense enough to realise what she was doing then she had enough to stop if she wished it.

The vision went dark and Fiyero thought for a moment that it was over then he heard Emerald's voice and realised that Elphaba had closed her eyes.

“Blessed Lady, I think she’s fainted,” said Emerald, as Elphaba slid back against the wall with a low moan. Barely conscious Elphaba was vaguely aware of the woman half carrying half leading her back to where she had been laying and speaking to the Lion as she did so.

“I probably should have checked her for concussion before we started listening to anything she said. The girl was obviously babbling even if she did believe everything she was saying was true.”

“Then you don’t think the Wizard is responsible, as she claims?” queried the Lion.

“Oh I’m certain that much at least was true, it seems a more likely explanation than him being so blind to the government’s actions that he did not know what they are doing to the Animals of Oz.”

“But if she is a spy she might tell us that anyway if she suffered more injury than first we thought in her fall.”

“When she wakes again we’ll question her, after making sure she has all her wits about her.”

“If she does indeed,” remarked the Lion. “And is not merely some puppet of the Wizard’s sent to tell us that he is aware that humans help Animals against his will.”

So, mused Elphaba sleepily. They think me half-witted or a liar and plan to question me later. No doubt if I wasn’t suffering from concussion, as she said, I might find that more upsetting.

With that she slipped all the way into unconsciousness and Fiyero found himself, briefly, in complete darkness.

After that brief moment of nothing Fiyero had a definite sense of being somewhere and an equally definite sense of Elphaba’s presence, which was the only thing that stopped him from panicking.

“I wanted to explain something without waking you up,” she explained quietly and Fiyero wondered if she was actually speaking or if he was just making himself think it was that way because it was a simpler explanation. He nodded, or gave an affirmative response at least, and she continued since he didn’t seem inclined to speak.

“Ever since I was young I have seen… things, things that are going to happen or might happen, they don’t always come true.”

“What sort of things?” asked Fiyero curiously.

“That first night you were at Shiz Galinda and I went back to our room, she decided we should share secrets and hers was ‘Fiyero and I are going to be married’.”

“She didn’t?” exclaimed Fiyero incredulously. “I only met her that afternoon!”

“Oh she did, and in the moments after she said it I saw, as clearly as though she wasn’t standing in front of me in bright pink, her in a white wedding gown – she looked like a fairytale princess truly.”

“But that didn’t happen.”

“No, it didn’t, but other things have and sometimes it’s not just what might be but what is and was.”

“What is and was?” repeated Fiyero, confused. “I don’t understand.”

“What might be is the future,” explained Elphaba. “What is and what was are the present and the past. It’s quite maddening really, most of the time I don’t even recognise the event until it’s already happened.”

“That must be more frustrating than not knowing what is going to happen to you,” agreed Fiyero.

“Oh for certain, I still haven’t decided entirely if my magic is a gift or a curse. It definitely seems like more of the latter most of the time, but anyway I wanted to tell you about something else. I had a bad fever after my little mountainside escapade and while I was unconscious there were...I don’t know how many of those visions, dozens, maybe hundreds, I remember them all but the fever jumbled everything - it’s all out of order and some of them are just split second fragments. What I think happened is that the fever caused my magical barriers, some of which I’ve been holding unconsciously for years, to give way. Thanks to that I’ve spent the last four years meeting people I’ve never seen in my life and knowing things about them…but that’s nothing compared to anything I want to tell you.”

“Would you have taken the Grimmerie,” wondered Fiyero. “If you had known how much power if would give you?”

After that question he had the sense that she was smiling and sighing at the same time.

“Further back than I thought, perhaps, because it is easier to believe what you are shown than what you are told but I will tell you what I am going to show you anyway – I had power before I set eyes or hands on the Grimmerie.”

The first events of this new experience were somehow condensed, giving Fiyero a sens eof what happened without him actually watching it. Elphaba, aged not quite thirteen, ran away from home and eluded the men sent to find her by her father for days.

One day, as night was creeping closer, she found herself in an abandoned orchard – Fiyero recognised it, by the ramshackle hut, as the place where they had spent the night not so long ago. Elphaba’s feelings here, because she was younger or because she was not in so much physical pain, were clearer here. She was so unbearably she even missed the company of the servants who disdained her and cosseted her sister.

She didn’t want to go in the house, it looked empty but who knew who might turn up? So she curled up in her cloak at the base of one of the trees and after whispering thanks for the shelter, in Quadling as her mother had taught her when she was just a toddler, fell asleep.

He could feel the presence of the adult Elphaba softly pointing out the fact that she had done nothing but go to sleep here and wondered what it meant, certain that he was going to find out. A brief moment of darkness, the same feeling of time being compressed, and the dawn light was shining through the tree branches and waking Elphaba from a deep sleep in which she had dreamed of having friends to keep her company.

She sighed heavily as she woke up to find the world exactly as it had been before.

“Don’t you be huffing all over my trunk, you’ll dirty it up!” protested the tree she had slept under, the tree that had been no more than a tree when she went to sleep.

Elphaba felt his shock as he realised the full import of what she had shown him and pulled herself back out of the link with his mind, just like that they were sitting on a perfectly normal bed in a normal room and Fiyero was staring at her as though he had never seen her before.

He sensed, rather than saw, her trying to pull away from him but he was still holding her hand and tightened his grip so she couldn’t move without dragging him along.

“No,” he said, trying to pull her back. “It’s fine, really, I mean unbelievable…but I do believe it but it’s fine. I just need a moment to… I don’t know… absorb, breathe, have I told you lately that you’re amazing? Because you are so amazing, does that woman – Emerald – does she know how amazing you are? You must tell me how all of that turned out after the fever visions, but then you were and I went and made a stupid remark and of course you reacted to my stupid remark I mean who wouldn’t? I didn’t mean to interrupt though, it’s just what you did, and you only a child it’s just…”

“Amazing?” suggested Elphaba wryly, when he paused to breathe and think of a word.

“I’m sorry, I’m babbling at you again, aren’t I?”

“Just a little,” replied Elphaba. “And understandably.”

“You’re very understanding,” agreed Fiyero cheerfully.

“Oh yes, an endless well of patience too, I’m sure,” she agreed in a tone of voice that made Fiyero laugh.

“Well,” he amended, since she seemed so insistent. “Very understanding of my flaws and foibles then.”

“You’re a very special exception, my very dearest one.”

“You mean you’re not this patient with everyone?”

“I’ve certainly not been this honest with anyone,” she answered, without answering the question.

“Can the one called Emerald really tell when people are telling the truth?”

“She can tell when someone believes what they are saying is true, as you heard, that is not always what is actually true.”

“I also saw that it is possible to tell her things that are entirely true without telling her the whole truth.”

“And she finds it infuriating, as you also saw.”

“Did she find out later that it was you who made the Monkeys fly?”

“Oh yes, once I woke up I explained all of that… not straight away though.”

“And the Lion was that Edest?” asked Fiyero, before she could explain that comment. “ I couldn’t quite tell.”

“One of his brothers, between them they rule what remains of the Lion tribes of Oz.”

“Why not straight away?” asked Fiyero belatedly. “Did they not ask?”

“It was more that I didn’t give them a chance to ask. You see, while I was unconscious, I learned a lot more about Emerald – her foster parents called her that because they found her in the Emerald City. She was born in Gillikin though, as I thought. She was also the leader of the Resistance against the Wizard’s government even before I met her.”

Fiyero had a feeling that ‘even before I met her’ was going to be an important point.

“And has continued to be?” he asked, in case her point was that her arrival had somehow caused Emerald to no longer be the leader.

“Oh yes,” said Elphaba fervently. “No one has more right to lead us than she does, I believe in that as strongly as I believe in what we are fighting for.”

“And who is ‘Emerald’ of the Emerald City, to warrant such loyalty?” wondered Fiyero, not doubting her but intensely curious.

Elphaba’s answer was stated in such a matter of fact tone that he stared at her in disbelief and asked her to repeat it, which she did.

“Ozma Tippetarius, the lost Princess and rightful Queen of Oz.”