“I had the feeling at the time that she was in collusion with the Wizard, and that she ordered her tiktok thing—Grommetik, the name’s just come back to me, isn’t memory odd like that—to kill Doctor Dilla-mond.”
“You saw fiends with knives behind every chair, you always did,” Nessarose said. “I don’t think that Madame Morrible had any real power. She was a manipulative woman, but her power was very limited, and in our naiveté we saw her as a villain. She was merely full of self-importance.”
“I wonder. I tried to say something about it afterward. Didn’t we all faint?”
“We were innocent and horribly suggestible, Elphie.”
“And Glinda’s gone on to marry money, as Madame Morrible said. Is Sir Chuffrey still alive?”
“If you can call it that, yes. And Glinda is a sorceress, there’s no questioning that. But Madame Morrible was merely predicting things to us; she saw our talents, as an educator could be expected to do, and she advised us on how to make the most of them. What’s so surprising about that?”
“She tried to seduce us into a secret service for an unknown master. I’m not inventing this, Nessie.”
“She knew how to get to you, obviously, by appealing to your sense of conspiracy. I don’t remember such alluring nonsense.”
Elphaba fell silent. Perhaps Nessie was right. And yet here they were, a dozen years later: two Witches, in a manner of speaking. And Glinda a sorceress for the public good. It was enough to make Elphie go back to Kiamo Ko and burn that Grimmerie, and burn the broom too, for that matter.
“She always reminded Glinda of a carp,” said Nessarose. “Can you really be scared of a fish, after all these years?”
“I saw in a book once a drawing of a lake monster, or a sea monster if you believe in oceans,” said Elphie. “I may not be sure if monsters exist, but I’d rather live my life in doubt than be persuaded by a real experience of one.”
“You said much the same thing about the Unnamed God once,” said Nessarose quietly.
“Oh, now please don’t start on that.”
“A soul is too valuable to ignore, Elphie.”
“Well, isn’t it good I don’t have one then, so there’s no muss, no fuss.”
“You have a soul. Everyone does.”
“How about the Cow you bartered for today, and the Sheep?”
“I’m not talking about lower orders.”
“That sort of talk offends me, Nessie. I freed those Animals today, you know.”
Nessarose shrugged. “You have some rights in Colwen Grounds. I’m not going to
walk around prohibiting your little pet missions.”
“They said some pretty horrible things about how Animals are being treated here. I thought it was the Emerald City and Gillikin only; I somehow guessed Munchkinland, being more rural, would have more common sense.”
“You know,” said Nessie, indicating that the maid should wipe her mouth with a napkin, “once at a prayer service I met a soldier. He had lost a limb in a campaign against some restless Quadlings. He said every morning he slapped the stump where his arm used to be. He got the blood ringing, and after a few minutes there was a tingling sensation, and he developed a kind of phantom limb. Not all at once, and not in physical form: What he regained was a sense of what it had felt like. It would grow to the elbow, and then his memory, his bodily memory, of limbs in three-dimensional space, would extend, eventually, all the way down to his fingers. Once his phantom limb was in place, mentally, that is, he could face the day as a crippled man. Furthermore, he had better physical balance.”
Elphaba, feeling more and more like a real Witch, looked at her sister, waiting for the punch.
“I tried it for a while. For months in fact. I had Nanny massage my little knobs there. After much hard work on poor Nanny’s part, I began to develop just the beginning of a sense of what it would be like to have arms. It never went very far, until Glinda dazzled up these shoes. Now—I don’t know why, maybe they’re too tight and my circulation is complaining—after an hour on my feet, I have phantom arms. First time in my life. I can’t quite get the feel of fingers.”
“Phantom limbs,” said Elphie. “Well, I’m pleased for you.”
“You know, if you slapped yourself around, spiritually speaking,” said Nessarose, “you might develop a phantom soul, or something that felt like one. It’s a good internal guide, a soul. I suspect you might even recognize that it’s not a phantom at all—it’s a real one.”
“That’ll do, Nessie,” said Elphaba. “I don’t care to discuss my spiritual trials with you.”
“Why don’t you stay here with me, join my staff, and we can have you baptized,” said Nessarose warmly.
“Water is profoundly painful to me, as you well know, and I won’t discuss it again. I can’t pledge allegiance to anything Unnamed. It’s a sham.”
