“You are a pest,” said Nanny. “She said to rest and not to worry. She gives her blessing. She is a filthy whore but she knows what she’s talking about.” Nanny didn’t mention that Yackle was certain the next child would be a girl too. There was too much chance Melena would try to abort her, and Yackle sounded quite sure that history belonged to two sisters, not a single girl.
“And you got home safely? Did anyone suspect?”
“Who would suspect innocent old Nanny of trading in illegal substances in the Lower Quarter?” laughed Nanny. “I do my knitting and mind my own business. Now go to sleep, my love. Nix to the wine for the next few months, and stay the course with this medicine, and we’ll have for you and Frex a decent, healthy child, which will provide no end of recovery for your marriage.”
“My marriage is perfectly fine,” said Melena, snuggling down under the covers—the capsule had a kick, but she didn’t want Nanny to know—“as long as we don’t go wading off into the muddy sunset.”
“The sun sets in the west, not in the south,” said Nanny soothingly. “It was a masterly stroke to bring up the pregnancy tonight, my dear. I wouldn’t come to visit you if you went paddling off into Quadling Country, by the way. I’m fifty years old this year, you know. There are some things Nanny is really too old to do.”
“Well nobody better go anywhere,” said Melena, and began to fall asleep.
Nanny, pleased with herself, glanced out the window again as she prepared to retire. Frex and Turtle Heart were still deep in conversation. Nanny was sharper than she let on; she had seen Turtle Heart’s face when he was remembering the threat to his people. It had opened like a hen’s egg, and the truth had fluttered and wobbled out of it just as naive as a yellow chick. And as fragile. No wonder Frex was sitting nearer to the beleaguered Quadling than Nanny thought was altogether decent. But there seemed no end of oddity to this family.
“Send the girl in so I can put her down,” she called from the window, partly to interrupt their intimacy.
Frex looked around. “She’s in, isn’t she?”
Nanny glanced. The child was not given to hiding games, neither here nor with the brats in the village. “No, isn’t she with you?”
The men turned and looked. Nanny thought she saw a blur of movement in the blue shadows of the wild yew. She stood up and held on to the window ledge. “Well, find her. It’s the prowling hour.”
“There’s nothing here, Nanny, it’s your overactive imagination,” drawled Frex, but the men were up quickly, and looking around.
“Melena, dear, don’t sleep yet; do you know where Elphaba is? Did you see her wander off?” said Nanny.
Melena struggled to lift herself to one elbow. She stared through her hair and her inebriation. “What are you on about?” she asked in a slur, “who is wandering off?”
“Elphaba,” Nanny said. “Come on, you better get up. Where could she be. Where could she be.” She started to help Melena up, but it was happening too slowly, and Nanny’s heart was beginning to beat fast. She fixed Melena’s hands to the bedposts, saying, “Now come on, Melena, this is not good,” and she reached for her blackthorn staff.
“Who?” said Melena. “Who’s lost?”
The men were calling in the purple gloaming. “Fabala! Elphaba! Elphie! Little frog!” They circled out away from the yard, away from the dying embers of the dinner fire, peering and hitting at the lower branches of bushes. “Little snake! Lizard girl! Where are you?”
“It’s the thing, the thing has come down from the hills, whatever it is!” cried Nanny.
“There’s no thing, you old fool,” said Frex, but he leaped more and more vigorously from rock to rock behind the lodge, smacking branches aside. Turtle Heart stood still, his hands out to the sky, as if trying to receive the faint light of the first stars into his palms.
“Is it Elphaba,” called Melena from the door, finally focusing, and stepping forward in her nightgown. “Is the child gone?”
“She’s wandered off, she’s been taken,” said Nanny fiercely, “these two idiots were flirting like schoolgirls, and the beast from the hills is abroad!”
Melena called, her words mounting in pitch and terror, “Elphaba! Elphaba, you listen to me! Come here this instant! Elphaba!”
The wind alone answered.
“She is not far,” said Turtle Heart after a moment. In the deepening dark he was almost invisible while Melena in her white poplin glowed like an angel, as if lit from within. “She is not far, she just is not here.”
“What the devil do you mean,” Nanny said, weeping, “with your riddles and your games?”
Turtle Heart turned. Frex had come back to him, to throw an arm around him and hold him up, and Melena came forward to his other side. He sagged for a minute, as if fainting; Melena cried out in fright. But Turtle Heart straightened up, and began to move forward, and they headed toward the lake.
“Not the lake, not that girl, she can’t abide water, you know that,” called Nanny, but she was rushing forward now, using her staff to feel the ground ahead of her so she wouldn’t stumble.
This is the end, thought Melena. Her brain was too foggy to think anything else, and she said it again and again, as if to prevent it from being true.
This is the beginning, thought Frex, but of what?
“She is not far, she is not here,” said Turtle Heart again.
