“Something worse, I expect,” said Elphaba, “but needs to be done. I’ve come to say good-bye. I’m not going back with you to Crage Hall. I’ll find a place to study on my own. I’ll not be part of—Madame Morrible’s—school—again—”
“No, no,” cried Glinda, “I can’t let you! Nanny will eat me alive! Nessarose will die! Madame Morrible will—Elphie, no. No!”
“Tell them I kidnapped you and made you come here, they’ll believe that of me,” said Elphaba. She stood on the mounting tread. A fat Glikkun female dwarf, having caught the gist of the drama, shifted to the more comfortable seat next to Glinda. “They needn’t look for me, Glinda, for I’m not going to be findable. I’m going down.”
“Down where? Back to Quadling Country?”
“That would be telling,” Elphaba said. “But I won’t lie to you, my dear. No need to lie. I don’t know yet where I’m going. I haven’t decided so I wouldn’t have to lie.”
“Elphie, get in this cab, don’t be a fool,” Glinda cried. The driver was adjusting the reins and yelling at Elphaba to sod off.
“You’ll be all right,” Elphaba said, “now you’re a seasoned traveler. This is just the return leg of a voyage you already know.” She put her face against Glinda’s and kissed her. “Hold out, if you can,” she murmured, and kissed her again. “Hold out, my sweet.”
The driver clucked the reins, and pitched a cry to leave. Glinda craned her head to see Elphaba drift back into the crowds. For all her singularity of complexion, it was astounding how quickly she became camouflaged in the ragamuffin variety of street life in the Emerald City. Or maybe it was foolish tears blurring Glinda’s vision. Elphaba hadn’t cried, of course. Her head had turned away quickly as she stepped down, not to hide her tears but to soften the fact of their absence. But the sting, to Glinda, was real.
On a clammy late summer evening about three years after graduating from Shiz University, Fiyero stopped at the unionist chapel in Saint Glinda’s Square, to pass some time before meeting a fellow countryman at the opera.
Fiyero hadn’t taken to unionism as a student, but he had developed an eye for frescoes that often adorned the cubbyholes of older chapels. He was hoping to find a portrait of Saint Glinda. He had not seen Glinda of the Arduennas of the Uplands since her graduation—she had finished a year before he did. But he hoped it wouldn’t be sacrilegious to light a charmwax candle in front of Saint Glinda’s likeness, and to think of her namesake.
A service was ending, and the congregation of sensitive adolescent boys and black-scarved grandmothers drifted slowly out. Fiyero waited until the lyre player in the nave had finished fingering a tricky diminuet, then he approached her. “Do forgive me—I’m a visitor from the west.” Well obviously, with his rich ochre skin color and tribal markings. “I don’t see a sexton—a verger—a sacristan, whatever the word is—nor can I find a pamphlet to tell me—I was looking to find an ikon of Saint Glinda?”
Her face remained grave. “You’ll be lucky if it hasn’t been papered over with a poster of Our Glorious Wizard. I’m an itinerant musician, only through this way once in a while. But I think you might look in the last aisle; there’s an oratory to Saint Glinda, or used to be. Good luck.”
Locating it—a tomblike space with an archer’s slit instead of a true window—Fiyero saw, lit by a pinkish sanctuary light, a smoky image of the Saint, leaning a bit to the right. The portrait was merely sentimental and not robustly primitive, a disappointment. Water damage had made great white stains like laundry soap mistakes on the Saint’s holy garments. He couldn’t remember her particular legend, nor the uplifting way that she had gagged on death for the sake of her soul and for the edification of her admirers.
But then he saw, in the underwatery shadows, that the oratory was inhabited by a penitent. The head was bowed in prayer, and he was about to move away when it struck him that he knew who it was.
“Elphaba!” he said.
She turned her head slowly; a lace shawl dropped to her shoulders. Her hair was looped on her head and skewered with ivory hair corkscrews. Her eyes batted once or twice slowly, as if she were moving toward him from a great distance away. He had interrupted her at prayer—he hadn’t remembered her to be religious—maybe she didn’t recognize him.
“Elphaba, it’s Fiyero,” he said, moving into the doorway, blocking her exit, and also the light—suddenly he couldn’t see her face, and wondered if he heard correctly when she said, “I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Elphie—I’m Fiyero—we were at Shiz,” he said. “My splendid Elphie—how are you?”
“Sir, I believe you are mistaking me for someone
else,” she said, in Elphaba’s voice.
“Elphaba, the Thropp Third Descending, if I remember the nomenclature,” he said, laughing stoutly, “I’m not mistaken at all. I’m Fiyero of the Arjikis—you know me, you remember me! From Doctor Nikidik’s lectures in the life sciences!”
“You have confused yourself,” she said, “sir.” That last word sounded a bit shirty, absolutely Elphaba. “Now you don’t mind if I am about my devotions in peace?” She drew her shawl up above her head, and arranged it to fall about her temples. The chin in profile could slice a salami, and even in the low light he knew he wasn’t wrong.
“What is it?” he said. “Elphie—well, Miss Elphaba, if you require—don’t shab me off like this. Of course it’s you. There’s no disguising you. What game are you about?”
She didn’t answer him in words, but by telling her beads ostentatiously she was telling him to get lost.
“I’m not going,” he said.
“You’re interrupting my meditation, sir,” she said softly. “Do I have to call the verger and have you removed?”
“I’ll meet you outside,” he said. “How long do you need to pray? Half an hour? An hour? I’ll wait.”
“In an hour, then, across the street; there’s a small public fountain with some benches. I’ll talk with you for five minutes, five minutes only, and show you that you’ve made a mistake. Not a serious one, but increasingly annoying to me.”
“Forgive the intrusion. In an hour then—Elphaba.” He wasn’t going to let her get away with whatever game she was playing. He withdrew, however, and went to the musician at the back of the nave. “Is there another exit to this building besides the main doors?” he asked, over her spurts of arpeggio. When it was convenient to answer him, she tucked her head and moved her eyes. “Side door through to the cloister of the maunts, it’s not open to the public, but you can get out to a servants’ delivery alley through there.”
He lingered in the shadow of a pillar. In about forty minutes, a cloaked figure entered the chapel and moved, hobbling with a cane, directly to the oratory Elphie occupied. He was too far away to hear if words were exchanged, or anything else. (Perhaps the newcomer was merely another disciple of Saint Glinda, and wanted solitude to pray.) The figure didn’t linger; it left again as quickly as its stiff joints would allow.
