“I won’t eat until we speak,” said the guest. “Not under your roof in false pretenses for one night; I’d rather lie at the bottom of a lake. Sarima, I know who you are. I went to school with your husband. I’ve known about you for a dozen years or so.”
“Of course,” said Sarima then, things clicking. The old, treasured details of her husband’s life came rushing up. “Of course Fiyero talked of you—and of your sister, Nessie, right? Nessarose. And of the glamorous Glinda, with whom I think he was a little in love, and the playful inverted boys, and Avaric, and solid old Boq! I had wondered if that happy time of his life was always to be self-contained, always his and never mine—you are good to have come to call. I should have liked a season or two at Shiz, but I didn’t have the brains, I fear, nor my family the money. I would have remembered you in a minute, well, the color of your skin, there’s nothing like it, is there? Or am I too provincial?”
“No, it’s unique,” said the guest. “Before we say ten sentences of polite nonsense to each other, I have to tell you something, Sarima. I think I was the cause of Fiyero’s death—”
“Well, you’re not the only one,” interrupted Sarima, “it’s a national pastime out here, blaming oneself for the death of a prince. An opportunity for public grieving and atonement, which I secretly believe people enjoy just a little bit.”
The guest twisted her fingers, as if to pry open a space for herself in Sarima’s opinions. “I can tell you how, I want to tell you—”
“Not unless I want to hear it, which is my prerogative. This is my house and I choose to hear what I want.”
“You must hear it, so that I can be forgiven,” said the w
oman, turning her shoulders this way and that, almost as if she were a beast of burden with an invisible yoke on her.
Sarima did not like to be ambushed in her own home. Time enough to consider these sudden implications. When she felt up to it. And not until. She reminded herself that she was in charge. And thus she could afford to be kind.
“If I remember rightly,” said Sarima—her mind was racing with memory—“you’re the one, Fiyero talked of you, of course—Elphaba, that’s it—you’re the one who didn’t believe in the soul. I remember that much, so what’s to forgive, dearie? I know you’re travel weary—it’s impossible to get here without being travel weary—and you need a good hot meal and a few nights of sleep, and we’ll chat some morning next week?”
Sarima linked her arm with Elphaba’s. “But I’ll preserve your name from them, if you like,” said Sarima. She walked Elphaba through the tall warped oak doors into the dining hall and called, “Look who’s here, Auntie Guest.” The sisters were standing beside their chairs, hungry and curious and impatient. Four had the ladle in the tureen, stirring; Six had dressed in a hostile puce; Two and Three, the twins, looked piously at their prayer cards; Five was smoking and blowing concentric rings toward the platter of yellow eyeless fish they had dragged up from the underground lake. “Sisters, rejoice, an old friend of Fiyero’s has come to share fond memories and enliven our lives. Welcome her as you do me.” Perhaps an unfortunate choice of words, as the sisters all resented and despised Sarima. Why had she married someone who would die so early and condemn them not just to spinsterhood but to deprivation and denial?
Elphaba didn’t speak through the entire meal or look up from her plate. She devoured the fish, though, and the cheese and the fruit. Sarima deduced from her eating habits that she had lived under a rule of silence at meals, and wasn’t surprised, later, to hear about the mauntery.
They took a glass of precious sherry in the music room, and Six entertained them with a wobbling nocturne. The guest looked miserable, which made the sisters happy. Sarima sighed. The one thing that could be said about the guest was this: She was older than Sarima. Perhaps, for the short while of her stay, Elphaba would come out of that sulk and lend an ear to hear how troubling and trying Sarima’s life was. It would be nice to chat with someone not in the family.
2
A week passed before Sarima said to Three, “Please tell our Auntie Guest that I’d like to see her tomorrow for elevenses in the Solar.” Sarima thought that Elphaba had had enough time now to get the measure of things. The suffering green woman was in some sort of slow-motion thrall, or fit. She moved jerkily, stalking about the courtyard, or stamping in to meals as if trying to poke holes in the flooring with her heels. Her elbows were always bent at right angles, and her hands clenched and unclenched themselves.
Sarima felt stronger than ever, which wasn’t very. It did her some good to have a contemporary around, however thwarted she might be. The sisters disapproved of Sarima’s cordiality, but the higher mountain passes were already closed for the winter, and you just couldn’t send a stranger packing into the treacherous valleys. The sisters conferred in their parlor, as they busied themselves knitting hateful gray potholders for the undeserving poor at Lurlinemas. She’s sick, they said; she’s inert, unfinished (even more than they were, was the unspoken corollary, an immensely gratifying notion); she’s damned. And is that fat balloon of a boy her son, or a child slave, or is he one of her familiars? Behind Sarima’s back they called the woman living in the cobbleshed Auntie Witch, echoing the old legends of Kumbricia, which were viler—and more persistent—in the Kells than elsewhere in Oz.
It was Manek, Sarima’s middle child, who was the most curious. One morning, as the boys all stood on a battlement pissing over the side (a game poor Nor had to pretend no interest in), Manek said, “What if we peed on Auntie? Would she scream?”
“She’d turn you into a toad,” said Liir.
“No, I mean would it hurt her? She looks like water gives her the aches and shakes. Does she even drink it? Or does it make her insides hurt?”
Liir, not an especially observant child, said, “I think she doesn’t drink it. Sometimes she washes things, but she uses sticks and brushes. We better not pee on her.”
“And what does she do with all those bees and the monkey? Are they magic?”
“Yeah,” said Liir.
“What kind of magic?”
“I don’t know.” They stepped away from the dizzying drop and Nor came running up. “I have a magic straw,” she said, holding up a brown bristle. “From the Witch’s broom.”
“Is the broom magic?” said Manek to Liir.
“Yes. It can sweep the floor real fast.”
“Can it talk? Is it enchanted? What does it say?”
They got more interested, and Liir bloomed and blushed under their curiosity. “I can’t tell. It’s a secret.”
“Is it still a secret if we push you off the tower?”
Liir considered. “What do you mean?”
