Nanny reported that Nessarose had grown to be far cleverer than anyone anticipated. She kept her cards close to her chest and issued vague statements about the revolutionary cause, statements that could be read several ways, depending on the audience. Nanny assumed Nessarose intended to set up some sort of theocracy, incorporating into the governing laws of Munchkinland her own restrictive interpretation of unionism. “Your sainted father Frex himself doesn’t know if this would be a good or bad thing, and keeps silent on the matter. He’s not much for politics, he prefers the mystical realm.” There was, Nanny observed, even some local support for Nessarose’s plans. But since Nessarose governed her remarks well, the Wizard’s armed forces garrisoned in the area could find no excuse to arrest her. “She’s adept at this,” Nanny admitted. “Shiz taught her well. She stands on her own two feet now.”
The word adept sent chills down Elphie’s spine. Was Nessarose even now responding to some sort of spell that Madame Morrible had placed on her, those foggy years ago in the parlor at Crage Hall? Was she in fact a pawn, an Adept of the Wizard, or of Madame Morrible? Did she know why she did what she did? For that matter, was Elphaba herself merely a playing piece of a higher, evil power?
The recollection of Madame Morrible’s proposals for their careers—hers, and Nessarose’s, and Glinda’s—had come back to Elphie with a shock following the recovery of Liir from his saturation and near drowning last winter. When he finally came around enough to answer questions about how he had come to be in the fishwell, he could only say “The fish talked to me, she told me to come down.” Elphie knew in her heart that it was Manek, horrible evil Manek, who had tortured the boy unmercifully and openly all winter. She didn’t care that Manek died, even if Manek was the precious son of Fiyero. Any torturer was fair game for javelin icicles. But she had to pause, gulping, at what Liir had said next. He said, “The fish told me she was magic. She said that Fiyero was my father, and that Irji and Manek and Nor are my brothers and my sister.”
“Goldfish don’t talk, sweetheart!” Sarima said. “You’re imagining things. You were down there too long and your brain got waterlogged.”
Elphaba had yearned toward Liir, a strange, unhappy compulsion. Who was this boy who lived in her life? Oh, she knew more or less where he came from, but who he was—it seemed to make a difference, for the first time in her life. She had reached out and put her hand on his shoulder. He had twitched it off; he was not used to such a gesture. And she had felt rebuffed.
“Want to see my pet mouse, Liir?” said Nor, who had been warm to the boy during his convalescence. Liir always chose the company of his peers over questioning by the grown-ups, and it was impossible to pry further information out of him about his ordeal. He didn’t seem much changed, except that with Manek dead, Liir charged around Kiamo Ko with greater zest and liberty.
And Sarima had looked at Elphaba, and Elphaba thought the hour of her liberation was at hand at last. “How silly of the boy, he’s delusional,” Sarima had said at last. “The idea of Fiyero being his father. Fiyero didn’t have an ounce of fat on his body, and look at the boy.”
Under the terms of her welcome, Elphaba could not prod Sarima to change her mind, but she stared at her hostess, willing her to accept the facts. But she wouldn’t. “And whoever might the mother be?” said Sarima blandly, touching the hem of her skirt softly. “It’s preposterous beyond words.”
For the first time, Elphie wished that Liir had at least an undertone of green in his skin.
Sarima had swept away, to weep in her chapel for her husband, for her second son.
And the terms of Elphie’s imprisonment—as an unwilling traitor, as an exiled maunt, as a hapless mother, as a failed insurrectionist, as a Witch in disguise—remained unchanged.
Though the idea of a Goldfish or a Carp in the fishwell telling such things to Liir—was there any possibility in that? Or had Madame Morrible the ability to change her shape, to live in cold darkness, to slip in and observe what Elphie was up to? Liir had no imagination to speak of, he couldn’t have come up with that by himself. Could he?
When she went to look in the fishwell, many times at all hours of the day or night, the old carp—or Carp—stayed out of sight.
“I’m glad to hear Nessarose is on her two feet,” said Elphaba at last, coming back to the orchard from her musings. Nanny was gnawing at a piece of sugar candy.
“I mean that literally, you know,” said Nanny through her spittle. “She doesn’t need to be propped up anymore. Not figuratively or literally. She can stand on her own, stand and sit.”
“Without benefit of arms? I don’t believe it,” said the Witch.
“You’ll have to. Do you remember that pair of shoes that Frex had decorated for her?”
Of course Elphaba remembered! The beautiful shoes! Her father’s sign of devotion to his second daughter, his desire to accentuate her beauty and draw attention away from her deformity.
“Well, old Glinda of the Arduennas, remember her? Married to Sir Chuffrey, and gone a bit to seed, in my humble opinion. She came to Colwen Grounds a couple of years ago. She and Nessarose had a wild old time, remembering college days. And she put those very same shoes through something of an enchantment. Don’t ask me. Magic was never my cup of tea. The shoes allowed Nessarose to sit and stand and walk without support. She is never without them. She claims they give her moral virtue too, but then she has buckets more of that than she needs. You’d be surprised how superstitious Munchkinlanders have become these days.” Nanny sighed. “That’s why I was free to look you up, dearie. The magic shoes made me redundant. Nanny is out of a job.”
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“You’re too old to work, you sit and enjoy the sun,” said Elphaba. “You can stay here as long as you like.”
“You talk as if this is your house,” said Nanny. “As if you have the right to issue such invitations.”
“Until I’m allowed to leave, this is my house,” said Elphie. “I can’t help it.”
Nanny shaded her eyes and looked out over the mountains, which in the midday light looked like polished horn. “It’s too rich, to think of you being a Witch, after a fashion anyway, and your sister trying out as resident Saint. Who would have thought, back in those muddy years in the Quadling badlands? I don’t think you’re a Witch, whatever you say. But one thing I do want to know. Is Liir your son?”
Elphaba shivered, though her heart, deep inside its pocket of cold, roiled in hot energy. “It is not a question I can answer,” she said sadly.
“You needn’t keep anything from me, dearie. Remember, Nanny was nursemaid to your mother too, and a more outgoing, sensual woman I have yet to meet. Convention didn’t bind her, not in youth nor in married life.”
“I don’t think I want to hear about this,” said Elphie.
“Then let’s talk about Liir. What in blazes can you mean, you can’t answer a simple question like that? Either you conceived him and bore him, or you didn’t. As far as I know in this world there are no other stories.”
“What I mean,” said Elphaba “and the only remark about it I will ever make is this. When I first went to the mauntery, under the kind offices of Mother Yackle, I was in no state to know what was happening to me, and I spent about a year in a deathly sleep. It’s just possible I brought a child to term and delivered it. I was another full year recovering. When I was first assigned duties, I worked with the sick and the dying, and also with abandoned children. I had no more congress with Liir than with any other of several dozen brats. When I left the mauntery to come here, it was under the condition that I would take Liir with me. I didn’t question the instruction—one doesn’t question the instructions of superiors. I have no motherly warmth toward the boy”—she gulped, in case this was no longer true—“and I don’t feel as if I’ve ever gone through the experience of bearing a child. I don’t quite believe myself capable, in fact, although I’m willing to concede that this may be simply ignorance and blindness. But that’s all there is to say about it. I’ll say no more, and no more will you.”
“Have you an obligation to be motherly to him then, despite the mystery?”
