“Well—yes.”
“Don’t bring him around here then, they spread the plague,” said Gawnette.
“They spread no such thing,” snapped Melena.
“No throwing, Elphie dear,” called Nanny.
“I’m only saying what I hear. They say at night that Quadlings fall asleep and their souls climb out through their mouths and go abroad.”
“Stupid people say a lot of stupid things.” Melena was curt and too loud. “I have never seen his soul climb out of his mouth while he was sleeping, and I’ve had plenty of opportu—”
“Darling, no rocks,” shrilled Nanny. “None of the other children have rocks.”
“Now they do,” observed Gawnette.
“He is the most sensitive person I’ve ever met,” said Melena.
“Sensitive isn’t much use to a fishwife,” said Gawnette. “How about to a minister and a minister’s wife?”
“Now there’s blood, how vexing,” said Nanny. “Children, let Elphie up so I can wipe that cut. And I didn’t bring a rag. Gawnette?”
“Bleeding is good for them, makes them less hungry,” said Gawnette.
“I rate sensitive a good sight higher than stupid,” said Melena, seething.
“No biting,” said Gawnette to one of the little boys, and then, seeing Elphaba open her mouth to retaliate, raised herself to her feet, bad hip or no, and screamed, “no biting, for the love of mercy!”
“Aren’t children divine?” said Nanny.
Darkness Abroad
Every second or third day Nanny took Elphaba by the hand and waddled the shadowy road to Rush Margins. There Elphaba mingled with the greasy children under the eyes of sullen Gawnette. Frex had moved out again (was it confidence or desperation?)—he was scaring miserable hamlets with his frenzied beard and his collected opinions on faith. Gone for eight, ten days at a time. Melena practiced piano arpeggios on a tuneless mock keyboard Frex had carved for her, to perfect scale.
Turtle Heart seemed to wilt and parch as autumn came on. Their afternoons of dalliance began to lose the heat of urgency, and developed in warmth. Melena had always appreciated the attentions of Frex, and been attentive to him, but somehow his body had not been as supple as Turtle Heart’s. She drifted off to sleep with Turtle Heart’s mouth on one of her nipples and his hands—his big hands—roaming like sentient pets. She imagined that Turtle Heart divided his body when her eyes were closed; his mouth roamed, his cock rose and nudged and leaned, his breath was somewhere other than his mouth, hissing elegantly into her ear, wordlessly, his arms were like stirrups.
Still she didn’t know him, not the way she knew Frex; she could not see through him as she could most people. She put this down to his majestic bearing, but Nanny, ever watchful, remarked one evening that it was just that his ways were the ways of a Quadling and Melena had never even acknowledged that he came from a different culture than she did.
“Culture, what’s culture,” Melena said lazily. “People are people.”
“Don’t you remember your nursery rhymes?” Nanny put aside her sewing (with relief) and recited.
“Boys study, girls know,
That’s the way that lessons go.
Boys learn, girls forget,
That’s the way of lessons yet.
Gillikinese are sharp as knives,
Munchkinlanders lead corny lives,
Glikkuns beat their ugly wives,
Winkies swarm in sticky hives.
But the Quadlings, Oh the Quadlings,
