“Pity the poor tree. Why would you do that to it?”
“Well, I was startled,” he said, “and I had a choice: either flip myself like a wood nymph through the leaves. Or else just climb quietly down on the other side of the stable, into the street, and go back to my life. Which would you choose?”
“Ah, that’s the question,” she said, “but I’ve always learned that the first thing to do is deny the question’s validity. Myself, being startled, I would neither climb quietly streetward, nor would I trip noisily treeward and lettucebound. I would turn myself inside out to make myself lighter, I would hover until the air pressure outside me had stabilized. Then I would let the underside of my skin settle, one toe at a time, back on the roof.”
“And would you then reverse your skin?” he said, entertained.
“Depends on who was standing there and what they wanted, and whether I minded. Also depends on what color the underside of my skin turns out to be. Never having reversed myself, you know, I can’t be sure. I always thought it might be horrid to be pink and white like a piglet.”
“It often is,” said Boq. “Especially in the shower. You feel like an underdone—” But he stopped. The nonsense was becoming too personal. “I do beg your pardon,” he said. “I startled you and I didn’t mean to.”
“You were looking at the tops of the fruit trees, examining the new growth, I assume?” she said, amused.
“Indeed,” he answered coldly.
“Did you see the tree of your dreams?”
“The tree of my dreams is of my dreams, and I don’t speak of that to my friends nor to you, whom I hardly know.”
“Oh, but you know me. We were in a child play set together, you reminded me when we met last year. Why, we’re nearly brother and sister. You can certainly describe your favorite tree to me, and I’ll tell you if I know where she grows.”
“You mock me, Miss Elphie.”
“Well, that I don’t mean to do, Boq.” She used his name without the honorific in a gentle way, as if to underscore her comment about their being like siblings. “I suspect you want to know about Miss Galinda, the Gillikinese girl you met at Madame Morrible’s poetry slaughter last autumn.”
“Perhaps you do know me better than I thought.” He sighed. “Could I hope she thinks of me?”
“Well, you could hope,” said Elphaba. “It would be more efficient to ask her and have done with it. At least you’d know.”
“But you’re a friend of hers, aren’t you? Don’t you know?”
“You don’t want to rely on what I know or not,” said Elphaba, “or what I say I know. I could be lying. I could be in love with you, and betray my roomie by lying about her—”
“She’s your roomie?”
“You’re very surprised at that?”
“Well—no—just—just pleased.”
“The cooks will be wondering what dialogues with the asparagus I’m having now,” Elphaba said. “I could arrange to bring Miss Galinda here some evening if you like. Sooner rather than later, so as to kill your joy the more neatly and entirely. If that is what’s to happen,” she said, “but as I say, how do I know? If I can’t predict what we’ll have for pudding, how can I predict someone’s affections?”
They set a date for three nights hence, and Boq thanked Elphaba fervently, shaking her hand so hard his spectacles jounced on his nose. “You’re a dear old friend, Elphie, even if I haven’t seen you in fifteen years,” he said, giving her back her name without its honorific. She withdrew beneath the boughs of the pear trees and disappeared down the walkway. Boq found his way out of the kitchen garden and back to his room, and reviewed his books again, but the problem wasn’t solved, no, not solved. It was exacerbated. He couldn’t concentrate. He was still awake to hear the noisy clatterings, the hushings, the crashings, and the muttered balladeerings, when the drunken boys returned to Briscoe Hall.
2
Avaric had left for the summer, once the exams were done, and Boq either had flimflammed his way through or disgraced himself, in which case there was little to lose now. This first rendezvous with Galinda might be the last. Boq bothered with his clothes more than usual, and got an opinion on how to fix his hair from the new look in the cafés (a thin white ribbon around the crown of his head, pulling his hair straight from the nub, so that it burst into curls beneath, like froth exploding from an overturned basin of milk). He cleaned his boots several times over. It was too warm for boots but he had no evening slippers. Make do, make do.
On the appointed evening he retraced his way and, on the stable roof, found that a fruit picker’s ladder had been left leaning up against the wall, so he need not descend through the leaves like a vertiginous chimpanzee. He picked his way carefully down the first few rungs, then jumped manfully the rest of the way, avoiding the lettuces this time. On a bench under the wormnut trees sat Elphaba, her knees drawn casually up to her chest and her bare feet flat on the seat of the bench, and Galinda, whose ankles were crossed daintily and who hid behind a satin fan, and who was looking in the other direction anyway.
“Well, my stars and garters, a visitor,” said Elphaba. “Such a surprise.”
“Good evening, ladies,” he said.
“Your head looks like a hedgehog in shock, what did you do to yourself?” said Elphaba. At least Galinda turned to see, but then she disappeared behind the fan again. Could she be so nervous? Could her heart be faint?
“Well I am part Hedgehog, didn’t I tell you?” said Boq. “On my grandfather’s side. He ended up as cutlets for Ozma’s retinue one hunting season, and a tasty memory for all. The recipe is handed down in the family, pasted into the picture album. Served with cheese and walnut sauce. Mmmm.”
“Are you really?” said Elphaba. She put her chin on her knees. “Really Hedgehog?”
