Chistery picked a nit off his chest and ate it.
“Spirit,” sang Auntie, “there is spirit, I know it. Spirit!”
“Spit,” said Chistery, or something like it.
Irji shoved Manek aside and the children almost fell through the door trying to see Auntie laugh and dance and sing. She picked up Chistery and hugged him, and said, “Spirit, oh spirit, Chistery! There is spirit! Say spirit!”
“Spit, spit, spit,” said Chistery, unimpressed with himself. “Spite.”
But Killyjoy woke from a nap at the sound of a new voice.
“Spirit,” said Auntie.
“Speared,” said Chistery patiently. “Spared. Spored. Sput sput sput. Spat spate spit, speed spurt spot.”
“Spirit,” said Auntie, “oh, my Chistery, we’ll find ourselves a link with Doctor Dillamond’s old work yet! There is a universal design among us all, could we get in deeply enough to see! Everything is not in vain! Spirit, my friend, spirit!”
“Sport,” said Chistery.
The children couldn’t stop laughing. They clattered down the stairs and fell into the dormitory, and giggled into the bedclothes.
They didn’t mention what they saw to Sarima or the sisters. They were afraid Auntie would be stopped, and they all wanted Chistery to learn enough language so that he could play with them.
One wind
less day, when it seemed they must get out of Kiamo Ko or expire of boredom, Sarima had the idea that they go skating on a nearby pond. The sisters agreed, and dug out the rusting skates Fiyero had brought back from the Emerald City. The sisters baked caramel sweets and prepared flasks of cocoa, and even decorated themselves with green and gold ribbons, as if it were a second Lurlinemas. Sarima adorned herself in a brown velvet robe with fur tippets, the children put on extra trousers and tunics, and even Elphaba came along, in a thick cloak of purple brocade and heavy Arjiki goatskin boots, and mittens, carrying her broom. Chistery lugged along a basket of dried apricots. The sisters in sensible men’s tribal overcoats, belted and latched, drew up the rear.
The villagers had cleared the snow off the center of the pond. It was a ballroom dance floor of silver plate, engraved with the flourishes of a thousand arabesques, mounded round with pillows and bolsters of snow to provide a safe repose for skaters who forget how to brake or turn. In the fierce sunlight, the mountains looked razor sharp against the blue; great snowy egrets and ice griffons wheeled high above. The ice rink was already noisy with screaming urchins and lurching adolescents (taking every opportunity to tumble and heap each other cozily in suggestive positions). Their elders moved more slowly, processionally around the ice. The crowd fell silent as the household of Kiamo Ko approached, but, children being children, the silence didn’t last for long.
Sarima ventured out onto the ice, her sisters in a knot around her with linked arms. Being largish, Sarima was nervous of falling, nor were her ankles strong. But before long she had remembered how things went—this foot, then that, long languorous strides—and the uneasy meeting of social classes was accomplished. Elphaba looked like one of her crows: knees out, elbows flailing, rags flapping, gloved hands raking for balance.
After the adults had had enough excitement (but the children were only still warming up) Sarima and the sisters and Elphie collapsed on some bearskins that the citizenry had spread out for them.
“In the summer,” said Sarima, “we have a huge bonfire and slaughter some pigs, before the men descend to the plains, or the boys ascend to the slopes to guard the sheep and the goats. They all come into the castle for a chew of pork and a few tankards of ale. And of course, any time there’s a mountain lion or a particularly nasty bear, we let them into the keep until the beast is killed or wanders away.” She smiled with noblesse oblige in an abbreviated way, off into the middle distance, though the locals were ignoring the castle folk by now. “Auntie dear, you looked quite the sight in that robe, and poking along with that broom.”
“Liir says it’s a magic broom,” said Nor, who had run up to throw a handful of granular snowflakes into her mother’s face. Elphaba turned her head quickly and tugged her collar up to avoid ricocheting snow spray. Nor laughed unkindly in a beautiful phrase like a woodwind, and scampered away.
“So tell us how your broom came to be magic,” said Sarima.
“I never said it was magic. I got it from an elderly maunt named Mother Yackle. She took me under her wing, when she was alert enough, and gave me—well, guidance, I suppose you’d call it.”
“Guidance,” said Sarima.
“The old maunt said the broom would be my link to my destiny,” said Elphie. “I assume she meant that my destiny was domestic. Not magic.”
“Join the sisterhood.” Sarima yawned.
“I never knew if Mother Yackle was completely mad or a wise, pro-phetic old hen,” said Elphie, but the others weren’t listening, so she lapsed into silence.
After a while Nor came flinging herself into her mother’s lap again. “Tell me a story, Mama,” she said. “Those boys are nasty.”
“Boys are vexing creatures,” agreed her mother. “Sometimes. Shall I tell you the story of when you were born?”
“No, not that,” said Nor, yawning. “A real story. Tell me about the Witch and the fox babies again.”
Sarima protested, knowing full well that the children considered Auntie Guest a witch. But Nor was stubborn and Sarima relented, and told the tale. Elphaba listened. Her father had taught her moral precepts, had lectured her about responsibility; Nanny had gossiped; Nessarose had whined. But no one had told stories to her when she was young. She pulled herself forward a little so she could hear over the noise of the crowd.
Sarima recited the tale with little dramatic involvement, but even so, Elphaba felt a twinge when she heard the conclusion. “And there the wicked old Witch stayed, for a good long time.”
