Still his hand moved down onto her buttocks, felt between her cheeks, beyond, felt the place one muscle pulled in crookedly, endearingly, felt the very faintest etching of hair beginning its crosshatch shadows, its swirl toward vortex. He worked his intelligent hand, reading the signs of her resistance.
“I have four companions,” she said suddenly, wrenching away in a motion soft enough not to disengage but to discourage. “Oh heart, I have four comrades; they don’t know who our cell leader is, it’s all done in the dark, with a masking spell to shadow the voice and distort the features. If I knew more, the Gale Force could catch me and torture it out of me, don’t you see?”
“What is your object?” he breathed, kissing her, loosening his trousers again, as if this were the first time, his tongue tracing the twisting funnel of her ear.
“Kill the Wizard,” she answered, looping her legs around him. “I am not the arrowhead, I am not the dart, I am just the shaft, the quiver—” She cupped more oil in her hand and as they slid and fell into the light, she made him bright and anguished with oil, took him deeper in than ever before.
“Even after all this time, you could be an agent for the Palace,” she said later.
“I’m not,” he said. “I’m good.”
h h h
A little snow fell one week, then some more the next. The feast of Lurlinemas drew nearer. The unionist chapels, having appropriated and transformed the most visible parts of the old pagan beliefs, hung themselves shamelessly in green and gold, set out green candles and golden gongs and greenberry wreaths and gilded fruit. Along Merchant Row, shops outdid themselves (and the churches) in decor, with displays of fashionable clothes, and useless and expensive trinkets. In display windows, papier-mâché figures evoked the good Fairy Queen Lurline in her winged chariot, and her assistant, the minor fairy Preenella, who strewed gift-wrapped delights from her capacious magic basket.
He asked himself, again and again, if he was in love with Elphaba.
He also asked himself why he was so late coming to this question, after two months of a passionate affair; and if he knew what the words even meant; and if it mattered.
He chose more gifts for the kids and for sulky Sarima, that well-fed malcontent, that monster. He missed her a little; his feelings for Elphaba seemed not to vie with those for Sarima, but to complement them. No two women could be more unlike. Elphaba demonstrated the proud independence of Arjiki mountain women that Sarima, married so young, had never developed. And Elphie wasn’t just a different (not to say novel) provincial type—she seemed an advance on the gender, she seemed a different species sometimes. He caught himself with a mammoth erection just remembering that last time, and he had to hide himself behind some ladies’ scarves in a shop until it subsided.
He bought three, four, six scarves for Sarima, who didn’t wear scarves. He bought six scarves for Elphaba, who did.
The shop girl, a dull Munchkinlander midget who had to stand on a chair to reach the till, said over his shoulder, “Just in a minute, ma’am.” He turned to make room at the counter for the other customer.
“But Master Fiyero!” cried Glinda.
“Miss Glinda,” he said, flabbergasted. “What a surprise.”
“A dozen scarves,” she said. “Look, Crope, look who’s here!”
And there was Crope, a little jowly though he couldn’t be twenty-five yet, could he?—looking guiltily up from a display of feathery, plumy things.
“We must have tea,” said Glinda, “we must. Come now. Pay the nice little lady and off we fly.” In her voluminous skirts she rustled like a corps of ballerinas.
He hadn’t remembered her quite so giddy; maybe this was married life. He slid a glance at Crope, who was rolling his eyes behind her back.
“Just you put this on Sir Chuffrey’s account, and this, and this,” Glinda said, mounding things on the counter, “and have them sent along to our rooms in the Florinthwaite Club. I’ll need them for dining so have someone run over with them right now if you would. How dear. So kind. Ta ta. Boys, come along.”
She gripped Fiyero with a pinching hand and steered him away; Crope followed like a lapdog. The Florinthwaite Club was only a street or two over and they could easily have carried the purchases back themselves. Glinda capered and clattered down the grand staircase into the Oak Parlor, making enough noise so that every female resident looked up in a rewarding sort of disapproval.
“Now, you, Crope, there, so you can be Mother and pour when we’ve ordered, and dear Fiyero, you here, right next to me, that is if you’re not too married.”
They ordered tea; Glinda got used to him a bit and began to calm down.
“But really, who would have thought it?” she said, picking up a biscuit and putting it down again, about eight times in a row. “We were the great and the good at Shiz, really. Look at you, Fiyero—you’re a prince, aren’t you? Do we call you Your Highness? I never could. And you’re still married to that little child?”
“She’s grown up now, and we have a family,” Fiyero told her warily. “Three children.”
“And she’s here. I must meet her.”
“No, she’s back at our winter home in the Great Kells.”
“Then you’re having an affair,” said Glinda, “because you look so happy. Who with? Anyone I know?”
“I’m just happy to see you,” he said; and in fact he was. She looked wonderful. She had filled out some. That wraithlike beauty had bloomed but not coarsened. She was more woman than waif, and more wife than woman. Her hair was cut short in a boyish style, very becoming, and there was a tiaralike thing in her curls. “And now you’re a sorceress.”
“Oh hardly,” she said. “Can I even get that damned serving girl to hurry up with the scones and jam? I can not. Yes, I can sign a hundred greeting cards for the holiday season at one go. But it’s a very minor talent, I tell you. Sorcery is vastly overrated in the popular press. Otherwise, why wouldn’t the Wizard just magick the hell out of his adversaries? No, I’m content to try to be a good partner for my Chuffrey. He’s at the exchange today, doing financial thingies. Oh do you know who else is in town? It’s too rich, Crope tell him.”
Crope, surprised to be given an opening, choked on his mouthful of tea. Glinda rushed in. “Nessarose! Can you believe it? She’s at the family home over there in Lower Mennipin Street—an address that’s come up quite a lot in the past decade, I might add. We saw her where, Crope, where? It was the Coffee Emporium—”
“It was the Ice Garden—”
“No, I remember, it was the Spangletown Cabaret! Fiyero do you know, we went to see that old Sillipede, do you remember? No you don’t, I can see it in your face. She was the singer who was performing at the Oz Festival of Song and Sentiment the day our Glorious Wizard arrived out of the sky in a balloon and orchestrated that coup! She’s making yet another of her innumerable comeback tours. She’s a bit camp now but so what, it was gales of fun. And there at a better table than we had, I might tell you, was Nessie! She was with her grandfather, or is it the great-grandfather? The Eminent Thropp? He must be eleventy-hundredy years old by now. I was shocked to see her until I realized she went merely to provide him an escort. She didn’t think much of the music—she scowled and prayed all through the entr’acte. And the Nanny was there too. Who would’ve imagined it, Fiyero—you’re a prince, and Nessarose just about installed as the next Eminent Thropp, and Avaric, of course, the Margreave of Tenmeadows, and humble little me-eee married to Sir Chuffrey, holder of the most useless title and the biggest stock portfolio in the Pertha Hills?” Glinda almost stopped for breath, but lunged on kindly, “And Crope, of course, dear Crope. Crope, tell Fiyero all about yourself, he’s dying to know, I can see it.”
Actually Fiyero was interested, if only for a rest from the staccato chatter.
“He’s shy,” Glinda pushed on, “shy shy shy, always was.” Fiyero and Crope exchanged glances and tried to keep their mouths from twitching. “He’s got this so avant-garde little p
alace of a loft apartment on the top floor of a doctor’s surgery, could you imagine? Stunning views, the best views in the Emerald City, and at this time of year! He dabbles a bit in painting, don’t you dear? Painting, a little musical operetta set design here and there. When we were young we thought the world revolved around Shiz. You know there’s real theatre here now, the Wizard has made this a much more cosmopolitan city, don’t you think?”
“It’s good to see you, Fiyero,” said Crope, “say something about yourself, fast, before it’s too late.”
“You cad, you kid me mercilessly,” sang Glinda. “I’ll tell him about your little affair with—well never mind. I’m not that mean.”
“There’s nothing to say,” Fiyero said, feeling even more taciturn and Vinkus than he had when he first arrived in Shiz. “I like my life, I lead my clan when they need it, which isn’t often. My children are healthy. My wife is—well, I don’t know . . .”
“Fertile,” supplied Glinda.
“Yes.” He grinned. “She’s fertile and I love her, and I’m not going to stay much longer as I’m meeting someone for a business conference across town.”
“We must meet,” said Glinda, suddenly plaintive, suddenly looking lonely. “Oh Fiyero, we’re not old yet, but we’re old enough to be old friends already, aren’t we? Look, I’ve gushed on like a debutante who forgot to splash on her Eau d’Demure. I’m sorry. It’s just that that was such a wonderful time, even in its strangeness and sadness—and life isn’t the same now. It’s wonderful, but it isn’t the same.”
“I know,” he said, “but I don’t think I can meet you again. There’s so little time, and I have to go back to Kiamo Ko. I’ve been away since the late summer.”
“Look, we’re all here, me and Chuffrey, Crope, Nessarose, you—is Avaric around, we could get him? We could get together, we could have a quiet dinner together in our rooms upstairs. I promise not to be so giddy. Please, Fiyero, please, Your Highness. It would do me such an honor.” She cocked her head and put a single finger to her chin, elegantly, and he could tell she was struggling through the language of her class to say something real.
“If I think I can, I’ll let you know, but please, you mustn’t count on it,” he said. “There’ll be other times. I’m not usually in town so late in the season—this is an anomaly. My children are waiting—have you children, Glinda?”
“Chuffrey is dry as two baked walnuts,” said Glinda, making Crope choke on his tea again. “Before you go—I can see you’re getting ready to dash—dear, dear Fiyero—what do you hear from Elphaba?”
But he was prepared for this, and had readied his face to be blank, and he only said, “Now that’s a name I don’t hear every day. Did she ever turn up? Surely Nessarose must have said.”
“Nessarose says if her sister ever does turn up she’ll spit in her face,” Glinda remarked, “so we must all pray that Nessarose never loses her faith, for that would mean the evaporation of such tolerance and kindness. I think she would kill Elphaba. Nessa was abandoned, rejected, left to look after her crazy father, her grandfather-thingy, that brother, that nurse, that house, the staff—and you can’t even say single-handedly, as she doesn’t have any hands!”
“I thought I saw Elphaba once,” said Crope.
“Oh?” said Fiyero and Glinda together, and Glinda continued, “You never told me that, Crope.”
“I wasn’t sure,” he said. “I was on the trolley that runs along the reflecting pool by the Palace. It was raining—some years ago now—and I saw a figure struggling with a big umbrella. I thought she was about to be blown away. A gust of wind blew the umbrella inside out and the face, a greenish face which is why I noticed, ducked down to avoid the splash of rainwater—you remember how Elphaba hated getting wet.”
“She was allergic to water,” Glinda opined. “I never knew how she kept herself so clean, and I her roommate.”
“Oil, I think,” said Fiyero. They both looked at him. “That is, in the Vinkus,” he stammered, “the elderly rub oil into their skin instead of water—I’ve always assumed that’s what Elphie did. I don’t know. Glinda, if I were to meet up with you again, what’s a good day?”
She rooted in her reticule for a diary. Crope took the opportunity to lean forward and say to Fiyero, “It really is good to see you, you know.”
“You too,” said Fiyero, surprised that he meant it. “If you ever get out into the central Kells, come stay at Kiamo Ko with us. Just send word ahead, as we’re only there for half a year at a time.”
“That’s just your speed, Crope, the wild beasts of the untamed Vinkus,” said Glinda. “I think the fashion possibilities, all those leather thongs and fringe and such, they might interest you, but I can’t see you as Mister Mountain Boy.”
“No, probably not,” agreed Crope. “Unless it affords fabulous cafés every four or five blocks, I don’t think a landscape quite developed enough for human habitation.”
Fiyero shook hands with Crope and then, remembering the rumors about poor Tibbett’s deterioration, kissed him; he threw his arms around Glinda and hugged her hard. She laced her arm through his and walked him to the door.
“Do let me shake off Crope and have you back, all to myself,” she said in a low voice, her patter evaporating into seriousness. “I can’t tell you, dear Fiyero. The past seems both more mysterious and more understandable with you right here before me. I feel there are things I could yet learn. I don’t want to wallow, dear boy, never that! But we go way back.” She held his hand between hers. “Something’s going on in your life. I’m not as dumb as I act. Something good and bad at the same time. Maybe I can help.”
“You were always sweet,” he said, and motioned to the doorman to hail a hansom cab. “How I regret that I won’t meet Sir Chuffrey.”
He moved out the doorway, across the marble entrance pavement, and turned to tip his hat at her. In the doors (the doormen held them open to enhance his parting view) she was a calm, resigned woman, neither transparent nor ineffectual—even, it might have been said, a woman full of grace. “If you should see her,” said Glinda lightly, “tell her I miss her still.”
He didn’t see Glinda again. He didn’t call at the Florinthwaite Club. He didn’t stroll past the Thropp family house in Lower Mennipin Street (though he was sorely tempted). He didn’t stop a scalper to try to get one of the tickets to Sillipede’s triumphant fourth annual comeback tour. He found himself in the Chapel of Saint Glinda in Saint Glinda Square, from which he could sometimes hear the cloistered maunts next door chanting and susurrating like a swarm of bees.
When the two weeks had passed at last, and the city was worked up to a froth over Lurlinemas, he went to see Elphaba, half-expecting she would have vanished.
But there she was, stern and loving and in the midst of making a vegetable pie for him. Her precious Malky was putting his feet in the flour and making paw prints all over the room. They talked awkwardly until Malky upset the bowl of vegetable stock, and that made them both laugh.
He didn’t tell her about Glinda. How could he? Elphaba had worked so hard to keep them all at bay, and now she was engaged in the major campaign of her life, the thing she had been working toward for five years. He did not approve of anarchy (well, he knew he was in lazy doubt about everything; doubt was much more energy efficient than conviction). But even after seeing the Bear cub struck down, he had to keep an even, cautious relationship with the Power on the throne—for the sake of his tribe.
Also, Fiyero didn’t want to make Elphie’s life harder than it was. And his selfish need to be comfortable with her surmounted his need to gossip. So he didn’t tell her Nessarose and Nanny were in town either, or had been. (For all he knew, he rationalized silently, they had already moved on.)
“I wonder,” she said that night, as the stars peered through the crazy frost pattern on the skylight, “I wonder if you should get out of town before Lurlinemas Eve.”
“Is all hell going to break loose?”
“I told y
ou, I don’t know the whole picture; I can’t know; I shouldn’t know. But maybe some hell will break loose. Maybe it would be best for you to go.”
“I’m not going and you can’t make me.”
“I’ve been taking correspondence courses in sorcery on the side, I’ll go puff and turn you into stone.”
“You mean you’ll make me hard? I’m already hard.”
“Stop. Stop.”
“Oh you wicked woman, you have bewitched me again, look, it has a mind of its own—”
“Fiyero stop. Stop. Now look, I mean it. I want to know where you’re going to be on Lurlinemas Eve. Just so I can be sure you’re not going to get hurt. Tell me.”
“You mean we won’t be together?”
“It’s a work night for me,” she said grimly. “I’ll see you the next day.”
“I’ll wait here for you.”
“No you won’t. I think we’ve covered our tracks pretty well, but there’s still a chance even at this late date that somebody could come here to intercept me. No—you stay in your club and take a bath. Take a nice long cold bath. Got it? Don’t even go out. They say it might be snowy by then anyway.”
“It’s Lurlinemas Eve! I’m not going to spend the holiday in a bathtub all alone.”
“Well, hire some company, see if I care.”
“As if you don’t.”
“Just stay away from anything social, I mean theatre or crowds, or even restaurants, please, will you promise me that?”
“If you could be more specific I could be more careful.”
“You could be most careful if you left town completely.”
“You could be most careful if you told me—”
“Give over with that, cut it out. I don’t think I even want to know where you are, come to think of it. I just want you to be safe. Will you be safe? Will you stay inside, away from drunken pagan celebrations?”
“Can I go to chapel and pray for you?”