Chapter 6
Glinda’s wooden joints couldn’t ache.
She realised that after the first show she did. It was two hours of singing and dancing. Singing and dancing she didn’t want to do, singing and dancing she was forced to do due to her predicament.
She was a raging success. People threw coins onto the stage, gave a standing ovation, and even tried to brush against her. She hated it.
Galinda would have loved the spotlight. Glinda, despite shrinking away from it, still found herself craving it and what could have been at times. Marionette hated every single agonising second she was on that stage, playing out the scenes of a story like the puppet she now was.
She’d done a few shows since then and hated every single one just as much. She wanted her free will back and, more than anything, she wanted Elphie.
Every night she spent in her little prison, she dreamt the green girl had her arms around her and they’d both fallen into sleep together— it wasn’t that she needed sleep, she just preferred it to nights awake without Elphie. Together. That was how they were meant to be. Glinda was of no use without her. The only reason she even functioned properly was due to her wooden limbs and the golden strings that controlled them.
She found that she could still feel, her senses worked at full capacity, if not better than before. But what use was all of that without free will?
There were days, curled up on the cold floor of the space under the trapdoor, that she couldn’t conjure even Elphaba’s comforting image and wondered if she would ever get out of her situation. Or would she be stuck in the situation she found herself in, playing roles that never felt right, putting on a show for others, separated from the love of her life? Forever.
Those nights she almost accepted her fate, too defeated to fight anything. Though she supposed that even if she tried to fight, it wouldn’t work with her constraints.
A marionette stuck in a play with no ending in sight. How oddly poetic.
***
People saw her as a mere puppet, one that could sing and dance of its own account and one that didn’t require strings — if only she could get rid of them — but a puppet nonetheless. After the excitement was over, Glinda wasn’t given so much as a second glance.
People were too enraptured in their own or others’ business to bother.
At first, Glinda loathed it. It was horrendible to ignore her like that after such wonderful performances — she may have hated them but that didn’t mean she wasn’t good at them.
Then she heard little snippets of conversation. A piece of information here and some there. Although she ignored it initially as it just seemed to be useless gossip, she found herself enjoying the little bits of conversation that she managed to catch between shows.
It was her only sense of entertainment and a way to know that a world still existed outside tented puppet shows, and long caravan rides spent in a dark and cold space.
So she enjoyed every little voice that floated to her ears.
“Did you hear about Caroline’s husband…”
“My pie exploded in the oven today…”
“I can’t believe she would do that to me…”
Glinda took an odd comfort in the mediocrity of people’s lives, enjoying what they considered as drama. They were stories, sometimes confusifying, sometimes scandalocious, sometimes just simple, picked from lives she could not live.
Sometimes, in the nicer stories, she imagined herself and Elphie enjoying the comforts of a domestic life together. Like in the cottage and their stolen moments, but these ones just… stretched. They didn’t have the Wizard or the Gale Force, or angry mobs to worry about. They didn’t have to look behind their shoulders everyday, wondering when their short lived peace would be rudely interrupted. They would just… exist.
And wouldn’t that be a beautiful thing?
On some of the worse nights, when she felt especially ignored, forgotten, and useless, she wondered if Elphaba would still love her in this form. Not that she wasn’t pretty. She’d caught her reflection in mirrors and did not find herself lacking in beauty, but the beauty felt preserved in a creepy way. Marionettes always terrified Glinda as a child and it was always because of the way those puppets looked stuck in time, and those painted expressions set to last for centuries. She also didn’t like the mouths so at least she didn’t have to worry about that.
Something that looked so perfect that it was unnerving. That was how Glinda looked. Everything about her was mechanical.
She didn’t think Elphaba would want that, would she?
Either way, she would like to find out for herself. Glinda wasn’t one to give up easily and she sure as hell would put up a fight for her Elphie.
***
Soon, the snippets came to be a thing she enjoyed quite well after a show. She always found herself actively listening for them.
Which is why when, through the snippets, the whispers reached her ears, she listened even more carefully.
“... I must say, I don’t quite understand these new laws.”
Glinda’s ears perked up and she found herself edging to the back of the stage where she heard the voices.
“What don’t you understand?”
“Don’t you think it’s all a little extreme?”
“Whyever would I think that?”
“I just find it hard to believe that Animals are as dangerous as people are making them out to be.”
Glinda went perfectly still against the wall, her limbs hanging loosely and awkwardly.
“Of course they’re dangerous!”
“But what’s the evidence?”
Glinda found a tiny smile gracing her face despite her efforts to conceal it. When she was with Elphie, her way of helping was by planting small doubts in people’s minds about the Wizard and his regime. She didn’t think it was doing much, but if this one man sounded so doubtful maybe she did help after all. Or maybe it wasn’t due to her contribution at all. Either way, she was glad to see the people of Oz questioning things.
She just hoped she could hear more of the conversation before Bas and Daniel came to take her back to her cage.
“I-I’m sure the Wizard has good reason.”
“I’m just saying. Is it really worth forcing Animals out of their homes and jobs? I find myself doubting it all.”
There was a long pause before the woman responded.
“I’ve never met an Animal.” The woman said so quietly that Glinda had to strain her ears to listen. “But if the Wizard says they’re dangerous it must be so.”
A sigh.
“I suppose you’re right.”
Glinda found herself frowning as the footsteps retreated. The lights in the theatre went dark as the last of the crowd trickled out and familiar footsteps sounded in her ears.
She was happy to see just Daniel there and not Bas. Bas was the more deceptively nice one of the two, but Daniel, she found, had more of a nervous niceness to him. Besides that, Daniel was a lot less shrewd than Bas.
“Daniel?” She asked, grateful to see his hands pocketed as he nodded for her to follow him. It was much more civilised than being manhandled and carried all the way back.
“Hmm?”
“Where are we?” She asked, then quickly explained herself at his suspicious look. “I just mean it feels like it has been so long and you wouldn’t deny a poor Marionette the knowledge of where she’s performing would you?”
He stayed silent and Glinda had almost given up hope when he spoke softly.
“The Gillikin-Munchkinland border, Miss.”
“The Madeleines?”
“Yes Miss.”
That explained the bumping around in recent days.
“Do you ever plan to travel to the Vinkus?”
“Is that where you’re from Miss?”
“A lady never reveals her secrets.”
“Then I mustn’t reveal ours either.”
Glinda didn’t find herself feeling too disappointed. After all, she’d gotten a lot more information from the man than she’d expected. So she climbed into her little space without much prompting and waited as the boots stomped off, pondering all she’d heard.
What did that woman mean by she hadn’t seen an Animal? Were their numbers truly dwindling so much that someone had gone their entire lifetime without seeing one? Did Elphie know about this?
Her thoughts swirled in a confusifying mix as she drifted into unconsciousness.
***
Whispers. She found herself looking for whispers between the snippets after the first conversation she’d overheard.
For two days she didn’t hear anything. Performances ended with her spent mentally and disappointed. Nights presided with a noticeable lack of Elphaba’s presence. It seemed almost hopeless and she was willing to give it up when on the third day, something caught her ears. A name. A name she knew quite well.
A group of ladies were whispering and giggling in the corner, doing nothing to conceal their voices or be discreet. At first she ignored them. They weren’t exactly the whispers she was looking for. But when she heard the name, she tuned out every other voice in the theatre, honing in on the one conversation.
“Captain Tigelaar,” one of them giggled, unable to keep a straight face as a red hue covered her face. Another girl sighed dreamily. “He’s so dreamy.”
“I can’t believe he’s engaged.”
“What?” A third girl chimed in.
Glinda could agree with that reaction. Her mind reeled as she tried to process the information.
Fiyero? Engaged?
She didn’t even know he was dating someone.
“Some Arjiki princess. Apparently, they had some secret romance in their schooldays.”
A secret romance? Glinda highly doubted that. She knew Fiyero during his college days. If he had a secret romance, she doubted he would have flirted with half the Shiz population and got together with her. Fiyero belied any past affections for someone.
This had to be the Wizard’s doing
“This must mean everything is fine, right? The Wicked Witch can’t do anything as long as Captain Tigelaar is around.”
“I still can’t believe it.”
So that was the game. A show engagement to show the people of Oz that nothing was wrong, that the Wizard had everything under control. Though she did wonder about this Arjiki princess.
It could have very well been Glinda in her position had she chosen to stay.
Was Fiyero happy with this engagement?
Even after the way things ended with them, she thought Fiyero to be a dear friend and she would never wish an engagement where he was unhappy upon him.
What in Lurline was going to happen next?
Oz was in shambles, concealed thinly and poorly. All one had to do was look a little deeper to peel back the layers. The thing was, few people knew to look for most lived under the illusion that everything was simply amazing with the Wonderful Wizard of Oz as their figurehead and leader.
Despite being the problem, he was smart. Glinda would give him that. And the most important thing, he was popular.
He knew exactly how to manipulate people into thinking he was their saviour, and Elphaba their villain. Elphaba was the perfect villain to cast all the blame on, to unite Oz, to distract from the other, more questionable goings-on, but it wasn’t just Elphaba who suffered, and it wasn’t just Elphaba who became a figure. He needed her antithesis, and so came the existence of Fiyero and Madame Morrible who was largely working behind the scenes till that point.
But she was assuming, in the light of the new information, that the cracks were starting to show and this engagement was a way to divert the attention and patch it up.
She sighed, rubbing her face with a wooden hand. This was too much political thinking for her. Elphie was usually the one who talked about all these things — not that Glinda didn’t know about them, she just didn’t care as much as her girlfriend. Though she doubted anyone cared as much as Elphaba.
The topic of Elphaba brought the green girl to the forefront of her mind once again. She wondered how she was doing? Was she eating and sleeping properly? Glinda knew she forgot to do that whenever she was overthinking or too involved in something. Was she grieving? Glinda wanted to kick herself as soon as it entered her mind.
Of course she was grieving. She’d lost her sister and her girlfriend in the same day. Which is why Glinda needed to get back to her. She needed to make sure Elphaba was okay.
***
The next bit of news came from a group of munchkins.
It was the day immediately after the knowledge of Fiyero’s engagement came to light and Glinda had just played a cursed princess who was saved by her prince. It was disgustifying. She didn’t want to saved by anyone except Elphie.
“I’m so glad we’re free of her.”
A chuckle from one of the munchkins. “We owe everything to that little girl.”
Little girl?
“Although there is the little, actually, rather large issue of the house.”
“The house?”
“It’s still in Center Munch.” The munchkin sighed. “Can’t another tornado arrive and take it away?”
Tornado? House?
Realisation dawned on her. A slow, horrendible realisation.
She’d seen the tornado that carried the house and that was presumably what had killed Nessa. Elphaba never told her what happened, she was too grief stricken and they didn’t have enough time after that.
Glinda didn’t know how she hadn’t pieced together two and two yet.
The thought of Nessa dying in such a way was horrendible. But she had played a crucial role in her downfall.
If she had simply just turned Boq down properly instead of deflecting him to Nessa, perhaps none of this would have happened. Boq would still be — hopefully — happy and not made of tin, Nessa would not have gotten obsessed with Boq and would not have become the Wicked Witch of the East.
She wondered how many of her terrible decisions doomed the people she cared about most. Something she found herself wondering a lot lately.
But what was it about that little girl the munchkins had mentioned? What little girl could have been involved in the situation?
It had to be Morrible’s doing. A tornado like that couldn’t have been some freak accident. There was only one witch in all of Oz that was capable of such feats featuring weather magic and that was the woman she’d spent so long craving attention and approval from.
But the munchkins said they owed everything to a little girl.
Could it be that this little girl they mentioned was responsible for that devastation? Was there some powerful child in Oz Glinda had no knowledge of?
Could the Wizard possibly have another trick up his sleeve and did Elphie know about this allegedly powerful child?
That night in her little space, she couldn’t drift off into sleep, uneasy or otherwise as her mind tried to piece together all the information she’d collected over the past few days.
The new anti-animal laws were far more severe than she’d thought them to be. Fiyero was engaged. A girl in a house had killed Nessa. They were at the Gillikin-Munchkinland border.
It painted an interesting and bizarre picture. Although there were still multiple gaps and multiple questions that she just wished she could fill in.
She was just glad Daniel had been sent the past few days. He was far more civil than Bas and, lurline forbid, the man in charge whose name Glinda didn’t know.
He was even a great source to weasel minute pieces of information out of.
How many days had they been on the road with her?
Six.
Was there a room for her outside the trapdoor?
Yes, but no one trusted her with it.
How long had these shows been running before her?
Years, but they never were a big success until her.
Were there any animals or Animals working as a part of this crew?
He hadn’t answered that one, but Glinda had her suspicions that there might be.
In the middle of the night, she swore she heard the sounds of donkeys or Donkeys braying in the distance, almost sounding like they were crying. She heard it every night without fail.
She just hoped she wasn’t going insane.
Either way, the operations that these men ran had some deeper, darker secrets than just holding her hostage for a pretty penny.
There was something very wrong in Oz, and there was something very bad going on right here.
Glinda didn’t know if she wanted to get to the bottom of it or stay as far away from it as possible.