prologue
"Good news! She's dead!"
Less than a day had passed since the siege on Kiamo Ko, but the news had spread throughout Oz as quickly as if it had sprouted wings, like those dreadful flying Monkeys.
Everyone from the Gillikinese aristocracy to the Munchkin peasants were discussing the siege. Everyone in Oz was united in this one topic of conversation.
"The Wicked Witch of the West is dead? But who could have killed her?"
"Who other than Glinda the Good? She put an end to her former friend for the greater good. Glinda led the witch hunters to Kiamo Ko, to destroy the Elphaba Thropp once and for all, and even landed the final blow."
"Good riddance!"
"Good riddance indeed. It sure says something about her, don't you think, that nobody is mourning her?"
"No one mourns the wicked!"
"No one's laying a lily on her grave, that's for sure!"
After Elphaba Thropp's death, there is not much more to discuss about her. The discussions are mostly the same, with opinions that strayed from the majority being shot down immediately.
However, there was one thing that stayed in the back of everyone's mind: the Wicked Witch of the West had possessed the Grimmerie. Who could say for sure that death was the end for her? What if the Grimmerie possessed some spell that could have saved the Witch from death? Nobody doubted the power of the Witch. If she were to one day come back, then surely hellfire would rain upon Oz as the Witch damned them all and sought her revenge, bringing nothing but chaos and despair to the world.
It was for this reason that the Gale Force still regularly patrolled Kiamo Ko. Oz watched carefully with heightened vigilance for strange occurrences throughout the land.
In the first year after her death, nothing happened.
In the second year following her death, nothing happened.
In the third year, nothing happened.
All the way through the thirteenth year, nothing happened either. More and more people were starting to believe that perhaps the Wicked Witch of the West really had perished at Kiamo Ko. Even though she had terrorized Oz, she had finally been ended. Slowly, Elphaba Thropp had become a legend, a ghost story to tell young children to frighten them into good behavior. And every adult knew that ghost stories were just that, after all-- only stories.