reincarnation
Elphaba Thropp got kicked in the head just as she opened her eyes.
"Stop pretending to be dead!" a voice shouted as she was thrown backwards, her head colliding hard with the ground. Stars blurred her vision.
How courageous, of you, to kick the Wicked Witch of the West, she thought. She tried to get up, but her arms buckled beneath her.
"How dare you tell Mother and Father!" the voice continued. "Who do you think you are? You're lucky that we took you in at all! If you weren't here, this would all be mine anyways!" There were crashes and smashes around her, but Elphaba wasn't being kicked anymore, so her vision gradually started to clear up.
She saw a young woman-- Nessarose?-- no, not Nessa. Her skin was a similar color, and her hair a similar texture, but that was where the similarities ended. She was as young as Nessa had been when they had gone to Shiz, but that had been many years ago now. The two of them were in a small room, surrounded by broken things and books that had been ripped apart.
"You told on me, but look at you now," the girl sneered, looking down at Elphaba. "Pretending to play dead! Who are you even trying to fool? You think you're so great because you've studied a little bit of magic! How does it feel to be brought low like a common dog?"
I'm not pretending to be dead at all, Elphaba thought. I've actually been dead for quite a while. Who are you? Where am I? Did I do something horrible and steal someone else's body?
The girl seemed to have had enough, and left the room, casting a glare back at Elphaba before slamming the door and leaving her alone.
Elphaba tried to get up again, but her limbs wouldn't obey her mind. So she rested there, on the floor, trying to gather her bearings. There was a mirror just out of reach, and Elphaba managed to grab it. It was cracked, but Elphaba looked into it, and was shocked at what she saw.
She wasn't green anymore. If she had thought about it, this wouldn't have been a surprise-- in her lifetime, she had been the only green person in all of Oz, and it was unlikely that after her death there would have turned up any more individuals with green skin-- but it was still shocking for her to look into a mirror and not see any green at all.
No-- her eyes were green, at least. But her skin was a perfectly normal dark color. The face looking back at her was young-- Elphaba wanted to say she looked like a teenager, perhaps a little younger than the young woman who had just kicked her, destroyed her belongings, and then left her alone.
Her belongings? No, this was someone else's room. Someone else's body. Elphaba struggles to sit up, and that's when she notices the circular array that she's lying in the center of.
It was dark red and damp-- it must have been drawn with blood. It looked gruesome. Elphaba could read it, but only barely. The incantations were written in the same language as the Grimmerie had been written in.
Elphaba studied the spell, and the mystery of why she was here slowly unfolded in front of her: she had been given someone else's body. It had to be a spell from the Grimmerie. There was no other way.
At least she hadn't stolen someone else's body. The poor girl, though. If she could read the incantation well enough to perform it, she had to have known what it would do. It had summoned Elphaba, yes, but had killed the original body's owner in return. What would possess someone so young to do such a thing?
The answer came to Elphaba quickly as she looked around the room again. Revenge. Of course it was revenge. Elphaba sighed. Of course this would happen to her.
Elphaba unsteadily paced around the room. She picked up the torn-apart notebooks and tried to piece together this girl's life.
Her name was-- is-- Fabala Bamm. She was at least seventeen years old. Her grandfather was a very rich man, and she lived with his heir, her uncle. She herself was the bastard child of his unmarried younger sister, who had passed shortly after Elphaba herself had originally died. The rest of the family seemed to have treated poor Fabala very poorly, particularly her cousin Almia, who must have been the girl from earlier, and Fabala had turned to studying magic in her solitude.
But how had the girl gotten ahold of a spell from the Grimmerie? Elphaba had left it with Glinda shortly before her death at Kiamo Ko, and for all her faults, Glinda would not have permitted a teenage girl to get her hands on such a dangerous spell as this.
A spell, that Elphaba was sure, had some way of binding her to getting revenge for Fabala's sake. It was difficult to read the bloody incantation, but Elphaba was sure that there would be some penalty to her if she did not manage to commit the revenge.
What would be good enough to count as revenge? Elphaba had never been good at revenge, to be quite honest. Would it be enough to slap Armia around a bit? Probably not. This was a revenge that Fabala had killed herself for, after all. She probably wanted everything burned to the ground. Well, Elphaba may not have been very good at revenge, but she was good at that-- burning everything around her to the ground. Now she just had to figure out a way to do it on purpose.
Elphaba left her room to explore her surroundings. She wandered towards the kitchen, and stole a loaf of bread before realizing that she probably hadn't had to steal it at all. Oh well. Old habits die hard, even after being reborn. She had been on the run for so long that she had forgotten what it was like to live as a normal person who wasn't wanted by the Wizard for treason.
The Wizard. Was he still here, in Oz? Had things gotten better for the Animals? Elphaba managed to stumble outside, where she realized that the house Fabala lived in was apparently a mansion.
Hmm. Elphaba didn't have the Grimmerie, but she could manage a few spells even without it. She could set the mansion on fire. Would that be enough to satisfy the incantation? Elphaba suspected, though, that the incantation would require nothing less than the ruining of the Bamm family and more than a few gruesome deaths.
Why had she of all people been summoned for this? She had been the Wicked Witch of the West, but she had just been trying to help the Animals. Okay sure, she had committed quite a few acts of terrorism, but those had either been distractions for freeing caged Animals, or surgical strikes to take out key Gale Force operations. It seemed that the Wizard's propaganda had been quite effective, even years later.
She could probably blow up the mansion with magic, but the thought of killing everyone inside made Elphaba's stomach twist. The servants, at least, were likely to be innocent enough. The family, less so, but even then, Elphaba felt reluctant to kill them. Fabala had wanted it, she guessed, but even as a Wicked Witch, Elphaba had never really been one for murder. But if she wanted to keep this second chance at life that Fabala had given her, she would probably need to kill the Bamm family. Could she do it? Could she kill them for her own sake?
Elphaba already knew the answer to that. She would not kill even terrible people for a good cause, let alone her own selfish sake. Well, if she wasn't going to last long in this world a second time, she may as well enjoy what little time she had left before the spell lashed back at her for failing to complete her part in it.
So Elphaba walked down towards a little stream she saw at the base of the hill that the mansion sat on, and sat down by the riverbank in the sun. It was nice. She had been sitting there for quite a while, half drifting off to sleep, when she suddenly heard a loud crack of thunder.
Her eyes sprang open. Somehow, in an instant, the weather had turned from sunny to storming. Cursing, Elphaba got up, and started to trudge her way back up the hill, already soaking wet.
She was halfway between the stream and the mansion, when she saw lightning strike the house. And then it happened again, and again. The mansion was the epicenter of a massive lightning storm, and even in the fierce rain, Elphaba could tell that it was on fire. Alarmed, she started running towards the house. Could she stop it with her magic? She tried to summon up some magic to her fingertips, but whereas before magic had been able to flood out of her in torrents, she could only push the smallest amount out of her now. Damn. It must be this body.
Before Elphaba's eyes, the Bamm family mansion burned in the storm, a fierce blaze that ended just as suddenly as it had started. Elphaba could only stand there in a daze. Had she done this, somehow? It couldn't be-- and yet, it couldn't be a coincidence. She had come back to life just hours ago, and now the Bamm family mansion was destroyed by a storm that could only have been magic.
She stood there in front of the remnants of the mansion for what must have been a long time, jolted out of her thoughts only when she heard a commotion at the bottom of the hill. It seemed that the magical lightning storm had drawn out the neighboring townspeople. They were coming towards her, and Elphaba braced herself to be blamed.
Instead, though, before anyone could say anything, a pink bubble appeared from the sky. Elphaba watched in confusion. She could make out a figure inside of the bubble, but it wasn't until the bubble landed and popped that she realized who exactly was inside of it. Elphaba's blood ran cold.
"Glinda!" the townsfolk cheered.
"Now what exactly happened here?" Glinda asked as she stepped out of her bubble. She was beautiful, regal, and imposing. She had clearly aged since Elphaba last saw her, but age had only made her more beautiful. Her golden curls bounced with her every step.
Elphaba was pulled out of her reverie when Glinda's eyes turned towards her. She froze. She wasn't ready to meet Glinda again.
Glinda frowned looking at her. "You there," she said. "Are you alright?" Glinda headed towards her with a concerned look on her face.
"I-- yes," Elphaba said in a daze.
"I bet she did it!" one of the townspeople shouted. "She's a witch!" Elphaba tensed when she heard that, and waited for Glinda to turn on her, but Glinda just turned around and laughed airily.
"So am I, dearie, but that was some extremely powerful magic. I don't think a teenage girl could have done it. No, this was something else."
The townspeople grumbled, but seemed to be placated by Glinda's words.
"Now, dear, what's your name?" Glinda asked her.
"Fabala Bamm," Elphaba said. Glinda's eyes widened, and then turned sympathetic.
"So this was your home, was it?"
"I suppose," Elphaba said, and then winced.
"I'm very sorry for your loss," Glinda said, and together they looked at the smoldering wreckage that used to be the Bamm's mansion. Elphaba must have been the only survivor.
"It's okay," Elphaba said, unsure of what else to say. "They weren't very nice to me anyways." Now what would Glinda say to that? Would she still defend her? Glinda's eyes, though, softened even more as she looked at her, studying her.
"You can perform magic?" Glinda asked. Elphaba shrugged.
"A little," she said, not wanting to overstate the matter. She wasn't sure exactly what she could do in this body.
"Hmm," Glinda said. "And you have no place to go now." Uh oh. Elphaba did not like the direction that this conversation was going. "I've got it!" Glinda said. "You'll come home with me. I'll mentor you, from now on."
"What if I don't want to?" Elphaba asked. Glinda gave her a hard look.
"Do you really want to stay here? As soon as I leave, they'll blame you again. I can't protect you from afar."
Oh. So that's what this was about. Something inside of Elphaba warmed.
"Okay," Elphaba said. She had always been weak to Glinda, and it seemed that that hadn't changed, even after dying.
"Excellent!" Glinda said cheerfully, grabbing Elphaba's hand. "Let's go."
"Right now?" Elphaba asked.
"The Gale Force is already on their way," Glinda replied. "I would rather them not take you into custody for questioning. If you're already with me, it will be harder for them to take you away."
"When did you get so shrewd?" Elphaba muttered, and Glinda shot her a look, but didn't seem to have heard exactly what Elphaba had said.
So together, they returned to Glinda's bubble, and Glinda took her away from the Bamm mansion.