Chapter 8
While Glinda was left stupefied by Elphaba’s extra circulars, Fiyero had been unable to think straight. Not that he was a thoughtful thinker by any stretch of the imagination, the night before consumed his thoughts, waking and otherwise. The cadence of her voice, the sway of her hips, the quick movement of her feet as she jump across the stage. All that emotion in her voice as it crested and fell. It was the first time he had truly seen that girl again. The one who sat with him in the run-down clinic, who gave so much of herself to help another that her body had begun to give out.
“Fiyero, what do you want for lunch?”
Glinda’s high-pitched voice broke him from his thoughts of Elphaba, bringing him back to the group of people he was with. Avaric and Shell on one side, Nessa at the end of the table, and Glinda next to him. Pfannee and ShenShen were who knows where. Though it was considerably quieter with them gone.
“I’m not particularly hungry.”
Glinda looked at him concern but didn’t say anything. Instead, she started talking to Avaric about her plans for the weekend. They, like always involved the OzDust.
“Well, Shell and I will have to bow out this week,” Nessa informed the group. “Our mother is coming up this weekend.”
“Mama’s coming up this weekend?” Shell asked, completely caught off guard.
“She doesn’t want to spend the anniversary with father,” Nessa replied with a tone so somber, it spread across the table.
Everyone wanted to know, but no one wanted to ask. Clearly the ‘anniversary’ was not something good. At least enough so that it had a glaze coming over Nessa’s eyes. She grabbed a napkin from Shell’s plate, drying the small tears before they had a chance to fall.
“Our sister,” Shell said. “This Saturday is the anniversary of her death.”
“I didn’t even know you had another sibling,” Glinda said in a sad, yet comforting tone that she had practiced far too many times over the years.
“She died when she was ten,” Nessa explained. “I was a few years younger than her. She protected me from everything.”
Shell shrugged, seemingly unfazed at the thought of his dead older sister. Nessa didn’t begrudge her brother. Socially he always seemed to walk a line of understanding what exactly to say or how to act. It was hard for him to reason why he should act sad when he didn’t feel it, and Nessa knew that it wasn’t to slight her. That was just Shell.
“I didn’t really know Elphaba, she died before I was old enough to talk,” He explained “Father never talked about her at all, and he’d get furious if anyone else did. He blames himself.”
The groups eyes seemed to widen at the name for a mere moment, before settling back down. Elphaba was a common enough name, especially amongst the religious. Years of revisionist history and propaganda around the Wicked Witches of the West and East had some paint them as villains, and others as saints instead of witches. Even in the Vinkus, it wasn’t uncommon to meet an Elphaba or two, given the time she spent there, and the several tribes that followed her against the Ozian army after the kidnapping of Prince Fiyero Tigelaar- his namesake, coincidentally - and the rest of his family.
“Don’t lie for him, Shell, I love father, but the way he saw Phabala, to him she was a curse. The Unnamed God’s punishment for his family falsely taking the role of Eminent Thropp.” Nessa spit in response before taking a deep breath. “She was born green, a sign that our house was cursed to fall. It’s why he named her after St. Ælphaba, the patron of the wicked and the damned.”
No one knew what to say to that. The conflicts 100 years prior were still a sore spot for Oz, even if most who lived through it had long since passed. There were exceptions of course, such as Glinda’s Granny, Glinda the Good, but that kind of longevity was sustained by magic, which was rarer than people like to admit. The magic of Oz did seem to be healing, Witches marks began appeared seventy years ago, and they only spread more with each strong use of magic in Oz. Such a change wasn’t accepted by everyone though, and as the visibility of magic had risen in Oz, so did the controversy of it.
None of them were surprised that a young girl could be treated as such for merely being born with green skin. There was still the dread that came with knowing such a thing. The knowledge that those today were no better, no more evolved than their predecessors, though they liked to think they were.
“What happened to her?” Fiyero asked, curiosity overtaking him.
“Some of the older boys used to bully us,” Nessa said. “Phabala was never one to put up with it. One day they went a little too far, throwing stones at her near the river. She fell in, and I was stuck in my chair, I couldn’t do anything. The boys ran away. A few days later, a hunter found her bracelet, and further out there were bits of her hair and her torn up sweater in a wolves’ den.”
Nessa couldn’t stop the tears from running down her cheek now. It had all been so long ago, and she was so young she could barely spell. She didn’t like to dwell on her sister much, about where she might have ended up if she had been born somewhere else, a more accepting place, or even to better parents. She would wonder that for the rest of her life, as would her mother.
Melena had concluded that if she hadn’t enabled Nipp’s cruelty, Elphaba would have survived to adulthood. While Nessa wasn’t sure how much it would have helped, she wished her mother had realized such a thing when Elphaba was still alive. Afterwards, Melena became far more protective over Nessa and Shell, to the point that Shell didn’t truly understand. How cruel their father had been.
Fiyero watched as Shell comforted his sister, unsure how to respond. He didn’t mention his siblings often, especially not Manek. He was over a decade older than Fiyero, born when his mother was far too young. It wasn’t common for children to be married in the Vinkus, though in recent years the tradition had waned some. Usually though, children stayed with the parents until adulthood. Fiyero’s mother moved in with her husband at fifteen, due to intense pressure his grandfather, and gave birth to Manek a year later. A rockslide would later claim her first husband when Manek was ten, and seeing a political opportunity, Fiyero’s grandfather offered her hand to the King, his father.
While his mother and father seemed to have a happy marriage, Manek hated the fact that his mother was forced to remarry, and that he was forced to live a stationary lifestyle at the castle than the nomadic life that was more common of the Scrow. The animosity only grew after Fiyero was born and everyone fawned over the heir to the Vinkus.
Even though, as a child, Fiyero thought Manek hung the moon and stars, the two never seemed to get along. Fiyero reasoned that it was because no one wanted to be around their kid brother. When Fiyero’s mother gave birth to the twins, Amael and Thana, that excuse was no longer a comfort to Fiyero. Manek moved back to the Scrow tribe soon after and married the current chieftan’s daughter, Nastoya. The last time Fiyero saw him was at their wedding, which was coming close to a decade now.
Their relationship was rocky to say the least, but Fiyero would still be heartbroken if Manek were to die. He couldn’t imagine having gone through that pain, and as a child, no less. Thinking about Amael, Thana, or Ilinora dying sent his heart racing so fast he thought he might faint. He quickly cast away the thought before he fell into a panic.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Fiyero said, standing up.
“Where are you going?” Glinda asked, the concerned face from earlier returning.
“I need to pick up a book from my room before class,” he answered, though he didn’t have class for another two hours.
All the thoughts of Hideodious deaths and the ever-lingering thoughts of Elphaba from the night at the Ruby Raven, he had a headache the size of a small horse was burgeoning in his head. As soon as he made it back to his dorm, he collapsed on his bed, hoping that when he woke his head would be a little clearer.