Chapter 22
Ozma was never fond of tours. She had to be proper, and where big frilly dresses with ruffles and puffed-up shoulders. Like the pink one she wore now. The petticoat underneath was more than enough to have her wallowing, and then there was the pink sheer overlay, in multiple layers till it seemed to be opaque. It was heavy and unruly, to say the least. Usually, she shuffled it off on some other official. The Vinkun royals though, they were of a different status, basically the rulers of a country within Oz. The Queen’s advisors made clear that she should pay some person attention to them.
Admittedly, she was interested in seeing the prince Fiyero, once more. She had spoken to him briefly on his first visit but had more easily been able to shrug off showing him about. After Lox came back and told her about Elphaba’s relationship with the prince, she became far more interested in the seemingly quiet, unassuming man. Though he had escaped, leaving Ozma with nothing of interest.
“Mama, can I ride on the Lion?” Thana whispered.
“For the last time, No!” The Queen responded rather loudly.
Thana and Amael had been asking the question since they saw the big Cat, but had been subsequently denied each time. The king shook his head in a laugh, mostly at the children’s wild thinking that their mother’s opinion might change.
Lox is captain of my guard,” Ozma said, laughing as well, not a pet. “No one’s ridden him since we were children.”
Lox scrunched his nose at the memory of Tip on his back. It had been after a particularly bad fall when the boy had gone to harvest some berries and fruit for snacks, as mombey often fed them themselves bare minimum that constituted a healthy diet. Anything else they had to get on their own or but with the merger tips they made at the circus. It was often that Elphaba, Lox, and Tip would go out and look for food in nature, to save the small sum of money they did have. It didn’t mean Tip was always smart about it. So for a week or two after Tip slipped and fell when a branch broke beneath him, Lox had offered himself as the main form of transportation.
“So people can ride him!” Amael surmised. “Oh please captain Lox can we?”
“No!” Their mother let out a loud sound, which was rather unusual.
Ilinora, who had been quiet in her arms startled with a cry. The girl was rather averse to loud noises, and certainly was unhappy with the anger in her mother’s voice. The Queen cradled Nor, hushing her.
Ozma took a deep breath, reminding herself as how they ought to behave in public. Blythe, airy, friendly, soft but not weak. It was all so tiring and often she missed being Tip, where all she had to worry about was not pissing off the few customers willing to hand them a spare bit of change.
She opened the door to the throne room, her throne room. Guests often cooed over it. The delicate carvings. The inate use of copper patina to mix the shine of metal and gold with the emerald of the throne itself. The stairs the stained glass, the remnants of the Wizards head behind the throne, eyes looming over all of Oz. It would have been a truly magnificent sight.
If not for the red head in the ruffled, laced shirt tucked into a ruffled skirt that fell just above her knees. Elphaba looked as beautiful as ever, though she would never admit to caring a twig about what others might think of her appearance.
“Why are the Thropps on the list this year?” Elphaba asked, either unaware or, more likely, not caring about the Vinkun family behind Ozma.
“You never invite the Thropps.”
Ozma picked up her skirt as she ran over, and Elphaba quickly stood, lazily approaching the Ozian Queen. As soon as they reached on another, Ozma ripped the hand written paper from the young witch’s hands.
“That is none of your concern,” Ozma responded, a bit to tense for sheer annoyance at Elphaba’s antics. “I don’t see you putting any mental labor into any of the other inaugural guests.”
Elphaba looked behind her, finally acknowledging the Vinkun family. Then she looked back at Ozma, who’s eye tweaked in a way that had Elphaba a bit uneasy. It then occurred that the royals were also on the list for the first time this year and had only recently made peace with the munchkins. It was a political show of faith, a clear message that the governance of Oz did not favor one territory over the other.
“Don’t get all pompous on me,” Elphaba responded as if it were only the two of them in the room. “You were the one who summoned me. I would have waited till after the holidays to come if I had any say in the matter.”
“I asked you to come yesterday, when I had a free afternoon,” Ozma clarified. “Not now when I am giving a tour to our royal friends from the Vinkus.”
Elphaba found the political talk rather tiring but ceded to the point. Ozma should have expected she would listen to exact orders though. Especially not when she was so tired from travel. She hadn’t even intended to play any games on her dear friend, but when the guards brought her to the throne room to wait, and it was gloriously empty, a stage had been set. The emptiness of the room, and the fact that Elphaba knew where Ozma hid her notes (a secret compartment in the throne itself) had her reading to placate her Boredom. Then when she hears the door open, Elphaba couldn’t help herself but to startle the Queen, as they used to do when they were younger.
“You’re a witch!” Thana yell echoed through the large, open room.
They spoke in Vinkun, which Ozma and Elphaba could thankfully understand. The flip to their native tongue had them speaking louder and faster, without any lack in confidence that often came with the second language of Ozian.
“A real live witch, like Fiyero told us about!” Amael mimicked his sister.
“You all have met the Western Witch many a time,” there mother remind them.
She switched to her native tongue as well. Elphaba heard the difference, the slight lift in the accent, the fact that she structures her sentence in a more Gillikin style as compared to her children. The Scrow dialect was the closest of the Vinkun languages to Ozian, though it still felt utterly foreign to most.
“Yes, but Rain is rain. She comes by with toys and stories and parlor tricks. We’ve never met another witch, one with markings and all!”
Thana argued back with the most illogical argument Elphaba had heard in a good while. Elphaba responded by getting on her knees and lowering herself to the girl’s level. She opened her hand, and the green vines across her body lit up like a sparkling river. In her palm was a shilouette of a man and woman dancing, made of green specks that mirrored the look of dust in the sunlight. As the green mist dissipated from her open hand, it traveled, weaving around Thana and Amael. As it passed their ears, they heard ball room music and chatter, the clinking of glass together, the clicking of heels against the floor. It was as if they were at the same room as the shadows that danced only moments ago. They awed at the truck, their eyes and mouths open wide as the music faded into nothing.
“I have a great many parlor tricks, though none are quiet as impressive as the Witch Rain.”
“I wish I could do that,” Thana lamented, before quickly shaking away the gloom. “But it’s still cool to watch it. Can you do it again.”
Elphaba was about to respond when another voice filled the room. It came from the doorway, cutting Elphaba off before she could say anything more. A voice that she knew all too well.
“Please tell me you aren’t bothering another of Ozma’s guests,” Fiyero said his voice light and humorous. “If you keep it up, I’ll have to stuff your mouth with goose feathers to keep you qu-“
He stopped talking when he saw Elphaba, still kneeled in front of his younger siblings. She failed at hiding back a smile as their eyes met. With his hand outstretched, he offered to help her up, and she gladly took it. She looked the same and yet, different. More confident maybe, like she belonged. It was no longer the look of someone walking on shaking ground, but someone whose feet were firmly planted like roots.
“I didn’t think I’d see you here, Elphaba,” Fiyero said, trying to hold back his own excitement, though it came out more like hesitation.
“Would you prefer I wasn’t?” She asked, more as a coy response, but there was a sincerity to the question. She understood if Fiyero didn’t want to publicly express his affections to his family just yet.
“Never.”
Fiyero pulled her into a hug. Nothing that implied romance, but his touch was enough. A comfort, one that let her know he was telling the truth. One arm wrapped around him and the wrapped around his shoulder, inhaling the strong scent of earth and saltwater. It was oddly calming to her, and it took her a moment before she willingly pulled away.
“I should go,” Elphaba admitted. “I truly didn’t mean to interrupt any of Ozma’s meetings or events.”
The Queen raised an eyebrow at her, and Elphaba knew that when they were alone there would be a long explanation of events. Elphaba just shook her head and laughed. The heels of her boots clicked against the floor. The door closing echoed through the room, and Fiyero looked at it with a longing he was far too tied up in to try and hide.
“She’s Rain’s apprentice, is she not?” The Vinkun Queen asked, finally placing where she knew the girl from. “The one who healed you?”
“She also goes to Shiz,” Fiyero answered. “She’s the one I wrote to you about. That curse that was placed on me, she stopped it.”
Fiyero made the decision that he didn’t care what might come of his actions. Without a word, he followed Elphaba, leaving his family alone.
Fiyero’s mother looked the door, then at the child in her arms. Nor had fallen back into her restful state. Often, she was a peaceful child, far quieter than any of her other children. Lifting the girl’s hand slightly, the vinkun queen ran the thumb over the green mark that had been left behind. The day at the Witch’s Den, it ran through her mind vividly. The way the glass had shattered, the blood that dripped down the girl’s face. The color of her markings that peered out from her clothes. Then she remembered what Fiyero had said to her that day.
“She was on the train,” the words came out low and in her native Scrow dialect.
Her eyes went to Ozma, who while not perfect could understand most vinkun languages understood what she was asking. That Elphaba had been on the train and seemed to have such an informal banter with the Queen of Oz. That she would have surely heard the pained screams of the Vinkun Queen if she had been in Ozma’s cabin merely one car away. Ozma’s eyes drifted to the side, but she nodded, confirming the queen’s suspicions.
“I thought witches needed time to regain their magic once they use it?” The queen continued her questions, in Ozian this time. “Rain said curses are much worse than other spells. one week, that would not be enough time recover, no?”
The King did not understand, nor did the kids, who at this point were pulling at their father’s coat. Ozma tilted her head back and forth, as if weighing the options of what to say. Elphaba, if confronted later, surely wouldn’t be happy, but Ozma didn’t want to risk offending the Vinkun royals with a lie that was easy to parse out. Elphaba would be more forgiving, she figured.
“Such intense burst of magic in such a short time frame takes a harsh physical toll. Many weaker witches would die if they attempted such a thing.”
“And if the curse on Fiyero hadn’t been broken, would he have…”
She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence. Ozma didn’t have the stomach to tell the vinkun queen the truth.
“He would have died. Rain said it probably would have occurred within a few hours, if she hadn’t intervened. You and your child would be dead too, if it wasn’t for her,” Lox said without hesitation. “It came at a great personal cost, breaking such well-woven curses.”
“Rain said she had nothing to do with Nor’s birth. What are you all on about?”
The King spoke with frustration. He hadn’t put the pieces together and was in no mode to keep standing there like an idiot as his kids pulled on his outerwear.
“The girl, Elphaba, she was the witch that saved Nor and I that day on the train,” The queen explained, falling back into vinkun as she spoke.
Nor fussed at the sound of her name so many times, but quickly settled against her mother once more. Now the King was looking at the door which his son had just run through. When Rain had told him of her plan to name a successor, he never pictured someone who seemed to lack caution or restraint. Yet, that seemed to be the case. She didn’t care who was around her, or what the implications of her actions might be in a political sense, based on what he just witnessed. Now it seemed to make sense to him why Rain had refused to introduce her. The king found much of her reckless and distasteful, not to mention rude.
Even so, she had saved his children, even when she hadn’t known who Fiyero was and what his death could mean. She didn’t seem to worry about the harm that came to her in the service of helping others. She had a good heart, a want to protect, and held a value in lives that others might brush aside.
It left the king with a headache trying to parse what this might mean for the future of his country. Though, with the scene that had just occurred, it might be more prudent to worry about what this witch meant for his son.