I don't know if anyone here reads Wicked fanfic, but if you do, I hope you like this. Musical-canon, set post-musical, ch 1 of... god knows.
Ch 1 – The Interview Room
What with everything else Glinda had to do – rebuilding Munchkinland, rewriting the legal statutes concerning Animals, restructuring the Emerald City senate, not to mention all the endless waving – it wasn’t until a month had gone by since the Melting that she had time to plan what she was going to do about the graves.
The first problem was the Grimmerie. Glinda and the ancient book had a stormy relationship. In fact, the first time she had tried to open it, it unleashed a cyclone from its pages that rampaged through her room and destroyed most of her furnishings, jewellery and clothes. It had only calmed down when Chistery spoke to it. Glinda had only calmed down and stopped hurling lit matches at the book when she realised that her rack of shoes had miraculously survived the carnage. From then on, she took the Grimmerie down to one of the old dungeons whenever she wanted to look inside it. There wasn’t much there that a spell could destroy, and she figured having a few torture devices lying conspicuously around might keep the book under control.
Even once the Grimmerie sulkily surrendered to her ownership, it didn’t solve the problem that, try as she might, Glinda couldn’t read more than a few syllables from its pages. And if she wanted to carry out her plan, she needed a spell. An unbreakable, irreversible spell.
She was lucky to have Chistery. The monkey, unlike the Grimmerie, acknowledged that his mistress had trusted Glinda to carry on her work, and for him, that was a good enough reason to be loyal. He still didn’t understand much language, but he could now mimic sounds he’d heard, and he had heard Elphaba reading the Grimmerie often enough to recite some of the spells back to Glinda. She found that saying the right words, even if she didn’t understand them, would produce for her a weak version of the spell. Unfortunately, what she had in mind now would require a little more power.
It would be dangerous. If it went wrong, if people talked, if people pieced things together, she would be thrown into a cell to spend the rest of her life underground. Everything she had worked for since becoming ruler of the Emerald City would come to nothing. Glinda knew that Elphaba would never have allowed her to do it. She also knew that Elphaba would absolutely have done it if she were in Glinda’s position.
So Glinda left her room at the Palace one night in her travelling cloak, and made her way to the dungeons.
She stopped at the Palace Menagerie to pick up Chistery. Some of the winged monkeys had been butchered by overenthusiastic Ozians after the fall of the Witch, but Glinda had had the remaining ones rounded up and placed under royal protection. They slept in a large domed room on the first floor, with a tree growing up through the centre. They chattered softly in the branches when Glinda opened the door. Chistery was silent as he swung himself down and loped to her side.
Together, they picked their way to the lower floors. The guard on duty saluted when he saw Glinda.
“Your highness.”
“Good evening,” said Glinda, mindless of the fact that it was one in the morning. “Did you get my memo?”
The guard’s brow contracted. “No, ma’am… my apologies.”
“Oh dear.” Glinda sighed. “I used my best scented writing paper and everything.”
The man blushed slightly. “Did – was there something you – can I help – ma’am?”
Glinda smiled. “Well, I’m not sure if it’d be allowed without the proper notificution, but I suppose we could always sort out the paperwork tomorrow, if you don’t mind bending the rules a little… Captain.”
The guard’s heels clicked together so smartly she thought he must have broken a bone. “Ma’am, whatever you wish, I am happy to oblige.”
Glinda beamed at him. “Perfect! Then if you don’t mind, I would like to visit a prisoner.”
***
The Palace dungeons were everything a dungeon should be: dank, cobwebbed and cold. After everything that had happened, Ozians were still so mindful of appearances. Glinda pulled her cloak around her and hoped no spiders fell in her hair.
The guard strode ahead with his lantern held high, which Glinda wished he wouldn’t, because it meant the light didn’t reach the floor. She kept stubbing her toes on uneven stones. Chistery was a nimble shadow in the passageway, his eyes turned up to the lamp-light.
When they passed the cells, Glinda shivered and lowered her head. Most of Oz’s convicts, apparently, either slept with one eye open or didn’t sleep at all, because she could feel their gazes on her with every step she took.
The lower they went, the more exotic the measures used to hold prisoners underground became. The captain had a metal case with him, the purpose of which became clear the first time he stopped before a door with no handle, took an acid green potion out of the case and threw it, causing the door to twist from the centre out and melt away as though it was being sucked out of the bottom of a glass. It phased back into place as soon as Glinda, Chistery and the guard had walked through. There were also doors that only opened when sung to at the right pitch, or stroked in the right place. Glinda tried to memorise all this as they went along, but there were so many doors, many of which looked identical, that she didn’t hold out much hope that she could recreate the sequence by herself, even with Chistery’s help.
The final door needed no magic or potions. The most formidable lock Glinda had ever seen opened with a series of booming clicks as the guard inserted five different keys and turned them by degrees in a sequence that Glinda gave up memorising halfway through.
When it swung open, the slight draught that emerged from the small room made a shudder run through Glinda from the top of her head down to the soles of her feet. A pair of bulbous eyes shone in the lantern light, in a face waxy from lack of sunlight. Chistery hissed, baring his teeth, and refused to cross the threshold. Glinda had to fight to keep her legs from wobbling as she stepped forward, into the cell.
“Your Highness,” sneered Madame Morrible.
Glinda did not smile. The last time she had faced down the Wizard’s press secretary, her anger and grief had been too strong to leave room for fear. She didn’t feel as brave now, even as ruler of the Emerald City, with Morrible in chains with her hair falling lank around her face.
“You’re looking a little overwhelmed, Glinda dear.” Morrible’s dull, sly eyes raked Glinda’s face, and her lip curled. “Clearly, the pressure of leadership –”
The end of the captain’s bayonet slammed onto the stone floor, making both women jump. “Enough, you,” barked the guard. “You’ll speak when spoken to.”
Glinda was thankful to him. She cleared her throat to keep it from cracking, and addressed Morrible. “Madame, luckily for us all, you will never be far enough above ground to know how I am dealing with the pressure of leadership.”
Morrible’s face twisted. Glinda turned her back on her and spoke to the guard.
“Captain, I would like to interrogerate this prisoner in person, concerning a matter of supreme state importance.”
The guard looked startled. “Er, I don’t know – that is, for your own protection –” He lowered his voice. “This one’s a nasty piece of work, your highness.”
“You don’t have to remind me of that. I am sure that no harm will come to me in your presence. Please.”
The guard stood to attention, looking slightly unsure of himself. “Well, I’ll need to listen to your interrogeration, your highness. For security.”
Glinda was prepared for that. “Of course. I wouldn’t expect anything else.”
While the guard hustled Morrible to her feet, Glinda ran through the spell in her head. She didn’t have the Grimmerie with her, but that wouldn’t matter so long as she remembered what to say.
The four of them proceeded to the interview room, which turned out to be quite nondescript. It was lit from above by hanging torches filled with unquenchable fire; the light they gave was faintly green and made everything look somehow fuzzy. The only furniture was a long table with benches on either side. The side facing the door had shackles attached to it. Morrible sat, glowering, while the guard chained her in place. Glinda took a seat on the other side, hands folded in her lap.
“I’ll be over here, your highness,” the guard said, taking his station beside the door. “And I’m afraid the monkey will have to wait outside,” he added.
Chistery gave the man an affronted look, and streaked out of the room. The guard swung the door shut and bolted it.
Glinda smiled, and turned to Morrible. When she was sure the guard could only see the back of her head, she mouthed the Muffling spell she had sort-of mastered the week before. A barely detectable thickness settled in the air around the table.
“Very impressive,” said Morrible.
Glinda settled back on the bench. Her back was as straight as a slide-rule. “Thank you.”
“Precisely how illegal is this conversation going to be?”
Glinda snorted. “Surely you aren’t about to object on moral grounds.”
Morrible’s eyes glittered. Glinda, feeling slightly bolder now, leaned across the table.
“I’ve come to talk to you because you and I have two things in common that set us apart from the rest of Oz. We both know the truth about the Wicked Witch of the West. And we’ve both managed to read at least one spell from the Grimmerie.”
“So you want me to perform a spell for you. I’m afraid without the Grimmerie in front of me –”
“As if I’d let you perform a spell, or bring that book anywhere near you.” Glinda glanced at the guard; he had a puzzled look on his face, and was digging a finger into his ear. She turned back to Morrible. “No, Madame, I want you to teach me a spell.”
Morrible’s eyes narrowed. “What makes you think I know this spell, or that I’d teach it to you if I did?”
Glinda set her jaw. “I think you know this spell because Chistery can say it, which means he’s heard someone else say it in the past. And I can’t think why Elphaba would have needed to use it, which means it must have been you.”
Madame Morrible laughed. “Ah, so you can only use the Grimmerie if a monkey tells you how. I am so glad to hear it. If you of all people had outdone me in the application of advanced sorcery, I should have had to die of embarrassment.”
“Pity,” said Glinda acidly.
The two women regarded each other with contempt across the table. The silence deepened until Glinda felt that either of them could have killed the other with sheer willpower at any moment.
Eventually, the guard coughed. The noise rang like a whip-crack. Glinda unclenched her hands; Morrible settled back with a clank of chains.
“Let’s suppose that I helped you,” said Morrible. “I presumerate I would be compensated in some manner for my trouble?”
“No.”
“Then we have nothing to discuss.”
“If you help me,” said Glinda, “I won’t make your life any more difficult than it already is.”
Morrible gave a derisive laugh. However, Glinda could see a muscle twitch in her neck that suggested she was thinking of a few ways in which her life could be made more difficult.
“For instance,” Glinda went on, “I won’t move you into a communal cell with any Animal prisoners. I hear they’re quite annoyed with you, for some reason.”
Under the green torch light, Morrible suddenly looked very ill indeed.
“Well, I’ll let you mull it over,” said Glinda. She began to rise.
“Stop.”
Glinda froze. Morrible’s eyes were on the table. Her limp curls cast a shadow over her face. Without looking up, she said, “Tell me what spell you need.”
Glinda kept most of her triumph from showing as she sat back down. With another glance at the guard, whose face was curiously rigid, as though he was inwardly rationalising what was happening to him, she reached into her cloak and drew out a silver quill. She laid it on the table, stared at it hard, and began to recite under her breath. After a while, Morrible inhaled in a way that told Glinda the spell had worked.
“I see,” Morrible said softly. “An invisibility spell?”
“More like a perception spell. It makes things unnoticeable. I can still see the quill, but other people can’t.” Glinda looked at Morrible. “I need to know how to keep that spell going even when I’m not concentrating on it. I want to make it last forever.”
The air below her flickered. Morrible glanced down at the now-noticeable quill.
“That sounds like a great deal of effort to go through for a pen,” she said.
Glinda didn’t answer. There was no way Morrible believed she wasn’t planning to cast the spell on something else.
“Just tell me how to do it. I already know what enchantment I need, I just have to learn to use it. It won’t work for me at the moment.”
Even though she had Morrible at her mercy, the older woman was beginning to smile in the same way she had done as the Wizard’s press secretary. Glinda suspected Morrible enjoyed having something she needed. It must be the only power she had left to wield.
“Unfortunately, Glinda dear, there is one simple reason the spell won’t work for you, and it isn’t something I can teach you. Magical talent. You have none. The very lettering of the Grimmerie is incomprehensible to you. All you can do is parrot whatever the monkey tells you. Words alone won’t produce a fully-fledged spell. Your friend, the Wicked Witch, could channel the contents of that book with nothing but her natural power. But you – all you can do is learn by rote. You can say those words until Ozma returns. You’ll never be able to cast that spell.”
Glinda slammed her hands onto the table. From out of nowhere, her eyes had filled with tears. “Madame Morrible, I can’t accept that!”
“Of course not.” Morrible’s sneer was almost inhuman. “Galinda never could conceive that she lacked the talent to get into my sorcery seminar, so why would Glinda the Good be any more willing to accept the truth of her ineptitude for magic? Stupid, conceited girl. I had nothing to teach you then, and nothing has changed.”
Glinda’s fingers curled against the tabletop. The idea that she wouldn’t be able to carry out her plan was like a blow to the stomach. “I don’t care what you think of me, but this is too important – it has to be done, it –”
Madame Morrible wasn’t looking at her. Her mouth had fallen open and her protuberant eyes were wide, giving her the look of a bloated fish. An instant later, Glinda realised that the table beneath her hands had become hot. She jumped and lifted her arms. Her palms tingled with an unpleasant sensation, as though she’d just placed them on the surface of a warm oil slick. She looked down, and gasped. Two handprints were sunk into the table.
“You –” Morrible choked.
Glinda lowered her head for a closer look. The edges of the prints were smooth and slightly blackened. Inside, the wood had a caramelised appearance. It was literally as though her hands had melted the table.
“How did I…” Glinda stared at her hands, and then smelled them. Apart from a very faint scent of oak, they seemed normal.
Morrible was silent. Her great white face was stunned, but calculation was beginning to tick into gear behind her eyes. She pressed her lips together as though trying to keep her thoughts from showing to Glinda.
In spite of the way her heart was pounding, Glinda felt a strange calmness. She pressed a fingertip to the table; nothing happened. Whatever had taken her over seemed to have passed. She breathed in slowly, letting composure fill her as well as air. Resting her arms on the table once more, she spoke to Morrible.
“Wrong again, hmm?”
Morrible showed no anger. The corner of her mouth was quirked in something that was not quite a smile.
“Miss Glinda, this night is turning out to be almost excessively eventful. Perhaps I should re-evalualate my… assessment of you. Evidently, there is more to you than meets the eye –”
“You don’t believe that.”
Morrible paused for a fraction of a second. It was enough for Glinda to know she’d been right on the mark.
“I bet you have a theory for why I could do that,” she said. “Cast a spell, without a wand, or the Grimmerie. Elphaba used to be able to do that. She said it was like losing control – she hardly even meant to do it, it just poured out of her.”
Morrible’s face twitched slightly. “How… astute of you. Yes, it is possible that you have the same gift.”
“Except that I’ve seen my birth certificate, and I’m definitely a child of just this world.”
A flash of irritation crossed Morrible’s forehead. “Well, there is that –”
“Never mind.” Glinda stood up. “It doesn’t matter where I got that power from. All that matters is knowing what lets me use it. It’s emotional. All I have to do is get upset.” She beamed at Madame Morrible. “Thank you so much. You’ve been such a great help.”
She twirled around and headed for the door. The guard yanked his transcript of the interrogation up to his chest when Glinda drew near, though not quite in time to prevent her from seeing it was blank.
“All done!” she trilled.
He blinked and stared at her. Beads of sweat had formed along his hairline. Glinda remembered that the Muffling charm had to wear off naturally. This room would be soundproofed for another half an hour or so.
“All done!” she repeated, exaggerating her mouth movements and giving the guard a double thumbs-up.
He smiled weakly and unbolted the door. Glinda saw him trying to discreetly jerk his head from side to side as though dislodging water from his ears.
Chistery was waiting for her in the passage. He slipped a questioning paw into Glinda’s hand; she nodded at him, and he withdrew. Mission accomplished.
As Chistery loped ahead, the guard cleared his throat from behind Glinda. She turned and found herself close to his red, round face. He was still sweating, and he still looked very unhappy.
“Begging your pardon, ma’am… er…”
Glinda felt a little bad for him. “Yes?” she said, kindly, putting a hand on his arm.
He dropped his bayonet. “I was just wondering,” he panting while lugging it upright, “what happened to the, er…” He motioned back into the room.
“The table?” said Glinda in her most innocent voice.
“Um. Yes.”
Glinda gave a tinkling laugh. “I am so sorry about that. Tried to cast a Truth spell on the prisoner, and melted the table instead! Clumsy me.”
The guard jumped a little at the information that Glinda could perform Truth spells, and nearly dropped the bayonet again.
“Don’t know why I didn’t notice it at the time…” he mumbled miserably.
Glinda patted his arm again. He gave her a slightly fearful grin and began to stump back up the corridor.
Glinda tactfully cleared her throat. “Er, Captain…” She motioned back towards the interview room.
Bright red in the face, the guard came back and retrieved Madame Morrible.
Once Morrible was back in her cell, Glinda and Chistery allowed themselves to be led back to the surface. The entire way, Glinda mulled over in her head the part she and Morrible hadn’t found an answer for. Why had she been able to do as Elphaba had done, in melting the table? Glinda knew she hadn’t a fraction of Elphie’s power. Unless…
There was one magical item in her possession, that until recently had been very close to Elphaba.
Glinda had more than enough reason to believe the Grimmerie could think for itself. It had made its opinions on her very clear, for a start. But could it, in a perverse way, be trying to help her?
Morrible had said that Elphaba had channelled the magic of the Grimmerie. If the Grimmerie could use Elphaba as a vessel for its own power, maybe the process went both ways – what if there was a little of Elphie inside the book? What if the book was pouring a little of Elphaba’s magic into Glinda?
The thought that a part of Elphaba might live on made Glinda stop dead in the passage. Chistery and the guard looked back at her. She had to pretend she’d snagged her cloak on something, and keep walking, trying to hide the sudden shaking fit that was threatening to break out.
It was just a theory. She mustn’t cling to every passing hope that wandered through her brain.
But, for the first time, Glinda was eager to sneak back to the dungeon in the morning, and pore through the pages of the Grimmerie.
Ch 1 – The Interview Room
What with everything else Glinda had to do – rebuilding Munchkinland, rewriting the legal statutes concerning Animals, restructuring the Emerald City senate, not to mention all the endless waving – it wasn’t until a month had gone by since the Melting that she had time to plan what she was going to do about the graves.
The first problem was the Grimmerie. Glinda and the ancient book had a stormy relationship. In fact, the first time she had tried to open it, it unleashed a cyclone from its pages that rampaged through her room and destroyed most of her furnishings, jewellery and clothes. It had only calmed down when Chistery spoke to it. Glinda had only calmed down and stopped hurling lit matches at the book when she realised that her rack of shoes had miraculously survived the carnage. From then on, she took the Grimmerie down to one of the old dungeons whenever she wanted to look inside it. There wasn’t much there that a spell could destroy, and she figured having a few torture devices lying conspicuously around might keep the book under control.
Even once the Grimmerie sulkily surrendered to her ownership, it didn’t solve the problem that, try as she might, Glinda couldn’t read more than a few syllables from its pages. And if she wanted to carry out her plan, she needed a spell. An unbreakable, irreversible spell.
She was lucky to have Chistery. The monkey, unlike the Grimmerie, acknowledged that his mistress had trusted Glinda to carry on her work, and for him, that was a good enough reason to be loyal. He still didn’t understand much language, but he could now mimic sounds he’d heard, and he had heard Elphaba reading the Grimmerie often enough to recite some of the spells back to Glinda. She found that saying the right words, even if she didn’t understand them, would produce for her a weak version of the spell. Unfortunately, what she had in mind now would require a little more power.
It would be dangerous. If it went wrong, if people talked, if people pieced things together, she would be thrown into a cell to spend the rest of her life underground. Everything she had worked for since becoming ruler of the Emerald City would come to nothing. Glinda knew that Elphaba would never have allowed her to do it. She also knew that Elphaba would absolutely have done it if she were in Glinda’s position.
So Glinda left her room at the Palace one night in her travelling cloak, and made her way to the dungeons.
She stopped at the Palace Menagerie to pick up Chistery. Some of the winged monkeys had been butchered by overenthusiastic Ozians after the fall of the Witch, but Glinda had had the remaining ones rounded up and placed under royal protection. They slept in a large domed room on the first floor, with a tree growing up through the centre. They chattered softly in the branches when Glinda opened the door. Chistery was silent as he swung himself down and loped to her side.
Together, they picked their way to the lower floors. The guard on duty saluted when he saw Glinda.
“Your highness.”
“Good evening,” said Glinda, mindless of the fact that it was one in the morning. “Did you get my memo?”
The guard’s brow contracted. “No, ma’am… my apologies.”
“Oh dear.” Glinda sighed. “I used my best scented writing paper and everything.”
The man blushed slightly. “Did – was there something you – can I help – ma’am?”
Glinda smiled. “Well, I’m not sure if it’d be allowed without the proper notificution, but I suppose we could always sort out the paperwork tomorrow, if you don’t mind bending the rules a little… Captain.”
The guard’s heels clicked together so smartly she thought he must have broken a bone. “Ma’am, whatever you wish, I am happy to oblige.”
Glinda beamed at him. “Perfect! Then if you don’t mind, I would like to visit a prisoner.”
***
The Palace dungeons were everything a dungeon should be: dank, cobwebbed and cold. After everything that had happened, Ozians were still so mindful of appearances. Glinda pulled her cloak around her and hoped no spiders fell in her hair.
The guard strode ahead with his lantern held high, which Glinda wished he wouldn’t, because it meant the light didn’t reach the floor. She kept stubbing her toes on uneven stones. Chistery was a nimble shadow in the passageway, his eyes turned up to the lamp-light.
When they passed the cells, Glinda shivered and lowered her head. Most of Oz’s convicts, apparently, either slept with one eye open or didn’t sleep at all, because she could feel their gazes on her with every step she took.
The lower they went, the more exotic the measures used to hold prisoners underground became. The captain had a metal case with him, the purpose of which became clear the first time he stopped before a door with no handle, took an acid green potion out of the case and threw it, causing the door to twist from the centre out and melt away as though it was being sucked out of the bottom of a glass. It phased back into place as soon as Glinda, Chistery and the guard had walked through. There were also doors that only opened when sung to at the right pitch, or stroked in the right place. Glinda tried to memorise all this as they went along, but there were so many doors, many of which looked identical, that she didn’t hold out much hope that she could recreate the sequence by herself, even with Chistery’s help.
The final door needed no magic or potions. The most formidable lock Glinda had ever seen opened with a series of booming clicks as the guard inserted five different keys and turned them by degrees in a sequence that Glinda gave up memorising halfway through.
When it swung open, the slight draught that emerged from the small room made a shudder run through Glinda from the top of her head down to the soles of her feet. A pair of bulbous eyes shone in the lantern light, in a face waxy from lack of sunlight. Chistery hissed, baring his teeth, and refused to cross the threshold. Glinda had to fight to keep her legs from wobbling as she stepped forward, into the cell.
“Your Highness,” sneered Madame Morrible.
Glinda did not smile. The last time she had faced down the Wizard’s press secretary, her anger and grief had been too strong to leave room for fear. She didn’t feel as brave now, even as ruler of the Emerald City, with Morrible in chains with her hair falling lank around her face.
“You’re looking a little overwhelmed, Glinda dear.” Morrible’s dull, sly eyes raked Glinda’s face, and her lip curled. “Clearly, the pressure of leadership –”
The end of the captain’s bayonet slammed onto the stone floor, making both women jump. “Enough, you,” barked the guard. “You’ll speak when spoken to.”
Glinda was thankful to him. She cleared her throat to keep it from cracking, and addressed Morrible. “Madame, luckily for us all, you will never be far enough above ground to know how I am dealing with the pressure of leadership.”
Morrible’s face twisted. Glinda turned her back on her and spoke to the guard.
“Captain, I would like to interrogerate this prisoner in person, concerning a matter of supreme state importance.”
The guard looked startled. “Er, I don’t know – that is, for your own protection –” He lowered his voice. “This one’s a nasty piece of work, your highness.”
“You don’t have to remind me of that. I am sure that no harm will come to me in your presence. Please.”
The guard stood to attention, looking slightly unsure of himself. “Well, I’ll need to listen to your interrogeration, your highness. For security.”
Glinda was prepared for that. “Of course. I wouldn’t expect anything else.”
While the guard hustled Morrible to her feet, Glinda ran through the spell in her head. She didn’t have the Grimmerie with her, but that wouldn’t matter so long as she remembered what to say.
The four of them proceeded to the interview room, which turned out to be quite nondescript. It was lit from above by hanging torches filled with unquenchable fire; the light they gave was faintly green and made everything look somehow fuzzy. The only furniture was a long table with benches on either side. The side facing the door had shackles attached to it. Morrible sat, glowering, while the guard chained her in place. Glinda took a seat on the other side, hands folded in her lap.
“I’ll be over here, your highness,” the guard said, taking his station beside the door. “And I’m afraid the monkey will have to wait outside,” he added.
Chistery gave the man an affronted look, and streaked out of the room. The guard swung the door shut and bolted it.
Glinda smiled, and turned to Morrible. When she was sure the guard could only see the back of her head, she mouthed the Muffling spell she had sort-of mastered the week before. A barely detectable thickness settled in the air around the table.
“Very impressive,” said Morrible.
Glinda settled back on the bench. Her back was as straight as a slide-rule. “Thank you.”
“Precisely how illegal is this conversation going to be?”
Glinda snorted. “Surely you aren’t about to object on moral grounds.”
Morrible’s eyes glittered. Glinda, feeling slightly bolder now, leaned across the table.
“I’ve come to talk to you because you and I have two things in common that set us apart from the rest of Oz. We both know the truth about the Wicked Witch of the West. And we’ve both managed to read at least one spell from the Grimmerie.”
“So you want me to perform a spell for you. I’m afraid without the Grimmerie in front of me –”
“As if I’d let you perform a spell, or bring that book anywhere near you.” Glinda glanced at the guard; he had a puzzled look on his face, and was digging a finger into his ear. She turned back to Morrible. “No, Madame, I want you to teach me a spell.”
Morrible’s eyes narrowed. “What makes you think I know this spell, or that I’d teach it to you if I did?”
Glinda set her jaw. “I think you know this spell because Chistery can say it, which means he’s heard someone else say it in the past. And I can’t think why Elphaba would have needed to use it, which means it must have been you.”
Madame Morrible laughed. “Ah, so you can only use the Grimmerie if a monkey tells you how. I am so glad to hear it. If you of all people had outdone me in the application of advanced sorcery, I should have had to die of embarrassment.”
“Pity,” said Glinda acidly.
The two women regarded each other with contempt across the table. The silence deepened until Glinda felt that either of them could have killed the other with sheer willpower at any moment.
Eventually, the guard coughed. The noise rang like a whip-crack. Glinda unclenched her hands; Morrible settled back with a clank of chains.
“Let’s suppose that I helped you,” said Morrible. “I presumerate I would be compensated in some manner for my trouble?”
“No.”
“Then we have nothing to discuss.”
“If you help me,” said Glinda, “I won’t make your life any more difficult than it already is.”
Morrible gave a derisive laugh. However, Glinda could see a muscle twitch in her neck that suggested she was thinking of a few ways in which her life could be made more difficult.
“For instance,” Glinda went on, “I won’t move you into a communal cell with any Animal prisoners. I hear they’re quite annoyed with you, for some reason.”
Under the green torch light, Morrible suddenly looked very ill indeed.
“Well, I’ll let you mull it over,” said Glinda. She began to rise.
“Stop.”
Glinda froze. Morrible’s eyes were on the table. Her limp curls cast a shadow over her face. Without looking up, she said, “Tell me what spell you need.”
Glinda kept most of her triumph from showing as she sat back down. With another glance at the guard, whose face was curiously rigid, as though he was inwardly rationalising what was happening to him, she reached into her cloak and drew out a silver quill. She laid it on the table, stared at it hard, and began to recite under her breath. After a while, Morrible inhaled in a way that told Glinda the spell had worked.
“I see,” Morrible said softly. “An invisibility spell?”
“More like a perception spell. It makes things unnoticeable. I can still see the quill, but other people can’t.” Glinda looked at Morrible. “I need to know how to keep that spell going even when I’m not concentrating on it. I want to make it last forever.”
The air below her flickered. Morrible glanced down at the now-noticeable quill.
“That sounds like a great deal of effort to go through for a pen,” she said.
Glinda didn’t answer. There was no way Morrible believed she wasn’t planning to cast the spell on something else.
“Just tell me how to do it. I already know what enchantment I need, I just have to learn to use it. It won’t work for me at the moment.”
Even though she had Morrible at her mercy, the older woman was beginning to smile in the same way she had done as the Wizard’s press secretary. Glinda suspected Morrible enjoyed having something she needed. It must be the only power she had left to wield.
“Unfortunately, Glinda dear, there is one simple reason the spell won’t work for you, and it isn’t something I can teach you. Magical talent. You have none. The very lettering of the Grimmerie is incomprehensible to you. All you can do is parrot whatever the monkey tells you. Words alone won’t produce a fully-fledged spell. Your friend, the Wicked Witch, could channel the contents of that book with nothing but her natural power. But you – all you can do is learn by rote. You can say those words until Ozma returns. You’ll never be able to cast that spell.”
Glinda slammed her hands onto the table. From out of nowhere, her eyes had filled with tears. “Madame Morrible, I can’t accept that!”
“Of course not.” Morrible’s sneer was almost inhuman. “Galinda never could conceive that she lacked the talent to get into my sorcery seminar, so why would Glinda the Good be any more willing to accept the truth of her ineptitude for magic? Stupid, conceited girl. I had nothing to teach you then, and nothing has changed.”
Glinda’s fingers curled against the tabletop. The idea that she wouldn’t be able to carry out her plan was like a blow to the stomach. “I don’t care what you think of me, but this is too important – it has to be done, it –”
Madame Morrible wasn’t looking at her. Her mouth had fallen open and her protuberant eyes were wide, giving her the look of a bloated fish. An instant later, Glinda realised that the table beneath her hands had become hot. She jumped and lifted her arms. Her palms tingled with an unpleasant sensation, as though she’d just placed them on the surface of a warm oil slick. She looked down, and gasped. Two handprints were sunk into the table.
“You –” Morrible choked.
Glinda lowered her head for a closer look. The edges of the prints were smooth and slightly blackened. Inside, the wood had a caramelised appearance. It was literally as though her hands had melted the table.
“How did I…” Glinda stared at her hands, and then smelled them. Apart from a very faint scent of oak, they seemed normal.
Morrible was silent. Her great white face was stunned, but calculation was beginning to tick into gear behind her eyes. She pressed her lips together as though trying to keep her thoughts from showing to Glinda.
In spite of the way her heart was pounding, Glinda felt a strange calmness. She pressed a fingertip to the table; nothing happened. Whatever had taken her over seemed to have passed. She breathed in slowly, letting composure fill her as well as air. Resting her arms on the table once more, she spoke to Morrible.
“Wrong again, hmm?”
Morrible showed no anger. The corner of her mouth was quirked in something that was not quite a smile.
“Miss Glinda, this night is turning out to be almost excessively eventful. Perhaps I should re-evalualate my… assessment of you. Evidently, there is more to you than meets the eye –”
“You don’t believe that.”
Morrible paused for a fraction of a second. It was enough for Glinda to know she’d been right on the mark.
“I bet you have a theory for why I could do that,” she said. “Cast a spell, without a wand, or the Grimmerie. Elphaba used to be able to do that. She said it was like losing control – she hardly even meant to do it, it just poured out of her.”
Morrible’s face twitched slightly. “How… astute of you. Yes, it is possible that you have the same gift.”
“Except that I’ve seen my birth certificate, and I’m definitely a child of just this world.”
A flash of irritation crossed Morrible’s forehead. “Well, there is that –”
“Never mind.” Glinda stood up. “It doesn’t matter where I got that power from. All that matters is knowing what lets me use it. It’s emotional. All I have to do is get upset.” She beamed at Madame Morrible. “Thank you so much. You’ve been such a great help.”
She twirled around and headed for the door. The guard yanked his transcript of the interrogation up to his chest when Glinda drew near, though not quite in time to prevent her from seeing it was blank.
“All done!” she trilled.
He blinked and stared at her. Beads of sweat had formed along his hairline. Glinda remembered that the Muffling charm had to wear off naturally. This room would be soundproofed for another half an hour or so.
“All done!” she repeated, exaggerating her mouth movements and giving the guard a double thumbs-up.
He smiled weakly and unbolted the door. Glinda saw him trying to discreetly jerk his head from side to side as though dislodging water from his ears.
Chistery was waiting for her in the passage. He slipped a questioning paw into Glinda’s hand; she nodded at him, and he withdrew. Mission accomplished.
As Chistery loped ahead, the guard cleared his throat from behind Glinda. She turned and found herself close to his red, round face. He was still sweating, and he still looked very unhappy.
“Begging your pardon, ma’am… er…”
Glinda felt a little bad for him. “Yes?” she said, kindly, putting a hand on his arm.
He dropped his bayonet. “I was just wondering,” he panting while lugging it upright, “what happened to the, er…” He motioned back into the room.
“The table?” said Glinda in her most innocent voice.
“Um. Yes.”
Glinda gave a tinkling laugh. “I am so sorry about that. Tried to cast a Truth spell on the prisoner, and melted the table instead! Clumsy me.”
The guard jumped a little at the information that Glinda could perform Truth spells, and nearly dropped the bayonet again.
“Don’t know why I didn’t notice it at the time…” he mumbled miserably.
Glinda patted his arm again. He gave her a slightly fearful grin and began to stump back up the corridor.
Glinda tactfully cleared her throat. “Er, Captain…” She motioned back towards the interview room.
Bright red in the face, the guard came back and retrieved Madame Morrible.
Once Morrible was back in her cell, Glinda and Chistery allowed themselves to be led back to the surface. The entire way, Glinda mulled over in her head the part she and Morrible hadn’t found an answer for. Why had she been able to do as Elphaba had done, in melting the table? Glinda knew she hadn’t a fraction of Elphie’s power. Unless…
There was one magical item in her possession, that until recently had been very close to Elphaba.
Glinda had more than enough reason to believe the Grimmerie could think for itself. It had made its opinions on her very clear, for a start. But could it, in a perverse way, be trying to help her?
Morrible had said that Elphaba had channelled the magic of the Grimmerie. If the Grimmerie could use Elphaba as a vessel for its own power, maybe the process went both ways – what if there was a little of Elphie inside the book? What if the book was pouring a little of Elphaba’s magic into Glinda?
The thought that a part of Elphaba might live on made Glinda stop dead in the passage. Chistery and the guard looked back at her. She had to pretend she’d snagged her cloak on something, and keep walking, trying to hide the sudden shaking fit that was threatening to break out.
It was just a theory. She mustn’t cling to every passing hope that wandered through her brain.
But, for the first time, Glinda was eager to sneak back to the dungeon in the morning, and pore through the pages of the Grimmerie.
