Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West (Wicked Years, #1)

by Gregory Maguire

“You work with Yackle.” “We sometimes have the same intentions, and we sometimes do not. Her interest seems to be different from mine.” “Who is she? What is her interest? Why do you hover at the edges of my life?” “In the world I come from, there are guardian angels,” said the dwarf, “but so far as I can work it out, she is an opposite number, and her concern is you.” “Why do I deserve such a fiend? Why is my life so plagued? Who positioned her to influence my life?” “There are things I don’t know, and things I do,” said the dwarf. “Who Yackle answers to, if anyone, if anything, is beyond my realm of knowledge or interest. But why you? You must know this. For you”—the dwarf spoke in a bright, offhand tone—“are neither this nor that—or shall I say both this and that? Both of Oz and of the other world. Your old Frex always was wrong; you were never a punishment for his crimes. You are a half-breed, you are a new breed, you are a grafted limb, you are a dangerous anomaly. Always you were drawn to the composite creatures, the broken and reassembled, for that is what you are. Can you be so dull that you have not figured this out?”