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July 31 - August 17, 2025
We only have babies when we’re young enough not to know how grim life turns out. Once we really get the full measure of it—we’re slow learners, we women—we dry up in disgust and sensibly halt production. But men don’t dry up, Melena objected; they can father to the death. Ah, we’re slow learners, Nanny countered. But they can’t learn at all.
Of course there’s cruelty. But Elphaba must learn who she is and she must face down cruelty early. And there will be less of it than you expect.”
“Perhaps our time here is limited,” said Frex, sighing with contentment and clasping his arms behind his head—the typical male response to happiness, thought Melena: to predict its demise.
Galinda didn’t see the verdant world through the glass of the carriage; she saw her own reflection instead. She had the nearsightedness of youth. She reasoned that because she was beautiful she was significant, though what she signified, and to whom, was not clear to her yet.
Looking about her, she could tell that some of these dollies came from families much better off than hers. The pearls and diamonds on them! Galinda was glad she had chosen a simple silver collar with mettanite struts. There was something vulgar about traveling in jewels. As she realized this truth, she codified it into a saying. At the earliest perfect opportunity she would bring it out as proof of her having opinions—and of having traveled. “The overdressed traveler betrays more interest in being seen than in seeing,” she murmured, trying it out, “while the true traveler knows that the novel
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“This one is thinking about good and evil,” said Elphaba. “Whether they really exist at all.”
“No, I mean do you think evil really exists?” “Well, how do I know what I think?” “Well, ask yourself, Miss Galinda. Does evil exist?”
“It’s just possible,” considered Galinda, “that she didn’t like being recognized on account of her skin color. I don’t know for sure, but perhaps she’s sensitive about it.”
She struggled with unnamed conflicts within her. Madame Morrible, for all her upper-class diction and fabulous wardrobe, seemed just a tad—oh—dangerous. As if her big public smile were composed of the light glancing off knives and lances, as if her deep voice masked the rumbling of distant explosions.
“What with their sainted mother in her waterlogged grave these long years, and their father off his head. Well, the family always was bright, and brightness, as you know, decays brilliantly. Madness is the most shining way.
Glinda tried to examine herself to see if she felt wrapped, or bound, or spell-chilled. But she only felt frightened and young, which may be close to the same thing.
They didn’t know it was the last time they would all be together, or they might have lingered.
we’re going to see the Wizard, come what may and hell to pay.”
“It’s unbecoming,” she agreed. “A perfect word for my new life. Unbecoming. I who have always been unbecoming am becoming un.
If she ever comes down off that plinth—the one that has words written on it along the edges in gold, reading MOST SUPERIOR IN MORAL RECTITUDE—if she ever allows herself to be the bitch she really is, she’ll be the Bitch of the East.
“For one thing, she has great taste in shoes.”
“This is why you shouldn’t fall in love, it blinds you. Love is wicked distraction.”
You’re eschewing all personal responsibility. It’s as bad as those who sacrifice their personal will into the gloomy morasses of the unknowable will of some unnameable god. If you suppress the idea of personhood then you suppress the notion of individual culpability.”
Was it an accident I saw that, Fiyero wondered, looking at the manager with new eyes. Or is it just that the world unwraps itself to you, again and again, as soon as you are ready to see it anew?
There was much to hate in this world, and too much to love.
“To the grim poor there need be no pour quoi tale about where evil arises; it just arises; it always is. One never learns how the witch became wicked, or whether that was the right choice for her—is it ever the right choice? Does the devil ever struggle to be good again, or if so is he not a devil? It is at the very least a question of definitions.”
“When the times are a crucible, when the air is full of crisis,” she said, “those who are the most themselves are the victims.”
“Listen to me, sister,” she said. “Remember this: Nothing is written in the stars. Not these stars, nor any others. No one controls your destiny.”
The monkey, who was called Chistery because of the sound he made, chittered and chattered now that he was warm and safe.
The mothy, gormless, indistinct sunrise of salvation world—the Other Land—I couldn’t get it, I couldn’t focus. Now I just think it’s our own lives that are hidden from us. The mystery—who is that person in the mirror—that’s shocking and unfathomable enough for me.”
“Cold anger?” “Oh yes, don’t you know that distinction? Tribal mothers always tell their children that there are two kinds of anger: hot and cold. Boys and girls experience both, but as they grow up the angers separate according to the sex. Boys need hot anger to survive. They need the inclination to fight, the drive to sink the knife into the flesh, the energy and initiative of fury. It’s a requirement of hunting, of defense, of pride. Maybe of sex, too.” “Yes, I know,” said Elphaba, remembering. Sarima blushed and looked unhappy, and continued. “And girls need cold anger. They need the cold
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And she put those very same shoes through something of an enchantment. Don’t ask me. Magic was never my cup of tea. The shoes allowed Nessarose to sit and stand and walk without support. She is never without them. She claims they give her moral virtue too, but then she has buckets more of that than she needs.
Perhaps Nessie didn’t want the position of Eminence, and was just as incarcerated there as her older sister was here. Perhaps Elphaba owed her the chance of liberty. Yet how much really could you owe other people? Was it endless?
“You’ve heard of my precious shoes,” he said. “I bought them from a decrepit crone, and then I retooled them for Nessa with my own hands, using skills in glass and metal that I had once learned from Turtle Heart. I made them to give her a sense of beauty, but I didn’t expect them to be enchanted by someone else. I am not sorry they are. But Nessa now thinks she needs no one, to help her stand or help her govern. She listens less than ever. In some ways I think those shoes are dangerous.”
I should remember my lessons from that life sciences course, she thought. All the devastating borders of knowledge Doctor Dillamond was about to cross. I almost understood some of it. I could stitch wings onto Chistery. He could join me in flight. What a lark.
“Thank you, Miss Eminence,” said the old woman. “The Eminence of the East. Or should I call you the Witch of the East?”
“Well no. I’m her sister. I suppose I’m the Witch of the West, if you will.”
“The more civilized we become, the more horrendous our entertainments,” said Frex.
How quickly you could be thrown back to the terrible uncertainty of your youth!
“I’m no pawn,” said Glinda. “I take all the credit in the world for my own foolishness. Good gracious, dear, all of life is a spell. You know that. But you do have some choice.”
“People always did like to talk, didn’t they? That’s why I call myself a witch now: the Wicked Witch of the West, if you want the full glory of it. As long as people are going to call you a lunatic anyway, why not get the benefit of it? It liberates you from convention.”
People who claim that they’re evil are usually no worse than the rest of us.” He sighed. “It’s people who claim that they’re good, or anyway better than the rest of us, that you have to be wary of.”
Dorothy is a child, but she has a heaviness of bearing like an adult, and a gravity you don’t often find in the young. It’s very becoming. Elphie, I was charmed by her, to tell you the truth.” He cracked a couple of walnuts and eastern macarands, and passed them around. “I am sure you will be, too.”
When she got home. She was thirty-eight, and just realizing what it felt like to have a sense of home. For that, Sarima, thank you, she thought. Maybe the definition of home is the place where you are never forgiven, so you may always belong there, bound by guilt. And maybe the cost of belonging is worth it.
