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

by Gregory Maguire

She thought one afternoon, inexplicably, of the baby lion cub taken from its mother, and pressed into service in Doctor Nikidik’s lab back in Shiz. She remembered how it had cowered, she remembered the fuss she had made about it. Or was she only glorifying herself in hindsight? If it was the same Lion, grown up timid and unnatural, it should have no bone to pick with her. She had saved it when it was young. Hadn’t she? They confused her, this band of Yellow Brick Road Irregulars. The Tin Woodman was hollow, a tiktok cipher, or an eviscerated human under a spell. The Lion was a perversion of its own natural instincts. She could deal with tiktok clockworks, she could handle Animals. But it was the Scarecrow she feared. Was it a spell? Was it a mask? Was there merely some clever dancer inside? All three of them were emasculated in some way or other, deluded under the spell of the girl’s innocence. She could give the Lion a history, and think of him as that abused cub in a Shiz science hall. She suspected that Nick Chopper was the victim of her own sister’s spite and magic, casualty of the enchanted axe. But she had no way to place the Scarecrow. She began to think that behind that painted cornmeal sack of a face, there was a face she would know, a face she had been waiting for.