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After the election, after the transfer of power is complete and the burden is finally lifted from her narrow shoulders, Glinda goes for a very long walk.
Days on the road and nights beside it, following every rumor she’s ever heard and every half-remembered dream she’s woken up from. New blisters form on old blisters; there’s dirt under her fingernails that she’ll never be able to wash away completely. In her traveling clothes not a single person recognizes her. She isn’t entirely sure what that means, but she is sure she doesn’t like it. Who is she out here? Who is she, if she isn’t Glinda the Good?
This she is sure of: Elphaba Thropp always knew who she was.
Knows, she reminds herself, use the present tense. Elphie is out here somewhere. She believes that.
On the twenty-fifth day she arrives in the Vinkus, and it’s like the air changes as soon as she crosses the border. There is a wildness here that feels like Elphie. This is a place that would call her home.
(It also feels like Fiyero, but she tries not to think about that, about him. There was something in him she could never tame. Glinda the Good, but never good enough. Not good enough to make either of them stay.)
Burrs on her skirt and leaves in her hair. She sees flashes of green around every bend in the road, and whether it’s fact or premonition, she knows she’s close.
It’s full dark on the thirtieth night when it happens.
Glinda had intended to walk on to the next village and find somewhere a bit more comfortable to spend the night, but the evening catches up to her. She makes camp — sometimes she hardly believes it herself, an Upland of the Upper Uplands making camp — beneath the overhang of a cliff, lighting a fire and humming to herself to keep the dark at bay.
When the fire burns to embers she sees two glittering eyes in the woods, just a few feet off. Two glittering eyes and a form all in black, blocking out the stars.
She dares to hope. She whispers, "Elphie?"
The woman doesn’t respond.
Glinda stands up and approaches slowly, hands out in front of her, the way she might with an injured animal. Something skittish, broken.
From the shadows, the woman says, "I didn't think it would be you." Her voice is rough from disuse, but Glinda would know it anywhere.
"Fiyero is dead," Glinda says.
Elphaba flinches, but the flash of emotion quickly subsides. "I think I knew that," she admits. "Is that — is that why you’re here?"
Glinda considers. Yes, but also no. His death was the catalyst, or maybe just the excuse, but half of her heart has been out here in the woods for years already.
She steps closer and Elphaba echoes her, moving just into the light. Tangled hair, her wrist bones too prominent. There’s a long cut from her eyebrow down to her jaw, fresh and still weeping. She bleeds red like everyone else. "You’re hurt," Glinda says, "let me—"
Elphaba brushes her off. "It’s fine—”
"No infected cuts," Glinda insists. “Not when your best friend is here to clean you up. Come on."
The leaves crunch under her feet as she marches up to her old friend. She touches Elphaba’s forehead with careful, gentle fingers, but she still winces like she’s been slapped. Glinda wonders how long it’s been since another person touched her.
The cut is long but it isn’t deep; this is magic Glinda can handle. She shuts her eyes tight and whispers the words, and Elphaba holds still under her hands.
"It’s done," she says after a moment, and the cut closes. With a lacy white handkerchief she cleans the blood and dirt from Elphaba’s face. Another stain that won’t come out.
"Where do you sleep?" she asks. Elphaba just looks at her, wary. Her calculations are written all over her face: is it safe? Is this a trick? Is she still working for them? Glinda doesn’t answer any of those unasked questions, just makes her face peaceful and still. Finally Elphaba takes her hand and leads her silently into the forest.
An hour passes, maybe two, before Elphaba pulls aside some branches to reveal the entrance to a cave. Glinda swallows hard and follows her inside.
It’s cozier than it has any right to be. There’s a makeshift hearth beneath a hole in the cave wall, and Elphaba lights the fire. There are woven blankets and rugs that Glinda recognizes as Vinkun; she and Fiyero got some just like it as wedding gifts. Pots and pans and earthenware dishes. Elphaba lives here. There is nothing impermanent about this.
“These caves are full of hermits,” Elphie says. “I’ve been here for a while. It’s…quiet.”
Glinda nods as though she understands.
"I've been tracking you for days," Elphaba says.
“You didn’t say anything?”
“I wasn’t sure I could trust you.”
Glinda sits with that for a moment. Finally she says, “Are you sure now?”
A ghost of a smile on Elphie’s face. “No. I just decided I didn’t care.”
Right. Of course. There is nothing Glinda could do to her now that hasn’t already been done.
For a while she disappears to wash up in a creek that burbles through the back of the cave. She returns with a pitcher for Glinda. The water is clear and sweet and cool, slipping through her fingers.
Elphaba cooks dinner, root vegetables and tomato, and Glinda takes it gratefully. They don’t say much while they eat, but the silence is comfortable. The last ten years have been nothing but talking, and Glinda has developed a new appreciation for quiet.
It gets late. Forest sounds echo around them. The moon is low enough in the sky that it streams through the entrance to the cave, alighting on Elphaba’s slim nose and high cheekbones.
Through the evening she whispers to small animals — Animals? — who do her bidding, flitting in and out of the cave; she steps outside to gather nightflowers that open at her touch. Out here in the woods and the dark Elphaba is her true self at last. Whatever woman or witch was inside her has finally escaped or been let out; finally she has come into her wildness.
She has never been more beautiful. Glinda swallows that knowledge, that ache.
Elphaba makes up a second sleeping area next to her own, stacking some of the blankets and pillows. “It gets cold at night,” she says. “There are more blankets if you need them.”
She’d never even asked if Glinda was staying. Maybe she had known all along.
They curl up in the blankets and Elphie blows out the last torch. The darkness settles around them and they wrap themselves in that, too.
“Was it a bad death?” Elphie asks, quiet.
Glinda thinks of Nessarose, of Boq and Morrible and her own mother. Casualties of malice or war or time; it made no difference in the end. They all haunt her steps, but Fiyero — he dances in them.
Elphaba had loved him too. Glinda knows they were together sometimes, all those years ago in the Emerald City, though she never confronted him. She'd hardly understood her own feelings, hardly knew why she was jealous.
She thinks he would approve of her being here. She knows he would understand.
“No,” she says, honestly. “It was a long time coming.”
They’ve moved closer together, consciously or not. Elphie reaches out and cups Glinda’s cheek.
Her hand is so warm.
“I’ve tried,” Glinda says, and is surprised to find her eyes, and her voice, full of tears. Her lips brush Elphie’s palm with every whispered word. “I’ve worked so hard. Things aren’t perfect, but — it mattered, Elphie. What you did. I…I made sure it mattered.”
She traces the pulse in Elphie’s wrist with her lips, following her beating heart. Like she’s been doing for weeks. Like she should have done all along.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t braver,” she says, and she doesn’t have any idea which particular instance she’s apologizing for, but there it is.
Elphaba drops her hand down, brushing along Glinda’s arm down to her waist. It rests there, warm and heavy. An anchor.
“Listen,” Elphaba says, and Glinda does. The low, constant hum of the earth, the long exhalations of the wind. Something skittering in the darkness beyond, in the deeper caverns.
And their breathing, in quiet, perfect tandem. They could be girls again, holding hands between their narrow beds at Shiz.
“Stay with me."
“And do what?” Glinda asks. After so long in the halls of power, what more is there to do? She can't hide the uncertainty in her voice, now that she's really here. Maybe she hadn’t really believed that she would find Elphie. She’d never thought about what she would do when she did.
Elphaba kisses her, her lips dry and soft. “Make magic,” she whispers, grinning, and her voice echoes against the ancient earth-carved walls; her hands trail their own desperate magic along Glinda's waiting spine.
And this, too, is magic she can handle.