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Frex
They say there is significance to the first shape a daemon takes.
When Nessarose comes into the world, taking her first breath in time with her mother’s last, her daemon appears as a penguin.
Her mother had a long-haired short-faced cat, the proper breed of which Frex never knew. It didn’t matter, except that the breed was fancy.
He expects Nessa will be more like him, a primate, cunning and clever. He expects much from Nessa, but right now it is enough to hold her, his daemon watching.
Frex doesn’t realize then, nor does Avram.
They won’t realize for years.
Elphaba
She didn’t know that having a daemon was normal until she was three and wanted to know why Yaakov went everywhere with Nessarose.
Now, at four, she runs away for the first time, and meets, for the first time, an Animal.
It’s the Cow who helps out at the neighbor’s, and she’s fascinated.
Animals don’t have daemons. Only humans do.
Later, Elphaba will use this to argue that she should be counted under Animal laws, not human ones, but for now she stares in wide-eyed adoration up at the Cow.
It’s the first time she’s seen anyone alone, you see.
Nessarose
It was easier when she was smaller and Papa could carry her. Now nine, she’s too big, so Yaakov has to help her from bed to chair.
He’s still unsettled, and can change from form to form as needed. Ape to pony, letting her rest on his back, to hyena and sliding her into the chair.
She loves him more than words can say.
Even in four legged forms, there’s a strap on the chair he can use to help pull her around. He is more her body than her body is, always tolerant of her crying and her weaknesses in a way no one else is. Papa tries, but he doesn’t understand, and Elphaba tries, but even at nine Nessa knows she’s impatient and, in Papa’s words, fundamentally unreliable. Sometimes Elphaba yells.
She never says anything to Elphaba about her lack of a daemon, but she doesn’t have to. Yaakov is so much a part of her life that the absence in Elphaba’s stands out more than ever.
At one point Elphaba brings home a toad from school. Nessa shrieks, and the frog is put outside.
It’s not like a frog is any substitute for a daemon, after all.
Elphaba
She’s fifteen when she sees them.
A chain gang, headed south to the ruby mines. They slouch along, and she stops in the bushes to watch.
The guards all have dog daemons, big and hairy and toothy.
The prisoners have no daemons at all. They stare at the ground in front of them, and move in slow, mechanical, repetitive motions.
She runs home, mind whirling. There are other people like her, and she’s burning to know more.
It has to wait until Nessa is asleep, she doesn’t know why, and she’s dancing with anticipation until her father sits her down and explains.
They’re not like her. She was born without a daemon—in the Unnamed God’s wisdom, her father says—and wherever he is, she still has a soul.
She doesn’t, she almost shouts, but her father is still talking.
The prisoners are severed. They had daemons, like normal people, but the daemons were cut away as a punishment.
Elphaba wants to know if the daemons are stored somewhere, and if they’re given to people who don’t have one.
They aren’t. Cut off from their human, daemons fade away.
The prisoners can never get theirs back, and neither can she.
Galinda
Wycen settled when she was fourteen, and by now she’s used to the way his tail gets caught in everything. He’s gorgeous though, so she forgives him for it every time.
Right now he’s got it tangled in the bedspread, and she reaches over to help him out. They have a range of nine and a half feet, longer than anyone else in Frottica. They almost have a witchy range.
Her roommate ignores them both, which Galinda is pleased by. Let her ignore them. If she looked up from her book, they might have to address the absence in the room.
When they settle back down on the bed, Wycen preening his tail feathers, Elphaba looks up for the first time and informs Galinda her daemon is a greater bird of paradise.
Galinda’s mouth falls open, and Wycen retreats to the bookcase. It’s not like they’re a common breed, after all. She’s never heard of anyone else with one.
Apparently they’re common in Ev. Elphaba treats this like a fact everybody should know, especially people with a bird of paradise for a daemon.
Galinda isn’t sure whether to start with books from Ev, the insult to her daemon—he is not common—or Elphaba’s ridiculouses knowledge of everything and asks Elphaba where her daemon is.
Apparently Elphaba doesn’t have one.
Wycen hisses and pulls himself back. Galinda feels the same. A severed? To room with her? The green is bad enough but this— Her roommate is impatient and rude and, according to her, not severed. She was born without a daemon, which is nearly as disturbing.
Galinda shifts so she could be far away from her roommate and still keep an eye on her. It’s unlikely Madame Morrible will let her change rooms, so she’ll just have to manage. Somehow.
Elphaba
Things would be better if she was rooming with Nessa. Yaakov, who settled as an ostrich, might not like her, but at least he and Nessa don’t recoil, or treat her like a tiktok piece, or jump every time she moves.
Like Galinda does.
She’s delighted her father let her come to Shiz, she really is. There might not be more Animals in the city than in the countryside but they are more concentrated, and they don’t flinch at her.
Sometimes she gets to touch them, settle her hand into thick fur and hold on, pretend they belong with her for a moment. She doesn’t do that very often though: it would be rude.
At least there’s Doctor Dillamond. His research is both fascinating and applicable. If there is no difference between animals and Animals, there might not be a difference between humans and Animals either, and that would be revolutionary. Maybe literally, she sometimes hopes. But if there is a difference, then the Animal laws have no basis in science, and moreover nobody would be able to treat her as different. They would have proof that daemons are not evidence of sentience.
Which doesn’t stop her from wanting one.
Galinda
Shortly after Fiyero’s arrival, Elphaba comes back with a dog. A dog, alas, not a Dog, which means that it smells and chews on awkward things.
Galinda hates it.
Elphaba calls it Makejoy, for reasons best known only to her, and trains it to walk beside her without collar or leash.
Galinda knows exactly what she’s up to, and doesn’t say a word to anyone. If her roommate feels better to have an animal pretending to be her daemon, so be it. At least it keeps her from sulking quite so much.
In fact, she seems to be enjoying herself more. She looks happiest, not that Galinda’s looking, with the dog pressed up against her, her hand clasped in its fur.
She even enjoyed the dance at the Ozdust, due entirely to Galinda’s assistance, of course, and she’s kept the hat. Which was meant to be an embarrassment and insult, but Elphaba doesn’t seem to have taken it that way.
Once, Galinda catches her putting it on Makejoy’s head and laughing. She treats the dog unlike a daemon, and unlike an Animal, but unlike anyone else with an animal either. Towards the dog, Elphaba always is kind, and gently, patiently stubborn.
She still reads an unheathlious amount.
Fiyero’s daemon, for the record, is a red deer. He has a same-sex daemon, but is quick to assure her and any interested girl that the stereotypes do not hold true.
The weird thing—one of, one of many weird things about Elphaba, but the weird one at the moment, is that Elphaba is the only girl in the witchery class to not have a bird daemon. Elphaba knows this, she must, so why didn’t she train a crow in the same way?
She doesn’t ask. It’s rude to ask about someone’s daemon.
Boq
Nessarose is… alright, he guesses. Pretty enough. He wonders how you’re supposed to do Things with that chair and what it means for her legs, and then blushes from embarrassment.
Galatea rolls her eyes at him. She’s a ratter of uncertain breed, and has no patience for anyone or anything. Stubborn, his mother had always said. Ratters are stubborn.
He is stubborn, when he wants to be. More patient than Galatea is. Just as loud as her, but less vicious. That’s okay. Your daemon is a perfect fit for you, but you’re not meant to be identical. Just matching.
He knows the stereotypes about dog daemons and doesn’t care. Or says he doesn’t care, which amounts to the same thing.
Besides, that green girl, Nessarose’s sister, she has a dog daemon and she isn’t subservient to no one.
Anyway, Nessarose is nice, but Galinda is everything. Beautiful and witty and beautiful and nothing like the girls in Munchkinland
Galatea nips his heel. She doesn’t like how much he’s hanging around Galinda. She thinks Galinda doesn’t care about him, that he would do better to focus on his studies.
He sighs, going to his next class. Maybe Galinda will be there.
Galinda
Elphaba has no idea how to behave around a daemon.
After Galinda spends some time in the witchery seminar, she begins to understand. It’s not that Elphaba touches Nessarose’s daemon, it’s that she comes way too close, and sometimes she even stands in between them, and she addresses him directly, and she—
It’s not just that she doesn’t have a daemon of her own. It’s that nobody seems to have ever taught Elphaba how to interact with other people’s daemons, and Galinda thinks this is because nobody wants to draw attention to it.
She starts sitting with Elphie, and explaining.
Elphaba
The first time she touches Wycen is an accident. They’re trying to get through the door at the same time, Galinda and her, and she brushes his wing.
Galinda and Wycen huddle in their bed in one corner of the room, and Elphaba holds Makejoy on her bed in the other corner, and they don’t talk for the rest of the night.
The second time is not an accident.
She’s known that witches get separated—not severed—since a few days into the seminar; it’s impossible to miss the way Morrible’s shrike flits all over the school.
She knew this, and she assumed Galinda knew it too, so she’s unprepared to have Yaakov burst into the room.
Nessa hadn’t wanted anyone else there for her separation. She rolled off, came back, and spent two days locked in her room with Yaakov. But she doesn’t talk about it, didn’t want her there, and Elphaba thought this was a witch thing, and Galinda would be the same way.
From Yaakov’s agitation, she isn’t.
Elphaba doesn’t stop for her hat, just runs out of the room and down the stairs. The ritual takes place on the edge of Shiz, and it’s there that she finds Wycen.
He can’t go any further. The ground is barren, no plants, no life, and he physically cannot fly any closer to Galinda, who’s already a hundred feet away. But he’s still trying, flying and walking and anything he can to throw himself through the non-existent barrier between them.
It hurts to watch someone in so much pain, and without thinking, Elphaba steps forward and puts her arms out—
And Wycen barrels into them, feet grasping at the front of her dress, head tucked and shivering against her neck.
A hundred feet away, Galinda flinches and continues walking.
Fiyero
He isn’t sure what he’s doing, out here in the woods to the north of Shiz, with a classmate he’s barely talked to and a mute Lion cub.
It wasn’t like he could leave the Cub, but it wasn’t really in the plans either. He’d gotten kicked out of other schools, sure, because Shiz was the best, and liked to take problem students and make them right, and they weren’t about to look at a Winkie otherwise, no matter what his title.
The point was, he was supposed to keep his head down. Be like any other rich spoilt brat. Not call attention to the Arjiki presence in the city.
Not go out in the woods, stealing a Lion cub for Oz’s sake, with the school’s most obvious student.
Who blends in rather nicely with the leaves, and who seems to know what to do with the Cub. Elphaba is kneeling on the ground, meat chunks in one hand—and where did she get the stuff, she doesn’t eat it—not looking at the Cub but looking around it.
Fiyero looks at her and wonders what he’s supposed to make of this witch, who is so sharp with everyone but so gentle with Animals.
Perhaps it’s the lack of a daemon, he thinks unkindly. Actaeon pokes him in response. Unlike animal deer, he keeps his rack year round. Sometimes it’s impressive. Right now it’s mostly annoying.
He tells her, after a moment, that the Arjiki have a pathway for Animals, out of the city and to a safe place. He tells her that he can take the Cub there. He tells her they can teach it to speak again.
She tells him she can cover for his absence.
He doesn’t tell her what he’s feeling, although it must be obvious from the way Actaeon’s head is raised, hair erect. Red deer stags measure each other, and the biggest wins the does. Actaeon is big, for a red deer. For any daemon, really.
She doesn’t tell him how she’s going to cover the absence of someone she ostensibly isn’t friends with.
He almost wants to ask, but you don’t pry into witch secrets and expect to walk away, and Elphaba’s plainly already on edge. Instead he scoops the Cub up, and they head off into the woods.
Elphaba can take care of herself. But, he tells Actaeon, she shouldn’t have to.
Elphaba
By definition, the Emerald City is like nowhere else.
It’s thrilling in ways she can’t describe, being the same color as everyone else, even if it is just an illusion.
Like some great cosmic joke. It’s an illusion that everyone else is green, and it’s an illusion that she has a daemon.
Of course Makejoy came. She doesn’t know what she’d do without his fur to hold onto. He walks close enough to brush against her legs, and just like with a real daemon, the touch centers her. He also likes to lie against Glinda—honestly, he’s not the only one. Anyway, that’s how dogs are.
She knows she has to ask the Wizard about the Animals, but she badly wants to ask him about magic. She won’t, but she wants anyway.
Her magic is inconsistent, irregular, impulsive. Her spells go awry, her potions don’t work, her foresight is sporadic. She is a witch because of her strength, but that’s the only thing separating her from a sorceress. No bird daemon, no impossible infinite distance, no cloud pine.
Perhaps her witchiness, to steal a word from Glinda, is just another illusion.
She sighs, and runs her fingers over Makejoy’s head.
Glinda
She should explain this to Fiyero, but she doesn’t know where to start.
Start with the Wizard and his firefly daemon, never more than a few feet away from him? Start with how she was awed at a daemon known for lighting the darkness, and how Elphaba was scornful at a daemon known for flightiness and deception?
Start with the Grimmerie and Elphaba’s reaction to it, how she could read the text written in an unknown tongue, how it powered her magic and gave her more control than ever before? Start with the Monkeys who she enchanted, magic twisting away from her only at the last?
Start with Elphaba’s anger at the Wizard’s deception, her trembling fear of Morrible’s words, her wild-eyed passion at her new knowledge?
Start with the two of them in an attic, shouting and arguing and standing too close, Wycen flitting around anxiously, Makejoy huddling against his owner’s leg?
Start with Elphaba enchanting a branch of cloud-pine on accident?
Start with Elphaba’s lips against hers, body pressed close, their touch crackling and brief—no, he doesn’t need to know that.
Start with Elphaba up near the top of the attic, flying for the first time, delight and passion and rage on her face, howling defiance at the soldiers?
Start with Makejoy howling in counterpoint, unable to join her?
Start with Wycen flying up, brushing his head against Elphie, sending ripples of sensation through Glinda? Start with Elphaba reaching out, holding him for a moment, Glinda on the ground overcome with emotion?
Start with the soldiers grabbing her and pulling her away, Morrible recruiting her, Wycen returning and whispering of how there were no tears on Elphaba’s cheeks?
She doesn’t know how to explain anything, but especially not the feeling of watching Elphaba fly away from her.
Nessarose
If she tries hard enough, she can hold onto everything.
Hold onto her powers, hold onto Munchkinland, hold onto Boq who means more than he knows.
She might propose to him, someday. It’s not necessary as a way to keep him here, but she thinks she might like a ring around his finger. It would look nice, the gold against his silver uniform.
If she just tries, scrabbles for influence in the Emerald City, strains to keep control of a mutinous population, stretches to outshout the rumors about her wickedness—if she pushes herself hard enough, far enough, she can do this.
The chair is more comfortable now, but bigger and heavier. Yaakov is less of a help, but Boq is more.
Yaakov’s range is an unending blessing. She can send him to fetch anyone or anything she needs, no matter how far away they are from her.
She thinks Elphaba is a product of too little sleep at first. She hasn’t seen her sister in years, and there’s no reason for Elphaba to come home now.
Months ago, when their father died, yes. But not now.
It doesn’t occur to her until Fabala mentions him that she might not have heard. It doesn’t occur to her, ever, to break the news gently.
They are, after all, siblings, and they grew up sharpening their tongues on each other. Now they’re adults, all that has changed is the degree of venom and the depths of their vulnerabilities.
She reflects on where this went wrong, later, and can only conclude that it went wrong when Elphaba entered the room. No Elphaba means no out of control magic.
Means no walking, but only Yaakov is brave enough to mention that.
The Grimmerie makes no more sense to her than it does to anyone but Elphaba, but if she tries hard enough she can force the words.
All she knows is that the spell has something to do with hearts; all she knows is that she needs Boq with her.
All she knows is that Galatea howls, far too high and loud, and then goes too silent; all she knows is that she cannot look at the expression on Boq’s face.
She doesn’t know what Elphaba does. She doesn’t know where Galatea goes. She doesn’t know how to deal with Boq, daemonless and metal.
For the first time, she wonders if she is wicked.
Elphaba
All she wants is to rescue the Flying Monkeys.
She doesn’t want to talk to the Wizard, doesn’t to listen to him, as if he is worth listening to. She wishes she had Makejoy with her to snap at his daemon.
She hadn’t wanted to drag Fiyero into this. Whatever was between them, he’d made his choice and she’d made hers. He’d chosen Glinda—she’d thought—and she’d chosen the Animals.
Except Fiyero changed, chooses her instead, and yet another plan has spiralled out of control, the Monkeys gone, Fiyero here, Glinda left behind with tears in her eyes.
Fiyero
He’s wished for a lot of things in his life, but never anything so desperately as to be allowed to keep Elphaba.
He loves her in a way he’s never felt before, and knows her well enough to know she won’t appreciate the words. But he shows it, in the way he touches her and in the way Actaeon touches her.
Actaeon’s touch sends goosebumps up his spine and a heat low in his groin. He hadn’t trusted Glinda this much. They’d had sex, yeah, but Actaeon had laid against the bed and Wycen sat on his roost. Not this, not green hands surprised against copper brown fur. With him, Elphaba is cautious, and Fiyero is wildly aroused and reverent.
There’s no daemon to touch in response, but he feels like getting to see her is enough. Even under the dark of the trees, there’s enough light to see that the green continues all the way down. It’s a sacrilege to see it, a violation, a blessing beyond belief.
He worships her in the hopes she will stay.
She doesn’t.
But as she gathers herself to go, she runs a hand down Actaeon’s flank, and that might almost be enough.
Glinda
This is her fault.
Far from Glinda the Good, she’s Glinda the Accidentally Wicked. She gave that idea to Morrible, no matter what she says to Elphie.
But she can hardly back down now, there’s nowhere to back down to.
Fiyero is gone, to be with Elphaba, and Elphaba’s gone, to be with Fiyero, and Nessa’s gone, to be dead, and she’s alone, even if she is screaming at Elphaba.
Wycen is screaming too, flying at Elphaba, who doesn’t dodge the same way someone with a daemon would. She doesn’t have, has never had, that response to someone else’s daemon.
When Fiyero comes, it just gets worse, it’s only been a day and he looks different, more alive, more passionate. Actaeon charges in, and Wycen shies away. Deer are vegetarians, but there’s no sense taking risks with a daemon twenty times your size.
And when Elphaba leaves—
She wants to send Wycen with, she wants to go with, but she is doing good in the Emerald City, she is, she’s the head of the underground and even if there was a mistake with Nessa, she has to go back.
She’s just getting tired of standing still and watching Elphaba leave.
Fiyero
It hurts.
The crucifixion is bad, yes, but they tethered Actaeon just beyond their range. He might be tearing muscles in his shoulders, hanging here, but this is tearing his soul.
He doesn’t know what hurts more: Actaeon, out of reach, or Elphaba, watching him point a gun at Glinda.
Actaeon is his soul, but he gave Elphaba his heart, and he knows she’ll understand later, but now—
And he’ll never get to explain, never get to apologize, never get to touch her again, because crucifixion is a death sentence.
He’ll never get to touch Actaeon again either. The last person to touch Actaeon will be a Gale Forcer, who grabbed him, making Fiyero collapse and vomit.
He doesn’t want to die like this.
He doesn’t want to die, but there are ways and there are ways, and this is—
The pain gets worse before it vanishes entirely.
Fiyero doesn’t have the faintest idea why until he looks down. He’s changed, exchanged uniform for farmer’s clothes, exchanged skin and bone for straw.
Exchanged an eight foot range for a fifteen foot one.
Actaeon sighs in relief, and whatever else happens, whatever else, he knows nothing can ever be so bad.
Dorothy
Oz is strange.
The colors are too bright, and the roads are too long, and there are talking animals, but not daemons, they’re just normal animals who talk. And don’t have daemons of their own. Like the armored bears, only no armor.
And some of the people don’t have daemons of their own. The Tin Woodsman doesn’t.
Balaam gives him a lot of space, but he won’t tell Dorothy why. He usually tells Dorothy everything, but now he won’t. Balaam likes the Lion and the Scarecrow and the Scarecrow’s daemon well enough.
Just not the Tin Woodsman.
The Scarecrow has a deer daemon. Dorothy asked him where a scarecrow got a daemon from, and he smiled and winked and turned a cartwheel.
It doesn’t bother her that whenever she sees the Wicked Witch of the West, she’s never seen a daemon. The Witch is, well, a witch. Everyone knows they’re magic.
She’s sorry her house dropped on the other Witch, but she’s not sure why she’s blamed. It wasn’t her tornado, after all.
Balaam, in the shape of a mountain lion, trots alongside Toto. She’s glad he came, at least. Balaam is cuddly when he wants to be, but he talks a lot. It’s his job to talk and guide her. Toto just listens.
The strangest thing about Oz is when the Tin Woodsman tells her about the Witch. She doesn’t have a daemon. It isn’t just that the daemon isn’t with her, she doesn’t have one.
The Scarecrow says she isn’t severed.
Then he has to explain what severed is.
Dorothy throws up in the bushes, and cries, and wants to know how this bright happy world can have such things in it.
The Wicked Witch might be wicked, she thinks, but so are people who cut away daemons.
Elphaba
If she—
If—
The girl is crying again.
There were letters, and she holds onto them in pockets in her dress.
Glinda is here.
The girl is crying, Glinda is here, but there are letters pressed against her and if the handwriting is different—
She’s been holding onto things for so long she doesn’t know what to do without a goal.
Goal: become a witch.
Goal: rescue Animals.
Goal: find Doctor Dillamond.
Goal: Fiyero.
Goal: get to Kiamo Ko.
Goal: get something of Nessa’s.
Goal: ?
What is there now?
Kill a child? Touch her daemon, force her—
She can’t get the shoes, she needs to accept this, she needs to learn that Nessa is gone and she is never coming back, that she won’t even have something of Nessa’s to remember her by.
She has always been bad at adjusting.
She has always been bad.
Glinda is here, and Glinda wants something from her, and she tries to pull herself together long enough to figure out how to get Glinda the thing she wants, but the thing Glinda wants is her and there are no words to explain that she’s gone, she’s shattered, all that remains are instincts and screaming.
She knows she can’t hurt Fiyero. Not any more.
If she can’t hurt Fiyero, she should go to Fiyero, and remake herself, and relearn how to be human.
This she holds onto.
But the Animals.
If she—
Glinda—
She doesn’t know, she can’t know, she’s trying to trust, but she chose Fiyero, so can she trust Glinda?
She doesn’t know.
She has to know.
Glinda holds her, and kisses her, and doesn’t ask about the letter Chistery brings her.
Perhaps that’s what trust is.
She decides.
She’s always been alone.
If she trusts, perhaps no longer.
Fiyero
In the end, there’s a lot magic can do.
In the end, he is more human than before.
In the end, Elphaba makes him whole, and in the process, herself.
In the end, there are letters to Oz, and letters from Oz, short terse coded letters on one side, and long rambling ones on the other, assuring them no one is spying on the letters. They come delivered by bird of paradise, and for the first time Fiyero touches him.
In the end, they make a family and a home, for them and Animals.
In the end, even witches retire.