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It’s 10am, the Emerald Palace is vast and beautiful, and Glinda is very, very lost.
No matter how often Glinda visits the Emerald Palace, she still gets lost.
She’s always there, these days. Between giving canned statements to the citizens about the Wicked Witch’s latest crimes, making her monthly report to the Wizard and Madame Morrible, and answering a summons, she thinks she might actually be spending more time there than she does in her own (much pinker) apartment. And she spends a lot of time in her apartment.
She should know this, she really should. It’s the same long, empty, incredibly, frustratingly green path, every time.
And yet no matter how many times she swears she’s going down the right corridors, the ones she was led down on that awful day she first arrived, she always manages to end up having to be led by the hand by some stern-faced winged ape guard while she calls back apologies to whatever meeting she’s just barged in on.
Or, as she is doing currently, she ends up pacing up and down a hallway, waiting for someone she recognises to turn up and give her a hint.
It’s taking a while.
“Ugh, whose idea was it to make all these hallways so…so identimical?” she demands of a portrait of the Wizard, the third she’s seen today. “And so green? There are other colours!”
It doesn’t answer.
She pulls a face at it.
“Rude.”
Soft footfalls echo down the hall behind Glinda and she spins on her heel.
“Finally,” she calls out. “I’ve been trying for…”
She trails off. Nothing there.
Her stomach gurgles.
So this is it, Glinda thinks. She’s gotten lost forever. She’s going to starve out here, in the hallway, and when the Wizard sends someone out to hunt her down because she hasn’t answered his stupid summons they’re just going to find her decaying skeleton out here in the halls, and all because nobody thought to put up signs. And the worst part of it all is, this isn’t even her best outfit. She’d thought it was when she put it on, but then on her way over to the palace she’d seen a woman on the street wearing a similar hat, and now she’s regretting the whole ensemble. She’s going to die unfashionable.
There’s a rustle below Glinda. A tiny hand slips into her own, and she looks down to see a little monkey with thick, soft golden fur and wide eyes staring up at her. It wears a little green silk sash with fine gold trim, and on its adorable little head is perched a tiny, tiny postal worker’s hat. On its back is strapped a thick bundle of letters, tied off with string. Glinda nearly squeals.
She doesn’t, of course, because that would be rude.
But it’s a close thing.
She smiles instead. Everybody likes those.
The monkey chitters quietly, then heads off down the hallways, tottering awkwardly on two legs as it tugs Glinda along.
They walk down hallway after hallway, sometimes turning, sometimes going straight, passing through doors seemingly at random. Glinda tries to keep track of it all, mumbling directions under her breath, but there’s so many and she quickly finds herself muddling them up, and all the thinking makes her head hurt.
She does notice, though, that they’re taking longer than usual. She looks down at her monkey guide and notices something odd about her steps. Her gait is off, wobbly, tottering around in a manner that’s most unfashionable. She opens her mouth to say something, then stops.
Dr Dillamond had trouble saying her old name, and he couldn’t pick things up. She’d been a bit unfair about it at the time, she can see that now. Sure, it had been embarrassing hearing him bleat out her name in his funny goat way, and it had been a pain watching him try to pick up a fallen ruler with his teeth, but more and more now she found herself wondering if all that was really as big a deal as it had seemed at the time. Nessarose can’t walk, so she uses a chair. Glinda can’t see anyone making fun of her for that.
Glinda stops and points to the bundle on the little monkey’s back, smiling gently.
“Here, I’ll take it,” she says softly, trying hard not to spook the little thing, and trying harder not to give away how much she wants to bury her face in its (freshly cleaned, obviously) fur.
Her. Her fur.
Animals are still strange creatures to Glinda, they probably always will be, but she has to remember they’re just the same as her. Like…like humans, but small ones, or funny shaped ones, in a fluffy skin. If she does nothing else for poor Dr Dillamond, she has to do that.
The monkey just stands there, shifting from cute little foot to cute little foot.
Trying not to let her impatience show, Glinda reaches slowly for the bundle.
“Here. Let me take it.”
The monkey’s eyes skid towards the giant green doors far down the hall, the ones that lead to the Wizard’s personal chambers. She grins.
(Anxiously, not happily, Glinda knows that now. The book had been long and boring and the corner she’d wedged herself in the avoid being caught reading it had been caked with dust, but she’d read it. She is trying.)
Glinda gives her best smile and hair flip, the combo that made Jeffy Stenton swoon mid-swish during his Wandery presentation and accidentally turn Molly Swash’s hair into flowers.
“It’s alright. I need to go talk to the Wizard about something of great importimancery, so it’ll be quicker if I take his mail in too.”
The monkey’s bald little face creases up, but Glinda can see her special smile is working. It always does, in the end.
Sure enough, the monkey lets go of her hand and starts carefully unbuckling the straps securing the bundle to her back. Glinda takes it, chest filling with pride.
Glinda is still behind Elphaba with her real magic, but in the meantime she still has her smiles, and they’re almost as good. With a good enough look and a sweet enough smile and enough pink, anybody can get anyone to do practically anything. It’s so easy. Honestly, Glinda is amazed more people haven’t worked it out. Glinda knows it. Fiyero knows it. Boq…is certainly working with a bit of an unfortunate handicap, what with his…face, and all, but the hangdog, kicked puppy look can work on people too. There’s potential.
But Elphaba…Glinda isn’t sure if Elphaba gets it. Ever will get it, now. The green skin is…distinctive, yes, but Elphaba had had a nice smile, still has, Glinda’s sure, and maybe if she’d just used it more, or on that day, or if Glinda had gone with her on that day, then maybe things would be more…more maybe…
Glinda isn’t sure what things would be more maybe, if she’s honest with herself.
Glinda isn’t sure of a lot of things, these days.
She gives the little golden monkey a wave as she scampers away, adorably nimble now that the weight is off her back and she can move on all fours.
Looking down the hallway at the huge, emerald green doors, Glinda’s heart flutters uncomfortably and she finds herself wishing she felt half as light.
But now’s not the time to think of that, so Glinda strides forward with purpose, nodding a graceful greeting to the winged ape guards manning the doors. She pushes open the doors, making sure to stop and flip her hair thankfully to the guards as she passes them. They used to stop her and check her over at the before letting her in, but that stopped after a little while and now they hardly glance her way before moving stiffly aside. She’s been making sure to thank them properly all the same, just like she would if they were human. They never give her more than a slight nod in reply, but Glinda supposes that’s enough. It’s not like they’re going to answer her out loud, anyway.
The fluttery feeling gets stronger.
Glinda ignores it and takes a step inside.
As she quietly hoped, the sheer state of the private chambers of Oz the Great and Terrible is enough to banish the flutter in Glinda’s chest in favour of a lurching in her stomach and the beginnings of a pounding ache in her head.
His chambers, as always, are a mess.
Glinda used to think Elphaba’s décor at Shiz was bad, but that had been…subtle, in its own way, just outdated.
The Wizard’s chambers, however, are an interior design crime scene. There’s beautiful, stylish rooms in here, she can see that, with bold patterns and groundbreaking shapes throughout. But it’s all smothered in a suffocating layer of…him. Lush velvet fainting couches and armchairs covered with half-finished gadgets and contraptions. A beautiful oak sideboard inlaid with intricate designs in beautiful mother of pearl, stacked high with paper scrolls covered in drawings. (Blueprints, he’d said once, even though they’re usually paper coloured.) Gorgeous silk monogrammed handkerchiefs, used as oil rags and then tossed aside.
Sometimes Glinda fantasises about sneaking in here when nobody’s around and tidying up. Not herself, obviously, but to supervise as a maid dealt with the mess. He has to have maids, doesn’t he? His clothes are always neat and his bed (what little Glinda has seen of it) always has clean sheets, and the fireplace is always well-stocked. Glinda has never made her own bed in her life, not even at Shiz, so she can hardly imagine someone like the Wonderful Wizard of Oz doing it. That’s what maids are for.
A large palm on the small of her back pushes her over the threshold, the heavy door slamming shut behind her with a thud that echoes down the halls.
“Just put them on the table, there. I’ll get it in a sec.”
The Wizard’s voice echoes from further in the room, bouncing off cluttered workbenches and tacky piles of scraps. Glinda steps forward cautiously, trying not to step on anything dangerous or important as she cranes her neck, looking for any sign of him. Eventually she spots a mop of carefully styled silver hair poking out from behind an overstuffed bookshelf. She skirts around it and steps carefully over a footstool to see him bent nearly double over a workbench, looking at something through a tiny magnifying glass. He turns his head slightly, revealing one of his little light-making tubes sticking out of his mouth. Glinda feels herself relax. With his suit jacket draped crookedly over the back of a chair, his fine cotton shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows and fastened with fine silk ribbons (with peacock embroidery, she notes with approval), and a pencil tucked behind his ear, the Wizard is in what Glinda is privately coming to know as his Good Day Outfit.
She tells herself it’s just a name.
“Taaaa-bleee…” sing-songs the Wizard, having transferred the device from his mouth to his hand. He’s bent even further over, nose nearly scraping the wood as he looks at his handiwork this way and that.
“Um, here?” Glinda says awkwardly, eyeing off a clear spot on a nearby table. It’s big enough to hold the letters, just. If the pile of blueprints looming over it don’t topple and cover them, anyway.
“Yeah, sure,” he says airily, groping for a tool.
Glinda shrugs and puts the letters down, trying to clear some room around them without knocking anything off-balance. It’s a near thing, but she manages it.
“Hey. Fetch me a screwdriver, would you?” calls the Wizard, having straightened up but still not looking Glinda’s way.
She dithers (What’s a screwdriver?) and he sighs, finally turning to face her. He stops dead as he spots Glinda, then his eyes light up and his face splits into a surprised grin.
“Oh! Ga-“ He frowns, muttering to himself. “No, no, tch, I know this…”
“Just Glinda, Your Wonderfulness,” says Glinda stiffly. “The ga is silent.”
People still using the ga shouldn’t bother her, but it does. It feels…wrong. Like she’s failing Dr Dillamond.
“Glinda,” the Wizard says with an easy smile. He knows the value of a good smile, that’s obvious. “No ga. I knew that.”
Glinda smiles back, a genuine smile, even though she should know better than to give him a real one.
She knows he’s done terrible things. Is doing terrible things. She’s not as smart as Elphaba, but she’s smart enough to know that much. She ran with Elphaba all that way for a reason, even if she couldn’t follow through in the end.
And she’s not so blind that she can’t see all the gifts and pretty things he and Madame Morrible have given her, the prestigulous job, the beautiful penthouse apartment, all the clothes and trinkets and toys, for what they are: bribes. She’s the rich, popular child of even richer parents; she knows what buying love looks like.
It should be so easy not to fall for it.
But then he looks at her like she’s a breath of fresh air in a stuffy room, and everything she knows she should remember fades away. He’s friendly. He’s funny. He tries to tell her things, about where he came from, about flying in his balloon. And sometimes he shows her his strange contraptions and tries to explain how they work, even though it just makes her head hurt.
It doesn’t match the bad things, and Glinda can’t make it all mesh in her head the way she knows she should. It’s just too much to take in.
So instead she gives a little curtsey, her cutest one, and her cheeks flush as he sketches a bow in return.
He finally spots the bundle of letters on the table and points to them, cocking his head to the side.
“Did you bring those?”
The Wizard wanders past Glinda before she can answer and picks up the bundle, tossing the string aside carelessly and flipping through the envelopes. He stops on one, a large envelope of crisp white paper with an inky black border. He hums vague disapproval before putting them all back down and scratching at his temple, frowning. “Did I put you on that? I coulda sworn that’s Lulu’s job.”
“Um,” Glinda mumbles, snapping out of it. “Lulu?”
The Wizard looks over to her and nods.
“Yeah, Lulu. Little…” He trails off, gesturing with his hands, vaguely approximating the shape of a monkey. Or maybe a squirrel. “Little monkey thing. Gold fur. Wears a little hat. Cute little thing, hard worker, well, at least I thought she was, but if she’s loading all her work off on you, then…”
The little golden monkey’s anxious grin flashes through Glinda’s mind.
“No!” Glinda splutters, making the Wizard jump slightly, his hand knocking a half-finished gadget to the floor. She coughs, embarrassed, then tries again. “Um, no, Your Wonderfulness. Lulu very nicely led me here, after I got lost, um, again. I told her I’d take the letters in, because I was going in anyway.”
The Wizard looks back down to the letters, fiddling with the corner of the black-bordered envelope.
“Yeah, but it is kind of her job, so…”
“She didn’t want to let me,” Glinda says quickly. “I had to convince her. She really wanted to take you your letters herself.” She doesn’t know why she’s so nervous. There’s no reason to be. The Wizard just wants to make sure his staff are doing their jobs properly, that’s all. There’s no reason to be worried.
She just really, really wants to make sure The Wizard knows it was her idea and not Lulu’s, that’s all.
He mulls it over for what feels to Glinda like far too long, fingers tapping idly on the table. Eventually he shrugs.
“Well, if you say so. Don’t-don’t make a habit of it, though, okay? You’ve got your own job to do, you don’t need to take on everyone else’s.”
Glinda seizes the new topic gladly.
“Right. Um. About my job. What do you need?”
He blinks at her owlishly.
“Me?”
Glinda blinks back.
“Um. Yes. You summoned me?”
His brow furrows.
“I did?”
“Um, yes, Your Wonderfulness,” Glinda holds out the card, crisp white paper tinted a light green by the surroundings. “You did.”
“Huh.” He takes it and looks it over, eyebrows hiking up as he reads. “Guess I did.” He sucks his teeth awkwardly and scuffs his feet. “See, uh, the-the thing is…”
Glinda’s smile stays strong, but if it’s a little stiff, then who could blame her?
“I got a little caught up in, in something, and now for the life of me I can’t quite remember…what I…”
The Wizard trails off, then suddenly gasps a quiet ‘Oh!’ and darts to the side, disappearing into the next room. Glinda rolls her eyes and follows, using the noise of rusting paper as her guide as she picks her way through his bedroom, which is even more cluttered than the room before. When she eventually finds the Wizard, he’s buried elbow-deep in a box of blueprints, papers spilling to the floor as he rummages through. He pulls one out and scans it as Glinda carefully approaches, before clicking his tongue, tossing it carelessly aside, and diving back in. Glinda picks up the discarded sheet with two fingers and looks it over. The paper is a mess of lines and words and numbers, whatever shape they’re supposed to make blurring and blending together into a big, squiggly mess that she’ll probably get frown lines trying to untangle. She’ll have to apologise to the books next time she visits Shiz, she decides. There are worse things.
Eventually he emerges, clutching a crumpled sheet in one hand with a look of triumph. He leaps to his feet and rushes over to his bed, apparently the only clear surface available. He snags Glinda as he goes, nearly dragging her off her feet. By the time Glinda’s regained her balance, the blueprint is spread out flat on the bed, the edges pinned down with tools Glinda doesn’t know the names of and doesn’t care to learn. The Wizard is chattering away, gesturing animatedly at the lines covering the page as he speaks.
“…had this idea for how you’re gonna travel, see, ‘cause there’s the train but that’s a little…a little un-magical, so I thought ‘hey, well, I say everyone deserves a chance to fly, so let’s go with that!’ and so that’s…that’s what I did.” He looks up at her expectantly. “What do you think?”
Glinda blinks back at him.
“Um…it’s paper?”
His smile falters slightly, just at the corner.
“Yeah, kiddo, good spotting…”
Never one to ruin a happy atmosphere, Glinda tries gamely to give the answer he seems to want.
“Um, it’s a page?” He said something about flying, so it must fly…ah! “It’s a bird! I’ll ride a bird?” Glinda tries not to wince, but she’s not sure she succeeds. “Um, that sounds a little…mite-y…”
She trails off as the Wizard shuts his eyes and holds up a hand.
“Okay, stop, stop.”
He grunts and pinches the bridge of his nose.
“A bubble, kid, it’s a bubble.” He opens a dark brown eye to peer at Glinda, then chuckles and chucks her under the chin. “How’s that sound? You wanna float in a bubble?”
“That sounds amazing!” Glinda gushes. She can picture it in her head, her floating along in a glistening, silvery bubble, maybe with some swirls of pink and a waft or two of purple mixed in, waving regally down at the crowds below as they look up and point in awe.
“Yeah? You think so?” the Wizard asks bashfully, his eyes glinting with a quiet, genuine pride. He picks up the paper and sits down on the blanket, smoothing the sheet over his lap. A finger traces a line wistfully. “I mean, it’s just a sketch right now, I haven’t actually made it yet, but…”
Glinda giggles and flops back onto the bed next to him, throwing her hands up to the ceiling.
“See, Your Wonderfulness, I knew you had magic!”
The words slip out carelessly.
He’d said, back on that horrible day with Elphaba where everything had gone all wrong, that he had no magic, not even a little bit. That’s why he needed Elphaba. But he makes metal things that walk and speak, and a giant head with a voice like thunder that spits fire, and even his personal summons are delivered by tiny balloon! If that’s not magic, what is it?
It’s supposed to be a compliment.
But the minute the words leave her mouth, the Wizard’s smile turns brittle and his eyes go dead, and Glinda knows she’s made a mistake.
“Yeah, you can go now,” he says flatly, getting to his feet. The bubble blueprint slips from his lap as he rises, joining the pile of scattered papers on the floor around them. He pays them no mind as he walks away, and if he hears the paper crunching under the soles of his sparkling emerald wingtips, he doesn’t show it.
Glinda trails after him, trying to get the easy atmosphere back, but it’s no use. She’s ruined it somehow, and now he’s back at the stack of letters, staring down at that black-edged envelope and wearing no expression at all.
“I’m sorry,” she tries lamely.
He doesn’t look up.
Glinda sighs, sets her head high, and heads for the door. As she steps through and lets go she takes one last glance back, just in time to see the Wizard lift something to his lips and tip his head back as the door swings shut with a thud.
She gives the winged ape guards a smile, like always, and she hopes it looks as real and bright as she wants it to. It must do, because they nod back like always, hardly looking at her at all.
Somewhere in the palace a clock chimes once, marking the half hour.
It’s 10.30 am, silence fills a long, empty hallway, and Glinda is very, very lost.