Archive of Our Own

It was the most important of rules, that a handmaiden should never rummage through the belongings of the lady of the house without permission—but did it matter, when said lady of the house had been dead for five years?

Besides, all of Lady Glinda’s belongings were in the process of being donated, sold, repurposed, or taken by the state. Who cared if in the middle of that a few valuables went missing? A golden earring here, a diamond ring there, a pearl necklace like so—no one would be the wiser.

But Murth wasn’t stupid. She didn’t plan to rummage through Lady Glinda’s vanity—it was too late for that, anyway, most had been taken by Palace officials—because that would be much too obvious.

That was why she was currently elbow-deep in boxes at the back of the closet, past all the most elaborate ball gowns her former lady so pristinely kept even though she was never seen wearing the same thing twice, no matter the gowns usually took more money and time to make than the average Emerald City apartment.

After more than forty years in Lady Glinda’s employ, Murth more than knew her ways and her secrets, even with all the effort she took to maintain them, well, secret. She’d been a cryptic mistress, Lady Glinda, keeping things—and often her own identity—away from most of the people that knew her, including her charming ex-fiancé and irrelevant husband.

But not Murth. Lady Glinda had indeed tried, yet it was a difficult thing to keep secrets from the woman who laced your corsets, drew your baths, and arrived with tea precisely when you were trying to have serious conversations. Besides, the Lady Glinda who spoke in hushed tones with ministers and magnates was quite a different lady from the one who devoured pastries as she took perfumed baths—an indulgence Murth considered excessive and ever so slightly unhygienic. But truly, who was she to judge the hand that housed her, fed her, and paid her wages?

With all she knew of Lady Glinda, Murth was certain her mistress had secret hiding places for her most precious belongings. And not the baubles, gowns, and ridiculous heeled shoes the rest of the world fawned over—no. Other things. Important things. Murth could not name them, but she trusted she would know them when she saw them.

Perhaps those damned documents the current Ozma Tippetarius was so adamant in finding. Lady Glinda’s will, after all, had never been recovered—she wasn’t often a disorganized woman, so her lack of preparations for her demise surprised everyone, even Murth.

Probably Lady Glinda believed she would never die, who could say. She wouldn’t be the first powerful woman of Oz to fancy herself immortal.

If Murth were to uncover the desired papers, Her Majesty Ozma would surely see her properly rewarded. Murth could then kiss goodbye this mausoleum of a house—magnificent though it was—and the benevolent queen would almost certainly forgive her for having appropriated a diamond or two from Lady Glinda’s more ostentatious skirts.

Hey, an old woman had to take what she could get.

Sifting through boxes of old shoes and small relics from a life well lived, Murth’s hand brushed one that seemed different. It was buried deep, like it had been tucked away on purpose.

She frowned. Where the other boxes were gently worn by years, this one bore the wear of use. Its edges curled backward from frequent handling, and its corners were pressed in, as though it had been drawn from hiding time and again.

Curiosity quickened her fingers. She drew it out and opened it, anticipating nothing more exciting than another pair of impractical slippers or some forgotten trinket—

Inside sat a second box, smaller, wrought in cool metal, smooth—a safe.

Lady Glinda had kept a safe?

Murth pulled it out. It was the length of her forearm, thick but awfully light. She gave it an experimental shake, but whatever lay inside produced only a soft, dull thud, more a shifting weight than anything distinctly solid.

No keyhole. No hinge. Smooth, dark metal on every surface. Not a seam to be seen.

Perhaps it wasn’t a safe after all, she thought with a wrinkle of her nose. More like… a block. A hollow slab for some purpose she could not yet discern.

She turned it over in her hands—and paused.

There, upon its surface, lay an impression roughly the size of her palm. But the shape was peculiar, almost like a star or a snowflake or—a magic wand.

Lady Glinda’s jeweled wand.

Just her luck, Murth knew exactly where that was.

It was here in this closet as well, concealed behind a false panel. Lady Glinda had only ever wielded it during her early years in the Emerald City, and once she hid it away she had made it clear that no one could ever know of its existence.

So Murth retrieved it now. She had not forgotten its resting place—nor had she troubled herself to enlighten the royal officers when they requested a detailed accounting of Lady Glinda’s effects.

Of course Murth hadn’t told them. What kind of handmaiden betrayed her mistress? Her lady’s secrets did not become state property simply because her pulse had stopped.

Murth sat down on the floor and pressed the starburst top of the scepter to the indentation in the box, and a jolt of pure fire shot up her arm.

She yelped, but she didn’t have time to drop anything.

The safe opened.

She had to blink. One second it was all smooth with no signs of hinges, and now it was opened right in front of her, a heavy lid with a strange, magical mechanism.

It was filled with papers.

Murth quickly dug through them. The will? Could it truly be—?

But it wasn’t the will. What lay inside were slips of paper, some no larger than a calling card, others torn pages. And beneath them, resting as though it had been waiting all this time, was a book. Pink leather, softened by handling, spine creased, pages yellowed.

Not a book, Murth realized. A journal.

And not a slender one by any measure. It had swelled nearly to twice its size with the sheer volume of loose pages tucked inside of it.

Murth frowned and lifted it, opening it with painstaking care. One never knew what spells might linger on a sorceress’s keepsakes. She had no desire for Lady Glinda’s leftover magic to leap out and rearrange her face, that would make it hard to find a fourth husband.

This journal belongs to one Galinda Arduenna of the Uplands, if lost please return to:

5 Highland Lane

Frottica, Pertha Hills

Gillikin

If you are an unwanted guest and continue reading I shall personally find you and make my displeasure known in a manner that will certainly make you regret intruding on my privacy. Thank you in advance.

You can now also return it to:

Room 22

Crage Hall, Shiz University

Shiz

Gillikin

Murth hummed. This was definitely Lady Glinda’s handwriting, but it looked as if put through an odd, shattered mirror. The mirror of time and lost youth.

It was signed at the bottom, but not with the jaunty flourish Murth herself had once been taught to imitate for when Lady Glinda “couldn’t be inconvenienced to read repetitive nonsense.” No little smiley face tucked at the end like a kiss of confidence. No public persona, no sparkle.

Just her childhood name, and a girlish underline.

Murth passed the page, knowing that either way Lady Glinda would not be able to personally find her and make her displeasure known—though she wouldn’t be surprised if that woman rose from her grave just to do so.

Tomorrow I will go to Crage Hall, and Ama Clutch suggested I start journaling to document my new life. What’s journaling good for? I’m not sure, but the thought of documenting something so monumental pleases me.

I read that dormitories are shared. A shame. I don’t believe such things should be shared, but at least I can prepare for what I’m sure will be the only hurdle I encounter. If nothing else, I shall find a roommate of good standing to broaden my social horizons.

~*~

I spoke too soon. What a mistake! My roommate is one Elfaba Thropp. She’s a Munchkinlander of “some” status at least, in line for a title or whatnot. She did not deign to speak a word to me.

And she’s damned green!

Murth looked up from the pages.

What in the world?

She looked down. The entries were written sequentially, with little swirls of ink separating them.

She kept reading.

This annoying little green girl has taken from me everything I’ve wanted! Apparently she is in possession of some magical talents, they may be greater than mine but I doubt it, yet she had a chance to show them to the headmistress and completely captivated her.

I say, what a fickle headmistress, it wasn’t even an impressive or very captivating spell. Anyone can make some wheels turn.

But the stunt means I’m now without a sorcery seminar, for Morrible wants to tutor Elfaba privately!

I shall find more about her, and put an end to this ludicracy. I’ll get myself a proper roommate, and a proper admission into Morrible’s seminar.

Otherwise, what in Oz am I here for?

~*~

Elfaba Elphaba Thropp. She’s my age. She has a sister. She dresses like she has a personal vendetta against colors, and more than a personal vendetta against style… she dresses as if she single-handedly murdered style. (that is funny, I should tell it to Shenshen and the others). She never seems to sleep. She apparently sustains herself with only apples. She rarely speaks to me… I wouldn’t even remember the sound of her voice if it weren’t for her volunteering to answer every question in class.

She’s green.

Murth ran her fingers over the last word, which was underlined three times and written over for emphasis.

Elphaba Thropp. Now there was a name she hadn’t heard in years and years and years. The Wicked Witch of the West.

And she had been Lady Glinda’s roommate? How could such a thing happen?

University is proving more cumbersome than I expected. I’ve been here for months now, and I hadn’t had time to write in here until now! That’s how cumbersome it is proving to be.

And I’m still not even part of the sorcery lessons!

On that note, I do believe I’m doing well. I’m not failing anything? Shenshen and Pfannee and Milla have proved adequate friends. There’s a noisy little fly called Biq who’s been vying for my affections as if I would ever care to entertain a Munchkinlander! Shen says I ought to enjoy the attention, but I know she jests. That odd Goat professor refuses to pronounce my name correctly. He is the first Animal I meet, and he doesn’t leave a good impression of the rest of his people.

Not much to report on anything else.

Green roommate is still green, we still don’t talk.

~*~

Something exciting, finally! A Winkie prince has enrolled in Shiz. Not only that, but tonight we’re going out.

Not just us, sadly, but the whole of the university, apparently. What a shame and a waste, but I’m sure we’ll have time to ourselves soon enough.

We’re perfect together, after all!

~*~

Usually I limit myself to one entry per day, because I believe everything should be done in moderation, even journaling (especially journaling! Writing so much can be so hard on the wrist and mine is so delicate)

Besides, when someone finds this and sets to write my biography, I want it to be said Galinda Arduenna of the Uplands was a sensible woman who did things in moderation.

Murth looked up from the journal again, eyes scanning the dozens of ballgowns she was surrounded with, then shook her head and continued.

Anyhow, journal (should I even address you as journal? Should I even address you at all? I don’t want whoever writes my biography to think I was not in my right mental faculties) I’m writing again because something troubling has happened.

I hate to call it troubling, but I’m troubled. Which is inconvenient, and a new experience. I gave my green roommate a hat today, and told her she should wear it for the outing at the Ozdust. The thing is hideous. A hideous hat for a hideous girl. Things will not end well for her if she does wear it, and I believe she will, I saw that guarded look of hers melting away the longer my monologue on why she should wear it stretched.

And I say, what do I care?

~*~

Third entry in a day. I do exercise moderation in most cases, dear future biography writer!

But I’m writing this because I can’t sleep, in a very uncomfortable position in my bed. Elphaba left the room a while ago, and I don’t believe she’s coming back.

So much happened tonight. I’m not well-acquainted with regret, and yet tonight I made a great friend of it. I never should’ve given Elphaba that hat. As I expected, she was ridiculed.

I did my best to salvage the situation, because I felt awful, and I do not like feeling awful about things. But since I did my best, then that means I did salvage the situation. Somewhat. I don’t think Shenshen etcetera will enjoy my company much after dancing with Elphie.

Murth grimaced. Elphie?

What an odd thing it was, dancing with her in the first place. Odd, but surprisingly nice… once she forgave me, that is. Which didn’t take long? I don’t think I would’ve forgiven myself if I was in her place, but maybe she just wants a friend.

A friend. We’re friends now.

I also regret ever calling her hideous, I didn’t really mean it. Green is quite the lovely color, I’d say. I tried fixing up her hair and doing her makeup tonight after we came back, mostly because she told me a horribly tragic story about her mother and I thought maybe I could cheer her up.

I wanted to cheer her up! Do you see how this situation is so odd? I also tried turning her frock into a ballgown, but that didn’t —I’m part of the sorcery seminar now! And thanks to Elphie of all people! I can’t believe I forgot about it!

I’ll be a sorceress!

And under the text was a doodle of a magic wand, not too dissimilar from the one that was carefully placed next to Murth’s leg, taken from the present and carefully sketched out in the past.

There was more writing crowding that same page, curling around the drawing as though desperate to squeeze every last inch of space, but all of it was neat, deliberate—disciplined, even. Murth hesitated. Did she even want to keep reading?

It was all so—so incredibly juvenile.

Lady Glinda, who for a long time had been the most powerful woman in Oz, who conducted herself with the unshakable poise of someone befitting her station, who had gathered supporters all over the world with wit and charm and a mind sharper than steel—all of that reduced to a teenage girl involved in petty university dramas.

And involved with the Wicked Witch of the West!

How come that secret had never been brought to light, even years after Lady Glinda’s death?

Lady Glinda was always uncharacteristically quiet about the Witch, claiming she had other concerns. “I say leave the hunting to the hunters, I don’t much care about one miscreant running loose. I have four countries and a capital to manage, for Oz’s sake!”

To think they had been roommates—that they had squabbled before becoming friends!

Oh I forgot about Fiyero.

We’ll be married one day I suppose.

Murth put the wand back in its hidey-hole, grabbed the book and the box with the other papers, and then made herself comfortable in Lady Glinda’s bedchambers, checking the door was locked before kicking her shoes off and throwing herself into the bed.

To lay in a dead woman’s bed, and be going through that same dead woman’s journal—how deplorable, and yet Murth didn’t care. She wanted to know what became of this young Lady Galinda, she was so curious.

Besides, the journal was long. And she dared not disturb whatever was pressed in its pages, scared that the papers may be arranged in order. Suddenly, she didn’t want to miss a thing.

I had lunch with Elphie today, which surprised her. She’s never had lunch with anyone who she wasn’t related to before? She’s such an oddball, and yet I ache for her for a reason I can’t understand.

I suppose I pity how terribly lonely she must be. I’m used to pitying others, I mean let’s face it, who isn’t less fortunate than I? That’s why we’re friends! And that’s why she’s my new project!

Whether I’m sometimes overcome with urges to snap at everyone who looks at her wrongly or makes fun of her is really neither here nor there. She hates pity and has told me not to defend her. Not that long ago I was one of the people looking at her wrongly and making fun of her (dear journal, I called her an artichoke! That is incredibly embarrassing now. It was not even clever! The artichoke is steamed? Fantastic joke, Galinda, truly.) so I suppose I can understand where she comes from.

When turning the page, Murth’s eyes were immediately drawn to a little piece of green paper stuck to the journal. It was scribbled in with a completely different handwriting, sharp and cursive and efficient, nothing like Lady Glinda’s embellished script.

Galinda, I think this is quite silly. But sure, lunch at 3PM again.

- Elphaba

This was handwriting from the Wicked Witch herself! Murth nearly yelped, afraid that it may contain a dark spell woven within the threads of the paper. And yet, she couldn’t stop herself from reading further.

Isn’t she adorable? She left the note with my makeup, doubtless she knew I would see it quickly enough. It is indeed terribly silly and childish to be passing notes in this manner, but I used to do it all the time when I was a little girl, and yet Elphaba never had the chance. I rather want her to have some harmless, childish fun if she can.

The infamous Wicked Witch of the West having harmless, childish fun? Murth had to laugh.

Dear journal, I am forced to reevaluate my initial assessment of Elphaba:

• She’s not my age, she’s more than two years older than me. Her father only sent her here to look after her sister, who is my age.

• Her father is perhaps the worst person in the world.

• Her sister, Nessarose, is quite pleasant to be around.

• Elphaba can and will in fact listen to me in matters of style. So far we’re halfway through fixing her wardrobe! She draws the line at colors, which is a shame, but at least the frocks are gone! She likes trousers. Can you believe? But who am I to judge? She’s begun to let her hair down more often, which makes her look even prettier than usual.

• She does in fact sleep! She just goes to sleep very late and somehow manages to wake up very early? Also, she snores.

• She also eats. She eats quite a bit, honestly, but never meat and she refuses anything that’s green. I think that’s hilarious.

• We talk a lot nowadays! And I quite like the sound of her voice.

~*~

University continues to be a bother, even with sorcery lessons now added into the mix. At least I have Elphie to keep me company.

And Fiyero, of course.

~*~

Something very weird is happening to me.

Listen to this (or read, I don’t know. You’re a journal, I don’t know how you communicate, forgive me). Elphaba had a bad dream last night. She says she has them all the time but I’ve never noticed before. I noticed last night because she woke up screaming bloody murder. She didn’t want to discuss the dream, but she was quite rattled.

I offered to go with her for a walk. I don’t know why. It was the damn middle of the night, my Ama would’ve had a heart attack, we could’ve been robbed or murdered or something worse.

But we went, and it was quite nice. The night was chilly so we walked close together, and slowly Elphie started relaxing. We ended up in one of the overlooks and had a lovely view of all of Shiz and its lights and its roads. But I could tell Elphie wasn’t all there.

So I made a firework with magic… well, I tried. I tried. It was more of a very sad spark coming out of my finger, but at least Elphaba laughed. I think maybe her laugh is the most beautiful s

See what I mean? Something weird is happening!!!!

When we came back to the dorm, I could still tell Elphaba needed some sort of comfort, she was so quiet. She hadn’t been quiet since we met and she couldn’t stand me, and it worried me, and I didn’t like it.

So I huddled up to her in her bed, and she was startled at first (and I was startled too! Startled at myself! How audacious!) but she let me stay, and she thanked me.

And I liked it. I liked it a lot, journal.

What in the everloving name of Oz is going on with me?

Murth steadied herself. It was difficult—nearly grotesque—to imagine Lady Glinda in her youth, all softness and girlish light, and harder still to picture Elphaba Thropp in that same tender frame. The Wicked Witch of the West, bane of children’s stories, Oz’s most infamous scourge.

To think she had been an eighteen year old schoolgirl, too. To think she and Lady Glinda had been—friends, and close enough to exchange silly notes and share a bed, before destiny claimed them both.

It was absurd.

The next page had another green little note in the Witch’s handwriting.

Galinda,

Thank you for last night.

- Elphaba

And an annotation right below it, in Lady Glinda’s penmanship:

I’ve told her already she doesn’t need to use our names. Who else is going to write such a note and leave it on top of my journal?

She says she likes that I journal, and she asked me if I also draw in here like I draw in my notebook’s margins.

I don’t, but maybe I should, shouldn’t I?

And then there was a sketch of a pointy hat. The pointy hat. Murth recognized it at once, and her stomach turned. It had been drawn with startling care—shadows, textures, even the faint suggestion of wear along the brim. She had never known Lady Glinda to draw at all, much less with such affection.

She went back a couple of pages to when Lady Glinda talked about giving the Witch a hat—it couldn’t be. Could it? She felt, for a disorienting moment, not as though she were reading a dead woman’s journal but a most indecent fiction, a dreadful story scribbled by a novelist with no grasp of reality.

And yet she could not put it down.

Fiyero and I

Fiyero! Murth had all but forgotten about him. She knew him well enough in the present day, for once he had been Lady Glinda’s fiancé, and for so long it’d been almost comical. Those years had seemed endless at the time; now they felt like another lifetime entirely.

She had not seen him in so long. He relinquished his captaincy not long after Lady Glinda departed this world—five years past, though some days it felt like fifty—and since then he had disappeared into quiet living, wherever that may be.

are most likely not going to be married.

Not because I don’t like him, I do, but because I don’t like him that way. I don’t see myself loving him anymore and I’m not sure why.

People don’t often marry for love. My own parents didn’t, did you know that, journal? They were both young and eligible and convenient, so their families arranged the whole thing. It made sense, and things making sense was romance enough, an auntie told me once.

Ama Clutch always told me to aim higher.

What could be higher than such profitable unions, you may ask, dear journal. I asked Ama Clutch the same thing. She said I would know it when I found it.

I don’t know what “it” is, but I know I will not learn about it with Fiyero.

~*~

Sorcery lessons are the best part of Shiz, as I expected, though not for the reasons I expected.

And then there was another drawing, rendered with the same tenderness as the sketch of the hat. A young girl bent over a book in a classroom, her gaze intent upon the page. A single long braid fell over her shoulder, every strand illustrated with such care it seemed to glimmer upon the paper.

”Elphie at work ♡” read a small scribble below it.

Murth grimaced. Disgusting.

Galinda,

I saw you drawing me. Do you believe me blind? I want to see it when you’re free, if you’d be so kind as to show me how you see me. I hope you haven’t exaggerated my features to make fun of me, I’d be quite displeased.

Lunch at 3pm?

- Elphaba

The next two pages were cluttered with sketches, so many that Murth found herself staring as though they were sentences to be read.

Most were of the Witch. In a few she wore spectacles; in a handful she had the pointed hat. In one she was simply eating an apple. She was never smiling, yet Lady Glinda drew her serene at all times, her sharp features gentle and smooth despite her angular face, softened by a careful hand and affectionate eye.

Murth had seen portraits of the Witch, of course, and she had seen her in wanted posters and graffiti. She definitely did not look like what these drawings depicted. Lady Glinda was a flatterer.

Other drawings included Shiz itself. The straight lines of the university, and carefully captured details on buttresses and terracotta windows and cupolas and shadowed gargoyles. If Murth knew the nomenclature of such things it was only because Lady Glinda had written them down.

Elphie says she likes that I know about architecture. I don’t think I know all that much, really, but I wish I did so I could impress her more.

This need to be liked by her is growing really tiresome. I’ve never had a need to be liked by anyone before.

“Oh, you’re lying, my lady,” Murth muttered.

I kissed Elphie today

If Murth were having a drink, she would’ve spat it out.

“What!?”

I don’t even know how it hap

That’s just not true

Here is how it happened, journal. You mustn’t tell anyone (future writer of my biography I suppose you can learn about this. It is important to strive for historical accuracy. Please do not release your work until I am long gone, for what I’m about to describe is, well, embarrassing. The people must know, but I must not know they know.)

It’s almost the end of mine and Elphie’s first year at Shiz. You should know I am writing this in an empty classroom, for I don’t know where Elphie is and I don’t want to run into her. That would be mortifying.

The point is, she and Nessarose are returning to Munchkinland for the holidays. Elphie is, reasonably, not thrilled about having to see her father again.

So I asked her if she wanted to come with me to Frottica. It’s only a few hours away by train, compared to Nest Hardings which is a much longer journey.

She told me she couldn’t. Her father wouldn’t allow it. Today is the day we’re supposed to say goodbye, and I won’t see her for a whole two months.

Two months is just too long, I’ll miss her too much.

This morning I saw her packing (well, I should say “packing” for she had already packed days ago, and was just triple checking she got everything she needed. She’s careful like that.) and I just got so irreparably sad. I hate being sad, I’m not usually sad.

But Elphie noticed, because she also has a good eye. And she gave me a hug.

What a normal thing, right? To give a friend a hug because she’s sad. Except that Elphie had never hugged me before

Did the word never really need to be underlined five times?

She doesn’t mind when I do it, and I do it a lot. We’ve hugged a lot, but she’s never the one hugging me first. Understand?

So I was quite shocked.

And it made me even sadder.

So I

I kissed her

Writing about it now I feel awful about it. How sickening can perspective be! Back in the moment it felt like the right thing to do, like it made sense, but now… I don’t know. I told you something weird was happening with me.

Naturally I ran away. I’m not a person who runs away, dear journal, but I… felt the need, in that moment. In just a few minutes Elphaba will be getting on her carriage back and I’ll get on my train and I’ll see her again in two months.

Even with this, two months feels like too long.

What will

Murth frowned. The entry ended abruptly, the remainder of the page—indeed, the facing page as well—left entirely blank.

And she had reached the first of the loose papers tucked inside the journal. Almost afraid of what she might uncover, she smoothed it open before daring to turn to Lady Glinda’s next written line.

It was a letter. A letter written in the same neat, elegant hand as the little notes.

Dear Galinda,

I hope this letter finds you well. I hope it finds you at all, really, because I’ve no idea if correspondence will make it from Munchkinland to Gillikin in a timely manner. We may be on our way back to Shiz by the time you get this.

Regardless, I hope you’re doing well.

As expected, being here is proving quite suffocating. For me, of course, not for my sister. Can you believe Father hasn’t stopped chastising me about the rooming situation? And it’s been nearly an entire year, but I’m not surprised.

I spend most of my time in the library, or just outside. I’m outside right now, as a matter of fact, in a little park writing this letter to you. Animals have stopped going out in public, just last year this place was filled with them and now I haven’t seen a single one. It’s a shame.

But enough about shame. How are you? How is your summer going?

I do miss you, you know, maybe more than I miss Shiz itself and the freedom it offered. It’s like you offered me a different type of freedom, a different type of glee.

I hope you get this in time.

Love,

Elphaba.

Murth blinked, and read the damn thing again. What was that about Animals? Who cared? What had happened after they kissed? How come there was no mention of that!?

The page of the journal showed Lady Glinda’s reaction, the handwriting nearly dissolving into incomprehensibility. Murth had to squint.

isn’t she the cutest thing? i think i will cry what does she mean i offer her a different type of freedom a different type of glee? i think i am beginning to understand what ama clutch was trying to explain to me i think you do know it when you see it

“What does any of that mean?” Murth groaned.

Dear journal, I have composed myself after yesterday’s… lapse. You understand why I didn’t write again, of course, since I spent the rest of the afternoon and evening writing my response to Elphie instead, and there’s only so much writing I can do before I start getting jittery.

As for summer

“No one cares about your summer, my lady,” Murth grumbled, skimming over Lady Glinda’s musings and recollections about her time back in Frottica.

This was the curse of firsthand events, it was impossible to get a full picture. She wouldn’t even get Lady Glinda’s response to that horribly sappy letter. Murth had completely forgotten she was not indulging in a novel, but trespassing through real history.

She skipped a few pages where nothing of note happened until another letter from Elp—from the Witch!

Dear Galinda,

I am not sorry to hear your summer is boring, I’d prefer that over being stuck in this place. I do wish I could’ve gone with you. You’re right, I ought to have ignored my father. Nothing good comes out of ignoring him, but nothing good comes out of listening to him, either.

I think about you often, too. And yes you may call me darling, I don’t believe that fits me too well but if it pleases you, go ahead. And I don’t believe you weren’t blushing when you asked.

And do you have to ask if I am really so fond of you? Of course I am. You’re the only friend I’ve ever had.

“Friend!?” Murth scoffed. “I think not.”

And just so you know, you must in fact kiss me silly next time you see me, it’s only fair.

I miss you too.

Love,

Elphaba.

“What are they even—? My lady, what did you even write to her?”

Murth fanned herself for a moment. This had no business being as endearing as it was, this was the Wicked Witch of the West they were talking about, the deadly plague upon the land. And here she was telling Lady Glinda, former Throne Minister of Oz, that it was alright to call her darling.

Murth actually put the journal down for a moment, and she stretched her legs and paced about the room. She still had duties to attend to, the house still belonged to Lady Glinda until the Palace finished up the paperwork.

Which they had been working on for five whole years, surely they wouldn’t get it done today.

So who would care if Murth slacked off just this one day?

Maybe the ghost of her mistress would, but she should’ve stayed alive if she wanted to scold Murth for slacking off.

So, back to reading it was.

Elphie is really shameless! I like that about her. I shall henceforward strive to be just as shameless, it’s truly only fair.

“More shameless, you mean? Oz. Focus.”

You know Ama Clutch is the one who takes my letters to the post? She asked me who exactly I’ve been writing so much to, so I told her about Elphie.

She hugged me real, real tight, and told me she was happy for me and proud of me.

I’d forgotten how much I missed her, too.

~*~

I dreamed about Elphie tonight. We were in sorcery lessons and Morrible left us alone for a moment to check on something, and when it was just the two of us she made some sparks the way I tried the day we took a middle-of-the-night stroll but hers were much better, and then she gave me a kiss.

Apologies if my handwriting seems rushed, I’ve just woken up, and I didn’t want to forget about it. I so often forget dreams.

~*~

Back to Shiz in a week! And here’s what Elphie wrote this time. I almost didn’t put this in here. It’s precious, I feel like I want to stitch it to my very heart. But I have to put it here to keep with the theme, and so I never lose it.

Dear journal, I think I fell in love with her.

 

Dear Galinda,

Address your letters however you want, but if you do that they may get lost in the mail. Who knows how many darlings are waiting for letters?

What an interesting dream. I hope you don’t want to reenact it when we meet each other again, at least not in that setting. That classroom is exceedingly dangerous, Miss Galinda, but I will happily kiss you anywhere else.

As for my own dreams and nightmares, thank you for asking about them. I haven’t had any in a while, but maybe I should say I have just to take you up on the offer. It sounds very lovely.

I’m glad we’ll see each other again soon, I also miss you.

I suppose this will be the last letter I get to write before going back. You’re probably expecting something romantic that’ll sweep you off your feet, but you’re not going to get it in a piece of paper, because I know you’re probably archiving these in your journal and I still don’t know how I feel about posterity. I don’t want my sappy letters to the girl I have feelings for to be my legacy.

So you’ll have to wait until we see each other again.

Love,

Elphie.

 

Dear journal, I just read that again.

I am definitely in love with her.

“Oh, my lady.” Murth sighed. This soft side to Lady Glinda was getting odder and odder by the second.

But heavens, it did shed light on a few mysteries. The first engagement that withered despite lasting long enough to raise eyebrows, the marriage that saw the husband away from his wife’s private rooms, the steadfast widowhood.

Could it be, that Lady Glinda’s relations with those men had dissolved not from disinterest or circumstance, but perhaps from loyalty elsewhere?

Surely not. Surely this little university infatuation had not endured beyond youth, beyond tragedy, beyond all that the Witch had done. It beggared belief. So what, precisely, had become of it?

Murth breathed in deep, and braced herself. Lady Glinda and the Witch were the two most unlikely people to fall in love in the whole of Oz, and Murth had a feeling soon enough she would be reading about their downfall.

First day back at Shiz! It was so wonderful, journal. I arrived before Elphie did so I set out to make our dorm room look as nice and welcoming as possible.

Obviously because the universe hates me she walked in just as I was doing that, and teased me up and down about it. But I did in fact make good on my promise to kiss her silly, so that teasing died off really quickly.

How incredible to be back with her again. I had half-convinced myself she wasn’t actually real, but just a dream.

There were no classes on the first day, so I took all the sweets and pastries Ama Clutch gave me this very morning, and me and Elphie had a most relaxed picnic by the canals.

It’s night time now, and she’s working on her reading for tomorrow’s class (always one step ahead, Elphie is) and I’m writing in here, but she just asked me when I’m going to finish and make good on my other promise, which was to snuggle in case she had any more nightmares.

What ever shall I do.

And there were two sketches of the Witch below that. One sitting on a blanket by a canal, a little piece of cake held in two pinched fingers, the carefully done shadows about her face indicating bright sunlight.

In the other drawing she was sitting on a bed with a book on her lap, head bent, bottom lip pinched between two fingers too, in concentration, the shadows cast from a single lamp on a nightstand.

Just a quick note before we head to class for today, but you’re probably thinking sleeping in the same small bed as someone else is terribly uncomfortable.

It’s not.

~*~

Elphie thinks it’s funny my notebooks for school are all color-organized and have drawings and notes and the like, meanwhile my journal is just… well, a journal. Plain and simple. But of course! I need all that other stuff to focus on schoolwork, but here I just write what pops into my head (which is always brilliant and worthy of note of course). Do you feel terribly left out, journal? I’m sorry if you do, but in my defense everyone else can always see my school books, but no one can see you obviously. Except Elphie. (and my future biography writer, hello!)

“And your aging handmaiden who is bound to get a headache,” said Murth.

Doctor Dillamond died today. I don’t think I’ve mentioned him so far. He’s… was the Goat professor that could never pronounce my name before, and Elphaba’s favorite professor… more like her mentor or idol. She always spoke so passionately of his lectures.

Elphie thinks he was killed, but Madame Morrible is sure it was just an accident.

I feel awful. I saw his body. I can’t stop seeing his body. His blood.

~*~

I think I will go by Glinda now

~*~

It’s so odd how life keeps moving. I’m sorry, journal, I know I don’t date these entries but it’s been four months since that accident, and I couldn’t write a thing here.

I go to sorcery lessons with Elphie, we hate our new biology professor, we still sleep in the same bed. She’s been getting better, more resolute, if that was possible.

I haven’t told her I love her yet, maybe I will. Maybe I should. Maybe I have to.

Maybe it’s unfair to want to feel normal again, but that’s all I want.

 

Glinda,

Lunch at 3pm?

- Elphie

 

Things are getting back to normal.

Murth didn’t know the implications of a dead professor, Lady Glinda hadn’t provided enough context on him, but she still felt as if this was something she shouldn’t skim over just because she wasn’t interested in it.

This felt—monumental, in a way. A shift.

Turning the page revealed a new surprise—the Witch’s handwriting directly in the book and not in any sort of note.

My sweet, I’m sorry for intruding like this. I promise I didn’t read anything, but I ran out of notes and I don’t have any paper on me right now and I’m in a hurry. I don’t want to wake you by going through my things.

Please find me in the library before class today. I have important news.

- Elphie

Curious. The next entry was Lady Glinda’s.

Elphie is going to meet the Wizard!

I feel like I don’t talk about her enough in this manner, but I do believe she will do great things. She has the kindest heart of anyone I’ve ever met, and she’s oh so very capable.

She’s asked me to come with her to the Emerald City. Me! I’ve always wanted to see it!

Of course I said yes. I’d say yes to anything she asked. I’d go anywhere with her.

~*~

Elphie is gone

Murth felt the dread in her stomach loosen, spill outward. A sudden nausea swept through her. And why? This ought to have pleased her—ought to have been the moment young Lady Glinda learned not to place faith in wickedness. The lesson she required to become the woman who later governed Oz with such poise and resolve.

Yet the sight before Murth told another story.

Several pages had been torn out after that solitary line. Ripped away, hurried and brutal. Murth brushed trembling fingertips over the ragged stubs near the binding and winced.

The rest of the journal had been tended with such devotion. Its wear spoke not of neglect, but of love. These torn leaves, by contrast, jutted out like bruises, like wounds, like unhealed scars.

I have tried writing this many times before, I’m not sure I want to. But, dear journal, who do I have to tell other than you?

Elphie is gone

She’s gone

The meeting with the Wizard went awfully wrong. What began as him wanting to meet her due to Morrible’s recommendation ended up as a horror spectacle.

They had this book and these monkeys and they made Elphie use the spells there to make the monkeys grow wings. It was… gruesome, and she regretted it immediately, she didn’t know it would hurt them or she never would’ve done it.

“They made her do it?” That wasn’t how the story was described. But of course, this wasn’t how any of this ever happened. Lady Glinda the Good had never been in contact with the Wicked Witch of the West until that fateful day with the Wizard, when the Wicked Witch launched her very first attack.

I’ve never seen her so… heartbroken. Horrified. And angry.

She ran away then. With the stupid spellbook.

And I followed her, foolishly perhaps. And we argued and Morrible told everyone she was wicked and she should be found and captured. And then I forgot what me and Elphie were arguing about, and I just wanted her safe

The page, even after all these years, bore the tiny, round marks of tears.

She asked me to go with her

She asked me to go

And I said no

I just couldn’t I couldn’t go with her why didn’t I go with her I’m so stupid and there was a magic broom and she flew away and left

I don’t think I’ll ever see her again

And I never told her that I loved her.

“But why didn’t you go with her? Are you an idiot?” Murth caught herself after saying that. Badmouthing a dead woman over decisions taken when she was so young—what was wrong with her?

No. No. What was wrong with Lady Glinda?

This wasn’t the betrayal and heartbreak Murth had been waiting for. This was just sad. Those signs of tears were making her heart twist painfully in her chest.

What happened? Why didn’t she go? Lady Glinda was a terrible storyteller, Murth was missing so much crucial context! Did she think no one would find this journal and peruse through it? Did she truly spare not a single thought for her future audience?

“It better not end like this between them,” Murth grumbled, so tempted to just skip ahead, but more and more she was learning the journey was as crucial as the destination.

It’s been weeks since Elphie left and I’m back at Shiz by myself. I had to explain the whole thing to Nessarose, otherwise Madame Morrible would’ve done it, and I had to be there for the fallout.

To say things are never going back to normal is an understatement. Dirt is being spread all over Elphaba’s name as if she were a villain, and I don’t know what to do. I hate it. And I hate that I’m the only one that knows the truth.

And you, of course. I suppose you also know, journal.

I find myself thinking back on that day. That one short day in the Emerald City with Elphie. I never knew the most perfect day of one’s life could sour so quickly, could become the worst thing that had happened to me.

We were happy, dammit. We went to the theater and saw a silly play and had lunch outdoors and traded drinks because we accidentally ordered something the other one liked more, and they were playing music in the square and we kissed there, and I had never been so happy in my life.

And then, of course, everything else.

And now Elphie is gone.

Did I make a wrong choice? Did Elphie make a wrong choice? I don’t know.

I’m not sure what I do know. I just miss her. I wish I could see her again.

Sleeping alone has become exceedingly difficult. Funny, after a whole life of doing that just a couple of months with Elphie were enough to make me forget all about it.

I don’t want to be here anymore.

The entries grew sadder as Murth went on—thinner, too, Lady Glinda’s joy wrung out one page at a time. Her bright musings dulled into bleak little sentences, small as crumbs. Murth found herself skimming some of them; they were so wretchedly heavy that she felt improper lingering over them.

Nothing made sense for Lady Glinda after the Witch was gone. Days blurred into one another, empty and tired, and Murth wondered why, if she was so heartbroken, she bothered to keep journaling.

A whole year in Shiz went by.

And another.

I’m about to be done with university.

I won’t say things have been hard, you know they have.

But I’m trying to make the best out of it. I’m not sure how I feel about reentering society, life at Shiz has been hard, but easy. This place has felt like a cage ever since Elphie left, but the thing about cages is that they also protect you from the outside world.

I miss Elphie every day, but I can’t just stop living.

Maybe I’ll see her again, maybe I won’t, but I can’t stay idle.

I hope she’s alright. I hope she’s happy. I hope she doesn’t think about me as much as I think about her, I wouldn’t wish this heavy yearning on my worst enemy, much less someone I love.

I hope she’s alive.

~*~

I made my choice. For now I am heading back to the Emerald City. I both hate the idea and No, I don’t love it. I just hate it.

Fiyero is going with me. I haven’t talked about him in a while, right?

Other than a few mentions in the past year that they had become friends, then no.

He misses Elphie, too. I suspect he’s. Well, it doesn’t matter now, does it?

He wants to look for her, but there’s no point. I don’t think Elphie wants to be found at all.

I don’t think she can be found

Otherwise… She would try to find me. Right?

~*~

Glinda the Good.

What a nice ring to it, right? I’m sorry I haven’t written in months again, though you wouldn’t know unless I told you, I strive for honesty.

Fiyero thinks it is amusing that I talk to my journal, though he’s never read anything of course. I wouldn’t show him.

Regardless, that is what people are calling me now. Glinda the Good.

I’m sure even you, journal, locked in my drawers as you are, have heard what they’re calling my Elphie.

The rest was blank. Murth took a long, long time before she passed the page because she could feel through the paper that something was pressed right behind it. A loose, folded piece of parchment.

It felt like a letter.

Slowly, as if afraid it may crumble into dust in her hands, Murth retrieved it, and unfolded it with shaking hands.

It was familiar handwriting at this point.

Dear Glinda,

She could scream.

Please let’s meet. I can’t say much in writing.

I’m sorry, my sweet.

It wasn’t signed, but of course it was obvious who it was. Murth’s heart hammered inside her ribcage as she read Lady Glinda’s entries.

I always knew she was good at magic. And didn’t I tell you? She was going to do great things, it just so happened that those great things have taken her away from me.

But not forever. Elphie has been… I’m not sure I can explain it even to you, journal. There are things that should stay between me and her, I suppose. She’s doing her best, as we all are, and she’s helping many people while she’s trying to stay alive.

Rereading what I just wrote… I sound so clinical. Forgive me. I’m even laughing to myself. Silently, of course.

Yes, I saw Elphie tonight. I’m… still seeing her, in fact. She’s asleep here in my house, in my room. I don’t think it’s all that safe, if anyone were to find us then this so-called Glinda the Good wouldn’t be so good anymore. But she was tired, and I was tired of the distance, so she decided to stay for the night.

It’s been both difficult and great to see her again after years. She’s thinner, but stronger. She calls me my sweet like nothing happened, like I didn’t let her go on her own, like I didn’t return to work with the people that want her dead, like I don’t bask in the adoration of the crowds that ask for her demise.

Her eyes still do that thing when she sees me… and when I call her darling, like she’s still surprised anyone would ever.

Murth adjusted herself against the pillows, feeling abruptly uncomfortable—and not due to age or springs. It occurred to her, with unwelcome clarity, that Lady Glinda had not spent all her nights as alone in this bed as she had thought.

She tried not to imagine it—truly, she did. She made a valiant effort to think only of linens and embroidery and respectable things like dusting schedules and curtain maintenance. But the mind, once corrupted, was a treacherous thing, and hers insisted on conjuring up images she had no business entertaining. Young Lady Glinda, rosy and laughing in these very pillows; the Witch, all sharp elbows and unwieldy green limbs, lying beside her and pulling her close.

Murth squeezed her eyes shut. Absolutely not.

“Lurlina preserve me,” she whispered to no one in particular. “My Lady, you could not have taken up a sensible hobby like lacework? Did you have to get involved with another woman? That woman?”

The ink, blurred by time and by the trace of Lady Glinda’s tears, had smudged along the page, yet Murth could still make out the words. They gentled her shock, softened her disgust into something quieter, harder to name.

It was difficult to resent pain when it had left its fingerprints so plainly behind.

I love her, I love her, I love her

~*~

Elphie left this morning, of course, before the sun came up. She said she didn’t want to wake me, but I think I was sleeping so uneasily I was awake before she was.

Now she’s gone. My bedchambers smell like her still, it makes me not want to get up from my bed. I still taste her mouth on mine. And I don’t know when I’ll see her again.

~*~

Being here is proving even harder than I thought. There is something to deal with every day, which I suppose is just life, but it’s hard to deal with it when my mind is on other matters.

I told myself I wouldn’t stop living just because Elphaba was gone, but now that I know she’s near, and that it’s only a matter of time before I see her again, the absence is a constant thorn in my side.

~*~

There is a comfort to being the one people look up to for encouragement, and hope and goodness.

I want to separate my work from my personal life, so you must understand I don’t talk too much about my role in here, but it’s not a bad role all things considered.

I cut ribbons for inaugurations and shake hands, make myself seen at events and parties, parrot the things Morrible and the Wizard tell me to parrot. I lift people’s spirits. I redirect attention so people focus on me and not on the hunt for Elphaba.

My Elphaba, my Elphie. My love. I want to see her again more than I have ever wanted anything in my life.

Glinda the Good isn’t so terrible a thing to be, I suppose. A harmless glittering thing. A pretty little consolation prize.

When they chant my name, I feel something like triumph. But when I return to my rooms, when the night is quiet and I am no longer performing goodness, it settles like an ache.

Perhaps if I hadn’t seen Elphaba again, I’d be able to focus more. But she has left me with the curse of awareness, and has taken away the luxury of ignorance.

~*~

Missing Elphaba is constant. Not a minute goes by I’m not thinking about her.

Where would she be? What is she doing?

I read reports on the Wicked Witch all the time, anything to get my hands on even scraps of information. And I mean the real reports, the one Fiyero writes, not the lies that make it to the papers.

No, of course not. Those claim that Elphaba is terrorizing villages, burning down fields and leaving dozens in ruin and hunger, or that she’s preying on little children to use their dead bodies for her nefarious spells.

How absurd!

In reality, Elphaba spends her time breaking Animals free of prisons. And she does burn down things, government buildings, noblemen’s manors, banks, things of that nature. She preys on people who are exactly like me, too, those close enough to rub elbows with the Wizard.

She’s done so much in so little time, causes chaos in ways that can’t be made public. Eventually the general populace will start to wonder why the Wicked Witch doesn’t target them, but those at the top.

But all that means I have my work cut out for me. Where Elphie goes, I’m soon to follow to smooth edges, sweet talk my way into placating whoever has been affected by Elphie’s actions.

I’m supposed to bring reassurance, tell them it won’t happen again, that she will be caught, that she truly is wicked and heinous and despicable and that we are working tirelessly to bring her to swift justice.

I help them see Elphaba as this thing that haunts and destroys for fun. Well, don’t look at me like that, journal, what else am I supposed to do?

What good am I, really?

I miss her…

Maybe if I go along with the Wizard enough, Elphaba will put me next in her list of people to torment. Maybe she will burn down my house, or come to kill me.

Wouldn’t that be a lark.

Anything to see her again.

~*~

It was suggested to me I should get married.

A woman of my status and position shouldn’t be all by herself, after all. I think it’s all bollocks. I despise the idea.

I asked Fiyero about it.

I didn’t ask him to marry me, but he said he would think about it.

He’s a dear friend of mine, but what a mess we find ourselves in. I think he’s moved on from Elphie, at least, but I haven’t asked him about it.

Maybe I should ask him about that. And how he did it. So I may know how to move on as well.

~*~

Today’s my engagement announcement

“Already?” Murth frowned. Lady Glinda was growing less and less constant with her journaling as time passed, it seemed. She went through the timeline of it all in her head—she’d been the one to pin up Lady Glinda’s hair that morning for the announcement, she recalled the unusual choice of dress with just one full sleeve, and how she’d caused such an upheaval with it for the next six months or so every other lady in court had attempted to replicate the effect.

Murth recalled the day well.

Lady Glinda had been twenty-six. Five years after she finished her education at Shiz.

Many people are thrilled, except the future bride and the future groom, of course.

Fiyero asked me if I wanted to give up on her, he doesn’t know about that one time I saw her. I can’t bring myself to tell him. It feels like such a precious moment between me and Elphie, it’s a wonder I even decided to write about it.

What am I doing here?

And a letter—

My sweet,

I see congratulations are in order.

I’ll leave at the bottom of this page a way of contacting me back, truth is I miss corresponding with you. I miss everything about you, honestly.

It’s my fault we haven’t talked written to each other more, I mean to remedy that if you… want me to.

You and Fiyero… That’s not real, is it?

Forgive me. I have no right to talk about it even if it is.

Do you want to meet? I can find a way.

It still wasn’t signed, but it didn’t need to be.

There was another letter just after that one.

My sweet,

I wish our circumstances weren’t so. I don’t think I can quite write down how much it meant to see you again. I think I tried to tell you. I also think I failed, it can’t be expressed.

But enough of that sappiness. Glinda, I know you said you would wait for me, but who can say how long will this last? I don’t want you to feel stuck or indebted to someone who cannot give you the life you deserve and

The rest of the letter was scribbled over, and Murth suspected not by the Witch’s hand.

Can you believe her? I ought to give Elphie a piece of my mind the next time I see her.

Rest assured there will be a next time, and a time after that, even. Stuck? I don’t feel stuck in the least, I feel like I finally know where I’m going after years of fumbling in the dark. I know where Elphie is and how to get to her, I have more purpose that I’ve had in a long, long time.

It’ll just take some convincing her this is what I want. She is what I want.

Always.

~*~

My last entry was rather curt, wasn’t it?

I barely know myself anymore. I’m angry all the time. I’m sad in ways that can’t be quite shaken off. Nothing feels everlasting. The thrill I get from the crowds fizzles and vanishes as soon as I turn my back to them, yet I can’t quit it.

Elphaba is disappointed in me. I know she is, even though she doesn’t say it. I think she loves me anyway, even if she doesn’t say that either.

I’m engaged to Fiyero. I spread dirt on Elphaba’s name during the day. And at night, she climbs through my window. It feels like a dream every time, or a story.

The Wicked Witch and the Good Witch.

But away from prying eyes, we’re just Elphie and Galinda.

~*~

Elphaba doesn’t want me to get married.

Ridiculous, isn’t it? Iʼm already living a lie, complicit in every cruelty of this world, and yet the thing she asks of me, the thing she aches over, what she begs me for, is that I do not wed someone else.

She looks at me with that fierce, bewildering hope and says, please...just not that.

Murth sighed. So romantic—

Alright, that was a lie. Elphaba asks a great many things of me, not only that I avoid walking down the aisle to Fiyero.

She wants to…use me. She wants to use Glinda the Good.

I’m ashamed to say that the idea revolted me. It felt like betrayal, that the one person I love might look at me and see a tool to use, when I have been used by everyone else in this wretched, ozforsaken city.

We had quite the nasty fight, and I said many things I regret.

It’s hard being around her, because she is so fragmented, and feels so temporary. Like I will turn away and never see her again.

She has the power to undo me just by walking away.

I’m afraid. I’m afraid of listening to her, I’m afraid of losing her. I’m afraid of losing myself. I’m afraid of getting hurt.

And I might as well confess in these pages, as I’m confessing everything I cannot say out loud, that I am a selfish coward.

Murth traced the words with her fingertips, fighting a shiver. She had never heard Lady Glinda talk about herself in such a way. It broke her heart, and she surprised herself with the strength of said sentiment.

They’d never been close, not really, not in any way that mattered. In fact, the thought was a little ghastly to Murth.

Other ladies confided in their handmaidens, Murth knew. Society women adored their gossip and small scandals, it was their sustenance, their brief rebellion against lives arranged like silverware in a cabinet. But they were lonely creatures by necessity. One could hardly be anything else when one’s chief occupation was to remain polished and perfect, for perfection left no room for companionship; it drove every human thing behind glass.

But with a handmaiden—well, matters shifted. Handmaidens were lower forms of life, unworthy of the pretense. And besides, it was impossible to maintain a flawless façade before the woman who saw you yawning at dawn and wriggling into corsetry.

Murth had friends in the same position as her. She knew the ropes, she knew the way the world worked, how mistresses operated. She knew intimacy grew where dignity must be set aside.

Lady Glinda was never like that.

Oh, she could be delightful, warm as spring sunshine when she chose, all effortless smiles and gentle charm. But beneath she was solitary and reticent. A reserve Murth had mistaken for grace, and now recognized as loneliness.

Murth knew her simple tastes—her seasonal craving for cinnamon crullers, her disdain for overly sweet lemon creams—but she had never known her heart. She could not have said whether Lady Glinda loved her mother or merely tolerated her; whether she pitied Fiyero or mourned their engagement; whether the Witch lingered in her thoughts as enemy or something else entirely.

Such an elusive mistress. Murth had followed her everywhere, hopping between Lady Glinda’s home and the Palace, guarding her time, managing callers and fabricating headaches when privacy was needed. It had been Murth who shielded her from the world, sometimes.

Forty years, Murth had known Lady Glinda.

She had seen her change firsthand, turning from a sweet young lady, to the effervescent Good Witch, to the astute Throne Minister of Oz. Fascinating—and troubling—how Murth still hadn’t known the first thing about that woman.

I’ve had time to calm down after my outburst.

The instant Elphaba left, truly the very instant, I thought I might faint or die from it. Instead I was sick. Horribly, dreadfully sick, as if every meal I’d taken turned against me at once, and left me. Dignity was nowhere to be found. You understand, journal. You must.

I can’t stand the thought of never seeing her again. I can’t stand the thought of her being angry at me.

The worst part, perhaps, or the best part, is that I understand her perfectly.

It used to be that in my youthful ignorance I didn’t know why Elphaba wanted to do the things she did. Why she was so hellbent on helping the Animals

“Helping the Animals?” Murth murmured, brows knitting. Lady Glinda kept circling back to the same subject, again and again—the Witch’s work with the Animals. But like so much in this journal, it did not align with the world Murth knew.

She forced her mind back to those years. The Wizard’s reign, distant now and hazy with age. Lady Glinda’s entries jogged what memory had smothered: the restrictions placed on Animal travel and labor, the endless articles and proclamations blaming them for the Great Drought, for unrest, for aiding the Wicked Witch of the West.

And then, in the years after, Lady Glinda as Throne Minister had reversed every one of those laws. Slowly, stubbornly, often against fierce resistance.

All that time… the Witch had wanted to help the Animals?

But I understand Elphaba now that I’ve seen things firsthand. I try to keep a blind eye to some matters regarding the Animals… it’s too gruesome, and what can I do? Me in my glittery gowns, with my wand and my smile. The Wizard doesn’t listen to me.

Elphaba seems to think there are other ways I can make myself useful. Even if the Wizard doesn’t listen to me, the people of Oz do.

I can’t say much, can’t do much, but I suppose I can help in some ways. Not the Animals directly, not Elphaba directly. Oz forbid. But I can continue to be the painless distraction everyone wants me to be. And I can do it better than ever.

~*~

Did you know there are parts of Oz where people don’t know who she is?

Very remote places in the Vinkus, according to Fiyero. She’s made a little home there, though she’s rarely ever there because according to her the fight is here in the Emerald City. I’ve lost count of how many Animals she’s helped escape one problem or another.

Rumors about her still abound, but who better than to put a stop to them than the so-beloved Glinda the Good? I have to be careful about it, of course, but I am adept at diverting conversation.

I visit her when she goes back to that little house. I visit her so often I’ve begun to think of that cottage as more of a home than this place ever is and ever will be.

There were drawings of said little cottage. A cozy place, if remote, the outside walls covered with vines and flowers.

There were drawings of the Witch, too. Sweeping the modest porch, or intensely watching a tea kettle as steam rose up from it. Lady Glinda never drew her as Murth knew her, no towering hat, no swirling cape, no broom in hand, no vicious snarl.

No, in Lady Glinda’s sketches Elphaba wore her hair down, tangled and bed-tousled, and her clothes were loose and casual, too, patched trousers and ripped sleeves and socks with holes, all details of her so carefully drawn by someone who saw not wickedness, but warmth.

Drawn by someone in love.

The passage of time was etched into Elphaba’s skin. Scars bloomed along her face, her arms. Slashes, punctures, jagged crescents like teeth. Lady Glinda had rendered each one with visible devotion, committing every raised line and healed wound to the page. Murth could practically imagine her lady’s fingers following each line on living flesh, memorizing them before ever giving them to the paper.

”And what are these?” Murth murmured.

Between the journal’s pages lay fragile paper figurines. A heart, a star, a half-moon, small animals with creased backs and softened edges. Time had pressed them flat as petals. Murth could not decipher their purpose; they felt like tokens from a world she had never been invited into, and she hadn’t seen anything like them in the previous pages of the journal.

A sketch of Elphaba revealed what they were, caught mid-fold with a tiny shape of paper in her hands. Above her head, Lady Glinda had written in a delighted flutter of ink, “Elphie is making something for me! ♡”

Murth mentally went through events she recalled pretty well, the glittering galas she had prepared Lady Glinda for, the grand speeches where Lady Glinda afforded the Wicked Witch only the politest degree of dread. And all that time she had been stealing away when she could, not to solitude and silk pillows as Murth thought, but to go home to Elphaba.

Lady Glinda had not merely loved the Witch. She had built a life around her, unseen and unspoken.

The entries grew scarce, but the drawings did not. Murth got to see Elphaba doing a dozen different mundane activities. Gardening and pulling out weeds, scrubbing laundry over a river, preparing a meal, lighting a candle, feeding a bird from her open hand, hanging a curtain.

There was no text for a long while. Sketches of their life were what adorned the pages. The little cottage, and then a bird’s view of it—had Lady Glinda drawn that from her bubble, or had she been on that infamous broom?—and notations and calculations and plans all around it.

And their home as it grew. From a small cottage to a proper one. The notes were difficult to follow, full of measurements and diagrams and jargon incomprehensible to Murth, but the meaning was clear enough: they expanded the place together. A second story added. A garden coaxed into abundance. Plans for a chicken coop and a pig pen abandoned halfway—“no animals, Glinda” in neat handwriting.

Pressed between the pages was a scrap of paper bearing a doodle, not the careful lines of Lady Glinda’s hand but this one clearly made by Elphaba, of what appeared to be a crooked staircase leading down into a basement. Lady Glinda’s handwriting was at the top, reading “This makes no sense, structurally speaking. But I love you Elphie so maybe we’ll figure something for your underground villain lair.”

And Elphaba’s handwriting right underneath: “Don’t call it that.”

It was all so—normal. No more accounts of Lady Glinda’s life in government, or Elphaba’s exploits. They could’ve been any two people in a faraway Vinkus hamlet by themselves.

In real time, and in Murth’s memories, Lady Glinda worked tirelessly under the Wizard during that period. Yet even then, she had been collecting her own power, her own loyal sphere. People gravitated toward her, placed their faith in her, trusted her more than they ever trusted the man behind the curtain. They loved her.

Even Madame Morrible, press secretary and mistress of magic, could not rival the radiance of Glinda the Good once she stepped fully into the public eye. The woman became a phenomenon. An institution unto herself.

It had never occurred to Murth that Lady Glinda’s ascent might have been fueled by love, not ambition. She wondered who Lady Glinda truly wished to impress—Oz, or the woman waiting for her at home.

It wasn’t just Lady Glinda, though, as she and Captain Tigelaar had shared such a famously protracted engagement that, after a time, no one bothered asking when the wedding might come. They were the darlings of Oz, its shining couple, endlessly adored.

And with that came power. Years of it. The people’s affection, yes, but also the loyalty of the Emerald Guard.

None of that appeared in the journal. Lady Glinda made no mention of her stature, nor the sway she held simply by breathing in a room. But Murth remembered. She had lived in the periphery, catching fragments of whispers, glimpses of private audiences, the faint glow of power seen through a servant’s half-closed door.

How much had she missed? What currents had flowed beneath the parquet floors while she stood polishing silver and announcing visitors?

And most unsettling of all—what had Lady Glinda been maneuvering behind the scenes, while Elphaba did the same beyond the Emerald City’s walls?

To think it was all for the good of Oz. To think Lady Glinda smiled in public, but she plotted in private, and Murth had been dusting the drapes while history shifted under her feet.

The revelation her old mistress hadn’t been who she thought at all was chilling. It took Murth a moment to compose herself, before diving into the next page.

Forgive me, dear journal, it has been quite a while, hasn’t it? I’ve reread some of the past entries, and some of Elphie’s past letters… did you know she kept all of mine, too? How adorable is she.

I look through our old correspondence often, and I’m thinking of organizing it somewhere just to keep things tidy. We’ve accumulated all sorts of knickknacks since we were adolescents. All the paper figurines Elphaba made for me are safe and sound, and she has kept and preserved all the flowers I pressed into my envelopes. She even kept the Wizomania tickets, from all those years ago! They were in her satchel when she flew away, can you believe she took care of them?

But it’s been years now. I haven’t forgotten about you, I just haven’t felt the need to document my life.

My life. It’s not bad by any means, it’s not perfect, but it’s mine and I wouldn’t change it.

There is only so much me and Elphie can do the way we are right now. I’m back at the Emerald City, and about to concoct a plan that honestly gives me the chills. I don’t want to talk about it too much, I fear it will go wrong if I do, but the point of it is for Elphaba to… well, fake her death.

“Fake her death—” Murth laughed. “Of course.”

We’ve not the details yet. We need to wait for something to happen, a sort of trigger? But we haven’t the faintest yet on what that could be.

Once Elphaba is out of the picture, well, we’ll see.

And indeed. This part of the story Murth knew as well. The melting of the Wicked Witch of the West. For a few years the date had been a jubilant holiday, all burning effigies and children cackling in imitation of a death they’d never seen. Until Lady Glinda was settled enough as Throne Minister to abolish the observance. Oh, she had not forbidden the revelry—Oz would celebrate what Oz pleased—but the government no longer recognized the day.

What must’ve that been like for her? Publicly celebrating the “death” of her lover? Murth supposed she would find out soon enough, if Lady Glinda decided to write about it.

No matter what Lady Glinda chose to document in her journal, Murth knew the sequence of events that would follow. That Dorothy Gale, and the witch hunters marching for the Wicked Witch, the banishment of said Wicked Witch, and then the Wizard’s departure.

Lady Glinda would have front row seats to the demise of the Witch, and she would dispose of the Wizard with an ease and quickness that would leave all of Oz breathless and dazzled, as all of Oz often was whenever Lady Glinda moved.

But wasn’t that a bit too convenient of a story?

Murth had never questioned it—Glinda the Good had made such a convincing heroine. Who would think to doubt her? But with the truth pressed beneath her very fingertips, written in blush-pink leather and dark ink, Murth felt rather foolish.

That was much more troublesome than we originally planned, and we were taken horribly by surprise. But all is done, I suppose.

Throne Minister of Oz. That’s me now. I wish I could say I’m happy about it, about the power and change I am now able to wield, but truth be told I’m rather numb to it all. It’s not what I want, but it’s what I must do.

I’m in the palace now, and I feel awfully juvenile writing this here. I don’t know where Elphie is, maybe back home, but I don’t think we’ll be able to see each other as much as

~*~

Rereading the last entry, I can’t help but smile to myself. Yes, that was her, so rudely interrupting my time alone (precious as it is, since I get so little of it nowadays!) by crashing through my window.

Having her sleep here is such a bad idea, yet there she is in my bed, snoring like an old lady.

And there was, indeed, a drawing of Elphaba sprawled in Lady Glinda’s bed in her palace chambers. There was a little heart doodled by her head, too.

I understand her. It’s hard to sleep when she isn’t here, too. She still gets nightmares, sometimes, she tells me not to worry about it, and that they’re so rare she hasn’t yet had one while she’s by herself, but I don’t believe her. I think she’s just trying to make me feel better. I wish I could be there for her every night.

She’s always so dashing when she appears. All black clothes and that hat, her face wind-kissed and the skies still lingering in the way she smells, in the way she walks. She walks differently now that she flies, it feels the ground is a suggestion she might ignore at any moment.

Now we’re here and it’s quiet. I watch her sleep, I listen to her breathing and I draw her. I try not to disturb her, because I know how tired she is. She brought me paper stars again, she’s grown so skilled at the art of folding. She says she wants to give me the skies, too…she forgets I have a bubble. I don’t blame her. The bubble is mostly for show.

I love her so very much. So terribly much.

I have written the words a thousand times, I have tried to sketch the shape of it, and still it feels insufficient. Language and graphite both fail me. How does one describe a heart when it no longer belongs to oneself?

If I could breathe her like air, I would.

The life that we have together is immeasurably precious to me, and I’d do anything to protect it, and I’d do anything to ensure she is happy with it.

I only hope she knows. I only hope it is enough.

She murmurs sometimes in her sleep. My name sounds different on her lips then. Softer. Sacred.

I still don’t know what would land me in a worse puddle, if in the past I’d been discovered with the vicious and fearsome terrorist she was known to be (said vicious and fearsome terrorist still refuses to eat green vegetables, by the way) or if I’m discovered now with that same terrorist… when she happens to be dead.

Not sure. I don’t want to test it, either.

This is nice. I should write more often, I’d forgotten how calming it could be. Despite it all, my life has been everything except calming in the past years or so. I don’t know if it’ll be calming going forward, but perhaps this can help.

~*~

Glinda,

Murth gasped. Elphaba writing straight in the journal again.

You’re sleeping, and I’m having trouble doing the same. I folded you a butterfly, it’s in your nightstand now. I hope you like it. You’ve always loved pretty things, which is why it baffles me that you love me.

You said I could read through the journal whenever I wanted. I was always apprehensive about it, you’ve carried this little thing since I met you and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to intrude your privacy.

But you’re asleep now, and we both know I’ll be gone longer than I’d like, and perhaps reading your words will let me pretend you’re awake beside me a little longer. Foolish, yes. I don’t care.

I will pretend this book is a conversation, so I am not truly leaving you behind, so I hope you don’t mind if I write a little, too.

You’re a lousy storyteller, my sweet.

“She absolutely is! Thank you!”

But seeing some things from your perspective was illuminating. The drawings I knew about, of course, and I was there for most of the things you talk about… except for those years of absence after Shiz.

I’m sorry.

I love you so very much, too. So terribly much. You needn’t wrestle language to prove it, I know. I have always known. You could say nothing at all, never write a word or draw me ever again, and I would still feel it in my bones.

You say your name sounds softer on my lips. You have no idea that for years, you were the only one saying my name at all. That is enough, my sweet. More than enough.

Our life is enough too, you know? I love living with you, as little time together as we have. I spend overlong doing dishes because I can hear you humming while you brush your hair, and I don’t want you to stop. You hum without realizing it. It’s very irritating. I hope you never notice.

And while I sweep all the crumbs you leave (all you) on the bed, I realize that I am content. Which is alarming.

I am not built for comfort. Or domesticity. I burn things. I ruin things. And yet there I am, folding towels and following your laugh as you tinker, watching as it settles in the rafters and brightens our home.

Sometimes I worry that I am only borrowing this life. That soon it will be returned to its rightful owner, and I will go back to being something sharp and solitary.

I don’t know what I’d do now without your warm hands or quiet nights or soup left warming on the stove. But you see? There’s no need for words, when we have all that.

Also, circling back to the start. I can’t believe you misspelled my name at first? It’s really not even that hard. And you ought to update the addresses in the front, how will anyone know where to return this if you don’t?

Murth discreetly wiped a tear away, and she couldn’t help but laugh.

Though considering this contains many details on our clandestine love affair, perhaps it’s best if no one returns it after you lose it. Imagine the embarrassment. Answer me truly, have you gotten rid of the idea someone will one day find this and write your biography? You’ve never mentioned that. You said you wouldn’t try to clear my name, this isn’t one of your ways to circumvent your promises with loopholes? I hate that you have the mind of a politician sometimes, even if you are a politician.

I’m rambling. I never knew I could do that even in writing. I’m mostly jesting, I do love how intelligent and cunning you are. Except when you turn that against me.

Regardless, I think I will go to sleep now. It is still surprising to me that I get to lie next to you, that you want me to, that you allow me to. There’s nothing in the world like it, and there’s no one in the world like you.

I do hope you find this only after I’m gone, otherwise I’ll never hear the end of it.

Yours,

Elphaba.

Oh she was sappy even after all those years. If this was how their back and forth always went, Murth was glad not to have Lady Glinda’s side of that initial correspondence, when they talked mostly over letters.

Well, Elphie, I shall reply to you here, since I know the first thing you’ll do once we see each other again and I fall asleep next to you is peruse through my journal, because you have no shame.

I’m kidding, darling, I know you will do it to know what I got up to, so I will do my diligent updates just for you. I’ll leave a bookmark here though, aren’t I nice?

You have got to be the most vexing creature to ever walk the lands of Oz, Miss Elphaba. How come you never tell me such beautiful things in person, and I have to read them from my own journal? I cried. I hope you’re happy.

Our life, Elphie... yes. Yes, of course it’s enough. You’re right, as always. And you’re not borrowing anything. This is something we built together.

Do you hear? We built this. With our little home and our garden and our crooked towels (you fold them terribly, by the way. No, don’t argue, I shan’t hear it).

You say you are not made for comfort, but I have seen you resting your head on my shoulder and you fit so perfectly there. I have seen you stealing my blankets and denying it. I have seen you soften like warm butter at the sound of the kettle.

You are better at peace than you think. You are better at love than you believe. You always have been.

Why, I have proof! Just look at all my drawings of you, for Oz’s sake! Don’t you look so beautiful when you’re at home?

And as for not knowing what you would do without me. Well. I have no intention of testing that. You’re stuck with me. For however long this world allows. And after that, I shall haunt whatever realm you flee to and make myself a right nuisance.

I love you. I won’t say it in any other way.

I love you, I love you, I love you. Tremendously. Obnoxiously. It is positively inconvenient how much I love you.

And if you ever call yourself sharp and solitary again, I will proceed to make another soup without salt. We know that ended well the last time!

Feel free to reply. If you are reading while I’m sleeping after we just reunited, please do wake me so we can kiss about it.

But about my biography. You recall I started this journal when I was, what, seventeen? What a lifetime ago that was. I couldn’t have known life would turn out this way, I promise it wasn’t an elaborate plan to circumvent my promise with a loophole (and I don’t do that that often!) The seventeen year old Galinda truly believed her life to be memorable enough to warrant documentation. Don’t think too harshly of her and her vanity, I’m rather fond of her.

I’d have thought someone as scholarly as you would’ve kept historical context in mind when reading something written so long ago. I’m disappointed in you, Miss Elphaba.

And this is my journal, so I will not sign it.

Murth pressed the heel of her palm to her damp cheek, exasperated with herself. Just when she’d composed herself enough to breathe again, Lady Glinda’s looping handwriting had come in like a gale and knocked the breath from her a second time.

“Sweet Oz,” she whispered hoarsely, staring at the declaration of I love you, I love you, I love you. “You pair of dramatic fools.”

She meant it as a scold, but her voice betrayed her, it trembled, wobbling at the edges. The bed felt suddenly too grand beneath her, the sheets too soft, the silence too loud.

Who was this woman on the pages? Such a stranger.

Murth sniffed, irritated to feel tears threatening again.

Her fingers hovered over the page, not touching, as if one wrong move might disturb the decades-old warmth pressed into it. What a ridiculous, astonishing thing—to love like this. Tender and fierce, absurd and loyal. Who could have guessed Lady Glinda carried it in silence all these years, a flame cupped against the wind.

Murth wiped her face again—oh, truly enough of that—and straightened her spine. Dignity recovered, or at least dragged back into place by its collar, she turned the page with hands that still betrayed her in their trembling.

I shall not bore you with politics, dear journal, you’ve always had the good sense to let me ramble about nicer things. But yes, an update is due. Years have passed. Lessons learned, crowns exchanged, and other such exhausting milestones.

Fiyero and I ended our engagement after I sent the Wizard packing. We offered no explanation to the press, of course, but Oz never needs one. They invented their own rather enthusiastically. Tales of screaming arguments, clandestine affairs, and some imaginary mistress carrying his child. Utter rubbish, all of it. But people do so adore a scandal when the truth is dull, don’t they?

Not that we told anyone the truth, but you know.

Murth hummed. Huh. She’d known the rumors weren’t true, of course, because Captain Tigelaar had thrown up a fuss about them downstairs in the living room.

“They’re making me out to be a scoundrel!”

“Well, dearest, rumors seldom spring from thin air.”

“Glinda! You know I would never!”

“Oh, you would, don’t give me that. You haven’t, true, but only because you haven’t been given the chance.”

“Don’t say those things! Now the press is all over me because they think I’ve hurt you!”

“I know, it’s dreadful. And over an affair! I honestly don’t see anything so wrong in having an affair.”

Fiyero had paused, and laughed, and the matter was never brought up again. At the time, Murth had thought it an odd comment and had simply moved on with her dusting.

Now, recalling it, she let out a quiet, astonished little chuckle.

Oz, but she had been blind.

What fun.

Elphaba’s wish was never to pan out. I found myself needing to marry anyway, a few years after me and Fiyero called things off. It was one thing to be Glinda the Good, the little propaganda-spreading figurehead working under the Wizard, and it was another thing to be the Wizard, and dealing with the people of his court.

Perhaps I would’ve gotten away with it in the past, but certainly not once I was on the throne.

I could’ve asked Fiyero, just imagine how people would’ve swooned at our triumphant return! But he found himself a nice little sweetheart and now that would’ve been a true scandal. I don’t like scandals at my age. The idea.

Aha, so this was the reason, then. Chuffrey had been a good man by all social accounts—dignified, doting, always making certain the footmen arranged Lady Glinda’s shawls just so, always arriving with flowers as though the gestures could bridge a chasm.

He had adored her. Murth had seen it plainly, the way a man gazed at a jewel and tried to earn it. And she had smiled at him just as she smiled at everyone—bright, flawless, and far, far away.

He had never known her, either. Of that Murth was painfully certain.

Lady Glinda had barely even given him the time of day, and even Murth had wondered, all those years ago, how exactly he fit into her life.

Now she knew he had not fit, and had only served a purpose. A means to an end. Poor man, he had wandered into a story that was never his.

I married, but nothing of note. Chuffrey was a means to an end and he died a couple of years after. No, it wasn’t my fault! And I did not marry him just because he was old and wealthy so I could keep his fortune. Rumors abound, you know how it is. Well, I suppose you wouldn’t know. And no, it wasn’t Elphaba’s fault either, don’t even think about it. Much as she wanted him out of the picture the second he appeared.

I’ll tell you that no one respects a widow. The amount of marriage proposals I received was honestly staggering. The man’s corpse wasn’t even cold! But I was able to play the grief up, so people rarely bother me anymore.

Onto the important things: progress is being made when it comes to the Animals and all sorts of things that matter, me and Elphie are really happy about it, though of course it hurts to be apart I think we’ve grown rather used to it.

I keep telling her that when we retire and get to live together it’s just going to be sweeter.

What a dreadful shame, Murth thought, turning the page with care. Lady Glinda had left this world before she could ever lay her burdens down, before she might enjoy peace earned through so much toil.

The notion caught in Murth’s throat. How cruel, that a gentle life had only ever existed in the margins of a journal. It wasn’t right. It wasn’t just.

It wasn’t fair in the slightest.

Despite her insistence that politics were dreadfully dull material for a journal, Lady Glinda still left little crumbs of statecraft scattered through her entries. Hints at policies, quiet maneuvers, subtle machinations. Enough for Murth to see it clearly that whatever Lady Glinda had been doing, Elphaba had been part of it.

They had been working in tandem, even after the world believed the Witch gone.

And meanwhile, Elphaba had managed to keep up the charade of death with such ease that even Murth had never once considered she might still be out there.

But here in these pages, Elphaba lived more vividly than most people did in the flesh. Lady Glinda sketched her whenever she could, and wrote of her far more often.

It was when Murth was about to reach the end, that something gave her a hard pause.

I think it’s time, isn’t it?

40 years of service to the populace, in one way or another, but it’s time to step down. I think we’ve done everything we could, and planted the right seeds to ensure the person coming after me has an easier go at things.

As for a successor, well, Elphaba has been hard at work looking these past years… well, not so much looking as keeping an eye on this person; one of the few that knows Elphie is still alive other than Fiyero and me.

I’ve met the future little queen only once. She’s not living like a queen at all, she was under a spell in some lost cabin in the woods

“What?”

until Elphie rescued her. She’s still young, I think she is seventeen? But she’s eager, and if Elphie says she’s ready then I’m not one to argue.

“What!?”

I do think seventeen is so young. I was barely seventeen when I made my way to Shiz. But, again, I’m not one to argue.

So we’ll do some preparations to ensure the smoothest power transition of power possible, and then I’m gone.

And I don’t mean just gone as in, I’ll quit, but I’ll be truly gone.

I cannot bear the thought of being recognized in streets, stopped in parlors, asked for advice or gratitude or apologies. I cannot endure being a face that means something to people. I am tired of belonging to everyone.

I don’t want to ever walk into a room where I am known, unless it’s my own living room, where my love waits for me.

I cannot live beside Elphaba the way I want to here. I might return to society as a former Throne Minister, but she never could return at all. I will not have her hiding in shadows while I stand in the sun. No, if I want a life with her, I must leave the world that wanted me and condemned her.

So I will go. I will vanish as she did.

And then I’ll be with her, and we’ll be together, no titles, no duties, no eyes on us. Just us, and that will be enough. It always was.

This couldn’t be.

My sweet,

The time to say goodbye to this place is coming, but I find that I will miss it just a little bit. I have grown a dislike of the Emerald City, as you know, but there is something precious about these four walls, and the four walls of the chambers back in your house.

Call me sentimental if you must. I know you feel similarly even if you try to hide it. I know how badly you want to get away from it all, but I also know how close you’re going to keep your memories of our life. I know because I will be holding them close, too, even as we move on from these places.

I don’t know when you’ll read this, we’ll have a busy day tomorrow. This whole “being dead” thing can be hectic, trust me. The point is, that I’m not really writing this with the thought of when you will read it in mind, I’m sort of just writing it. I guess I’m journaling, too.

What else do you do in this thing? I refuse to talk to it the way you do, but I am talking to you so I guess it’s the same damn thing.

It’s been hard, hasn’t it? It’s been nearly insurmountable at times, but I’m proud of the work we’ve done, I’m proud of the work you’ve done, and there truly was no fight we could not win.

The greatest team there’s ever been, didn’t I tell you?

There’s still a lifetime of things to do together, and I can’t wait for them.

Always yours,

Elphaba.

~*~

It’s time to say goodbye.

Everything’s in motion, everything’s set, and I’ve done everything I could. Elphie and I have done everything we could. There is a deep sense of satisfaction that comes with trying your best, and seeing things work out.

Well, they haven’t worked out just yet, but they will. I know they will.

But as I’m saying goodbye, there are things that I feel I must leave behind.

That includes you.

I know, I’m sorry. After all this time? But I think it’s necessary. I won’t ever return to the palace, and I won’t ever return to this house, to this room where I’m currently hiding before I proceed to hide you. (Elphie was right, being dead is a whole business).

Whoever is reading my words, I do hope it’s been a long, long time. I do hope I’m no longer around, because if that’s so then me and Elphaba will be no more than distant memories, and it won’t be too hard to reveal the truth you’ve found here.

Yes, this is all true. Every word in this book, every letter, every note, every drawing. All the truth.

Do with it what you will, I am under an oath, after all, that I will personally not try to clear Elphie’s name.

You are, of course, under no such oath.

And if it hasn’t been that long, well, then I’m not sure. Elphaba was foolish enough to slip to Ozma the existence of this journal, so I’m sure she’ll be looking for it… for years she was one of the only companions Elphie had, and so she found out about us. The girl has been infatuated with what she calls “the greatest love story of all time” since she was young.

But, again, this is no longer my possession. I trust you will do with it what you see fit.

If you’ve read this far I like to think you’re a curious historian from the future, and not just some nosy person who found a dead woman’s journal and decided to read it for a lark.

“Guilty.”

There is a chance I know you. There is a chance I don’t. Either way, thank you for your time, it is rare to find someone willing to entertain a woman of my age for so long.

It occurs to me you may also be a woman of my age.

“Shit.”

Murth, on the rare occasion you’re the one who found this… Well. I hope you had fun, at least! Don’t think less of me now, dear. I still paid your bills for years and years and years, didn’t I? I’m that same woman who did! If you must steal my gems or jewelry, do it carefully for the love of Oz. The last thing you need is someone discovering you and sending you to prison before you find a fourth husband.

Take care, whoever you are.

Sincerely, and finally free,

Glinda.

Murth had lost count of how many times she dabbed at her eyes with her sleeves. She put the book down and took a deep, trembling little breath.

Despite the years, she could see Lady Glinda in this room still. No one had lived here since she passed… since she went away.

There was the vanity where she would sit so Murth could do her hair, and all the little knickknacks she had accumulated over the years. A little glass castle, a sorcery book, a tiara with some broken pieces she insisted she would fix herself when she could, old sentimental accessories like a pair of gloves that were so worn they no longer kept one’s hands warm, and a little collection of quills and pens and pencils and different types of ink, all the things that were not valuable enough to take, but valuable enough for Lady Glinda to keep.

And in this room, the presence of another… not erased, but unseen until now that Murth had new context. Of course the gloves were too worn, they weren’t Lady Glinda’s. Of course she hadn’t fixed the tiara, it’d fallen because of someone else’s hands combing through her hair. All the quills and pens and pencils were foreign, and now Murth knew where she had used them.

There weren’t other traces of Elphaba, it’d been too long for that. But in another life she could imagine Lady Glinda discreetly taking black hairs from her pillows, so that Murth wouldn’t see, and locking her window in the mornings so that Murth would find it the way she’d left it the night before.

How could she have lived so long like that? Through such a public life? In a mansion so full of people? In the damn Palace?

How could she have endured such a thing?

For love, Murth thought somewhat wistfully, running wrinkly fingers over the worn pink leather cover of the journal. It was all for love and because of love.

She searched for the box where she’d found the little book, and took out the papers there—only to be greeted once again with her old mistress’s handwriting.

Dear Elphaba,

Dear Elphie,

Darling,

Sincerely, Galinda

Love, Galinda

Always yours, Glinda

Letters upon letters. Elphaba’s side of the hoard, so to speak. She had kept everything too, and Lady Glinda had saved it all together. There were other mementos, too, old notes scribbled in scraps; paper hearts and flowers and butterflies, lovingly folded by Elphaba’s hands. A faded pair of theater tickets to Wizomania. Wrinkled pressed flowers, so old they stuck in yellowish marks against paper.

When Murth breathed in, she swore she could smell the distant scent of them.

She couldn’t bring herself to read the letters, she felt she’d intruded enough—and after Lady Glinda addressed her directly, she found it even harder to stomach.

Besides, she didn’t want to revisit it all again—their school years, their heartbreak, their hardships.

There was one thing, though, that she wouldn’t mind visiting at all—

Sun was relentless on this side of the world, and downright unbearable, if Murth was being totally honest. How could anyone stand it?

She tightened the shawl around her face and trudged forward in the Vinkus wilderness. If that old hag from the closest village had lied to her—

But she hadn’t, Murth realized quickly.

A small vegetable farm at the end of the road, east of the well, down the hill. Murth recognized it, of course, she had seen its likeness put to paper many a times before. The vine-covered wooden beams, a modest porch, and entryway lined with a frankly absurd amount of flowers—that was a new addition.

She didn’t need to steel herself or take a deep breath or fix her clothes or take a moment, she was sweltering in the heat and hoped to get out of the sun so she didn’t waste time with anything else.

Marching down the flower-lined path felt almost unreal. They were everywhere, in pots and beds and unruly bushes, spilling over borders, pushing up between the cracks in the stone slabs. An impossible abundance. Daisies brushing her skirts, peonies and roses nodding in the breeze, sunflowers craning like nosy sentries. Poppies scattered like spilled paint. So many blooms Murth recognized, and twice as many she didn’t, each one insisting they had always lived here, and always would.

By the time Murth reached the door and knocked, she felt as if she had stepped into another world.

A crash resounded from the inside, and she winced out of instinct. It sounded like a broken plate.

Before Murth could even think on it, the door swung open.

A woman stared down at her, but not the woman she’d been expecting. This one was tall and sharply built, lean as a fence post and twice as solid by the look of her. Fine scars crossed her skin, a thin line over the bridge of her nose, another one over her eyebrow, and at the side of her mouth. The corners of her eyes carried years in their creases, and her long, black hair was threaded through with silver.

Oh, and she was green.

“Greetings. Can I help you?”

Murth opened her mouth, but couldn’t find her words. The Wicked Witch of the West herself.

Elphaba.

She had only ever seen her in wanted posters and crude, mocking graffiti, and then, later, in Lady Glinda’s gentle sketches, earnest and adoring. But even those drawings were out of date by now.

Here she was. Not ink, not rumor, not history—but real. Solid. Breathing.

Behind Elphaba, another plate broke against the wooden floorboards, but she was too tall for Murth to see what was happening inside the house.

Elphaba whirled about and hissed a quick: “Chistery! Stop doing that! I’m going!” Then turned to Murth again. “Apologies, you seem to have come at a bad time. Is there anything you need?” And her eyes narrowed, and Murth thought for a moment that she would recognize her. “Are you new here? You’re shocked at my color, I imagine, all the villagers have gotten used to it by now. Let me get—”

She stumbled forward, almost colliding with Murth, because something had jumped onto her back.

A—winged monkey?

“Chistery, you rascal, I said I’m going.” Elphaba grunted, bending an arm toward her back to yank the monkey free from her shoulders. It was all a very practiced motion that suggested this was a common occurrence. “Don’t you see we have a visitor? You’re so awfully rude. Sorry, this is Chistery the Second and he’s quite young and hasn’t learned manners. I’m monkeysitting him while his father is away, and I have to settle him before he pulls out every last strand of my hair. Do come in if you wish.”

And with that she turned on her heels again, gingerly holding Chistery on her hip like a stubborn toddler, her movements springy and jittery. She wore simple trousers and a loose shirt, and she was barefoot and unconcerned. No towering hat, no swirling cape, no broom in hand, no vicious snarl from the posters.

Just a woman in her home… and Murth still could not quite believe she was real.

“What’s going on? I swear I heard the door—Oh.”

Now there was a woman Murth couldn’t believe was real, either.

Couldn’t believe was alive, more like it.

“Murth.” Lady Glinda’s mouth quirked up. “You’re a long way from home, dear.”

“My lady—”

“Oh, please, none of that.” She waved a hand, then walked toward Murth. “No one has called me a lady in half a decade.”

“That’s not true,” Elphaba muttered from somewhere in the house—where had she gone and when? “I call you that.”

“Hush, Elphie, you only call me that in contexts we ought not to mention in front of polite company. It’s been a long time, old friend, how are you?”

Murth blinked, and Lady G—and Glinda was in front of her. Alive as she had ever been. More alive, Murth thought, even if she was older now. The years marked her face too, but the lines suited her; there was sun in her skin now, warmth earned from life in the open. Her curls were cut boyishly short, practical and charming all at once, and she looked lively in a way Murth had never quite seen in those decades of prestige and power.

Oz had mourned her. Yet she had not been lost—only finally found.

“You really lied to all of us.”

Glinda laughed. “Yes, I tend to do that. Come in, let me close the door, and I’ll get you some of the wine we’ve been brewing. I assume you’re here because you found my journal?”

Murth swallowed hard. “I did.”

“Oh but you didn’t need to come all the way here to return it. It doesn’t belong to me anymore.”

The kitchen was bright and open, sunlight spilling through sheer curtains draped over a wide window above the counter. Pots crowded every surface, some decorative, others clearly young vegetables just taking root. The air smelled faintly of herbs and clean earth, the garden following them indoors.

Glinda went immediately to the counter, shooing a fluffy white cat trying to steal from a bowl of blueberries. She moved at ease, unburdened. Without her gowns and sparkle she seemed smaller, but the way she carried herself still made her seem larger than life.

Murth had never seen her like this. She wasn’t maintaining grace—she was grace, at rest.

The cat scampered from the counter, and threaded between Glinda’s ankles, rubbing its head against her calves, but she barely paid it any mind.

“You’ll get none of this, Malky,” she said briskly. “That only works on Elphie.”

It was in the decisive flick of her hand, even doing something as trivial as gesturing to a cat, and in the sternness of her voice, that instinctive note of command as if she still expected to be heard and obeyed. The Throne Minister of Oz was still there, unmistakable, beneath the sunlight and freckles and simple summer dress.

Murth smiled.

The novelty, however, was wearing off. Murth had spent so much time with Glinda these years, with her writings and her drawings, that seeing her here started to make sense, it started to connect with reality.

“I didn’t come here to return your journal.” Murth unwrapped her shawl from her hair and breathed in the greenery, the sweetness of wine, and something warm baking in the oven. “My lady—”

Glinda raised an eyebrow.

“Glinda,” Murth corrected. “Force of habit. But I came here to give you something else.”

“Is that so?” Glinda pushed a clay cup into Murth’s hand, it smelled awfully sweet, and it was awfully murky. “You have to give wine years and years to age properly, of course, but do you know how simple it is to do that with magic? It makes everything so much more time efficient. Do have a taste.”

“It’s—” Murth frowned. “You made this?”

“Mhm.”

“You? Yourself?”

“Yes!” Glinda huffed.

“That can’t be. Just how much magic did you use on it? Is it a potion?”

“It’s not a potion! It’s just wine, Murth, I used magic only to speed up the aging process. Why are you so surprised?”

“Because it’s good.” She took another sip. “Forgive me, I’ve seen you burn toast. I never thought you’d take to wine making, and that you’d take to it successfully.”

“Oh, Murth.” Glinda laughed. “You haven’t seen me in years, you discover I’m not dead, and you come here and drink my wine and you tease me.”

“What else is a handmaiden to do?”

“Indeed. So what do you have to—Malky!” She took the cat away from the blueberries again, but it melted in her arms, head lolling over the crook of her elbow as if it was playing dead, and Glinda seemed unable to let it go with how limp it’d gotten. “Sorry. What do you have to give me?”

“It’s—”

“So you’re Murth?” Elphaba appeared in the kitchen quite suddenly, the monkey now happily munching on a pear, perched on her shoulder as if she were a particularly sturdy branch. “I thought you looked familiar.”

“Elphie, don’t interrupt.”

“You know me?” Murth frowned. “We never met.”

“We didn’t.”

“But Elphie still saw you, now and again,” Glinda said, smile tugging at her lips. “Usually on mornings when she had to hide under the bed while you put on my face for the day. Unfortunate times when we’d gotten too distracted and lost track of time, so we missed the proper window to sneak her out. Well, I suppose not quite so unfortunate.”

“Don’t talk about that,” said Elphaba. “That’s private.”

“This is my old handmaiden, Elphie, she knows everything there is to know about me, don’t be shy.”

Murth just blinked at them. “But I don’t.”

“You don’t what, dear?”

“I don’t know everything there is to know about you,” Murth said, laughing a bit. “Not even close. I mean—” And she motioned to Glinda with the cat and Elphaba with the monkey and she motioned to this entire space, this entire house in the middle of nowhere. “I never would’ve guessed that—”

As she trailed off, Glinda’s smile turned fond. “Yes, that was the point. I’m sorry if you felt deceived.”

“Deceived?” Murth laughed again, this time harder. “No, my lady, I feel relieved. I’ve been here for a few clock ticks, and I don’t think I’ve seen you happier in forty years. This is what I’m here to give you—to give you both, as a matter of fact.”

She set her valise on the kitchen table. Malky and Chistery leapt from their respective humans at once, noses buried in wool and linen, sniffing and chirping. Murth hardly registered them. Her hands were already diving past traveling gowns and neatly folded stockings until her fingers closed around leather.

She drew out the thick, brownish book, and turned to face Elphaba and Glinda.

They stood side by side, not quite touching, yet close enough that the space between them hummed. A shared breath, a mirrored stillness. History drawn into the shape of two women.

Glinda reached for the book first, apparently already knowing what it was. “Murth. You didn’t.”

She shrugged. “I thought I was the best person for the job.”

“What is it?” asked Elphaba, and Glinda opened the book so that they may look at the title together, for the front was bare—Murth was not a leather worker, after all. “‘The Life and Times of Glinda Arduenna of the Uplands: a personal account from her only handmaiden?’”

“The title is a work in progress,” Murth said, flushing.

Glinda laughed. “I quite like it. You really wrote this yourself?”

“I know how to write,” Murth said defensively.

“I know, dear, but there’s a difference between knowing how to write and writing an entire book.” She flipped through the pages, and seemed impressed the writing was all the way through. “And about me, no less.”

“Plenty of material to go by.” Murth sniffed. “Besides, what else could I do with my time? With the Ozma girl tearing up your house—”

“Tearing up?”

“Well, she’s requisitioning it.”

“That’s not tearing up.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Murth waved a hand. “I’ve been out of a job for two years now! So what could I do with my time other than write your memoirs?”

“You could’ve gotten another job?” Elphaba offered.

“She didn’t need one,” said Glinda. “Is that bracelet mine?”

Murth tucked her hands behind her back. She had forgotten about that! Oh, well, at least she had left the diamond necklace back home. “When in the provinces, one must show the locals a little style, my lady.”

“Oh, I’m sure.” Glinda chuckled. “I admit I was expecting someone would only write this after I was long gone, I don’t want nosy people knowing where we are right now.”

“That’s the only copy that exists,” Murth said. “Well, I have the original manuscript back home, but I haven’t shown anyone, I haven’t sent it anywhere, and I won’t because I know you don’t want the attention just yet, but I wanted to show it to you regardless.”

“That’s kind of you, Murth.”

“Besides,” Murth said quickly, because Glinda saying those simple words to her reminded her too much of being under her employ. She looked toward Elphaba. “I remember what you said to her, once, that you didn’t know how to feel about posterity, and how you didn’t want your sappy letters to be your legacy.”

Glinda giggled some more, pressing a hand over her mouth.

“I don’t even remember saying that.” Elphaba’s brow furrowed, but she was growing flustered.

“It was in one of your letters,” Murth said. “I wrote it down. For historical accuracy, of course.”

“Oh, Oz.” Glinda was still laughing when she ran a hand down Elphaba’s arm. “Darling, I think your legacy being your sappy letters is much better than everything else people are saddling you with.”

Elphaba was busying herself with keeping the cat and the monkey away from Murth’s things. “I think I’d rather be known as the villain.”

“Don’t listen to her,” said Glinda, now clutching the book close to her chest. “Murth this is—well, more than quite kind. I’m touched, really, but I find myself at a loss for words. This is so unexpected, you see.”

“You’re the first person from before who’s ever found us,” Elphaba said. “Glinda’s a bit overwhelmed, forgive her.”

Glinda swatted her on the shoulder. “Hush, Elphie. Murth, really, I’m—”

“There’s no need to thank me,” Murth said. “Much less because you haven’t even read it. And you don’t have to read it, I just wanted you to have it. Like you relinquished your journal, I’m relinquishing this to you, so you may do with it as you see fit.”

“And where is the precious journal?” asked Elphaba.

“Safe,” Murth said. “It’s mine now.”

“It is.” Glinda smiled at her again. She was so bright. “And you’re sure no one has read it yet? Not even dear husband?”

Now Murth was the one to flush. Of course Glinda noticed the wedding band around her finger, there were few things that ever escaped this woman.

“No one, my lady, I swear it.” Murth defaulted to the politeness of her old position.

Before she could say anything else, Glinda had an arm wrapped about her. “I’m happy for you, old friend.”

Absolutely baffling. Murth couldn’t remember if they had ever hugged before. Funny, she had brushed Glinda’s hair every day for decades, and done her makeup and prepared her baths, she had probably spent more time with her than anyone else alive, including her current lover, and yet—they had never hugged before.

“Now come.” Glinda took her hand. “I’ll show you around our home, and you may stay for a few days if you like—truth is I’d love the company. Every now and then I go a little crazy with only Elphie to talk to, so having you here will be wonderful. And I shall give you my honest opinion on what you wrote, if you want. And for the first time, I will cook for you! Isn’t that lovely?”

Forty years of knowing her, seven years without her, and yet she was the same woman Murth had worked for. Rambling and good-spirited, and now more herself than she had ever been before.

Murth’s smile crept up slowly. It pleased her, profoundly, that she had once broken the most important of rules and rummaged through her mistress’s belongings. A very foolish thing. A very disloyal thing.

And the wisest choice she had ever made.

“I would love that.”