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She kept the green bottle on her perfume shelf these days, and it was all too easy to grab by mistake when she was choosing a morning fragrance. Every time she did, the moving muscles in her body would grind to a halt. A ripple would begin, grief rolling through her core as she was reminded of the jagged hole in her heart that haunted her less-than-good dreams.
I couldn’t be happier, she’d sang. What a joke. Even back then, she’d known it to be a lie.
Sometimes, on those occasions when Elphaba’s absence cut deeper than she could handle, Galinda would tuck the bottle into her dress and bring it with her as she ran her errands. Greeting the people, being the perfect poster girl with the perfect posture she’d practiced since she was a child. None of them knew about the glass pressing cold against her abdomen, and there was something of a thrill to be found in that.
Thank Oz, she’s dead! voices would cry, pretty bouquets landing on the plush seat of Galinda’s bubble with heavy thumps. The Wicked Witch is dead! Long live Glinda the Good!
Smiling gracefully, she’d pick up a bouquet and give it an elegant sniff. It would always be too cloying.
Galinda loved the spotlight, except for when she didn’t.
It was a sunny afternoon just like that when she snuck out of the gates of the Emerald City. She knew how to do it—she’d done it before, shrouded in black and galloping to a castle hugging the coastline. She didn’t bother with the steed today. She had too much weight on her back, with all the regret and broken promises and spewed hatred. It would bring the poor thing down. Instead, she headed to the woods on foot. Hoping to get lost, maybe. Wanting to see how long would pass before anyone noticed she wasn’t floating around, pointing with her fake wand and waving at strangers.
The first thing she decided upon arrival was that everything was chilly and wet and she wasn’t too fond of the woods, no matter how Ozian they were. She hardly had the shoes to be prancing about in places of this nature, no pun intended. And there weren’t many animals around—they were still being introduced back into the lands of Oz, understandably cautious about the governing bodies’ sudden change of heart. It left the woods deserted like the aftermath of apocalypse.
Rather than bringing her the clear head she’d imagined, walking through the trees brought Galinda a whole lot of annoyance. Her dress was muddy at the hems and her heels would sink into the dirt too deep and after a handful of minutes she was ready to scream and call it quits and go home. Perhaps it was fate, because it was at that moment that she glanced up and her steps came to a stop.
Above her, the trees formed quite the unnatural shape. As if a gigantic bird or squirrel had bent them into a shelter. In normal circumstances, that would’ve been her sign to turn tail and get the blazes out of there—and preferably write about it in her diary—but she was especially frazzled today. She couldn’t think straight.
Did Oz have those types of creatures? Nothing of that size had ever been covered in the textbooks at Shiz. Galinda wasn’t the curious sort—keeping unpleasant matters out of sight and out of mind had served her well, more often than not. But it seemed Elphaba had a way of influencing her, even after she’d passed.
Before she knew it, her pink heel had planted itself at the base of the trunk, and she was scaling it like one of the Wizard’s flying monkeys.
“So what,” Galinda muttered under her breath, nails digging into bark, “if I get eaten by some big, stupid, fluffy”—her grip slipped, and she let out a small shriek, before continuing—“squirrel?!”
She’d deserve it, she thought through gasps of air, for staying in that filthy closet and doing nothing. Watching. Galinda Upland was no spectator. Had she lost her mind?
She threw her leg over a particularly thick branch, hauling herself up with the last of her strength, and collapsed onto a flat surface, chest heaving.
It took a lot longer than a clock-tick for her to catch her breath and steady her dizzy head. For the umpteenth time, she cursed her inability to use magic.
When she came to herself, she realized the place she had ended up in appeared… homely. Not the primitive living arrangements of a beast, but those of a person.
And oh goodness, had she stumbled into the secret quarters of some wizard or witch or unfriendly squatter? She jumped to her feet with a click of her shoes.
“Hello?” she called, wary.
It was quiet, serene. No one responded to her. The only sound was the breeze, playing with the leaves that made up the circular entrance. Galinda took a step forward. Then another.
Then she clapped a hand over her own mouth, trying to keep her breakfast down.
Because she’d wondered—oh, how she’d wondered—what kind of place Elphaba had lived in during her exile, and in truth she’d imagined a place far more dingy and disgusting than this. Something like that castle, dark and grotty. But no, this was pretty, and gentle and so Elphaba that Galinda felt the same old tears welling up in her eyes before she could think about stopping them.
Furniture fashioned masterfully out of branches. A firepit, soft moss underfoot, pots and pans and lanterns. Flowers and nuts and berries, the retreat of a fairy from a storybook.
She staggered over to the dresser. There were newspaper clippings, propaganda posters. Elphaba Thropp, the prodigy. The activist. The wicked witch. So much green, so many twisted snarls and sinister cartoons and of course that’s what they were—cartoons, because that rendition of her was nothing but a fabrication.
Galinda continued to rifle through the papers, unsure what expression she was making. So many memories, more expected faces. Nessarosa Thropp, the governess and her promotion and her policies. Fiyero and his soldiers and his orders. Both of them, gone. Just like the girl who had loved them. Both of them, taken from that girl because of Galinda.
She was flicking back through the stack when it dawned on her that she hadn’t seen her own face. That was impossible. Had she missed something? Wasn’t there anything about her at all? In the news, at least?
Even the colors finding her eyes didn’t match, there were blues and greens and greys and yellows but not any—no, where was it—
Her heart dropped at the lack of pink atop the dresser until, in a petulant tantrum, she threw open the first drawer, and whatever was left keeping her together shattered into fragments.
Galinda Upland, how ditzy she was. How utterly foolish. She stamped her foot until it left a dent in the floor beneath her. Her tears fell like rain. Galinda loved Galinda, but she hated the Galinda that bickered in the dormitory and dueled with her wand and gifted that ugly hat. Every hurtful act she’d ever made Elphaba the recipient of meant nothing now, they’d agreed on it, but it still meant everything. Silly Galinda, stupid stupid Galinda!
She had no choice but to get awfully cross with herself, because everything in that drawer was about ‘Glinda the Good’, and it was all so sentimentally useless. Her face with no caption, the glamorous curl of her handwriting, a pressed pink flower in a book.
A note, on a page.
I hope you get what your heart desires.
Galinda’s hands wrapped around the edge of the dresser to keep herself upright. She stayed there, unmoving, until she could draw in a full breath without choking on it.
“Elphie,” she murmured, releasing the wood and tracing her thumb across her own pink pen scrawl. “Elphie, Elphie, Elphie… Oh goodness, Elphie. Why didn’t I go with you, back then?”
The question rang empty in the air even as it was leaving her lips. She knew she’d still make the same choice, every time. Because what was Galinda without her people and their love? She didn’t have magic, she wasn’t ready to bleed for change like Elphaba and Fiyero were, all she wanted was…
The bark was cool against her forehead when she pressed it to the wall. She hadn’t noticed she’d gotten so worked up. It was simply too easy to picture Elphaba here, braiding her hair. Reading the Grimmiere and casting her spells.
Oz, what Galinda would give to hear her voice just once more. She’d sacrifice anything to hear her laugh, witch cackle or otherwise, and to hear her sing.
But bygones were bygones. The Wicked Witch was dead.
She pushed off of the wall with a huff. Her mind was in a daze as she moved to the round entrance of the treehouse, twisting her shoulders under the hanging foliage.
“I was never here, Elphie,” she said aloud, bordering on hysterical. “Don’t worry, I didn’t see a thing. Not even your collection of love letters to me!”
My, she wished there were some. She’d have a grand time reading those. The one Elphaba had left in the Grimmiere stopped feeling fresh once Galinda could recite it from memory.
Her hands rose to cover her eyes as though she were a child. “Not a thing, not a thing at all!”
She smiled wide, showing all of her teeth, too close to a grimace. A laugh bubbled up from somewhere in her chest and she swayed where she stood, dragging her feet around in a clumsy dance. She pressed the back of one of her hands to her hairline, and the other fell to her hip.
She kicked her heels and jumped until the tension in her jaw evaporated. All that was left afterwards was a heaviness, as if the gravity pulling her down was twice as strong.
Her cheeks that were red with frustration and upset began to cool. She turned away from Elphaba’s sanctuary with a sniff, and climbed back down the tree.