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Elphaba gazed out over the Emerald City with a strange emptiness. She had a feeling that she was never going to see it again, that beautiful city that she had dreamed of living in all her life. She could recall the first time she ever set foot on it, arm in arm with Glinda, and how they’d tried to learn the whole city in a day, pointing, gasping, giggling between themselves. Drunk on the new world before them and on their youth.
Now the shine of the city is clouded by Elphaba’s memory of the place: the nights she’d circled the skies, wondering if there was any safe place for her to land and sleep. The day she’d flown from the Emerald City, devastated at uncovering the true nature of the wizard.
She was exiled from the city, thrown out of the place she’d lived in her childhood dreams, watching her best friend slowly ascend the throne.
A best friend she hadn’t spoken to for a long, long time—until now.
“Come on,” Fiyero tugged her hand, pulling her away from the window at the Emerald Palace and towards the flight of stairs leading down, out of the palace. They couldn’t hear the guards behind them anymore, but Elphaba knew they wouldn’t be far behind.
She had to run.
She knew she had to run.
But something held her back: Glinda.
Glinda was up there, still with the wizard and his cage full of winged monkeys. Elphaba could still see her in her mind’s eye, her long blue dress brushing the floor and her tiara glittering on her pile of blonde curls. It wasn’t that Elphaba worried Glinda would be in danger, because she knew Glinda could handle herself. She had a way of always choosing the right side to fall on, and she’d done it again. No, what held Elphaba back was the look in Glinda’s eyes, recognition and betrayal and longing, which would haunt Elphaba for the rest of her life if she ran right then, Elphaba knew it.
There was no reason for Elphaba to stay behind though. Glinda would be fine, and Glinda had never let whatever was between them get in the way of her own self interest—why should Elphaba?
Elphaba remembered Glinda stepping out into the public eye and calling her dangerous, promising to take care of the citizens of Oz in the perilous times, remembered her telling Elphaba to lay down her pride and her principles and aim for the top.
And still, Elphaba said, “Wait.”
She looked back up the stone steps that they’d just fled down, hand in hand, and she listened for the sound of high heels against it.
“Elphaba,” Fiyero urged, pulling at her harder, trying to grab her waist when she didn’t give. “We need to get out of here—my men are going to be right behind us.” He seemed to study her face, and his shoulders dropped, his voice softening. “She’s not going to come after us. You know that.”
Elphaba didn’t know if he meant that she wasn’t going to join them in running away, or that she wasn’t going to hunt them down. She knew both of those things. Glinda fell perfectly in the middle of two extremes, just like she always did.
The sound of Glinda’s sharp footsteps sounded so familiar, as if Elphaba had been hearing them for the last few weeks, instead of just in the memories of her university days. Clip, clip, clip.
Then, Fiyero couldn’t have moved Elphaba even if he tried to throw her over his shoulder and run for it.
Glinda rounded the winding staircase and stared down at them, wand raised.
Looking up at her now, Elphaba felt that miserable surge in her heart that she’d gotten when Glinda first walked into the room not a few minutes ago when she’d been talking to the wizard. The wizard had been offering to take Elphaba on, if Elphaba could just learn to settle down, when Elphaba found Mr. Dillamond, entirely speechless.
And then there was Glinda, for the first time in years, and Elphaba felt the world fall away from her.
She’d been in love in her university days, she was old enough now to admit that to herself, and the sight of Glinda brought it all rushing back. The fluttering, desperate urge to make Glinda see her, the desire to touch her that bordered on madness, the nights spent staring at the ceiling, trying not to stare at her asleep figure across the room.
Glinda said, “Wait.” An echo of Elphaba’s own words.
Elphaba swallowed, watching her.
Her blonde hair shone. The back of her blue dress dragged against the stairs and her chest rose and fell, her wand hand trembling. She was the Glinda Elphaba had known in school, all grown up.
“Are you here to arrest me?” Elphaba asked coldly.
Glinda opened her mouth, but no sound came out. Her wand hand faltered and fell to her side, as if Glinda had lost touch with it, forgotten it was there. Finally, she said, “Elphaba.”
“Glinda,” Elphaba returned, softer but still wary. She had her broom in her hand, all she had to do was to break the window and leap out of it, but she didn’t.
“For goodness sake, not now,” Fiyero said, “We need to go.”
Fiyero was right—behind Glinda, they could hear the sound of heavy boots against the stone steps, a stampede. Fiyero gripped Elphaba by the arm so hard, she thought she could feel the bones of his fingers against the bones of her arm. She looked at him, then at Glinda, standing before them, stunning in blue, and gripped her broom handle.
With a heavy swing, she smashed the glass window with the end of her broom, shards of it falling around her arms and drawing thin stripes of blood. Red against green.
“I’m going,” she told Glinda, “If you want to arrest me, do it now.”
She didn’t mean it. She sure wasn’t going to wait around to be arrested, nor was she going to risk getting Fiyero arrested after he’d deserted the force to protect her and aid her escape.
She just wanted to say something to Glinda.
She wished she could hear Glinda say her name one last time before she flew away from the city, likely to never return. She’d miss the city’s soaring skyline and the beautiful buildings rising from the ground, the loud people and colorful culture, but more than anything, she’d miss knowing Glinda was nearby, picking her way carefully up the political ladder. And this was the last time that was going to be true.
“No,” Glinda said firmly.
“No?” Elphaba echoed, swinging her leg over the broom. It hovered in the air, her feet a couple inches off the ground. She watched Glinda watch her escape. “I am going.”
“No,” Glinda said, “I’m not going to arrest you.” The dress dragged again as Glinda stepped down the stairs towards them, putting her wand in her pocket and looking Elphaba hard in the eye, the way people did when they were terrified. “I want to go with you.”
Elphaba closed her eyes.
I want to go with you.
How many times had she dreamed about those words out of Glinda’s mouth, I want to go with you, I want to go, I want you. She’d rewritten that day in her mind again and again, when she’d forsaken her dreams and taken to the skies—and asked Glinda to come.
And Glinda had said no.
This was their second chance, Elphaba knew. This was when she could reach out and take Glinda’s hand and hold her. Perhaps they’d break out fighting before they’d even crossed the city’s borders, perhaps they’d never come to agree, perhaps Glinda would change her mind and take Elphaba down with as much conviction as she was now saying she wanted to run away with her. Perhaps, perhaps. But this was Elphaba’s chance, and Elphaba wasn’t going to throw it away.
So she slid back on the broom and looked at Glinda.
They made it out through the window just as the first of Fiyero’s men exploded down around the corner, scepters extended in their direction as they shot off into the sky.
Glinda got a cut up her arm, and the droplets flew off into the wind, but she didn’t complain. Elphaba had her arms circled around Glinda, gripping the handle between Glinda’s legs, the glitter on her dress scratching against the insides of her forearms, and Fiyero sat behind her, gripping her waist tightly.
They wobbled, tipping in the air, as they left the Emerald City behind them.
“I don’t usually fly with this many people,” Elphaba said into Glinda’s ear, for lack of anything better to say.
“Just you and Fiyero, then?” Glinda asked. “The couple of outlaws.”
“We’re not,” Elphaba told her firmly, “Not together. And until today, Fiyero wasn’t even an outlaw.”
Glinda was quiet for a moment, and then she cast a long look over her shoulder, the wind throwing her golden curls back into Elphaba’s face. She had this citrus-smelling shampoo, a luxury that Elphaba couldn’t afford. When she had the time to shower, she took a shower, usually dragging a bar of soap all over her body and rinsing her hair, and calling that a day. Her hair had begun to clump in matted masses of sweat and the mists they’d begun to fly through. They were clouds, heavy and dark, like rainstorm clouds, and they filled Elphaba’s vision until Elphaba was forced to pull up and fly above the clouds, leaving the world below them blanketed in gray-white.
“You’re not going back, are you?” Glinda asked, as quietly as anyone could be heard over the screaming of the wind. Elphaba was sure even Fiyero behind them couldn’t hear her. “Back to the city, back to the wizard.”
Elphaba tightened her arms around Glinda. She hadn’t let herself think about what Glinda might want from her once they were off in the air, didn’t have time to think anything other than this, this was the chance she’d lost all those years ago. She hadn’t thought about setting Glinda down, or turning the broom around if Glinda changed her mind.
Would it be kidnapping if Glinda wanted to come and then decided she didn’t, but Elphaba didn’t want to or didn’t think it would be safe to stop? What then?
“No,” she admitted into Glinda’s ear, “No, I’m not. I’m not welcome there anymore.”
“I know.” Glinda had her hands on the broomstick too, though she wasn’t steering, just holding on for balance. She slid them back until they were half-holding Elphaba’s own. “Where will we go then?”
We rang in Elphaba’s ears like a bell. We, we, we.
She forced herself to be reasonable. Have self respect. Why Glinda had come with her, she wasn’t sure, but it would be strategically ill advised to trust her right off the bat and, perhaps more importantly, emotionally unwise to let her walk right back into her life as if nothing had happened. As if Elphaba wasn’t hunted across the land partly because of Glinda’s words to the public about her.
“Why did you come?” she asked, instead of answering Glinda’s question. “Are you fleeing them, or following me? Or are you leading them after me?”
“They’re not following us,” Fiyero said from behind her, “They don’t have the means to. They can’t even see you through the clouds; they can’t know which way you’ve gone.”
“Perhaps with a spell,” Elphaba said, and nudged Glinda’s body with her own. She was closer to the shape of Glinda’s body than she ever had been before, though she tried not too hard to think about it. Her arms pressed into the soft, lean give of Glinda’s waist, her dress cinched tight. Her head rested quite naturally in the crook of Glinda’s neck, and her entire front was pressed perfectly to Glinda’s back, the two of them molding together as if they’d been one person, carved into two, and found the way they fit together again. “Show me your wand.”
Glinda took one hand carefully off the broom handle to reach into the pockets of her dress and handed the wand to Elphaba, who slowed their flying to a crawl as she took it in her hands and turned it about, searching for the feeling of magic radiating off of it.
It had nothing. She hadn’t expected it to have anything. It seemed so stupid to be as certain as Elphaba was about nothing but the language of a gaze, but when she thought about the way Glinda looked at her when she said wait, and when she said I want to go with you.
She knew Glinda was a master at manipulating people, but she was Elphaba Thropp, and she knew Glinda like no one else did. At least, she used to.
And she believed Glinda was here following her heart, not her head, though why her heart was this way, Elphaba couldn’t be sure. There was no reason why Glinda should have suddenly developed a passion for animal advocacy when she never had before.
That left only Fiyero and Elphaba, as far as Elphaba could tell.
“I’m not here to get you into any more trouble,” Glinda said, when Elphaba handed back her wand, satisfied. “On the contrary, I want to leave the city with you, and I don’t want to be found either.”
“Glinda,” Elphaba said. “I know that. I want to know why.”
She couldn’t hear Glinda draw in a long, slow breath, but she could feel it in Glinda’s body, the way it moved against her.
“You’ve probably passed the city border by now,” Fiyero said from behind them, peering down at the clouds that clustered around their feet, leaving them wet and cold. Elphaba almost wanted to shove him off the broom and watch him fall. Glinda was so infuriatingly difficult to figure out, and she had been about to tell Elphaba something about herself for free.
Instead, she dipped the broom and let them plummet through the clouds.
When the world came into focus below them, it became clear that Fiyero was right—they had passed the borders of the city they’d been banished from, and crossed into the farmlands of Oz. There were glistening yellow fields waving in the wind for as far as the eye could see, broken only by pale, dusty roads that looked like spiderwebs from this height.
“What’s your plan from here?” Glinda asked, more audible now that they’d slowed, approaching the ground. Soon they were close enough to see the thin wooden fences surrounding some of the fields, the scarecrows posted in them as little dots in the wind. “Do you have a place to stay out here?”
“No,” Fiyero said, “We find one.”
“This place looks fine,” Elphaba added, circling a shed in one of the fields. She brought them low enough that their feet brushed through the wheat, leaving it swishing behind them, and slowed the broom until they could better assess what they were looking at.
It was small, looked to be a tool shed, certainly nowhere for sleeping, and the red paint was old enough that only patches of it remained on the door and below the windowsills. Through the door, they could see a set of shelves nailed unevenly to the wall, with some tools laid across it—a hoe, a rake, some handheld shovels and a large pitchfork—but other than that, it was empty, the wooden floor covered in a thick layer of dust that suggested no one had been here in a long time, perhaps years.
“Just for the night,” Elphaba said, touching down, “And then we move on.”
“All three of us, here for the night?” Glinda asked, stepping away from the broom and peering into the window some more, as if searching for a hidden trapdoor to another floor of the tiny building.
“We’ve shared a room before, I’m not going to kill you in your sleep,” Elphaba said icily. She wasn’t pleased with the arrangement either, but the sun was beginning to set and she didn’t want to be out after dark, still searching for a place to set up for sleep. She, too, dreaded lying in the same room as Glinda, waiting for dreams to take her away, and thinking only of the look in Glinda’s blue eyes as she stood at the top of those steps and said wait.
Fiyero looked between the two of them and took the broom from Elphaba’s hand with an air that brooked no argument. “I’m going to try to sweep out the dust,” he said, “You two had better stay out of the room until it’s clear.”
It was obvious he was letting the two of them have their time alone, and yet neither one of them pointed it out. They simply watched him walk purposefully over to the shed, wrench the door open with a terrible shriek of the hinges, and step in, closing the door behind him.
Elphaba stared at the closed door for a moment, wondering who she was. The kind of person who faced the only woman she’d ever loved with a steady gaze and demanded answers? The kind of person who wanted to fly into the clouds again and hide among them until the sun finished setting and rose again, and they could leave conversation behind them?
She decided she was the kind of person who reached for the closed door, ready to ask her friend to give her the broom and let her do the sweeping.
“Elphaba,” Glinda said as Elphaba reached for the doorknob, “I thought you had questions.”
Elphaba paused, but didn’t move away from the door.
Glinda looked a mess, her hair windblown and her eyes red. The hem of her dress was drenched from flying through so many clouds, and she trembled before Elphaba like a leaf in the wind. Still, she seemed the way she always did: like hot metal, extremely bendable but unbreakable in essence, able to forge herself into something new anytime it was necessary. Even now, something about her manner was working on Elphaba like an enchantment, whether it was deliberate or not.
The shaking shape of her made Elphaba want to grip her waist and warm her with her hands and mouth, to find her by touch in the dark, forget about it and everything else she wanted in the morning.
“I realized I’m not sure I want the answers,” Elphaba told her, and it was the truth.
Glinda caught her tight, hands gripping her biceps. Even through the fabric of her clothes, Elphaba could feel the heat of her palms up against her skin, the sharpness of Glinda’s gaze pinning her. “Elphaba,” she said, “I think you know why. Are you afraid of it?”
I think you know why.
Elphaba searched Glinda’s face again.
There was a feeling she got when she saw Glinda again for the first time in years, when she stepped into the room with Elphaba and the Wizard. It was a deep, old ache, something like melancholy, bittersweet. To see the girl she had loved grow up to be someone she wasn’t sure she could agree with. She wanted to come to some sort of agreement with her, but was too afraid to try, so it was all longing, aching for what could have been in one life but wouldn’t be in this one.
She saw that now, in Glinda, like a mirror image of herself.
“Glinda.” She let her body turn away from the door to face Glinda fully. “What about everything else?”
Glinda’s mouth was full and pink, puffy in a way that suggested anxious biting or crying. Glinda pressed it gently to the side of Elphaba’s face, a touch that sparked fire in Elphaba she hadn’t known she was capable of feeling.
It opened up a chasm inside her, a void she hadn’t realized she’d closed off until Glinda tore the door of it wide open with this simple gesture and showed her a hole she needed to fill.
“I came with you,” Glinda said. With that, Elphaba knew Glinda had seen Elphaba realize it, feel it grow inside of herself: a tether between the two of them, as strong as magic. “Can’t that be enough for now?”
Fiyero threw open the door to the shed, and with him came a cloud of dust, a torrent of coughing. “All clear,” he said, “We’d better settle in.”
Glinda looked at Elphaba, and then to the shed, and then to Elphaba again. A question.
“Come in,” Elphaba said.