(no subject)
Canon compilation: Wicked, relevant to Sarima and to Fiyero's children
Bold is mine, italics are in the original text. Spoilers go without saying. Especially for this one.
He told her the barest outline of things. His wife, Sarima, the childhood bride grown up and grown fecund - their three children. The old Officer of Public Works waterworks headquarters at Kiamo Ko, which by ambush and occupation his father had converted to a chieftain’s seat and a tribal stronghold back in the time of the Ozma Regent. The dizzying, schizoid life of moving every year from the Thousand Year Grasslands in the spring and summer, where the clan hunted and feasted, to a more settled autumn and winter at Kiamo Ko.
“I’ve sent word to Sarima that business is keeping me here indefinitely. She doesn’t care. How could she care? Plucked out of a filthy caravanserai and married as a small child to an Arjiki prince? Her family wasn’t stupid. She’s got food, servants, and the solid stone walls of Kiamo Ko for defense against the other tribes. She’s going a little fat after her third child. She doesn’t really notice whether I’m home or not - well, she has five sisters, and they all moved in. I married a harem.”
“No!” Elphaba sounded intrigued and a little embarrassed at the idea.
“You’re right, no, not really. Sarima has proposed once or twice that her younger sisters could and would happily occupy my energies at night-time. Once you pass over the Great Kells, the taboo against such an exercise isn’t as strong as it seems to be in the rest of Oz, so stop looking so shocked.”
“I can’t help it. Did you do it?”
“Did I ‘do it’?” He was teasing her.
“Did you sleep with your sisters-in-law?”
“No,” he said. “Not out of lofty moral standards, or a lack of interest, either. It’s just that Sarima is a shrewd wife, and everything in marriage is a campaign. I would have been in her thrall even more than I am.”
“Such a bad thing?”
“You’re not married, you don’t know. Yes, a bad thing.”
“Kisses to Irji, Manek, and Nor,” he wrote on the bottom of his weekly letter to Sarima, who couldn’t write back because, among other things, she had never learned either alphabet. Somehow her silence seemed a tacit approval of this vow-shattering interlude. He didn’t write kisses to her, too. He hoped the chocolates would do.
If the snows held off, he would be home by then, restless and chafing in the tall narrow rooms of the mountain stronghold, but maybe he would get the credit for thoughtfulness. And perhaps deserved, why not? To be sure, Sarima would be in her winter doldrums (as distinct from her spring moods, her summer ennui, and her congenital autumn condition). A torque eventually would cheer her up, at least a little.
Fiyero felt the sudden longing, again, for his own cold and distant children.
He chose more gifts for the kids and for sulky Sarima, that well-fed malcontent, that monster. He missed her a little; his feelings for Elphaba seemed not to vie with those for Sarima, but to complement them. No two women could be more unlike.
He bought three, four, six scarves for Sarima, who didn’t wear scarves. He bought six scarves for Elphaba, who did.
“There’s nothing to say,” Fiyero said, feeling even more taciturn and Vinkus than he had when he first arrived in Shiz. “I like my life, I lead my clan when they need it, which isn’t often. My children are healthy. My wife is - well, I don’t know . . .”
“Fertile,” supplied Glinda.
“Yes.” He grinned. “She’s fertile and I love her, and I’m not going to stay much longer as I’m meeting someone for a business conference across town.”
Irji and Manek, twelve and eleven, were almost old enough to want to bust out of this nest of venomous doves. Irji was soft and cried a lot, but Manek was a little bantam, always had been. If she let them go off to the Grasslands with the clan, in the summer migration, they both might have their throats slit - there were too many clansmen to claim leadership for themselves or their sons.
“If I remember rightly,” said Sarima - her mind was racing with memory - “you’re the one, Fiyero talked of you, of course - Elphaba, that’s it - you’re the one who didn’t believe in the soul.”
[Sarima, to Elphaba] “And I think you wish me ill. You wish me ill and you don’t even know it. You want to punish me for something. Maybe for not being a good enough wife to Fiyero. You wish me ill and you fool yourself to think it’s some therapeutic course of tablets.”
“Do you know how he died, at least?” said Elphaba.
“I know it was a violent action, I know his body was never found, I know it was in a little love nest,” said Sarima, for a minute losing her resolve. “I don’t care to know who it was exactly, but I have heard enough about that vile Sir Chuffrey to have my strong opin-”
“Sir Chuffrey!”
“I said no. I said no more.”
“Besides, the clan had gone on as long as it could with an ad hoc collaborative leadership; they demanded a single chief, and one was put forward, and he’s served well. When Irji comes of age he may claim the rights of progenitorship, if he’s bold enough; he is not yet bold at all. Manek is the more obvious candidate, but he’s only second in line.”
“Any afterlife notion is a manipulation and a sop. It’s shameful the way the unionists and the pagans both keep talking up hell for intimidation and the airy Other Land for reward.”
“Don’t,” Sarima said. “For one thing, that’s where Fiyero is waiting for me. And you know it.”
Elphaba’s jaw dropped. When she least expected it, Sarima always seemed ready to rush in with a surprise attack. “In the afterlife?” said Elphie.
Sarima told Auntie Guest what she knew of the boys’ initiation rite in the tribe. “They are taken out in the grasslands, and left with nothing but a loincloth and a musical instrument. They are required to call forth spirits and animals out of the night, to converse with them, to learn from them, to soothe them if they need soothing, to fight them if they need fighting. The child who dies at night clearly lacks the discretion to decide if its company needs fighting, or soothing. So it is correct that he should die young and not burden the tribe with his foolishness.”
“What do the boys say of spirits who approach them?” asked Auntie Guest.
“Boys say very little, especially about the spirit world,” she answered. “Nonetheless, you pick up what you pick up. And I think some of the spirits and very patient, very wearing, very obdurate. The lore supposes there should be conflict, hostility, battle, but I wonder, in contact with spirits, if what the boy needs if a good helping of cold anger.”
“Cold anger?”
“Oh yes, don’t you know that distinction? Tribal mothers always tell their children that there are two kind of anger: hot and cold. Boys and girls experience both, but as they grow up the angers separate according to the sex. Boys need hot anger to survive. They need the inclination to fight, the drive to sink the knife into the flesh, the energy and initiative of fury. It’s a requirement of hunting, of defense, of pride. Maybe of sex, too.”
“Yes, I know,” said Elphaba, remembering.
Sarima blushed and looked unhappy, and continued. “And girls need cold anger. They need the cold simmer, the ceaseless grudge, the talent to avoid forgiveness, the sidestepping of compromise. They need to know when they say something that they will never back down, ever, ever. It’s the compensation for a more limited scope in the world. Cross a man and you struggle, one of you wins, you adjust and go on - or you lie there dead. Cross a woman and the universe is changed, once again, for cold anger requires an eternal vigilance in all matters of slight and offense.” She glared at Elphaba, pinning her with unspoken accusations about Fiyero, about Liir.
Liir survived, but Manek did not. The icicle that Elphaba trained her gaze on, thinking on the weapons one needed to fight such abuse - it broke like a lance from the eaves, and drove whistling downward, and caught him in the skull as he went out to find some new way of beleaguering Liir.
The sisters suffered from that most dreadful of losses: the theft of the adult Manek from their lives. Their sad lot had been bearable all these years because Manek was going to be the man Fiyero had been, and maybe more. They realized in retrospect that they had expected Manek to restore the fallen fortunes of Kiamo Ko.
[Liir] said, “The fish told me she was magic. She said that Fiyero was my father, and that Irji and Manek and Nor are my brothers and my sister.”
...
And Sarima had looked at Elphaba, and Elphaba thought the hour of her liberation was at hand at last. “How silly of the boy, he’s delusional,” Sarima had said at last. “The idea of Fiyero being his father. Fiyero didn’t have an ounce of fat on his body, and look at the boy.”
...
“And whoever might the mother be?” said Sarima blandly, touching the hem of her skirt softly. “It’s preposterous beyond words.”
For the first time, Elphie wished that Liir had at least an undertone of green in his skin.
Bold is mine, italics are in the original text. Spoilers go without saying. Especially for this one.
He told her the barest outline of things. His wife, Sarima, the childhood bride grown up and grown fecund - their three children. The old Officer of Public Works waterworks headquarters at Kiamo Ko, which by ambush and occupation his father had converted to a chieftain’s seat and a tribal stronghold back in the time of the Ozma Regent. The dizzying, schizoid life of moving every year from the Thousand Year Grasslands in the spring and summer, where the clan hunted and feasted, to a more settled autumn and winter at Kiamo Ko.
“I’ve sent word to Sarima that business is keeping me here indefinitely. She doesn’t care. How could she care? Plucked out of a filthy caravanserai and married as a small child to an Arjiki prince? Her family wasn’t stupid. She’s got food, servants, and the solid stone walls of Kiamo Ko for defense against the other tribes. She’s going a little fat after her third child. She doesn’t really notice whether I’m home or not - well, she has five sisters, and they all moved in. I married a harem.”
“No!” Elphaba sounded intrigued and a little embarrassed at the idea.
“You’re right, no, not really. Sarima has proposed once or twice that her younger sisters could and would happily occupy my energies at night-time. Once you pass over the Great Kells, the taboo against such an exercise isn’t as strong as it seems to be in the rest of Oz, so stop looking so shocked.”
“I can’t help it. Did you do it?”
“Did I ‘do it’?” He was teasing her.
“Did you sleep with your sisters-in-law?”
“No,” he said. “Not out of lofty moral standards, or a lack of interest, either. It’s just that Sarima is a shrewd wife, and everything in marriage is a campaign. I would have been in her thrall even more than I am.”
“Such a bad thing?”
“You’re not married, you don’t know. Yes, a bad thing.”
“Kisses to Irji, Manek, and Nor,” he wrote on the bottom of his weekly letter to Sarima, who couldn’t write back because, among other things, she had never learned either alphabet. Somehow her silence seemed a tacit approval of this vow-shattering interlude. He didn’t write kisses to her, too. He hoped the chocolates would do.
If the snows held off, he would be home by then, restless and chafing in the tall narrow rooms of the mountain stronghold, but maybe he would get the credit for thoughtfulness. And perhaps deserved, why not? To be sure, Sarima would be in her winter doldrums (as distinct from her spring moods, her summer ennui, and her congenital autumn condition). A torque eventually would cheer her up, at least a little.
Fiyero felt the sudden longing, again, for his own cold and distant children.
He chose more gifts for the kids and for sulky Sarima, that well-fed malcontent, that monster. He missed her a little; his feelings for Elphaba seemed not to vie with those for Sarima, but to complement them. No two women could be more unlike.
He bought three, four, six scarves for Sarima, who didn’t wear scarves. He bought six scarves for Elphaba, who did.
“There’s nothing to say,” Fiyero said, feeling even more taciturn and Vinkus than he had when he first arrived in Shiz. “I like my life, I lead my clan when they need it, which isn’t often. My children are healthy. My wife is - well, I don’t know . . .”
“Fertile,” supplied Glinda.
“Yes.” He grinned. “She’s fertile and I love her, and I’m not going to stay much longer as I’m meeting someone for a business conference across town.”
Irji and Manek, twelve and eleven, were almost old enough to want to bust out of this nest of venomous doves. Irji was soft and cried a lot, but Manek was a little bantam, always had been. If she let them go off to the Grasslands with the clan, in the summer migration, they both might have their throats slit - there were too many clansmen to claim leadership for themselves or their sons.
“If I remember rightly,” said Sarima - her mind was racing with memory - “you’re the one, Fiyero talked of you, of course - Elphaba, that’s it - you’re the one who didn’t believe in the soul.”
[Sarima, to Elphaba] “And I think you wish me ill. You wish me ill and you don’t even know it. You want to punish me for something. Maybe for not being a good enough wife to Fiyero. You wish me ill and you fool yourself to think it’s some therapeutic course of tablets.”
“Do you know how he died, at least?” said Elphaba.
“I know it was a violent action, I know his body was never found, I know it was in a little love nest,” said Sarima, for a minute losing her resolve. “I don’t care to know who it was exactly, but I have heard enough about that vile Sir Chuffrey to have my strong opin-”
“Sir Chuffrey!”
“I said no. I said no more.”
“Besides, the clan had gone on as long as it could with an ad hoc collaborative leadership; they demanded a single chief, and one was put forward, and he’s served well. When Irji comes of age he may claim the rights of progenitorship, if he’s bold enough; he is not yet bold at all. Manek is the more obvious candidate, but he’s only second in line.”
“Any afterlife notion is a manipulation and a sop. It’s shameful the way the unionists and the pagans both keep talking up hell for intimidation and the airy Other Land for reward.”
“Don’t,” Sarima said. “For one thing, that’s where Fiyero is waiting for me. And you know it.”
Elphaba’s jaw dropped. When she least expected it, Sarima always seemed ready to rush in with a surprise attack. “In the afterlife?” said Elphie.
Sarima told Auntie Guest what she knew of the boys’ initiation rite in the tribe. “They are taken out in the grasslands, and left with nothing but a loincloth and a musical instrument. They are required to call forth spirits and animals out of the night, to converse with them, to learn from them, to soothe them if they need soothing, to fight them if they need fighting. The child who dies at night clearly lacks the discretion to decide if its company needs fighting, or soothing. So it is correct that he should die young and not burden the tribe with his foolishness.”
“What do the boys say of spirits who approach them?” asked Auntie Guest.
“Boys say very little, especially about the spirit world,” she answered. “Nonetheless, you pick up what you pick up. And I think some of the spirits and very patient, very wearing, very obdurate. The lore supposes there should be conflict, hostility, battle, but I wonder, in contact with spirits, if what the boy needs if a good helping of cold anger.”
“Cold anger?”
“Oh yes, don’t you know that distinction? Tribal mothers always tell their children that there are two kind of anger: hot and cold. Boys and girls experience both, but as they grow up the angers separate according to the sex. Boys need hot anger to survive. They need the inclination to fight, the drive to sink the knife into the flesh, the energy and initiative of fury. It’s a requirement of hunting, of defense, of pride. Maybe of sex, too.”
“Yes, I know,” said Elphaba, remembering.
Sarima blushed and looked unhappy, and continued. “And girls need cold anger. They need the cold simmer, the ceaseless grudge, the talent to avoid forgiveness, the sidestepping of compromise. They need to know when they say something that they will never back down, ever, ever. It’s the compensation for a more limited scope in the world. Cross a man and you struggle, one of you wins, you adjust and go on - or you lie there dead. Cross a woman and the universe is changed, once again, for cold anger requires an eternal vigilance in all matters of slight and offense.” She glared at Elphaba, pinning her with unspoken accusations about Fiyero, about Liir.
Liir survived, but Manek did not. The icicle that Elphaba trained her gaze on, thinking on the weapons one needed to fight such abuse - it broke like a lance from the eaves, and drove whistling downward, and caught him in the skull as he went out to find some new way of beleaguering Liir.
The sisters suffered from that most dreadful of losses: the theft of the adult Manek from their lives. Their sad lot had been bearable all these years because Manek was going to be the man Fiyero had been, and maybe more. They realized in retrospect that they had expected Manek to restore the fallen fortunes of Kiamo Ko.
[Liir] said, “The fish told me she was magic. She said that Fiyero was my father, and that Irji and Manek and Nor are my brothers and my sister.”
...
And Sarima had looked at Elphaba, and Elphaba thought the hour of her liberation was at hand at last. “How silly of the boy, he’s delusional,” Sarima had said at last. “The idea of Fiyero being his father. Fiyero didn’t have an ounce of fat on his body, and look at the boy.”
...
“And whoever might the mother be?” said Sarima blandly, touching the hem of her skirt softly. “It’s preposterous beyond words.”
For the first time, Elphie wished that Liir had at least an undertone of green in his skin.