The Effects of Gravity 4/?, by ainsleyaisling
Title: The Effects of Gravity 4/?
Author: ainsleyaisling
Rating: PG-13/R
'Verse: Musical AU; some details from bookverse
Pairings: Glinda/Fiyero, Elphaba/Fiyero, Glinda/Elphaba
Summary: Elphaba didn't exactly leave the Emerald City emptyhanded - and Glinda finds out what happens when you associate with witches.
Disclaimer: Wicked belongs mostly to Gregory Maguire, and musicalverse belongs to Stephen Schwartz, Winnie Holzman, and possibly Universal.
Notes: Previous part can be found here.
~~Glinda~~
She couldn't believe she'd never thought to ask, although to be fair, she did have some excuse for forgetting a detail like that in the midst of all that had happened. But it never occurred to her even to wonder, until the afternoon four days after their return when she entered their room too quickly, too quietly, and she caught Elphaba slamming something and shoving it under her pillow.
Sort of. Most of the object was still sticking out, and Glinda's eyes completely skipped over the tense expression on Elphaba's face in favor of examining the visible corner of the . . . book . . . the really, really old book . . .
"Oh sweet Oz," she gasped, pressing her hand to her mouth and kicking the door of their room shut with one heel. "Is that . . . ?"
Elphaba glanced down, realized the book was still visible, and shrugged in guilty acknowledgement.
"You stole it?"
"Well . . ." Elphaba pulled the book out from under her pillow and placed it in her lap, fingers smoothing over the old and battered leather binding. "I didn't exactly steal it. I mean, they knew I had it and they didn't ask for it back, did they?"
"But still . . ."
"And anyway, I'm sure they'd have come after it by now if they didn't want me to have it. They know where we live." That brought all sorts of unpleasant images to Glinda's mind, and she must have paled because Elphaba shook her head and said, "I'm sure it'll be fine. It's not as if I couldn't possibly have had an honest reason for taking it, right? I do need to learn how to read the rest of it."
Glinda shrugged out of her coat, laid it across her bed, and went to sit next to Elphaba on the other bed. "So you can't read it all?" she asked curiously. Her fingers itched to touch the book on her roommate's lap, and she tucked her hands under her thighs to restrain them.
"Some of it I can," Elphaba said, opening the book to a random page. "Some of it becomes clear after a minute if I concentrate. And then some of it I can't get at all. I've been trying to figure out what makes some spells harder than others, and how I can teach myself to read them all." She looked up at Glinda and smiled. "Go ahead."
Eyes widening in a silent confirmation that she had permission, Glinda freed one of her hands and ran a finger reverently over the open page. Her fingertip tingled and she drew it away quickly. "It feels like . . . I can't describe it."
"I know," Elphaba said quietly. "Here, I want to show you something."
"What?" Glinda held very still and tried to get used to the burning sensation on her legs as Elphaba carefully passed the book onto her lap.
"I think it may be easier to read a spell after you've heard it spoken once. It says something like that in . . . well, sort of like an introduction, I guess." She leaned over Glinda to turn the pages. "Here - can you read that?"
Glinda studied the markings on the page Elphaba had indicated. "No - wait!" She blinked a few times to be sure, but without changing their appearance at all, the markings had somehow begun to look like something she recognized . . . "Hold on, it's turning into proper letters, I think." Soundlessly she mouthed the nonsense words until they began to seem familiar. "This is the levitation spell, isn't it? I can't tell what the words mean, but I can see them - I mean I could pronounce them if I had to."
"That's what most of it is like for me, too." Elphaba shifted closer on the bed so that her shoulder pressed against Glinda's. "Some of it makes sense - I mean, the words aren't right but I know what they mean. It's as if - as if you said something completely nonsensical, not real words at all, but I automatically knew you meant 'let's go to dinner.' And then some of it is like you said - I can read the words, but they don't mean anything."
Glinda frowned. "Then how can you know what the spell will do?"
"You can't, I guess." Elphaba patted Glinda's hand, the one that was still pointing at the letters on the page. "I think I've learned what happens when you perform a spell without knowing exactly what it's intended to do."
Thinking of the monkeys' wings made Glinda shudder. "Me too."
"But," Elphaba added with a note of false cheer, "some of them do have illustrations, so that's helpful." She flipped through the pages at random until she found one with a drawing near the title of the spell. "See?"
Glinda bent close until she could make out the picture - it was a man with something attached to his front . . . or rather . . . "Ew, Elphaba. Is that a man impaled on a tree limb?"
As Glinda looked away in disgust, Elphaba leaned in closer. "No," she said after a minute.
"Oh, good."
"I think it's a lamp-post, actually." She nudged Glinda's fingers out of the way and hastily turned the page. "I don't think I'll be trying that spell."
"I should think not." Glinda shifted backward on the bed and tucked her feet up under her. "On the other hand, maybe it's a spell for healing someone who's been impaled on a lamp-post."
Elphaba laughed a little with her. "But imagine what you'd have to do to find out."
"So you think I can read the levitation spell because I've already heard you say it out loud?"
"That's my guess." Elphaba looked around the room for a moment, then went and fetched a quill off her desk and laid it purposefully on the nightstand beside Glinda. Leaning over the book as she resumed her seat, she flipped back to the page containing the spell Glinda had recognized. "Go ahead, try it."
Glinda looked up at her friend, uncertain whether she felt more excited or afraid. "Really?"
"Just make sure you concentrate on the quill and not me."
"Well - all right." She took a deep breath, then gripped onto Elphaba's hand. With her free hand she waved tentatively at the quill and began, haltingly, to read out the words of the spell.
For a long tense moment they sat staring at the quill, which remained motionless on the nightstand. Then, just as Glinda was about to give up and hand the Grimmerie back to Elphaba - the quill rose. Slowly, and only a few inches into the air, but it rose.
Glinda covered her mouth with both hands and said, thus muffled, "Oh, my."
Elphaba threw both arms around her neck, looking really pleased for the first time in days. "You did it!" she said in a whisper more intense than any scream could have been.
"I did." Glinda lowered her hands slowly and laid them over Elphaba's on her own shoulder. "I've never done an old spell before - with a chant and without a wand."
"And it worked the first time!"
"It did!" Excitement slowly seeping in through the shock, Glinda turned and hugged Elphaba tightly. "I can't believe it worked for me!"
"Maybe you're better without a wand," Elphaba said, pulling back to smile at her.
"So you think you can teach me to read it?"
Elphaba's face tensed for the briefest second, but she quickly relaxed into a smile again. "I hope so," she said.
~~Elphaba~~
Now that Nessa had finally stopped harping on Elphaba's behavior in the Emerald City, and her impossible failure to tell her sister everything that had happened, and the shame she had brought on their entire family, walking her to and from class had become an exercise in daydreaming for Elphaba. True, her sister was still talking, but it was generally a recitation of everything Boq had said or not said to her that day, every time she had seen him, every time he had acknowledged or ignored her. Elphaba really did feel for her sister - Boq was essentially ignoring her now, and there didn't seem to be a good reason why he had suddenly stopped his attention to Nessa - but she simply couldn't listen to every little interaction, every slight, every complaint Nessa had against him.
Instead she let her mind wander, pondering over the last spell she had managed to read from the Grimmerie, puzzling over the meaningless words of the last one she hadn't managed, letting Nessa's voice and the quiet squeaking of her chair's wheels mix with the cool wind and the honking of geese and the chattering of the other students into a swirl of indistinguishable sounds. It was always an annoyance when they came so close to a particular group that their words broke loudly into her thoughts and interrupted her daydreaming.
Today it happened as they passed a gazebo that sat between the male and female dormitories - a favorite place for lovers because ivy grew so thickly among its planks and lattices that it was almost impossible to see inside from most angles.
The students inside today did not appear to be lovers, however - there were too many of them, and all female. ". . . get her comeuppance, all right," one of them was saying in piercing tones as Elphaba and Nessa came closer on the path.
"Well, she is so very fond of having everyone in love with her," another anonymous voice responded with an obnoxious giggle. Elphaba rolled her eyes. The capacity of the females at Shiz to be cruel to one another continued to astound her - their behavior toward her she understood, but they were often equally fierce with each other for apparently no particular reason.
"She'll probably enjoy the attention." A third voice, deeper but still female.
"You're sure they got your message?" the second voice asked. One of Nessa's wheels caught in a rut and Elphaba had to stop and rock her sister back and forth to free it. Nessa was uncharacteristically silent and uncomplaining during this process, but then she always did have to listen to gossip - always afraid it might be about her.
"I'm sure - my messenger said they looked like all their birthdays had come early." This statement was greeted with raucously unladylike laughter.
"What'd you tell her?"
The first girl sounded eminently pleased with herself. "That her darling prince charming wanted to meet her in the history classroom."
Nessa's wheel came free at last, and Elphaba pushed her hastily away from the gazebo. If they were plotting some unfortunate prank against one of the other girls in her class - like the time someone had copied out Pfannee's roommate's diary and hung the pages on the cafeteria noticeboard - she would rather not know about it. Best to stay as far away from those quarrels as she possibly could.
When Elphaba finally made it to her room alone, having left Nessa to rest up before dinner in her own suite, she collapsed directly into an exhausted heap on her bed. Glinda's excitement at being able to perform even one spell from the Grimmerie had been contagious and they had stayed up late into the night attempting to read more of them. The only glitch in Elphaba's plan had been the fact that in order to teach Glinda to read the spells, Elphaba had to read them out loud - which carried far too strong a danger that she might accidentally perform the spell. Still, a few of them had been obviously innocuous enough to try. She grinned - from her vantage point on the bed she could see the quill still lying on the desk. It was now pink, the result of Glinda's very first successful color change spell.
After the quill she had wanted to try it on Elphaba, but Elphaba had energetically refused. Somehow she thought ending up bright pink would be much worse than green.
Speaking of which, there was a sheet of paper lying under the quill that hadn't been there before. Elphaba hauled herself reluctantly to her feet and went over to retrieve it.
"Don't wait for me - see you at dinner," read Glinda's swirling handwriting. "Fiyero wanted to talk - be in the history building if you desperately need me!"
Elphaba smiled to herself as she replaced the note on the desk. Did Glinda think she would suddenly have such an urgent need for fashion advice that she would burst in on them in the -
Oh, no. The sinking feeling in her stomach grew stronger as she reread the note. Oh, no no no no no.
She is so very fond of having everyone in love with her.
Her darling prince charming wanted to meet her in the history classroom.
Oh, no.
Without stopping to put her coat back on, Elphaba ran as fast as she could. Most of these quarrels she would stay well out of, but Glinda was a different case entirely.
All the windows in the history building were already dark, with classes concluded for the day, except for a light in a professor's office high on the top floor. Elphaba hesitated with her hand on the doorknob, afraid of what she was likely to stumble onto inside. If it should be too late to warn Glinda or to undo the damage - if those girls had plotted to embarrass her in some way - would Glinda rather that Elphaba not be there to witness it? On the other hand . . .
A shrill cry of fear pierced the air and was quickly cut off. That decided it; Elphaba pushed the door open and ran into the darkened hallway.
There was no more noise, but she didn't feel any better. It had certainly been Glinda who screamed, and it had not been a mild shriek of embarrassment, or of surprise. The girls in the gazebo had specifically said the history classroom, so Elphaba counted the rooms in the dark and paused outside the first-year history room, listening with her ear against the door. A voice - a male voice - was saying something, too low for her to make out the words. There was a scuffling sound, the sound of something being knocked over. Elphaba turned the knob and found the door locked.
Her stomach now clenched in fear, she stepped back and raised a shaking hand over the doorknob. She hadn't memorized a spell for this, but . . . Glinda. Screaming. In danger. Locked in the dark with . . . Power flowed through her body in a painful jolt and the door flew open, banging against the wall inside the classroom.
Elphaba gave a little strangled cry at the scene that greeted her eyes. Two large and well-built boys, only one of whom she recognized from her classes, had Glinda by the elbows and were holding her pinned against the wall. Her hair fell loose over her shoulders and tears shone on her face. The third boy had just begun to turn around as Elphaba barrelled into the room.
Pure rage filled her ears and her throat to the extent that she had no idea what she was screaming - the sound of her own voice drowned out whatever the boys might have been shouting as she ran toward them - and then she was abruptly halted, winded, her tirade cut off. The third boy, the one not occupied with holding Glinda, had turned and backhanded her sharply across the face. "Shut up!" he roared as she reeled backward, hand flying to her mouth, hair falling forward to veil her face. Glinda's horrified cry of her name sounded very far away.
The other two boys, however, had frozen in fear. One of them - the one Elphaba didn't know - pointed and gasped, "You idiot - she - the witch, the one they told us about!"
The boy who had struck Elphaba grabbed her by shoulder and pulled her up roughly to look into her face. "Greyling said she's not really a witch, didn't she?"
"Greyling said she wasn't a criminal - she never said she wasn't a witch!" Neither he nor his partner, however, made any move to release Glinda.
The third boy laughed and brought his hand up to hold Elphaba's chin. "Not that dangerous, are you?" he chuckled. "Just ugly. Not that I necessarily mind."
"Elphie," Glinda pleaded - for what Elphaba wasn't sure, but it was enough. The power that had drained her energy moments ago surged through her again - she was barely able to hope that it didn't touch Glinda as she felt her anger and fear pour through her fingers.
When it was over, all three boys were lying motionless on the floor - awake, but apparently unable to move. Glinda - mercifully unscathed by the explosion of Elphaba's power - squeaked softly and hurried to Elphaba's side, stepping over one of the boys on the way.
"What did you - but, and how - how did you know -"
"Your note," Elphaba said, her voice raspy. "On my way home I heard some girls plotting to . . . do something to someone in the history classroom. When I saw your note . . . I thought, I expected it was something to embarrass you, not something like - this."
"Oh, Elphie." Glinda brushed her fingers lightly over Elphaba's mouth and then held them up, stained with blood. "Are you all right?"
"Are you?" Elphaba asked meaningfully. She could taste the blood now; he must have hit her hard.
"Yes," Glinda replied, her eyes nervously surveying the boys on the floor.
"Really?"
Glinda laid her hand on Elphaba's chest, over her heart. She held Elphaba's gaze with her own and repeated, "Yes."
Elphaba kicked the boot of the boy lying closest to them - the one who had struck her. "What did they tell you to do?" she demanded.
It seemed that whatever she had done to them, they were able to speak. "I don't know what you're talking about," the boy replied.
"Those girls," she said through clenched teeth. "They told you to do something to her, I know they did."
One of the other boys struggled to lift his head. "They didn't say to do anything to her, I swear. They said she was . . . er . . ."
"They said she was looking for a little fun," the boy nearest to Elphaba spat out. "They said she'd come to us, and she'd pretend to be shy, but we shouldn't pay any attention when she pretended to say no."
"And you believed them." None of the boys spoke, but their expressions were clear enough. They hadn't really believed such a ridiculous story. "It gave you a convenient enough excuse to act like animals, didn't it?"
Glinda's arms slipped around Elphaba's waist, and her head leaned on Elphaba's shoulder with a warm and welcome pressure. "What are we going to do?" she asked quietly.
"We're going to Madame Greyling," Elphaba replied immediately. "I don't know how long they'll be stuck here, but I hope long enough." She took Glinda's hand in hers and led her from the classroom, and back down the darkened corridor, in silence. Once they were back out in the fading late afternoon light she stammered, "I don't know how to - this is because of me. This is happening to you because of what I did . . ."
"Stop." Glinda dug in her heels and tugged on Elphaba's hand until she stopped walking and turned to face her. "We're both in this, remember? And you saved me." She reached up and gently wiped more blood from Elphaba's face with her thumb.
"You're not afraid, or -"
"I was so scared," Glinda replied, holding tight to Elphaba's hand, her lips trembling. "But I don't blame you - and I'm not afraid it'll happen again. We're supposed to be under the Wizard's protection, remember - I think those boys should be more afraid of what's going to happen to them."
"And those girls," Elphaba said darkly. "They'd better hope they're expelled and sent away." She squeezed Glinda's hand. "You're doing a good job of acting brave."
"Acting is exactly what it is." Glinda took a deep breath. "Well, let's go talk to Madame while I still can." She started to walk again, then stopped and reached up to run her fingers over Elphaba's hair and down through the tousled ends. "Thank you," she whispered.
Elphaba nodded. "Always."
Author: ainsleyaisling
Rating: PG-13/R
'Verse: Musical AU; some details from bookverse
Pairings: Glinda/Fiyero, Elphaba/Fiyero, Glinda/Elphaba
Summary: Elphaba didn't exactly leave the Emerald City emptyhanded - and Glinda finds out what happens when you associate with witches.
Disclaimer: Wicked belongs mostly to Gregory Maguire, and musicalverse belongs to Stephen Schwartz, Winnie Holzman, and possibly Universal.
Notes: Previous part can be found here.
~~Glinda~~
She couldn't believe she'd never thought to ask, although to be fair, she did have some excuse for forgetting a detail like that in the midst of all that had happened. But it never occurred to her even to wonder, until the afternoon four days after their return when she entered their room too quickly, too quietly, and she caught Elphaba slamming something and shoving it under her pillow.
Sort of. Most of the object was still sticking out, and Glinda's eyes completely skipped over the tense expression on Elphaba's face in favor of examining the visible corner of the . . . book . . . the really, really old book . . .
"Oh sweet Oz," she gasped, pressing her hand to her mouth and kicking the door of their room shut with one heel. "Is that . . . ?"
Elphaba glanced down, realized the book was still visible, and shrugged in guilty acknowledgement.
"You stole it?"
"Well . . ." Elphaba pulled the book out from under her pillow and placed it in her lap, fingers smoothing over the old and battered leather binding. "I didn't exactly steal it. I mean, they knew I had it and they didn't ask for it back, did they?"
"But still . . ."
"And anyway, I'm sure they'd have come after it by now if they didn't want me to have it. They know where we live." That brought all sorts of unpleasant images to Glinda's mind, and she must have paled because Elphaba shook her head and said, "I'm sure it'll be fine. It's not as if I couldn't possibly have had an honest reason for taking it, right? I do need to learn how to read the rest of it."
Glinda shrugged out of her coat, laid it across her bed, and went to sit next to Elphaba on the other bed. "So you can't read it all?" she asked curiously. Her fingers itched to touch the book on her roommate's lap, and she tucked her hands under her thighs to restrain them.
"Some of it I can," Elphaba said, opening the book to a random page. "Some of it becomes clear after a minute if I concentrate. And then some of it I can't get at all. I've been trying to figure out what makes some spells harder than others, and how I can teach myself to read them all." She looked up at Glinda and smiled. "Go ahead."
Eyes widening in a silent confirmation that she had permission, Glinda freed one of her hands and ran a finger reverently over the open page. Her fingertip tingled and she drew it away quickly. "It feels like . . . I can't describe it."
"I know," Elphaba said quietly. "Here, I want to show you something."
"What?" Glinda held very still and tried to get used to the burning sensation on her legs as Elphaba carefully passed the book onto her lap.
"I think it may be easier to read a spell after you've heard it spoken once. It says something like that in . . . well, sort of like an introduction, I guess." She leaned over Glinda to turn the pages. "Here - can you read that?"
Glinda studied the markings on the page Elphaba had indicated. "No - wait!" She blinked a few times to be sure, but without changing their appearance at all, the markings had somehow begun to look like something she recognized . . . "Hold on, it's turning into proper letters, I think." Soundlessly she mouthed the nonsense words until they began to seem familiar. "This is the levitation spell, isn't it? I can't tell what the words mean, but I can see them - I mean I could pronounce them if I had to."
"That's what most of it is like for me, too." Elphaba shifted closer on the bed so that her shoulder pressed against Glinda's. "Some of it makes sense - I mean, the words aren't right but I know what they mean. It's as if - as if you said something completely nonsensical, not real words at all, but I automatically knew you meant 'let's go to dinner.' And then some of it is like you said - I can read the words, but they don't mean anything."
Glinda frowned. "Then how can you know what the spell will do?"
"You can't, I guess." Elphaba patted Glinda's hand, the one that was still pointing at the letters on the page. "I think I've learned what happens when you perform a spell without knowing exactly what it's intended to do."
Thinking of the monkeys' wings made Glinda shudder. "Me too."
"But," Elphaba added with a note of false cheer, "some of them do have illustrations, so that's helpful." She flipped through the pages at random until she found one with a drawing near the title of the spell. "See?"
Glinda bent close until she could make out the picture - it was a man with something attached to his front . . . or rather . . . "Ew, Elphaba. Is that a man impaled on a tree limb?"
As Glinda looked away in disgust, Elphaba leaned in closer. "No," she said after a minute.
"Oh, good."
"I think it's a lamp-post, actually." She nudged Glinda's fingers out of the way and hastily turned the page. "I don't think I'll be trying that spell."
"I should think not." Glinda shifted backward on the bed and tucked her feet up under her. "On the other hand, maybe it's a spell for healing someone who's been impaled on a lamp-post."
Elphaba laughed a little with her. "But imagine what you'd have to do to find out."
"So you think I can read the levitation spell because I've already heard you say it out loud?"
"That's my guess." Elphaba looked around the room for a moment, then went and fetched a quill off her desk and laid it purposefully on the nightstand beside Glinda. Leaning over the book as she resumed her seat, she flipped back to the page containing the spell Glinda had recognized. "Go ahead, try it."
Glinda looked up at her friend, uncertain whether she felt more excited or afraid. "Really?"
"Just make sure you concentrate on the quill and not me."
"Well - all right." She took a deep breath, then gripped onto Elphaba's hand. With her free hand she waved tentatively at the quill and began, haltingly, to read out the words of the spell.
For a long tense moment they sat staring at the quill, which remained motionless on the nightstand. Then, just as Glinda was about to give up and hand the Grimmerie back to Elphaba - the quill rose. Slowly, and only a few inches into the air, but it rose.
Glinda covered her mouth with both hands and said, thus muffled, "Oh, my."
Elphaba threw both arms around her neck, looking really pleased for the first time in days. "You did it!" she said in a whisper more intense than any scream could have been.
"I did." Glinda lowered her hands slowly and laid them over Elphaba's on her own shoulder. "I've never done an old spell before - with a chant and without a wand."
"And it worked the first time!"
"It did!" Excitement slowly seeping in through the shock, Glinda turned and hugged Elphaba tightly. "I can't believe it worked for me!"
"Maybe you're better without a wand," Elphaba said, pulling back to smile at her.
"So you think you can teach me to read it?"
Elphaba's face tensed for the briefest second, but she quickly relaxed into a smile again. "I hope so," she said.
~~Elphaba~~
Now that Nessa had finally stopped harping on Elphaba's behavior in the Emerald City, and her impossible failure to tell her sister everything that had happened, and the shame she had brought on their entire family, walking her to and from class had become an exercise in daydreaming for Elphaba. True, her sister was still talking, but it was generally a recitation of everything Boq had said or not said to her that day, every time she had seen him, every time he had acknowledged or ignored her. Elphaba really did feel for her sister - Boq was essentially ignoring her now, and there didn't seem to be a good reason why he had suddenly stopped his attention to Nessa - but she simply couldn't listen to every little interaction, every slight, every complaint Nessa had against him.
Instead she let her mind wander, pondering over the last spell she had managed to read from the Grimmerie, puzzling over the meaningless words of the last one she hadn't managed, letting Nessa's voice and the quiet squeaking of her chair's wheels mix with the cool wind and the honking of geese and the chattering of the other students into a swirl of indistinguishable sounds. It was always an annoyance when they came so close to a particular group that their words broke loudly into her thoughts and interrupted her daydreaming.
Today it happened as they passed a gazebo that sat between the male and female dormitories - a favorite place for lovers because ivy grew so thickly among its planks and lattices that it was almost impossible to see inside from most angles.
The students inside today did not appear to be lovers, however - there were too many of them, and all female. ". . . get her comeuppance, all right," one of them was saying in piercing tones as Elphaba and Nessa came closer on the path.
"Well, she is so very fond of having everyone in love with her," another anonymous voice responded with an obnoxious giggle. Elphaba rolled her eyes. The capacity of the females at Shiz to be cruel to one another continued to astound her - their behavior toward her she understood, but they were often equally fierce with each other for apparently no particular reason.
"She'll probably enjoy the attention." A third voice, deeper but still female.
"You're sure they got your message?" the second voice asked. One of Nessa's wheels caught in a rut and Elphaba had to stop and rock her sister back and forth to free it. Nessa was uncharacteristically silent and uncomplaining during this process, but then she always did have to listen to gossip - always afraid it might be about her.
"I'm sure - my messenger said they looked like all their birthdays had come early." This statement was greeted with raucously unladylike laughter.
"What'd you tell her?"
The first girl sounded eminently pleased with herself. "That her darling prince charming wanted to meet her in the history classroom."
Nessa's wheel came free at last, and Elphaba pushed her hastily away from the gazebo. If they were plotting some unfortunate prank against one of the other girls in her class - like the time someone had copied out Pfannee's roommate's diary and hung the pages on the cafeteria noticeboard - she would rather not know about it. Best to stay as far away from those quarrels as she possibly could.
When Elphaba finally made it to her room alone, having left Nessa to rest up before dinner in her own suite, she collapsed directly into an exhausted heap on her bed. Glinda's excitement at being able to perform even one spell from the Grimmerie had been contagious and they had stayed up late into the night attempting to read more of them. The only glitch in Elphaba's plan had been the fact that in order to teach Glinda to read the spells, Elphaba had to read them out loud - which carried far too strong a danger that she might accidentally perform the spell. Still, a few of them had been obviously innocuous enough to try. She grinned - from her vantage point on the bed she could see the quill still lying on the desk. It was now pink, the result of Glinda's very first successful color change spell.
After the quill she had wanted to try it on Elphaba, but Elphaba had energetically refused. Somehow she thought ending up bright pink would be much worse than green.
Speaking of which, there was a sheet of paper lying under the quill that hadn't been there before. Elphaba hauled herself reluctantly to her feet and went over to retrieve it.
"Don't wait for me - see you at dinner," read Glinda's swirling handwriting. "Fiyero wanted to talk - be in the history building if you desperately need me!"
Elphaba smiled to herself as she replaced the note on the desk. Did Glinda think she would suddenly have such an urgent need for fashion advice that she would burst in on them in the -
Oh, no. The sinking feeling in her stomach grew stronger as she reread the note. Oh, no no no no no.
She is so very fond of having everyone in love with her.
Her darling prince charming wanted to meet her in the history classroom.
Oh, no.
Without stopping to put her coat back on, Elphaba ran as fast as she could. Most of these quarrels she would stay well out of, but Glinda was a different case entirely.
All the windows in the history building were already dark, with classes concluded for the day, except for a light in a professor's office high on the top floor. Elphaba hesitated with her hand on the doorknob, afraid of what she was likely to stumble onto inside. If it should be too late to warn Glinda or to undo the damage - if those girls had plotted to embarrass her in some way - would Glinda rather that Elphaba not be there to witness it? On the other hand . . .
A shrill cry of fear pierced the air and was quickly cut off. That decided it; Elphaba pushed the door open and ran into the darkened hallway.
There was no more noise, but she didn't feel any better. It had certainly been Glinda who screamed, and it had not been a mild shriek of embarrassment, or of surprise. The girls in the gazebo had specifically said the history classroom, so Elphaba counted the rooms in the dark and paused outside the first-year history room, listening with her ear against the door. A voice - a male voice - was saying something, too low for her to make out the words. There was a scuffling sound, the sound of something being knocked over. Elphaba turned the knob and found the door locked.
Her stomach now clenched in fear, she stepped back and raised a shaking hand over the doorknob. She hadn't memorized a spell for this, but . . . Glinda. Screaming. In danger. Locked in the dark with . . . Power flowed through her body in a painful jolt and the door flew open, banging against the wall inside the classroom.
Elphaba gave a little strangled cry at the scene that greeted her eyes. Two large and well-built boys, only one of whom she recognized from her classes, had Glinda by the elbows and were holding her pinned against the wall. Her hair fell loose over her shoulders and tears shone on her face. The third boy had just begun to turn around as Elphaba barrelled into the room.
Pure rage filled her ears and her throat to the extent that she had no idea what she was screaming - the sound of her own voice drowned out whatever the boys might have been shouting as she ran toward them - and then she was abruptly halted, winded, her tirade cut off. The third boy, the one not occupied with holding Glinda, had turned and backhanded her sharply across the face. "Shut up!" he roared as she reeled backward, hand flying to her mouth, hair falling forward to veil her face. Glinda's horrified cry of her name sounded very far away.
The other two boys, however, had frozen in fear. One of them - the one Elphaba didn't know - pointed and gasped, "You idiot - she - the witch, the one they told us about!"
The boy who had struck Elphaba grabbed her by shoulder and pulled her up roughly to look into her face. "Greyling said she's not really a witch, didn't she?"
"Greyling said she wasn't a criminal - she never said she wasn't a witch!" Neither he nor his partner, however, made any move to release Glinda.
The third boy laughed and brought his hand up to hold Elphaba's chin. "Not that dangerous, are you?" he chuckled. "Just ugly. Not that I necessarily mind."
"Elphie," Glinda pleaded - for what Elphaba wasn't sure, but it was enough. The power that had drained her energy moments ago surged through her again - she was barely able to hope that it didn't touch Glinda as she felt her anger and fear pour through her fingers.
When it was over, all three boys were lying motionless on the floor - awake, but apparently unable to move. Glinda - mercifully unscathed by the explosion of Elphaba's power - squeaked softly and hurried to Elphaba's side, stepping over one of the boys on the way.
"What did you - but, and how - how did you know -"
"Your note," Elphaba said, her voice raspy. "On my way home I heard some girls plotting to . . . do something to someone in the history classroom. When I saw your note . . . I thought, I expected it was something to embarrass you, not something like - this."
"Oh, Elphie." Glinda brushed her fingers lightly over Elphaba's mouth and then held them up, stained with blood. "Are you all right?"
"Are you?" Elphaba asked meaningfully. She could taste the blood now; he must have hit her hard.
"Yes," Glinda replied, her eyes nervously surveying the boys on the floor.
"Really?"
Glinda laid her hand on Elphaba's chest, over her heart. She held Elphaba's gaze with her own and repeated, "Yes."
Elphaba kicked the boot of the boy lying closest to them - the one who had struck her. "What did they tell you to do?" she demanded.
It seemed that whatever she had done to them, they were able to speak. "I don't know what you're talking about," the boy replied.
"Those girls," she said through clenched teeth. "They told you to do something to her, I know they did."
One of the other boys struggled to lift his head. "They didn't say to do anything to her, I swear. They said she was . . . er . . ."
"They said she was looking for a little fun," the boy nearest to Elphaba spat out. "They said she'd come to us, and she'd pretend to be shy, but we shouldn't pay any attention when she pretended to say no."
"And you believed them." None of the boys spoke, but their expressions were clear enough. They hadn't really believed such a ridiculous story. "It gave you a convenient enough excuse to act like animals, didn't it?"
Glinda's arms slipped around Elphaba's waist, and her head leaned on Elphaba's shoulder with a warm and welcome pressure. "What are we going to do?" she asked quietly.
"We're going to Madame Greyling," Elphaba replied immediately. "I don't know how long they'll be stuck here, but I hope long enough." She took Glinda's hand in hers and led her from the classroom, and back down the darkened corridor, in silence. Once they were back out in the fading late afternoon light she stammered, "I don't know how to - this is because of me. This is happening to you because of what I did . . ."
"Stop." Glinda dug in her heels and tugged on Elphaba's hand until she stopped walking and turned to face her. "We're both in this, remember? And you saved me." She reached up and gently wiped more blood from Elphaba's face with her thumb.
"You're not afraid, or -"
"I was so scared," Glinda replied, holding tight to Elphaba's hand, her lips trembling. "But I don't blame you - and I'm not afraid it'll happen again. We're supposed to be under the Wizard's protection, remember - I think those boys should be more afraid of what's going to happen to them."
"And those girls," Elphaba said darkly. "They'd better hope they're expelled and sent away." She squeezed Glinda's hand. "You're doing a good job of acting brave."
"Acting is exactly what it is." Glinda took a deep breath. "Well, let's go talk to Madame while I still can." She started to walk again, then stopped and reached up to run her fingers over Elphaba's hair and down through the tousled ends. "Thank you," she whispered.
Elphaba nodded. "Always."