Defying Gravity 4/?, by ainsleyaisling
Title: Defying Gravity, 4/?
Author: ainsleyaisling
Rating: PG-13
'Verse: Musical AU; some details from bookverse
Summary: Glinda and Elphaba - and Fiyero - working hand-in-hand, the way it was supposed to be . . . maybe . . .
This chapter: Elphaba's plan works a little too well.
Disclaimer: Wicked belongs mostly to Gregory Maguire, and musicalverse belongs to Stephen Schwartz, Winnie Holzman, and possibly Universal.
Notes: Sequel to "The Effects of Gravity," a link to all chapters of which can be found here. The previous chapter of this story can be found here.
~~Elphaba~~
The Wizard was positively beaming.
"I never imagined - barely a week!" he exclaimed, rubbing his hands together. "And I worried this might be difficult for you. Well, go on, show us."
Elphaba drew herself up to her full height, which almost matched the Wizard's, and looked down her nose at the sheet of parchment she had just handed him. "What would you like me to find?" she asked. Before he could reply she added, "Perhaps something easy to start with - or something you'd recognize immediately, so you can see clearly whether it worked the way you expected?" Her heart threatened to beat just a bit harder; after all, her plan would only work if he didn't ask first to see something she didn't want to show him.
Fortunately, he only continued to smile. "Of course, of course. Perhaps . . . perhaps you could find me a group of students having an informal study session at your alma mater? Not a class of course -"
"No, an informal group," Elphaba said. "Yes, of course. It'll have to be something more specific though - say, the largest group of students sitting together in the library." She had no need of the parchment - like Glinda, she had memorized the spell and the way it had to be recited. Her pause for breath was unnecessary, and carefully placed at a different part of the spell than the words she had left out of her recitation. Those words she said quickly in her mind, in the miniscule lapse of time between one syllable and the next. She knew she had done it right; she always did it right. The glowing green sphere that appeared showed a bored-looking contingent of upperclass Shiz students gathered together around a battered old library table. The Wizard clapped his hands together, and Madame Morrible peered into the image and murmured appreciatively.
"Well, Elphaba," she said slowly as Elphaba made the image disappear. "You've done well, it seems. This could be very useful - to the Wizard, of course."
"Of course," Elphaba repeated almost inaudibly.
"I'm sure you won't mind if I make an attempt myself - to verify your methodology?"
Elphaba gave herself the luxury of a quick glance at Glinda as Madame Morrible reached for the parchment in the Wizard's hands. Glinda's expression was impassive, though Elphaba thought she caught a trace of nervousness in her eyes.
Morrible cleared her throat ostentatiously before beginning to read aloud the words of the spell, which Elphaba had printed neatly and phonetically. Their old teacher still halted over one or two of the unfamiliar words, but in all it sounded as if she had said everything correctly. Everything except the missing words, of course. The fuzzy sphere that floated in the air before her revealed the freckled face of a Munchkin farmer in a straw hat, then a teenager with his long hair tied back with twine, then a fat Munchkin wife in her kitchen.
"What does this mean?" the Wizard asked, watching intently as the parade of faces continued.
Elphaba held her breath for a moment before speaking. "I'm not sure. It isn't supposed to do that."
"If - if I might, Madame?" Glinda raised her hand as if she were in class, managing at the same time to turn her gasp into a cough when one of the faces in the sphere flashed a familiar smile. Rikk. Elphaba nearly had to cough herself. "That's what happened the first time I tried it," Glinda explained, a false-sweet sympathy in her voice. "I mean, it didn't work for me at first either."
Morrible huffed, but the Wizard interrupted before she could comment. "But it works for you now, Glinda? You can perform the spell accurately?"
"Oh yes!" Glinda's show of remembering her manners was obviously false, without even an attempt at subtlety. Elphaba was almost ready to enjoy herself. "I mean," Glinda corrected with a sheepish smile, "I mean, it's very difficult, but most of the time I can do it."
Morrible ended her spell with a grunt of temper. "Why don't you show us, then?" she simpered. "See if you can find what I was looking for."
"What were you looking for, Madame?" Glinda asked.
Morrible's cheeks seemed to hollow as she spoke. "I was looking for a group of Rebels, any group meeting together in Munchkinland with treasonous intentions."
Elphaba thought she felt her heart stop. A few feet away from her Glinda swallowed visibly and asked, "But - but Madame, I thought the old spell could do that? Surely we could just tell it to find the Resistance . . ."
"We've tried that," Morrible snapped. "But it seems the spell will only work if all the members of the group are together in one place. We're going to have to look cell by cell now, home by home, wherever small numbers of them gather together. Starting now. Perhaps you could take a leaf from Elphaba's book and simply find the largest group, for starters."
Glinda shot Elphaba a helpless look that was quickly disguised as general nervousness. "All right," she said slowly. "May - may I have the parchment please? I haven't quite memorized the spell."
Morrible handed over the parchment and Glinda took it - a show of good faith, planned to make them think she really was reading the spell exactly as Elphaba had written it down. Glinda licked her lips, took a very deep breath, and began to read, gesturing with one trembling hand while the other held the paper. Elphaba was torn between curiosity and horror as she listened to Glinda recite the spell perfectly, complete with what sounded like a pause for thought in a randomly chosen place in the middle. She had truly no idea whether Glinda would sacrifice credibility and perform the spell incorrectly, or whether she would actually allow it work, or whether she'd even think of any other option quickly enough . . .
The sphere that took shape in front of Glinda was foggy at first, and Elphaba held her breath. When it began to clear, however, the image was pristine. It showed . . . the central meeting chamber of the Munchkinland General Assembly. Complete with nearly every single member in his or her seat.
"Oh dear," Glinda murmured, looking into her spell. "I may have been thinking too broadly. It seems to have interpreted merely disagreeing with the central government as treasonous."
Elphaba felt the tension flow from her body so quickly that she nearly collapsed, even though they weren't out of trouble yet. There was no way the spell had actually shown the Assembly in lieu of a large group of traitors; no way Glinda had actually been so vague. The quick look she shot Elphaba out of the corner of her eye confirmed it. It was a piece of very fast thinking that had allowed her to come up with both a group that could not, realistically, be arrested in its entirety, and a plausible excuse for ending up with that result. Glinda was dangerously close to looking pleased with herself.
Morrible made a sound that indicated she might be about to argue that, in fact, the entire Munchkinland Assembly might be treasonous. Elphaba cut her off.
"But you see, it worked," she said quickly. "Glinda might not have framed her request exactly right, but -"
"Of course, of course." The Wizard was much too excited to notice that his press secretary was fuming. "Now, er, perhaps we could try something a little more difficult? Perhaps Elphaba . . ."
"Anything you like," Elphaba said, feeling her nervousness creep up on her again. If he asked for something impossible, she didn't think the vagueness excuse would work for them again.
"Perhaps . . ." The Wizard frowned, although she was nearly certain that his thoughtfulness was feigned. He already knew what he wanted. "Any large group of Rebel Animals in Munchkinland, can we do that?"
Relief made Elphaba half-giddy. It was at least plausible that there were no such groups, whereas this tactic would not have worked for Glinda - it was not plausible that there were absolutely no treasonous humans in Munchkinland. She smiled.
"Of course," she said. "I can do that." She chanted slowly, as if she needed to think about the words, all the while concentrating on one thing she was certain could not be found anywhere in Munchkinland - a herd of unicorns. Blue ones. With wings.
When her green sphere materialized, it showed nothing at all. Just green mist.
Morrible sounded positively triumphant as she crowed, "So, it didn't work?"
"It did," Elphaba said with calm assurance, gazing into the misty sphere. "When it doesn't work, it shows individuals, or something else that's wrong. When it shows nothing at all, like this, it means the thing sought doesn't exist. It means," she said, addressing herself to the Wizard, "that there are no groups of Rebel Animals anywhere in Munchkinland. And of course, that only makes sense, as you knew. There have been no Animals left in Munchkinland for nearly two years."
The Wizard nodded sagely, accepting the credit for wisdom she'd hoped he would take. "Yes, indeed, I did know that most of them had disappeared. Very . . . mysterious. So this spell of yours can verify for certain the complete absence of a certain type of thing from a particular area?"
Elphaba nodded.
"Wonderful." The Wizard's smile was warm, and gave her no indication that he suspected anything was wrong. "That's wonderful. You've done excellently. And I'm certain that as Madame Morrible becomes accustomed to the spell . . ."
Glinda almost laughed; a nervous reaction. As it was she managed to turn it into a sort of sputter, and her face reddened. Elphaba nodded.
"I may have put the spell together oddly," she said, looking somewhere around Morrible's ankles. "Since most of our education was completed under Madame Greyling. Perhaps my methods are unorthodox."
"I did have to practice for a very long time before I got it right," Glinda said innocently. Elphaba had to fight the urge to laugh.
~~Glinda~~
The only warning of what was about to happen was a soft rumble of distant thunder, and a flash of lightning that seemed to take place almost behind her eyelids. When it happened she blinked furiously, but no one else in the central market appeared to have noticed anything. The merchants and customers were going about their business without even glancing upward. Glinda shook her head and tried to concentrate again on the stall full of apples in front of her, but it was mere seconds before the thunder cracked loud and close overhead. Now the others in the square did look up at the sky, and Glinda, despite a moment's worry that it was all in her head again, looked up as well.
Gray clouds, so dark they were almost black, moved fast across the sky and blotted out most of the sunlight within seconds. Hard, angry, heavy raindrops greeted Glinda's upturned face and instantly soaked into her dress; she could feel the water beginning to run from her skin almost right away. The panicked scene in the square, as people dove for cover, was illuminated only by the occasional burst of dangerously close and fiery hot lightning. The first screams came with the first flash of light in the sky, but they grew louder and more horrified when the winds came.
The wind swept through the square like a flood, overturning stalls, snatching packages and useless hats and umbrellas from their owners, and even tearing a few children from their parents' hands. Glinda clung with white-knuckled hands to the doorway of an open shop and watched as a frightened mother released her own handhold on a heavy wagon in order to run after her son, dragging him into her arms and flattening them both to the ground. When the clouds began to swirl, to turn brown and green, and to ring with the telltale sound of a train moving down its tracks, Glinda pressed her eyes shut against the wind and the rain and the terrifying sights and wished hard for Elphaba. She might know how to stop this.
Then, as suddenly as the storm had come up, it was gone. Or not gone exactly, because it was still visible in the sky, but - over. The winds seemed to sweep past and continue on a path out of the city; the clouds blew along with them; the rain went as well with one last angry volley. Glinda unclenched her fingers from the doorjamb and watched, water flowing freely down her face, as the now-brown clouds twisted their way off into the distance, moving south.
She kicked off her wet shoes and ran for the Palace as quickly as she could manage with them dangling from one hand, her bare feet splashing into puddles all the way. Although moments before the storm half the marketplace had been staring at her, watching her, now she went unnoticed as they gathered themselves together and examined the damage. She supposed she was also less recognizable soaking wet, with her dress plastered against her body and her hair darkened and dripping.
No one seemed to find her appearance out of the ordinary as she ran through the Palace, wet feet slipping on the marble floors, but then they had all obviously seen the storm. She'd passed whole units of soldiers trying to remove debris from the Palace lawn - Fiyero not among them - and she saw others in the halls who had clearly just come in, their uniforms dark with water. Even when she nearly fell down the stairs in her hurry to rush up them, none of the guards blinked.
Elphaba seemed to have been waiting for her. As soon as Glinda opened the door she asked, "Did you get - oh my." By then she was able to take in Glinda's appearance, and her eyes were wide and worried. "You were out in the storm."
"Did you see it from here?" Glinda asked, padding carefully across the room with a trickle of water marking her path.
"A little." Elphaba gestured to the window. "I think it was moving south."
"Looked like it," Glinda agreed. "Could you see it coming?"
"No, that's the strange thing." Elphaba frowned as she watched Glinda begin to unbutton her wet dress. "It didn't come from anywhere. I heard the thunder before I saw it, and suddenly it was right overhead and moving south. Unless it came from the south and then turned around and went back, I can't see where it could have come from. It's as if it materialized right over my head."
"Hmm," Glinda said as she struggled with buttons made tight and stiff by water.
"Let me help." Elphaba started from the bottom of the bodice, having only slightly more luck by virtue of having dry hands. "You're not hurt, are you?"
"I don't think so."
"I was worried."
"I'm sure you were." Glinda laid a cold, wet hand against Elphaba's cheek and had to fight back a laugh when she jumped. "Sorry."
"It's all right." They were quiet together for a few moments while Elphaba managed to get Glinda's dress completely unbuttoned and peeled from her shoulders. "Go and change," she said quietly then, "and after that I have something to tell you about."
She sounded much too serious; Glinda was instantly concerned. She ran into her room and stripped off her wet things quickly, and threw on the first dress that came to hand. Elphaba was waiting for her stiffly on the sofa.
"Did something happen today?" Glinda asked as she settled beside her.
Elphaba shook her head. "Not today. The other day, while Fiyero was here. We heard a storm, and I saw - I thought I saw lightning, but there was no storm. Then the same thing happened today, I think, before the actual storm started. I - I saw a storm that wasn't there?"
Glinda pulled her wet hair over her shoulder and carefully squeezed the water out of it. In all the excitement she'd almost forgotten. "No, I think the same thing happened to me," she said. "Not the other day, but today, before the storm came. I heard the thunder and no one else did, and I saw lightning before it really happened - I think - I don't know how to explain it."
"A spell," Elphaba said. "It's what I thought the other day, and now I'm almost sure. That storm didn't come from anywhere; a spell made it."
"It still came from somewhere," Glinda pointed out, though she subsided when Elphaba glared. She lowered her voice cautiously. "You think it was Morrible, then?"
Elphaba nodded. "I can't think what she would have been doing, though. Why send a storm through the City, what did it accomplish?"
"It scared people and did a lot of damage. Is that useful in any way?"
"I don't know." Elphaba reached out absently and took Glinda's hand. "Maybe she was just angry about something, and . . . expressing herself."
Glinda almost laughed, but it turned into a shudder. "And I was afraid of getting her angry before."
"I wonder if something happened."
"Maybe she can't master your location spell."
Elphaba shivered now. "Don't even joke about that."
"Sorry." Glinda slid closer and rested her head on Elphaba's shoulder. "Am I getting you wet?"
"No. Well, yes, but it's all right."
She sat up a bit and pulled her wet hair as far over her other shoulder as she could, to keep it away from Elphaba. "Better?"
"A little." Elphaba's fingers pressed tightly on Glinda's. "Do you think maybe she was sending it somewhere?"
"Sending what?"
"The storm."
"Oh. Well - it was moving awfully quickly. And all in one direction. So maybe?"
Elphaba nodded. "Well. I suppose if anything really dramatic happened we'll hear about it."
After the cold chill that ran through Glinda at those words, she was barely surprised to read in the paper the next morning that a cyclone had whipped through Munchkinland the previous afternoon, narrowly missing the Governor's mansion and almost entirely flattening the General Assembly. The building had been nearly empty at the time, the Assembly's session having finished an hour earlier, and so only ten people had been killed.
"Only," Elphaba said blankly when she read it. "Only ten."
"A warning?" Glinda asked.
Elphaba closed the newspaper on the photograph of the rubble. "Maybe?"
"But to whom? They couldn't have known what happened, that I called up a picture of them."
Elphaba bit her lip and stared at the folded paper in her hands. "Then she just wanted to get rid of them. Disband them, confuse them, make them less effective. Without them suspecting the Wizard's involvement, or he could have just dissolved the Assembly by official decree."
"Does it say who was killed?" Glinda asked softly. "Their names?"
"No. It'll be in the Munchkinland papers, maybe. I'll see if I can get one today." Elphaba suddenly turned a piercing look on her. "This is not your fault, Glinda."
"How can it not be my fault?" Finally, she had a name for the hard, empty, sick feeling in her chest. Guilt.
"You chose people you thought were safe - and you were right, it was the best you could have done. It would be so much worse if you had let her find any actual Rebels, you know that."
"I know," Glinda said automatically, but even Elphaba's arm around her shoulders didn't entirely make her feel better.
Author: ainsleyaisling
Rating: PG-13
'Verse: Musical AU; some details from bookverse
Summary: Glinda and Elphaba - and Fiyero - working hand-in-hand, the way it was supposed to be . . . maybe . . .
This chapter: Elphaba's plan works a little too well.
Disclaimer: Wicked belongs mostly to Gregory Maguire, and musicalverse belongs to Stephen Schwartz, Winnie Holzman, and possibly Universal.
Notes: Sequel to "The Effects of Gravity," a link to all chapters of which can be found here. The previous chapter of this story can be found here.
~~Elphaba~~
The Wizard was positively beaming.
"I never imagined - barely a week!" he exclaimed, rubbing his hands together. "And I worried this might be difficult for you. Well, go on, show us."
Elphaba drew herself up to her full height, which almost matched the Wizard's, and looked down her nose at the sheet of parchment she had just handed him. "What would you like me to find?" she asked. Before he could reply she added, "Perhaps something easy to start with - or something you'd recognize immediately, so you can see clearly whether it worked the way you expected?" Her heart threatened to beat just a bit harder; after all, her plan would only work if he didn't ask first to see something she didn't want to show him.
Fortunately, he only continued to smile. "Of course, of course. Perhaps . . . perhaps you could find me a group of students having an informal study session at your alma mater? Not a class of course -"
"No, an informal group," Elphaba said. "Yes, of course. It'll have to be something more specific though - say, the largest group of students sitting together in the library." She had no need of the parchment - like Glinda, she had memorized the spell and the way it had to be recited. Her pause for breath was unnecessary, and carefully placed at a different part of the spell than the words she had left out of her recitation. Those words she said quickly in her mind, in the miniscule lapse of time between one syllable and the next. She knew she had done it right; she always did it right. The glowing green sphere that appeared showed a bored-looking contingent of upperclass Shiz students gathered together around a battered old library table. The Wizard clapped his hands together, and Madame Morrible peered into the image and murmured appreciatively.
"Well, Elphaba," she said slowly as Elphaba made the image disappear. "You've done well, it seems. This could be very useful - to the Wizard, of course."
"Of course," Elphaba repeated almost inaudibly.
"I'm sure you won't mind if I make an attempt myself - to verify your methodology?"
Elphaba gave herself the luxury of a quick glance at Glinda as Madame Morrible reached for the parchment in the Wizard's hands. Glinda's expression was impassive, though Elphaba thought she caught a trace of nervousness in her eyes.
Morrible cleared her throat ostentatiously before beginning to read aloud the words of the spell, which Elphaba had printed neatly and phonetically. Their old teacher still halted over one or two of the unfamiliar words, but in all it sounded as if she had said everything correctly. Everything except the missing words, of course. The fuzzy sphere that floated in the air before her revealed the freckled face of a Munchkin farmer in a straw hat, then a teenager with his long hair tied back with twine, then a fat Munchkin wife in her kitchen.
"What does this mean?" the Wizard asked, watching intently as the parade of faces continued.
Elphaba held her breath for a moment before speaking. "I'm not sure. It isn't supposed to do that."
"If - if I might, Madame?" Glinda raised her hand as if she were in class, managing at the same time to turn her gasp into a cough when one of the faces in the sphere flashed a familiar smile. Rikk. Elphaba nearly had to cough herself. "That's what happened the first time I tried it," Glinda explained, a false-sweet sympathy in her voice. "I mean, it didn't work for me at first either."
Morrible huffed, but the Wizard interrupted before she could comment. "But it works for you now, Glinda? You can perform the spell accurately?"
"Oh yes!" Glinda's show of remembering her manners was obviously false, without even an attempt at subtlety. Elphaba was almost ready to enjoy herself. "I mean," Glinda corrected with a sheepish smile, "I mean, it's very difficult, but most of the time I can do it."
Morrible ended her spell with a grunt of temper. "Why don't you show us, then?" she simpered. "See if you can find what I was looking for."
"What were you looking for, Madame?" Glinda asked.
Morrible's cheeks seemed to hollow as she spoke. "I was looking for a group of Rebels, any group meeting together in Munchkinland with treasonous intentions."
Elphaba thought she felt her heart stop. A few feet away from her Glinda swallowed visibly and asked, "But - but Madame, I thought the old spell could do that? Surely we could just tell it to find the Resistance . . ."
"We've tried that," Morrible snapped. "But it seems the spell will only work if all the members of the group are together in one place. We're going to have to look cell by cell now, home by home, wherever small numbers of them gather together. Starting now. Perhaps you could take a leaf from Elphaba's book and simply find the largest group, for starters."
Glinda shot Elphaba a helpless look that was quickly disguised as general nervousness. "All right," she said slowly. "May - may I have the parchment please? I haven't quite memorized the spell."
Morrible handed over the parchment and Glinda took it - a show of good faith, planned to make them think she really was reading the spell exactly as Elphaba had written it down. Glinda licked her lips, took a very deep breath, and began to read, gesturing with one trembling hand while the other held the paper. Elphaba was torn between curiosity and horror as she listened to Glinda recite the spell perfectly, complete with what sounded like a pause for thought in a randomly chosen place in the middle. She had truly no idea whether Glinda would sacrifice credibility and perform the spell incorrectly, or whether she would actually allow it work, or whether she'd even think of any other option quickly enough . . .
The sphere that took shape in front of Glinda was foggy at first, and Elphaba held her breath. When it began to clear, however, the image was pristine. It showed . . . the central meeting chamber of the Munchkinland General Assembly. Complete with nearly every single member in his or her seat.
"Oh dear," Glinda murmured, looking into her spell. "I may have been thinking too broadly. It seems to have interpreted merely disagreeing with the central government as treasonous."
Elphaba felt the tension flow from her body so quickly that she nearly collapsed, even though they weren't out of trouble yet. There was no way the spell had actually shown the Assembly in lieu of a large group of traitors; no way Glinda had actually been so vague. The quick look she shot Elphaba out of the corner of her eye confirmed it. It was a piece of very fast thinking that had allowed her to come up with both a group that could not, realistically, be arrested in its entirety, and a plausible excuse for ending up with that result. Glinda was dangerously close to looking pleased with herself.
Morrible made a sound that indicated she might be about to argue that, in fact, the entire Munchkinland Assembly might be treasonous. Elphaba cut her off.
"But you see, it worked," she said quickly. "Glinda might not have framed her request exactly right, but -"
"Of course, of course." The Wizard was much too excited to notice that his press secretary was fuming. "Now, er, perhaps we could try something a little more difficult? Perhaps Elphaba . . ."
"Anything you like," Elphaba said, feeling her nervousness creep up on her again. If he asked for something impossible, she didn't think the vagueness excuse would work for them again.
"Perhaps . . ." The Wizard frowned, although she was nearly certain that his thoughtfulness was feigned. He already knew what he wanted. "Any large group of Rebel Animals in Munchkinland, can we do that?"
Relief made Elphaba half-giddy. It was at least plausible that there were no such groups, whereas this tactic would not have worked for Glinda - it was not plausible that there were absolutely no treasonous humans in Munchkinland. She smiled.
"Of course," she said. "I can do that." She chanted slowly, as if she needed to think about the words, all the while concentrating on one thing she was certain could not be found anywhere in Munchkinland - a herd of unicorns. Blue ones. With wings.
When her green sphere materialized, it showed nothing at all. Just green mist.
Morrible sounded positively triumphant as she crowed, "So, it didn't work?"
"It did," Elphaba said with calm assurance, gazing into the misty sphere. "When it doesn't work, it shows individuals, or something else that's wrong. When it shows nothing at all, like this, it means the thing sought doesn't exist. It means," she said, addressing herself to the Wizard, "that there are no groups of Rebel Animals anywhere in Munchkinland. And of course, that only makes sense, as you knew. There have been no Animals left in Munchkinland for nearly two years."
The Wizard nodded sagely, accepting the credit for wisdom she'd hoped he would take. "Yes, indeed, I did know that most of them had disappeared. Very . . . mysterious. So this spell of yours can verify for certain the complete absence of a certain type of thing from a particular area?"
Elphaba nodded.
"Wonderful." The Wizard's smile was warm, and gave her no indication that he suspected anything was wrong. "That's wonderful. You've done excellently. And I'm certain that as Madame Morrible becomes accustomed to the spell . . ."
Glinda almost laughed; a nervous reaction. As it was she managed to turn it into a sort of sputter, and her face reddened. Elphaba nodded.
"I may have put the spell together oddly," she said, looking somewhere around Morrible's ankles. "Since most of our education was completed under Madame Greyling. Perhaps my methods are unorthodox."
"I did have to practice for a very long time before I got it right," Glinda said innocently. Elphaba had to fight the urge to laugh.
~~Glinda~~
The only warning of what was about to happen was a soft rumble of distant thunder, and a flash of lightning that seemed to take place almost behind her eyelids. When it happened she blinked furiously, but no one else in the central market appeared to have noticed anything. The merchants and customers were going about their business without even glancing upward. Glinda shook her head and tried to concentrate again on the stall full of apples in front of her, but it was mere seconds before the thunder cracked loud and close overhead. Now the others in the square did look up at the sky, and Glinda, despite a moment's worry that it was all in her head again, looked up as well.
Gray clouds, so dark they were almost black, moved fast across the sky and blotted out most of the sunlight within seconds. Hard, angry, heavy raindrops greeted Glinda's upturned face and instantly soaked into her dress; she could feel the water beginning to run from her skin almost right away. The panicked scene in the square, as people dove for cover, was illuminated only by the occasional burst of dangerously close and fiery hot lightning. The first screams came with the first flash of light in the sky, but they grew louder and more horrified when the winds came.
The wind swept through the square like a flood, overturning stalls, snatching packages and useless hats and umbrellas from their owners, and even tearing a few children from their parents' hands. Glinda clung with white-knuckled hands to the doorway of an open shop and watched as a frightened mother released her own handhold on a heavy wagon in order to run after her son, dragging him into her arms and flattening them both to the ground. When the clouds began to swirl, to turn brown and green, and to ring with the telltale sound of a train moving down its tracks, Glinda pressed her eyes shut against the wind and the rain and the terrifying sights and wished hard for Elphaba. She might know how to stop this.
Then, as suddenly as the storm had come up, it was gone. Or not gone exactly, because it was still visible in the sky, but - over. The winds seemed to sweep past and continue on a path out of the city; the clouds blew along with them; the rain went as well with one last angry volley. Glinda unclenched her fingers from the doorjamb and watched, water flowing freely down her face, as the now-brown clouds twisted their way off into the distance, moving south.
She kicked off her wet shoes and ran for the Palace as quickly as she could manage with them dangling from one hand, her bare feet splashing into puddles all the way. Although moments before the storm half the marketplace had been staring at her, watching her, now she went unnoticed as they gathered themselves together and examined the damage. She supposed she was also less recognizable soaking wet, with her dress plastered against her body and her hair darkened and dripping.
No one seemed to find her appearance out of the ordinary as she ran through the Palace, wet feet slipping on the marble floors, but then they had all obviously seen the storm. She'd passed whole units of soldiers trying to remove debris from the Palace lawn - Fiyero not among them - and she saw others in the halls who had clearly just come in, their uniforms dark with water. Even when she nearly fell down the stairs in her hurry to rush up them, none of the guards blinked.
Elphaba seemed to have been waiting for her. As soon as Glinda opened the door she asked, "Did you get - oh my." By then she was able to take in Glinda's appearance, and her eyes were wide and worried. "You were out in the storm."
"Did you see it from here?" Glinda asked, padding carefully across the room with a trickle of water marking her path.
"A little." Elphaba gestured to the window. "I think it was moving south."
"Looked like it," Glinda agreed. "Could you see it coming?"
"No, that's the strange thing." Elphaba frowned as she watched Glinda begin to unbutton her wet dress. "It didn't come from anywhere. I heard the thunder before I saw it, and suddenly it was right overhead and moving south. Unless it came from the south and then turned around and went back, I can't see where it could have come from. It's as if it materialized right over my head."
"Hmm," Glinda said as she struggled with buttons made tight and stiff by water.
"Let me help." Elphaba started from the bottom of the bodice, having only slightly more luck by virtue of having dry hands. "You're not hurt, are you?"
"I don't think so."
"I was worried."
"I'm sure you were." Glinda laid a cold, wet hand against Elphaba's cheek and had to fight back a laugh when she jumped. "Sorry."
"It's all right." They were quiet together for a few moments while Elphaba managed to get Glinda's dress completely unbuttoned and peeled from her shoulders. "Go and change," she said quietly then, "and after that I have something to tell you about."
She sounded much too serious; Glinda was instantly concerned. She ran into her room and stripped off her wet things quickly, and threw on the first dress that came to hand. Elphaba was waiting for her stiffly on the sofa.
"Did something happen today?" Glinda asked as she settled beside her.
Elphaba shook her head. "Not today. The other day, while Fiyero was here. We heard a storm, and I saw - I thought I saw lightning, but there was no storm. Then the same thing happened today, I think, before the actual storm started. I - I saw a storm that wasn't there?"
Glinda pulled her wet hair over her shoulder and carefully squeezed the water out of it. In all the excitement she'd almost forgotten. "No, I think the same thing happened to me," she said. "Not the other day, but today, before the storm came. I heard the thunder and no one else did, and I saw lightning before it really happened - I think - I don't know how to explain it."
"A spell," Elphaba said. "It's what I thought the other day, and now I'm almost sure. That storm didn't come from anywhere; a spell made it."
"It still came from somewhere," Glinda pointed out, though she subsided when Elphaba glared. She lowered her voice cautiously. "You think it was Morrible, then?"
Elphaba nodded. "I can't think what she would have been doing, though. Why send a storm through the City, what did it accomplish?"
"It scared people and did a lot of damage. Is that useful in any way?"
"I don't know." Elphaba reached out absently and took Glinda's hand. "Maybe she was just angry about something, and . . . expressing herself."
Glinda almost laughed, but it turned into a shudder. "And I was afraid of getting her angry before."
"I wonder if something happened."
"Maybe she can't master your location spell."
Elphaba shivered now. "Don't even joke about that."
"Sorry." Glinda slid closer and rested her head on Elphaba's shoulder. "Am I getting you wet?"
"No. Well, yes, but it's all right."
She sat up a bit and pulled her wet hair as far over her other shoulder as she could, to keep it away from Elphaba. "Better?"
"A little." Elphaba's fingers pressed tightly on Glinda's. "Do you think maybe she was sending it somewhere?"
"Sending what?"
"The storm."
"Oh. Well - it was moving awfully quickly. And all in one direction. So maybe?"
Elphaba nodded. "Well. I suppose if anything really dramatic happened we'll hear about it."
After the cold chill that ran through Glinda at those words, she was barely surprised to read in the paper the next morning that a cyclone had whipped through Munchkinland the previous afternoon, narrowly missing the Governor's mansion and almost entirely flattening the General Assembly. The building had been nearly empty at the time, the Assembly's session having finished an hour earlier, and so only ten people had been killed.
"Only," Elphaba said blankly when she read it. "Only ten."
"A warning?" Glinda asked.
Elphaba closed the newspaper on the photograph of the rubble. "Maybe?"
"But to whom? They couldn't have known what happened, that I called up a picture of them."
Elphaba bit her lip and stared at the folded paper in her hands. "Then she just wanted to get rid of them. Disband them, confuse them, make them less effective. Without them suspecting the Wizard's involvement, or he could have just dissolved the Assembly by official decree."
"Does it say who was killed?" Glinda asked softly. "Their names?"
"No. It'll be in the Munchkinland papers, maybe. I'll see if I can get one today." Elphaba suddenly turned a piercing look on her. "This is not your fault, Glinda."
"How can it not be my fault?" Finally, she had a name for the hard, empty, sick feeling in her chest. Guilt.
"You chose people you thought were safe - and you were right, it was the best you could have done. It would be so much worse if you had let her find any actual Rebels, you know that."
"I know," Glinda said automatically, but even Elphaba's arm around her shoulders didn't entirely make her feel better.