Defying Gravity, 19/?, by ainsleyaisling
Title: Defying Gravity, 19/?
Author: ainsleyaisling
Rating: PG
'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: A new magic may be coming into the picture, and Glinda explores.
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, plus the posted chapters of this story, can be found here. The previous chapter of this story can be found here.
~~Elphaba~~
Glinda was right, in that the entire idea seemed sort of crazy in the morning - but not crazy enough to forget about it entirely. She waited until Glinda had finished most of a cup of tea, and then said, "So, do you want to try it?"
She didn't have to say what she was talking about - although they hadn't discussed the idea all morning, she knew they were both thinking about it. Glinda pointed to herself with her teaspoon. "Me?"
"It was your idea."
"You keep saying that," Glinda said, putting her teaspoon carefully into her cup, "and I don't think that makes it true."
"I wouldn't have thought of it without you," Elphaba said. She cleared a little space on the table between them, pushing aside a plate of toast. "Anyway I sort of want to see what happens if you actually try your idea."
"My - ah." Glinda sighed and rubbed her fingers together as if to make sure there were no crumbs on them. "All right. Don't be surprised if I accidentally cross magics and something explodes."
"That would be interesting."
Glinda's eyes narrowed on the air in front of her as she held out both hands, palms cupped toward each other. Elphaba didn't know whether she had been practicing the spell on her own, or studying it in between learning the spells Morrible had set her, but she remembered it perfectly, muttering the words under her breath - except, Elphaba noted with some amusement, the words that had to be spoken silently in front of others. Safest to stay in that habit, she supposed. Once the spell was spoken, Glinda raised one eye toward Elphaba from the circle of her hands and added, "Find Ozma's rubies." Elphaba returned the most arch look she could manage, before the sphere started to materialize in Glinda's hands.
Green mist swirled in cloudlike patterns, not immediately showing anything but giving off some sense of . . . urgency? Glinda glanced up, blue eyes reflecting a sort of aquamarine, and gave a small shrug.
"What did you ask it to find?" Elphaba asked softly.
"Rubies anywhere in the building," Glinda replied, one side of her mouth curling into a doubtful grimace. "I wonder if they're even allowed. I've never seen Morrible wearing any."
"No, and she wears more jewels than anyone else I've ever seen." Elphaba bit on her lip and stared into the swirling mist. It seemed so much more agitated than the other times they'd ask for things that didn't exist. She wondered whether Glinda was thinking the same thing, whether that was the reason that she hadn't yet ended the spell. "I wonder," she murmured.
"Oh!" Glinda said suddenly. "Oh, wait." She brought her hands together hastily, winking the sphere out of existence, and then immediately began to chant again. Elphaba was afraid to break her concentration by asking questions, so she only leaned close, watching the air in front of Glinda with a renewed sense of expectation.
The sphere that started to form was misty green at first, as usual, but as they watched it began to swirl red instead, until it cast a pinkish light on Glinda's face and flooded her lap with light the color of Munchkin wine. "What -" Elphaba whispered.
Glinda shook her head. "I don't know. I - oh, look, look!"
Elphaba squinted closer, but she saw nothing more than red mist. "What?"
"Don't you see - there." Glinda pointed carefully with the smallest finger of her left hand. "There, the mist is swirling all around it, but -"
"I don't see anything," Elphaba said, her eyes practically coming unfocused with her effort.
"Come stand behind me."
Elphaba left her chair and rushed to stand over Glinda's shoulder, peering past her into the sphere. "I still don't see anything," she confessed after a moment.
Glinda waved her finger again, slowly. "There, at the very bottom, under all the mist. It's - like a floor, or something, flat, and crumbling around the edges, but I'd swear it's ruby. The right color anyway. But it's not gemstones, you know, it's like - a sheet of it. Like glass. You really can't see it?"
"No." Elphaba leaned a hand on Glinda's shoulder and looked closer, to no avail. "What did you do differently?"
"Oh - well, I realized I asked for the wrong thing the first time. If the Palace had been built over the foundations of the old Ozma palace, then the rubies - if there were anything left - wouldn't be in the Palace, would they?"
"They'd be under it," Elphaba realized. "Good thinking."
"I still don't understand why you can't see it," Glinda murmured.
"Or why it turned the whole thing red," Elphaba added.
"Maybe you were right after all." Glinda twisted her wrists slowly in one direction and then the other, rotating the sphere - for effect more than anything else, Elphaba thought. "Strong magic, different from yours."
"From all modern magic, it seems," Elphaba said. "I messed with that spell, but it's ordinary magic."
"It's interesting anyway." Glinda gently twisted the sphere around again. "And pretty."
Elphaba laughed quietly. "End it," she said. "I'd like to try, if you don't mind."
The really interesting thing happened when Elphaba cast the spell herself, asking it to find anything made of ruby on the site of the Palace. This time the sphere that appeared seemed to flare a stronger, brighter green before settling down to red - and now Elphaba could easily see, somewhat masked by the clouds of red mist, the ruby-red crumbling floor, or wall, Glinda had been talking about.
"There," Elphaba whispered. "Is that the same thing you saw?"
In a tone of voice that suggested she found all of this rather intriguing, Glinda said, "I can't see anything, Elphie."
Elphaba frowned. "But you've already seen it once, you know what to look for. Come stand behind me."
Glinda laughed as she got to her feet, but as she came to lean over Elphaba, one hand on each of her shoulders, she said, "I don't think I'm going to see it. I have a theory."
"Nothing?" Elphaba asked as Glinda peered past her.
"Nothing."
Elphaba twisted so that she could look up at Glinda at least a little. "You think it's only visible to the person casting the spell?"
"Yes," Glinda said. She squeezed Elphaba's shoulders briefly as she returned to her chair.
Elphaba bit the inside of her cheek thoughtfully for another moment before closing her hands and letting the sphere disappear. "The magic protecting itself maybe? So if someone finds it, it won't be visible to everyone around?"
"Who knows?" Glinda refreshed her tea with hotter water from the kettle and stirred with slow strokes in a soothing rhythm. "It's something we've never seen before, anyway."
"I wonder if Morrible has." Elphaba pulled her own empty teacup toward her again and refilled it, watching the stray leaves spin in the little current she'd created. "I wonder if she's that ambitious, to go looking for other types of magic."
"She's ambitious, but is she patient enough to develop new magic, or lazy enough to just do the most damage she can with the power she has?" Glinda absently twisted one loose curl around a finger as she spoke. "Which, we know, is a lot."
"That's definitely true," Elphaba said. "The question is, would finding out more about this other power -"
"If it is another power, and not just pretty rubies with a curse on them or something."
"Right. Would it help us against her at all?"
"And," Glinda said, "is all this really just a way for you to put off going to talk to your sister?"
Elphaba gave her a halfhearted glare, trying to ignore the fact that Glinda's words had brought that uncomfortable feeling back to her stomach. "I'm not putting anything off."
"Of course you're not. We always spend our time exploring esoteric magical theories when there's practical work to be done."
"I think I'm having a bad effect on you," Elphaba said.
"I agree." Glinda smiled innocently. "Like another slice of toast?"
"Just for that, you're dealing with any cursed rubies we might find."
Glinda's smile widened, and she very gently kicked a slippered foot against Elphaba's shin. "Elphie, if you find me cursed rubies to mess with, it'd be like my birthday come early."
Her stomach unclenching slightly, Elphaba relented and gave her a half smile. "We'll ask Fiyero to look around for any."
~~Glinda~~
Elphaba hadn't been gone more than ten minutes - on an errand to the Wizard's library that would probably end with her sitting in the library, buried in a book, for at least two hours - when Glinda started to feel fidgety. She tried practicing the most recent spell Morrible had asked her to learn, but quit after managing only to produce a small army of bubbles which the cat chased, leaping and twisting and chirping in confusion when it didn't succeed in breaking any of the bubbles. "I'm glad I entertained you," she told it, but it only went on dancing after a floating bubble.
After a moment Glinda carefully tucked her wand into the waist of her skirt, untying her sash and winding it around her waist again so that it concealed most of the rest of it. A glance in her bedroom mirror confirmed that her hair was perfect, her dress not terribly practical, and her shoes completely frivolous. She smiled cheerfully at the guards as she left their suite and trooped down the marble stairs, her slippers making only the tiniest tapping sounds.
She descended lower and lower, ignoring the landing that would normally take her out of the Palace or toward the kitchens, spiraling down and down and down. By counting after she passed the barracks, she knew when she had reached the landing where Fiyero had taken Elphaba into the hidden passageway to Southstairs. She paused there to run her fingers over the obscured doorway, shivering a little as she pictured what must be on the other side of it, but mostly telling her eyes and fingertips to memorize what it looked and felt like, this attempt to hide a door in plain sight. Then she turned her back to it and continued descending, now conscious of stepping as softly as she could to avoid making a sound.
On the next landing she stopped, eyes skimming the whitewashed, uneven walls, and fingertips brushing over it, but she was fairly certain there was nothing hidden there. From the smell, the hallway that spiraled off on this level led to the food cellars, which made some sense since she must be low enough now for the ground to stay cool in summer. Already she was beginning to wish that she'd been clever enough to wear a sweater, though that might have defeated her attempt to look careless and innocent.
Two more flights down and she had come to the very bottom, a dim landing no one had bothered even to whitewash, with a cold draft coming from somewhere and a strong smell of mildew. Glinda wrinkled her nose as she made her routine investigation of the walls, but there appeared to be nothing hidden here, either. Wrapping her arms tightly around herself, she started down the narrow, dark hallway. The only light was coming from rows of small sconces set into the wall, the burning of which did nothing to counter the wet smell. The ground under her slippers was no longer paved; it looked more like hard-packed dirt. The very bottom of the Palace, or so they want you to think, Glinda.
The absolute silence suggested that she was alone. She had gone about forty paces when she came to a doorway on one side, which had no door in it but was just an opening in the wall. The room beyond was barely lit with only about six of those sconces and an old-fashioned chandelier with actual candles hanging from the center of the ceiling. The flickering light glinted off of hundreds and hundreds of bottles stacked in neat rows all around the walls.
Wine cellar, Glinda thought with some disappointment. Nothing especially mysterious about that, although it did seem like the sort of thing a silly, frivolous girl might go exploring for. She made a mental note to use it as an excuse, should she need one, and returned to the dim hallway.
On the floor running off in the opposite direction from which Glinda had come, there were marks that looked as though they'd been made by small wheels, as if someone had pushed a wheeled cart many, many times over the same part of the dirt floor. This part of the hallway also wasn't lit beyond twenty paces or so, and Glinda couldn't see what might be at the end of it. Reluctantly she unwrapped her arms, feeling the draft instantly on her chest, and whispered the words to create a tiny light in her palm. She'd managed to do it right this time; that, or her hands were too cold to feel the burning immediately. With the light held before her and her breath kept as shallow and silent as possible, she started down the dark hallway.
She swung her light from side to side occasionally, but the monotony of the dirt walls was unbroken except for more sconces, all unlit. The wheel tracks continued and she superstitiously set her feet on them as she walked, as if there were any chance of getting lost in a straight hallway with no turnings and no alternate passages. The wet smell increased seemingly with every step, and after a while she was certain that she was not imagining the sound of rushing water. The hall turned and slanted uphill a bit, and when she looked up, she saw that the high ceiling was growing correspondingly lower, so that the change in the floor level had no effect on the level of the floor above. A nagging sense of alarm made her train the light on the floor as she climbed and came around a corner, which was lucky, because after a few steps on something harder that echoed like wooden planks laid loosely over the ground, she came to a sort of underground river. Had she been less careful, she might have stepped right off the floor and into the rushing water.
In the small glow of her light she picked out a set of handrails built on either side of the path here, with a peg presumably for tying up boats. She leaned around the corner and held the light before her, trying to look upstream, but couldn't see anything beyond rippling black water. Just to be thorough she bent and dipped one finger in the water, which was very cold, and tentatively tasted it, but was satisfied that it was pure water and not anything more interesting. Judging by the cart wheel marks, she guessed this must be a method of bringing the wine stores into the Palace from the river without having to carry large crates down the stairs. It made sense, and again, was rather disappointing in its mundaneness. After that creep down the pitch-dark hallway she'd expected something a bit more worth concealing.
She returned back the way she'd come with slightly less care, making note of the fact that the west tower stairwell didn't appear to reach this far down - probably because the underground river was running right where it would have come down. She let the light go out as she passed the wine cellar and sped up her steps until she was back in the stairwell. Regretfully she traced her fingers over the wall there, but it was certain that there was no hidden door here - or if there was, it was hidden by something more than just clever masonry and painting. Frowning to herself, she brushed off her skirts (in the better light she could tell that the wine cellar hallway had been rather dusty) and started to climb again.
Halfway between the next landing up and the one after that, the one that led to the food cellars, something caught her eye and made her step back, her slippered feet staggering back to the step below. Certain that she was just looking at a cobweb, she brushed her fingers over the wall, but the gray line didn't come away with her touch. Holding her breath, afraid to jinx an important discovery, she ran her hand lower over what, it was now clear, was a crack in the whitewash running almost all the way to the floor. About three inches before it would have touched a stair, the line went off at a right angle along the curved external wall, coming to an end high above the stair three below the one Glinda was standing on.
Glinda straightened, took a moment to listen carefully for any sound, and then, hearing none, tentatively pushed on the area outlined by the cracks. Although it seemed to give a bit under her hand, nothing happened. Disappointment instantly flooded her stomach, but before she gave up, she pushed one more time, more firmly. The crack widened, and a door swung inward.
A strong chemical smell greeted her, something she couldn't place. She took a moment to create her light again in the palm of one hand, but as she reached that hand through the doorway to have a look around, the light immediately went out. Cursing herself for being careless at a time like this, she tried again, but one more time, the light vanished as soon as it crossed through the doorway.
Logic, she told herself, trying to stay calm despite the growing dizzy fear that she would be caught any moment. Maybe magic just doesn't work. Looking around her, she grabbed one of the oil lamps carefully out of its sconce in the stairwell and held it gingerly through the doorway. When its light continued to flicker bravely, she stepped in after it.
The smell hit her more strongly now, and she swallowed hard. Her heart was in her throat and the dizzy feeling only increased. Swinging the lamp around, she tried to have a look without going any further into the passage.
It seemed empty. There were shelves on one wall, but there was nothing on them. It seemed more of a room than a passageway, with a low ceiling and a packed dirt floor. Then, as she stretched the lamp out in front of her as far as her arm could reach, she saw a hulking shape at the far end - something with sharply delineated edges covered by fabric. Her head spun, and the dizziness came over her in waves, and all of a sudden she realized what the chemical smell was. Just as her knees were about to collapse, she grabbed for the edge of the doorway and pulled herself back through it with all her strength. She fell against the opposite wall and stumbled down a couple of stairs, barely managing to keep from dropping the lamp. She held her breath, and with what energy she had left she reached out with a simple summoning spell and summoned the door toward her. When it clicked shut, once again nearly disappearing into the wall, she let herself sit down on a stair and take a few deep, slow breaths.
When she felt that she could stand, she put the lamp back in its place and began the climb, slowly and clinging tightly to the banister, back up to their suite. Elphaba was back already, watching the cat play with the few bubbles that hadn't disappeared on their own yet. "What did you do?" she asked, gesturing to the largest and pinkest bubble, which was at that moment bouncing off the cat's perplexed-looking head.
"Don't ask me why Morrible wants me to make bubbles that don't break." Still feeling a bit wobbly, Glinda sank down to the floor and sat down right where she was. "I found something."
Elphaba was at her side in a moment, reaching out for one of Glinda's hands. "Are you all right?"
Glinda nodded and swallowed hard against a sudden wave of nausea. When she felt that she could speak, she said, "There's another hidden passage, off the middle of the stairwell, two floors below the door Fiyero took you through. It -" She had to stop and swallow again, and take a few more breaths to clear the swimming feeling in her head. "It looked empty, but there was something at the end covered in a drape. And it was full of chloroform."
"The drape?"
"The room, the room was full of chloroform." Glinda took another deep breath and forced it out hard through her mouth, which kept the nausea at bay for another moment.
"Oh!" Elphaba said, suddenly catching on. Her hand moved to Glinda's shoulder. "Are you - would water help, or -"
"Maybe." Glinda closed her eyes briefly to steady herself as Elphaba got up to get her a drink. "It wasn't strong enough to knock me out right away, but after a few moments . . ."
"Did you pass out?" Elphaba dropped cross-legged onto the floor and put a glass of water into Glinda's hand.
"No." Glinda shook her head, which was a mistake. "I got myself out in time." She took a few careful swallows of the cool water, which did seem to help. "And I thought I found something else interesting, but it was just the wine cellar. And some of kind of canal they use to bring the wine in under the Palace."
"Why would the Palace have a room full of chloroform?"
"To keep anyone from staying conscious long enough to see what's under that drape, I guess." Glinda lifted her eyes toward Elphaba, and wasn't disappointed.
"We'll go back," Elphaba said. "We'll think of something to deal with the chloroform."
"What did you find in the library?" Glinda asked.
"I'll tell you after you lie down for a while." Elphaba frowned. "Here, on the sofa, so I can see if . . ."
"No argument." Glinda lifted one elbow and let Elphaba pull her to her feet and guide her to the sofa. "I felt very intrepid."
Elphaba gave a tiny, smothered laugh. "I'm sure you did. Rest now."
"The cat will keep me company," Glinda murmured sleepily as she stretched herself out, the cat, as if on cue, leaping onto her stomach and settling there.
Author: ainsleyaisling
Rating: PG
'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: A new magic may be coming into the picture, and Glinda explores.
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, plus the posted chapters of this story, can be found here. The previous chapter of this story can be found here.
~~Elphaba~~
Glinda was right, in that the entire idea seemed sort of crazy in the morning - but not crazy enough to forget about it entirely. She waited until Glinda had finished most of a cup of tea, and then said, "So, do you want to try it?"
She didn't have to say what she was talking about - although they hadn't discussed the idea all morning, she knew they were both thinking about it. Glinda pointed to herself with her teaspoon. "Me?"
"It was your idea."
"You keep saying that," Glinda said, putting her teaspoon carefully into her cup, "and I don't think that makes it true."
"I wouldn't have thought of it without you," Elphaba said. She cleared a little space on the table between them, pushing aside a plate of toast. "Anyway I sort of want to see what happens if you actually try your idea."
"My - ah." Glinda sighed and rubbed her fingers together as if to make sure there were no crumbs on them. "All right. Don't be surprised if I accidentally cross magics and something explodes."
"That would be interesting."
Glinda's eyes narrowed on the air in front of her as she held out both hands, palms cupped toward each other. Elphaba didn't know whether she had been practicing the spell on her own, or studying it in between learning the spells Morrible had set her, but she remembered it perfectly, muttering the words under her breath - except, Elphaba noted with some amusement, the words that had to be spoken silently in front of others. Safest to stay in that habit, she supposed. Once the spell was spoken, Glinda raised one eye toward Elphaba from the circle of her hands and added, "Find Ozma's rubies." Elphaba returned the most arch look she could manage, before the sphere started to materialize in Glinda's hands.
Green mist swirled in cloudlike patterns, not immediately showing anything but giving off some sense of . . . urgency? Glinda glanced up, blue eyes reflecting a sort of aquamarine, and gave a small shrug.
"What did you ask it to find?" Elphaba asked softly.
"Rubies anywhere in the building," Glinda replied, one side of her mouth curling into a doubtful grimace. "I wonder if they're even allowed. I've never seen Morrible wearing any."
"No, and she wears more jewels than anyone else I've ever seen." Elphaba bit on her lip and stared into the swirling mist. It seemed so much more agitated than the other times they'd ask for things that didn't exist. She wondered whether Glinda was thinking the same thing, whether that was the reason that she hadn't yet ended the spell. "I wonder," she murmured.
"Oh!" Glinda said suddenly. "Oh, wait." She brought her hands together hastily, winking the sphere out of existence, and then immediately began to chant again. Elphaba was afraid to break her concentration by asking questions, so she only leaned close, watching the air in front of Glinda with a renewed sense of expectation.
The sphere that started to form was misty green at first, as usual, but as they watched it began to swirl red instead, until it cast a pinkish light on Glinda's face and flooded her lap with light the color of Munchkin wine. "What -" Elphaba whispered.
Glinda shook her head. "I don't know. I - oh, look, look!"
Elphaba squinted closer, but she saw nothing more than red mist. "What?"
"Don't you see - there." Glinda pointed carefully with the smallest finger of her left hand. "There, the mist is swirling all around it, but -"
"I don't see anything," Elphaba said, her eyes practically coming unfocused with her effort.
"Come stand behind me."
Elphaba left her chair and rushed to stand over Glinda's shoulder, peering past her into the sphere. "I still don't see anything," she confessed after a moment.
Glinda waved her finger again, slowly. "There, at the very bottom, under all the mist. It's - like a floor, or something, flat, and crumbling around the edges, but I'd swear it's ruby. The right color anyway. But it's not gemstones, you know, it's like - a sheet of it. Like glass. You really can't see it?"
"No." Elphaba leaned a hand on Glinda's shoulder and looked closer, to no avail. "What did you do differently?"
"Oh - well, I realized I asked for the wrong thing the first time. If the Palace had been built over the foundations of the old Ozma palace, then the rubies - if there were anything left - wouldn't be in the Palace, would they?"
"They'd be under it," Elphaba realized. "Good thinking."
"I still don't understand why you can't see it," Glinda murmured.
"Or why it turned the whole thing red," Elphaba added.
"Maybe you were right after all." Glinda twisted her wrists slowly in one direction and then the other, rotating the sphere - for effect more than anything else, Elphaba thought. "Strong magic, different from yours."
"From all modern magic, it seems," Elphaba said. "I messed with that spell, but it's ordinary magic."
"It's interesting anyway." Glinda gently twisted the sphere around again. "And pretty."
Elphaba laughed quietly. "End it," she said. "I'd like to try, if you don't mind."
The really interesting thing happened when Elphaba cast the spell herself, asking it to find anything made of ruby on the site of the Palace. This time the sphere that appeared seemed to flare a stronger, brighter green before settling down to red - and now Elphaba could easily see, somewhat masked by the clouds of red mist, the ruby-red crumbling floor, or wall, Glinda had been talking about.
"There," Elphaba whispered. "Is that the same thing you saw?"
In a tone of voice that suggested she found all of this rather intriguing, Glinda said, "I can't see anything, Elphie."
Elphaba frowned. "But you've already seen it once, you know what to look for. Come stand behind me."
Glinda laughed as she got to her feet, but as she came to lean over Elphaba, one hand on each of her shoulders, she said, "I don't think I'm going to see it. I have a theory."
"Nothing?" Elphaba asked as Glinda peered past her.
"Nothing."
Elphaba twisted so that she could look up at Glinda at least a little. "You think it's only visible to the person casting the spell?"
"Yes," Glinda said. She squeezed Elphaba's shoulders briefly as she returned to her chair.
Elphaba bit the inside of her cheek thoughtfully for another moment before closing her hands and letting the sphere disappear. "The magic protecting itself maybe? So if someone finds it, it won't be visible to everyone around?"
"Who knows?" Glinda refreshed her tea with hotter water from the kettle and stirred with slow strokes in a soothing rhythm. "It's something we've never seen before, anyway."
"I wonder if Morrible has." Elphaba pulled her own empty teacup toward her again and refilled it, watching the stray leaves spin in the little current she'd created. "I wonder if she's that ambitious, to go looking for other types of magic."
"She's ambitious, but is she patient enough to develop new magic, or lazy enough to just do the most damage she can with the power she has?" Glinda absently twisted one loose curl around a finger as she spoke. "Which, we know, is a lot."
"That's definitely true," Elphaba said. "The question is, would finding out more about this other power -"
"If it is another power, and not just pretty rubies with a curse on them or something."
"Right. Would it help us against her at all?"
"And," Glinda said, "is all this really just a way for you to put off going to talk to your sister?"
Elphaba gave her a halfhearted glare, trying to ignore the fact that Glinda's words had brought that uncomfortable feeling back to her stomach. "I'm not putting anything off."
"Of course you're not. We always spend our time exploring esoteric magical theories when there's practical work to be done."
"I think I'm having a bad effect on you," Elphaba said.
"I agree." Glinda smiled innocently. "Like another slice of toast?"
"Just for that, you're dealing with any cursed rubies we might find."
Glinda's smile widened, and she very gently kicked a slippered foot against Elphaba's shin. "Elphie, if you find me cursed rubies to mess with, it'd be like my birthday come early."
Her stomach unclenching slightly, Elphaba relented and gave her a half smile. "We'll ask Fiyero to look around for any."
~~Glinda~~
Elphaba hadn't been gone more than ten minutes - on an errand to the Wizard's library that would probably end with her sitting in the library, buried in a book, for at least two hours - when Glinda started to feel fidgety. She tried practicing the most recent spell Morrible had asked her to learn, but quit after managing only to produce a small army of bubbles which the cat chased, leaping and twisting and chirping in confusion when it didn't succeed in breaking any of the bubbles. "I'm glad I entertained you," she told it, but it only went on dancing after a floating bubble.
After a moment Glinda carefully tucked her wand into the waist of her skirt, untying her sash and winding it around her waist again so that it concealed most of the rest of it. A glance in her bedroom mirror confirmed that her hair was perfect, her dress not terribly practical, and her shoes completely frivolous. She smiled cheerfully at the guards as she left their suite and trooped down the marble stairs, her slippers making only the tiniest tapping sounds.
She descended lower and lower, ignoring the landing that would normally take her out of the Palace or toward the kitchens, spiraling down and down and down. By counting after she passed the barracks, she knew when she had reached the landing where Fiyero had taken Elphaba into the hidden passageway to Southstairs. She paused there to run her fingers over the obscured doorway, shivering a little as she pictured what must be on the other side of it, but mostly telling her eyes and fingertips to memorize what it looked and felt like, this attempt to hide a door in plain sight. Then she turned her back to it and continued descending, now conscious of stepping as softly as she could to avoid making a sound.
On the next landing she stopped, eyes skimming the whitewashed, uneven walls, and fingertips brushing over it, but she was fairly certain there was nothing hidden there. From the smell, the hallway that spiraled off on this level led to the food cellars, which made some sense since she must be low enough now for the ground to stay cool in summer. Already she was beginning to wish that she'd been clever enough to wear a sweater, though that might have defeated her attempt to look careless and innocent.
Two more flights down and she had come to the very bottom, a dim landing no one had bothered even to whitewash, with a cold draft coming from somewhere and a strong smell of mildew. Glinda wrinkled her nose as she made her routine investigation of the walls, but there appeared to be nothing hidden here, either. Wrapping her arms tightly around herself, she started down the narrow, dark hallway. The only light was coming from rows of small sconces set into the wall, the burning of which did nothing to counter the wet smell. The ground under her slippers was no longer paved; it looked more like hard-packed dirt. The very bottom of the Palace, or so they want you to think, Glinda.
The absolute silence suggested that she was alone. She had gone about forty paces when she came to a doorway on one side, which had no door in it but was just an opening in the wall. The room beyond was barely lit with only about six of those sconces and an old-fashioned chandelier with actual candles hanging from the center of the ceiling. The flickering light glinted off of hundreds and hundreds of bottles stacked in neat rows all around the walls.
Wine cellar, Glinda thought with some disappointment. Nothing especially mysterious about that, although it did seem like the sort of thing a silly, frivolous girl might go exploring for. She made a mental note to use it as an excuse, should she need one, and returned to the dim hallway.
On the floor running off in the opposite direction from which Glinda had come, there were marks that looked as though they'd been made by small wheels, as if someone had pushed a wheeled cart many, many times over the same part of the dirt floor. This part of the hallway also wasn't lit beyond twenty paces or so, and Glinda couldn't see what might be at the end of it. Reluctantly she unwrapped her arms, feeling the draft instantly on her chest, and whispered the words to create a tiny light in her palm. She'd managed to do it right this time; that, or her hands were too cold to feel the burning immediately. With the light held before her and her breath kept as shallow and silent as possible, she started down the dark hallway.
She swung her light from side to side occasionally, but the monotony of the dirt walls was unbroken except for more sconces, all unlit. The wheel tracks continued and she superstitiously set her feet on them as she walked, as if there were any chance of getting lost in a straight hallway with no turnings and no alternate passages. The wet smell increased seemingly with every step, and after a while she was certain that she was not imagining the sound of rushing water. The hall turned and slanted uphill a bit, and when she looked up, she saw that the high ceiling was growing correspondingly lower, so that the change in the floor level had no effect on the level of the floor above. A nagging sense of alarm made her train the light on the floor as she climbed and came around a corner, which was lucky, because after a few steps on something harder that echoed like wooden planks laid loosely over the ground, she came to a sort of underground river. Had she been less careful, she might have stepped right off the floor and into the rushing water.
In the small glow of her light she picked out a set of handrails built on either side of the path here, with a peg presumably for tying up boats. She leaned around the corner and held the light before her, trying to look upstream, but couldn't see anything beyond rippling black water. Just to be thorough she bent and dipped one finger in the water, which was very cold, and tentatively tasted it, but was satisfied that it was pure water and not anything more interesting. Judging by the cart wheel marks, she guessed this must be a method of bringing the wine stores into the Palace from the river without having to carry large crates down the stairs. It made sense, and again, was rather disappointing in its mundaneness. After that creep down the pitch-dark hallway she'd expected something a bit more worth concealing.
She returned back the way she'd come with slightly less care, making note of the fact that the west tower stairwell didn't appear to reach this far down - probably because the underground river was running right where it would have come down. She let the light go out as she passed the wine cellar and sped up her steps until she was back in the stairwell. Regretfully she traced her fingers over the wall there, but it was certain that there was no hidden door here - or if there was, it was hidden by something more than just clever masonry and painting. Frowning to herself, she brushed off her skirts (in the better light she could tell that the wine cellar hallway had been rather dusty) and started to climb again.
Halfway between the next landing up and the one after that, the one that led to the food cellars, something caught her eye and made her step back, her slippered feet staggering back to the step below. Certain that she was just looking at a cobweb, she brushed her fingers over the wall, but the gray line didn't come away with her touch. Holding her breath, afraid to jinx an important discovery, she ran her hand lower over what, it was now clear, was a crack in the whitewash running almost all the way to the floor. About three inches before it would have touched a stair, the line went off at a right angle along the curved external wall, coming to an end high above the stair three below the one Glinda was standing on.
Glinda straightened, took a moment to listen carefully for any sound, and then, hearing none, tentatively pushed on the area outlined by the cracks. Although it seemed to give a bit under her hand, nothing happened. Disappointment instantly flooded her stomach, but before she gave up, she pushed one more time, more firmly. The crack widened, and a door swung inward.
A strong chemical smell greeted her, something she couldn't place. She took a moment to create her light again in the palm of one hand, but as she reached that hand through the doorway to have a look around, the light immediately went out. Cursing herself for being careless at a time like this, she tried again, but one more time, the light vanished as soon as it crossed through the doorway.
Logic, she told herself, trying to stay calm despite the growing dizzy fear that she would be caught any moment. Maybe magic just doesn't work. Looking around her, she grabbed one of the oil lamps carefully out of its sconce in the stairwell and held it gingerly through the doorway. When its light continued to flicker bravely, she stepped in after it.
The smell hit her more strongly now, and she swallowed hard. Her heart was in her throat and the dizzy feeling only increased. Swinging the lamp around, she tried to have a look without going any further into the passage.
It seemed empty. There were shelves on one wall, but there was nothing on them. It seemed more of a room than a passageway, with a low ceiling and a packed dirt floor. Then, as she stretched the lamp out in front of her as far as her arm could reach, she saw a hulking shape at the far end - something with sharply delineated edges covered by fabric. Her head spun, and the dizziness came over her in waves, and all of a sudden she realized what the chemical smell was. Just as her knees were about to collapse, she grabbed for the edge of the doorway and pulled herself back through it with all her strength. She fell against the opposite wall and stumbled down a couple of stairs, barely managing to keep from dropping the lamp. She held her breath, and with what energy she had left she reached out with a simple summoning spell and summoned the door toward her. When it clicked shut, once again nearly disappearing into the wall, she let herself sit down on a stair and take a few deep, slow breaths.
When she felt that she could stand, she put the lamp back in its place and began the climb, slowly and clinging tightly to the banister, back up to their suite. Elphaba was back already, watching the cat play with the few bubbles that hadn't disappeared on their own yet. "What did you do?" she asked, gesturing to the largest and pinkest bubble, which was at that moment bouncing off the cat's perplexed-looking head.
"Don't ask me why Morrible wants me to make bubbles that don't break." Still feeling a bit wobbly, Glinda sank down to the floor and sat down right where she was. "I found something."
Elphaba was at her side in a moment, reaching out for one of Glinda's hands. "Are you all right?"
Glinda nodded and swallowed hard against a sudden wave of nausea. When she felt that she could speak, she said, "There's another hidden passage, off the middle of the stairwell, two floors below the door Fiyero took you through. It -" She had to stop and swallow again, and take a few more breaths to clear the swimming feeling in her head. "It looked empty, but there was something at the end covered in a drape. And it was full of chloroform."
"The drape?"
"The room, the room was full of chloroform." Glinda took another deep breath and forced it out hard through her mouth, which kept the nausea at bay for another moment.
"Oh!" Elphaba said, suddenly catching on. Her hand moved to Glinda's shoulder. "Are you - would water help, or -"
"Maybe." Glinda closed her eyes briefly to steady herself as Elphaba got up to get her a drink. "It wasn't strong enough to knock me out right away, but after a few moments . . ."
"Did you pass out?" Elphaba dropped cross-legged onto the floor and put a glass of water into Glinda's hand.
"No." Glinda shook her head, which was a mistake. "I got myself out in time." She took a few careful swallows of the cool water, which did seem to help. "And I thought I found something else interesting, but it was just the wine cellar. And some of kind of canal they use to bring the wine in under the Palace."
"Why would the Palace have a room full of chloroform?"
"To keep anyone from staying conscious long enough to see what's under that drape, I guess." Glinda lifted her eyes toward Elphaba, and wasn't disappointed.
"We'll go back," Elphaba said. "We'll think of something to deal with the chloroform."
"What did you find in the library?" Glinda asked.
"I'll tell you after you lie down for a while." Elphaba frowned. "Here, on the sofa, so I can see if . . ."
"No argument." Glinda lifted one elbow and let Elphaba pull her to her feet and guide her to the sofa. "I felt very intrepid."
Elphaba gave a tiny, smothered laugh. "I'm sure you did. Rest now."
"The cat will keep me company," Glinda murmured sleepily as she stretched herself out, the cat, as if on cue, leaping onto her stomach and settling there.