Defying Gravity, 20/?, by ainsleyaisling
Title: Defying Gravity, 20/?
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: Glinda and Elphaba make another discovery, one with interesting implications.
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.
~~Glinda~~
By the time Glinda woke - though she couldn't quite sit up as the cat was curled into a ball, fast asleep on her chest - Elphaba was sitting at the table staring pensively into a book, a stack of others on the table beside her. "What are you reading?" Glinda asked, her voice coming out raspy and dry.
Elphaba looked up, frowning. "Are you all right?"
Glinda gently eased her hands under the cat and shifted it to her lap so that she could push herself to a sitting position. "Yes. My head hurts a bit, that's all. What -"
Elphaba closed the book on her finger and held it up so that Glinda could see the cover. "Our third-year sorcery book. We never got to the last chapters, remember -"
"I do," Glinda said. Her voice was slowly returning to normal. "Two extra months on the history of famous sorcerers instead - even I have never cared that much about whether Mairy Magister wore red or blue robes or how long Marxen's wand was."
"Yes," Elphaba said. There was no need to elaborate further - both girls had long held the shared belief that Madame Greyling had been instructed to slow down their magical education, so that Madame Morrible could more effectively control what spells they learned. "Well, here in the back there's a spell to surround the caster with pure breathable air that will push away anything noxious. The book says it was developed during the plague years."
"Useful," Glinda said. A nagging sense of guilt crept into her mind. "We always did mean to go and learn all those spells we skipped."
"We'll certainly learn this one now." Elphaba wrinkled her nose slightly as she returned to her book. "I've been trying to figure out whether that was just meant to be a description of how it could be used, or whether it really only keeps out things it thinks are noxious. I mean, if the spell doesn't think chloroform is noxious . . ."
"Only one way to find out, I suppose," Glinda said, lifting one hand to her aching head as if to brace it. "We should have a moment or two to find out whether it works, before we'd be overcome by the vapors if it doesn't. But -"
"Hmm?"
"I forgot to mention something," Glinda said with some embarrassment. "At first I tried to make a light, you know, to look around the room. But it went out every time I tried, as soon as it crossed the threshold. I had to use a lamp."
Elphaba propped an elbow on the table and dropped her chin into it in a posture of defeat. "You think magic doesn't work in there."
Glinda shrugged helplessly. "I didn't try anything else, but - well, I did summon the door closed, but I did that when I was outside the room. Though the door, being open, was partly inside it . . ." The effort of thought seemed to make her headache worse, and she screwed up her face against the pain. "But maybe the spell was able to work on the outside of the door because technically it's not part of the room?"
"Lie back down," Elphaba said, getting to her feet and heading for the bathroom. "I'll get you a compress, you look as if someone were drilling into your head."
The image made the pain so much worse. Glinda whimpered slightly as she lay her head back onto the sofa cushion and closed her eyes. She didn't move again until Elphaba was laying a warm, wet cloth that smelled slightly of lavender over her forehead, and then she moved only enough to find Elphaba's damp hand and squeeze it.
"I'll just have to think of something else," Elphaba said, more softly, as she gently pressed the cloth against Glinda's temples. "Masks for miners, or something."
"Maybe we could just create a little cyclone in the stairwell," Glinda murmured drowsily, "and suck all the gas out through the open door." She paused. "And then faint in the stairwell, because we'll have just gassed ourselves outside of the room instead of in it."
The absolute silence told her that Elphaba was thinking. It was a slightly frightening prospect.
"Or," Elphaba finally said. "We could suck all the gas out of the room, and trap it in a big pink unbreakable bubble."
A slow, careful smile spread across Glinda's face. "I don't think they actually have to be pink," she mumbled. "Mine just came out that way."
"Could you figure out how to get something into the bubble and then seal it up?"
If it wouldn't have hurt so much - and if the compress wasn't hiding them anyway - Glinda would have rolled her eyes. "Oh yes. My next assignment was going to be figuring out how to get things into the bubbles - I was supposed to start trying it with little things, pens and biscuits and whatnot. I could learn fast, I have the instructions. But -" She frowned, and couldn't quite stop herself from saying "ow". She pressed her palm more firmly against the compress on her head. "I was really just joking. I mean, the magic wouldn't be able to go into the room to get the gas, would it?"
"That's why I thought it was brilliant, actually," Elphaba said. "Even if it was a brilliant joke. Magic couldn't go into the room, but if we created a cyclone in the stair, it would be the air currents - the wind - that actually sucked the gas out of the room. The magic wouldn't have to cross the threshold. Just like, if I picked you up with magic and threw you toward the door, you'd fall through, because your momentum wouldn't be magic."
Glinda thought about that for a while, rubbing her ankles together as if squirming could ease her headache. The cat stretched in its sleep and dug a claw into her belly. "You're right," she said. "I think."
"There'd have to be a way of making the cyclone only affect things in the room," Elphaba mused. "Not us, or the bubble itself. I'll practice, we do have those endless pages of weather spells."
"All right," Glinda said, pulling her elbows under herself to sit up.
"Not now." Elphaba gently pressed her back down. "You still feel awful, and anyway I don't think you should take the chance of breathing that stuff more than once in one day. You rest, I'll work on the cyclone spell, and in the morning you can practice with your bubbles and then we'll go."
Glinda had no intention of arguing.
Luckily, in the morning, the spell to create a bubble that something could then be moved into did turn out to be as simple as Glinda had expected. After putting a lot of breakfast buns into bubbles and then taking them out again, she tried opening a bubble to allow in a shower of airy green sparks Elphaba had created with her own, very seldom-used, wand. It worked; the sparks danced around inside the pinkish sphere like a strange Solstice decoration.
She and Elphaba were silent as they descended the stairs. Elphaba's mouth twisted slightly as they passed the concealed door that led through into Southstairs, but she didn't say anything. Still, the thoughtful look that appeared on her face as they continued to descend gave Glinda a moment of concern. Both concern and thoughtfulness, however, vanished when they were standing before the door to the secret room, and Glinda was gently pointing out the cracks of the door with her fingertips.
They both froze, listening for any noise, and then Elphaba held her hands out in front of her in a preparatory way. "You'll have to open the door," she said, "but then get right behind me, and do your bubble."
"Right." Glinda pressed her palm against the door and took a deep breath. "Ready?"
"Ready." Elphaba nodded and then breathed deep herself, pressing her lips tightly together.
Glinda pushed the door open as hard as she could and then jumped back behind Elphaba. Even with her breath held, the scent of chloroform tickled her nose. Elphaba was already chanting, low and controlled the way trained singers managed their breath to avoid taking another. When the cyclone began to form in front of her, visible because of the dust and cobwebs it instantly collected, its narrow end tendriled toward the open doorway. Hands moving around the outer edges of her cyclone in circular patterns, Elphaba chanted something else unfamiliar in a voice made harsh now by breath control. "Get ready," she said, and Glinda could hear the strain.
Trying not to watch as the cyclone grew visibly bigger, presumably as it pulled air and strength from inside the room, Glinda concentrated on her spell. Holding her breath was making her lightheaded, and finally she let it gush out and took another as the bubble began to form on the end of her wand. The air she breathed seemed safe enough, so she gave up and breathed normally as she released the bubble and then carefully, carefully, opened it and just edged the wide end of Elphaba's cyclone inside.
"Bigger," Elphaba managed to gasp with what sounded like the last breath she had.
"I think you can breathe now," Glinda muttered quickly as she concentrated on expanding the bubble. Dirty air pulled in by the cyclone filled it now, a swirling, disgusting gray cloud of dust and other small airborne debris, including a few spiders. She heard a quick gasp as Elphaba gave up and started to breathe again, but she was watching the bubble grow and grow. After what seemed like a bare heartbeat, Elphaba waved her arms.
"I think it's all right," she said. "I can feel air from the stairwell rushing into the room to fill it; whatever was in there has to be out."
Glinda nodded sharply and closed the bubble with all of her concentration. "Done," she said nervously. "Can you -"
"I still smell the chloroform, but I suppose the smell itself would linger a bit," Elphaba replied. "Shall we?"
"Only thing to do," Glinda said. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at the big pink bubble full of swirling dirt. "I think we forgot one small detail."
"Shrink it," Elphaba said. "Carefully. And rest it in the empty sconce after we've taken a lamp."
"Good thought," Glinda said, painstakingly following Elphaba's instructions.
They looked at each other anxiously for a few seconds after stepping into the room, but although a faint smell did linger, neither of them felt dizzy. Eventually they were brave enough to cross the room and investigate the large draped object at the other end.
"I'd better," Elphaba said, sounding nervous. She handed the lamp to Glinda, who held it as near to the drape as she could without setting it on fire.
Elphaba lifted a corner of the drape gingerly, but when nothing jumped out to bite them, she began uncovering the object more quickly. What was underneath seemed mainly a collection of shadows, until Glinda lowered the lamp and looked more closely. "A . . . basket?" It was a basket nearly as high as Glinda's chest and as wide as the length of her legs, but still just a basket.
Elphaba's confused face lifted to hers in the flickering lamplight. "What's worth -" She looked down again, and said, "Bring the light lower?"
Glinda obeyed, and they both hovered over the edges of the basket, peering inside. "There's more cloth . . ."
"Silk," Elphaba said, rubbing a bit of it between her fingers. "Red silk . . ."
"Yellow underneath." Glinda brought the lamp even lower. "And - wait, can you pick up all the silk?"
Elphaba gathered the fabric into her arms, panel after panel after panel. "There's more than I thought, it's heavy."
Glinda glanced anxiously toward the door they'd left standing open, but she heard nothing. "There's something underneath," she whispered urgently. "Quickly, we shouldn't stay long."
"It's like . . ." There was a rustle of silk as Elphaba managed to sweep most of the fabric into her lap and uncover what was buried beneath. "A stove. Only it's broken."
"A stove?" Frowning, Glinda lowered her light to investigate. "It is a stove. It's not just the pipe that's broken, look, it's supposed to attach to something."
"To the top of the basket," Elphaba said, getting to her knees and in the process dumping most of the piled silk onto the floor. "Glinda, this is the Wizard's balloon!"
"The one he arrived in?" Glinda hesitated, but the feeling in her stomach told her that Elphaba was right. "I thought that was just a story they told children." She tilted the light, looking at a wooden board that lay propped against one side of the basket, behind the stove. It had a faded, but garishly painted sign that showed a sphere with light pouring from it, and the legend 'The Great OZPIN.'
"I used to think so, until we found out he didn't have any magic." Elphaba was leaning into the basket now, her hands feeling around its sides for any further discoveries. "Then I thought it made sense - how else would someone with no magic get here from another world? He must have drifted just as he said." She made a noise in the back of her throat, and her hands stopped their fumbling.
"What did you find?" Glinda asked, a portentous feeling sweeping through her.
"Bottles," Elphaba said, sounding puzzled. "A box - no, at least three boxes of . . . bottles. And some little bags of something soft, like dried leaves."
"Take one," Glinda suggested. "One of each, and then we should get out of here before someone comes."
Elphaba moved quickly, stuffing something into the pockets on either side of her dress. "All right, can you help me get this silk back inside?"
Glinda bent with her free hand to try to help. "Why protect this old balloon so well?" she asked.
"Maybe because it suggests he didn't get here by magic?" Elphaba was moving faster now, stuffing the fabric any which way back into the basket. "I don't know. Maybe there's something about the bottles."
"Get the drape," Glinda instructed, holding the light high. "Maybe he comes in here to visit it, we don't want him to suspect . . ."
"How, without being knocked unconscious?" Elphaba asked rhetorically as she labored to get the heavy drape over the top of the basket again. "Do you think Morrible helps? Do you think she knows this is here?"
"She must," Glinda said, feeling proud of herself for being practical. With her toe she caught a slipping fold of the drape and helped Elphaba pull it right. "If there's a block on magic in this place, someone must have set it. We know the Wizard couldn't have."
"That's true," Elphaba said, stretching over the basket to drop the drape over the other side. "But she doesn't necessarily know what the room is guarding. It could have been empty when she laid the sp-"
Glinda frowned and nudged Elphaba with her foot. The other girl had frozen in the act of smoothing the drape. "Elphie?"
Elphaba shook herself and continued with her task. "The spell. I was just thinking. If it's a spell, shouldn't we be able to counter it?"
"Spells are unrevers-"
"I know, I know, but - when you make fire, I can put it out, can't I?" Elphaba stepped back to eye her handiwork. "It wouldn't be unmaking the fire, it would be bringing something else to bear on it. Maybe there's a way to do that here."
"Think later," Glinda said. "That looks good, let's go."
When they were back out in the stairwell, Glinda studied her bubble with some pride, and a question. "Should we put the chloroform back?"
"If we're worried about suspicion, I suppose." Elphaba took the lamp from Glinda and nudged the bubble out of its home in the sconce so that she could replace the light. "I don't know how shrinking air works; better expand it again first."
"Right. Stand back and hold your breath."
They both watched as the bubble, responding to Glinda's hasty chant, expanded to its original size and then opened without bursting ("Fascinating," Elphaba said, without drawing breath) and released its burden. A quick wave of Elphaba's hands directed most of the mess back into the secret room, though complete precision wasn't possible. When the bubble appeared empty and Glinda had made it disappear, Elphaba said, in an urgent, breathless voice, "Upstairs, now."
Glinda understood immediately. Not all of the chloroform had gone back into the room; some of it was hovering right where they were. She summoned the door shut and ran past Elphaba, climbing as fast as she could without drawing breath. She heard Elphaba's boots pounding the stairs behind her.
Two landings up she could no longer hold her breath and she gasped hard without stopping her pace. From the sounds that followed her she could tell Elphaba had done the same. The chemical smell lingered, but she felt like herself, so she just kept going.
Their guards barely blinked when they finally got back to their room. Elphaba shut the door and leaned against it, breathing hard.
"Do you think the gas will dissipate?" Glinda asked, leaning against the sofa for support.
"It should," Elphaba gasped. "There's a draft in that cellar."
"I know, I almost froze yesterday." Glinda swallowed hard, which seemed to help her catch her breath. "Elphie, the bottle?"
Chest still heaving, Elphaba reached into both her pockets and pulled out what looked like a small herbal sachet in a plain brown sack, and a very familiar-looking green glass bottle.
"Elphaba," Glinda said, staring at the bottle.
"I know." Ignoring the sachet in her other hand, Elphaba held the bottle to the light and watched it glisten. Fractured beams of darker green light reflected onto her face. "The Wizard told me there were lots of them. He has one. He said they were popular among Munchkinland peddlers."
"But why would he have so many? And hidden?" Glinda stepped closer to Elphaba, feeling drawn as if by a magnet, and her hand reached to touch the bottle ever so gently.
Elphaba lowered the bottle thoughtfully, then opened it and sniffed. She raised the bottle to her lips and took a careful, tiny sip, then coughed. "Same stuff," she said, "that was in his the last time I saw it, and in my mother's."
"Which is?"
"Strong drink." Elphaba made a face and capped the bottle again. "Do you suppose all that effort is to hide his secret stash of moonshine?"
Glinda giggled. "Seems a bit much, for that. It's his Palace after all, no one would steal from him."
"Oblivion," Elphaba murmured to herself as she held the bottle to the light again.
Glinda felt that strong sense of portent again, but swallowed it. "What?"
Elphaba blinked as if coming back to herself and lowered the bottle. "He said it brought oblivion. Maybe it's stronger than liquor . . ."
"Poppy?" Glinda gently pried the bottle from Elphaba's hands and began to uncap it. "Fiyero said he went to a den once, where they smoked it." She sniffed the open bottle. "Though, it does smell like liquor."
"Close it up, we don't need oblivion," Elphaba said wryly, and Glinda smiled and obeyed. "We need answers . . ."
Something clicked in Glinda's mind. "Elphie. The sign, did you see the sign in the basket?"
Elphaba shook her head. "No, there was a sign?"
Glinda hastily described it. "It sounds a lot like 'the Great and Powerful Oz,' don't you think? But it looked like an ordinary merchant's stall sign - Elphie, what if he was a peddler?"
Elphaba looked even more confused. "When?"
"After he came." Excitedly, Glinda grabbed the sachet from Elphaba's other hand and sniffed it. "Look, this is ordinary dried witch hazel, but it's written on it . . ." She squinted at the faded black ink on the brown fabric. ". . . 'Herb of Life.' What if he sold these things, before, before he managed to become the Wizard -"
"He has to have done something." Understanding dawned on Elphaba's face. "And why else would he have so much of it, so many crates of the bottles and herbs? He doesn't believe in folk magic."
"But he can make others believe anything he wants," Glinda said in a near-whisper. "Elphie -"
"You're right. He was able to make all of Oz believe he could do magic, but before that - before that, he convinced them his wares would cure their ills, or extend their lives, or - whatever. It must be. No one saw him land in Oz, and he already knew so much about us - everyone thought it was all magic, but he must have been here for - who knows how long, learning and watching -"
"Finding out what our problems were," Glinda said darkly.
Elphaba's eyes held hers, glittering with something Glinda couldn't identify. "Yes. And exactly how to exploit them."
For a long while neither of them moved, or spoke, or even breathed. Finally Glinda murmured, "That's worth hiding, isn't it."
Elphaba looked back at her intensely. "Yes. But the bigger question is, why keep it at all? What's important about all that, why not just burn it?" Her eyes narrowed, and she looked again at the bottle in Glinda's hand. "And, Glinda - Glinda -"
"What?"
Elphaba's eyes returned to hers. "If he sold those bottles to people in Munchkinland . . ."
Glinda caught her breath as she realized what Elphaba meant. "He might have met your mother. Elphie -"
"I . . ." Elphaba shook her head, and backed away as if the bottle frightened her. "I don't know why that matters to me, lots of people knew her, but . . . him? It's so odd, and why wouldn't he say something? Wouldn't a peddler, if that's what he was, remember selling something to the Governor's wife? Especially if he was trying to learn about us?"
Glinda's thumb reflexively pressed down on the cap of the bottle. "You'll have to ask him."
Elphaba nodded, and for some reason the look on her face made Glinda shiver. "Yes. I will."
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: Glinda and Elphaba make another discovery, one with interesting implications.
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.
~~Glinda~~
By the time Glinda woke - though she couldn't quite sit up as the cat was curled into a ball, fast asleep on her chest - Elphaba was sitting at the table staring pensively into a book, a stack of others on the table beside her. "What are you reading?" Glinda asked, her voice coming out raspy and dry.
Elphaba looked up, frowning. "Are you all right?"
Glinda gently eased her hands under the cat and shifted it to her lap so that she could push herself to a sitting position. "Yes. My head hurts a bit, that's all. What -"
Elphaba closed the book on her finger and held it up so that Glinda could see the cover. "Our third-year sorcery book. We never got to the last chapters, remember -"
"I do," Glinda said. Her voice was slowly returning to normal. "Two extra months on the history of famous sorcerers instead - even I have never cared that much about whether Mairy Magister wore red or blue robes or how long Marxen's wand was."
"Yes," Elphaba said. There was no need to elaborate further - both girls had long held the shared belief that Madame Greyling had been instructed to slow down their magical education, so that Madame Morrible could more effectively control what spells they learned. "Well, here in the back there's a spell to surround the caster with pure breathable air that will push away anything noxious. The book says it was developed during the plague years."
"Useful," Glinda said. A nagging sense of guilt crept into her mind. "We always did mean to go and learn all those spells we skipped."
"We'll certainly learn this one now." Elphaba wrinkled her nose slightly as she returned to her book. "I've been trying to figure out whether that was just meant to be a description of how it could be used, or whether it really only keeps out things it thinks are noxious. I mean, if the spell doesn't think chloroform is noxious . . ."
"Only one way to find out, I suppose," Glinda said, lifting one hand to her aching head as if to brace it. "We should have a moment or two to find out whether it works, before we'd be overcome by the vapors if it doesn't. But -"
"Hmm?"
"I forgot to mention something," Glinda said with some embarrassment. "At first I tried to make a light, you know, to look around the room. But it went out every time I tried, as soon as it crossed the threshold. I had to use a lamp."
Elphaba propped an elbow on the table and dropped her chin into it in a posture of defeat. "You think magic doesn't work in there."
Glinda shrugged helplessly. "I didn't try anything else, but - well, I did summon the door closed, but I did that when I was outside the room. Though the door, being open, was partly inside it . . ." The effort of thought seemed to make her headache worse, and she screwed up her face against the pain. "But maybe the spell was able to work on the outside of the door because technically it's not part of the room?"
"Lie back down," Elphaba said, getting to her feet and heading for the bathroom. "I'll get you a compress, you look as if someone were drilling into your head."
The image made the pain so much worse. Glinda whimpered slightly as she lay her head back onto the sofa cushion and closed her eyes. She didn't move again until Elphaba was laying a warm, wet cloth that smelled slightly of lavender over her forehead, and then she moved only enough to find Elphaba's damp hand and squeeze it.
"I'll just have to think of something else," Elphaba said, more softly, as she gently pressed the cloth against Glinda's temples. "Masks for miners, or something."
"Maybe we could just create a little cyclone in the stairwell," Glinda murmured drowsily, "and suck all the gas out through the open door." She paused. "And then faint in the stairwell, because we'll have just gassed ourselves outside of the room instead of in it."
The absolute silence told her that Elphaba was thinking. It was a slightly frightening prospect.
"Or," Elphaba finally said. "We could suck all the gas out of the room, and trap it in a big pink unbreakable bubble."
A slow, careful smile spread across Glinda's face. "I don't think they actually have to be pink," she mumbled. "Mine just came out that way."
"Could you figure out how to get something into the bubble and then seal it up?"
If it wouldn't have hurt so much - and if the compress wasn't hiding them anyway - Glinda would have rolled her eyes. "Oh yes. My next assignment was going to be figuring out how to get things into the bubbles - I was supposed to start trying it with little things, pens and biscuits and whatnot. I could learn fast, I have the instructions. But -" She frowned, and couldn't quite stop herself from saying "ow". She pressed her palm more firmly against the compress on her head. "I was really just joking. I mean, the magic wouldn't be able to go into the room to get the gas, would it?"
"That's why I thought it was brilliant, actually," Elphaba said. "Even if it was a brilliant joke. Magic couldn't go into the room, but if we created a cyclone in the stair, it would be the air currents - the wind - that actually sucked the gas out of the room. The magic wouldn't have to cross the threshold. Just like, if I picked you up with magic and threw you toward the door, you'd fall through, because your momentum wouldn't be magic."
Glinda thought about that for a while, rubbing her ankles together as if squirming could ease her headache. The cat stretched in its sleep and dug a claw into her belly. "You're right," she said. "I think."
"There'd have to be a way of making the cyclone only affect things in the room," Elphaba mused. "Not us, or the bubble itself. I'll practice, we do have those endless pages of weather spells."
"All right," Glinda said, pulling her elbows under herself to sit up.
"Not now." Elphaba gently pressed her back down. "You still feel awful, and anyway I don't think you should take the chance of breathing that stuff more than once in one day. You rest, I'll work on the cyclone spell, and in the morning you can practice with your bubbles and then we'll go."
Glinda had no intention of arguing.
Luckily, in the morning, the spell to create a bubble that something could then be moved into did turn out to be as simple as Glinda had expected. After putting a lot of breakfast buns into bubbles and then taking them out again, she tried opening a bubble to allow in a shower of airy green sparks Elphaba had created with her own, very seldom-used, wand. It worked; the sparks danced around inside the pinkish sphere like a strange Solstice decoration.
She and Elphaba were silent as they descended the stairs. Elphaba's mouth twisted slightly as they passed the concealed door that led through into Southstairs, but she didn't say anything. Still, the thoughtful look that appeared on her face as they continued to descend gave Glinda a moment of concern. Both concern and thoughtfulness, however, vanished when they were standing before the door to the secret room, and Glinda was gently pointing out the cracks of the door with her fingertips.
They both froze, listening for any noise, and then Elphaba held her hands out in front of her in a preparatory way. "You'll have to open the door," she said, "but then get right behind me, and do your bubble."
"Right." Glinda pressed her palm against the door and took a deep breath. "Ready?"
"Ready." Elphaba nodded and then breathed deep herself, pressing her lips tightly together.
Glinda pushed the door open as hard as she could and then jumped back behind Elphaba. Even with her breath held, the scent of chloroform tickled her nose. Elphaba was already chanting, low and controlled the way trained singers managed their breath to avoid taking another. When the cyclone began to form in front of her, visible because of the dust and cobwebs it instantly collected, its narrow end tendriled toward the open doorway. Hands moving around the outer edges of her cyclone in circular patterns, Elphaba chanted something else unfamiliar in a voice made harsh now by breath control. "Get ready," she said, and Glinda could hear the strain.
Trying not to watch as the cyclone grew visibly bigger, presumably as it pulled air and strength from inside the room, Glinda concentrated on her spell. Holding her breath was making her lightheaded, and finally she let it gush out and took another as the bubble began to form on the end of her wand. The air she breathed seemed safe enough, so she gave up and breathed normally as she released the bubble and then carefully, carefully, opened it and just edged the wide end of Elphaba's cyclone inside.
"Bigger," Elphaba managed to gasp with what sounded like the last breath she had.
"I think you can breathe now," Glinda muttered quickly as she concentrated on expanding the bubble. Dirty air pulled in by the cyclone filled it now, a swirling, disgusting gray cloud of dust and other small airborne debris, including a few spiders. She heard a quick gasp as Elphaba gave up and started to breathe again, but she was watching the bubble grow and grow. After what seemed like a bare heartbeat, Elphaba waved her arms.
"I think it's all right," she said. "I can feel air from the stairwell rushing into the room to fill it; whatever was in there has to be out."
Glinda nodded sharply and closed the bubble with all of her concentration. "Done," she said nervously. "Can you -"
"I still smell the chloroform, but I suppose the smell itself would linger a bit," Elphaba replied. "Shall we?"
"Only thing to do," Glinda said. Her eyes narrowed as she looked at the big pink bubble full of swirling dirt. "I think we forgot one small detail."
"Shrink it," Elphaba said. "Carefully. And rest it in the empty sconce after we've taken a lamp."
"Good thought," Glinda said, painstakingly following Elphaba's instructions.
They looked at each other anxiously for a few seconds after stepping into the room, but although a faint smell did linger, neither of them felt dizzy. Eventually they were brave enough to cross the room and investigate the large draped object at the other end.
"I'd better," Elphaba said, sounding nervous. She handed the lamp to Glinda, who held it as near to the drape as she could without setting it on fire.
Elphaba lifted a corner of the drape gingerly, but when nothing jumped out to bite them, she began uncovering the object more quickly. What was underneath seemed mainly a collection of shadows, until Glinda lowered the lamp and looked more closely. "A . . . basket?" It was a basket nearly as high as Glinda's chest and as wide as the length of her legs, but still just a basket.
Elphaba's confused face lifted to hers in the flickering lamplight. "What's worth -" She looked down again, and said, "Bring the light lower?"
Glinda obeyed, and they both hovered over the edges of the basket, peering inside. "There's more cloth . . ."
"Silk," Elphaba said, rubbing a bit of it between her fingers. "Red silk . . ."
"Yellow underneath." Glinda brought the lamp even lower. "And - wait, can you pick up all the silk?"
Elphaba gathered the fabric into her arms, panel after panel after panel. "There's more than I thought, it's heavy."
Glinda glanced anxiously toward the door they'd left standing open, but she heard nothing. "There's something underneath," she whispered urgently. "Quickly, we shouldn't stay long."
"It's like . . ." There was a rustle of silk as Elphaba managed to sweep most of the fabric into her lap and uncover what was buried beneath. "A stove. Only it's broken."
"A stove?" Frowning, Glinda lowered her light to investigate. "It is a stove. It's not just the pipe that's broken, look, it's supposed to attach to something."
"To the top of the basket," Elphaba said, getting to her knees and in the process dumping most of the piled silk onto the floor. "Glinda, this is the Wizard's balloon!"
"The one he arrived in?" Glinda hesitated, but the feeling in her stomach told her that Elphaba was right. "I thought that was just a story they told children." She tilted the light, looking at a wooden board that lay propped against one side of the basket, behind the stove. It had a faded, but garishly painted sign that showed a sphere with light pouring from it, and the legend 'The Great OZPIN.'
"I used to think so, until we found out he didn't have any magic." Elphaba was leaning into the basket now, her hands feeling around its sides for any further discoveries. "Then I thought it made sense - how else would someone with no magic get here from another world? He must have drifted just as he said." She made a noise in the back of her throat, and her hands stopped their fumbling.
"What did you find?" Glinda asked, a portentous feeling sweeping through her.
"Bottles," Elphaba said, sounding puzzled. "A box - no, at least three boxes of . . . bottles. And some little bags of something soft, like dried leaves."
"Take one," Glinda suggested. "One of each, and then we should get out of here before someone comes."
Elphaba moved quickly, stuffing something into the pockets on either side of her dress. "All right, can you help me get this silk back inside?"
Glinda bent with her free hand to try to help. "Why protect this old balloon so well?" she asked.
"Maybe because it suggests he didn't get here by magic?" Elphaba was moving faster now, stuffing the fabric any which way back into the basket. "I don't know. Maybe there's something about the bottles."
"Get the drape," Glinda instructed, holding the light high. "Maybe he comes in here to visit it, we don't want him to suspect . . ."
"How, without being knocked unconscious?" Elphaba asked rhetorically as she labored to get the heavy drape over the top of the basket again. "Do you think Morrible helps? Do you think she knows this is here?"
"She must," Glinda said, feeling proud of herself for being practical. With her toe she caught a slipping fold of the drape and helped Elphaba pull it right. "If there's a block on magic in this place, someone must have set it. We know the Wizard couldn't have."
"That's true," Elphaba said, stretching over the basket to drop the drape over the other side. "But she doesn't necessarily know what the room is guarding. It could have been empty when she laid the sp-"
Glinda frowned and nudged Elphaba with her foot. The other girl had frozen in the act of smoothing the drape. "Elphie?"
Elphaba shook herself and continued with her task. "The spell. I was just thinking. If it's a spell, shouldn't we be able to counter it?"
"Spells are unrevers-"
"I know, I know, but - when you make fire, I can put it out, can't I?" Elphaba stepped back to eye her handiwork. "It wouldn't be unmaking the fire, it would be bringing something else to bear on it. Maybe there's a way to do that here."
"Think later," Glinda said. "That looks good, let's go."
When they were back out in the stairwell, Glinda studied her bubble with some pride, and a question. "Should we put the chloroform back?"
"If we're worried about suspicion, I suppose." Elphaba took the lamp from Glinda and nudged the bubble out of its home in the sconce so that she could replace the light. "I don't know how shrinking air works; better expand it again first."
"Right. Stand back and hold your breath."
They both watched as the bubble, responding to Glinda's hasty chant, expanded to its original size and then opened without bursting ("Fascinating," Elphaba said, without drawing breath) and released its burden. A quick wave of Elphaba's hands directed most of the mess back into the secret room, though complete precision wasn't possible. When the bubble appeared empty and Glinda had made it disappear, Elphaba said, in an urgent, breathless voice, "Upstairs, now."
Glinda understood immediately. Not all of the chloroform had gone back into the room; some of it was hovering right where they were. She summoned the door shut and ran past Elphaba, climbing as fast as she could without drawing breath. She heard Elphaba's boots pounding the stairs behind her.
Two landings up she could no longer hold her breath and she gasped hard without stopping her pace. From the sounds that followed her she could tell Elphaba had done the same. The chemical smell lingered, but she felt like herself, so she just kept going.
Their guards barely blinked when they finally got back to their room. Elphaba shut the door and leaned against it, breathing hard.
"Do you think the gas will dissipate?" Glinda asked, leaning against the sofa for support.
"It should," Elphaba gasped. "There's a draft in that cellar."
"I know, I almost froze yesterday." Glinda swallowed hard, which seemed to help her catch her breath. "Elphie, the bottle?"
Chest still heaving, Elphaba reached into both her pockets and pulled out what looked like a small herbal sachet in a plain brown sack, and a very familiar-looking green glass bottle.
"Elphaba," Glinda said, staring at the bottle.
"I know." Ignoring the sachet in her other hand, Elphaba held the bottle to the light and watched it glisten. Fractured beams of darker green light reflected onto her face. "The Wizard told me there were lots of them. He has one. He said they were popular among Munchkinland peddlers."
"But why would he have so many? And hidden?" Glinda stepped closer to Elphaba, feeling drawn as if by a magnet, and her hand reached to touch the bottle ever so gently.
Elphaba lowered the bottle thoughtfully, then opened it and sniffed. She raised the bottle to her lips and took a careful, tiny sip, then coughed. "Same stuff," she said, "that was in his the last time I saw it, and in my mother's."
"Which is?"
"Strong drink." Elphaba made a face and capped the bottle again. "Do you suppose all that effort is to hide his secret stash of moonshine?"
Glinda giggled. "Seems a bit much, for that. It's his Palace after all, no one would steal from him."
"Oblivion," Elphaba murmured to herself as she held the bottle to the light again.
Glinda felt that strong sense of portent again, but swallowed it. "What?"
Elphaba blinked as if coming back to herself and lowered the bottle. "He said it brought oblivion. Maybe it's stronger than liquor . . ."
"Poppy?" Glinda gently pried the bottle from Elphaba's hands and began to uncap it. "Fiyero said he went to a den once, where they smoked it." She sniffed the open bottle. "Though, it does smell like liquor."
"Close it up, we don't need oblivion," Elphaba said wryly, and Glinda smiled and obeyed. "We need answers . . ."
Something clicked in Glinda's mind. "Elphie. The sign, did you see the sign in the basket?"
Elphaba shook her head. "No, there was a sign?"
Glinda hastily described it. "It sounds a lot like 'the Great and Powerful Oz,' don't you think? But it looked like an ordinary merchant's stall sign - Elphie, what if he was a peddler?"
Elphaba looked even more confused. "When?"
"After he came." Excitedly, Glinda grabbed the sachet from Elphaba's other hand and sniffed it. "Look, this is ordinary dried witch hazel, but it's written on it . . ." She squinted at the faded black ink on the brown fabric. ". . . 'Herb of Life.' What if he sold these things, before, before he managed to become the Wizard -"
"He has to have done something." Understanding dawned on Elphaba's face. "And why else would he have so much of it, so many crates of the bottles and herbs? He doesn't believe in folk magic."
"But he can make others believe anything he wants," Glinda said in a near-whisper. "Elphie -"
"You're right. He was able to make all of Oz believe he could do magic, but before that - before that, he convinced them his wares would cure their ills, or extend their lives, or - whatever. It must be. No one saw him land in Oz, and he already knew so much about us - everyone thought it was all magic, but he must have been here for - who knows how long, learning and watching -"
"Finding out what our problems were," Glinda said darkly.
Elphaba's eyes held hers, glittering with something Glinda couldn't identify. "Yes. And exactly how to exploit them."
For a long while neither of them moved, or spoke, or even breathed. Finally Glinda murmured, "That's worth hiding, isn't it."
Elphaba looked back at her intensely. "Yes. But the bigger question is, why keep it at all? What's important about all that, why not just burn it?" Her eyes narrowed, and she looked again at the bottle in Glinda's hand. "And, Glinda - Glinda -"
"What?"
Elphaba's eyes returned to hers. "If he sold those bottles to people in Munchkinland . . ."
Glinda caught her breath as she realized what Elphaba meant. "He might have met your mother. Elphie -"
"I . . ." Elphaba shook her head, and backed away as if the bottle frightened her. "I don't know why that matters to me, lots of people knew her, but . . . him? It's so odd, and why wouldn't he say something? Wouldn't a peddler, if that's what he was, remember selling something to the Governor's wife? Especially if he was trying to learn about us?"
Glinda's thumb reflexively pressed down on the cap of the bottle. "You'll have to ask him."
Elphaba nodded, and for some reason the look on her face made Glinda shiver. "Yes. I will."