“They want people who will recognize me,” Glinda put together, looking up at Fiyero. “And you.”
“That’s what we’re thinking. With no sight of Fae while she’s been staying out of the skies, they’re taking to the ground. For us. They’ll use us to drag her out, if they can.”
“And the announcement I keep hearing you talk about?”
“Tonight, at the ninth hour. They’re promising new information on the kidnapping, on you…maybe me, since they can’t pretend I’m still out looking for you forever. We can only guess at what they have planned, but the Wizard seems to have been turning the whole thing into some sort of production.”
Glinda removed her arms from the table, crossing them around her chest, her voice dimming to a whisper.
“Putting on a show.”
Then, at the sixth hour, the first emerald bomb dropped in the form of a precursor to the official announcement. A live broadcast from the palace featuring none other than Larena Upland.
“Bubble, baby…Galinda, dearest…if you can hear this, please be strong. We’re coming for you.”
Though she kept hold of her mind, Glinda didn’t trust it, falling into wide-eyed panic while Elphaba tried to meet her eyes and take her hands.
“Breathe.”
“It’s the voices, though, right? Th-that isn’t my—“
“We’re going to listen, okay?”
“But it’s in my head—“
“No, love, it’s her.”
Elphaba took hold of Glinda from behind, trying to wrap trembling porcelain arms under her own and around the both of them. She turned the blonde towards the glow of the radio as if to prove it was real. When Larena Upland shared that she was with the Wizard and Madame Morrible now, Glinda’s legs had given out, but the witch was already there to take her weight.
At the seventh hour, with thunder rolling in from the east, Fiyero saddled Feldspar. Elphaba and Glinda joined him in the darkness under a curved sliver of a moon that offered very little light. Fae took the prince's face and pulled it down to her lips, drinking deeply as if it could sober the bitter omen of knowing something bad was coming. Fiyero wrapped his arms around Glinda, who held him tight. When they pulled away at the chest, they leaned into a brief kiss that seemed so rooted in what Elphaba could only assume was six years of muscle memory, that neither of them questioned what it was supposed to mean.
The eighth hour arrived, bringing cracks of white lightning and a downpour of rain. Arms of ivory and jade entwined under the wool afghan, foreheads touched, and they held onto each other as if it could help them let go of fear. Eyes fell closed, the light of the fire going black behind heavy eyelids. Unbeknownst to the women who trusted the announcement at the ninth to wake them, the golden glow of the radio had fizzled out with a lightning strike.
The ninth passed in silence, with a dark radio and a low fire.
At the tenth, the flame fell to ash.
And finally, at the eleventh hour, Elphaba woke up alone, calling out for the blonde in a tired slur, trying to adjust her eyes to the darkness and find a head of light hair somewhere within it.
Through the roar of thunder and the downpour of rain outside, she failed to hear Glinda’s screams.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Leaning into Glinda and quietly delighting in how putting a pink flower in her hair saw the drop of a more practiced smile, and revealed something almost a little shy.
How when he drew her close on the dance floor and made her laugh - actually laugh, not her soprano giggle - he just wanted to pull back the admittedly adorable mask that this girl had on and see who he met underneath.
Maybe she was a little like him…
Dancing through life.
- From “The Kidnapping of Glinda the Good”
Read it on AO3 here:
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
A new style of posts where I show seeds that dropped in earlier chapters of “The Kidnapping of Glinda the Good”, and how they came back around in later ones.
Chistery’s First Psychic Touch
In Chapter 8, Chistery is healed by Elphaba using the Grimmerie. In trying to bring back his ability to communicate through sign language after his hands have been crushed, the spellbook repairs his injuries and also turns one of his hands gold. That hand becomes telepathic, and he can communicate and read minds through touch. Glinda is the first person he reaches out to, after the spell is complete.
(From Chapter 8 - “What We Come To”)
At first, he studied her like an apparition, like he wasn’t sure she was there. She felt much the same. How? How was he still alive? Glinda slowly neared the table.
“Chistery?”
She caught Elphaba’s eyes despite the witch’s focus on her spell, perhaps trying to urge her to stay back even as she was nearing completion. In Glinda’s hesitation of the witch’s warning, she didn’t notice Chistery’s gold hand fly towards her and grip her arm. Though she seemed to be nearly finished, Elphaba immediately stopped chanting.
“Let her go!”
(Then Chapter 34 - “Too Much To Mention”)
Chistery didn’t need more than that to remember. He’d seen all but the first in the explosion of the Grimmerie’s spell, raw and unhinged in its first minutes, the fire of a fresh curse burning him from the inside out until it could be channeled into the nearest connection. Glinda.
“Let her go!”
Miss Elphaba had intervened quickly, grabbing his arm, but he’d already seen everything.
(The following flashback lines are from the previous 5 chapters, where we saw Glinda’s experience in the palace that nearly killed her.)
“It dulls the pain…”
“Why didn’t you stay? For me?”
“DO IT! Fucking DO IT!”
“How do you get him out of your head?”
“We are not the same.”
“Remember one of your fiance’s most notable contributions?”
“You’re taking it either way, dearie.”
“He’s come to save me…”
“You don’t want to be cold.”
“NO…AWAY…HERE…”
Yes, there was. Just one.
——————
Read all of “The Kidnapping of Glinda the Good” on AO3. A novel experience more than fan or ship service, formatted with intention using a work skin.
Secretly, ‘Uncle Chis’ adored Azuria’s mispronunciation as much as her cracked front tooth, and the clusters of crowded and missing ones that caused it. All of her top front incisors angled into her lip from the habit of sucking her thumb.
So we all will collectively die for this child, right? 🤣
“Azuria” is Chistery’s niece (non-canon) in The Kidnapping of Glinda the Good.
Art by @c-rose2081 will be featured in the next chapter.
