Then the watermark rose off the page. It did not flesh out, like a suddenly luminous puppet or like a radioactive green parrot, but retained its drawn outline, its crude symbolic origin. It reared, it rose in a sweep of cape, it lifted like a green flower from a bed of words and red roses on a black fringed background. It was not Elphaba; she was not here; her time was over and done. It was the mark of Elphaba, though, vivid as ever. Their eyes stung, to see her again, or for the first time.

“Of course,” said Yackle, turning for a moment and glowing at Ilianora. “You have a brother. Of course you must go on! Because history can’t be vexed by small players; don’t you know?” She looked at Ilianora, at the dwarf, at Brrr, with an expression too complex, too pungent to understand. “Don’t you understand? She’s coming back-”

Brrr thought, for an instant-but what does she mean? In her weird seeingness, can Yackle picture Muhlama H’aekeem? Or does she mean the lost Ozma, or Elphaba, who melted away, or the fairy goddess Lurline, or the Kumbric Witch, or even Dorothy the interloper?

In any case, Yackle let her shroud slip to the floor, and from her naked, poxy back unfurled two capacious sails of feather and strut and papery light. Unused these dozens of years, they had lost none of their power to elevate. Yackle rose in the air in the courtyard of the House of Saint Glinda, her calloused heels showing the dirt and detritus of the cobbles, the skin around her shanks and buttocks sagging, bruised, vivid with ancient life. She said nothing more, but as the watermark of Elphaba began to sink back again to flatness on its page, Yackle followed it. She disappeared into the Grimmerie like a diver entering the deepest parts of a magic pool: slow-motion, full of grace, the toes in the gleam; casting off wretchedness, casting off the shroud. She folded magically into the Grimmerie, her third and fourth dimensions laddering accordion-like into the secret unnamed dimensions of a page. They all leaned over the great book to watch.

But she wasn’t fully done. Just before her arms and wing tips and head lost their material shapeliness, her hands twisted in the air. Brrr, who had met Yackle only twenty-four hours earlier, knew her well enough to guess what she intended. He reached over the book as one will lean over a precipice. Shadowpuppet-Malky began to squirm and yowl, but Ilianora grabbed its rear paws. Together she and Brrr delivered the glass Cat to Yackle’s hands. Only a vowel-less snarl was left behind as Yackle’s wing tips and wrists and tendrils of hair and the glimmer of hostage Cat disappeared into the pages of the Grimmerie.

“I’ve sworn off taking sides,” said Ilianora fiercely, “but good riddance to bad rubbish. I hope it finds itself in some sort of a pit of hounds in there.”

“That hissy little piece of work won’t do any more damage while penned in that book,” said Brrr. “Just hope it doesn’t try to claw its way out from the inside.”