“You fool. You should be abed. I can manage my own nightgown,” snapped Glinda.

“The girl couldn’t sleep and I didn’t dare let her wander about alone.”

“So where did the two of you wander to? The ramparts?”

Miss Murth pursed her lip. “The girl was curious. But I did not care for the entertainment. It did not seem suitable.”

“Suitable for whom? I’m disappointed in you both. Take yourselves off somewhere else to sulk. I didn’t write the script. Go on, I’m in no mood to talk.” Miss Murth arose. She didn’t glance at the Grimmerie, which Glinda felt was glowing against her bosom like a red-hot breastplate. “You wil bring us to ruin, Lady Glinda,” she said in a low voice. “Come along, girl.”

The sleepy child stood and yawned. As much to herself as to Glinda or Murth, she murmured, “My favorite was the Lion.” I2.

Whatever happened, Glinda was pretty sure she wouldn’t be subject to a midnight inquisition, so she just stuffed the Grimmerie under her pilow. Then she humped herself into bed and blew her own candle out, and failed to sleep til nearly dawn.

What to do about the book? Cherrystone had already scoured her apartments, but he was no fool. He might work out that the performance of such a seditious little one-act was a diversionary tactic. That some transaction had occurred in the forecourt. He could come storming in here at dawn and tear the place apart. What to do? Where to turn?

And why was she the point person? Was it simply too obvious for words—that she was known to be more capricious than clever? That no one would think to look for an instrument of parlous magic in her presence? That she was a sily, dispensable figure whose moment had passed? She couldn’t dispute any of this. And she stil couldn’t sleep.

Her thoughts returned to Elphaba Thropp. It was more than fifteen years since they had parted ways. What an uncommon friendship they had had—not quite fulfiling. Yet nothing had ever taken its place.

Years later, when that boy Lir had shown up at Glinda’s house in the Emerald City, she had known him at once for Elphaba’s son, though he seemed in some doubt on that matter. (Children.) He had had Elphaba’s broom, after al, and her cape. More to the point, he had had her look: that look both haunted and thereby abstract, but at the same time focused. A look like a spark on a dry winter’s day, that staticky crackle and flash that leaps across the air from finger to the iron housing of the servant’s bel.

What would Lir do, were he handed the Grimmerie? What would Elphaba?

She drifted to sleep at last as the summer dawn began. Birds insisted on their dim pointless melodies. She didn’t believe she dreamed of Elphaba; she didn’t have the kind of aggravated imagination that loitered in dreams. Maybe she dreamed of a door opening, and Elphaba coming back from the Afterlife. To settle Glinda’s consternation; to save her. Or maybe this wasn’t a dream, just a foundational longing.