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All this palaver. “Why have you come, Miss Spunge?”
“Call me Nanny.”
I resisted the invitation. She continued. “My sweet Melena, the Thropp Second Descending, is still young and fertile. I want some salve, some charm, some hedge to ensure that any second child would be born—without blemish.”
“The first child?” I said.
“Elphaba,” said Nanny.
A chill ran through me. I who hadn’t known chills before. I didn’t ordinarily deal in medical charms. “A serious blemish, I’m guessing, or you wouldn’t be here.”
She nodded. A tear fell, and I knew it to be genuine.
I continued. “They put the unhappy infant out of its misery, I assume.”
“Hardly. As if they could. That child has a will stronger than springtime.”
“Her infirmity, then? You must be blunt if I am to be of help.”
Nanny pushed the potted fern closer. “Green. Skin as rich as that. I brought this so you could see. The child is a year old now, poor dreadful thing. I don’t ask you for a corrective for her condition—only for a prophylactic to save Melena Thropp, her mother, against a repeat disaster. To benefit a second child, not Elphaba. Elphaba is condemned to sorrow.”
“Elphaba is condemned to nothing,” I found myself saying. “Nothing is written for her, which means everything is possible.”
I looked at the fern, which did not wither back at me.
“That’s a fancy opinion,” said the family retainer, but I could see she was a bit shaken. “Nanny expected something more in the line of an herbal remedy. Not a prophecy.”
“This is not a restaurant. You take what’s on offer,” I said, but I was surprised at my vehemence, too.
“As long as you’re feeling prophetic, why not push it a little bit further?” she asked. “I mean, a Nanny’s job is to prepare for all eventualities, so it would be useful to know what to look out for. Plagues, boyfriends, the rotten tread in the tower stairs, that sort of thing.”
I was torn at the audacious request. Who was I? A scioness of nothing—without an evident mother, I wasn’t even a bastard. Having anything to do with a prominent family seemed risky from the start. Still, I was intrigued. I wasn’t given to vaulty sorts of sentiments, but the report of a green girl had captured my attention. I felt a little bit of a one-off myself—perhaps there was a kinship effect.
“I will need to have something to hold,” I said, playing for time while my mind raced.
Nanny put her hands in her satchel. At first I thought she meant merely to remove them from the tabletop so I wouldn’t get any ideas. Then I saw she was fussing about. “I suspected as much,” she said. “I came prepared. This isn’t my first visit to an oracle, you know.”
“Why didn’t you go back to the oracle you’d seen before?”
“She died, alas, when a marble bust of Pastorius fell off its pillar and brained her.” The Nanny got to the punch line first. “Yes, yes, if she didn’t see it coming, one questions her professional skills. So she probably deserved to die.”
I snorted to be polite, yet not so loudly as to impugn my colleague, may she rest in peace. Whatever that might be like.
“Still,” said the Nanny, continuing to rummage about, “who of us really can see our own deaths coming?”
I didn’t know back then that this would be a problem of mine decades hence: that I couldn’t find my own death. “Have you got anything in there?” I asked.
The Nanny withdrew some prettily carved beads, ivory or the like, and a golden garter worked with repoussé trim. “The beads were made by Melena’s husband, the minister,” she said. “They’re inscribed with symbols of the Unnamed God, I’m told. To me they look like denomination emblems from foreign monetary systems, but what do I know. Like I said, I haven’t traveled much.”
I took the beads. They felt cool and aloof in my hands, and spoke nothing to me. If I’d hoped for a jolt of spiritual connection, I was disappointed. “Let’s see the garter,” I said. “And this belongs to your Ladyship?”
“Did. Does. That is…” And here the Nanny began to blush, remembering I was supposed to be a truth-teller. “I came away with it in my belongings, somehow, last time I visited,” she admitted. Meaning she stole it. I nodded without disapproval; I wasn’t above theft myself, though it was the edible thing rather than the beautiful that I usually lifted.
I felt it, to little benefit. The woman who wore such a decorated legging expected her legs to be explored by admirers. That was all, and I’d already figured out as much. I handed it back. “Is there nothing else?”
“Oh, you are good,” said the client. “Here you go.” Next she fished out a small bottle made of green glass with a cork stopper in it. It stood so-high, about, and a paper label was affixed to the front. Yes, I remember what it said; give me a moment. It read MIRACLE ELIXIR.
“You have miracle elixirs, so what are you coming to me for?” I asked.
