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“They want a green witch, they’ll get her soon enough, ugh.” Agatha slammed the door to her house — or the house she’d been squatting in while trapped in a witch’s spell for the past 3 years anyway — and power-walked down the sidewalk in search of a sucker who’d make a passable green witch. She only needed her for a short while, until she got rid of her current coven. And of the fake green witch too, of course; after all, she couldn’t go around leaving witnesses, be they of the magical persuasion or not.
Scanning the gardens of the neat terraced houses didn’t yield her a suitable candidate. But then, right ahead of her appeared what could only be a witch, going by her attire of black on black on black and a hat to top it off and — ugh — a broomstick… who just so happened to be green.
Agatha had found her green witch!
*
“Green witch!”
Elphaba had flown west, had kept going through rain, hail, weird red magical barriers, mosquito swarms, and sunshine. All of that and she’d come to land in front of a woman with crazy eyes, who pointed at her, called her a witch, and smiled. She smiled?
“You’re not running away screaming in terror,” said Elphaba, who was still stuck on the smiling. This wasn’t a reaction she was used to.
“And we both like stating the obvious, apparently,” the woman said. “We really were meant to belong to the same coven, right? Right.” And then proceeded to blow Elphaba’s mind even harder by taking her hand and dragging her off to who knows where, as if her skin didn’t bother her, as if having a green witch in your coven was fine, as if holding hands with someone you’ve just met was something that happened to Elphaba.
*
“Someone has a type,” muttered Jennifer Kale, when instead of a desperate witch down on her luck, like all of them gathered in Agatha Harkness’ house, the woman coming through the door with Agatha was holding hands with her. That’s why she didn’t want Rio to join, she thought. And thought further, wow, this new one is literally green, someone is still hung up on her last partner, how embarrassing.
‘Someone’, being Agatha, glared at Jen before letting go of the green witch and starting a round of introductions. She made everyone introduce themselves instead of being efficient and calling their names herself.
“Elphaba Thropp,” said, apparently, Elphaba, when it was her turn. El-pha-ba, memorized Agatha. “From Oz.”
“An Aussie! I didn’t recognize the accent,” said Lilia, trying to dispel the awkwardness after the curt introduction.
Elphaba didn’t say anything to that. Agatha appreciated it, she thrived in awkwardness too.
But enough was enough. “Well! We’re all here now. Let’s go down the Witches’ Road.”
*
Elphaba was clearly not in Oz anymore.
There were enough witches in this land to make a coven, for a start. She’d met more magical women in the past hour than in her whole life until then. But their magic… they cast it by singing?
Dancing in the Ozdust Ballroom had been embarrassing enough, and now Elphaba was expected to join in on a song she hadn’t ever heard before. “I stray not from the path,” she shyly sang. “I hold Death’s hand in mine.”
An ominous line, especially after recently holding Agatha’s — apparently the name of her new coven mate. A kind touch really wasn’t something casual in Elphaba’s life, or something she would quickly forget.
So it was with that in mind that she opened her eyes to see the door that had appeared beneath their feet, but more interestingly, Agatha’s face: she didn’t look like she expected the song-spell to have worked.
*
Teen rushed through the door without giving Agatha any choice but to follow along, together with the coven she’d failed to finish off by draining their powers…
…and she found herself on a yellow road. Bright, canary yellow. Were those bricks dyed? Where did anyone get yellow bricks? Surely they were custom made. The color clashed horribly with the overgrown woods and their dark leaves and blackened bark. Total eyesore.
“This is the Road?” Jen sounded skeptical, and Agatha couldn’t blame her. Not that she’d imagined the Road before, being as she didn’t think it was a real thing, but if she had she’d have pictured something darker, more foreboding. Not something from a children’s theme park.
“The Yellow Brick Road,” said Elphaba. “Leading me straight back to the Wizard. So I can’t escape that confrontation…”
Agatha looked suspiciously at Elphaba, and she wasn’t the only one. The Road, such as it apparently existed, was supposed to be for all of them to fight through, not for one of them to go on a personal quest with some tagalongs.
“Maybe we’re all supposed to face this wizard,” said Alice. “It’s a natural rivalry, us against wizards. Maybe you shouldn’t escape the confrontation, but find someone to help you. Like a coven.”
“Maybe the Road is telling us all that we need a coven. We’ve all been on our own, and what good has it done us? I’m in.” That was Lilia speaking, but the rest of the witches all nodded along and voiced agreement. Elphaba looked about to cry from gratitude.
It was all bullshit. Agatha knew an illusion when she saw it — even if it took three years of police procedurals and a wakeup call filled with sexual tension from an ex to see it. This Yellow Brick Road was all Elphaba, and Agatha had stupidly fallen into another web woven by another overpowered witch who made a game of trapping innocent witches in their fantasies. First the Fucking Scarlet Witch, now the Froggy Witch of Oz — nickname to be workshopped into something catchier.
Oh, well. Life was long for someone like Agatha, she needed distractions. Antagonizing a bunch of witches on the way to kill a wizard wasn’t too bad of one. And who knew, maybe she could drain the wizard’s energy instead of the coven’s, and the coven would even thank her for it. Yeah, that sounded like a great plan.
“Alright,” she said, stopping the chatter the others had fallen into. She removed her shoes, and looked at them all in turn. “Remember: I stray not from the path. Let’s go down this Yellow Brick Witches’ Road.”