Two-Way Mirror (Fanfic)

       “Oof!” Glinda gave a half-muffled cry as she was flung backwards and her pink lacey dress catapulted itself over her head.
       Dorothy and Fiyero couldn’t help smiling, but Elphaba merely sat there, looking depressed.  “Glinda . . . They won’t come off.”
       “Buu dow fuu oo doh—“
       “Glinda, we can’t hear a word,” Fiyero said.  “Take your dress off your face.”
       Glinda shook the skirt material off of her head and stood up.  “But how do you know it won’t work?  Elphie, your magic is stronger than Nessa’s.  It’s stronger than mine!  Surely you can do something.”
       “I wish I could.  But right now there’s nothing.”  She propped herself up on her hands and looked at them.  “You know, one of you could help me off the floor.”
       They all looked embarrassed since none of them had thought of that before she’d said it.  Fiyero recovered first, knelt down, and gently picked her up.
       “I guess . . . Put me in Nessa’s old wheelchair,” Elphaba said.  Dorothy rushed over to wheel it to the center of the room, and Glinda waved her wand and the dust and age disappeared from it’s surface.  Fiyero placed her gently down and stepped back.  It was as if they didn’t know how to act around her now.
       Elphaba felt the tension, too.  “We’ve gotta find a way to solve this.  Glinda, can you go back to Muchkinland and see what you can find of Nessa’s old belongings?  She might have something there of how she did this, what spell she used.”
       “All right.  I believe I took her things to the Emerald City.  I’ll go there.”
       “Good.  Fiyero, you and Dorothy–“
       “We’ll see what we can track down about how Nessa managed to put her soul into those shoes.”
       “Good.  Okay, you guys go.”
       Fiyero leaned down to hug her, but Elphaba pushed him away gently.  Saddening but understanding, he and Dorothy left.
       “It’s been awhile since we were last alone,” Glinda said.
       “Yeah.  And once again, I’m limited,” Elphaba said with a smirk.
       “Elphie, we’ll find some way to cure this.  You won’t be in that chair forever.”
       “Oh, no?  Well, why shouldn’t I be?  Maybe Nessa was right to do this to me.  I left her in this chair long after I should have tried to do something good with my powers.  I forgot about my own sister and then expected her to help hide me!  Glinda, maybe I do belong here.  Maybe this is my fate.”
       “No!”  Glinda stamped her foot.  “Elphie, listen to me.  You can still be with Fiyero.  You can still be here with me.  You can have all you ever wanted . . .”
       “I can’t,” Elphaba disagreed.  “I can’t walk, I can’t move freely around Oz even if I could walk . . .  Glinda, it’s hopeless.”
       “It isn’t.  You told me that it was up to me.  For both of us, things were up to me.  Well, I’ve made my decisions.  You’re going to rule with me in the Emerald City, and I don’t care who tries to stop us.  No one will turn against Glinda the Good.”
       “Glinda, be reasonable.  You can’t just whisk your wand over everything and make things happy.”
       The witch of the North suddenly looked so sad that Elphaba wanted to hit herself on the head.  Glinda had always had so much brighter of an outlook on life than she did, and she didn’t want to ruin that.  It was one of Glinda’s more endearing, (though annoying,) qualities.  But what came out of her mouth next surprised Elphaba to her core.
       “I know I can’t.  Otherwise this never would have happened.  Otherwsie, I never would’ve thought you were dead.  Otherwise, Oz never would have turned against you in the first place.’
       “Glinda . . .”
       “Elphie, listen.  Maybe I can’t make everything perfect, but I can try.  The Ozians all look up to me now.  Well, the Munchkins always have, but that’s not they’re fault.  They’re so tiny.  Anyway, we’ll figure out how to reverse this spell, and take it from there, okay?”
       Elphaba sighed, not seeing any reason to tell Glinda yet that once she could walk again, she and Fiyero were leaving Oz–for good.  “Yes, we’ll . . . take things from there.”
       Silence fell between the two and Glinda wandered over to the small window in the tower.  “Elphie, couldn’t you still use your broom?  Wouldn’t you be able to fly on it?”
       “I don’t have it.  I left it at the cottage Fiyero and I were at.”
       “Oh.”  She thougt a moment.  “Well, couldn’t you go back through the mirror?”
       “Not in this.  I have to be able to step through it.  And now I can’t.  Fiyero and I won’t be able to pass through there until I can walk again.”
       “How did it get here?”
       “What?”
       “The mirror.  Where did it come from?”
       “Oh.  It’s a physical manifestation of my need to see Oz.”
       “So that’s why time can’t touch it . . .” Glinda murmured.
       “What?”
       “There’s no dust on it.  Dorothy and I noticed that.  And of course there wouldn’t be.  Your needs don’t get dusty, not if they’re not in the back of your mind.”
       “Yes.  I created it and left it here before Fiyero and I escaped through the Dragon Clock.  It also serves as a Looking Glass, you see.  On the other side, I could look into it and see any part of Oz that I wished.”
       “Can you do that now?  Could we see where Dorothy and Fiyero are?”
       “I suppose.  Though we’d have to put a spell on this side.”
       “All right, I’ll do it,” Glinda volunteered.  Before Elphaba had a chance to protest, Glinda began chanting.  She was fine until she got to a change in the verse, and mixed up an “eh” sound with an “uh” sound.  Elphaba heard her mistake, and shouted, “No, Glinda!  You said that wrong word!”
       But as Elphaba shouted, the mirror

began to change.  The colors swirled with blue and green and black, and soon, they could make out Dorothy’s house, and someone standing near the door, an axe leaning against a tree stump nearby.
       Elphaba’s shout echoed on the walls of the castle, and the person starightened, almost as if he could hear it.
       Glinda gasped as she realized who it was and Elphaba bit her lip.  He couldn’t have heard her . . .  Glinda’s mispronunciation couldn’t have made it a two-way mirror . . . could it?
       The someone in front of the house turned around and stared right at Glinda and Elphaba.  His eyes widened and he lurched back a step.  His mouth opened in what both witches knew was a strangled scream.  They couldn’t hear him, but for whatever reason, he could hear them, and he’d seen them.  Elphaba and Glinda watched him run away, probably to inform other Ozians of what he’d seen.
       Once he’d disappeared and the mirror had clouded over, Elphaba and Glinda looked at one another.
       “Boq knows you’re alive . . .”