Chapter 10

Each day, there was a little less pain. Yet she grew more numb, like a wound that covers itself with skin that can no longer feel. Every day was the same. Sleep. Eat. Work. Run. The rhythm of it kept her going.

“You are not a person,” Hadrick stated each time a man came with cash, eager for his chance with the green whore.

And she had accepted it. The words no longer ignited rage, they were a simple fact. She had been stripped of personhood. She no longer hoped or felt, she simply did. She existed to be used, whether it be for good during the day, or for her body by night.

Elphaba had learned to shut the men out. She would squeeze her eyes shut and will herself to another place, usually a lush, green place. She would be free there, alone and free. The ravaging of her body would fade as she imaged wrapping herself in the lush green of nature, taking comfort in its silence.

The men usually departed quickly, which was merciful. She had taken to rubbing herself with oils to remove the scent of them. She had to steal them from the merchant who set up a rickety table at the corner, but it was worth the risk. She found they calmed her nerves, gave her a measure of sleep. One even seemed to take the sting out of the still-fresh scars between her legs. It was a luxury she’d never thought to try before, yet now she realized their value to a person who cannot bathe.

After a thorough rubbing, she’d climb out her sagging window and sit on the roof tiles, staring at the moon. She’d taken to singing, something she’d thought she’d left behind with her days at Shiz. Yet it was cathartic. It was as if she was casting all the pain, the anger, and the filth out into the starry sky to be swallowed up by the faceless moon.

They were often wordless songs, but her voice was hypnotic, rising and falling like the sea, or lovers in the throws of passion. Surely the very Unamed God himself would pause as her lilting soprano carried upward and out into the heavens. Surely, if he existed, he held something better for this strange green woman he had created.

Yet only silence answered her song.

“But I am not a person,” she told the night, “and God has no need for soulless things.”

She crawled back into the window to struggle for sleep. Soon she’d face another day. There was always another day.