Elphie teases Nessa about what to hex next. “Maybe I’ll toy with Nanny’s pincushion,” she says, “or that sack of medicinal tablets she keeps on a cord around her neck.”
“You can’t get close enough to hex Nanny’s pills,” says Nessa, mixing up hexing with petty larceny.
“You try it then, see if you can.”
A noise outside. Frex comes in to kiss them good night. “It’s going to be a long evening, and I don’t want you to be frightened if you hear your mother, um, making noises,” he says. “She’s having a baby tonight, did you know that?”
“Well, obviously,” replies Elphie, though she’s only just putting it together.
“I’ll tell you all about it in the morning. Having babies is hard work but it’s worth it. Look at you two.”
Nessa and Elphie glance at each other; the green one, the hampered one. They aren’t the ones to say whether it has been worth it or not. No scale of judgment.
When Nessa has rocked herself to sleep in her hammock, Elphie steals outside. The supper things are cleared away, everyone else is in tents, and Ti’imit has already built up the fire against jungle cats. The blaze makes the air tremble. Elphie sings a little, again, to stifle the forces opposed to her. Out of shadows approaches the polter-monkey. It is blue in the blue moonlight but gold on the edge nearer the flame. It feels like a dream, so she speaks to it, why not. “Are you here to do a hex for me?”
“You sing me near, you are the hexing one.”
In her isolated and rural life, Elphie has neither come across a talking Animal nor heard tell of a real one—only in nursery tales. In the jungle, Animals keep to themselves. So this is a dream; she’s dreaming this night. Then she wonders if into this singular figure she herself might have magicked the gift—or the curse—of a tongue she can understand.
She stares at the creature. It seems more solid than it did that other time, or times, she has encountered it. Language does that.
“What do you mean, I sing you near? I do not.” Already oppositional, our Elphie.
“I like your voice; it cuts through the blather of your family. I am alone, my own clan has been scattered by the cats. I have been hiding near your camp for safety and company. My name is—”
“You can’t have a name, you’re not a pet!”
“I am not a pet and I have a name. It is Oporos. You are—I know—you are Elphaba. The others I don’t know and I don’t care.”
“Have you come to kidnap me? I’ll need a moment or two to pack.”
Oporos makes a pout that Elphie registers, correctly, as a smile. “I would not carry you into the path of cats. You’re safer here. So am I.”
“Why are you taking things and bringing them back?”
The monkey turns its head a quarter of the way around and puts its forefinger against its lips, as if thinking—or mocking the way it has seen humans appear to be thinking. At last it says, “I am trying to get you to notice me.”
“You could just call my name.”
“And be shot by your father’s gun? He doesn’t like Monkeys who talk.”
“Does he know any? He doesn’t! Are you sure?” Her father couldn’t have kept such a marvel from her for all these years. He just couldn’t have.
“We’re not open to—to persuasion. About the god thing. He has tried.”
“He’s come across your people and preached to you?”
“If that’s what you call it. We like the stories where they have wings. The angel people. We asked if we could have some if we joined up his church. He said no.”
“Why do you want wings?”
“Oh, don’t you know?” Peering at Elphie, the creature looks tired. The girl doesn’t know if Oporos is male or female, or maybe those distinctions don’t happen in Monkeyland. It looks young and old at the same time—old from experience and young in aspiration. She won’t be able to think out things like this until she’s much older, but her practice of analysis—from observation—has already begun. For now, she just listens when it continues. “If we had wings, why, then, this business of cats, of losing our family members to the stalkers of the jungle—we could escape. If we had wings, we could be angels. We could see more, we could know more. But mostly—just—we could survive. That’s all.”
“If you think I am about to hex you up a pair of wings . . .” says Elphie, in a Nanny voice.
“I don’t think that,” says Oporos. “Not at all. But if you sing, two things will happen. You’ll help the fire to keep the cats away. And you will lift me up.”
“Lift you up?”
The creature smiles and hands over a marsh plum. “There’s more than one way to cast a hex.”
Unriddling a statement that can mean several things is not one of Elphie’s strengths. She stares at the polter-Monkey, perhaps a little coldly, and then drops her gaze to the piece of fruit in her palm. The wind soughs in the palmettos, clacking the dried-out fronds. The air smells slightly rank. Her invigilator hulks there, waiting for her to say something, to react. No next thing to say occurring to her. But she’s good at being still.
A groan from her mother’s tent—a groan opening out into a teary cursing.
When Elphie has turned back from glancing tent-ward, the creature of the evening is gone. Skittish item, a polter-Monkey.
She inches back to her cot. On slightly damp groundcover, her bare feet sting. She ought to have put on her boots. She never realized dew begins to collect at midnight.