The green girl sat hunched in the corner of the hut, away from the dripping eaves and puddles of swampy wet in the center of the room. Her head was bent between her knees, long, damp black hair falling in ratty curtains around her face, her dirt-stained red dress hiked up her thighs to reveal long, slender emerald legs.

Elphaba looked slowly up, brushing her hair back from her eyes. Nessarose sat slumped against the mud-brick wall, her eyes closed, snot dribbling from her nose and onto the frayed collar of her dress. Her chin sagged against her chest, her thin body swaying without the balance of arms. She was nine, but with the body of a six-year-old, her skin pale as a fishbelly, her unused legs like wan sticks.

Elphaba stood and found her calfskin boots next to her, sliding her bare feet into them and wincing; their last trek through Quadling Country had left her heels callused and her toes blistered. She propped Nessarose's frail figure against a stump and then went to squat by their fire pit, warming her fingers over the embers. Shell and Nanny were gone, but that was to be expected: Nanny was always hunting for something they could eat, and Shell loved to splash behind her and chase after dragonflies and mosquitoes darting on the surface of the water.

When her hands were warm, Elphaba sloshed across the floor to the other corner, where beneath a blanket Papa kept his valuables dry. She cast a glance at Nessa, to make sure she was asleep and upright, and then ducked under the blanket herself. She rummaged in Papa's gilded wooden trunk until her fingers closed on the familiar leathery spine of a book and, in the watery light that came through the threadbare cloth, she read. There were only twelve books in Papa's chest, and Elphaba had read them all, again and again. She no longer cared what the title was, or even what they were about—all tomes of moral philosophy, religion, and the Unnamed God, none of which she cared for—but the words were fascinating. Elphaba settled happily against the back of the trunk and tucked her feet underneath her, losing herself in a world of words far away from the marshes of Quadling Country.

"Elphaba!" Nessarose called an hour later, stirring from her nap. "Elphie, where are you?"

The green girl poked her head out from under the blanket. "I'm here, Nessa," she said, closing her book and slipping it back into the trunk.

"Where's Nanny?" Nessarose asked, quietly. She struggled to sit straight, but lost her balance and fell to her side, slippered feet flailing. Elphaba scuttled out and propped her sister up again, looking flushed and guilty.

"I'm sorry, Nessa," she apologized, wiping dirt from the girl's dress. "Just ask if you want to sit up. Do you want something to eat?" She found an apple in amongst the roots and remedies in Nanny's trunk, and fed it in pieces to Nessarose, with the tenderness of a mother to her newborn child.

"Papa's prayer meetings will finish tonight. Nanny says he'll come home as soon as he can," Nessarose said, eagerly, turning her head away from a piece of shriveled fruit in Elphaba's hand.

"Home?" Elphaba scoffed, eating the apple herself. "This is home, Nessa?"

"Oh, Elphie, you know Papa will find us something better. This is only for a little while," Nessarose said. "This is better than in the Ovvels. At least there's a bed."

There was a bed, Elphaba admitted to herself, but she had never slept in it. Nessarose and Nanny shared it when Papa wasn't home, while she and Shell slept in blankets on the floor. This hovel was no worse than those they'd had in the past, but it was certainly no better—holes in the dripping and ancient thatch, mud walls and floor, devoid of real furniture and miles away from civilization. There was a low table in the corner—more of a bench—stacked with plates and cups and a mound of prayer beads Shell liked to play with when Papa was away. The narrow bed was pushed up against the wall, its sagging frame draped with a single brown blanket.

"At least there's a bed," Elphaba echoed finally, bowing her head under her sister's expectant gaze.

"Let's go outside, Elphie. Can you take me outside?" Nessarose asked.

Elphaba cast a longing glance at Papa's book chest, but turned away quickly. "Of course," she said soberly.

Elphaba unfolded herself and stood, tugging at the hem of her smock. It was too short and tight around the budding roundness of her chest, and her long, green legs stuck from it like awkward sticks; Nanny had made it for her a year ago out of one of Melena's old, glamorous frocks.