Disclaimer: I do not own Wicked (I'd know if I did )
Prologue: Kerrin's Story
It all started, if such things can be said to have a definite beginning, with a young man of Gillikin – one Kerrin Hadar – defying his father's wish for him to make a good marriage within the minor nobility of the North to enter the service of the Unnamed God as a Priest. With prompting from his wife Kerrin's father gave in and gave his blessing with the unspoken thought that Kerrin could always be married after his ordination.
Believing that marrying, and indeed living, in Gillikin would hinder his purpose the young man sought the advice of his superior and decided to go south to convert the heathen Quadlings – that was the last his family heard of him for a great many years
He went first to Qhoyre, the only place resembling a city in the south, but found that very few Quadlings actually lived there. When he asked of a local Missionary where he might go to find likely converts he was, rather brusquely, told not to waste his time on "those mud grubbing heathens who spend most of their lives with their minds firmly fixed on the clouds"
Dismayed but not discouraged by the older man's cynicism Kerrin Hadar sought an audience with the man presumed by Northern Ozians to be the Ruler of Quadling Country.
Much to his surprise when the audience was granted he found himself conducted into the presence of a Quadling lady. The conversation made such an impression upon him that he later recorded it in his personal journal.
Excerpt from the journal of Kerrin Hadar, dated 18th year of the Reign of Ozma the Wise:
Much to my surprise upon being conducted into my audience with the Ruler of this Southern land I was met with a lady of the Quadlings.
"Greetings to you, Madame," said I to her, being unsure on the proprieties of addressing such a personage.
"And to you, greetings, Kerrin of Gillikin," she replied in the oddly muddled way of speaking they have. Some find it irksome but it seems to me that if any of us bothered to learn their language, as I intend to do, we would sound just as odd.
"To speak to I, you wished?" she continued and I realised I had fallen silent.
"I beg your pardon, Madame, I did wish to speak to the person in charge but I was led to believe that was Master Herlyn," I replied, taking pride in the fact that I did not stumble too badly over the gentleman's name.
"Herlyn is, as you say it, 'husband' to I. To I you wish to speak, to ask if you may do what? Go among my people and tell them that for speaking to those who have passed they are cursed? For not believing in one, Unnamed, Father they are cursed?"
It was at this point I began to have strong suspicions as to why my fellow Missionaries regarded the Quadling people as an 'impossible task'
"I must protest, Madame, and assure you in the hope that you will believe me. I have no intention of telling your people that their ways are wrong, though I know there are those who believe it to be so."
"Your word, only, I have for this. How am I to be knowing if it is kept?"
How indeed? I wondered silently to myself, searching through the scanty knowledge of the Quadling people I had acquired, finally I spread my hands in defeat.
"I can think f no way to prove my sincerity to you, Madame, I am sorry."
"Your faith you do not claim to make you infallible?"
"No one is infallible, Madame, that is why we have our faith."
After I made that statement, entirely genuinely of course, she fell silent and studied me with such intensity that I felt quite nervous – was she about to banish me from her land and if she did where would I go? Perhaps it would have been best to make my own way without drawing her attention to me.
"To preach to my people, you intend to?" she demanded suddenly. "How? When many of them are not speaking your language and less than them speaking it well?"
"I…I thought to find someone who would teach me to speak your language, Madame, if that is possible. I thought perhaps some of the misunderstandings between our peoples on the subject of our beliefs might be due to the barrier of language."
"Words do not a language make. To truly be knowing a people, you must know their beliefs. A bargain for you, Kerrin of Gillikin. To one of my people you will be teaching your ways and from that one learning ours, do you agree?"
That was the last journal entry written by Kerrin Hadar.
After a few moments thought he agreed to the conditions set by the Lady Ruler of Quadling Country and that was how he came to meet Liana Neerasa. Liana was as interested in learning about his beliefs as he was in learning her language, at that point he thought of learning her beliefs as necessary to understanding the people he was trying to convert.
The first thing Liana did was take him away from the city, after explaining that he could not understand what being Quadling meant until he had seen how most of them lived. He soon discovered that they had no method of keeping time smaller than measuring the seasons. Day was day until it became night and then it was day again. The difference between seasons was the amount of rain that fell and slight variations in temperature.
Before he knew it he was in love with that wild humid swampland and the people who lived in it, particularly one person who lived in it – Liana who had shown him that there was more to Quadling beliefs than the self-delusion that northerners, particularly religious officials, dismissed them as and had in turn embraced his beliefs and proven that one person could believe in all of those things without conflict.
They spent the next few years travelling while Kerrin preached, until Liana informed him in no uncertain terms that he had six months in which to decide where they would live until their child was born.
Kerrin's family, and his superiors in the church, would have been horrified to hear that a Quadling woman was expecting his child but they didn't know because the last they heard of him was the response to a query from his superior telling them that Kerrin Hadar had 'gone native' and 'vanished into the backcountry'.
In plenty of time the couple settled down in a small Quadling settlement near the southernmost border of Oz, it was not called a town because it didn't have a name and the inhabitants tended to move every year or so – one of the reasons for the well known unreliability of the postal system in the South.
The baby, properly christened at Kerrin's insistence and ceremonially introduced to her ancestors at Liana's insistence, was named Melena and to Kerrin's surprise the only sign she showed of being half-Quadling were the reddish highlights in her brown hair – her skin was as pale and pretty as any Gillikinese girl could wish for.
Liana remained amused by his surprise for some time to come, she also suggested that he may wish to tell his mother of her grandchild now that he knew she was not...different. Kerrin's reaction to her assumption that he was ashamed to have a Quadling wife (he insisted on using the term despite the informality of their relationship) and daughter was vehement to say the least – after he finished Liana never considered the thought again, not even four years later when their second daughter, as Quadling in looks as her mother, was born.
Time passed, unremarked upon for the most part, Kerrin taught his daughters to speak the language of North as well they spoke that of the South. The girls grew up in the freedom of a Quadling childhood, so much less demanding than what he had been through, and saw most of their homeland by the time Melena was thirteen. Their mother taught them Quadling magic, the gift of growing things that all Quadlings had to some degree, while their father taught them how to read and figure numbers.
Tragedy struck the South in the Seventh Year of the Reign of Ozma the Bilious – a plague swept through the land killing nearly half of the Quadlings. Of Kerrin's family, who all contracted the disease, only three survived. The youngest daughter, Melena's beloved sister, had always been more frail than most and was not strong enough to survive despite the devoted nursing by mother and sister. They did not even have the comfort of speaking to her in spirit for the Sprit Speaker, a person who is not named in the Quadling language because all Quadlings know what he or she is, had been a victim of the plague as well.
Gradually, to the subdued surprise of those who survived, life returned to normal.
Melena, having already learned midwifery and nursing from Liana, decided she wanted to learn more and spent three years studying with healers all over the South before announcing that she had arranged to go to University in Munchkinland to study medicine there.
When Kerrin would have protested, not her ambition but her choice to leave, Liana took him aside and spoke the wisdom of her people:
Every life is full of choices.
Every child must leave her home.
The time to choose for our child has passed.
So Melena went to the North East, writing often to her parents though it took months for the letters to actually arrive at whichever settlement they were residing in at the time. A year after she left Melena's parents received a letter telling them that she was going to be married – in fact by the time the letter arrived she was married – to Frex Thropp, the Governor to be of Munchkinland.
The next letter brought the news that the Governor, Frex's father, had died in a riding accident and Melena was now wife of the Governor of Munchkinland – a role she was not comfortable in but was certain it would improve – there were less letters after that, Melena's mother in law was a stern Gillikinese woman who insisted that Melena learn many new things.
She invited them to come and visit, to meet her husband, whenever they received the letter containing the invitation. Before they could leave Liana, after nursing several others through a relapse of the illness that killed so many five years before, suffered a relapse herself.
You won't be lonely for long, she told Kerrin as she lay dying. Melena is coming home soon, and bringing someone very special with her.
AN: Next chapter switches to the pov of Melena in Munchkinland.