Gregory Maguire_Wicked Years_02 (38 page)

T
HEY CONDUCTED THEIR LOVE AFFAIR
in the room above the abandoned corn echange as the autumn weather came lop-leggedly in from the east: now a warm day, now a sunny one, now four days of cold winds and thin rain.

O
NE EVENING THROUGH THE SKYLIGHT
the full moon fell heavily on Elphaba sleeping. Fiyero had awakened and gone to take a leak into the chamber pot. Malky was stalking mice on the stairs. Coming back, Fiyero looked at the form of his lover, more pearly than green tonight. He had brought her a traditional Vinkus fringed silk scarf—roses on a black background—and he had tied it around her waist, and from then on it was a costume for lovemaking. Tonight in sleeping she had nudged it up, and he admired the curve of her flank, the tender fraglity of her knee, the bony ankle. There was a smell of perfume still in the air, and the resiny, animal smell, and the smell of the mystical sea, and the sweet cloaking smell of hair all riled up by sex. He sat by the side of the bed and looked at her. Her pubic hair grew, almost more purple than black, in small spangled curls, a different pattern than Sarima’s. There was an odd shadow near the groin—for a sleepy moment he wondered if some of his blue diamonds had, in the heat of sex, been steamed onto her own skin—or was it a scar?

But she woke up just then, and in the moonlight covered herself with a blanket. She smiled at him drowsily and called him “Yero, my hero,” and that melted his heart.

G
REGORY MAGUIRE
is the bestselling author of
Son of a Witch
,
Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister
,
Lost
,
Mirror Mirror
, and
Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
, the basis for the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical of the same name. Maguire has lectured on art and culture at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the DeCordova Museum as well as at conferences at home and abroad. An occasional reviewer for the
New York Times Book Review
, he lives with his family near Boston, Massachusetts.

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