No One Mourns the Bigot
wickedness
The pews of the Governor’s mansion chapel were full, which Nessarose took as a sign of love. Munchkinlanders packed the aisles in their finery, fanning themselves against the late summer heat, and the front rows held every provincial minister and magistrate her father had ever appointed. She watched them from the raised pulpit, her wheelchair locked into the platform that Frexspar himself had commissioned years ago so she could read scripture to the congregation. He had thought of everything. He had always thought of her.
She smoothed her notes against the lectern.
“My father believed that governance was a form of devotion,” she began. Her voice carried well; she had trained it to. “He governed Munchkinland for twenty-three years, and in that time he built the eastern irrigation network, reformed the tithe codes, and established the first public schools in the rural parishes. He believed that a province was a flock, and that a governor’s duty was indistinguishable from a minister’s: to shepherd, to protect, to serve.”
She paused. The silence was good. Respectful.
“He was not perfect. He would have been the first to say so. But he gave his life to this province, and I believe, with all my heart, that Munchkinland is better for it.”
A murmur of assent rippled through the chapel. Minister Hollis, who had overseen the eastern resettlement districts for a decade, nodded from the second row. Nessarose allowed herself a small, private breath of relief. She turned to the next page of her notes.
The doors at the back of the chapel banged open.
Elphaba Thropp had not set foot in Munchkinland in six years, and the gasps that greeted her confirmed she had not been forgotten. She strode up the center aisle with the particular fury of someone who had rehearsed this walk a hundred times in her mind, her black traveling cloak still dusted from the road, her green skin livid under the chapel’s candlelight. She carried a leather folder under one arm.
“Elphaba.” Nessarose’s voice did not waver, but her hands tightened on the edges of her notes. “This is Father’s funeral.”
“I know what it is.”
Elphaba stopped at the foot of the pulpit steps. She could see her sister clearly from here: the pressed white dress, the prayer beads wound around one wrist, the careful composure that Nessarose had been perfecting since childhood. Behind her, the congregation had gone rigid.
“I have something the mourners should hear.” Elphaba opened the folder and held up a sheaf of documents, each one stamped with the Governor’s seal. “These are the quarterly relocation manifests from the last four years of Father’s administration. Every Animal community relocated under the Relocation Acts is listed here, along with their destination assignments.” She let that sit for a moment. “Seventeen of those destinations do not exist. They are empty coordinates. Forest tracts with no infrastructure, no water supply, no shelter. Father signed every one of these manifests personally.”
The chapel erupted. Ministers turned to one another. Someone in the back stood up. In the second row, Minister Hollis had gone very still, his eyes fixed on the folder in Elphaba’s hand.
Nessarose’s jaw set. “You have no right to do this here.”
“Where else? He’s being canonized. Someone should mention the dead.”
“Father implemented the Relocation Acts because the Wizard’s office required compliance from every province,” Nessarose said. She kept her voice measured, pastoral, though her pulse hammered in her throat. “He negotiated protections that no other governor pursued. Reduced quotas. Extended timelines. He fought for those communities within the constraints he was given.” She leaned forward. “Quadling Country refused compliance outright, Elphaba. Do you know what happened? The Wizard’s Gale Force handled the relocations directly. No negotiations. No reduced quotas. The mortality rate in Quadling Country was three times what it was here. Father’s compromises saved lives. You may not like the mathematics of it, but people are alive in Munchkinland today because he chose to work within the system rather than hand his province over to the Gale Force.”
That landed. Elphaba’s expression tightened, and for a moment the chapel saw something other than fury on her face. She looked, briefly, like a woman standing at the edge of a calculation she did not want to perform.
Then she opened the folder again.
“Seventeen destinations, Nessa. Empty coordinates. I am not talking about the compromises he made under pressure. I am talking about the manifests he signed after the negotiations were finished, when the Wizard’s office was no longer watching, when the quotas had already been met. He kept signing. The last four manifests have no corresponding Wizard’s mandate at all. They were his initiative.” Her voice dropped. “He initialed the mortality audits. He saw the numbers. He continued.”
Nessarose’s hands were shaking. She pressed them flat against her notes.
“You left,” she said. “You left this family, you left this province, and you spent six years in hiding while Father carried the weight of governing under an autocrat. You have the luxury of moral clarity because you never had to sit in his chair and choose between terrible options. You never had to sign anything. You never had to be responsible for anyone.”
“I was responsible for the Animals I tried to protect.”
“And how many of them are alive, Elphaba? How many did your underground save?”
The question hung in the chapel like smoke. Elphaba did not answer. Her jaw worked, and something shifted behind her eyes: the particular grief of a person whose losses have just been tallied by someone who knows exactly where to cut.
In the second row, Minister Hollis rose quietly from his seat. He did not speak. He walked to the side aisle and out through the vestry door, and the soft click of the latch behind him was louder than anything either sister had said.
Elphaba watched him go. When she turned back to Nessarose, her voice was raw.
“The last four manifests had no mandate behind them. Whatever he did under pressure, whatever lives his compromises saved, he went further than the system required. That is the part you cannot bury, Nessa. That is the part that belongs to him alone.”
She set the folder on the front pew.
“Anyone who stays in this room and mourns him without acknowledging what he did is complicit. You are mourning a man who participated in the organized displacement of entire communities, and your silence makes you partners in it.”
She walked back down the aisle. The doors closed behind her.
Nessarose sat alone on the platform. She looked at the folder. She looked at the empty seat where Hollis had been.
Finally, she folded her notes in half and set them aside.
“My father loved Munchkinland,” she said quietly. “I believe that. I will always believe that.”
She swallowed.
“The service is concluded. Go in the Unnamed God’s peace.”
The chapel emptied in silence. The folder remained on the pew, unopened.