Arrival of the Clock of the Time Dragon

The Clock of the Time Dragon, a towering, wagon-mounted mechanical theatre, arrives in the impoverished Munchkinlander hamlet of Rush Margins on the very day Frexspar the Godly, the local unionist minister, has chosen to confront it. The Clock is not a timepiece but a prophetic and slanderous entertainment, a "propaganda tool for wickedness" that challenges the power of unionism. Its arrival is the culmination of a drought-stricken season and the erosion of traditional faith, and it directly precipitates the crisis that defines the life of Elphaba, the child born that same night.

The Clock and Its Threat

The Clock of the Time Dragon is described as a "tottering, freestanding theatre," punched with alcoves and proscenium arches, and crowned by a clockwork dragon of green painted leather, silvery claws, and ruby jeweled eyes. Its skin is made of hundreds of overlapping discs of copper, bronze, and iron, and it belches out sulfurous balls of flaming orange stink. The puppet shows it stages are cruel and humiliating, targeting specific villagers with accusations of adultery and grotesque physical anomalies. Frex, having read a report from a fellow minister, knows the Clock is making its way to Rush Margins and prepares to do battle for the souls of his flock, whom he fears are vulnerable to its "pleasure faith" and spectacle.

Frex's Failed Confrontation

Frex arrives in Rush Margins in a deep sweat, calling out archaic imprecations to gather the sullen fishermen and hardscrabble farmers. He attempts to harangue them against the Clock, arguing that its painted hands, fixed at one minute before midnight, measure not earthly time but "the time of the soul"—a minute short of judgment. However, the crowd is too eager for the entertainment. When a small, yapping puppet dog emerges from the Clock, its hair as dark and tightly curled as Frex's own, the crowd laughs at him. He is bundled from his perch, and as darkness falls, he is attacked from behind: kneed in the groin, kicked between the buttocks, and fouled. A sympathetic widow leads him away to hide in a root cellar, warning that the mob, incited by the Clock, will be after him with pitchforks.

The Birth of Elphaba

While Frex is being humiliated and assaulted, his wife Melena is in labor at the minister's lodge, attended by a fishwife and a palsied crone. The midwives, warned that the drunken mob is looking for Frex and his family, flee with the laboring Melena in a hay cart. They take refuge inside the abandoned Clock of the Time Dragon itself, hidden in a crawl space among its pendulums and toothed wheels. There, in the aftermath of a storm, Elphaba is born. When the midwives rub the caul and blood off the infant, they discover her skin is a scandalous shade of pale emerald. The child does not wail but opens her mouth, breathes, and keeps her own counsel. The midwives, debating whether to kill the "little green pat of butter," are dissuaded only when the infant bites off the fishwife's finger at the second knuckle. They leave the baby at its mother's breast, and in the shadows, the infant stares overhead at the "oiled and regular teeth of time's clock."

Consequences and Aftermath

The Clock's arrival and Frex's failure have immediate and lasting consequences. Frex, his confidence shattered, is unable to resume his ministry and retreats into a hermit-like existence. The community's faith is eroded, and the event is remembered as a scandal. More profoundly, the circumstances of Elphaba's birth—the curse Frex had invoked when he announced "the devil is coming," the violence of the mob, and the birth inside the prophetic machine—are seen by her parents as the cause of her green skin and monstrous teeth. Frex believes the child is a punishment for his failure to protect his flock, while Melena suspects her own moral lapses. The event thus establishes the central mystery of Elphaba's identity and the novel's core themes of wickedness, destiny, and the nature of evil, all born from a single night of public humiliation and private trauma.