Chistery

Chistery is a snow monkey rescued by Elphaba during her journey to Kiamo Ko, who becomes her closest animal companion and a test subject in her experiments to teach language and flight to animals. More than any other creature in Elphaba's menagerie, Chistery bridges the gap between wild animal and sentient being, embodying both the promise and the limits of Elphaba's lifelong project to prove that the boundary between Animal and animal is not fixed. His halting acquisition of speech and his eventual role as a winged messenger make him the most tangible result of Elphaba's application of Doctor Dillamond's theories, even as his limitations underscore the tragedy of her isolation.

Rescue and Early Life

Chistery enters the story as a foundling. During the Grasstrail Train's journey through the Great Kells, the party stops at a small tarn. Killyjoy, Elphaba's dog, plunges into the water and swims to a tiny island, where he clamps his teeth around the skull of a small beast in the grass. Elphaba, who cannot bear to touch water, runs across the surface anyway, and the water turns to ice under her feet, forming a bridge. She pries Killyjoy's jaws apart and scoops up the creature: a baby snow monkey, abandoned by its mother and tribe, or perhaps separated by accident. The monkey shivers in terror and cold, its bright black eyes alert and watching. It does not think much of Killyjoy, but it likes the warmth of the wagon. Elphaba names it Chistery, because of the sound it makes.

Life at Kiamo Ko

At Kiamo Ko, Chistery becomes a fixture of Elphaba's tower room. He is present during her long winter of grief and her experiments with the Grimmerie. He is devoted to Nanny, who leans on his head as she hobbles about. When the children of the castle—Irji, Manek, and Nor—sneak into Elphaba's room, they find Chistery nibbling on nutshells. They try to get him to talk, and he produces sounds that seem like words: "Watch Witch," "Spell ill," "Spill all." Elphaba, entering, dismisses it: "He mostly just repeats what you say." But she has been trying to teach him to speak, sounding out words to him: "Say spirit. Spirit. Spirit." Chistery twists his mouth to one side, as if considering it. Eventually he says something like "Spit," and Elphaba, overjoyed, picks him up and hugs him. "Spirit, oh spirit, Chistery! There is spirit! Say spirit!" He responds with a string of near-words: "Spit, spit, spit... Spite... Speared... Spared. Spored. Sput spot sput. Spat spate spit, speed spurt spot." The children, watching through the crack in the door, cannot stop laughing. They want Chistery to learn enough language so that he can play with them.

The Winged Monkey Experiments

Years later, after the kidnapping of Sarima's family and the death of Manek, Elphaba turns to the Grimmerie and to Fiyero's old schoolbooks from Doctor Nikidik's life sciences course. She begins a gruesome series of experiments: stitching the wings of a white-crested male roc into the back muscles of her current crop of snow monkeys. She more or less perfects the procedure after years of botched and hideous failures, when mercy killing seemed the only fair thing to do to the suffering subject. The Grimmerie helps, if she is reading it correctly: she finds spells to convince the axial nerves to think skyward instead of treeward. Once she gets it right, the winged monkeys seem happy enough with their lot. She has yet to see a female monkey produce a winged baby, but she still has hopes. Certainly they have taken better to flying than they have to language. Chistery, now a patriarch in the castle menagerie, has plateaued at words of one syllable, and still seems to have no clear idea of what he is saying.

Role in the Final Confrontation

When Dorothy and her companions approach Kiamo Ko, Elphaba deploys her remaining creatures against them. She sends the crows first, then the bees. When both fail, she turns to Chistery and his winged kin. She explains what she wants: "Bring me Dorothy and the Lion. Dorothy has my shoes, and I have a rendezvous with the Lion. We're old friends. Can you do this?" Chistery squints, nods, shakes his head, shrugs, and spits. "Well try, what good are you if you don't try," she says. The winged monkeys succeed where the others failed, swooping down and dumping their passengers onto the cobbles of the inner courtyard. The Lion moans in pain and weeps from vertigo. Dorothy sits up, clutching her small dog. Chistery has done his work. Later, when Elphaba orders Chistery to throw Toto into the fishwell, he looks dubious but scamper away with the dog under his arm. The Lion catapults into the kitchen after him, and the rescue of Toto begins.

Thematic Significance

Chistery is the living proof of Elphaba's most ambitious project: the attempt to prove, through practical application, that the boundary between animal and Animal is not fixed. He is the direct descendant of Doctor Dillamond's research, of the summer of secret library work with Boq, Crope, and Tibbett, and of Elphaba's own stubborn refusal to accept the Wizard's Banns on Animal Mobility. Yet Chistery's limitations—his plateau at single syllables, his apparent lack of understanding of what he says—also mark the limits of Elphaba's power. She can reshape flesh and teach mimicry, but she cannot give him a soul, or even a coherent sentence. He remains, like Elphaba herself, a creature caught between worlds: neither fully animal nor fully Animal, neither wild nor tame, a composite being made of wing and fur and borrowed magic.