Rescue of Liir

The Rescue of Liir is the pivotal event in which Elphaba, after years of emotional distance, revives the drowned boy Liir from the fishwell at Kiamo Ko, an act that forces her to confront her own capacity for life-giving action and her ambiguous maternal bond with the child. The event marks a rare moment of direct, physical intervention by Elphaba, who has spent years in a state of withdrawn grief and failed political action, and it exposes the deep fractures in the household's care for the boy, as well as the latent magical or instinctual powers Elphaba possesses but refuses to claim.

The Discovery and the Drowning

Liir is found by the snow monkey Chistery, whose wrinkled nose and whining alert the children Nor and Irji to the fishwell. When they swivel the cover off, the lurid gleam of light on pale human flesh terrifies them. Manek, who had led Liir into the well as part of a cruel game, comes running when he hears the noise of his mother and the others exclaiming before the well. They pull Liir up; the water has risen with continued melting and rain, and Liir is like a corpse left in a stream, bloated. Manek says in a funny voice, "You know he said he wanted to go down in that fishwell once." Sarima scolds the children and sends them upstairs, but they huddle around the open doorway at the top to listen and peer.

The Attempt at Revival

Sarima asks if anyone has the art of medicine, and turns to Elphaba: "Quick now, there may be time. You have the arts, don't you, you studied the life sciences!" Elphaba shouts for Nanny to be fetched, and says, "We'll bring him up to the kitchen, gently now. No, Sarima, I don't know enough." The sisters urge her to use her spells and magic, but Elphaba cries out, "I can't bring him back! I have no aptitude for sorcery! I never did! That was all a foolish campaign of Madame Morrible's, which I rejected!" Irji escorts Nanny to the kitchen, Nor brings the broom, Manek brings the Grimmerie, and the sisters and Sarima bring the body of Liir, dripping and bloated, and lay him on the butcher's block. Nanny gets to work pumping the legs and arms, and sets Sarima to pressing in at the abdomen. Elphaba flips through the Grimmerie, screws up her face and hits herself on the temple with her fists, wailing, "But I have no personal experience with a soul—how can I find his if I don't know what one looks like?" The children make cruel remarks: Irji says he is even fatter than usual, Manek suggests pricking his eyes out with a magic straw from the magic broom, and Nor says she never would have gone in the fishwell. Sarima weeps and the sisters begin to mumble the service of the dead.

Elphaba's Mouth-to-Mouth

Nanny snaps at Elphaba, "Be some help! You're just like your mother in a crisis! Put your mouth on his and push air into his lungs! Go on!" Elphaba wipes the wet off Liir's pasty face with the edge of her sleeve; the face stays where it is pushed. She grimaces, nearly vomits, and spits something into a bucket. Then she sinks her mouth down on the child's and breathes out, pushing into the sour passage her own sour breath. Her fingers tense at the sides of the butcher's block, gouging splinters, as if in an ecstasy of sexual tension. Chistery breathes along with her, breath for breath. Nor says under her breath, "He smells like fish." Irji remarks that if that is what you look like when you drown, he would rather burn to death. Manek declares, "I'm just not going to die, and nobody can make me."

Revival and Aftermath

The body of Liir begins to choke; at first they think it is an involuntary reaction, air from Elphaba's mouth pocketing and blurting out again, and then there is a small stream of yellowish yuck. Then Liir's eyelids move, and his hand twitches of its own accord. Sarima murmurs, "Oh mercy. It's a miracle. Thank Lurlina! Bless you!" Nanny says they are not out of the woods yet, that he may still die of exposure, and orders his clothes off. The children watch the silly indignity of grown-up women tearing Liir's trousers and tunic off; they rub him all over with lard, which gives the children a case of the giggles and makes Irji feel very funny in his trousers for the first time in his life. Then they wrap Liir in a woolen blanket. When asked where he sleeps, the sisters look at Elphaba, and Elphaba looks at the children. Manek says, "Oh, sometimes on the floor in our room, sometimes on the floor in Nor's." Nor says he wants to sleep in her bed too but she pushes him out, that he is too fat. Sarima coldly asks Elphaba, "He doesn't even have a bed?" Elphaba replies, "Well, don't ask me, this is your house." Liir stirs somewhat and says, "The fish talked to me. I talked to the fish. The goldfish talked to me. She said she was—" but Nanny hushes him, saying time for that later. She glares around at the women and children in the kitchen and declares that if there is no other bed for him, he can come up to her room and she will sleep on the floor. Sarima begins to protest, but Nanny snaps, "Barbarians, the lot of you!" For which no one in Kiamo Ko ever forgives her.

Consequences and Significance

Sarima later lectures Elphaba severely for what happened to Liir. Elphaba tries to say it was not her doing, not her fault, that it was some boys' trick, some game, some dare. The event forces Elphaba to confront the reality of Liir's neglected existence in the household—he has no bed, no designated place, and no one has taken responsibility for him. It also reveals the limits of her self-proclaimed powerlessness: when pushed by Nanny's command, she performs a direct, physical act of revival that succeeds, even as she insists she has no sorcery. The rescue also triggers Liir's cryptic statement about the goldfish talking to him, claiming that Fiyero was his father and that Irji, Manek, and Nor are his brothers and sister—a revelation that Sarima dismisses as delusion but that plants a seed of doubt about Liir's parentage. The event deepens the household's unspoken tensions and sets the stage for Elphaba's later, more deliberate acts of care and protection toward the boy.