How It All Goes Down
- One winter day Elphaba finds a weird old book that's all purple, green, and silver.
- She thinks it's a "Grimmerie," which is apparently a book of magic spells.
- But Elphaba has trouble reading it, since the words keep moving around the page. At least the "magical" part of the book's description wasn't false advertising.
- Sarima then tells the story of how she came to own this book.
- One day a weird old guy stopped by her castle (this sounds like the beginning of a fairy tale).
- Weird old guy made a sales pitch for the Grimmerie:
"He said that it was a book of knowledge, and that it belonged in another world, but it wasn't safe there. So he had brought it here – where it could be hidden out of harm's way." (5.2.5.15) - So Sarima said fine and agreed to keep the book. She didn't read, so the book ended up in a closet.
- Elphaba thinks the "other world" story is garbage.
- Sarima believed the old guy though. She says Elphie can look at the book all she wants.