That is the tag line of the Broadway's musical, Wicked. First performed in 2003, this show was a huge success. Soaring the name of Idina Menzel and Kristin Chenoweth, who played The Wicked Witch of The West, Elphaba and Glinda The Good.

This musical is actually based on a novel by Gregory Maguire under the same title. While Broadway focused on Elphaba and Glinda's friendship and how Elphaba became the Wicked, Maguire wrote a biography-alike of the witch, starting from the day she was born.

Elphaba or Elphie or Fabala or Fae was born with father a minister of unionist (more or less like a modern day reverend) and mother a grand daughter of Descended Eminent Thropp, ruler of the Munchkinland. She was born green from head to toe and couldn't get near water. Her sister, Nessarose was a beautiful religious armless girl. While his brother, well let's just say he did not partake much of the story.

Elphaba met Glinda, or Galinda at the time, when she was schooling at Shiz. Under the order of Headmistress Madame Morrible, they were forced to become roommates. They didn't get along, of course. Galinda, a social climber, queen of popularity. While Elphaba was an awkward green living thing.

But perhaps it was Elphaba's idealism of rightness. Perhaps it was Glinda's clear minded. But after series of tragedies, including the death of an Animal professor, Dillamond, and the down of Glinda's caretaker, Ama Clutch, they gradually became best friends.

The girls were the last generation of Oz that had some lectures taught by Animals. These Animals (with capital A) were almost like mankind, except that they looked like animals. During the reign of Wizard of Oz, they were banished from society, forced to be living in country side, along with ordinary animals.

After the funeral of Ama Clutch, both Elphaba and Glinda seek for audience with the Wizard of Oz. Elphaba suspected the death of both the Animal and Ama was linked to Dillamond's hypothesis of the substantial alikeness between human and Animal. They tried to convince the Wizard about Dillamond's work and thus restore the rights of Animals.

But the Wizard wasn't amused. He insisted that evicting Animals from mankind's community was the proper way of living. Elphaba was beyond mad. She vowed to bring the Wizard's down. She then decided not to go back to Shiz with Glinda and stayed in Emerald City of Oz.

Living in disguise, Elphaba always wore her ridiculous cone hat, black gown, and a shawl around her neck to hide her immediately-would-be-recognized green skin. From then on, her destiny as the Wicked Witch of The West was sealed.

The essential difference of musical Wicked and book Wicked was that in the novel, Elphaba is never much of a witch. While Madame Morrible did foresee the three of them (Elphaba, Glinda and Nessarose) to be living with sorceries, Elphaba refused to even learn.

This affair was also the one to lead Elphaba into make a home out of a Vinikus castle in Kiamo Ko, where she waited for Dorothy to kill her.

It's a series of unfortunate events, what happened to Elphaba. She, of course, had never asked to be born green. As green as sin, some may say. She did not know a thing about sorcery but because of her look and her given magical broomstick, she took the name. Her sister Nessarose was a witch, ruled as a tyrant thus Elphaba's associated with cruelty. She might scare the hell out of Dorothy, even more of the Lion, but all she wanted were the shoes Dorothy wears.

She wouldn't have guessed it was her death people were celebrating so merrily.

So much happen before Dorothy dropped in to Oz. So much about the Wicked Witch of The West we have yet to understand.