Very Bad Wizards

by Stunich, C. M.

  “Look, bitch,” I snap, because even if Mannix pulled the trigger—so to speak—it was Dorothy that ordered us hunted down, ordered Stryker killed, me imprisoned, Taavi … well, whatever it is they did to Taavi. “I'm not giving you the shoes, okay? If you want them, you'll have to take them from me.”

  Shit.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  Why did I just say that?! We're not back in Seattle, standing in the quad outside the school. The consequence for fucking up here isn't expulsion; it's death.

  “Dorothy …” Tuala starts, and now her own voice is threaded through with a hint of fear.

  Dorothy rises from her throne, coming down the steps toward me. Taavi growls, the fur along his spine lifting up in warning, but she ignores him, coming close enough to me that I can smell her perfume—it's the same scent as the fountain in my room, sweet to the point of cloying.

  “I would very much like those shoes,” Dorothy repeats, making herself smile again. “They'd be a great boon to the country of Central, a boon to the whole of Oz. The Wicked Witch of the East stole them from me, and I'd appreciate it if you'd give them back.”

  “No.” My voice is much shakier this time, but I'm not backing down. Clearly, if she could take the shoes from me, she would have already. She needs me to give them freely to her, and there isn't a chance in this hell they call Oz of that happening.

  “Don't you want to please me?” Dorothy asks, reaching out to touch a loose strand of hair that's come free from the fanciful design that the servant girl gave me. “As queen of Central, my favor is the best gift there is. No enchantment or spell could top the things I'd give you, if you were to please me.”

  “I said fuck off,” I repeat, my hands curling into fists at my sides. “You kidnapped me, you messed with my dog … err … guardian, and you killed my friend.”

  “Oh, Stryker, the Vain and Arrogant, isn't dead,” Dorothy says carefully, her smile twitching at the edges, like she'd truly enjoy socking me as hard as she could in the face. “I keep forgetting that you're like me, from the H.W. You have been told that sorcerers can only be killed through a single means? Stryker's weakness is fire; a gunshot could not kill him.”

  “He's alive?” I choke out, trying to imagine how someone could possibly live through what I saw. His blood and brains and bits of skull sprayed out across the clearing like so much mist. My stomach clenches tight, and I put a palm over the front of the bodice to calm myself.

  “He is. And I'd be happy to send him to your rooms tonight, if you'd like. He's a powerful wizard, and very handsome. I'd thought, perhaps, about keeping him here, for breeding purposes, but if you want, he could be yours to keep.” Dorothy is smiling at me again, her floor-length hair pooling in green puddles near the hem of her gauzy silk gown. The wings on her back flutter slightly, even though I'm fairly certain they're not real. “Just hand over the shoes, and everything will fall into place as it should.”

  Stryker is alive?! I'm momentarily stunned. But my guardian isn't.

  She extends her hand again, and Taavi lunges, his teeth clamping down on Dorothy's wrist as Tuala lets out a howl of rage. She lunges forward, shifting into the large form of the faerie dog—the barghest—nails scrambling across the marble floor.

  Dorothy does two things at once, backhanding Taavi hard enough to make him yelp and drop his hold on her arm. With the other, she grabs hold of Tuala's green collar, bringing the horse-sized beast to a sudden stop, jowls pulled back, slaver dripping from her jaws. She's inches from my face, her hot breath stirring my hair as she pants heavily, the air sticky with the threat of violence.

  Taavi stands between me and the barghest, me and Dorothy, but he's only a hundred pounds of dog. Without his ability to shift, without his ability to think like a human, what can he do for me now?

  “Tell me, Ozora,” Dorothy says, surprising me with the use of my full name, her pale green gaze hard as she takes me in from head to toe, pausing with her attention on the silver shoes. “Do you find me beautiful?”

  “Beautiful?” I ask, blinking hard, and swallowing down the nervous lump in my throat. I'm grandstanding here; I might look calm on the outside, but I'm fucking terrified. As strange as the land of Oz is, as kooky, as close to the storybook … it's more violent than I ever could've imagined. I could very well die within the walls of Dorothy's palace.

  “Am I the magnanimous ruler you expected to meet?” She reaches out and cups the side of my face, sending shivers of revulsion through me. I'm not sure what it is about her, but there's something off, something I can't quite place my finger on.

  “I don't know what you think I'm up to, but I promise this: I never asked to come to Oz.” My voice is shaky, threaded through with cold terror. “Send Taavi and me back to the Human World, and you won't have to worry about us.”

  Tuala shifts back into her human form, crouching naked on the floor beside Dorothy, her mistress' fingers curled around her collar. The gold skeleton key dangles enticingly between her small breasts.

  “She isn't charmed,” Tuala hisses, looking at me accusingly. I'm no Norm—I didn't grow up eating fantasy novels for breakfast—but I'm pretty sure the term charmed means more here than it does at home. Dorothy frowns, and the expression chills my blood.

  “It must be the shoes,” Dorothy says, eyes glittering with dark anger as she takes me in with a much less pleasant expression than before. Her gaze snaps to mine, and I take a small step back. “You are one, lucky wizard, Ozora, the Great and Terrible. How did you ever convince a cardinal witch to give you his mark?”

  “I …” Words fail me. I have a bad fucking feeling about all of this. “She isn't charmed.” The way Tuala said that gives me the idea that I've somehow failed them both in ways I can't even imagine. My mind strays to the image of Stryker, nailed to a cross, skin burnt and painted over by the Munchkins' faerie hands.

  What if they set me on fire, too?

  “Send me back to Kansas,” I whisper finally, as Dorothy and her guardian study me with renewed interest. I wish they wouldn't. I don't want to be a fascinating puzzle that they'd spill blood to solve. That's how they both look right now, like they'd do whatever it took to get the shoes off my feet.

  “I never grant favors without something in return,” Dorothy says, voice still pleasant but edged like a blade. Ready to cut. Taavi snarls, and Tuala snaps at the air in response. “You killed the Witch of the East and you wear the silver shoes, which bear a powerful charm. There is now but one Wicked Witch left in all this land, and when you can tell me he is dead, I will send you back to Kansas—but not before.”

  “Kill the Wicked Witch of the West?” I echo, putting two and two together. Bain and Stryker both mentioned Thyer, the Witch of the West. “Dorothy and Thyer are too evenly matched. She might win, but she might not. She won’t take that risk.”

  One of Dorothy's fingers traces across my lower lip, making my stomach turn, my knees tremble. I'm afraid of her. I want so badly to be like the badass heroines in my brother's books, but I'm not. I'm just Ozora Gale, a Pacific Northwesterner with a love for swimming, trashy reality TV shows, and makeup tutorials on TikTok. What am I supposed to do in a world I know nothing about? How can I play by the rules—how can I even break them—when I don't know what they are?

  “Remember that the witch is wicked—tremendously wicked—and ought to be killed. Now go, and do not ask to see me again until you have completed your task.”

  “How am I supposed to do that?” I choke out in desperation. Dorothy turns away from me, tugging Tuala along by the collar. She heads toward the door that General Mannix used, pausing just once to glance over her shoulder at me, gauzy wings fluttering as she smiles tightly.

  “Fight in the Trials, of course. Good luck, Oz, the Great and Terrible.”

  In Which Bain, the Good Witch of the North, Visits–Obviously

  A tray of hot tea and green cakes waits for me back in my rooms, but I'm not hungry. Instead, I sink down to the carpet at the end of
the bed, emerald skirts pooling around me, and try to remember how to breathe.

  “Scary, isn't she?” a bored voice drawls from behind me. I glance back to find Bain, the self-proclaimed Good Witch of the North, lounging on my bed with his green-tinged-golden braid slung over one shoulder, witch's hat askew. The brim is tipped just low enough that I can't see those lavender eyes of his. As if he can sense my thoughts, he reaches up a glittering nail to push it up and out of the way. His expression is equal parts amused and curious. “So, tell me, how did your first meeting with Dorothy, the Small and Meek go? I told you she was a waste of life.”

  “How did you get in here?” I ask, pushing up from the floor. I glance down at Taavi, but he doesn't seem concerned by our guest, lying with his head on the rug, brown-turned-green eyes gazing beseechingly up at me before flicking to the mountain of green cakes. I toss him one before moving over to stand next to the bed. I realize my hands are still trembling, so I tuck them into my skirts to keep Bain from noticing. He watches me lazily, an insouciant smile blooming on his lips. “And why aren't you wearing the stupid glasses? Everyone else is, even Dorothy's guardian.” Although General Mannix wasn't, was he?

  “I have my ways in and out of the Emerald Spire,” Bain replies carefully, sitting up and then reaching out a single finger to touch the bridge of the glasses on my nose. With a whiff of ozone, the lock in the back clicks and they fall from my face, hitting the edge of the mattress and bouncing to the floor. My mouth drops open as Bain swings his legs off the bed to stand up beside me. “Do you mind if I help myself to tea and cakes? I'm starving.”

  “What …” I start as he strolls past me. I'm floundering over what question to ask first; there are just too fucking many. As he passes Taavi by, Bain reaches down and taps the dog's glasses, knocking them from his muzzled face as the lock clicks open. Bending low, I pick up my own spectacles and find the golden bit in the back intact and unlocked. After a whole day of seeing green, it's a bit of an adjustment to remember how colorful the world actually is.

  Taavi growls briefly at Bain, but as soon as the witch tosses another cake to the floor, he seems to forget what he was angry about in the first place.

  “The glasses leech magical energy from the wearer,” Bain explains, adding three cubes of white sugar to his tea and then turning to face me. He balances the cup and saucer—delicately painted with tiny green birds—on his palm while the spoon stirs itself. Magic is all-too real here, isn't it? I think as I watch him put a strawberry cake to his lips with the other hand. “And the earth around the wearer. It's a doubly useful trick: Dorothy takes the power from the people and uses it to reinforce the walls of the city without wasting her own magic. As an added bonus, it keeps a witch such as myself from drawing any power out of the land.”

  “If that's the case then how did you get here?” I ask, skirting around him to pour myself a cup of tea. I'm still shaking, but for some odd reason, Bain's presence here is helping me to calm down. Maybe it's because he looks so confident, so unafraid of Dorothy and her palace on the hill. He certainly didn't seem afraid of her when we first met, when he called her a … what was it? … a loudmouthed goody-goody?

  “Oh, me?” Bain asks, feigning surprise and blinking long lashes at me. I'm pretty sure he's a faerie of some sort. What kind, I have no idea, but I feel like it's an important distinction to take note of. “I'm a crafty, little witch, that's how.” He tosses his fishtail braid over his shoulder, the end of it nearly brushing the floor, and then points to beads, gems, ribbons, and bits of what look like bones that are woven in. “Trinkets, charms, cantrips, that sort of thing. Wizards are so arrogant; sometimes they forget what we witches can do. I've bound plenty of magic to carry with me from the North.”

  “I'm sorry, but it's been a long fucking day,” I say as I grab a lemony cake with white icing. “What's the difference between a witch and a wizard?”

  Bain sighs dramatically and moves back over to the bed, carefully setting his tea on the nightstand, a plate piled with pretty cakes beside it. He turns back to look at me, crossing his arms over his chest, white robes swaying around the toes of his white boots. The contrast of that pretty white fabric against his skin helps to highlight the gold shimmer of it, like he's been brushed with a hint of glitter.

  “Witches use the magic of the land; wizards have their own magic.” He nods, as if he's made his point, and then makes himself comfortable on my bed again, boots and all. I look down at Taavi, sans glasses but still nowhere near his usual self, and then move over to sit beside Bain. As much as I want to play the rebellious prisoner, I need to eat, so I take the tea and cakes with me. There must not be any poison in them, if Bain is eating them. Besides, if Dorothy could kill me and just take the shoes, she would've done it in the throne room. The fact that she didn't is very telling.

  “Is that why you all have … like, regions?” I ask, thinking of their cardinal titles: witch of the north, of the south, of the east, of the west. Bain nods, delicately sucking honey from the tips of his long fingers.

  “There are ley lines—that is, veins of magical energy that run through the land of Oz—that cut across the world in just such a way that they feed power into five territories. North, South, East, West, and Central. As you can see, Dorothy's already stolen Central for herself, stripped the land of its power with her ridiculous green goggles. If a new witch doesn't step up to claim the east, she'll get her charmed hands on that, too, I'm sure. Although the Witch of the East was a monster worthy of Dorothy's cruelty; the Munchkins won't notice much difference if she does claim the land.” Bain sips his tea, looking thoughtfully up at the green silk canopy above our heads.

  I might not be wearing the glasses anymore, but most everything here is still green: the rug, the bedspread, the perfume pouring out of the fountain. My lips turn down into a frown as Taavi hops up on the bed beside me. I'm guessing that if Bain had the power to fix him, he'd do it. He seems to be on my side anyway. “How did you ever convince a cardinal witch to give you his mark?”

  “Why do they make everything green anyway?” I ask, knowing that it's a stupid question, compared to all the others I could ask. And yet, I can't help myself. As the old adage goes: curiosity killed the cat. I'm going to wind up dead here in Oz; I can feel it. “What's the sense in that?”

  “It's all part of the game,” Bain says, running his finger along the brim of his white witch hat. It lilts slightly to one side, like it's as lazy and bored as he is. “Emerald eyes for an emerald city. Everything is green here, while in the country of the Munchkins, blue is the favorite color. It's all an illusion, Oz, as is much of Dorothy's rule. The people believe they trod over emeralds instead of river rocks, that they sup rare delicacies, and drink rare wine.” I lift up on my knees and move over to push back the lacy curtains next to the bed. As Bain said, the rocks embedded in the road are gray, the ones on the walls of the city as dull as cement.

  Wow.

  I sit back down, leaning my suddenly heavy body into the pillows. It isn't just the color either, is it? When I looked out the window before, the stones seemed to glow, to reflect back the light of the sun as if they really were emeralds instead of useless fucking rocks.

  “Dorothy drains the blood of the fae and uses it to make her goggles,” Bain says, frowning for the first time since he started his story. He smells like sugared-plums and coconut, like gardenias and honey. I bury my face in my teacup to distract myself from it. “It's an elaborate glamour, built into the lenses of those fucking glasses. The citizens outside the Emerald Spire—this lovely castle turned prison you're now sitting in—eat plain corn cakes and drink dirty water yet taste strawberries and fine wine. They all truly believe they live in luxury, the same way they all truly believe in Dorothy: because the magic tells them so. Inside the Spire, Dorothy keeps things luxe; she finds plainness distasteful.”

  “Dorothy's guardian, Tuala, said that I wasn't charmed, and they thought it was because of the shoes.” I point down at the silv
ery Vans on my feet, and Bain smiles. It's not a pretty smile either; it's dripping with self-satisfaction. “You seem to be in a chatty mood. Want to tell me what that’s all about?”

  “Every wizard has a specialty, just as they have a weakness. Mannix, the Strong and Heartless, can command metal. Stryker, the Vain and Arrogant”—if Bain notices the way I stiffen up at the mention of Stryker’s name, he doesn’t let on—”commands light. And you, my dear, you seem to have an affinity for storms.” Bain turns toward me, his teacup levitating off his palm to set itself back on the nightstand. The china doesn’t even clink as it settles into place. “Dorothy’s specialty is charisma. She tells the people they love her; they believe it with their whole hearts. She says she is a just ruler; they bow low and thank her for the honor of it.”

  My brows go up, and I think back on Norm’s games of Dungeons and Dragons, played in the attic of our house in Seattle. Each character in the game has special traits; charisma is one of them. The more charisma the character has, the more easily they can influence others.

  This thing with Dorothy, it doesn’t sound dissimilar.

  “That’s why she asked me to give her the shoes,” I muse aloud, absently stroking Taavi’s pricked ears back from his face. I’m surprised by how much I miss his human form, considering I knew him that way for all of a couple of days—several of which I spent truly and utterly believing I was trapped in a delusion of my own making. At least I don’t have to feel like a creep for checking him out. The guy has perfect abs, even if his personality’s a bit prickly. “She thought I’d hand them over if she asked.”

  “Why else would Mannix follow a wizard who, in many regards, is the weaker of the two parties? He’s always been called the Heartless, but now that title is literal. She keeps his heart, you know, under a glass dome in the ballroom, just because she can. As far as anyone knows, he gave it willingly to her.”