My metal friend grabbed my hand, and his metal palm felt softer and warmer than I would have imagined was possible. He pulled me close against his chest, and the orchestra slowed up its tempo into something tender and sentimental. We waltzed across the dance floor. Everyone else had paused in their own dancing to watch us. They surrounded us in a circle, transfixed.
I was so happy that I was dancing on air. Literally: when I looked down, I saw that my feet were hovering a few inches above the ground, my magical shoes enveloped in a red mist, holding me aloft. No one noticed. They were too distracted by how happy they were.
The Lion was sitting on his haunches, ready to take me up in the next dance. He extended a huge paw, cutting in, and I was about to reach out for it when something bumped against my shoulder, hard. Cold, fizzy liquid splashed against my back, and then I heard the sound of glass crashing against the ballroom floor.
When I turned around, I saw Aunt Em standing there with a guilty look on her face, a shattered crystal goblet lying in a puddle of purple liquid on the floor.
I came back down to earth.
“Oh, Dorothy, I’m sorry,” Aunt Em said. “I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going, and I just bumped right into—”
I put a hand up to interrupt her. “Stop,” I said. “You were thoughtless. You were careless. I was dancing, and you weren’t even watching. Everyone else was watching me.” I reached back and felt the dampness of my gown. “You could have ruined my dress.”
“I’m sure . . . ,” Aunt Em began. Her lips began to quiver. Tears came to her eyes.
I’d always hated seeing Aunt Em cry, and now I hated it even more. It was like she was doing it to spite me. Like she was trying to make me feel guilty on a day when I should have felt nothing but happiness.
“Clean it up,” I said.
She looked at me in surprised horror, her tears still streaming down her cheeks. “Well—I’m sure Miss Ozma can ask someone else . . .”
“No,” I said. “I want you to clean it up. Immediately.”
Uncle Henry was at her side now. “Now see here, Dorothy,” he said, taking my aunt’s arm. “This has gone too far.” For a moment, it seemed that he was going to be angry, but then he saw the look in my eyes and the expression on his face turned quickly to one of fright. He went silent.
“Clean. It. Up,” I instructed Aunt Em again. When she made no move to do as she was told, I took the choice out of her hands. Things had changed, and the two of them needed to learn that. I was their niece, and they had raised me, but we were in Oz now. Here in Oz, I wasn’t just another prairie girl. I commanded respect.
My shoes were urging me on. I could hear them whispering in my ear in a voice that was almost Glinda’s but not quite. It was low and urgent and sweet. It was the voice of Oz; the voice of magic. It was the voice of my mother.
Do it, it was saying. Teach them a lesson or they’ll never learn. Show her who you are. Show them that this is where you belong. Show them that you are the one with power here.
My whole body was burning; not just my feet. Every bit of me was singing with the power the shoes spoke of, and the music from the orchestra faded into just a distant hum as the song of my true self took its place. This was what I had been born for. Everything that had happened before had been preparing me for this moment, preparing me for my destiny. For who I really was.
I tugged at the strings that controlled my aunt, and she bent to the floor, onto her hands and knees, and began to wipe up the mess she’d created with a wet rag that had materialized for her.
“I’m so sorry, Dorothy,” she said. “You are so wise and beautiful. I’m lucky to know you. To be able to have kept you safe all these years. Please, I beg your forgiveness.”
“And now the dress,” I said, and Aunt Em stood, and began to dab at my back with the rag. I could have cleaned it myself, with just a thought, but I didn’t want to.
“It’s such an honor,” Aunt Em was saying. “To be able to serve you like this.”
Then Ozma was standing in front of me. I hadn’t seen her approach.
She looked different than I’d ever seen her. This was so much more than the Ozma who I’d seen in the maze, the day I’d met her. It was like she had been hiding part of herself from me. She no longer looked like the girl I knew. She no longer looked like a girl at all.
Her skin was fiery and glowing like the sun; her green eyes were huge and iridescent. Her hair haloed her face in oily-black tendrils that coiled and twisted like snakes.
The wings she’d showed me in the garden that day had revealed themselves again, but they were bigger now, twice as big as her body, and they sizzled with magical energy.
She looked like a fairy, and not even a fairy princess. She looked like a queen.
“Dorothy,” she said. Her voice reverberated throughout the ballroom. “It’s time for you to leave.”
“No,” I started to say. But the words wouldn’t come out.
I knocked my heels together, trying desperately to use my magic against her. It didn’t work. Nothing happened at all. My feet felt cold. Too cold. Like the magic had been drained from them.
And then, with everyone in the ballroom staring, I felt myself turning and walking away. I had lost it. I had lost my magic, lost everything I had worked so hard for. I couldn’t fight back—Ozma was controlling me.
“Wait!” the Scarecrow called. I found I couldn’t answer him.
Before I knew what had happened, I was back in my bedroom, where I settled into a black and dreamless sleep.
Eighteen
I woke up to find Aunt Em sitting on the edge of my bed. She’d opened the windows, and the light was streaming through, casting her in a silhouette. The breeze hit my face. It smelled like grass and dirt and rain. It smelled like home.
For a second, I thought we were back in Kansas, and that it had all been a dream. I always hated it when stories ended that way.
“Dorothy,” Aunt Em said. I rubbed my eyes, still disoriented, and tried to think back to last night. It was foggy in my memory. There had been some kind of party, and I’d been dancing with the Lion and—
Oh.
I pulled the pillow over my face and groaned, trying to block it all out. If only I could go back to sleep, maybe everything would be okay.
“Dorothy,” Aunt Em said again. She pulled the pillow away. I grabbed for it, but she held it at arm’s length. “It’s nearly afternoon.”
“I need to sleep,” I said. “I think I ate something I shouldn’t have last night. I don’t feel so good.”
She pushed a lock of hair behind my ear and looked down at me. I expected her to be mad, but there was something tender in her expression. “I know, dear,” she said. “You know, you’re not in trouble.”
I sat up slowly and slumped against the silk-upholstered headboard. “I’m not?” I asked cautiously.
“Of course not. We all know that you didn’t mean to do any of that.”
“You do?”
“Yes, dear. Your uncle and I have had a long talk about it with Ozma, and we all agree that you’re not to blame. It’s those shoes. They’ve been doing something to you. Something terrible.”
“It’s not—”
“We just think it’s time for all of us to go home. We’ve stayed here too long already.”
“No!” I jumped out of bed and threw on the brocade robe that was draped over the armchair by the window. “Don’t you see?” I asked angrily. “It’s her. Ozma. She’s making you think that there’s something wrong with me, when really it’s just that she’s afraid I’m more powerful than she is, and now she wants to get rid of me, just like she got rid of Glinda. Well, the princess can’t always have her way. I’m not going anywhere.”
When I turned around, Ozma was standing in the doorway. In the late morning light, wearing a simple white shift, she looked more like a little girl than ever.
“You’re right,” she said sadly. “About one thing, at least. I was afraid
of Glinda. She’s used to getting her way around here, you know. She was trying to manipulate me. I had to send her away. Oz has seen too many cruel rulers already. If Glinda had gotten what she wanted, I would have been another. I couldn’t let that happen.”
“Spare me,” I said. “I don’t believe anything you say. You’ve been tricking me all this time. Trying to make me think you’re this kind, innocent, little girl, when really you’re just like the witches—you just want Oz for yourself.”
Ozma shook her head sadly. “Don’t you see? When she couldn’t control me, she thought she might be able to control you. So she sent you those shoes, and brought you here to do her work for her. And it’s working.”
“You’re lying! Glinda sent me the shoes because she knew I was the only one who could save her. Which is exactly what I’m going to do.”
I didn’t know why I was even bothering talking to her. This could all be solved with a simple knock of my heels.
All I had to do was wipe Ozma’s mind clean. I’d done it once before, and I could do it again.
I tried to summon a spell, but where my magic had once been, all I found was a deep, aching emptiness. A hunger. I had gotten so used to having it—even if I couldn’t always use it, it was always there. Comforting me, protecting me. Feeding me.
Now it wasn’t.
I looked down in a panic. My shoes were still on my feet. They were as red and shiny and beautiful as ever. But where they had once felt alive—like a part of my body, as important as my arms or legs—they now just felt heavy and separate. Just two ordinary shoes with extra-high heels.
Ozma gave a half shrug and looked away when she saw the distraught expression on my face. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I can’t take the shoes away from you. Whatever spell binds them to you is already complete, and magic like that is irreversible, even for me. But I can block your access to the power they possess. And I have. I didn’t want to—I thought maybe you would be able to handle it, that maybe you were strong enough to resist the corruption. You are Dorothy, after all. If anyone could fight off Glinda’s manipulations, it’s you. But the Sorceress is powerful and ruthless. She didn’t outlast the other witches by playing fair, you know.”
“No one could have resisted,” Aunt Em said. She had risen from my bed and walked over to me, placing a hand on the small of my back. I suppose it was meant to be comforting, but I slapped it away. “It’s too tempting,” she said. “It’s not your fault, Dorothy. You’ll see, someday. This is for your own good. It’s time to go back to Kansas.”
“No!” I screamed, whirling around in a rage, looking for something—anything—that I could use against the princess. But it was too late. Ozma waved her scepter and my palace bedchambers faded to white.
When the world re-formed, I found myself standing in the middle of an endless field of waving green grass. I felt dizzy and nauseated, and I struggled to stay on my feet. Was this Kansas? Had it been that easy to undo it all?
No. We were still in Oz—the Emerald City was still visible in the distance, and Ozma was still standing in front of me. Aunt Em was here, too, stumbling around a bit from the transition, and Uncle Henry was a few paces away, holding Toto in his arms. As soon as my little terrier saw me, he wriggled out of my uncle’s grip and raced over to where I was struggling to stay on my feet. Toto circled my ankles, sniffing my shoes in confused concern. He could see that something was missing.
“I sure feel terrible,” Uncle Henry was saying. “You won’t believe me, but I know how much you wanted to be here. I hope you can understand, someday.”
“Sending you home isn’t simple,” said Ozma. “I really didn’t know how to do it for a while—so little is known about the walls that separate your world from ours. I needed to find something that already knows the way.”
I didn’t know what she was talking about, and I didn’t care. All I wanted was to find a way to stop her.
“When you arrive home in Kansas, none of you will remember any of this. I think it’s better that way. It will just seem like a pleasant, faraway dream. Something that happened to someone else in a story.”
“No!” I screamed one more time, lunging for her. She might have cut me off from my magic, but I still had two hands, and I would use them to strangle her if that’s what I needed to do to stay here.
But before I could reach her, she raised her scepter, and I hit a wall. I punched and clawed at it, but my fists bounced uselessly against the invisible barrier.
“I’ll always be grateful to you, Dorothy,” Ozma said, ignoring my screams. “You saved Oz. And I’ll always think of you as a friend.”
With that, Ozma threw her head back and lifted her scepter to the sky. Her wings materialized, and she rose up into the air as a column of blinding light shot down from the clouds and surged through her. She began to shine so brightly that she was barely even visible anymore—she was just a vague, burning ball of radiance.
Even in my fury, I couldn’t help being impressed. I had met witches and sorceresses and wizards, but I had never met anyone who could turn themselves into a star.
Uncle Henry put his arm around Aunt Em. Even Toto sat back on his hind legs and stared up in amazement.
As Ozma cast her spell, wind whipped through the treetops. Dark clouds swirled overhead. It looked like a storm was coming. The light changed; the sky around us was now a sick, pale, greenish shade.
In that moment, I felt something happening to me. My feet began to tingle, and then the rest of my body was tingling, too, until it was almost vibrating with power.
No one noticed what was happening.
Ozma must have been too consumed with her own spell to realize that whatever barriers she’d placed on my shoes were falling away. She must not have been able to manage both spells at once.
My magic was coming back.
In the distance, I saw it approaching. The old house—the shack that had brought me to Oz—was flying across the sky, spinning like a top as it drew nearer, getting bigger and closer by the second. That was what Ozma had meant by something that already knows the way. She was going to put us all back in that awful, ramshackle old house and she was going to make it take us back to Kansas.
I wouldn’t stand for it. My shoes gripped my feet so hard it hurt.
It all happened so fast. Important things always seem to, don’t they?
The house was careening through the sky, traveling faster than I thought possible, and then it was right over our heads and it began to hover in place as it made its descent.
My hair was whipping past my face; my whole body was twitching with fear and rage and power. More power than I’d ever felt before. More of anything than I’d ever felt before.
I didn’t know how long it would last. I only had one shot.
And I didn’t really even think about what I was doing. I just knew I had to do something. So I reached out in fury and desperation. I summoned every ounce of magic I could find, and I grabbed it. That’s really what it felt like. It felt like I was reaching out with giant hands and pulling the house from Ozma’s magical clutches. It was easy.
I just plucked it up and I threw it at her—sent the house hurtling for the princess like I was tossing a handful of chicken feed onto the ground for Miss Millicent.
Ozma saw it coming a second too late. Just before it was about to hit her, the column of light that held her suspended dissipated, and her body returned to her. She screamed, her black hair swirling around her as her wings flapped furiously. Acting on instinct, she flung her arms out in front of her to protect herself. A glowing green shield materialized in front of her.
Like I say, it happened fast. Too fast for me to react.
The house crashed into Ozma’s force field. But it didn’t shatter. Instead, the farmhouse ricocheted off of it with a thunderous crash and went sailing gracefully through the air, straight toward where my aunt and uncle were standing, frozen in place.
“Dorothy!” Aunt Em screamed, seeing it coming towa
rd her.
“Do som—” Uncle Henry shouted.
Toto let out a howl, and I put my hand up, summoning another spell to stop it, but even as I did I knew I was a second too slow.
When the dust settled, the house had come crashing to the earth, still in one piece, and all that was visible of my poor aunt Em were her two feet sticking out from under our old front porch.
Nineteen
Silence.
Terrible, awful, horrible silence.
It was only broken by the sound of my voice cracking. “Aunt Em!” I screamed. “Uncle Henry!”
There was no response. I knew there wouldn’t be.
I fell to the ground in front of the house, sobs racking my body.
What have I done? She was dead. Uncle Henry was dead. Tears rolled down my face. My throat closed up. It hurt so much. They were my only family. They had loved me, despite everything.
I choked on my tears. Why had I ever brought them here? I should have left them in Kansas, where they would have been safe. And happy. They hadn’t asked to come. All they’d wanted was to go home and I wouldn’t let them.
No. It wasn’t my fault. It was hers. She had done this to them.
I shook with rage as I saw Ozma, back on the ground, crawling to her feet from where she’d made her own crash-landing.
The clouds thickened, growing darker above me. My shoes hugged my feet like a vise, glowing like they were made of red lightning. Ozma stared up at me in shock.
“You did this,” I shrieked. “You killed them!”
I walked toward her, the rage burning me alive. It felt good to hate her this much. Natural.
Small forks of lightning flickered off the shoes as they throbbed with a magical pulse. But the heels weren’t alive. I was. The pulse was my heartbeat. Their magic was part of me now.
A scream ripped out of me as another magical surge punched through my body. I felt like I was about to explode into flames as I walked steadily toward Ozma, screaming louder and with more anguish than the Screaming Trees in the Forest of Fear.
No Place Like Oz Page 13
