Shadows of the Emerald City

by J. W. Schnarr

  “But the house landed on my sister. It killed her dead as anything and I got no explanation. Some little bitch came out of the house, totally unscathed, and said it was an accident. She played dumb…like she had no idea.”

  “Who is she?”

  “No clue. She says she’s from a place called Kansas. I’ve never heard of it and I’ve been a great many places, mind you. Those ungrateful Munchkins…you’d think some great God had dropped from the sky. They were praising her and dancing and singing. Meanwhile, my sister lay squashed under that damned house.”

  “What do you need me to do?”

  The witch sighed. “I’d better wait to tell you after your heart is gone. I don’t know how it will react.”

  Nick nodded.

  “What I will tell you is that the stupid little girl is awfully desperate to get back to this Kansas place. The Munchkins have her following the Yellow Brick Road, thinking that the Wizard can help.”

  Nick had a good idea of what she was going to have him do. And while it did make his heart tremble, it simply reminded him of how badly he wanted it out of his body.

  “Are you ready?” the witch asked him.

  “Yes.”

  She spread her hands out and began muttering something under her breath. Nick watched as a fine mist of reds and oranges rose from his chest and gathered around the emeralds that she had placed there.

  Moments later, Nick’s heart thumped a single time and then settled in his chest. When it left his body, he smiled lightly. As he lay there and waited for further instructions, he was sure that he could hear its pounding echoing in his head.

  If the stupid little dog hadn’t have perked its ears up in its sleep, Nick would have never sensed the other presence in the night. He turned slowly, wondering if the Scarecrow had awakened. But the figure that stood behind him was slender and draped in a robe as dark as the night itself. Even if he hadn’t have figured out the identity of the stranger from these details, the broom gave it away.

  “Don’t torture yourself over it,” the witch whispered to him. She then waved her hand upwards and flexed her fingers. A brief flicker of light filled the night and then the Tin Man actually heard the breathing patterns of the girl, her dog and the Scarecrow change as they fell into a much deeper state of sleep.

  The Tin Man studied the witch’s face for a moment as she looked to the girl named Dorothy. There was malice in her stare but faint traces of awe as well. “I fear you may have to accompany her for the duration of her pointless little trip,” the witch said.

  “She’s going to Oz, you know,” he told her. “She wants to see the Wizard.”

  She grinned at him. He never noticed until then, looking at her in the shaded moonlight, that her teeth were yellowed and sharper than most people’s. “And do you know why?” she asked him.

  “It’s like you said. She wants to return home. She seems sincere about it.”

  “I’m sure she is. And what about the Scarecrow? I understand that they’ll be asking the Wizard for his brains, too?”

  “Yes.”

  She walked closer to him and placed her hand on his chest, her palm touching the left side of his tin plate. “And what about you? Are you having any second thoughts about our trade? Is there anything you may be asking the Wizard for?”

  “No,” he said quickly. As he said this, he found himself gripping his axe. He didn’t want to attack the witch, but he wanted to hurt something. Perhaps he’d slice the dog in half. Or maybe he could tear into the Scarecrow.

  No. If he was to carry out any violence in the future, it would be on the girl.

  “You know,” the witch said. “You’ll likely come to the place in the woods where you helped slaughter the Woodkins tomorrow. Are you ready for that?”

  “I believe so.”

  “And there are all manner of odd creatures in that area of the woods these days. Cranes, wild horses and those insipid lions. I’m sure Little Miss Kansas will end up attracting someone else to your traveling party.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking,” Nick said, “if she bothers you so much, why can’t I simply kill her right now while she sleeps?”

  “I’d love nothing more,” the witch said. “But she needs to make it to Oz. She needs to see that moron of a Wizard.”

  “Why? Do you want her to succeed now?”

  “Hardly. It’s just that she gives people hope. You should have seen those Munchkins bowing and dancing around her. So foolish. But they adore her and the hope she provides.”

  “Well then, what would you have me do?”

  “Wait until you get to Oz. Wait until the Wizard is fawning all over her like the Munchkins. Wait until she knows she is going home. And then attack.”

  “Won’t I be arrested and punished?”

  “Likely. But you’re made of tin and your heart is no longer an issue. What’s the worst they could do to you? Besides, politics in Emerald City are shadier than people think. I am certain I could pull a few strings. Not everyone is in love with the little bitch.”

  The Tin Man nodded. He looked to his axe and regretted that he would not be using it.

  “Okay then,” he said. “I’ll wait.”

  The witch nodded to him and straddled her broom. She looked to him almost lovingly as she floated from the ground. As she gained momentum and faded into the distance, he watched her lift her hand, removing the sleep spell she had cast upon his companions.

  The Tin Man looked to Dorothy. The spell broke. She sighed in her sleep and the faintest traces of a smile came to her face. Her dog chuffed and settled its head onto its paws. It awoke slightly, cast him a curious glance with one beady eye and then returned to sleep.

  Nick sat up the rest of the night. He sat perched on a fallen log, looking to the outskirts of the forest. The Yellow Brick Road barely showed through, casting a sickly glow into the night.

  To Nick, it would never be a road, but a graveyard.

  He thought of the Woodkin bodies beneath it and a hollow place in his chest filled with something akin to heat. He gripped his axe tightly, looked to the girl from Kansas and scowled at her.

  He wondered what it would be like to murder the girl and not feel those old stirrings of guilt and remorse from within. He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that his heart was gone now; the thought of killing the girl neither bothered nor elated him. He simply saw it as a task to be accomplished.

  Still, he peered out to the Yellow Brick Road and wondered if the ghosts of the Woodkin people knew he was here. With the thought of feeling those phantom eyes on him, he wondered if fear was linked to the heart.

  And he wondered if ghosts would even bother haunting him if they knew he was without it.

  As it turned out, the witch had been right. The following day, their group grew by one. The lion had pounced out of the woods at them, terrifying the girl, her dog and the wobbling scarecrow. But Nick had planted his feet, gripped his axe and was ready to strike. When he realized how harmless the lion was—he was, in fact, as terrified of the girl as she was of it—Nick eased up.

  And even though Nick did not attack the gentle beast, he knew right away that the end was near. He was pretty sure that Emerald City was still at least three days away and there was no way he could continue to act merry in the presence of these idiots. He remembered the magician in the back of the carriage so many years ago, speaking to him about purpose. Well now that he finally had a purpose—a real purpose—he was bursting to fulfill it.

  As he walked quietly behind the small group of odd travelers, he thought of the witch and what she was asking of him. Basically, she was asking for his services…for him to carry out her dirty work. Hadn’t he been subject to similar treatment many years ago? Hadn’t that same treatment caused him to be junked, to be stored away forgotten while Oz took pleasure in the horrors and hells he had endured for the sake of that damned road? What was the point in submitting to servitude again when he knew where it would eventually lead? Was this newfound evil
purpose worth it?

  Sure, the witch had made her promises to him, but he knew full well the breaking capacity of promises. When he had been a man, his wife had broken them. When he had been a productive Tin Woodsman, the Emerald City workers had broken them. Why would the witch be any different?

  As they walked through the low hanging branches of the forest, Nick glanced into the trees. He knew that something was moving around out there; the longer he stared, the more certain he became that the forms in the shadows of foliage were the witch’s winged monkeys.

  Fine, he thought. You watch all you want, witch.

  Yet, as he observed the shapes in the tops of the trees, he became more and more aware that the posture to their forms was somehow off. The shapes up there were not the bodies of the witch’s minions…they were more rounded, more agile somehow.

  A sound from the ground broke his attention. He looked down and saw one of the yellow bricks of the road protruding up, pushed from its underside. To his left, another brick did the same thing. He studied this one as it popped into the air and clattered to the ground. When the brick was free, revealing the ground below, four small fingers tipped with brown cracked nails tore through the soil.

  “What is that?” he asked. He readied his axe, prepared to lop off the fingers.

  “What is it, Tin Man?” Dorothy asked him. She was looking to him and then to the ground, back and forth, perplexed.

  “There! Do you not see it?”

  The girl shrugged. Even her dog seemed to be confused. Similarly, the Scarecrow and the Lion stared at him as if he had lost his mind. Nick looked to the ground and the fingers were still there, reaching and pulling. To both sides, more of the bricks were coming undone as something pushed its way out of the ground. The dirt shook and trembled and Nick could feel the movement in the hollow shapes of his legs.

  Whatever it was that he was witnessing, the girl and their companions were not seeing it. Even the little dog, which seemed to have a higher sensitivity to unseen things, was unaware of anything happening.

  Nick looked behind him and saw that thousands of the bricks were being jarred from the ground in similar fashion. And with each brick that was unearthed, a reaching hand took its place. The hands were small and the wrists and arms to which they were attached looked as thin as twigs. Still, there was something menacing about them.

  Finally, he understood.

  He looked back up to the trees and saw that the shapes had begun to descend. They were swinging from branches and scaling down the bodies of the trees. Their faces were hidden in shadows that came as if from nowhere, broken only by the menacing white of their smiles. And despite the shadows, Nick recognized the appearance of the Woodkins right away.

  As they gathered around him, surrounding him and chanting in some woodland language that he did not understand, his traveling companions still saw nothing. It was in that moment, as Nick began swinging into the air with his axe, that his question was answered.

  Yes.

  Ghosts would haunt a man despite the absence of his heart.

  Nick swung at the small figures as they approached. To the girl and her new friends, he was merely swinging at air. Realizing this only pushed Nick further to an edge of angst and hate that he didn’t understand—even if he had his heart, he didn’t think he’d be able to fathom the sensation.

  He turned to them and swung with blinding purpose. The Lion reacted first, his cowardice forgotten in the face of a threat to the girl. But before he could raise so much as a paw, the blade caught him just above the left eye. There was a cracking sound followed by the creature’s yelp of pain. The lion reeled back, his paw going to his face as he tottered to the ground in a spray of crimson.

  The dog came next, barking nonsensically at Nick’s ankles. Nick barely noticed the mutt at all. He was swinging at the shape of an approaching Woodkin. Its body had deteriorated; its face was a smear of color and wrinkled, its limbs caked with rot and stale dirt. As Nick brought his axe around only to watch it pass through the Woodkin’s form like mist, the end of the axe came down upon the dog like a club. There was a cracking sound like branches snapping and then the dog went limp. It happened so fast, the dog was unable to let out even the slightest squeal of pain.

  “Toto!”

  The stupid girl came rushing forward, her left arm raised to ward off his blows, her right one extended towards her crushed pet. Behind her, the Scarecrow looked as if he wanted to attack, to prevent Nick from further damage, but his legs seemed to fail him. He shivered with fear, the straw of his torso slowly unraveling and fluttering to the ground in frail strings.

  Nick raised his axe over his head. The world was nothing more than a melee of moving Woodkin phantoms and this girl—this haphazard savior to the miracle land that had betrayed him—and it was all too much for him.

  He screamed. Before the axe fell in a mad swoop, he saw the Scarecrow cringing at the scream. To Nick, his own rage-filled wail sounded like the shrieking of metal on metal in a violent collision.

  But the sound he heard when the axe fell heavily on the girl’s shoulder drowned it out. There was a pop as her collarbone snapped in half and then a wet tearing sound as her entire left side was torn and fell away. For a moment, the face and neck of the girl from Kansas seemed to hover in midair and then collapsed with the rest of her split form.

  Nick watched as her blood pooled on the ground, trickling between the bricks of the road.

  The bricks…

  The road was whole again. The yellow bricks he had seen popping from the ground were back in their rightful places. The Woodkins were also gone.

  Only, as he stared down the Scarecrow and raised his axe again, he knew that they were still with him. He could feel them watching from the shadows of the forest. They were waiting for him.

  Faced with death the Scarecrow was unable to move. He opened his oddly shaped patch of a mouth and let out a cry of anguish. Nick swung his axe around in an arc that could actually be heard on the air. The blade tore through the soft body of the Scarecrow. It tore him in half. His legs stood stubbornly for a moment before collapsing in a heap of straw and fabric. The upper half of the body twitched a bit in response. Nick watched contently as one of the idiot’s button-like eyes drooped from the surface of its face.

  He looked to the girl’s body once more, her blood cascading over the yellow bricks. It seemed fitting, somehow. Had he the capacity to do so, he liked to think that he would have grinned.

  Looking away from her, he walked to the edge of the Yellow Brick Road. He carried his axe by his side sternly as he felt the lure of the Woodkin dead from the shadows. He sensed them ahead of him, leading him somewhere. He wasn’t sure where at first, but as the forest grew deeper and darker, he began to understand. It was easier to think clearly with that damned road behind him.

  The witch had taken his heart and for that, he was grateful. But in the end, she had expected something of him. And while he had done that duty—although not to her standards—she was expecting something from him in return. And Nick Chopper was done with being used.

  Nick Chopper, he thought. I remember him. He certainly was a foolish man.

  As he walked further into the woods with the ghosts of the Woodkin people ahead of him, he thought of the witch. He thought of what it was going to feel like when he plunged his axe into her guts.

  And with that thought, he actually managed something similar to a smile. The shadows of the forest squeezed in and overtook him completely. As a parade of Woodkin ghosts led him towards his next kill, he left Nick Chopper behind to die in the shadows.

  His heart was what had defined him as a man. Now it was time to be defined by the axe, the darkness and the tin.

  The End.

  Fly, Fly Pretty Monkey

  by Camille Alexa

  Madrigaard is closest to my heart. I hold her to my breast, croon to her. I stroke the sparse hairs on her misshapen head, soft like crow feathers but fine and ill-rooted.

&nb
sp; “Fly, pretty monkey,” I tell her. I lean far out the open window of my turret. Wind whips against my cheeks and neck, tugs cruelly at my hair, rakes my clothing from my body until it billows out in webby tatters like a banner of my imperfections, announcing that the Wicked Witch is home.

  I kiss Madrigaard’s warty head once more and toss her into the whipping wind.

  Her tiny stick arms flail helpless at the air. She tumbles like a small black stone.

  Fly, I silently urge, not shutting my one good eye against the sight of her plummeting body, out of respect. Fly, pretty monkey.

  I expect to hear the wet smack of her small body against the stones far below, but her tiny wings like scraps of rotten leather unfurl from against her shivering body. They flap feebly. For a moment, I’m certain she’ll not make it. The rocks beneath my tower are littered with the tiny skulls of her siblings, her cousins, her foremothers—generations of their bones lying stark and naked and lovely, picked clean by keening birds swirling the cliffs near the waterside not far from these bony spires of my keep thrusting upward between sky and landlocked inland sea.

  But her flapping strengthens. At the last instant before death on the rib- and femur-covered rocks, her bat-scrap wings slow her descent. She clutches at the nothing of wind and space, her tiny newborn body shriveled and fragile. She flaps and flaps and flaps, slowly rising on one of the bitter currents gusting from the inland sea. When she finally draws up level with me, I smile. In my hopes for her, I’ve bitten clean through the thin skin of my lip, and ichor trickles down my chin, wending toward the tattered open neck of my rotted black lace gown.

  Flapping, hovering, she dips her tiny monkey paw into what my blood has become. She holds it to my mouth, as though I must kiss my own hurt better, and when I croon, “What a pretty girl, a clever girl,” she wraps her stick arms around my neck and sighs her tiny monkey sigh into my ear.

  My sister’s murderer has been sighted in the poppy fields on the other side of that Green Monstrosity that Oz calls home.