Once Upon a Happy Ending: An Anthology of Reimagined Fairy Tales

by Casey Lane

  “Dorothy Gale is not just a character in a book?” The Chronicler squinted.

  “Her real name is Dore. Short for Dorothy. Later, she walked America known as Door, a somewhat misheard interpretation of her name.”

  “Door?” The Chronicler pointed at the door behind him.

  “Yes,” Frank nodded. “Because she traveled among worlds through some sort of doors.”

  “What kind of doors?”

  “Tornadoes.”

  “Uh-uh.” The Chronicler rubbed his chin.

  “Remember the 1879 tornado?”

  The Chronicler was too young to remember that. He hadn’t been born when that happened. Still, he’d heard about it. One of the most damaging tornadoes in American history. Most memorable. So much so that he’d studied it in school. It happened in Irving, Kansas forty years ago.

  “I was nearby when it happened.” Frank said. “A day later, I decided to go and see the aftermath.”

  “You saw the aftermath of the 1879 tornado? Weren’t you afraid it would hit again?”

  “It was a terrible time in my life. I was young, out of jobs, without purpose, and borderline suicidal,” Frank said. “But I wasn’t there looking for a death wish.”

  “Then why did you go there, Frank?”

  “I was looking for magic.”

  “Magic? In a tornado?”

  “I’ve always been fascinated by tornadoes. Cyclones, as deadly as they were, made me want to believe in higher places, different worlds, and fairy tales. They were so damaging that I thought I’d find hope somewhere between their twisting folds.”

  “I’m not sure I see the point, but what does the tornado have to do with Dorothy?

  “Door.” Frank shot him a demeaning gaze.

  The Chronicler realized the ignorance of his question. What did a tornado in Kansas have to do with Door-a-thy Gale? Really?

  “Everything.”

  “Are you telling me it was the same tornado that inspired your Wizard of Oz books? The tornado that sucked Dorothy Gale out of Kansas and to the Land of Oz?”

  “It didn’t inspire me, no,” Frank coughed, his whole body shaking. “It’s the story itself.”

  “I’m confused here, Frank,” the Chronicler said. “I mean really. We all know that the Wizard of Oz is a children’s fairy tale you made up, but you keep saying Dorothy is real. Could you please explain?”

  “There in Kansas, I came across the damaged houses with their roofs ducked to the ground. The tornado was like a giant who’d knocked the houses flat. However, it was raining heavily, which helped me see a little through the sandstorm.”

  “See what, Frank? You just said everyone was dead.”

  “There was a puddle of mud where I heard the sound of a moaning girl,” Frank’s sick eyes glittered. “I found her face down.”

  “Who?” the Chronicler almost knew the answer, but had to hear it.

  “A teenage girl. She was hurt. Bleeding to death. She neither looked white, nor of color. Somewhere in the middle. A beauty of seventeen-to-nineteen years or so. A tough beauty, I could see it in her eyes when I turned her around.”

  There was no point in asking who again. The Chronicler preferred not to interrupt.

  “I asked her about her family, she said she lived with her uncle and aunt, and that they had died in the tornado,” Frank said. “Then I asked her about her name. She said ‘Door’ and spit out blood. Later she managed to speak her full name: Dorothy Gale.”

  The Chronicler shrugged. Was he really witnessing a most important moment in American history, being told that Dorothy Gale was for real. What about the Land of Oz, then? Was it for real, too?

  “I was about to go fetch her some water when she pointed at a waterskin nearby,” Frank said. “I mean an authentic good ol’ waterskin made of a cow’s bladder.”

  The Chronicler pulled his chair closer, so he wouldn’t miss a detail.

  “I reached for the waterskin and helped her. A breeze whirled behind me, suggesting the tornado would return.” Frank said. “As she drank, I took another look at her face. Her skin was a light tan and her eyes emerald green. I’d never seen such a beautiful girl before. Not in Kansas, where she may not be considered beautiful. Her face was smeared with black coal or something. Her skin was buried in sticky grains of sand. She wore a hat. A Cowboy’s, matching the waterskin in color, but I hadn’t the time to analyze the rest of her outfit then, as I wanted to help her first. She drank like a tough man, a warrior who had no time to sip. She gulped, water trickling down her cheeks, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hands. She wore a lot of armbands.”

  “I’m listening, Frank. What happened next?”

  “I saw her curly hair dangle from under her hat. One side curls, the other braided — like Indians. She struck me like an American-Indian for a second, but she wasn’t even that. I was enamored by her ethnicity. Pure American in a weird way. You’d see her and you’d say she was a foreigner, but her Southern accent was native American to the core.”

  “That’s hard to accept,” the Chronicler had to interrupt. “We all know what a native American girl looks like, Frank?”

  “Do we?,” Frank seemed offended. He knew a lot, and the Chronicler needed to shut up and listen. “You have no idea what an American is. None of us really knows.”

  “And she did?”

  “You bet. Door wore a cowboy’s outfit. I mean a real cowboy’s outfit from the old days, not like the modern clothes people wore in 1879.”

  “Are you saying she was from another time?”

  “And another place.” Frank finally managed to prop himself on one elbow, letting out some painful moan, then reached for the Chronicler’s sleeve, pulling him closer. He whispered in his ears. “Door came from the Real America.”

  “I’m not sure what this means.”

  “She came through the tornado,” Frank said. “A parallel universe, but you wouldn’t understand that, not before you read the vellums under my bed.”

  Though the Chronicler had begun considering the story to be all in Frank’s head, he still listened. There was nothing wrong with hearing a great author’s last fantasy before death. Maybe he could turn it into a book himself after Frank died, and become as famous as him.

  “So you’re saying she came through the tornado,” the Chronicler repeated. “From the Real America, right? What’s the Real America like, Frank?”

  “The south was inhabited by Quadlings, the north Gilikins, the west Winkies, and the east was called Munchkin land. Kansas, where the tornado occurred is in the middle, it’s where the Emerald City supposedly existed but it wasn’t as easy to find in later years.”

  “You’re basically describing America’s four corners where the center, Kanas, had been the heart of America’s conflict for years. The war that spilled endless blood. The war between pro-slavery and those who fought to free the slaves and make America a great country.”

  In a rare glance, Frank smiled. The Chronicler seemed to have understood part of the the author’s theory.

  “Except I called it the Land of Oz in the book.”

  A twinge of shiver chilled through the Chronicler’s spine. Frank’s words made sense. “Are you telling me that children all over the world are actually reading a book about America disguised as the Land of Oz?”

  Frank nodded.

  “Why call it Oz?”

  “Many reasons. One of them was a nod to the Ozark Mountains, the highest region in America, but I’ll get to that later.”

  “And you say it’s a parallel world to ours, but also different? How?”

  “The Other America, or the Land of Oz, is brutal and deadly. All the deaths and slavery you’ve seen here is nothing compared to it.”

  “And the tornado is a door that connects us?”

  “The tornado is a breach,” Frank insisted, not leaning back, but almost falling off the edge of the bed. “The tornado is the result of a dark magic by the Wicked Witch of the West. She was trying to cr
oss over.”

  “That’s enough, Frank,” The Chronicler said, suddenly refusing to get sucked into Frank’s absurd fantasy. “You need to rest.”

  “You have to read the vellums and understand. You have to help Door. She needs help. She might not remember why she is there. And now that I’m dying, I need to make someone believe me and find a way to her.”

  “Seriously, you have to stop.”

  Frank gripped the Chronicler’s hand with a sudden force like that of a twenty-year-old. “Everything you need to know, I’ve jotted down in these vellums.”

  “That’s a whole lotta reading, Frank.” the Chronicler was in pain from Frank’s grip. He wondered if he should summon his wife.

  “I’ve made it into a story so anyone who reads it can understand flawlessly. It’s easy to read. A dramatic tale where the truth unfolds page after page. Except it’s not a children’s book. It’s as true as a blade’s edge. The book is so real, it hurts.”

  “The story of the Other America?” The Chronicler mocked him.

  “Exactly, the real story of Dorothy Gale. Bloody, brutal, and not for children.”

  The Chronicler’s eyes shifted toward the vellum’s under the bed. It was one thing to consider Frank hallucinating, but what about the vellums? When did he have the time to write them? The man had his stroke only yesterday. Could he be telling the truth?

  While thinking, Frank’s wife dashed into the room. She was furious to see him like that and accused the Chronicler of enraging her sick husband. The Chronicler hardly listened to her words. He didn’t even react to her slapping him on the face. His eyes were fixed on the vellums under the bed.

  Then his ears caught a sound. Frank’s voice. “Promise me you will read the vellums, tell the world the truth, and help Door.”

  The Chronicler stood silent. No madman would insist on such a request in his last breaths.

  “Promise me so I can cross over to the Shifting Sands.”

  Whatever that meant, the Chronicler didn’t know. But he nodded. He promised Frank he would read the vellums. In no way did he understand what the Real America was or what Dorothy Gale had to do with the American Wild West. A Dorothy in Cowboy hat and boots?

  “I will read the books, Frank,” The Chronicler said. “I promise you.”

  Frank literally took his last breath and died.

  Before he did, he said. “Now I’m ready to cross the Shifting Sands.”

  The day after, the Chronicler sat at his house with the endless vellums on the table. Reading through, he realized they’d really been designed to be real as a story, one that Frank had organized to pass the truth along. It was clear that the Real America was a wicked version of the American West, with magic, witches, and a dash of fairy tale.

  Whether Frank was right or fantasizing, the Chronicler decided to read it. Not only because he’d promised Frank, but because of another paper slip that lay on the table beside him. A confirmation he’d received from the Kansas State Department about the 1879 tornado. It was a list of names of the deceased men, women, and children that day. Whether their bodies had been found or not, their names had been jotted down. At the bottom of the list there was the name of a girl who’d been said to have lived with her uncle and aunt by the names of Henry and Em. In that authentic, real life document, the girl’s name was listed as Gale. The age didn’t match the Dorothy from the books though. The Chronicler guessed Frank had made her younger to resonate with the children who read the book. There was no mention of the name Dorothy though. Just Gale, but was that a first name, or a last name? He couldn’t be sure, but it was there.

  The Chronicler took a deep breath and rubbed away the spiderwebs from the first book. Be it the truth or a fascinating story, he began reading about the collection Frank titled Throne of Oz. It began with a first volume called…

  Chapter 1

  The Shifting Sands desert,

  the Land of Oz, also known as the Real America,

  1860

  The girl they were about to hang was only sixteen years old. Normally they would toss a coin to decide whether to rape her or leave her hanging naked as a feast for the crows. They’d earned no coins today because they hadn’t sold any slaves, so their solution was to do both to the girl. And now they stood in the scorching sun waiting for the crows to come and take bites from her flesh.

  The girl was of white skin, a dirty-blond with freckles on a scrawny face. Pale breasts. Red buttocks from torturing. Nipples as pink as a pig’s nose. The shiniest parts of her body were her eyes; blue, like the skies in the Land of Oz once were, before the stars had fallen down and sunk, buried into the desert sands.

  The girl could almost have been the torturers’ sister or mother. She would be practically considered the same race. She even had a Southern dialect, not that different from the West coast dialect the torturers spoke. And she was not of brown color, the torturers’ favorite prey in Oz. Still, they’d treated her brutally the way slaves were treated.

  Why? Because she was a Quadling.

  “I say we carve our names on her body so it’d be a warning for other Quadlings not to come here,” said Johnny Hate, one of the two torturers.

  Hate was a Winkie Guard, working for the Wicked Witch of the West. She’d permitted them to go wreak havoc when she didn’t need them. It was best for him and his partner to have caught the Quadling girl and sold her in the slave market in the nearest town. But the two bastards were so bloodthirsty, they didn’t care for money sometimes.

  “I carved mine on her back already,” said Kenny Blade, a seven-foot fortress of a man, licking the blood from the tip of a knife. Blade never shot a gun. He was so good with knives, so much so that the Witch had nicknamed him Blade. Unlike Hate, who’d gotten his name for being a slaves hater, he had rugged skin, tanned and damaged from too much sun. “Though I regret now we hadn’t sold her.”

  “We’ll find another if we move further into the Shifting Sands.” Hate rolled his gun back in his holster. “Slaves are a dime a dozen in this land.”

  “But not Quadlings,” Blade said. “They pay triple for them in the market. And they don’t pay in coins. They pay in stars.”

  “I know,” Hate scratched the back of his head. “It always puzzles me why a Quadling is worth so much. I mean we’re roaming the earth to kill every colored slave in this land. Quadling or slave, they should be the same.”

  “That’s because you’re a dumbass,” Blade tucked his knife in a holster full of other knives around his waist. “A slave is just a woman or man of color. A Quadling, also known as a Quadroon, is a descendant of a colored slave who mated with a white man.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” Hate spat on the sand. “I just don’t see the difference.”

  “A slave can be easily spotted,” Blade said. “A Quadling looks something like this girl. Neither white, nor black. You ain’t gonna know on whose side she is. That’s why most of them spy on us for the South. That’s why they’re worth so much.”

  “I did like what we did to her,” Hate smirked. “She’s definitely different. Let me carve my name on her now.”

  Blade watched Hate do it then glanced away at the vast and endless Shifting Sands. “You know how we find our way back to the Booty Tonk Bar in Easters Town?”

  Hate shielded the sun with his hands, trying to figure out the distance. “Not really, but ma horse knows.”

  “Then I’ll follow ya.”

  The two embarked their horses. Behind them the girl still moaned feebly.

  “It seems like your rope didn’t really kill the Quadling,” Blade said. “You think we oughta finish her before we go?”

  “Nah,” Hate pulled his horse’s saddle. “Let her bleed. Let her feel agony when the crows arrive and eat at her flesh. Let her be an example. Wick would like that.”

  Wick was the Wicked Witch’s common name. She liked it. It had morbid music to it.

  Blade roared with laughter. “You’re right, pal. Let the salves bleed, ju
st like back in Kansas.”

  A flock of crows arrived once they rode away toward the Booty Tonk Bar, and the girl began screaming.

  Chapter 2

  The Shifting Sands, a few hours later

  Miles away, amidst the desert of Shifting Sands, a silhouette of a girl emerged in the distance. She strode down from the top of the hill, looking like a ghostly mirage in the heated horizon. Crows cawed all around her but dared not approach her. The scorching sun made her silhouette look like a man's. Like an outlaw. Even worse. She looked like death itself walking the land, only without a pale horse.

  The girl whistled. A song. One that only few in Oz had ever heard before. It was by a man who’d not been born yet. A man named Johnny Cash. It sounded something like that: ain’t no grave gonna hold my body down.

  Closer, the girl’s features began to show…

  Her braided hair dangled from underneath her brown hat. Thick and stiffened braids like Indian women, smeared with soot and filled with sand. An unwashed face shone from between the braids. Features of what once was a young beauty, now distorted by the tanned lines of her lust for revenge.

  She wore a poncho. A green one. Well, once green but now a shade of grey from the red blood of her enemies. They said she was only nineteen, but had killed enough people to grant her a place in hell for ninety years.

  If anything really stood out from the hordes and outlaws walking the land of Oz, then it was her cowboy boots. A pair of ruby shoes. An unusual bright color in a forgotten region like Oz. In truth, they weren’t ruby anymore. Again, the blood of her enemies had reddened these precious shoes, which once belonged to the Wicked Witch from the East.

  Under the poncho, she wore her waterbag. She had it slung over one shoulder, diagonally stretched over her breasts, and crisscrossed with a katana sword slung over the other side. Three revolvers hung holstered to her waist. A set of bullets and an additional rifle attached to her left leg. None of all this weight made her flinch. Neither did she hunch over. Not one bit. It wasn’t just strength that straightened her posture, nor was it pride. She simply needed her upright posture to help her pull the coffin she pulled behind her as he descended the hill.