by Lotus Rose
But there’s yet another troubling thing about her new heart—it seems to hold fond feelings for Dorothy, so whenever Dorothy is discussed, Malice even misses the girl, despite never even having met her!
It’s all so curious and frightening. It remains to be seen where her new heart shall lead her. All Malice can do is keep moving forward. The next step on their mission is to enter the mystical magical yellow brick road.
They have to wait till midnight, and it is now nearly upon them.
Humpty, sitting in front of Malice, is gauging the time, watching the sweeping seconds hand on the watch he holds. Everybody else (except the Cat) is there as well, on a blanket near a stream they’d decided to wait near.
The full moon casts gloomy shadows from them. The Cat had found waiting around to be too boring, and so had left without saying where to.
Hatter had poured everyone except Malice a little pile of the poppy dust about a minute before midnight. He’d said he didn’t trust Malice to hold onto any dust without partaking of it early.
Malice is skeptical that the timing of dosing has to be so precise down to the second, but she can’t blame everyone for being cautious. And she has to admit that, lately, she’d demonstrated poor judgment around mood-altering substances.
Humpty starts counting down. “5...4...” Malice holds her hand out, as Hatter pours some of the dust onto her palm.
“3” says Humpty.
Malice frowns, because the pile of yellow dust in her palm seems rather skimpy. She figures, so long as she has to take an hallucinogenic substance, she might as well imbibe a decent amount, and make a jolly good time of it, at least.
“2...1...midnight.”
“Bing Bong!” Hatter proclaims. “Inhale now!” and in demonstration, he himself lifts the pile of powder in his left palm to under his nose, and sniffs hard.
Malice mimics him. She’s already inhaled the powder once, so she’s prepared for visions of swirling light accompanied by euphoria.
The team stands, awkwardly exchanging glances, as Hatter gathers up the blanket, and begins putting it in his magic satchel.
Everyone else bursts into giggles. Sleepy B is cackling, with droopy lids.
“What now?” the Jabberwock manages to say, through giggles.
Hatter, who has tucked the blanket away now, shrugs. “I thought the entrance was supposed to simply appear to us after taking the dust. Do we need to go searching for it, I wonder?”
“No need,” Humpty says. “There it is.” He points.
At the shore of the stream, a glowing yellow brick road has appeared, extending about seven feet over the surface of the water, leading into a bright portal of about seven feet high, by four feet wide. The yellow road seems to extend into the portal, beyond which stands someone who is either a male munchkin, or a human boy, holding a lamp and beckoning at them to enter.
“Well,” Malice says, “That was easy. Let’s not dally.”
Humpty says, “How can those bricks extend over the water, and still be sturdy?”
“Magic, my lad!” Hatter exclaims.
“Onward!” Sleepy B shouts, raising her hand in triumph, marching toward the road.
The rest of the team follows her into the portal, Malice is third in line. As soon as Sleepy B and the Jabberwock step into the portal, they begin to fade, like the Cat does as he’s teleporting away. Moments later, the two vanish completely.
Malice gasps and turns around, to see Humpty and Hatter vanish.
“Intriguing,” says the munchkin or boy holding the lamp.
Malice turns to look at him to see that he is a munchkin after all, with a beard, and looks to be in his early thirties.
Malice jumps as, off to her side, a female voice says, “The road musta tooked them. Redisturbed them.” The speaker is a twenty-something female munchkin in a dress—a green dress, though it’s hard to be entirely sure in the dim light.
Malice looks above to see the full moon, as the female munchkin says, “Greetings, and welcome to the Yellow Brick Road. I’m Martina.”
“Redisturbed?” Malice mutters in shock and confusion.
“Redistributed, I think she means,” says the male munchkin. “It happens sometimes for certain travelers. Their companions get redistributed—spread out along the road. Don’t worry, you’ll reunite with them again as you travel down the path.”
“Portal’s closing,” Martina remarks. She nudges with her chin over Malice’s shoulder, and Malice turns to watch the portal close and disappear, cutting off the view of the stream and its shore. Now, where the portal was, it is as if the road and reality itself ends—she cannot see past that point at all, which is a strange sort of thing to experience, so she turns back around.
“Are my friends okay?” Malice says.
The male munchkin says, “For the time being, they should be fine. You can travel down the road tomorrow and reunite with them. I’m Frederick, by the way. You may call me Fred. Martina and I shall be your guides.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you. I’m Malice.”
“Alice?” Martina says, sounding suspicious.
“No, Malice. I’m Alice’s twin. But I’m not her. Our team came here to see the Wizard.”
“Of course you did,” Fred says. “That’s why everyone comes here. So you’re not Alice, eh?” He shrugs. “Because Chief Dorothy is looking for her.”
“Yeah,” Martina says. “According to her, we’re supposed to capture Alice and turn her in.”
“Not that we would do that,” Fred says. “The munchkins of the road aren’t in her tribe, and we probably wouldn’t do anything the chief wants anyway, because we— Well, I suppose I can only speak for myself— I despise her, can’t stand anything about her.”
“Aye,” Martina says, “Because as the munchkins of the road, we thinks we is rascally suferior, I mean vastly suferior! And so we thinks we is smarter than the stupid dummy munchkins of the wastelands. If we ever find any allitraitors willing to help Dorothy, why, we’d lock ’em up in jill and throw away the key!”
“What’s an allitraitor?” Malice says, confused and dizzy from the dust.
“‘Traitor’, she means,” Frederick says. “And ‘jail’, not jill.”
Martha looks confused before nodding, and saying, “I see.”
Malice says, “Well I’m glad to know we can continue on our mission unimpeded. Now about this road—”
Frederick shakes his head. “I’m afraid we can’t discuss matters of the Road beyond what we’ve already said, because we can’t interfere with your personal journey as a traveler. It’d be best for you to get some sleep for the rest of the night.” He points off to the side of the Yellow Brick Road into a field of grass next to a tree, where there is a murky dark shape she hadn’t noticed before.
“It’s a bed,” Martina says. “We provide it for all the travelers, so they can sleep off the poppy dust they have to take to ascertain here.”
Frederick draws his head back. “I have no idea what she means by that, but the gist is correct. We shall see you tomorrow, to guide you.”
Malice thanks them, fully intending to collapse onto that comfy-looking bed and sleep off her intoxication, but it’s exactly because she’s intoxicated that she finds her tongue to be loose, and before she can stop herself, she finds herself giggling while saying the pair of munchkins before her are so vastly different from the last pair she encountered. She babbles on about how giant Dalten was and how her team almost got crushed in their quest to attain the Tin Knight’s heart.
The munchkin pair listen on politely enough. Fred nods, with a grin on his face, but his grin seems forced, and Malice suspects he’s waiting for a good opportunity to ask her to stop talking. Martina, on the other hand, is doing a much more convincing job of acting interested—she nods with her eyes convincingly opened wide, and encourages Malice to speak further. It is a testament to her politeness abilities.
Malice knows she has babbled on too long, but is having a ha
rd time stopping. After a bit more babbling, she worriedly says, “So does that mean I’m a girl-liker now, do you think?”
With a glowering expression, Frederick says, “We know nothing of such matters. But, really, love, you need to get your rest for tomorrow, so it would be imprudent for us to keep you any longer. We bid you goodnight.” He bows, gives a look to Martina, who curtsies.
“Goodnight,” Malice says, as the pair turn around and walk further down the road.
Malice, meanwhile, steps off the road into the field. The full moon provides just enough light for her to navigate. When she gets to the bed, she is surprised to find it’s her bed from her castle—or it’s a perfect replica. She concludes that there must be strong magic brewing around the road, before getting into her bed that she’s been missing terribly. It feels exactly as it used to, her body so used to it that she promptly falls asleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
MALICE SITS UP IN BED and stretches. Daylight has come and birds are singing. Out on the yellow brick road, Frederick stands patiently, with his arms behind his back like a soldier. Respectfully, he’s facing the road, rather than creepily watching her.
A few minutes after awakening, she approaches him. His suit this morning is indeed green, with golden buttons. His hat is green as well, his shoes are curled up in the toe area.
“Good morning,” Malice says. “Where’s Martina?”
Frederick shrugs. “She told me she had a personal matter, and shall join us shortly. Between you and me, she can be a bit unreliable. So you’re stuck with just me for the time being, but I can handle this morning’s tasks, and I can always enlist the help of one of the other Yellow Road munchkins.”
She looks about, but only sees birds, bees, and butterflies. No munchkins. In fact, she can’t see much of anything, except the yellow brick road, which up ahead, has tall sunflowers on its side. She finds it very unnerving that she can’t seem to see any farther than ten feet in any direction. It’s as if the world just ceases to exist beyond a certain distance—like she is in a scene setting of a stage play or something. “Other munchkins?” she says.
“Yes, you could say we have our own tribe of sorts, better than Dorothy’s. A bunch of them are watching, but staying out of our way. But they’re there, hiding in the flowers.” He waves, and some rustling from both sides of the road answer back—Malice guesses there might be half a dozen munchkins in there. And so as not to be rude, Malice meekly waves back.
“Forgive me if I’m being rude,” Malice says. “But I’ve found it quite disconcerting just how very short is the distance I can see, ever since first coming onto this road.”
“Yes, it is different here, in the area around the Road. Many of us munchkins came from the areas of the wastelands, where you can see far into the horizon, unless the land bends, or somethings block your way. But it is different here, on the Road. It is its own separate realm, where the Yellow Road controls all. The Yellow Road doesn’t want anyone to see too far ahead to what it brings, we believe—doesn’t want them to anticipate what is to come. And so the Yellow Road limits how far its travelers and inhabitants can see.”
“How curious. Is the Yellow Road a thinking being, then? Is it alive?”
He shrugs. “That is something we have wondered ourselves. I, personally, don’t think the Road lives. But the Road shapes things, it creates. But it doesn’t speak to us or anything like that.”
“But the Road controls everything...” Malice says, struggling to understand.
“In a way. The Road does the bidding of the Wizard. But only to an extent. The Road makes its own particular decisions, sometimes it even disobeys.” He shrugs. “Such is the way of the Road. The Road can be fickle.”
“Who made the Road?”
“Enough questions. Besides, the munchkins do not know. The Road merely is. And we serve it. Now, did you have a good night’s sleep, love?”
“Indeed I did. My bed—it was the same as the one in my castle. How?”
“The Road can pluck things from people’s minds. It shapes the paths of its travelers to suit them. Each path is different for each traveler, specifically suited for them to fulfill the Road’s plan, whatever it may be. And speaking of your Path, it is time for you to begin traveling along it, and you must figure out its situations on your own. So I shall act as your guide now, and stop answering your questions.”
“Will the Road lead us to the Wizard?”
“It always does, if you survive.”
“Yikes. How far must we travel?”
“The Road chooses how long it shall be. Really, I must insist you cease your questions and begin your traveling. Come.” He gestures with his hand for her to follow, and begins walking. During their stroll, the Cat appears, ready for adventure.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
IT’S READILY APPARENT that traveling along the yellow brick road is quite anomalous, as Malice can’t see very far in any direction and the areas to the side of the road magically shift as they walk, but Malice is from Wonderland, so she’s used to such things.
She takes another stab at trying to pry some more information from Fred, but he brushes off her questions.
“Phooey,” she says to Fred. “You’re just as annoying as the Cat, with your evading questions and not interfering.” Out of habit, Malice waits for her kindness programming to butt in and is surprised she has no urge to apologize, until she remembers. “Hey! I was snippy!”
“Congrats,” the Cat says. “Who knows? Soon, you might be downright bitchy!”
“One can only hope, my furry little buddy. But I still reserve the right to be sappy-sweet from time to time, but only when I choose to be.”
Fred listens on with a puzzled expression, but now he stops walking. “Ah, it seems the Road has prepared something for you.” Both sides of the path are now comprised of flat, mowed areas of bright green grass. Fred points to the right of them, where a bed sits beneath the shade of a large elm tree.
And there is Sleepy B lying in bed with her eyes closed, her blond head poking out above the covers.
“Is she sleeping?” Malice says. “I thought she couldn’t do that anymore.”
“She could be faking,” the Cat says.
“Why would she do that?” Malice says.
“I don’t know. She’s a wily one.”
“She’s not faking,” Fred says.
“How do you know?” Malice says.
“I am designated as your guide, so the Road makes certain things known to me, so that travelers may better assess the situations the Road has created.”
“The Road communicates with you?” Malice says. “Like um...telephoneishly?”
The Cat says, “‘Telepathically’, I think you mean, love.”
Malice giggles embarrassedly. “That’s right.”
Fred says, “No, it’s nothing like that. Certain notions and facts just become available in my mind, that’s all.”
She sees Martina step out onto the Road, seemingly out of nowhere. She walks toward them. In her hand, she’s carrying a rag doll in a black dress.
“Sorry I’m late,” Martina says. “I had to visit someone in order to take care of something.”
“Hmm?” Malice says with furrowed brow.
“Why didn’t you tell me what you were doing?” Fred says.
Martina sneers. “Because you’re not the boss of me.”
Fred frowns. “And why are you carrying that doll?”
“It’s for Malice, loyal Fred. That’s what I should call you. All the munchkins of the Road all stick together, right? They all hate Dorothy, right? And if not, well they’ll get what’s coming to ’em right?”
“What are you talking about?” Fred says. “Any munchkin with any sense would hate Dorothy. Now, what’s the doll for?”
Martina grins wickedly. “You see, Alice is gonna invitamin—I mean, invite—a surprise guest to join us, despite her not knowing it yet.”
“What?” Malice and Fred say at t
he same time. Malice adds, “I’m Malice.”
Martha says to Fred, “Seeing as how you’re so loyal to the Road and its munchkins, don’t you think you should try to stop it?”
“I have no idea what’s going on,” Fred says.
Malice says, “And I don’t know what you’re talking about. I have no intention of inviting some visitor. Where’d you get that notion?”
Martina clucks her tongue while shaking her head. “Look into your heart, my dear. Oh wait, but it’s not really yours, now is it? You told me it was originally the Tin Knight’s. Tell me, do you feel it? Does your heart yearn to be reunitedated?”
Malice shakes her head in confusion. “What? Reunited? I feel nothing like that.”
“Well then,” Martina says, “Here’s my gift to you. You certainly deserve it, for all you’ve done against Dorothy.” She raises the doll in the air. “Disloyal Fred, you want to know what I was doing? Watch.” She holds the doll out toward Malice. “Please take a hold of it, so you can see what it does. Trust me, it shall be amazing.” She smiles sweetly.
Fred says, “Martina, I demand you tell me what you’re doing.”
“Oh, hush, don’t be such a spoilspurt,” Martina replies. She gives an encouraging nudge of her chin at Malice, so Malice dumbfoundedly wraps her hand around the doll’s dress.
Martina opens her left hand to reveal what she’d been hiding there. She holds a little plushy red heart—a little silver chain of about three inches long is attached to the center of the heart.
“What are you—” Fred starts, utterly flabbergasted.
Malice meanwhile, is staring at Martina’s other hand which is holding a sewing needle.
When Malice looks up to meet Martina’s eyes, Martina winks at her with a quirky grin. “Watch.”
Now she intones:
“No longer shall the two be apart!
