The Wicked Will Rise

by Danielle Paige

  “Maybe we can climb it,” Nox said thoughtfully. “I never was so great with horticulture spells but . . .”

  He moved his fingers over the earth and a pair of thick, green vines sprouted up from out of it, quickly crawling up the sides of the wall.

  I shuddered, remembering rope climbing in gym class, and how I’d never been able to even make it halfway. I wasn’t sure I wanted to test my improvement on a day like today.

  I didn’t need to worry about it. When Nox tugged at the newly created vines to test their strength, they wilted instantly under his touch.

  “Damn,” he said. “No surprise, though.”

  I just stood there, trying to think of what to do. Maybe we should just turn around and head off somewhere else.

  I was so exhausted. Rest. That was what I wanted. Somewhere to rest.

  Not rest like sleep though. I could have used that, too, of course, but what I really wanted was rest as in, like, a break from always having to be on alert, never knowing what was coming next, a break from watching people die and not being able to do anything to stop it.

  A break from being the one who had to kill them.

  More than anything, I wanted this to be someone else’s responsibility.

  I let out a scream of pure frustration and slammed my fist against the wall. When that felt good, I did it again.

  That was when I felt something inside of me snap. I kept on screaming and punching, and screaming and punching. It felt good, in a weird way. This was everything I wanted to do to Dorothy, and Glinda. To Mombi and Glamora, for getting me into this. To Pete, for selling us out. To the Wizard, for just being the Wizard. Screw it—to everyone.

  This is what I’d always wanted to do to all the people who had ever underestimated me, to everyone who had ever picked on me, or cast me aside. Just hit them. I hadn’t even gotten to hit Madison, but I’d been suspended for it anyway.

  So I kept on whaling on it, not caring that my knuckles were bleeding, or that I knew it was all completely pointless. Actually, there was something about the pain, and the pointlessness, that was exhilarating.

  “Amy!” Nox said, sounding shocked at what I was doing. I ignored him. I didn’t care.

  I was so caught up in my fury that I didn’t notice that, as I kept on punching, the pain became less and less apparent. I didn’t notice that, with every blow I took at the wall, I was getting bigger. Stronger. Or that, as I punched, the blood pouring out of my fists was seeping into the bricks, and that, one by one, they were turning black.

  But then I realized my punches weren’t just bouncing off it anymore. As I hammered blindly away, small pieces of rock began to fly. I don’t know how long I kept going, but whether it was five minutes or an hour, or a day, the whole wall had turned black, infected with the dark magic I could no longer control.

  When I gave another scream—a scream so loud that the wall actually shook just from the sound of it, a thin, golden fissure appeared, spidering across the wall’s surface, and when I punched it again, there was a sound loud as thunder as that crack split wide open, and bricks came tumbling down around me like dominoes, first just a few and then hundreds and thousands. The wall crumbled around me.

  I had torn it down. The whole damn thing was obsidian dust in my hands, and I was kneeling on top of it.

  Still, I didn’t stop. Even when it was all gone, I kept slamming my fists into the dirt. I felt more powerful than ever, like I had taken its magic for my own, and I liked it.

  “Amy,” I heard Nox saying. I ignored him until I felt his touch on my shoulder, and then I turned around to face him, and I growled.

  Growled. Like an animal.

  “Amy,” Nox said. “It’s okay.”

  He knelt down next to me, wrapped his arm around my shoulder, and pulled me into his chest. I was still shaking, and I nestled into his body, which suddenly felt very small.

  “It’s just too much,” I said. I felt like I would cry at any second. I wanted to cry, and at the same time, I couldn’t. I was in a place past crying.

  “I know,” Nox said. “I know. But it will be over soon. It has to be.”

  I began to melt into him. There in his arms, I felt so secure—for the first time in maybe my whole life—that if I could have, I would have let myself become part of him. Just so I could feel that safe forever.

  But then I looked into his eyes, and I saw how haunted they were, and suddenly I realized that he was afraid of me. At first, I thought it was only because of what he had just seen me do, but then, I caught a glimpse of myself—just a glinting image reflected in his pale gray irises—and I realized that it wasn’t what I had done that had frightened him.

  It was what I had become.

  Startled, I wrenched myself from his grip and stared down at my own body.

  Was this really me? My hands, my arms, and even my legs—all of me—were rippling with muscle and bulging veins, and were covered with a fine dusting of something like fur, a deep emerald green and the texture of velvet. Each of my fingers was tipped with a blood-red, razor-sharp claw.

  Beginning to panic, I pressed an open palm to my forehead, hoping that what I had just seen had only been my imagination. It wasn’t. At my temples, just below my hairline, two hard, curling nubs protruded. They weren’t big, but they were there.

  I had grown horns.

  “Amy,” Nox repeated. I jumped to my feet, but he grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me back toward him. I was so ashamed of myself that I just wanted to run away. And I could have. I was so much stronger than him now, and bigger, too—his body had seemed small because he was small now, at least compared to me. Because as I had been tearing down the road of yellow bricks, I had grown into something new. Something huge and terrifying. The very thing I had been afraid of turning into.

  I had become a monster.

  I didn’t want Nox to see me like this, and still, I stopped myself from pulling away from him and hiding. I didn’t want to hurt him by accident either. I didn’t know my own strength. So I let him hold me.

  “I didn’t mean to . . .”

  “I know,” he said. “I know.”

  We stayed like that for a long time, me shaking in his arms while he held me and told me everything was going to be okay. As he said it over and over again, I felt myself calming down, and the thing that was inhabiting me began to slip away, leaving my body.

  The most messed-up part is that I wanted to hold on to it. I didn’t want it to go. But I forced myself to relinquish it, and soon I felt my horns shrinking away, my claws pull back into my fingers, and my skin return to normal. I was myself again.

  “What happened?” I asked when I finally felt able to really speak.

  “You got carried away,” he said. “It was the magic. You let it take over. That wasn’t you.”

  I wanted to believe him, but I wasn’t sure that I did. What if it was me?

  Then I let my gaze move past him, and all my thoughts of myself stopped as I realized where we were. In my temporary insanity, I had lost track of what I had been doing; I had forgotten why I had wanted to get through the wall in the first place. Now I turned and saw what it had been protecting.

  We were sitting on the edge of the Emerald City. Or, I guess, what used to be the Emerald City. It was hard to say if you could still call it that—because it was different now.

  It looked like it had been hit by a nuclear bomb. The once glittering, bustling thoroughfare was now empty, piled with trash and debris. The buildings that hadn’t been destroyed were empty shells, with charred facades and shattered windows. The lavish, stately gardens that Dorothy had spent her time lounging in had been mostly destroyed, the fountains shattered, the flowers dead and covered over with vines.

  But all over the place, when you looked a little more closely, traces of the city’s former grandeur remained. Amidst all the wreckage, the streets had a sheen that I realized was coming from millions of scattered jewels—emeralds, obviously, but diamonds and rubies and amet
hysts, too. Here and there, pools of gold melted and then hardened again, like puddles lingering after a thunderstorm.

  At the center of it all, the Emerald Palace rose up, its majestic towers replaced by a dense tangle of twisting, almost tentacle-like spires that stretched so high into the sky that the tops of them were obscured by a cover of dark clouds. The whole structure was covered in grime and dust and a thick forest of ivy, but at the same time, there was something about it that took my breath away. In the still silence of everything, it looked less like a palace now and more like a cathedral; like a monument to some ancient, long-forgotten god.

  As I stared up at it, something jogged my memory, and I remembered something I was pretty sure I’d heard someone say. One of the monkeys on Queen Lulu’s council.

  For one thing, it seems to be growing.

  At the time, I’d had no idea what that had meant. It had seemed so strange that I’d pretty much ignored it when I’d heard it. Now I understood.

  It was true. Somehow, the palace was bigger than when I’d left it. Much bigger. Maybe it was still growing: when I stared at it long enough, I realized it seemed to be moving, like it was a living thing. It seemed to be breathing.

  But before I could ask Nox what he thought had happened, I saw a movement out of the corner of my eye, and then from out of every crevice and alleyway and window, from the sewer grates and the gutters and out from behind every building, an army of monkeys emerged, coming toward us. Leading the way was Queen Lulu, who was dressed in army fatigues and carrying a small, silver pistol.

  “Amy,” Lulu said. “We’ve been waiting for you. And I’ll tell you one thing. You sure know how to make an entrance.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “You were right,” Lulu told me as she approached. The rest of her monkey guard was hanging back, watching silently. “You told me we couldn’t just sit up there in the trees, waiting for bad things to come to us. We’d been ignoring the rest of Oz for too long—and now look what happened. When I heard there was trouble afoot in the city, this seemed like the best place to come. I had a feeling you’d turn up sooner or later. I guess you chose later.”

  “What happened to Mombi?” Nox cut in. “Is she here, too?”

  “Nope,” Lulu said. “She disappeared from her quarters last night. Don’t know where she got herself to, but there’s no time to worry about that.”

  “What happened to the city?” I asked. “Where is everyone?”

  Lulu let out a cackle. “Everyone? Everyone left, I figure. Or at least, everyone who hadn’t left when you and yours attacked the place. With Dorothy gone, and the city ruined, wasn’t much reason to stick around. And it’s not safe here. Doesn’t feel right. There’s something going on in the palace—something rottener than week-old herring.”

  “I can see that,” I said.

  “I don’t know what it’s all about, but I’ve sent in three separate patrols to check it out. Last I’ve seen any of them. But we have seen a few signs of life.”

  My ears perked up. “Who?” I asked. “Who’s been through here?”

  “Dorothy and Glinda passed through a few hours ago—zipped right over the top of the yellow brick wall in a pink soap bubble. Not quite as impressive as blowing the whole thing to smithereens of course.”

  My stomach dropped as I looked around for signs of them. “Where did they go?” I asked. “We have to find them. Now.”

  Lulu bared her teeth and narrowed her eyes. “Honey, don’t I know it,” she said. “But we monkeys haven’t just been sitting around on our heinies. The sorceress has been . . . dealt with. For now.” She gave an oblique glance toward her pistol. “Dorothy got away. Took Ozma with her and headed straight for her old haunt. The palace.”

  “Did she say what she wanted?” I asked.

  “What, you think we were making small talk? If you want to know what she’s up to, you’d better find out for yourself. You have a job to do, sweetheart. My people and I will protect the city. You’d better hop to.”

  I clenched my jaw, with no idea where all this was heading.

  “It’s that way,” Lulu said, stating the obvious as she pointed toward it. “Wish I had more time to catch up, but if you want my opinion, time’s already wasting. Good luck.”

  I looked at Nox, who nodded back at me. The crowd of monkeys parted to let us pass, and we began to move on our way.

  “If I were you, I’d head for the maze!” Lulu shouted after us. We were already gone.

  “Now, I ask you,” Nox said. “What the hell is going on?”

  I was pretty sure the question was rhetorical. Even if it wasn’t, I didn’t know the answer. All I knew was that something had brought us here, and that whatever was going on, the palace was at the center of it.

  As we rushed through the abandoned city streets, the feeling of dread that was emanating from the center became more and more palpable. When I looked over at Nox, he looked almost sick.

  “There’s something evil in there,” he said. “I can feel it.” He didn’t say it aloud, but he was staggering a little, slowing down, and I could tell that he was fighting with everything he had just to keep going. “It’s like it wants me to turn back,” he said.

  I could feel it, too. And I could tell that it was evil. But instead of repelling me, that same feeling was pulling me closer, like there was a party going on somewhere nearby, and I was following the music. Like someone was cooking a delicious roast and I was a starving woman following the scent.

  I didn’t mention that.

  Nox put his head down and kept on moving.

  Soon, we were there, and I saw exactly how grotesque the palace had become. It was covered in a slimy, filthy moss, and in place of the ornate, golden doors that had once served as the entrance, there was a kind of horrible sculpture: a gigantic, monstrous creature in bas-relief. Itlooked kind of like an octopus, but with more arms, and with a nasty, crowded mouthful of sharp, gritted teeth.

  “What the hell is that?” Nox asked in disbelief.

  I didn’t answer, because I had just noticed something even more disturbing.

  Lying on the steps like a broken, discarded rag doll, his arms and legs splayed out in every direction, was the Scarecrow. His head was hanging limply, lolling off to the side. He didn’t look like himself.

  “Shit,” I said. “It’s showtime.”

  I summoned my knife, hoping to make this a fast fight, and screamed in horror at what appeared in its place: somehow, from out of nowhere, a black, hissing snake was writhing in my grip. Before I could drop it, it had wrapped itself around my arm, where it pulled its head back and unhinged its jaw, ready to strike me.

  Without thinking, I sent it away, the same reflexive way I had learned how to do when I didn’t need my weapon anymore.

  Nox was staring at me, his mouth wide open.

  But I found that I wasn’t exactly surprised by what had just happened. “It’s this place,” I said. “The evil in here. It’s screwing with everything.”

  We didn’t have the luxury to puzzle through it any more than that, because the Scarecrow was now moving. He sat up and looked at me with his painted-on little eyes and gave a weak grimace.

  “Hello there,” he said, without any of the sinister menace I was used to from him. Instead, he sounded like someone’s weird, only slightly creepy uncle. “Do I know you?”

  I saw immediately that there was something wrong with him, but it took a moment longer to actually see what it was. Then it dawned on me: his head looked misshapen and oddly deflated. Like there was something missing from it.

  I was pretty sure I knew what that something was.

  Without my knife to rely on, I felt a little bit unprepared, but I had other weapons to work with. At least, I thought I did. But when I tried to fire off a flame dart at him, all that came out of my fingers was a puff of noxious, green smoke that smelled like rotten eggs, and I realized with a sinking feeling that I wasn’t going to be able to rely on my magic at all.


  Luckily, for now at least, it didn’t seem that the Scarecrow would be much of a threat. As I ran up the stairs toward him, he made no move to attack me or even get out of the way. Instead, he was just muttering something to himself. A spell, I wondered, reminding myself to keep my wits about me.

  No, I realized as I got close enough to hear. It wasn’t a spell at all.

  “And so the imp says to the toadstool . . . ,” he was saying. “No, wait. Let me start that again. Two young harlots and a fish walk into a . . .”

  When he saw me racing for him, he looked up at me again, as if he was seeing me for the first time. “Did I already tell you this one?” he asked. His eyes rolled back, and his canvas head dropped to the side, where it flopped at his shoulder.

  “I used to be very clever, you know! Everyone said so. I was even king, after a fashion. Now look at me.” With that, his painted-on face collapsed in a mask of grief and he began to weep silently to himself.

  “Who?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

  “Dorothy,” he said. “My dear old friend Dorothy. How could she?”

  It was pathetic to see him—the cruelest and most terrifying of Dorothy’s companions—in such a state. But I didn’t feel sorry for him. How could I?

  I grabbed him around the throat and picked him up, squeezing tight. His cross-stitched mouth let out a gurgling sound as he gulped for air. I squeezed harder, and then harder as he let out a gurgling noise. He flailed his stuffed arms, but didn’t really resist. If anything, he looked relieved.

  Then, finally, his eyes popped open and he gave a final, high-pitched whimper as his stuffed body went completely limp.

  However much he had been alive in the first place was a mystery and probably always would be. But whatever it was, that life was gone. I had killed him.

  Before I tossed him aside, I grabbed at the loose fabric of his scalp, and yanked his head clean off.