by S. D. Stuart
“How did he become the Oracle?”
“He gave the High Priestess information in exchange for his life. She sent us out on raiding parties to obtain the special equipment he requested. Equipment he used to show us what was happening all over OZ, in real time. It was the Oracle who showed us your locomotive being filled with explosives last week before departing the city in the south.”
Explosives? Those must’ve been the crates he saw men unloading from the locomotive. Of course. There was no way he could have laid down the track and positioned the locomotive in such a short time. Ellis had told him to think of the track as a gun with the locomotive as a bullet. The reason he used that example was because it was a bullet. An explosive bullet they had planned to use.
But use against who?
With the exception of the siege camp, the first thing they’d come across since leaving the city was here.
At the Southern Marshal’s insistence, Ellis had re-purposed his weapon originally designed for an attack on Center City.
He shook his head. “They removed the explosives to make room for us. It was no longer a weapon.”
“They didn’t remove enough. The bomb we hit the locomotive with could never have made an explosion that big. The best we could hope for was to knock it off course, away from the city. I could tell, from how you looked at what was left of your locomotive, you had no idea of its original purpose.”
She inserted a key into the lock and swung open the cell bars.
He searched her hands for a weapon that she might be hiding in the jumble of clothes held in her arms. “What are you doing?”
“I’m taking you to see the Oracle.”
She tossed the bundle of clothes at him. “Your friend needs to put these on.”
He inspected the clothes. It was a Banshee outfit. “Why does she have to wear this?”
“If we want to make it through the city without being stopped, she has to look like one of us; and you have to be her prisoner.”
“Prisoner?”
She held up a pair of rusted shackles. “The only men within the city walls are either prisoners, or slaves. Nothing will arouse suspicion faster than you freely walking around.”
Dorothy looked down at Toto lying on the ground.
“What about him?”
Tara shook her head.
“I’m sorry. It will arouse too much suspicion if we carry the robot dog around the city. We have to leave him behind.”
As they stepped out into the street, Dorothy tugged on the chain and the shackles bit into his wrists. He grunted in pain.
She flinched and dropped her end of the chain. “Sorry.”
Tara swiftly picked up the chain and placed it back into Dorothy’s hands. “No, that was good. The more he is mistreated, the less we will be noticed.”
Caleb looked around at the people walking through the streets of the city. He saw mostly women. A few men, probably servants of the extravagantly dressed women they hurried along behind, followed with their heads bowed and eyes cast to the ground.
He had expected to see everyone dressed as Banshees. But the only two dressed like that were Dorothy and Tara.
He immediately worried they would stand out before realizing that when someone noticed them, they immediately turned their head away. Apparently, Banshees were just as feared by the people they protected as they were by the people they attacked.
Tara moved forward, the other pedestrians making a column of empty sidewalk for her almost instinctively, since none of them pretended to notice her.
They followed her through the city while Dorothy tugged on the chain a little more forcefully. “Keep moving, prisoner.”
Caleb said through gritted teeth, “You’re enjoying this a little too much.”
He couldn’t tell whether or not she smiled behind her beak shaped mask, but her eyes housed the tiny sparkle of the Dorothy he once knew. They made their way quickly through the city, ignored by everyone they came across. Tara, always a few steps ahead, scouted around each corner before motioning for Dorothy and Caleb to follow.
Tara slowed down. “Just a few more blocks. We’re almost there.”
She looked both ways across a busy street and then motioned for them to follow. They were halfway across another of the multitude of intersections they had crossed in the expansive city when Tara rushed back, shoved them into a back alley, and ushered them behind piles of rotting vegetables. The stench of decay and decomposition assaulted his nose. Right about now, it would be nice if his body was still numb so he could not smell the rot around him.
Tara was oblivious to, or just plain ignored, the smell as she peered around the corner. He sidled up next to her and peeked around the corner.
Down the street, in the direction she was looking, he saw two Banshees standing guard at the threshold of a dilapidated wooden door that looked to be the street-side entrance to the moss-covered stone house.
Caleb let out an exasperated breath. “Let me guess. That’s the Oracle’s house.”
He and Tara exchanged a look and his shoulders drooped with the realization he was right.
She studied the two guards blocking their goal. “I didn’t think you’d be noticed missing from the dungeon so quickly.”
“What makes you think they know we’re missing already?”
“The High Priestess only orders guards for the Oracle when there’s trouble. I had to take us around the city in a non-direct route, or else we would have been discovered by now. Unfortunately, it also gave her time to put them in place.”
She stared for a few more seconds before she turned around and clapped her hands on her thighs. “Doesn’t matter. We have to get in there.”
She seemed to notice the smell for the first time as a sly smile spread across her lips. She bent down, scooping up handfuls of rotting garbage before she stood up again. She held her hands stretched out on either side like a scale, as if comparing the weight of the garbage in her two hands.
He did not like the look in her eyes as she took a step toward him.
He took a step back and pulled the chain tight, Dorothy still holding the other end.
“What are you planning to do with that garbage?”
Tara never took her eyes off his. “If we expect those guards to believe we brought you to clean the Oracle’s sewer, you have to smell the part.”
She smeared the garbage into his clothes and fur. Dorothy refused to do anything except hang on to her end of the chain. He didn’t want to pull her off balance, so he could do nothing more than stand there and let Tara smear him with garbage.
When she was done, she took a step back and admired her handiwork.
Caleb took short, halting breaths. His nose had not yet begun the process of ignoring the, now permanent, smell. “Was this absolutely necessary?”
“Yes. But you might have trouble making new friends for a while.”
Feeling confident in her new plan, she led them straight to the Oracle’s front door and stopped right in front of the other two Banshees. “Hey Leslie. Hey Melissa. Have you two met Cynthia yet? She’s my new apprentice.”
One of the guards stepped forward and blocked her with a hand. “What are you doing here, Tara?”
“It’s the monthly cleaning.”
Leslie pointed a finger at Caleb. “Who’s that?”
Caleb followed the behavior he’d seen from the other men in the city and kept his stare fixated on his feet. The hooded cloak Tara had given him covered the feline features of his face as long as his head remained lowered.
Tara turned and regarded Caleb as if it was the first time she had taken notice of him. “The regular cleaner is sick, so I grabbed a sewer rat for the job. If you’ll please let me by…”
Leslie stepped sideways and re-blocked Tara from entering the Oracle’s house. “I don’t know if you’ve heard, but the prisoners have escaped. The High Priestess thinks they might try to harm the Oracle.”
Tara let a surprised expression
wash over her face as she looked up and down the street. “Is it just the two of you?”
Leslie shrugged her shoulders. “Banshees are stationed at key points all around the city. They’ll be caught long before they make it here.”
Tara suddenly sounded agitated. “I was one of the five that captured them. They directly threatened the Oracle before we shocked them. You need to go immediately and bring more Banshees here.”
Leslie stood her ground. “The High Priestess personally ordered us to stand guard at the Oracle’s door. Why don’t you go?”
Tara leaned in, their faces coming within inches of each other. “Are you refusing the direct order of a superior?”
Leslie stammered her reply. “No ma’am.”
“Good. We will stand here with Melissa. Let’s pray, for your sake, the enemy doesn’t get here before you return with reinforcements.”
Leslie snapped to attention. “Yes ma’am!”
She ran off without looking back.
Tara watched her disappear around the corner before facing Melissa. “I’m sorry about this.”
Before Melissa could ask what Tara was sorry for, she grabbed Melissa with her left hand and hit her with an electrical charge from the gauntlet. Melissa was unconscious before she hit the ground.
Tara pushed open the front door to the Oracle’s house and dragged the unconscious Banshee inside. Caleb and Dorothy rushed in after her. Tara looked up and down the street to verify nobody had seen what happened before closing the door.
She unlocked the manacles from Caleb’s wrists.
“You don’t have much time. Leslie is a good soldier and I just lit a fire under her. We’ve got, maybe, two minutes before she’s back with more Banshees. You don’t want to be here when that happens.”
He glanced around the room. The house was nothing more than a single great room sparsely populated with furniture, only one door, the one they had come in through, and nobody else in the room but them. It looked lived in, but something looked off about the room. He couldn’t place his finger on it, though. Something was wrong with the room, but he couldn’t figure out what.
A fire burned in the fireplace and steam rose from a bowl of half eaten soup on the table. It looked like somebody had just left. But they had come in the only door, and certainly hadn’t passed anyone going out on their way in. Somebody had recently placed that soup there. And then miraculously disappeared. Whoever was about to sit down for lunch had been interrupted by their entry, but had inexplicably disappeared.
That’s what was missing from the room!
He looked around at the few pieces of furniture. They were all tables and shelves. There were no chairs anywhere. Why were there no chairs?
Tara propped the unconscious Melissa against a wall and hurried over to the fireplace. She waved frantically into the gaping maw of the fireplace. “Go through, the Oracle’s waiting for you on the other side.”
Caleb felt the heat from the fire all the way across the room. Even if he tried to run through it, his fur would ignite in an instant. Maybe their escape had been a ruse this whole time. He knew nothing about the woman who had helped them. This could all be part of some elaborate plan to kill them as escaped prisoners on the run.
They were being given a choice. Stay here and be captured, and most likely killed, or burn to death in the oversized fireplace. Either choice had the same outcome. Death.
Dorothy had been following obediently without complaint since they left the dungeon. She stopped in the middle of the room and pointed at the roaring fire.
“You want us to go in there?”
Tara glanced into the fireplace. “Oops.”
She grabbed a crudely shaped candlestick off the mantel and pushed it into a gap between the stones at the base of the mantel shelf. It fit the gap perfectly. The flames receded and went out. The scraping of stone on stone revealed a door opening in the back of the fireplace.
Tara turned to them with a smile. “Sorry about that. Is this better?”
He grabbed Dorothy to keep her from running into the fireplace. He scanned the eyes of the Banshee, looking for a reason why she would betray her own people. “Why are you helping us?”
“The Oracle told me the truth about OZ.”
“What truth?”
There was a bang on the front door followed by shouting and more banging. The door was old. It wouldn’t stand up much longer to the abuse from outside. Tara tore her gaze from the splintering door and pleaded with him. “The Oracle will explain everything. You have to go now.”
He and Dorothy rushed through the fireplace and into the darkened passageway that led down and away from the house. He took two steps before he realized it was still only he and Dorothy in the passageway. He turned back and poked his head through the opening.
“Aren’t you coming with us?”
“No. I have to slow them down so you can escape.”
“What are you going to do?”
She yanked the candlestick from the hole and the stone door started to slide closed. “Whatever it takes.”
As if by magic, the flames reignited moments before the secret passageway sealed itself off from the rest of the house. With a loud clank, they were plunged into darkness.
His eyes adjusted as best they could, but there was no light in the passageway. He bumped his head several times before remembering that the passage had a low ceiling. He crouched as he made his way carefully down the gently sloping tunnel. In the pitch black tunnel, he didn’t want to step off into empty air and find himself tumbling down a flight of stairs, so he tested the ground in front of him lightly as they moved forward slowly.
Dorothy’s whisper broke the silence. “Caleb?”
“Yes. I’m here.”
“You knew me before my memory was wiped, right?”
“Yes.”
“Was I as afraid of the dark then as I am now?”
He groped back into the blackness. “Here. Hold my hand.”
He heard the faint rustle of her Banshee suit before her hand brushed his, and she clamped on tight.
In the dark it was hard to tell, but he had been counting each step silently as they made their way through the tunnel. He guessed they had traveled just under a hundred feet without a single turn or any stairs. Just how long was this tunnel?
His foot probed forward and bumped into something. Had he finally reached some stairs heading upward?
He felt forward with this hand and came up against a wall.
He felt around him on both sides and in front. There were no passageways leading off in another direction. The only direction without a wall was the way they had just come.
They were at a dead end with nowhere to go. They certainly couldn’t go back to where the Banshees would be waiting for them. At least not right away.
They could sit and wait for a while before making their way back up the tunnel. If they waited long enough, maybe the Banshees would leave the empty house and they could get away.
Dorothy was dressed like a Banshee. She could easily sneak past them on her own. And then what?
That wouldn’t work. They had to stay together. But they couldn’t stay here at the end of this tunnel forever. The Directors were still coming and he had to get the weapon before they did. He didn’t have time to wait around in the dark for something to happen.
He had to make something happen. And he had to make it happen soon.
Who would build a secret passageway that didn’t go anywhere? There must be something that opened a door at this end. He just had to find it.
He let go of Dorothy’s hand and she let out a small yelp.
“I’m right here, Dorothy. Help me feel around the walls for something that might open the door. A lever or a push plate or something.”
Together they felt and pushed on the stones that made up the walls, bumping into each other on occasion.
Dorothy’s voice echoed softly in the low tunnel. “I think I found something.”
A
clunk sounded in the distance and the sound of rocks grinding against each other was followed by a faint light illuminating the tunnel from the newly created opening.
“Good work Dorothy.”
He grabbed her hand and they slipped through the widening door before the grinding sound even stopped. Who knows how long it would remain open, and he didn’t want it to start closing on them before they made it all the way through.
A few seconds after the doorway stopped grinding, it started closing again. It stayed open long enough for someone to get through and then automatically closed again.
The ceiling was higher in this new room, but Caleb still had to stoop slightly. The light in the room emanated from flashing monitors, the same type the Southern Marshal used to see what the Totos saw. The views on these screens were of the same low angled shots of various places in OZ. Whoever used this room was able to keep an eye on the world outside, just like the Southern Marshal did. He looked around the room and saw plenty of tables and shelves surrounding the wall of monitors, but no chairs.
“Dorothy?”
The voice came from the other side of the room and Caleb crouched in a defensive position, ready for anything.
Ready for anything, except what happened next.
A man in a wheelchair rolled out from behind the monitoring station. That would explain the lack of chairs.
The man’s eyes lit up. “It is you!”
Dorothy and Caleb exchanged a look. She shook her head. He looked back at the man in the wheelchair.
“Her memory has been wiped, she doesn’t remember you.”
The man wheeled forward quickly, forcing them to take a step back before he ran over their toes. “Dorothy. It’s me. William. William Sipes.”
She struggled as she tried to access memories that were either deeply buried or gone. “I’m sorry. I don’t remember anything.”
He looked up at her, pleading. “You have to remember me!”
Caleb stepped in front of her. “The Southern Marshal gave her the scarecrow treatment. Everything’s been erased. But we don’t have time for that right now. We have to find someone called the Oracle.”
