And then, without warning and for no apparent reason, Caitlin’s courage and daring flowed away as quickly as if someone had siphoned it out of her.
Her hands turned clammy. Her body shivered like a caffeinated Chihuahua’s, even though the air wasn’t cold.
An unexplainable glut of anxiety seized her in the chest. Irrational panic grew in her throat, causing it to constrict. Her body quivered in petrified fear of nothing she could see or hear or explain. The intensity of her illogical fright bordered on imminent hysteria.
“Behold! Guess who’s nearby?” Glinda said. She appeared calm, but her voice fluttered and her hands shook.
“Scarecrow?”
“Well done. You’ll get used to the shivering. Just don’t react to it. It’s not coming from inside you. The scentless pheromones that come off Scarecrow are putting it there. If you react and accept the fear as your own, it’ll awaken real fear inside you. Then it will grow like a worthless weed.”
Before Caitlin could fully process what Glinda had just told her, her eyes found him.
Just up ahead. Standing square in the middle of the yellow brick road.
The Scarecrow.
The last time she had seen him was at the Queen of Hearts’s castle during the masquerade ball, but it had been hot, crowded, and steamy. She had never really gotten a good look at him. Now she did.
Tall and broad-shouldered, Scarecrow was garbed in gunny cloth and denim, overstuffed with straw, and fastened together with thick, twisted rope.
Be brave.
As she approached, she saw that his cloth-skinned face was bleached pale and his cheeks were sunken like a dead man’s corpse and menacingly shadowed. His eye sockets were as black as jet, except for a blade-thin, ghostly red glimmer that lit his eyes. His face was held together by zipperlike stitches that crossed his lips, cut into his cheekbone, and crept diagonally down his chin.
Two long and narrow sticks of rotting timber ran horizontally across his shoulder blades, broadening his physique. A battered burlap hat tipped downward over his brow. He was utterly mean and nasty-looking.
I said, be brave.
Scarecrow fixed his glimmering ruby gaze on Caitlin.
“Listen carefully,” he hissed, wasting no time on introductions or small talk. His inhuman voice sounded like a saw blade cutting steel. “These crowmen lack a moral compass. They maim without conscience, murder without pity.” His razor-thin pupils pulsed, blood red, to the cadence of his voice. “Compassion, mercy, penitence, atonement—alien concepts to these mutants.”
Caitlin’s knees involuntarily knocked together like swinging coconuts. She couldn’t help it.
No wonder this dude scares the crows.
His vocabulary reminded Caitlin of Natalie. She wondered which of them had the bigger brain.
Scarecrow slid the rope fastened around his left wrist farther up his forearm, which tightened the long cuffs of his canvas glove. “There are seven crowmen who walk upright—full-bodied, like yourself.” He slid the rope up on his right forearm, tightening the other glove. “The rest of the crows form regular flocks and fly. They’re in constant telepathic contact with the seven, however. Specifically with their leader, the one called Janus.” Scarecrow’s scarred mouth grew tight. “There is no darker, soulless creature than
Janus.” His eyes narrowed. “Except for the Enchanter. He created Janus.”
The sound of his words scraped her eardrums like sandpaper.
“How does all of this connect to Natalie?” Caitlin asked.
“Eos.”
Her brows curled like question marks.
“Eos is a future kingdom,” Glinda revealed. “An imminent world still in the making, still embryonic, but soon coming. It will be a world of ceaseless sunlight—a realm of perpetual regeneration and existence. A kingdom that will never know night or death, because the shine of seven new orbiting moons will equal the luminosity of its sun.”
Glinda’s spoken words were not just vapors or sound waves. Caitlin actually tasted the flavor and quality of each word when Glinda’s voice touched her eardrums as she spoke of Eos. Her flesh tingled with each lofty syllable. Each letter was like a savory ingredient in a recipe for some kind of intoxicating, utopian kingdom.
“The stories destined to emerge in that world are so glorious, so enchanting and dream-worthy, the words to describe the ineffable joyance they will produce have not been formed yet.”
Scarecrow interjected, his face hardening.
“The Enchanter plots to infect this new universe; change its destiny. Like mutating the seed of a great tree to make all its branches and fruits sickly and diseased. His plan is to birth a defective new kingdom. A realm of unnatural darkness, which will give rise to other kingdoms bearing dark moons, dark suns, and dark hearts.”
“What has this got to do with me?”
“Nothing,” he said.
Caitlin flinched.
“It has to do with Natalie.”
“Why?”
“I’m unable to answer why questions.”
“Huh? Why not?”
Scarecrow remained silent. Caitlin realized that was another why question.
Glinda gestured with an open palm to the straw man. “The vial.”
He reached into an inside pocket and retrieved a large glass vial sealed with a cork stopper. The vial was filled with a glistening, pearly-silver fluid.
“Scarecrow only answers questions dealing with how, what, when, where, and who,” Glinda said.
Caitlin threw up her hands. “But I need to know why this involves Natalie. Who can answer the why questions?”
Scarecrow spoke: “The wisest in Oz.”
Caitlin pointed at him. “But that’s you—the smart one with the big brain.”
Scarecrow waved a gloved finger. “And I’m smart enough to know a simple truth: information resides in the brain, but true wisdom lives in the heart. The brain can only tell you how. Only the heart can tell you why.”
Caitlin instinctively pressed her palm against the left side of her chest and said, “The Tin Woodman?”
“Kudos,” Glinda said. Scarecrow nodded.
“Then let’s go find him,” Caitlin said.
Scarecrow held up the vial of silver fluid.
“We’re all decaying,” Glinda responded. “Decomposing because of the affliction. However, tin doesn’t rust. But it does melt.”
Caitlin’s eyes brightened like the blush of dawn. “You mean . . . that’s him? Inside the bottle? Like, a liquefied zombie?”
Glinda grinned. Scarecrow’s red-slit eyes pulsed.
Glinda pointed to the worn, weathered yellow brick road that still lay ahead. “You may ask questions along the way.”
Just when Caitlin thought this world couldn’t get any weirder, it had. Thankfully, she was fixated on finding Natalie and didn’t have the energy to contemplate the inherent strangeness of her situation.
And with that, Caitlin and her two cohorts began their journey down the jagged amber road that turned, twisted, and led far off into the distant horizon.
* * *
The figure with the large duffel bag detoured to Treasure Island via Zeno’s Forest. He took the portal to the Samoan island and Mount Vaea, where Robert Louis Stephenson lay buried. He began digging up that burial ground area, too, and loading up his duffel bag some more.
Once full, he went back through the portal to Treasure Island and began tracking his target—the firstborn Caitlin Fletcher.
CHAPTER Fifteen
“Does the liquid talk?” Caitlin asked as they walked briskly down the brick road. “I mean, how do I address questions to a test tube of melted tin?”
Scarecrow turned to Glinda. She nodded and winked.
Scarecrow popped the cork stopper from the spout of the vial. He strode over to the cent
er of the road and poured out the contents.
Hot tin liquid pooled on the bricks like fluid quicksilver. Then it began to congeal, thicken, and amplify in volume. From the gelatinous, expanding goop, the form of a body began to rise up. It solidified rapidly into a highly polished Tin Woodman whose eyes were nickel silver and flecked with red.
“You may ask the why questions to Tin Man,” Glinda said to Caitlin.
Except she couldn’t at that particular moment. She was staring, wordless, and squinting her eyes in response to the way the light glinted off the man made of tin.
It took a moment for her to regain the power of speech. And when she did, she spoke in a voice filled with awe. “So very nice to meet you.”
Tin Man bowed his head graciously.
“Please, can you tell me why Natalie is connected to Eos?”
“The Lord of the Curtain has chosen her,” Tin Man said. “If they should meet physically in person, she won’t stand a chance. She’ll succumb to the red-band path of light. When you’re that close to the Enchanter, his power is overwhelming. Your presence in this realm protects your sister. This is what has prevented a physical encounter thus far. But Natalie may willingly choose to meet him, of course.”
She’d never do such a thing!
“How did the Enchanter get so powerful?” Caitlin asked.
The man of straw responded to this how question. He nudged the brim of his burlap hat upward with a finger. “A sunlit room grows dark when you close the curtain. But the sun still shines. The presence of the curtain simply manufactures a new dimension of palpable darkness.”
Amethyst, the green-tea-drinking caterpillar/butterfly, had said something similar to Caitlin.
She remembered and nodded. “I think I understand. But what’s your point, straw man?”
“There’s a curtain that hides a great truth.”
Hmmm. Like the curtain that hid the “great and powerful” Wizard?
“What truth?” she asked.
“Happily ever after.”
“Not following you.”
Glinda pointed to the horizon. “Speak as we walk. The crowmen are advancing.”
Caitlin picked up her step as Scarecrow continued. “Happiness is the only reality. The singular truth. But the Lord of the Curtain has cloaked it. The Enchanter managed to conceal a world ablaze in light simply by hanging up a curtain and creating a dimension of darkness on the other side. Within this darkness all misery is born. Happily ever after gives way to woe ever more. Only because we walk on the dark side of the curtain.”
Caitlin was lapping up the answers like a thirsty puppy, but answers led to more questions.
“But I don’t see any curtains. Where are they?”
Scarecrow’s eyes pulsed as his brows sharpened. He pointed to his head.
In the mind?
“He’s so powerful that he can do that?” Caitlin said.
A bloodcurdling shriek from Janus and the crowmen reverberated far off in the distance.
Grave concern crossed Glinda’s face. The Sorcerer of the South said, “The Enchanter has no self-generating power. None at all. The only strength our nemesis acquires is what we hand over. We give the Enchanter our own sparks from the violet band. That’s how this nefarious being sustains existence and wields power over us. “
“Oh my gosh—we give him the power? How?”
Glinda signaled to the straw man with the big brain. “Pay attention,” he said. “The Enchanter conjures up illusions around you, illusions born of the darkness that he fabricates. This is done for one purpose: to trigger a robotic, reflexive, reactionary response from you.”
“That’s a lot of R words. Perhaps be a tad more specific?”
“You become a slave.”
“To whom?”
“To everything in front of you. Everything around you. Everything you see and hear. You respond obediently each time the Enchanter stimulates a rash response arising from the red band. And that’s when it happens.”
“What?”
“Each reaction transfers a spark from your Violet Spectrum to the Lord of the Curtain. All those twinkles, shimmers, and waves of violet become the very life force and power of the Enchanter. And he stockpiles it. Like a backup generator.”
“So my fear feeds him?”
“Like flesh to a shark.”
“My anger?”
“Blood to a bat.”
“Jealousy?”
“Dung to a beetle.”
“Gross! But I get it.”
Caitlin had a hunch. “I haven’t seen Jack Spriggins, Rapunzel, Snow White, Alice, or any of the others since last year.”
Glinda, Scarecrow, and Tin Man smiled slyly as Caitlin continued. “Then I had a dream about Jack. In it, I hadn’t seen him in ten years. But he told me he had been near me all along. I thought maybe the Enchanter had altered my glasses. But it wasn’t my glasses, was it?”
Scarecrow nodded. “No.”
“How did he get inside my head?”
“You opened the door.”
“How?”
“When your blog went viral. You invited the Enchanter to draw a curtain over your mind. Which made you see the opposite of light.”
She shook her head. “I let the popularity go to my head?”
Scarecrow nodded.
“Vanity?”
He nodded again.
“Arrogance?”
Nod.
“Pride?”
Nod.
“Ego?”
Instead of giving a nod after this last word, Scarecrow smiled wistfully and waved a finger. “The human ego—the ultimate spark. The very root of the Red Spectrum.”
How freaking depressing.
“But I’m not an egomaniac.”
“The phenomenon called ego is not what you presume. The Red Spectrum also incorporates diametrically opposed, inverse explications of all those other egocentric emotions.”
“You lost me at also.”
“Ego includes the flip sides of all those traits.”
“I thought ego meant that I think I’m, like, totally wonderful.”
Scarecrow shook his head “The Enchanter is far more clever than that. The Red Spectrum is only about triggering a reactive emotion. And the ego refers to all possible reflexes. Shall I elucidate?”
“Please do.”
“The ego is the dominating voice in our head that says, ‘I can do no wrong.’ But the ego also says, ‘I can’t do anything right.’ The red band triggers emotions that convince us to think ‘I’m the absolute best there is.’ But it also makes us tell ourselves, ‘I’m the worst there ever was.’ It will conjure thoughts that declare ‘I can never lose,’ and then the inverse notion: ‘I can never win.’ Feeling that we are unstoppable winners or inevitable losers are both red-band reactions—opposite emotions with one single common denominator—a reaction! That’s how the Lord of the Curtain traps us. And with each reaction, the ego expands. And as the ego expands, the curtain thickens and illusion grows more powerful. Without a will to resist this onslaught of reactive emotions, true reality gradually recedes behind an ever-thickening curtain. The Enchanter’s power and control magnifies. Welcome, therefore, to the world of ghouls and zombies.”
Tin Man chimed in, “And that’s why you could no longer perceive the beings that dwell in other kingdoms.”
Natalie was right—it was my narcissism.
Caitlin’s heart suddenly ached for her sister.
“Wait a minute! Then why can I see you now? And why was I able to see Glinda at Forest Lawn?”
“Pain,” Tin Man replied. “Pain’s ultimate purpose is to draw back layers of curtain.”
“What pain?”
Tin Man’s silver head tilted to indicate disbelief, as if Caitlin should be abl
e to figure that one out on her own.
She did. The devastating loss of her dad. The anguish she had experienced when she thought she was losing her mind at the orphanage. The shame she had felt when her reputation was ruined. And, worst of all, the abduction of Natalie, for which she felt totally responsible.
With that much chaos clobbering you, that much tragedy wounding you, there’s no room for the ego to shine.
A wooden signpost caught her attention. Carved into the wood was a single direction: West.
A nervous flutter arose in Caitlin’s chest. She dropped the last thread of conversation as she picked at a fingernail.
“Um . . . I see we’re now walking westward,” she noted to Scarecrow.
He grinned and replied in his staccato, saw-blade voice, “We are.”
The yellow brick road had come to an unexpected end. At the outer edge lay a vast and dying field.
Caitlin loosened her collar. The widespread, parched grasses were dotted with decomposing daisies and decaying poppies. Caitlin’s mouth went dry.
“I thought we were going to the Emerald City?” she asked Scarecrow.
“Detour.”
“Doesn’t a certain one-eyed, wicked witch live in the West?”
Glinda suddenly issued a firm command.
“Seize her!”
Tin Man snatched Caitlin’s left hand.
What the—!
Scarecrow snagged her right.
The sky darkened.
Caitlin glanced up.
Endless flocks of blood-eyed black crows were sheathing the sky.
With her free hand, Glinda plucked a shiny object out of her left eye.
Oh my gosh!
Then she popped another object out of her right eye.
Contact lenses!
Glinda swiveled her head toward Caitlin. Her naked eyeballs glistened like fresh blood.
Oh my—!
Scarecrow and Tin Man tightened their grip. Caitlin locked her knees. Stiffened her legs. She flailed her arms to wrench free. Not a chance. Scarecrow and Tin Man were too strong.
“Move on,” Glinda commanded.
Scarecrow and Tin Man began hauling Caitlin forward.
“Where you taking me?” she screamed at Scarecrow.
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