To test his growing intellect, he’d memorized every Munchkin’s name and face and a few of their attributes.
Hibiscus Lemon didn’t smile but her tears stopped falling. That was something. He squeezed her tiny hand gently, and she leaned against him. She weighed less than nothing, but he could feel the weight of all that was lost back at the palace all over again.
“This Jinjur person is getting more awful by the second,” the Scarecrow said quietly to the Lion over her little green-haired head.
“It’s certainly unprecedented,” the Lion agreed. “Perhaps Jinjur saw you as vulnerable.”
“Me? Vulnerable?” the Scarecrow sputtered. “Of course I needed to get a feel for things still, but I was certainly learning how to do an excellent job as king. And like the book said, she is clearly not in any position to judge me.”
The Lion looked at Scare as if he was trying hard to figure him out. “I never know anymore whether you want me to answer or whether your question is rheumatical?”
“Rhetorical,” the Scarecrow corrected.
The Lion shrugged his hulking shoulders as if this somehow proved his point.
“Can’t you help me, Your Highness?” the Munchkin asked desperately.
The Lion rose with a sigh. He cast a sympathetic glance at the Munchkin but then gave Scare a look that said they needed to move.
The Scarecrow had no idea what to tell this poor creature. How could he possibly help her? He had to get to the Forest of the Beasts with the Lion and find a way to reclaim the throne. But the Lion was looking at him intently, and the teary-eyed Munchkin was staring at him with beseeching eyes. He couldn’t just leave her here. The Wizard had given him brains—surely he could come up with a solution to her problem.
A spark of inspiration hit him. “Where were you hoping to go?”
“To my family, sir.” She pointed down the path. “They live in a Munchkin village at the edge of the Forest of the Beasts.”
The Scarecrow was delighted by this convenient turn of events. “Then we shall escort you there,” he said grandly, feeling generous and magnanimous. Picking up people to help along a journey reminded him of the trip down the Road of Yellow Brick with Dorothy, and that had turned out better than they ever imagined. At the very least he could help this one girl.
Hibiscus Lemon nodded, but he could see from her far-off stare that his clever solution hadn’t done much to reassure her. Still, he was certain it was just what the Wizard would have done, and he was pleased with himself. She was not like him—knowing the next move had lifted a bit of the weight off his straw-filled chest. He assumed that the Munchkin would not feel better until she saw her home again and was safely in the arms of her parents. The Lion did not comment, but the Scarecrow could sense that he approved, or at the very least, was happy they were moving and no longer sitting ducks for any of Jinjur’s army.
The three of them set off in the direction the girl had been heading. They saw no more riders on the road, and the Scarecrow wondered if any of the other palace residents had escaped Jinjur’s forces. He certainly hoped so. The memory of the Royal Army’s trampled body flashed in front of his eyes. It was horrible to think of the same thing happening to other residents of the palace. His people. What if Jinjur had killed poor Fiona? Or the sweet Munchkin chef who oversaw the kitchens?
“Hibiscus Lemon, when you were . . . did you happen to see Fiona?” he managed as gently as possible.
Hibiscus shook her head. And opened her mouth, but the effort brought more tears.
He wished that she’d answered differently. That she’d seen his favorite little maid escaping to safety. But at least she’d not said that he’d seen her hurt by Jinjur. He opened his mouth to ask more, but he closed it again. In this one case not knowing felt better than knowing, especially when he knew that whatever she had to say would not be good.
With Hibiscus Lemon taking the Scarecrow’s former place on the Lion’s back, the journey passed quickly, and soon the Scarecrow could see a small village in the distance. The Munchkin perked up visibly at the sight of her home. “Ma and Pa will be happy to see me,” she said, straightening her bloodied dress. “I haven’t been home in ages. Everyone’s home—you can see the smoke from their cooking fires.”
But as they got closer, it was obvious something was wrong.
“Are those grislybirds?” the Lion asked in a low voice. The Scarecrow looked up. Dark shadows circled and swooped in the air above them.
Grislybirds were hulking and silent creatures. Unlike other animals in Oz, they didn’t speak—which made them all the more terrifying. Not to mention they fed on dead flesh. The Scarecrow shivered.
As they drew closer, he could see that the smoke wasn’t coming from the chimneys. The thick, dark, oily plumes were rising from the huts themselves. The village was on fire.
“Jinjur’s army was here first,” the Lion said quietly.
“But why?” cried the Munchkin, breaking into a limping run.
The Scarecrow’s mind raced and came up with a solution. “She said that she’d kill anyone who supported me,” he said, guilt washing over him with every step closer to the charred pastel houses. “The Munchkins have always been loyal to whoever sat on the throne. They had no idea she’d kill them for not yielding to her coup. The Munchkins have never been fighters—there’s probably not a single weapon in the entire village. They were totally unprepared.”
“My parents! I have to make sure they’re alive!” the Munchkin girl sobbed, her bloodstained face now streaked with tears. “I don’t have anything left!”
“Wait!” cried the Scarecrow. “For all we know, some of Jinjur’s soldiers stayed behind to finish the job!”
The Lion nodded in agreement, but Hibiscus tore away from them and ran toward her ruined village. Up close, the destruction was awful. Many of the houses had been burned to the ground, and others were only partially standing. Through the scorched and blackened walls, the Scarecrow could see tables still set for a meal, as though the occupants had just stepped outside. But the charred corpses in the streets suggested that none of the Munchkins had gotten far.
Scare scanned the faces for ones he knew. None of them worked at the palace. He did not know them. But they were his people all the same. They were his responsibility as king and now they were gone.
The once carefully tended flower beds that lined the road were trampled, and blood had pooled between the paving stones. The Lion lowered his head, sniffing at one of the dark puddles. “Still warm,” he growled. “The soldiers just passed this way.”
Ahead of them, Hibiscus screamed. She had sunk to her knees in front of the house that must have been hers, and she wasn’t alone. The Scarecrow had been right: they weren’t alone in the village. One of Jinjur’s soldiers had been left behind, and she was holding a knife to the Munchkin girl’s throat.
SIX
The Lion leapt forward with a roar. “Wait!” the Scarecrow cried out. The Lion twisted in midair and dropped back to his feet. Jinjur’s soldier grinned at them over the terrified Munchkin. She grabbed a hank of the Munchkin’s hair and jerked her head backward, her knife pressing so deeply into the girl’s throat that a line of blood welled up beneath it. The Munchkin’s eyes were huge with fear.
“Welcome, Your Highness,” the soldier sneered. “Do you like what we’ve done with the place? Anyone not loyal to the new queen will learn the cost of disobedience—immediately.”
“Let the girl go,” the Scarecrow said firmly. “Your quarrel is with me. You’ve already shed enough blood for one day.”
Jinjur’s soldier laughed. “Spoken like a true fool,” she snarled. “Welcome to the new Oz.” With one swift motion, she drew her knife across Hibiscus’s throat. The Scarecrow cried out in horror as blood spurted from the gaping crescent wound. The soldier let the girl’s body go. Her body teetered ghoulishly for a second and then fell to the ground with a sick thud.
“Hibiscus Lemon.” Her name escaped his cloth lips,
which trembled with rage and sadness all at once. For a split second, Scarecrow wished that he had never known Hibiscus’s name. That he did not know a thing about her. Maybe that would have made looking at her lifeless little form easier. But a second later he was glad he had known at least that.
Out of the corner of his eye he could see the Lion was already leaping forward with a snarl, his claws extended. Jinjur’s soldier whirled to meet him but he knocked the knife from her hand easily with one swipe of his huge paw. She lunged at him with her bare fists, her face totally without fear. But even she was no match for the Lion. He threw her to the ground and stood over her with his paw upraised. “Don’t hurt her!” the Scarecrow cried out, but it was too late. Jinjur’s soldier spat in the Lion’s face, and with a terrible roar he brought his huge paw down on her skull, snapping her neck.
Everything seemed to stand still for a long second. The Lion stared down at his victim, panting. The Scarecrow realized his mouth was wide open and he was watching the sinister tableau with his hands balled into fists. He could feel that strange, sinister serpentine thing stirring in the back of his sawdust brain, and the Lion’s tail was lashing furiously as though it were possessed. The Lion ripped out the soldier’s throat, spraying them both with blood.
“What are you doing?” Scare cried, coming to his senses.
The Lion stopped mid-roar, his eyes crazed and his mouth dripping gore.
“I don’t—I don’t know,” he gasped. The Lion slumped backward and all the rage seemed to drain out of him into the blood-soaked ground.
“A new Oz, indeed,” the Scarecrow said quietly.
The Lion stepped away from Jinjur’s soldier as if the ground burned his paws, leaving her body next to Hibiscus Lemon’s in the dirt.
“What happened just now?” the Scarecrow asked, staring down at the stranger who seemed to have taken the place of his oldest friend.
“We were too late to save the girl,” the Lion said hoarsely, not meeting his eyes. That wasn’t what the Scarecrow had meant, and they both knew it.
Without another word, the Lion turned and stepped back onto the path, and the Scarecrow followed. From time to time, they heard distant cries and the sound of gunshots—more of Jinjur’s soldiers, the Scarecrow guessed grimly, taking care of the disloyal. But for now there was nothing they could do. They continued walking in silence. The Scarecrow could feel his sawdust brain churning, trying to process what had just happened and what would happen next, but it was too much for him to comprehend.
“The Wizard gave us these gifts, but he never told us how to use them,” Scare said finally. At first, he thought the Lion was ignoring him, but after a minute his friend sighed.
“It’s better not to think about it too much.”
“But that’s all I know how to do,” the Scarecrow protested. The Lion didn’t answer. He wondered if his learning curve would be as fast as the Lion’s evidently had been, and if he’d figure out the solution in time to save Oz from Jinjur. But if the Wizard’s gifts meant they’d have to become murderers, how were they any better than the would-be queen?
Ordinarily, he would have enjoyed the trip to the Lion’s country. He hadn’t traveled since Dorothy had rescued him from his post in the farmer’s field and gone with him to find the Wizard, and before he met Dorothy he had never traveled at all. The path took them along a roaring brook that flowed with lavender-scented water; translucent, jewel-bright fish glinted in the current like bits of glass. They crossed a broad meadow of multicolored flowers that undulated like waves even though there was no breeze. The snow-topped mountains sparkled in the distance, and butterflies the size of the Lion’s head flapped lazily past them. But the Scarecrow barely noticed the wonders of Oz, he was so preoccupied with his thoughts.
“Do you remember the Kalidahs?” the Lion asked suddenly, interrupting his reverie.
“Of course,” replied the Scarecrow, surprised. He, the Lion, the Woodman, and Dorothy had almost been killed by the terrifying tiger-headed monsters on the way to the Emerald City, and only the Woodman’s quick thinking had saved them. He’d destroyed the bridge the beasts were crossing, sending them plummeting to their deaths in the ravine below.
“I was so afraid of them then,” the Lion mused. “I couldn’t have managed to kill them, even though they were threatening our lives. But today . . .” He trailed off, but he didn’t have to finish his thought for the Scarecrow to guess what he was getting at.
“The Wizard’s gift is working for you,” he said.
The Lion shrugged. “I suppose so. I’ve never had to test it before.” He looked briefly troubled. “I’ve never killed anyone before either. It felt strange.”
“Strange?” The Scarecrow didn’t think “strange” was the right word,
Lion was a killer.
Scare had read books about beasts and he knew technically that was something that beasts did. But Lion wasn’t like the other beasts, was he?
Jinjur’s soldier had killed the Munchkin girl, and would have killed them, but killing her wasn’t any better. Murder was murder, even if it was self-defense.
“I don’t know if I liked the feeling,” the Lion said, “but it felt different from anything I’ve ever done. I felt powerful. I suppose that’s what courage is. I just never knew before.”
Scare was sure that wasn’t right. In fact, the way Lion said it kind of scared him.
“I know I didn’t ask for courage . . . ,” Scare began, preparing to tell him just that.
“Maybe you should have,” the Lion said. “We’ll have to do it again.”
“Do what again?”
“Kill people. If you really want your throne back, it won’t happen peacefully.”
The Scarecrow had not thought that far ahead. “There must be another way,” he said immediately, but his brain hit a brick wall that did not move.
“If there is, you’ll have to think of it,” the Lion said. “You’re the one with the brains.” The Scarecrow wondered whether his old friend was mocking him, but the Lion seemed serious.
“This isn’t what I wanted at all when I asked for a brain,” the Scarecrow said unhappily. “I didn’t even ask to be king—I just wanted to be clever. Do you think the Wizard’s gifts led to what’s happening now?”
The Lion swished his tail. “I don’t see how,” he rumbled. “Perhaps the Wizard’s gifts are the tools we need to deal with what’s coming.”
“What is coming?”
“I don’t know,” the Lion said quietly, “but I don’t think it’s going to be very good.”
SEVEN
The Scarecrow had never visited his old friend’s new home, and despite the circumstances, he looked around in wonder. From a distance, the forest’s boundary was so pronounced it looked like a giant green wall looming over the landscape. A golden meadow, grass gently waving in the breeze, ran straight up to the forest’s edge and stopped abruptly. Golden jewelflies buzzed in the tall grass and were snapped up by emerald-green bellyfrogs that burped tiny puffs of pink smoke after their meal. Flat sapphire pools glinted here and there, but when the Scarecrow stooped down to touch the fresh-looking water, his fingers flicked against diamond-hard gemstone.
It was beautiful. But he could never live like this. Where would all his books go?
As soon as they set foot inside the forest barrier, the sunlight vanished as if someone had thrown a light switch. The Forest of the Beasts was eerily quiet, as if the Lion’s subjects somehow already sensed that trouble was brewing.
The Scarecrow rubbed his button eyes, squinting in the sudden dimness. Lion was nocturnal, so he was used to the dark, but the Scarecrow hesitated. The Lion looked back with a sigh, then looped his tail around Scarecrow’s wrist, guiding him. All around them the towering brown trunks rose into the shadowy forest canopy, and the silence of the forest was as thick as a blanket. The Lion rose up on his hind legs, leaning his paws against the nearest tree, and made a sound somewhere between a cough and a roar. Out of nowher
e a large rabbit scampered up to them; he was wearing a neatly cut velvet suit, and a tiny top hat was tilted at a rakish angle over one of his ears. His buckteeth protruded at a slightly ridiculous angle.
“Your Majesty!” the rabbit cried, clapping his paws together. “We’ve been so anxious to have you back!” The rabbit caught sight of the Scarecrow, and a startled expression passed across his face. “I beg your pardon, Your Majesty,” he said, executing a sweeping bow. “I didn’t see that the King of Oz was with you.” He bowed again, this time at the Scarecrow.
“It’s all right,” the Scarecrow said, in a way he hoped was regal.
“Can’t we have some light, Cornelius?” the Lion rumbled, and the rabbit clapped his paws together again.
“His Majesty will fire me for my foolishness!” he exclaimed to the trees. He ran back and forth in agitation, pawing frantically at his top hat.
The Lion sighed and dropped to all fours again, settling back on his haunches and opening his mouth in a huge yawning roar. “LIGHTS!” he bellowed.
As if by magic, a storm of tiny lights swirled up out of the earth, spinning around them. Each one of them was a tiny firefly that buzzed upward, landing on the trees and branches until they were thickly covered in glowing light. A small army of badgers, foxes, and weasels carrying stringed instruments rushed in after the fireflies, assembling themselves in an unruly group in front of the Lion and the Scarecrow and striking up a slightly out-of-tune march. Cornelius produced a golden banner depicting a lion from behind a tree and waved it back and forth. “His Majesty has returned to the Forest of the Beasts!” he bellowed. The Scarecrow heard cheering from the depths of the forest, and soon more and more animals poured into the clearing where they stood, jostling one another as they each tried to get closer to the Lion.
Cornelius rudely pushed aside a bear cub, a crocodile with rows and rows of jagged teeth, and several rats. “Clear a path for His Majesty!” he shouted pompously. The animals ignored him, and he shoved them more aggressively until finally they moved aside. The Lion walked forward, and the Scarecrow followed him through the forest.
Dorothy Must Die Novella #5 Page 3
