The Wicked Will Rise

“You have to come in,” he said. “The water’s incredible.”

“I don’t have a bathing suit,” I said. I was suddenly feeling shy.

Pete gave me a whatever look. “Who cares? Anyway, can’t you just magic yourself something else?” he asked. “I thought you’d gone all witch now.”

“The Order’s training camp isn’t exactly fashion school,” I said. “If you need me to incinerate someone, though, I’m your girl.” Then I thought of something. “Hey,” I said, with a sly, sidelong glance in his direction, hoping I wasn’t hitting on a touchy subject. “What about you? Aren’t you a fairy or whatever?”

Pete grimaced like I’d just insulted him. “Um, no,” he said. Then he caught himself. “I mean, not exactly,” he said, more calmly. He paused and looked at the ground. “Well, maybe, I guess. Maybe technically? But I can’t do magic,” he said. “Not even a simple spell. I don’t really know why. I wish I could.”

This time, when he jumped in, he did it in a huge cannonball, purposely drenching me with the splash. “Come on,” he said. “I won’t look. I promise. Anyway, I hate to tell you, but I’ve already seen you in your underwear.”

“What? When?”

“Um, try this morning?” Pete said. Then he screwed his face up and started talking in a squeaky voice. “I have to find Nox,” he said. “He’s the only one I trust.”

It took me a beat to realize that he was mimicking me.

“You heard that?” I asked, my stomach dropping as I realized exactly what he was saying. Trying to remember everything I’d said and done around Ozma with no idea that I’d had an audience beyond one catatonic princess. “What else did you hear?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know the answer.

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Not everything. When Ozma’s in charge, things are sort of fuzzy. Sometimes I miss days at a time; other times it’s like I’m seeing through her eyes. But don’t worry—I try to be a gentleman about it. Anyway, now we’re even. You’ve seen me in my underwear, and you know all my secrets. Plus, I don’t care about your crush on Nox. Is it supposed to be surprising? Who can resist an angry, tortured rebel type? Especially when he’s—you know . . . extremely attractive.”

He dove back under the water without waiting for my answer, and I watched his pale figure disappear as he went deeper and deeper below the surface. I was basically dying to go in myself.

Screw it, I thought. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d gone for a real swim. It would be a total waste to pass up the opportunity now. So without thinking about it anymore, I stripped down to my bra and my leopard print granny panties and jumped in.

The water felt better than I’d imagined was possible. It was cool, but not freezing, and there was something about it that gave my skin a minty tingle. I stayed under as long as I could, just letting it seep into me.

Finally, I had to come up for air, and when I did, Pete was waiting. He grabbed me around my waist and lifted me into his arms, both of us laughing, then tossed me across the pool.

“You suck!” I shouted at him after I recovered myself. He was still laughing, but then his laughing stopped and his smile turned into something more serious. “I’ll tell you one other thing I saw,” he said. His tone wasn’t mean, just concerned or something. “I saw you fighting the Lion. I’m glad you did what you did, but . . .”

He didn’t seem to be able to put it into words. But he didn’t have to. I’d been trying to put it out of my mind ever since it had happened.

“I know,” was all I said.

He wasn’t going to let it go quite that easily. “It’s just like . . . Dorothy was good once upon a time, too, you know? Not just good. She was the best. Until the magic got ahold of her.”

“I know,” I said. He didn’t look away. “I know,” I repeated.

“You know what that means, right?”

But before I could reply, there was a crashing sound, a burst of purple smoke, and Mombi was sprawled out on a bamboo platform next to the water, right between where Pete stood and I sat.

Her face was bruised and swollen. Her cloak was in tatters.

She looked from me to Pete and back. “Well,” she said in a strained voice. “I’m glad to see you two are getting along.”

Then her eyes rolled back in her head, and she crumpled to the ground.





EIGHT


Later that afternoon, I once again found myself in Queen Lulu’s chambers, which the monkeys had transformed into a makeshift courtroom. Mombi was on trial.

In addition to being queen of the monkeys, it turned out that Lulu was also the chief justice of their supreme court, and she was presiding in a long black robe and a crooked white judge’s wig, clutching an oversize gavel in her paw. All around the room, the members of the monkey council were perched in whatever spots they could find, all of them outfitted in somber courtroom garb, monkey style.

The hours following Mombi’s surprise arrival had been a blur. We had no idea where she’d been or how she’d found us. Within seconds of her collapse, a retinue of monkey guards in beefeater uniforms had swept in—apparently her teleportation spell had tripped their alarms. The Wingless Ones had not been amused to have yet another witch in their presence, and as they’d hauled her motionless body off to the monkey slammer, it was unclear whether she was even still alive.

If she was dead, it was even more unclear how I felt about it. Of all the members of the Order whom I’d met, Mombi was the one I trusted the least. She had lied to me more than once, and she had always seemed to have the most right to call herself wicked.

But, for better or worse, I had bound myself to her, in more ways than one. And, on top of that, I had questions I needed to ask her.

Queen Lulu had declared that the trial be held as soon as Mombi woke up. If she woke up. And while Pete—who Lulu, oddly, had been unsurprised to see instead of Ozma—had been barred from entering the queen’s chamber, I had been chosen to act as Mombi’s lawyer, for reasons I couldn’t make sense of.

Now, here we were. I’d heard of kangaroo courts and even monkey trials, but this was taking it to a whole new level. Not that it mattered much anyway—I’d been in Oz long enough to know that courtroom procedure around here didn’t have much in common with what I knew from watching SVU reruns. In Oz—in my experience at least—there was no due process, no Fifth Amendment to plead, and if the judges were sassy, it wasn’t usually in a well-meaning, salt-of-the-earth kind of way. It was usually more like sassy-psychotic.

For Mombi’s sake, I could only hope that Lulu was a more evenhanded judge than Dorothy had been when I’d been put on trial.

“This court will now come to order!” Lulu barked from the bench, which was really just her throne. “The despicable crone known as Mombi stands accused of high witchery, gross dishonesty, untold crimes against monkeys, outrageous trespassing, and general unpleasantness. Also, she is extremely unattractive. Miss Amy, do you speak for the witch?”

I was standing behind a long, wooden table that had been set up in the middle of the chamber.

“Uh, I’m not exactly a lawyer,” I said, addressing Lulu and the rest of the monkeys. “But do you really think she’s fit to be put on trial? Look at her—she can barely stand up at all.”

It was true. On her best day, Mombi was haggard and withered, but you only had to spend a minute or two with her to realize how tough she was despite her old age. Today was the first time she’d ever truly appeared fragile. There was something about it that was unsettling, and I was reminded of the first time I had ever really understood that when my mom was “relaxing,” she was high as a kite and not taking a funny kind of nap.

It was that feeling you get when you realize that the person you’ve always looked to for protection can’t help you at all—that she, not you, is the one who needs taking care of.

Mombi was leaning heavily on the table, hunched over, her shoulders trembling as she strained under every breath. It was no secret to anyone in the room that she was in serious pain. She had a stool next to her if she wanted it, but she was standing. You had to give her credit for poise.

I had to get her out of here and make her get better, if for no other reason than because she was my best chance of figuring out what was going on. Not to mention my best hope for finding Nox.

“Your honor,” I said, addressing the queen as politely as I could.

“Your royal honor,” Lulu corrected me in her high-pitched, nasal singsong.

“Sorry, your royal honor,” I said. “But I think we need to get Mombi to someone who can help her. It’s—”

“Zip-zip!” Queen Lulu barked, pulling her fingers across her lips. Suddenly I realized who she reminded me of: Judge Judy. Now this was a version of the law I recognized. Back home, Judge Judy was my mother’s favorite show—Mom was always coming up with enemies she wanted to face off against in Judy’s courtroom. You know, like our landlord, the lady in the next trailer over with the annoying dog, the bartender at Paddy O’Hooligan’s who wouldn’t serve her a third drink. She was always sure she would win. Big surprise, she never quite got around to filling out all the applications to get Judge Judy to take her cases.

The good news was that if this was Judge Judy, I knew how to deal with it. Basically, I just had to suck up. “It’s an honor to appear before you today,” I said to Lulu, smiling smarmily. She seemed pleased at my deference, and as she shuffled some papers around in front of her, I looked over at Mombi. “Are you okay?” I whispered.

“I’ll be fine,” she muttered through gritted teeth. But she didn’t look fine.

“How should I say you plead?” I asked.

Mombi wheezed. “Guilty!” she cackled to the room at large, doubling over at the effort it took just to laugh.

“Miss Gumm,” Lulu said sternly. For some reason—procedure?—she was refusing to speak to Mombi. “Please remind your witch friend that the sentence for her crimes is death.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But can you remind me exactly what her crimes are?”

My words were lost in the pandemonium that had broken loose as Lulu had announced the penalty and the rest of monkeys began hooting and chattering and jumping up and down.

“Kill the witch!” screeched a monkey—the one who had looked so cute in his little green overalls just yesterday.

“Burn her!” a smaller monkey shouted.

Then they were all yelling at once:

“Melt her with water!”

“Make her pay!”

“Witches get stitches!”

Queen Lulu let the pandemonium go on for a long spell, looking extremely pleased at the scene she’d created. Finally, when things were threatening to get truly out of hand, she hopped up in her seat and waved her tiny, furry fists.

“Shut up!” she screeched. She didn’t really seem angry, just excited. “All of you! I’m in charge here!” The room snapped to silence as I heard Mombi clear her throat. All eyes turned back to her.

“Monkeys of the court,” she said. Her voice was measured and quiet, but had a commanding edge to it. “If I may speak.” Mombi gathered herself up and stood tall, clearly trying to summon as much dignity as she could. You know, given the situation.

“I stand before you bruised and bloodied,” she said, laboring over each word. If this were Judge Judy I’d probably have assumed it was all a show, and that she was playing the victim card. But Mombi looked like she was in real pain. “My comrades, the Revolutionary Order of the Wicked, are lost, scattered to the four corners of Oz—an Oz whose future has never been more in doubt. My magical abilities are almost completely drained. In short, I am a shadow of myself. Why? Because I have been fighting a war for many years. I have done this not for power, not for glory, but for Oz. I fight not just for myself, but for the Munchkins, and the Nomes, and yes, for the monkeys—for winged and wingless alike. You ask me how I plead. If I am accused of fighting for those who cannot fight, then I refuse to pretend at anything other than the truth. Of that crime, I am guilty.”