The Wicked Will Rise

I sighed, ignoring her. I knew that Ollie and Maude were right. But my last glimpse of Nox back in the city kept flashing through my mind: his dark, always-messy hair, his broad shoulders and skinny, sinewy arms. The determined tilt of his jaw, and that look of almost arrogant pride. The anger that was always coiled deep in his chest finally ready to burst out and strike down everything that stood in his way, all of it to save Oz, the home that he loved.

No, not just that. To save me, too.

I had learned so much from him. He’d taught me who I was. Now I might not ever see him again, and there was nothing I could do about it.

“Where are we going?” I asked flatly. Now the burning city was just a tiny orange dot in the vast blackness below us, and then it was gone as if it had never existed.

“To the North,” Ollie grunted. “To the Queendom of the Wingless Ones. Now don’t you think you should try to get some rest?”

I didn’t really blame him for not wanting to talk. It had been a long and confusing night. But I had so many questions that I barely knew where to start.

Among the biggest of all of those questions was Ozma. She looked perfectly comfortable, cradled in Maude’s arms where she was singing a little song to herself, the only one who didn’t seem bothered by anything that had happened tonight. As a gust of cool air hit us and carried us sailing higher into the sky, her hair whipped around her face and she gave a squeal of delight, like this was just a ride on the Tilt-A-Whirl at the county fair. Her green eyes were so bright that it almost seemed like they were lighting our way.

Ozma whooped, wriggling happily as Maude struggled to keep hold of her.

“Hold still, Your Highness,” Maude grumbled. “I can’t go dropping the daughter of Lurline, can I? Queen Lulu would never let me hear the end of it.”

Ozma frowned at the name. “I’m the queen,” she said with an edge of annoyance.

My eyes widened a little in surprise when she said it. Technically it was true—she was the queen. Technically. But Ozma had never quite been all there, and this was one of the first times I’d heard her say anything that actually sounded half-lucid. I studied her face, looking for signs of intelligent life, searching for any trace that remained of the kind, majestic ruler that I’d heard she’d been before Dorothy Gale of Kansas had worked her magic and wiped her brain.

As she blinked back at me, I only saw more puzzles. Who was she?

Was she the dim-witted queen who I’d seen back in the palace, wandering the halls like someone’s senile great-aunt? Was she the powerful descendant of fairies who had supposedly once been the best ruler Oz had ever had?

Or was she really Pete, the emerald-eyed stranger who had been the first person to greet me when I’d crash-landed in Oz; the kind-faced gardener who had risked himself to keep me company when I’d been a captive in Dorothy’s dungeon; the mystery boy who, at the wave of the Wizard’s hand, had transformed before my eyes into the dizzy, birdbrained princess babbling at my side?

Pete had been all of those people, somehow, and I’d just discovered that he and Ozma were one and the same. What did it all mean?

“Pete?” I asked. I had to believe that he was still in there somewhere. But Ozma simply looked at me sadly.

“Come on,” I said. “If you can hear me, Pete, talk to me.”

Ozma furrowed her brow at the name, and for a second I thought I saw a glimmer of recognition flickering behind her eyes. Was that him in there trying to get out? “Pete,” I said again. “It’s me. Amy Gumm. Remember?”

“I once knew a girl named Amy,” Ozma said, her eyes glazing over again. With that, her jaw slackened back into an expression of placid boredom. She blinked twice and covered her perfect red mouth with a delicate hand, laughing at a private joke.

“There’s magic all around!” she said. “Oh my. The fairies know! I’m a fairy, too!”

I rolled my eyes and gave up, holding on for dear life as we flew higher and higher into the sky. When we passed through a thick cover of damp cotton-ball clouds, the black sky opened up like it was a stage and the curtain had just been raised.

The stars revealed themselves.

I already knew that the stars were different in Oz from the stars I’d known on earth, but from this vantage they were really different. They took my breath away.

For one thing, they weren’t a million miles away in space. They were right here and they were everywhere around us, close enough to reach out and touch. They were flat and five-pointed, none of them bigger than a dime; they reminded me of the glow-in-the-dark stickers I’d taped to the ceiling of my bedroom when I was just a little kid, before my dad had left and before my mom and I had moved to the trailer park. Almost, but not quite: these stars were brighter and sparklier and cold to the touch. Rather than being fixed in the sky, they were moving in a pattern that I couldn’t get a handle on—they were configuring and reconfiguring themselves into brand-new constellations right before my eyes.

“They never get old,” Maude said, sensing my awe. “As many times as you see them like this, they’re always a surprise. This is probably the last time I’ll see them,” she said sadly.

When I glanced into Ollie’s eyes, I saw that they were wide and filling with tears.

I looked at his paper wings, and wondered again how he had come to wear them. I know it sounds strange, but he had always been proud of being Wingless, proud that he’d been able to sacrifice the thing he loved most about himself in order to keep his freedom.

I decided to broach the subject as gently as I could. “Are you ever going to explain where exactly you got those?” I asked him.

“I told you,” he said tersely. “The Wizard gave them to us. They’re only temporary. But they were necessary.”

“But why?” I asked. “And—”

Ollie cut me off. “I promised I would protect you. I needed the wings to get the job done. And they’ll be gone soon enough.”

“But the Wizard . . .”

Ollie squeezed my arm. “Later,” he muttered. “For now, no talking. It’s good to fly again. It feels like being a kid. Just let me enjoy the stars.”

I don’t know if it was the mention of her name or what, but suddenly I felt a wriggling in my pocket and remembered what—who—I was still carrying: Star, my pet rat. Star had come here with me all the way from Kansas, and somehow, she’d stuck by me through everything. There were times—like when I’d been trapped in Dorothy’s horrible dungeon far below the Emerald Palace—when I was pretty sure I would have gone crazy without her to keep me company.

I pulled her out and placed her on my shoulder, feeling her sharp little claws sinking through the fabric of my dress and digging into my skin.

Back in Kansas, I’d hated Star, who technically, had started out as my mom’s rat, not mine. I’ve always heard that rats are supposed to secretly be really smart, but if that’s true, Star must have been playing hooky in rat school. Back home, she’d always been mean and stupid, interested in nothing except running on her squeaky wheel and biting my hand when I tried to feed her.

Being in Oz had changed her, though. In Oz, it was like she had grown a soul. She had become something like a friend—my oldest friend in the world, these days, and we were in this together. I sometimes wondered what she thought of everything that had happened to us.

I wish I could have talked to her about all of it. I mean, animals talk in Oz, right? But not her. Maybe she was just the strong, silent type.

Star snuggled up in the crook of my neck, and we coasted along silently into the night, the stars brushing against my cheeks like little snowflakes. The clouds stretched out in every direction like an infinite ocean. I dipped my fingers in and let them skim the surface, scooping up little cottony pieces just to watch them melt into nothing in my hand.

Up here, things were peaceful. We couldn’t see the burning city anymore. It was just us and the stars. I could almost imagine that Oz was still the place I’d read about in storybooks, the magical, happy land of Munchkins and talking animals, where witches were wicked but could be killed with nothing more than a little old-fashioned Kansas elbow grease and a bucket of mop water.

I was still imagining the Oz that could have been—the Oz I should have found—when I felt Star’s little body slacken against my neck. She was asleep.

That did it. You might think it would be hard to relax in a situation like this—and believe me, it was—but between the twinkling stars and the wind on my face, the swooping up and down as Ollie sailed into one current after another, and the comforting, steady feeling of my rat nestled in my shoulder, soon I was asleep, too. I didn’t dream.