The Wicked Will Rise

FOURTEEN


We spent the morning walking, following the Road of Yellow Brick as it took us through pastures and meadows and an orchard of squat trees whose branches hung heavy with luscious plums that I was still too full from breakfast to eat; it led us across babbling streams and over rolling hills, into and then out of lush, vibrant valleys.

A few times, way off in the distance, I noticed clusters of domed buildings that looked like villages, but whenever they popped up in my peripheral vision, the road always veered off in the opposite direction. I was familiar enough with Oz to get that it wasn’t just luck—the road knew that we wanted to be stealthy, and it was helping us.

Was this the same road that, once upon a time, had led both me and Dorothy from Munchkin Country to the Emerald City? That was a hard question to wrap my head around. That road had a fixed beginning and ending, but I knew from experience that it was also known to move around, depending on traveling conditions. I’d been told more than once that it had a mind of its own. It was possible that Ozma had summoned it with Old Magic, and it had veered off course to help us find our way.

The sun was still out, the walk was peaceful, and I was actually making some headway teaching Ozma to sing “Ninety-Nine Bottles of Beer on the Wall.” The only problem was that she didn’t really know how to count, and kept mixing up the numbers.

After a while, I gave up on correcting her and just let her keep on singing. Even though the song didn’t make any sense at all anymore, her voice was actually nice, and I let my mind wander.

This morning’s conversation with Glinda had been unsettling, although I guess it could have been worse. But what did she want from me? Why had she changed her tune so drastically? She had to be trying to trick me . . . but trick me into what?

I was reminded of Lulu’s warning in the forest, to keep ahold of yourself. If Lulu was worried that Oz was corrupting me, did that mean that Glinda thought so, too? Had she come to me this morning because she thought she’d be able to take advantage of that?

Glinda had made it sound like, out of nowhere, she had no more use for Dorothy. I wondered what could have caused such a huge rift between them in just the few days since the battle in the Emerald City—unless their alliance had never been as solid as it had appeared. And where did that leave me? Did Glinda think that the fact that I was from the Other Place meant that I would be able to pick up the slack now that her favorite little despot had fallen out of her favor?

It was frustrating that everyone was so convinced that I had this great potential to be evil, when all I’d done was show up, get thrown in the dungeon by Dorothy, and then follow the Order’s instructions pretty much exactly. I’d fought for what I thought was right. For what I believed in. And now even people like Lulu—people who were supposed to be on the same side as me—seemed suspicious of me because of it. It all felt a little unfair.

Anyway, I had a hard time thinking of myself as a ticking time bomb waiting to explode in a burst of evil when I was in such a good mood. Yeah, the morning had been a little dicey, but ever since Ozma and I had started walking, it had been a pretty perfect day.

The whole time we walked, the mountains stayed fixed in the distance. They were a jagged set of purple teeth on the horizon, rising higher and higher as we moved closer. Based on the deep indigo hue of everything around us, as well as the little I remembered of Oz geography, I was pretty sure these mountains had to be the Gillikins—the treacherous, sprawling range that stretched all the way across Oz’s northern territory, separating wild from wilder.

We’d seen no monsters since we’d left the forest—not counting Glinda—so I was guessing things were still basically civilized for now. But the landscape was slowly changing, and even without crossing the Gillikins, I wasn’t sure that we were going to stay in civilized territory for much longer. As morning faded to afternoon—in a way that felt pretty normal by Oz standards—the sunny fields and groves of trees gave way to muddy swampland dotted with intermittent patches of brush, milkweed, and the occasional stunted, tired-out-looking tree. The sun had disappeared behind a dense, rolling cloud cover, leaving everything around us a gloomy gray that was only barely tinted with a washed-out lavender. Everything looked as though the life had been sucked out of it. The world had lost its color.

The air had changed, too. It had thickened, turned sticky and cold, until I felt like I was draped in a used, mildewy towel like the ones my mom had always had a penchant for leaving strewn all over our trailer.

Ozma had stopped singing.

Only the path we were walking on lent any bit of cheeriness to the landscape. The road had brightened in contrast and now cut a curling swath into the distance, no longer yellow but a glittering, pulsating gold.

Then even the road began to lose some of its fight against the gloom. This morning it had been a wide and open boulevard, but as the terrain grew rocky, it narrowed and snarled to weave its way through the obstacles that had begun to pop up.

Meanwhile, though it didn’t feel like we were getting any higher, the sky appeared to be getting much closer. The clouds were now so low over our heads that I could practically reach up and touch them, and then I didn’t need to reach at all: the road curled sharply, leading us into a corridor of boulders barely wide enough to lift your arms, and I saw the clouds scraping the bricks just ahead of us, swallowing the path.

Sitting at the edge of the fog was a lone figure: it was a woman, wearing a long, hooded cloak of midnight blue feathers, each one tipped with gold. Her skin was smooth and unlined, but there was a sharp wisdom in her eyes too. She looked both very young and very ancient. When she saw us coming she let out a long, stuttering howl that bounced against the rocks, echoing in a chorus like there were twenty of it instead of just one. And she began to change. She spread out her arms, and her cape became a set of enormous wings; her nose and mouth joined together and stretched themselves into a long, thin beak. Finally, the creature blocking our path was no longer a woman at all, but a giant bird.

I took a step backward. This thing—whatever it was—didn’t look like it was going to attack, but there was something spooky about it, and my previous experience with giant birds hadn’t exactly been fun.

“Amy Gumm,” the bird said, in a wispy, whistling voice that was kind, but with an edge of fierceness to it. “I have waited here many months for the day that you would pass through here. I see that your transformation has begun. But only just. I wonder: When you claim your name, what will it be?”

Something about its words jogged a place deep in my memory, and suddenly I recognized the creature. This wasn’t a roc. It was the same bird that Nox had carved into the hilt of my knife, the bird that he said reminded him of me, because of the way it transformed itself. The same bird I carried with me into every fight.

“Yes,” it said, laughing softly at my recognition. “I am the Magril. I see that you know me. Just as I know you. Just as I have always known you, since long before you came to this place.”

My shoulders tensed. “How—” I began to ask.

“Those like me do not concern ourselves with how,” the Magril said, “We are creatures of magic and transformation. We only ask to find the shape that is ours. I have found mine. You have yet to find yours. But you are on the path.”

My head was swirling with so many questions that I didn’t know where to start. I couldn’t find the right way to say any of them.

“I understand,” the bird said, even though I hadn’t said a word. “But beware. I guard the Fog of Doubt. Think carefully before entering. Only those with unshakable faith may pass. Many have failed. You need not. I give you a choice: if you choose to turn back, I will send you home.”

“Home?” I asked.

“It is within my power, yes.”

“But . . .” I started. I didn’t know where home was. Did home mean Kansas? Dusty Acres? It had never felt like home when I had lived there, and now it felt as far away as something out of a storybook.

The Magril gazed at me like it could see right into my soul. “I cannot tell you where your home is,” it whispered. “That is for you to discover. I can only offer you the choice. Will you continue? Or will you return to where you belong?”

“I . . .” I started to say. And I understood I didn’t have a choice at all. “This is where I belong,” I said quietly. For better or worse, it was the truth.

The Magril ruffled its feathers. “As you wish,” she said. “I must leave you. But I offer you a final warning: To survive the fog, you must be willing to become yourself.”

Then, without waiting for a response, the Magril took off, soaring into the white expanse of nothingness above and beyond us. I looked at Ozma, who blinked back at me and twisted her lip uncertainly. I took her hand, squeezing it for reassurance—I just wasn’t sure if I was reassuring myself or her.

“Who are you?” she asked me. Another question I couldn’t answer. But I didn’t have to, not for now. For now, all I had to do was step forward. So I took a deep breath, and Ozma and I walked into the mist.

It turns out that pitch black is not the scariest thing in the world. Bright, blinding white—the kind of white that makes you wonder if the whole world around you has been erased—can be just as scary.

That was where we had found ourselves. The fog we had entered was so thick that when I held my hand out in front of me, I couldn’t see it. I wiggled my fingers just to make sure they were still there. Well, I could feel them, so that had to count for something. Right?

With my other hand, I was still gripping Ozma’s, tighter than ever now, but when I looked to see her reaction to all of this, she might as well have not even been there.

The only thing I could make out at all was the road, and even that was just a faded, ghostly after-impression, like the floaters you get in your vision when you stare at a light bulb and then look away. Still, it was there: pale and thin, spinning out ahead of us, up and out into the blankness.

From behind the shroud of thick fog, it was impossible to tell what lay on either side of the road’s edges. Were we a thousand feet in the air, with only the clouds separating us from a heartrending plunge to our doom? Or were we strolling through a peaceful meadow without even realizing it? All I could do was put one foot in front of the other and try to keep the faith that we would make it through.

Faith: everyone knows it’s something you’re supposed to have, but it’s harder to put that into practice when your senses are telling you all hope is lost.

And the fog was just getting started on me. We had been walking for probably five minutes when there was a soft, sinister whispering in my ear. It sent me jumping out of my skin. The voice was slimy and reptilian, neither male nor female. It was so close that I could feel breath tickling my earlobe.

“Turn back,” it said. “You’re weak. You’ll never make it. You’ve never been ready. You’ve never been brave enough, or strong enough. You shouldn’t have bothered. You should never have come here.”

I shuddered, and tried to remember the giant bird’s warning. This was the Fog of Doubt. Whatever was speaking to me probably wasn’t even real—it was just magical trickery playing off my natural fears and insecurities. If I was going to let a little ghostly torment get to me, I had no right to be here in the first place. I was tougher than that. I just had to ignore it.

The next voice I heard was one I recognized, even if it wasn’t the one I had expected. It was Madison Pendleton, who had made my life back home hell from the day that my father left us, who had turned all of my friends against me, just for fun, and who had gotten me kicked out of school—the same day that I’d been carried away to Oz on a cyclone.

“Well, look who it is,” she was saying. Just the sound of her called up a feeling I thought I’d left behind for good, of being both angry and powerless at the same time. It was that horrible feeling that no matter how hard you tried, you were making things worse for yourself, and the best thing to do was give up.

“Salvation Amy. Haven’t changed much, have you? Still just a piece of worthless, stupid trailer trash. I didn’t ruin your birthday party. No one was going to come to it, anyway. And what are you wearing?”

“Go to hell, Madison,” I muttered. I wasn’t very impressed. Honestly, Madison had usually been more cutting than this in real life. If anything, she was just making me realize how far I’d come since the days when she could ruin my day just by sneering at me.

I wasn’t that girl anymore. I wasn’t a victim anymore. But as soon as I dismissed her, her voice changed seamlessly into Nox’s.

“So, I hear you have a crush on me, huh? Come on. Look, we kissed, okay, but I hope you didn’t get the wrong idea. I know messed up when I see it, and I don’t waste my time with it.”

Another voice chimed in on top of his. It was my mother. “Children are just vampires, sucking the life out of you. If I didn’t have you, Amy, I might never have started drinking. You drove me to it. You made your father leave me. You drove me out into that storm. You ruined my life, and then you just left. Did you even think of what you put me through?”

And a voice from so long ago that I was surprised at how familiar it was. A man’s.

“The best thing I ever did was leave,” my father said. Unlike the rest of the voices, his didn’t sound vindictive, or angry. He sounded just like I remembered him: gentle and easygoing. “I’m happy now, you know. I have a new life. A new family. I made things right for myself.”

“No!” I screamed. “You’re lying!” But I couldn’t hear myself, because suddenly there were so many voices shouting at me that I was drowned out. So many that I couldn’t separate them all. Glinda, Mombi, Lulu, Indigo, all of them reminding me of how I had messed up and worse, of all the things that had been wrong with me from the start. It was like that old show This Is Your Life, except this version was called This Is Why You Suck.

“Shut up!” I screamed, dropping Ozma’s hand to cover my ears and stopping in my tracks. “Just leave me alone! You’re lying!”