The Wicked Will Rise

SEVENTEEN


The rainbows washed over me. It was like I was being spun in some Willy Wonka version of a washing machine. A neon palette swirled around me as I tumbled: hot pink, electric blue, candy-apple red, grape-soda purple, and every color imaginable in between, all of them zooming downward into infinity in a twisting, death-defying flume, carrying me faster than even seemed possible.

Once I got used to the nauseous somersaults my stomach was pulling—and figured out that I wasn’t going to die—it was less scary than I expected it to be. It was actually sort of fun. Then the world flipped upside down, and instead of falling, I was flying, sailing upward into a radiant light, the colors becoming brighter and brighter until they all merged with each other.

When I saw blue, clear sky over my head, I felt myself swimming, and I realized the ride was over. I floated upward a few more feet and emerged into day in a warm, whirling pool of light that wasn’t quite wet and not quite dry, and felt like all the sunshine in the world had been poured into a jar too tiny to begin to contain all of it.

Of course: I’d spent enough hours studying with Glamora and Gert to know a magical portal when I saw one.

I rubbed my eyes, adjusting, and saw that Nox and Bright were already here. From the edge of the pool, Nox reached out a hand to help me, and I took it, climbing up to join him on a small, grassy patch of land, feeling like I’d just gotten off a waterslide at an amusement park.

“Fun ride, huh?” Bright asked, wiggling an eyebrow.

“I’ve definitely had worse. Most of them this week,” I said, shaking myself off and spraying a shower of iridescent droplets from my body.

My jaw dropped at the scenery. We were on an island in the air, no more than thirty feet across, suspended high above the clouds. The portal I’d just crawled out of took up almost all of it, extending all the way to the edge except for the area we were standing on, its shimmering light spilling out into the sky like water in one of those infinity pools you see in ads for fancy hotels. Ozma was crawling out of it herself now, but all I could do was gape at the scenery.

The air was dotted with what could have been hundreds of the hovering islands, some huge, others as small as my trailer back home. They drifted lazily through the air as if being blown by a gentle wind. As they floated, a constantly shifting network of vibrant, shimmering rainbows appeared and disappeared randomly between them, momentarily connecting one to the next before fading away.

On the largest and highest of all the islands was a crystal palace with sharp, angular lines, reflecting and refracting the light at a million different angles like a diamond. A trio of glittering spires rose up so tall that they looked like they could have been scratching the edge of outer space.

“Come on,” Bright said, pointing toward it. “Polly’ll know we’re here.”

Like it knew our exact intentions, a rainbow appeared where we stood and shot up to the citadel, forming a long, steeply pitched bridge.

“Don’t worry, they’re totally solid,” Bright said, stepping out onto it, “but watch your step anyway, they’re slippery as hell.”

I went next, bracing myself, and though I was expecting a long, nail-biting hike up to the castle, it turned out that the only thing I had to do was keep my balance: as soon as I had both feet on the rainbow, it began to carry me upward.

I laughed a little. This was like being on an escalator at the most surreal mall ever, heading from the food court to JCPenney. I breathed deep and tried to relax. The air smelled like honeysuckle and filled me with a deep, longing feeling.

It took me the whole ride to identify it as hope.

From up close, the palace was even more beautiful than before, with intricate floral patterns etched into all of its surfaces. The rainbow bridge took us over a moat of clouds and right to the castle’s grand, arched entranceway, where the doors flung themselves open before we could even step up to them.

Standing behind them was a girl so beautiful that I was startled at the sight of her. She was tall and statuesque and willowy, wearing a loosely fitting caftan in a neon paisley print. Even though the dress was roughly the size and shape of a refrigerator box, it was translucent to the point of near abstraction, almost like the fabric itself had been woven from threads of light and color, and didn’t do much to cover the shape of her slim, coltish body.

But it was her hair that was the most impressive thing about the girl. It flowed around her like she was being blown with one of those giant fans they use in music videos, and was so long that it was hard to tell where it ended. It was intertwined with beads and flowers and threads of color that shifted through the spectrum depending on the angle you looked at them.

I had a pretty good feeling that this was Polychrome.

“Welcome to my kingdom, visitors!” she exclaimed in an ethereal voice.

“What, no welcome for me?” Bright asked, stepping up and wrapping an arm around her waist.

“Oh, hello there,” she said, batting her eyelashes coquettishly.

“Hey, babe,” Bright said huskily.

“You’ve been gone too long. Lost again, I presume?”

“Yup. Saw a lot of crazy stuff this time. There’s some serious business happening on the ground right now—we have a lot to talk about.”

“I’m sure,” she agreed, and she promptly swept him up into the kind of kiss that made me feel like I should probably look away.

Was he kidding me? I was pretty sure he’d been hitting on me back on the ground, and it was now clear that Polychrome was his girlfriend. Had he been trying to embarrass me before, or was he such a player that he just couldn’t help himself?

Probably both, I thought. Nox must have known exactly what I was thinking, because he gave me a smug I told you so look and then a gag me gesture.

They didn’t notice. Their makeout went on. And on. And on.

And on.

About two minutes after it had gotten seriously uncomfortable, I cleared my throat, and Polychrome pulled away from Prince Charmless looking flushed.

“Forgive me,” she said, remembering us. “What a bad hostess I’m being. I can’t help it sometimes—we rainbow dwellers are a people who truly delight in the senses. But please! Come in and join me in my rumpus room. I’ve been so looking forward to your visit.”

“She knew we were coming?” I whispered to Nox as we stepped into the castle, but I guess I’d been too loud, because it was Polychrome herself who responded.

“My sprites sent word of your arrival, of course,” she explained as she led us up through a lavish foyer. “They got so excited when they saw you heading up the bridge. Tourism used to be one of our biggest industries here in the falls, but Dorothy’s rule put an end to all that. Now we’re reduced to selling those disgusting rainbow cigarettes on the black market to make ends meet. We never get visitors anymore. Especially none as royal as yourselves.” She glanced over her shoulder at Ozma and gave a halfhearted little curtsy without breaking her stride.

“Come on, Polly. Everyone’s a royal around here,” Bright said. “Can’t go ten feet without bumping into someone who claims total dominion over a patch of grass. Is it really such a big deal to have another princess in our midst?”

I was starting to agree with him, but Polychrome didn’t look amused. “Please forgive my Royal Consort,” she said, beginning to ascend a spiral staircase with translucent, floating steps and a thin silver, handrail. “He’s a monstrous pain in the ass, and the absolute laziest person you’ll ever have the misfortune to meet, but you have to admit: he’s hot.”

“Guilty as charged,” Bright said.

The staircase went up and up, high into the castle, and opened up into a spacious, circular lounge that was entirely enclosed in glass, providing a stunning, three-hundred-sixty-degree view so expansive that I was pretty sure I would have been able to see from one end of Oz to the other, if my vision were sharp enough.

Ozma trotted over to the window and stared out at the kingdom, fully entranced. She turned to me. “The time draws near,” she said.

I glanced at her in surprise. Her moments of lucidity were becoming more and more frequent—and more lucid.

“The time for what?” I asked. But she didn’t reply.

On one edge of the room was a curved, chrome bar, its glass shelves fully stocked with hundreds of tiny jars and bottles of strange things I wasn’t able to recognize. In place of any other furniture, the rest of the space was strewn with plush, oversize pillows in various shades of white. Bright immediately flopped down on one of them and leaned back, stretching languorously, his shirt rising to reveal an inch of stomach.

I caught myself staring and quickly looked away, hoping that no one had noticed, only to see that Polychrome was openly ogling him, too. When she saw me, she tossed her hair saucily, gave me a just us girls wink, and stepped behind the bar.

“Can I offer anyone a snack?” she asked.

“We’re looking for the Order,” I said. It was easy to get caught up in the strangeness of everything, but I couldn’t forget I was here on a mission. “Mombi said we might find some of them here.”

Polychrome raised a brow in recognition of Mombi’s name, then shook her head as she continued pulling out jars and vials. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s true that this was once a meeting place for Mombi’s cohort, but none of them has passed through here in as long as I can remember. Now would you care for some rose petals? A relaxing snort of poppy pollen? Perhaps a thimbleful of dew?” She drew out the last word into at least three syllables so it was almost hard to tell what she had said.

“No thanks,” I said. “We can’t stay long. Anyway, I’m not hungry.”

“No one ever is,” she said with a sigh. “I guess I just have a larger appetite than most. For now I believe I’ll just munch on some freshly caught wasps.”

My stomach lurched as she pulled out a large glass jar containing what looked like most of a fairly healthy hive of crawling, brown insects. She unscrewed the lid and reached inside to pluck one out with her fingers, then popped the still-squirming creature into her mouth—chomping down on it with an audible crunch.

Bright lit another rainbow cigarette. “She’s just showing off,” he said. “She knows it’s disgusting, but she does it every time someone new comes around.”

She gave him an unamused look. “Must you smoke in here?” she asked icily.

“Where else am I going to smoke?” he asked, deliberately blowing a smoke ring into her face. Instead of getting angry, she giggled and batted her eyelashes again. For a second, I was worried they were going to start making out again.

Instead, Polychrome sat down on the pillow next to him, tucking her legs underneath her body and gesturing for me and Nox to sit, too.

She tossed another wasp into the air, watched in amusement as it buzzed around trying to evade her, and then snapped her head forward to catch the bug in her mouth, looking quite pleased with herself. “So,” she said. “Tell me about you.”

“Please,” I said. “We need your help.”

“All in good time. First, introduce yourselves.”

“I’m Amy,” I said. “This is Nox. That’s Ozma over there.”

“Oh, I know the princess, of course. Or the queen, I suppose. Everyone was always so vague when it came to her title.”

She cast a pitying look toward Ozma, who was still occupying herself by looking at the view. “So tragic what happened to her, isn’t it?” Polychrome said. “Before her troubles, we were the best of friends. Sure, she was always a little too serious—constantly worrying about tariffs and labor regulations and the dullest things like that, never seemed to have any time to rip off our clothes and go for a fully nude romp in the clouds, just us girls—but nevertheless, I adored her.”

Polychrome saw the skeptical look I was giving her. “You land dwellers never understand,” she said. “It’s very important for fairy princesses to commune with nature. In the nude, the way fairies were intended to be. Anyway, forget about Ozma: the poor thing is a lost cause. Amy, Nox, it’s lovely to meet you.” A sudden thought swept across her face. “Oh!” she said excitedly. “Would you like to meet my pet unicorn?”