The Wicked Will Rise

I wasn’t very worried about Polychrome’s china. I was too busy watching what was happening to the princess.

Her arms dangled lazily at her sides, her mouth went slack, and her eyes were heavy-lidded in an expression of sedate peacefulness. Meanwhile, something was emerging from her, a green smoke that curled out from her chest and hovered in the center of the room.

At first, it was just an indistinct cloud. Then its colors shifted, and the smoke condensed as it gathered itself into recognizable form. No: two forms, each of them hanging in the air next to each other, translucent but clearly visible as separate, familiar bodies.

One of them was Pete. The other was Ozma—a second Ozma, a ghostly simulacrum of the version who was still standing in a semi-drugged state on the stool.

Pete looked utterly himself: slim and lanky and a little bit mischievous, his features sharp and strong, with an odd, mismatched beauty.

This version of Ozma though, was different. Not in any way that I could really put a finger on, but in a way that was subtle and at the same time impossible to miss. Her eyes were bright and full of intelligence; her posture, even as she hung suspended above the ground, perfectly still, was regal and dignified. She had a power about her; an awe-inspiring grace that, even knowing she wasn’t real, made me want to kneel and bow my head to the ground.

She looked, in short, like a queen.

Behind them, the real Ozma—or, what I guess was the real Ozma—observed the two spirit forms that had been summoned forth from somewhere deep within her. She didn’t try to move from the stool she was standing on, and instead was simply looking on with the confused, sheepish guilt of a little kid who’s just been caught next to a broken cookie jar, the cookies scattered across the floor.

Polychrome looked back and forth between them and raised a knowing eyebrow.

“Interesting,” she said. “There have been two life forces occupying the princess’s body. But you knew that already, didn’t you?”

She smirked in my direction, like she’d had a feeling all along that this is exactly what she would find.

I nodded. What else could I do? But Polychrome didn’t seem to care that I had lied to her. “No matter,” she said. “We all have our secrets. One of mine is that I’m not as dim as people often think. But, actually, I have a whole cabinet of secrets. So much more convenient not to have them rattling around in my head, you know? It’s much safer to keep them all locked up where I can’t leave them lying around by accident. Anyway. I could run some more tests, but I have a nagging little suspicion that you already have most of the answers we could desire. Who is this second soul?”

She stepped over to the spot where Pete’s form hovered and circled him, looking him up and down wolfishly. “Is he as charming as he appears?”

I tried my best to explain the whole Pete situation—what I knew of it, at least—to Polychrome, who nodded along with the story as I related it to her.

“I see,” she said. “When Mombi attempted to disguise the princess, she inadvertently created the seed of a new soul. It happens! The trick is catching it and nipping it in the bud before it comes into itself. Mombi has always been so sloppy when it comes to the details. It seems simple, now that you explain it. When Ozma was restored all those years ago, she suppressed this other soul. Then, when Dorothy did her little number on the princess, the thing was allowed to flourish again. At any rate, it shouldn’t interfere much with things.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear the answer.

“I can see now that the spell Dorothy cast on the princess was all anger and impulse. No sense of precision at all, but it was powerful, too. That makes it a bit more complicated, especially now that it’s had so much time to put roots down. But I think with a little elbow grease, I can restore Ozma to her proper state—the state you see before you instead of the simpering, foolish nincompoop who has been occupying her place all these years. And that will certainly change the game, won’t it?”

“What will happen to him? To Pete?” I tried to hide the panic I was feeling, but I don’t think I did a very good job of it.

“Oh, dear.” Polychrome gave me a sympathetic frown. “Did you develop a little crush on the rogue soul? Well, he is handsome, I’ll give you that. But you can’t let yourself get all mushy over it. I imagine it’ll just disappear.”

“Please,” I said. “You can’t. It’s not a crush. He’s a good person. I don’t want him to die.”

“Amy, sweetie. Listen to me. It can’t die when it’s not alive in the first place. And it’s not a person at all—just a little bad witchery that got out of hand. No matter what happens, you’ll always have your perfectly lovely memories of it, now won’t you? And a memory is worth a lot, especially when Ozma’s return will do so much for Oz. So you lose yourself a plaything. There are more fish in the sea!”

I didn’t like the way she was talking to me. As if I was some dumb little girl and she was my big sister who had come back from college and thought she knew everything because she’d had sex a couple of times and had read some French novels.

But while people like me had been fighting for Oz, Polychrome had just been locked up here in her castle, doing practically no good to anyone while she played tonsil hockey with her vapid, rainbow-smoking boy toy. And now she was trying to lecture me about the good of Oz? Some people had a lot of nerve.

On the other hand, she had a point. Having Ozma back for real would change the game in a serious way. Was the risk of losing Pete worth it? And even if it wasn’t, could I stop it from happening?

At this moment, the only thing I could be sure of was that Polychrome was annoying. “Would you like a hug?” she asked.

“No, thank you,” I said.

She snapped her fingers, and the floating images of Pete and Ozma were instantly sucked back into the body of the real princess, who doubled over at the shock of having all of her parts returned to her. She stumbled from the stool on which she’d been standing and landed on her hands and knees on the stone floor of the Lumatorium, and promptly began to retch.

Instead of vomit pouring from her mouth, a flurry of tiny rainbows came out, and pooled on the ground in a sick puddle of jumbled-up colors.

Polychrome ignored the fairy princess’s distress, and instead directed her attention to me.

“Don’t you fret over all this, at least not for now. The Ritual of Restoration will be difficult, and before I can perform it, I must ask my sprites to gather the necessary ingredients. Also, I need my rest—I can practically feel the dark circles forming under my eyes as we speak. And, not to be a bitch, but you look like you could use a little beauty sleep, too. I’ll let Heathcliff take you to your room, and tomorrow, we’ll get everything all settled, okay?”

“I’ll take my stuff, first, thanks,” I said. The things I’d taken from the Lion and the Tin Woodman seemed even more important than ever now, even if I didn’t know why, and I didn’t want to let them out of my sight.

“Of course,” Polychrome said, and I gathered them quickly into my bag, wondering what to do next.