The Wicked Will Rise

TWENTY-ONE


Dorothy looked as surprised at her condition as I felt when I saw her get back up to her feet.

She wasn’t dead. I had given her everything I had, and it hadn’t been enough. She seemed as shocked I was.

She stared at me, then looked down at herself, where my knife was still lodged in her body. She began to laugh at the absurdity of it.

Then, with more strength than she should have had left in her, she kicked me in the stomach with a spiky heel and sent me flying onto my back. As I struggled to my feet, she flicked her wrist and shot a bolt of energy at me, hitting me square in the rib cage. My whole body seized in convulsions, pain shooting through my every nerve as I fell back down again.

Dorothy yanked my knife from her chest. Blood was squirting everywhere, but she didn’t seem to be feeling any pain. She held the blade aloft, looking at it curiously.

She shouldn’t have been able to do that. The knife was a part of me. No one else was supposed to be able to touch it unless I was using it to slice them open.

Then again, Dorothy shouldn’t have been alive either, after what I’d just done to her.

“Well,” she said. “I don’t know what just happened, but I guess it didn’t work. Cool knife, though.” She rested the hilt against her palm. “Looks like magic. The black kind.”

Now she was advancing toward me, brandishing my weapon. All I could do was lay there waiting for her, twitching. Her red shoes were sparkling with magic, and with every step she took she seemed to grow more powerful. Without even looking like she was trying to do it, she was drawing down a storm of lightning bolts from the sky, all of it flowing through her body and into her shoes like she was a living conduit for all the magic Oz had to offer.

Was it possible that I had somehow just made her more powerful?

“So. It seems that you have a bit of a problem. It looks like you can’t kill me, now doesn’t it? I think this is the part where you cry uncle.”

“Not on your life. Assuming you even have one anymore,” I said.

But I knew she was right. Maybe I still needed the Scarecrow’s brains, just like the Wizard had said, or maybe something else was the problem, but I wasn’t going to be able to beat her. Not like this.

All I could do was retreat to the one place I knew I would be safe. So, old hat or not, I pulled the darkness over me, feeling it envelope me like a familiar blanket. I burrowed into it as far as I could, closing out the flames, the smell, the screams—closing out the whole world until everything, everything, everything was pitch-black.

Everything except the one thing I was really trying to hide from. Against the utter nothingness of the shadow world, Dorothy looked Technicolor. Her eyes were so blue they vibrated, and her face—which had formerly been tinged with a sickly olive pallor—was now a vibrant, clownish green slashed with lips red as cartoon blood. Her shoes were the reddest of all. They were so bright I had to look away.

Even here, I couldn’t escape from her.

“You think you’re the only one who knows about the Darklands?” she asked, seething. “Oh, honey, this dimension might as well be my living room. Have to admit, I’ve never met anyone else who could get in here—even Glinda doesn’t get it. I guess it’s a Kansas thing!”

It’s hard to describe the powerlessness I felt just then. This was a different kind of powerlessness than I’d felt when Dorothy had me wrapped in her chains. Instead of feeling hypnotized—held in her thrall—I just felt hopeless, like nothing I could do would make a difference, so why bother trying?

She looked down at my knife curiously. Watching her touch it gave me a strange, awful feeling, like when you’re a little kid and you wiggle your tongue around in the hole where you just lost a tooth.

I could see that Dorothy understood my discomfort. “I doubt I can hurt you with it,” she said, “But I’m guessing as long as I’m holding it, you won’t be able to put up much of a fight. Shall we test the theory?”

She extended an arm and touched the tip of my knife to my collarbone. I didn’t resist. She drew the blade across my neck, pressing hard enough for me to feel pressure. But there was no blood, and no pain.

“I figured,” she said. “You get a feel for these things after a while, you know? Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’ll just have to get creative.” She paused.

“Oh, never mind,” she said. “You can’t kill me, I can’t kill you; how predictable can it get? There’s probably some dull prophecy about it—there always is, isn’t there? Chosen ones and blah blah blah. Who can keep track? Good thing I don’t need to kill you anyway. Oh, I’d like to, but as Glinda’s constantly reminding me, a girl can’t have everything she wants. Not even me. But you’ve got your wants, and you’ve got your needs. And all I need”—she grabbed the strap of my bag and yanked it hard, snapping it—“is this.”

“No,” I said.

“Yes,” she said, digging around inside. “Let’s see. One mechanical heart. Check. One artificial tail. Check. And . . . a French textbook? I mean . . . I guess that could come in handy, too. You never know when a girl might want to aim for higher education.” She brushed a lock of hair from her face and the blackness began to fade.

As the world returned, I saw that the battle was over. Really over. The floating island on which it had been waged was now just a scorched, charred husk of dirt and rock, with only a few small flames lingering in the wreckage.

Polychrome lay still in the middle of it, her delicate hand wrapped around Heathcliff’s lifeless tail. Nox was kneeling beside them in defeat, his face bloody and covered in dirt and ash, his formerly wild hair singed to almost nothing.

The battle was over, and we had lost. I had lost. Glinda stood above us, arms crossed at her chest in a pose of both victory and impatience.

“There you are,” she said as Dorothy stumbled out of the shadows to join her at her side. “I was just about to wonder if I was going to have to leave without you.”

“I got what we came for,” Dorothy said, holding up my bag triumphantly.

“And yet the girl lives. Curious.”

Dorothy shrugged. “You know how magic can be. Annoying,” she said, finishing her own thought.

“So it can,” Glinda agreed.

“Must be some dumb rule no one remembers. She couldn’t kill me either, by the way.”

“It makes no difference. The girl is no more than a nuisance now. So what do you think? Should we take them with us?” Glinda asked. “Put them to work? The Order’s little warlock can wash windows, the witch from Kansas can serve, and the beautiful boy behind the boulder”—she waved a hand and a large rock disappeared from the periphery, revealing a sheepish Bright’s hiding spot—“could make a very interesting plaything.”

Even as she said it, I could see that it was, at least in part, bravado. She and Dorothy might have won, but they hadn’t come out of this unscathed. Dorothy looked aged and decrepit, her skin still a sickly green, and even Glinda looked exhausted. Her bun had come undone, her armor had been pierced in several places, and she had a giant gash running from her shoulder to her elbow. If she’d had the juice left in her, she could have done whatever she wanted to us. But she didn’t. Which meant that this was a stalemate of sorts, whether or not either of them wanted to admit it.

Dorothy shook her head with an exasperated groan, trying to act like she seriously didn’t give a shit. “They’re too much trouble,” she said. “Ozma is back in our control. We have the things we came for. The rainbow fairy and her familiar are dead, and this horrible so-called paradise has been burned to a crisp. Soon, we’ll have done the same to the place I used to call home. I say, let’s get out of here.”

“Your wish is my command,” Glinda said. She turned gloatingly to me: “Toodle-oo! Polly’s been the mostess of hostesses, but even the most delightful teatimes must come to an end. And Dorothy and I are late for a very important appointment, aren’t we, dear heart?”

“We sure are.” Dorothy lowered her eyes toward the bodies on the ground, then shot a glance at me. “I hate to leave it such a mess, but I guess a girl from the trailer park has slung some slop in her day.” She gave me a barely perceptible wink. “Not that I know what that’s like.”

Suddenly, out of nowhere, Ozma let out a screech from where Dorothy still had her chained, where Pete had been earlier. It had taken her this long to come to her senses, but now, she finally seemed to understand that she was being held prisoner.

“I command you!” she shouted. “With the Old Magic that . . .”

“That’s the royal spirit we like!” Glinda said, looking like she wanted to explode with laughter.

Dorothy waved a hand, the chains pulled tighter, and Ozma was silent.

Then Glinda snapped her fingers and, in a puff of pink smoke and a shower of glitter, all three of them were gone.