The Wicked Will Rise

TWENTY-TWO


Glinda, Dorothy, and Ozma were gone. The falls, and the islands revolving around it, had been destroyed. The sun was rising, and the purple sky was filled with floating ash and ember and the sad, wilted remnants of barbecued rainbows.

Off in the distance, the place in the skyline that had been occupied by the Rainbow Citadel now held only a billowing plume of blue-black smoke.

It all looked like the morning after a surprise party gone really, really wrong.

Nox and I couldn’t even bring ourselves to look each other in the eye.

Meanwhile, Bright stood stoically, gazing out at the wreckage as the sun rose slowly above it. He shook a single cigarette from his case. “My last one,” he said. “Ever, I guess. No more rainbows left. I guess I should savor it, huh?” But instead of lighting it, he put it carefully back into the case and patted it like a precious object.

He walked over to Polychrome’s sad, limp body and knelt to touch her face. “She was something,” he said. “Y’know, I never figured out what she saw in me, not really.” He bent over and kissed her tenderly.

As his lips touched hers, her body began to glow one last time, and when he pulled away, a small, weak tendril of yellow light curled from out of her mouth and began to eat away at the rest of her until she had melted into a shapeless puddle that danced with color like an oil slick. When there was nothing left of her, the puddle began to unwind, rising—first slowly, then quickly—into the sky in a luminous, vibrant thread.

A rainbow.

We watched her go. And when the last of the last rainbow had faded, Bright turned his attention to Heathcliff. He carefully untied the ribbon at the giant cat’s chin, and removed the horn that Polychrome had given him. “Here,” he said, handing it to Nox. “This will come in handy. It’s real, you know. It came from a real unicorn. Polly got it off one when it crashed through the window by the breakfast nook and died. Stupid things are dumber than birds. God, that was ages ago. Anyway, it’s rare you find one of these. And it’s magic. Does some crazy shit. You’ll see.”

“You don’t want to keep it?” Nox asked. “It should be yours.”

“Nah. It’ll just make me sad. And what am I going to do with it anyway? It’ll probably just get lost, like everything else. It’s time for me to get moving again.”

He reached behind his ear and pulled out a golden button. “My only trick,” he said, holding it up to the morning light. “But it’s a good one. My parents always said I was bright as a button, and Polly knew I’d get bored if she tried to keep me cooped up, so she magicked these for me so I could get out whenever I wanted. Don’t want my bird in a cage, she said. Didn’t even care if I sometimes left without telling her when I’d be back. Anyway. I only have a couple of these left, but I guess I don’t really need ’em anymore. Won’t be coming back here, will I?”

He pulled out another button and handed it to me. “Do good, babe,” he said. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”

“Where are you going to go?” I asked him.

“Where else?” he asked. “I’m going to get lost.” He flipped the button up, and it spun a few times, then exploded in a shower of glitter, leaving in its place an ordinary wooden door, standing free amidst the rock, connected to nothing.

Bright turned the dull, glass knob, pulled the door open, and stepped through the frame. It disappeared as he closed it behind him, but I kept staring at the empty place where it had just been.

Instead of saying anything, I stepped to the precipice of our flying hunk of burned-out rock and sat down, letting my feet dangle off into the vast, empty sky. Nox slid down next to me and we just sat there in silence, watching the last of the sunrise.

“Well,” I said to Nox when it was over. “I guess it’s just us. What do we do now?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I really don’t.”

“You know what I wish?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I think I kinda do.”

I knew he knew. I said it anyway. “I wish we could just stay here. Just the two of us. See if we could rebuild this place. Maybe not the same as it was, but, maybe like we would want it to be.”

“Like it was ours.”

“Exactly. Make it a home.” I didn’t need to say what we were both obviously thinking. The first real home either of us had.

“I wish that, too,” Nox said. His voice cracked. “Maybe next time.”

“Yeah. Next time.” I turned away, and Nox stood and walked to where Heathcliff’s body still lay.

“You were right,” I said. “About Pete, I mean. I should have listened.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” Nox said. “It was already done.”

“I shouldn’t have trusted him in the first place.”

“Yes,” Nox said. “Yes, you should have. Because that’s who you are.”

I hadn’t thought of it that way, but maybe he was right.

“Maybe we should find Mombi,” Nox offered. “Maybe she’s better now. Maybe she’ll know what to do.”

No. I was sick of maybe. I was sick of witches, sick of searching, sick of chasing mysterious objects. Sick of being ordered around and used like a pawn. Now, if I had to trust anyone, it was myself.

“Forget Mombi,” I said. “We’re going to find Dorothy and kill her. And then we’ll finally get a happy ending.”

Nox seemed too tired to argue with me. I was tired, too, but I was also jittery and restless and suddenly not in the mood to waste time. I took the button that Bright had given me and tossed it up just like I’d seen him do. Like before, a door appeared.

Screw it. I didn’t know where it would take us, but I stepped through it anyway. Maybe, I thought, the magic will be on my side for once.

Instead, it sent me walking right into a brick wall. Literally.

A yellow brick wall, to be precise.