The Wicked Will Rise

TWENTY-THREE


Bright’s portable doorway had deposited me back on solid, non-floating land, where the clouds were now once again hundreds of feet above my head rather than miles below my feet. Nox was just a second behind me, and as soon as he stepped through the portal, it slammed shut and disappeared. We both stared up in amazement at what was standing in our way.

Rising up out of the field in which we stood, the Road of Yellow Brick had turned itself into a gleaming wall. A wall so high that there was no hoping to see over it, and so wide in either direction that it appeared to go on forever, with no sign of any way through it.

I pressed my hands against it. “Does this count as lost?” I asked, wondering if maybe we should have found another way back down to earth than the one we had chosen.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Nox said, echoing my thoughts. “What do you think’s on the other side of this thing?”

“I guess I’ll find out.”

Before I even tried teleporting to the other side of the wall, I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be so simple. My gut was right. When I tried to melt into the shadows—what Dorothy had called the Darklands—and slither through the wall, some kind of force stopped me. Instead of finding myself on the other side of the barrier, I rematerialized ten feet back from where I’d started, with a woozy sensation and a sudden headache, like I’d just tried to butt my head against the bricks. I tasted something metallic in my mouth.

“Weird,” I said.

“Not really,” Nox replied. “The road is serious business. Mombi once told me it’s as pure an expression of Oz’s magic as there is—and now that the magic’s coming back, I bet it’s getting more powerful than it was before. You’ve seen how it can be. It has a mind of its own. I guess it decided that it doesn’t want anyone going past this spot. And it looks to me like it’s not going to give up without a fight.”

I felt the wall, running my fingers along the smooth bricks, which were glittering golden in the sun. It was so beautiful that, under other circumstances, I would have been awestruck.

I don’t know what I was looking for. A secret button that would open a door, like in a Nancy Drew book?

I laughed at the irony of that. Come to think of it, though, how nice would it have been to find myself in any other storybook world than this one, with nothing to worry about except missing heiresses and stolen jewels?

Next time, I promised myself.

For now, I was out of luck. Even if there was a hidden switch somewhere in these bricks, I had no way of finding it—it would take me weeks, if I was lucky, to cover every inch of the wall looking for it.

“So what do we do?” I wondered aloud, giving the wall a kick. “Know any flying spells?” Flying had never been my thing. Hovering, maybe, a little levitation here and there, fine, but actual flying was something I’d only seen Mombi do, and it took a lot out of even her.

“Nope,” Nox said. “But there’s no law saying we have to go through it. Who knows what’s on the other side, you know? Maybe we should head the other way and try to regroup. Go find the Order and get a real plan together.”

“News flash,” I said. “There is no Order anymore. Mombi’s sick, Glamora’s probably dead. Who knows where the rest of them are? That leaves you and me. Look, I say Bright’s doorway took us here for a reason. If something’s trying to keep us from getting through here, there must be something important on the other side.”

“Maybe we can climb it,” Nox said thoughtfully. “I never was so great with horticulture spells but . . .”

He moved his fingers over the earth and a pair of thick, green vines sprouted up from out of it, quickly crawling up the sides of the wall.

I shuddered, remembering rope climbing in gym class, and how I’d never been able to even make it halfway. I wasn’t sure I wanted to test my improvement on a day like today.

I didn’t need to worry about it. When Nox tugged at the newly created vines to test their strength, they wilted instantly under his touch.

“Damn,” he said. “No surprise, though.”

I just stood there, trying to think of what to do. Maybe we should just turn around and head off somewhere else.

I was so exhausted. Rest. That was what I wanted. Somewhere to rest.

Not rest like sleep though. I could have used that, too, of course, but what I really wanted was rest as in, like, a break from always having to be on alert, never knowing what was coming next, a break from watching people die and not being able to do anything to stop it.

A break from being the one who had to kill them.

More than anything, I wanted this to be someone else’s responsibility.

I let out a scream of pure frustration and slammed my fist against the wall. When that felt good, I did it again.

That was when I felt something inside of me snap. I kept on screaming and punching, and screaming and punching. It felt good, in a weird way. This was everything I wanted to do to Dorothy, and Glinda. To Mombi and Glamora, for getting me into this. To Pete, for selling us out. To the Wizard, for just being the Wizard. Screw it—to everyone.

This is what I’d always wanted to do to all the people who had ever underestimated me, to everyone who had ever picked on me, or cast me aside. Just hit them. I hadn’t even gotten to hit Madison, but I’d been suspended for it anyway.