There was a crack and a hiss, and then the boatman was lighting a lantern with a match. The light barely made a dent in the smothering darkness around us, but at least I could see something now. We were in a low, narrow tunnel, the rock just inches over our heads. The boat’s wings were furled tightly to its sides now, and its head was lowered close to the water to avoid brushing the tunnel roof.
“I think I liked it better when it was dark,” Madison said. Even in this dim light I could see that she was pale.
“I hated it at first, too,” Lang said as the boat moved forward again. “It’s funny how much a person can change. Now, when I go aboveground I feel naked. It’d take years up there to get used to it again.”
Nox was looking a little pale, too. I reached over and squeezed his hand, and he gave me a brief, grateful glance. Lang saw the touch and frowned, looking away again.
“We’re almost there,” she said. “Just a few more minutes.”
“What was that song?” I asked the boatman, but he didn’t respond.
“He only speaks to me,” Lang said. “It’s a spell that all my servants know; it can only be sung by a single person with many voices. It’s the only way to get to the place I’m taking you.”
“Why’d you set the magic up that way?” Madison asked. Lang was silent and Nox answered her.
“So no one can torture it out of her,” he said. “I’m guessing her servants don’t feel pain.”
After that, none of us felt like talking for a while.
Finally, the tunnel opened up into a larger cavern where the water formed a broad, flat lake that was big enough that the lantern light didn’t reach to its shore. I felt my spirits lift as the ceiling did, as if the rock itself had been oppressing us. The dragon boat sped up, probably sensing it was nearly at the end of its journey, and soon the lamplight fell on a narrow, pebbled beach. Lang kicked off her shoes. In one smooth motion, she swung herself over the boat’s side and into the water, wading toward shore.
“I guess we follow,” Nox said under his breath.
I climbed out of the boat as Nox offered Madison a hand. She waved it away. The pitch-black water was almost hip-deep, and freezing cold. I splashed my way toward the beach and something very large and very scaly slithered past my calves. Panic flooded through me and I half ran, half sloshed toward the shore. Madison made an awful noise behind me and I knew that she’d just encountered whatever it was that had passed me.
“They’re harmless!” Lang called from the beach. I didn’t stay in the water long enough to find out whether or not she was telling the truth, and Nox and Madison were right behind me.
“You can change,” Lang said, indicating our soaked clothes with a jerk of her head. She’d unearthed a waterproofed leather bag of supplies from somewhere and was pulling on tight black leather leggings, a loose shirt, and boots. With her dark hair pulled back from her face in a high ponytail, she looked like a cross between a rocker and an aerobics instructor.
I rummaged through the bag, choosing a similar outfit. My shoes had stayed miraculously dry despite the slog to shore; apparently magic boots were water-resistant. Who knew. Nox changed with his back to us, his lean muscles rippling as he pulled on a clean shirt.
“You’re staring,” Madison said, elbowing me in the ribs.
“I am not,” I said, blushing.
“Mmm-hmm,” she said, and rolled her eyes.
Behind us, the dragon boat was paddling away, steered by its strange captain. Lang lit another lantern, its flickering amber light playing over the rocky beach and sending looming, sinister shadows ahead of us.
“Come on,” she said. “You can rest for a few hours before we figure out what to do next. I have enough alarm spells set up to wake the dead, but we shouldn’t need them for a while. No one but me knows this place exists.”
Rest. Just the word sent a flood of longing through me. When was the last time I’d really been able to rest?
I thought of the little bedroom my mom had set up for me in Kansas while she waited for me to come home, even though everything pointed to the fact that I was dead. How she’d refused to give up on me, gotten sober in case I came back, finally started dating someone who wasn’t a greaseball or a loser. I plodded after Lang’s wobbly beacon, across the stone beach and into yet another tunnel. This one was more rough-hewn than anything in her palace. Thankfully, it also didn’t sport the Headless Horseman–themed decor. There were fewer branches and turnings; it was as if Lang was leading us deep into the heart of the earth itself. We were silent, our breath echoing in the dimly lit, narrow tunnel.
For the millionth time I wondered what my mom was doing now.
It wasn’t just me who’d vanished this time—the Nome King’s magic had destroyed the high school and pulled Madison into Oz, too. We were both missing persons—me for a second time. I wanted to believe my mom would be okay, but I knew better. She’d barely been sober for a month when I disappeared a second time. She’d lost our home, me, everything. Even her pet rat, Star. Her new boyfriend, Jake, seemed like a nice enough guy but I wondered how good he’d be at helping her stay sober, or if she’d fall back into her old bad habits.
She’d been right to hope that I was alive the first time I’d disappeared. But I couldn’t imagine that she’d be able to keep up hope a second time.
And even if we finally defeated Dorothy and I found a way to get back to Kansas, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go.
“You look really sad,” Madison said quietly.
I jumped. “Yeah, sorry,” I said. “I was just thinking about . . .”
“Kansas?” she supplied.
“Yeah. Are you—”
“Trying not to think about it? Yeah,” she said. “I just keep going over that moment in my head, you know? When Assistant Principal Strachan turned into that freaky-ass dude and dragged me through—well, through whatever that was. And I dropped Dustin Jr. I dropped him! My kid!” She shook her head. “I can’t stop wondering if there’s something I could’ve done different. What mistake I made to end up here without him. I don’t belong here, Ames. I don’t want to be here. And now everything is . . . This all seems like some awful, fucked-up dream.”
“I know,” I said.
I did know, was the thing. I knew what she was going through in a way that no one else in Oz possibly could. Lang and Nox might’ve lost their parents, but they were still living in the place where they were from. They hadn’t literally been pulled out of their own world and into one that they’d grown up believing was just a story—a funny movie with cheesy old actors in bad face paint and a pretty girl in a checked dress.
There was no way to describe what that felt like to someone who’d grown up in a world where magic was normal, witches were real, and the Cowardly Lion ate people in front of you.
But what I wasn’t telling Madison was that when I first landed in Oz, I was happy to not be in Kansas anymore. Happy to have escaped the trailer, and my mom—and Madison. Happy to be needed by the Order, and to be chosen for something for the first time in my life. Oz had made me stronger, had given me magic and friends and love. Oz had given me something to fight for.