It was showtime.
The Diggers carried the Nome King onto the dais. Bupu and I followed him like lackeys, but I just smiled, knowing that I’d have plenty of time later to make him regret the insult if I felt like it.
I sighed, and he glanced over at me, I suppose expecting to see the glum face of a prisoner. Instead, I threw him a radiant smile. He smiled back, but there was something uncertain about it this time.
What a waste killing him would be. But it’s like they say—you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Even Toto refused to change his ways when he got older. The Nome King, I was sure, wouldn’t be any better at it.
At any rate, he must have taken to heart what I’d said to him about weddings being a festive occasion. As the guests gaped up at him like sheep, he invited them to dance. And to my delight, they did. The musicians played a wonderful waltz. The guests danced in beautiful patterns, their faces glowing with joy and exertion.
I clapped my hands in delight, transported briefly from my more immediate problems. The dance was a little ungraceful, but perhaps that was just the local custom. I snatched a glass of something silver and sparkling off a passing waiter’s tray and surreptitiously chugged it down in one gulp. I’d already sampled some of the Nome King’s most bracing liquor to soothe my nerves before my big moment, but one more sip never hurts, does it?
I’m sure the guests would have danced all night if he’d let them, but the Nome King had more important business to take care of. It was sad, really. I would have so loved to find the man who was a perfect match for my abilities and beauty.
Of course, it was likely that that person didn’t exist. If he was out there, I certainly would have met him by now.
Suddenly another memory flashed through my mind, unbidden and unwelcome.
The Other Place. Aunt Em had had a hired hand for a while who was as handsome as the day is long and who always paid me extra attention. He’d leave little gifts on my windowsill—a pretty hair ribbon, a robin’s egg he’d found in the long grass, a pie still warm out of the oven—and sometimes when I caught him looking at me he’d turn bright red and look away. I’d been wildly in love with him, of course, but much too shy in those days to do anything about it.
Why was I thinking of him? At this moment? It made absolutely no sense. And yet the more I tried to swat the memory away, the stronger it became.
Tommy. He’d been called Tommy.
I wondered where he was now. Then I realized he was long dead. Time moved differently there. But before that—if he’d found some other farm girl to fall in love with and marry. If he’d ever had a family. A farm of his own. Maybe he’d moved to the big city. He had been so handsome—maybe he’d become a movie star. As the Nome King droned on, I remembered Tommy’s smell—new hay and clean sweat—and the transparent blue of his eyes. I remembered how he’d always called me “Miss Dorothy” and tipped his hat when he saw me, even though I told him a thousand times that just plain Dorothy would do. I remembered—
No. I didn’t want to remember. That life was over.
Tommy was beautiful and charming, but when I came back from Oz, he had joined the others in shunning me. “Miss Dorothy, you seem changed,” he’d said. He’d preferred the old me, the one who had not an ounce of magic or courage. I didn’t belong with him any more than I belonged with my current homicidal fiancé. At least he recognized I was royalty.
Another memory flooded in—Aunt Em baking pies in the kitchen of the old homestead. She’d made me pie after Tommy slighted me. “Nothing cures a broken heart like pie,” she’d said.
“I don’t want my heart. But I’ll take the pie,” I’d quipped. I could see Aunt Em’s smile and hear her laugh and I could almost taste the pie. At the time it tasted like hope and cinnamon.
With some effort, I dragged myself back to the present, only to hear the Nome King quietly clear his throat. He was looking at me with surprise and some annoyance. I wondered when he’d stopped talking.
“My fellow citizens of Ev,” the Nome King said pointedly, “I give you your future queen, the Witchslayer, the rightful ruler of Oz.”
It was my cue—the moment I’d been waiting for. Immediately, all my senses sharpened; my memories vanished like smoke on the wind. This was it. This was my only chance, I knew, to escape the man who wanted to steal the fruits of all my hard work and claim it as his own.
Being a woman, it turns out, isn’t any different in a make-believe world than it is in the real one.
I stepped forward and took off my mask. And then I looked directly at Amy. It was ironic that she was the key to my escape after trying so very hard to end me. I looked at her; the dress she’d chosen wasn’t horrible. Losing the pink hair, though, was a big mistake. But it was perhaps the best I’d seen her look since that trailer dropped her in my kingdom.
Her eyes flickered with more than recognition. More than hate. She knew what I was up to. She was smarter than I had ever given her credit for, after all. Once upon a time we were both in the Other Place wishing for some magic, excitement, and friends. And here we were now. Two tornados later. Two girls from the Other Place all dressed up at my wedding ball . . .
“Hi, Amy,” I said. “Are you going to kill me now?”
And the ballroom broke out into chaos.
TWENTY
I wasn’t caught entirely off guard by Dorothy’s words. That small niggling part of my brain had told me to be prepared for something like this. And as soon as she spoke, I realized exactly what she was doing.
The Nome King had said there would be one ruler. That meant he never planned for Dorothy to survive. He just wanted to marry her to get her magic, and then he was going to kill her. Clearly she knew this—and she wanted to escape, and she wanted me to help her do it. She was trying to create a distraction for the Nome King so that he didn’t kill her.
At her side, the Nome King was muttering something that sounded like a curse but was most likely a spell. A black cloud formed in the air over his head, the darkness spinning and cracking with forks of red lightning.
He held up his hands, preparing to attack, but whether he was going to go for me or Dorothy was hard to tell. My guess was me; he couldn’t kill Dorothy until he’d stolen her magic. And he needed to complete the wedding ceremony to do that.