“She kept bees and crows and wolves,” Dorothy said. “The Woodman killed them all. I didn’t ask him to. Even then, he could be so cruel.”
“That’s Dorothy,” Nox breathed, stepping close to me. “That’s Dorothy when she first came to Oz and killed the Wicked Witch of the West.” Of course. That’s why this looked so familiar to me.
“I didn’t mean to!” Dorothy—my Dorothy—cried. Her voice was still that high, strange, child’s voice. Her eyes were full of tears. “I never wanted to hurt anyone! I didn’t want to kill her!”
I felt a warmth in my feet and calves, and when I looked down, I saw that my boots were glowing so brightly with energy that I could barely make out their shape. The silvery magic was seeping out of them, and flowing in a shimmering stream, to where Dorothy stood, pooling around her ankles.
I didn’t know why, or how, but I knew what was happening. Sort of. The shoes were connecting us to each other.
I didn’t want to kill her. Dorothy’s lips weren’t moving anymore, but the words kept echoing in my head, as if it was a chant she was repeating to herself.
And for a brief, spinning second, I felt the ground drop out from under me as I thought of the night, long ago, on the terrace of the Emerald Palace, when I had almost killed her, and had stopped myself at the last minute.
The thought that had struck me in that moment so long ago came back to me.
Dorothy wasn’t always like this. It wasn’t until she killed the witch that she started to change.
I understood.
Before she killed the Wicked Witch of the West, Dorothy was just a little girl on a big adventure. After that, she was something else. Someone who’d taken a life needlessly. Someone who was open to evil. Not just Wickedness, but cruelty and suffering.
But what if I could change that? What if Lurline—by bringing us to this strange, frozen moment in the past—was giving me the opportunity not just to defeat Dorothy, but to undo all the damage that she had done?
If Dorothy never killed the witch, she would never become Dorothy the Witchslayer, the tyrant queen of Oz. She would never have come back to Oz a second time. All the death, the torture, and the pain that followed that would be undone as though it had never happened.
I didn’t want to kill her.
That was it—Dorothy herself was the answer.
That was why I’d been brought here. Not because I was the only person who could kill Dorothy, but because I was so much like her: enough like her that I understood her, but different enough that I had chosen another way.
Everything I’d been through, everything I’d learned, every battle I’d fought, had all been part of my journey toward the truth. To knowing that another world was possible if we took responsibility for creating it.
But knowing and doing are two different things.
If we changed the past—if Dorothy Gale never returned to Oz to become a tyrant—it also meant I’d be undoing everything else, too. I’d be undoing the very thing that had brought me here, and everything that being here had accomplished.
More than that, it meant not knowing any of the friends I’d made here. It meant never knowing Nox.
Our eyes met. I could see the anguish in his face. The wheels must have been turning in his head just as they were in mine. He couldn’t understand everything that was happening the way I could, but he could understand enough to know what was at stake.
I had the one thing I’d always wanted: the opportunity to free Oz for good. But it would mean losing Nox forever. It might even mean losing myself. I wanted to shut my eyes against the pain in his face. To will my heart against the pain I felt, too.
But I couldn’t. That was the whole point of everything. Dorothy would have chosen to be selfish. Now, as much as it hurt, I had to make the other choice.
“I love you,” I said to Nox. “Always.” Tears spilled over my cheeks as he nodded and reached his hand out toward me in a gesture of blessing. Or forgiveness. I wanted to say good-bye.
There was no time. Dorothy was wavering. She was looking up at me with a shattered, heartbroken expression, and I knew, without really knowing, that she’d just heard every thought I’d had. All the magic of Oz, and Ev—all the magic of everywhere—was flowing through our shoes, flowing so strongly between us that we were glimpsing the rawest part of each other’s soul.
“Dorothy,” I said urgently. “You don’t have to kill her.” I wasn’t sure who I was talking to: Was it the grown-up Dorothy I’d come to despise so much, or the little girl standing motionless before us, who still had a chance?
But the little girl couldn’t hear me. She was carrying a bucket of water. It steamed in the cool air: not with heat. With magic. Her face was set. She was looking up at the witch, her mouth twisted in a petulant scowl.
The grown-up turned her eyes in my direction, her eyes blank.
“She hurt Toto, and she put the Lion in a cage,” grown-up Dorothy said. “I had to stop her.”
Her expression suddenly melted from calm into anger, and when she spoke again, the seething rage in her voice shook my whole body.
“I hate her,” she snarled. “She deserved to die for what she did.”
“No,” I said. “You know you never meant to kill anyone. All you had to do was stop her. All you wanted to do was stop her. That’s who you were, then. Who you can still be.”
Dorothy cocked her head to the side as though she was remembering something. “I never wanted to hurt anyone. Not the witches. Not Aunt Em or Uncle Henry either. I just wanted to get my way.”
I’d forgotten. The Wicked Witch of the West wasn’t her only victim in those early days—her family was, too. But this was the first time I’d heard her blame anyone other than Ozma for their deaths. This was the first time she had ever taken responsibility. I felt a well of hope opening up inside of me. Was I getting through to her?
“What happened to them wasn’t your fault. It was an accident.” There were tears in her eyes now. “They wouldn’t have wanted this for you.”
I looked her right in the eye.
“You can change things.”
“Tin . . . Scare . . . the Lion . . . Toto . . . all their blood is on my hands.” She wiped her hands on her dress as if the blood was literal.
“Dorothy . . .” I said.
Nox and Madison were holding their breath. I could see it in their eyes: now they understood.
She shook her head suddenly and closed her eyes. “Auntie Em would be so proud,” she said bitterly.
“So make her proud now.”
Dorothy blinked her tears away, hard. “What’s done is done,” she snapped, her face blazing. “You can’t go home again. I read that on a pillow!”
I tried again. “It never had to be this way. This is your chance to change it all. You can bring them back—Em, Henry, Scare, Tin, the Lion—they’ll be alive again. It will be like none of this ever happened.”