Authors: Danielle Paige
“As you know, our dear friend has been helping me with a project that’s very close to my heart,” Glinda cooed. “And before I return you to Dorothy, he’d like to see all his hard work come to fruition. I hope you’re aware of what a tremendous honor it is for you to be asked to help him.”
“Me?” I asked uncertainly, and Glinda laughed.
“My dear Jellia!” she burbled merrily. “You don’t think I’ve forgotten about how eager you were to do your duty for Oz, do you? We’ve been working nonstop all week to perfect the machine I designed that will siphon Oz’s leftover magic to where it’s needed most.”
My eyes widened in terror and I took an involuntary step backward. “I thought the machine didn’t work, Your Eminence,” I whispered. Her brow furrowed with displeasure.
“Jellia, that skeptical attitude is simply hateful, and I won’t tolerate it. Of course my machine works. It simply needed some—adjustments.” She smiled at the Scarecrow. “Now, are you ready?”
Before I could open my mouth to answer, everything went blurry, and I felt as though I was being pulled through a tub of molasses while trying to cross a stormy sea in a rowboat. When the world solidified around me again, Glinda, the Scarecrow, and I had been transported to a meadow of pale yellow grass, dotted here and there with bright red flowers that grew more thickly at the meadow’s center. The air had the faint, ozoney crackle of magic. A handful of Munchkins were busy setting up what I recognized with a sinking heart as a simpler and more compact version of the mechanical apparatus she’d used on me on the journey to her palace.
“You know what they say, Jellia,” Glinda said, smiling at my stricken expression. “If at first you don’t succeed—try, try again.” She seized my arm and dragged me, struggling, toward the machine, the Scarecrow following after us. “You should be very honored, Jellia,” Glinda added. “Even though he’s terribly busy, the Scarecrow agreed to come out and help me make a few adjustments to my magic drill. Isn’t that generous of him? He knows how important the well-being of Oz is, and how much this magic will help keep Oz the wonderful place it is.”
As Glinda dragged me closer the Scarecrow turned to look at us, his awful button eyes glinting as he examined me like I was one of his science experiments. “This is the fairy?” he grated.
“Only part,” Glinda said, “but she’ll have to do.” My mind reeled. Part fairy? Me? But that was impossible.
“It may not be enough. I’ve already told you, Munchkin labor—”
“Is inefficient,” Glinda interrupted sharply.
“Perhaps. But it may be the only way to operate the machine.”
“I didn’t bring you all the way out here to give me excuses,” Glinda said brightly. “There’s no excuse for this negativity when it comes to serving Oz.”
The Scarecrow shrugged. “I made the adjustments you specified, but I haven’t had enough time to experiment. Another few weeks in my laboratory, and I might have something for you. But I can’t guarantee this machine will work.”
“We don’t have another few weeks. Dorothy wants the girl back now,” Glinda said, shoving me forward into the Scarecrow’s arms. “And we wouldn’t want to disobey the illustrious ruler of Oz, would we? Start the machine.”
His fingers closed around my arms, and I shuddered with revulsion. It was almost impossible to believe this monster was the same lovable buffoon who’d once—briefly—governed Oz before Ozma took her rightful place on the throne. His fingers dug into my flesh as he strapped me to a smaller, more compact version of the platform Glinda had harnessed me to before and fastened a metal collar around my neck. Metal pieces curved upward from the collar and ended in rods that he inserted in my eardrums. I couldn’t move my head without impaling myself, and so I gave up struggling and held myself as still as possible. His eerie, dead eyes didn’t even register me as he worked. He tightened the straps that crossed my chest and stepped away from me. “It’s ready,” he said to Glinda, and she smiled.
“Let’s begin, Jellia,” she said sweetly. “Try not to let me down this time, my dear.”
I braced myself but there was no preparing for the agony that followed. Excruciating waves tore through me, each one worse than the last; the metal pieces in my ears were like red-hot pokers driving into my brain. Glinda and the Scarecrow watched dispassionately as I sobbed in despair.
“She’s too weak,” I heard the Scarecrow say as my vision began to go dark. “I told you, it’s not going to work.”
“Then both of you are terrible disappointments,” Glinda said coldly. “But I’m done wasting my time here. If she survives, the Munchkins can take her back to Dorothy. I have no more use for her.”
The pain overwhelmed me, and then I didn’t feel anything at all.
When I opened my eyes again the darkness around me was so thick there was no difference from when I’d had them closed. I was lying on my back on something hard. When I shifted cautiously, the pain shooting through my body was so awful that I gasped aloud.
“Ah, she’s awake,” said a gentle voice nearby, and the darkness was suffused with a cool white glow that gradually brightened until I could make out what surrounded me.
I was lying next to a clear pool in the middle of a huge cavern whose ceiling was lost somewhere in the darkness overhead. The cavern’s purplish stone floor was polished smooth, as though by generations of feet, and its walls glowed with a gentle, phosphorescent light that eased the darkness around me and illuminated the person who had spoken.
I turned my head with difficulty to study her. She was the oldest person I’d ever seen; her body was round and shapeless beneath her sack-like white dress, and her face was so seamed with lines and wrinkles that it was hard to make out her features. Her hair stuck up in a silvery halo that wafted gently in the cool air like an undersea plant. “Don’t try to move,” she said. “You’ve been through quite a lot, my dear.” The wrinkles around her mouth wriggled and shifted, and I realized she was smiling at me.
“What—who are you? Where am I?” I croaked, wincing as a whole new set of aches flared up in my body. In the cave’s light, I could see what a mess I was. My dress was torn and bloody where the Scarecrow’s harness had dug into my skin. My bare arms and legs were purpled with bruises and streaked with more blood. And every part of me hurt, from my scalp to the tips of my toes.
“You can call me Gert. Grandma Gert, if you like. But who I am and where you are can wait until you’ve healed. You’re dying, Jellia.”
“Dying?” I struggled to sit up and cried out as my broken body refused.
“Lie still.” Gert’s voice was gentle but firm. “What you’ve been through would have killed anyone without your power. Glinda’s machine—”
“You know about my power?” I wheezed.
“I said lie still, Jellia.” She scooped me up in her soft arms, so lightly that I barely felt the movement. It didn’t seem possible that someone so soft could be so strong. She waded into the pool with me still in her arms. “This may hurt a little, my dear.”
The clean, clear water of the pool rose around us. It was as warm as bathwater, but it felt thicker than ordinary water—almost like oil. Gert lowered me fully into the water and I felt it move against my skin insistently, almost as if it wanted something from me. I became more and more aware of the pain in my body—the pool was pulling it from me, bit by bit. I cried out in anguish and my open mouth filled with water; I swallowed involuntarily and felt a mouthful of the strange liquid move through my body as if it had a will of its own, worming its way through my veins.
I looked down at myself and saw that a thick, dark substance was seeping out of my pores, forming a black cloud around me that slowly dissipated in the pool. The pain in my body was slowly replaced with a warm, drowsy sense of bliss. Dimly, I felt Gert lift me up again and set me down gently at the pool’s edge. The bruises and blood were gone; my skin glowed, and my ruined dress had been replaced by a thick, soft white robe. Instead of feeling broken and exhausted, I felt refreshed.
“What was that?”
Gert was looking at me with an expression that was hard to read. It almost looked like pity. Though she’d just gone into the pool with me, her clothes were dry. “Magic,” she said.
“I figured that much out.”
She smiled. “It’s good to see you back to normal, Jellia. I must admit I was worried about you. We were aware you might encounter danger at Glinda’s, but we weren’t prepared for things to move so quickly. Come,” she said, offering me her hand and pulling me to my feet. “It’s time for some explanations.” But instead of continuing to talk, she took off at a brisk pace. I had no choice but to follow her as she led me away from the healing pool and down a bewildering series of tunnels, all lit by the same glowing phosphorescence that seeped out of the walls.
Sometimes the tunnels opened up into more caverns, each one of them full of marvels: a shimmering, underground meadow, radiating silver light and dotted here and there with towering wildflowers that rose into the darkness; another pool, this one so big I couldn’t make out its far side, where bright golden fish jumped and fell back into the water with a splash; a series of mysterious, enormous machines, which sent a shard of terror stabbing through me until I realized they were putting together elaborate clocks that slid past on a conveyor belt.
We were moving too fast for me to catch more than the briefest glimpse of each cavern before Gert dragged me along to the next tunnel. Finally, she stopped at a low wooden door, rapped sharply, and pushed it open without waiting for a response. I followed her into a smallish room, furnished with a huge black table and rough wooden chairs that took up most of the space. Three people sat at the table: a cloaked figure, a mean-looking old woman I didn’t recognize, and Nox, whose expression was distinctly worried.
“What are
you
doing here?” I asked him.
“He saved your life,” the cloaked figure said, and lowered her hood. I flung my hands up and took a step backward. Her perfect face, her heart-shaped mouth, her strawberry-blond curls—Nox hadn’t saved me, he’d betrayed me. Because the woman in front of me was Glinda.
Without realizing it, I’d backed up to Gert, who held me firmly in her fleshy arms. “It’s all right, Jellia,” she said, her soft tone doing nothing to slow my pounding heart. “It’s not her. I’d like you to meet Glamora—Glinda’s twin sister.”
I blinked and stared at the woman seated at the table. What Gert was saying made a kind of sense. This woman had Glinda’s face, but where Glinda’s eyes were like cold, hard chips of ice, hers were kindly. The set of her mouth was friendly, not cruel.
“Have a seat, Jellia,” Gert said, steering me to a chair. “We have much to discuss. And I imagine you’re hungry.” With that, she sat down next to me and snapped her fingers, her eyes twinkling. I was used to magic, but I was still taken aback by the feast that appeared on the table almost instantaneously—big platters piled high with fruit and cheese, fragrant loaves of steaming bread accompanied by creamy butter and honey, a huge tureen of some kind of soup that smelled like heaven. Gert handed me a plate and a gleaming silver fork that she plucked out of the air, and I helped myself.
If this was going to be my last meal, I might as well make it a good one. Nox, Glamora, and Gert filled their plates, too—but the fourth person sat at the far end of the table, glaring at the food as if she expected it to bite her. I eyeballed her surreptitiously as I ate.
She looked more like a troll than a witch. Like Gert, she was short and squat, but where Gert came across as nurturing, there was nothing generous about this woman. Her nose was the most extraordinary feature in her wrinkled face: huge and bulbous, with a wart at its very tip. She was dressed in purple rags that hung haphazardly from her stout body and a battered, pointed black hat rested on her greasy, stringy black hair at an alarming angle. “Why don’t you paint a picture, it’ll last longer,” she growled at me. Embarrassed at being caught staring, I quickly looked away, mumbling an apology. Next to me, Gert chuckled.
“Don’t you mind our Mombi,” she said. “She has a terrible attitude problem.”
“Remind me of my attitude problem the next time I save your skin,” Mombi snapped. “Are you done stuffing your faces? We don’t have all day. It’s time to get down to business.”
For the first time, it occurred to me to wonder what Glinda would think about my disappearance. How long had I been in the cave? What would happen when—if—I returned to her palace? And how had I gotten here in the first place?
“One at a time, dear,” Gert said, and I realized that she was answering me even though I hadn’t spoken aloud. “Bad habit,” she added, reading my thoughts again. “But it saves time. I won’t look in on anything that’s none of my business, don’t worry.”
“Fine,” I said, trying not to show her how unnerved I was by her magic mind reading. “How did I get here?”
“I can answer that,” Nox said. “I followed you when Glinda summoned you. I knew if she’d brought the Scarecrow to the palace, she was up to something really bad. We”—he indicated the others seated at the table—“didn’t realize she’d move again so quickly. I could protect you inside the palace, but by the time I got to you, it was almost too late. She and the Scarecrow had left you for dead. I thought there was still a chance we could save you, so I brought you here.” I thought of the Scarecrow’s machine and shivered, covering my eyes with my hands. I felt Gert put an arm around my shoulders.
“I’m sorry we couldn’t prevent you from experiencing so much pain,” she said. “We had no idea she would try again so soon after she brought you to the palace. Glinda and Dorothy have been looking for a way to tap into Oz’s magic since Dorothy took over the Emerald City. Glinda’s machine will be slowed down now by the fact that she’ll have to use Munchkin labor. But that won’t stop her for long. Oz is in danger, and we’re the only people who can keep the country safe.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” I asked. Mombi drew herself up to her full height.
“The Revolutionary Order of the Wicked,” she said proudly. “The only thing standing between Oz and its destruction.” If the only thing standing between Oz and its destruction was this ragtag bunch, I thought, then Oz was in even bigger trouble than I’d thought—but I kept my mouth shut. Gert was probably reading my mind anyway. “We’re witches, too,” Mombi continued. “But for years, we’ve kept to ourselves, letting our more attention-hungry sisters steal the spotlight. When Glinda brought Dorothy back to Oz, we knew it was time to come together to find a way to stop her.”