Dorothy Must Die: The Other Side of the Rainbow Collection: No Place Like Oz, Dorothy Must Die, The Witch Must Burn, The Wizard Returns, The Wicked Will Rise (28 page)

When I reached a carved oak doorway, the ringing stopped. I’d really been hoping the bell would lead me to one of the normal doors, but of course it put me in front of this monstrosity at the end of the hall. The door was carved into a landscape scene that twisted and moved as I stared at it, almost like crude animation. In it, dozens of blackbirds repeatedly dropped dead over an endless field of corn.

I knocked, and then jumped back as a blackbird exploded into a puff of feathers beneath my knuckles.

An impatient, somewhat familiar voice told me to enter. My heart sank when I saw the Scarecrow sitting on the edge of his bed in the center of the room, waiting for me. Or rather, waiting for Astrid.

“Yes, Your Royal Scarecrow?” I chirped in my sweetest voice, even though I was shaking on the inside. I was face-to-face—and alone—with the monster who’d experimented on Melindra. I felt my hand tingling and I was comforted with the knowledge that my knife was there if I needed to summon it.

The Scarecrow’s room looked less like a bedroom and more like an enormous, filthy study. Every surface was cluttered with loose papers and dirty plates and bits of straw. The whole place smelled stale and moldy, like the bootleg firewood our neighbor used to wheelbarrow around Dusty Acres. Lying on the floor near my feet I noticed a bound leather book open to a drawing of a monkey’s internal anatomy, with little notes in shaky handwriting penciled in the margins.

I shivered and forced myself to look away, letting my eyes travel upward, where walls of bookshelves stretched beyond the reach of the candlelight.

“Well? What took you so long?” the Scarecrow snapped. My eyes snapped, too, back down to where he sat, his creepy button eyes looking right through me. “Why didn’t you just zap yourself to me?”

“Zapping is forbidden in the palace,” I said, the words out before I could even think about them.

I let out an internal sigh of relief when the Scarecrow seemed exasperated but not suspicious. “You should know by now that those silly rules don’t apply when
I
ring,” he grumbled. He gave me a meaningful look.

Oh no
, I thought.
Please please please don’t tell me he’s Astrid’s secret boyfriend
.

But he just scowled as he gestured toward a square metal tray that was sitting on a table next to his bed. “I’m feeling duller by the second here.”

Doing my best not to disturb his mess, I carefully stepped over piles of junk and picked up the tray.

It took everything I had to stay calm when I saw what was actually on it: knives and scalpels and curved needles and pliers and an assortment of other things I didn’t even want to think about. Some of them were still bloody.

These were probably the same tools this monster used to dissect and experiment on innocent Ozians. On people like Melindra.

And what did he want
me
to do with them? I was still trying to figure it out as he casually leaned his stuffed body against his bed’s ornate headboard and started removing a series of straight pins from his scalp, dropping each one carefully into a metal wastebasket near his feet.

I noticed that they had blood on them, too. I cleared my throat and nodded toward the horror show of instruments on the tray.

“What would you like me to do with these tonight, Your Eminence?” I kept my voice detached, like a good, subjugated servant girl, even as my skin crawled at the scene before me. I hadn’t been prepared to face the Scarecrow within minutes of my arrival. I hadn’t been prepared for the Scarecrow at
all
.

He looked me up and down with his dead and shiny button eyes. “I want you to do the same thing I always want. What’s gotten into you?” Without waiting for me to answer, he plucked a scalpel up from the tray I held and began carefully using it to break apart the stitches that held his canvas skull together. “I got started without you. The syringe is already filled.”

I noticed it then: a syringe with a needle at least four inches long was sitting right there next to the rest of the bloody utensils. I picked it up, wishing I’d learned a spell to keep my hand steady.

When I turned around the Scarecrow was lifting the flap off his head, revealing his brain.

I’d seen a monkey brain once in biology class. This was kind of like that, only pinker and goopier. The whole thing was suspended in red, gelatinous mush that I’d mistaken for blood.

I picked up the syringe. I gave it a little squirt like I’d seen nurses do on hospital shows. Where was I supposed to stick it? My borrowed Astrid instincts were quiet. Maybe the magic only went so deep, or maybe she’d done such a good job blocking out these traumatizing scenes that they didn’t transfer over, or maybe my own instinct to run away screaming was overriding my Astrid sense.

Either way, I stood there holding the needle like a dummy.

When I waited a moment too long, his gloved hand shot up and grabbed my wrist with a steel grip. His hold was tight, yet I could feel his straw insides crunching as he squeezed. I almost flinched away, but that wouldn’t be an Astrid move. I kept my eyes downcast and frightened.

“Get it right, girl. Or I’ll be the one sticking needles into
you
next.”

“Yes, sir,” I said meekly, adding a shudder that wasn’t entirely feigned.

When he let go, I went for it, jamming the needle into the pinkest part of his brain mass. Part of me hoped there might be an air bubble in the needle or something, and my next job as servant girl would be mopping bits of Scarecrow off the walls. I pushed the plunger, releasing the fluid. The Scarecrow let out a long moan of relief. His head lolled over to his shoulder and a little felt tongue I didn’t even know he had dangled limply from his mouth. I willed myself not to throw up.

“Ahhhh,” he moaned again.

I pulled the needle out and put it back on the tray, slowly backing away.

“Do you know how many brains I had to drain for this stuff?”

The thing is, he wasn’t looking at me. It sounded more like he was talking to himself; he barely seemed to remember I was there at all.

“It’s exhausting,” he continued, “but it’s the price they must pay to have the finest brain in all of Oz.”

“Yes, sir,” I mumbled.

“I’ll sew myself back up. It’s good to let it breathe for a bit.” He waved me away, a bit of straw escaping from his cuff. “Take the trash on your way out, girl.”

I grabbed the wastebasket, almost tripped over myself curtsying, and got the hell out of there.

As long as I didn’t think too much about it, and if I followed my feet and let the spell do the work, I knew my way around the palace. After only one wrong turn, I finally found my way to the kitchen, which seemed as good a place as any to dispose of the Scarecrow’s garbage. It was empty now for the brief window between cleaning up after dinner and getting ready for breakfast. The place was even more huge than I had expected, which was fitting considering the size of the palace.

Not to mention the size of Dorothy’s appetites.

One wall was lined with a row of old-timey stoves while a row of sinks dominated the other. At the end of the kitchen was a fireplace, a small fire dancing behind the grate. I tossed the whole wastebasket in. It burned down to dust in an instant.

When I turned around, I was no longer alone. Ozma was standing in the doorway. She wore a nightgown so sheer I could see her pale, almost translucent skin through it. Her big green eyes were unblinking, glowing brightly in the kitchen’s candlelight.

I was pretty sure she hadn’t noticed me.

I held my breath and stepped aside into a shadow. But as I moved, the princess let out a lilting giggle and I saw that her eyes were trained right on me. I’d been discovered.

“Pardon me, Your Majesty,” I said, curtsying deeply and praying I hadn’t done anything technically against the rules.

Again, she giggled. It had a manic, almost crazed quality to it.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” I asked quietly and carefully. “May I assist you to your quarters?”

She smiled and clapped her delicate hands together. “Quarters! Halves!” she exclaimed in delight, and then her face immediately drooped into a frown. “And have-nots.”

So this was the One True Princess of Oz. It was obvious to anyone that she was broken somehow. I wondered if this was what she did every night—if she just wandered around the palace reaching for whatever shiny objects caught the attention of her spooky green eyes and spouting weirdo puns. I turned to go. I didn’t want to be around if she started banging on pots and pans or something.

But as I tiptoed around her into the empty hallway, she called after me.

“Dorothy knows,” she singsonged. I stopped and turned back, wondering what she meant. What if there was a little bit of Ozma still in there?

“What does she know?” I asked, forgetting myself.

She began to sing. “Backward rivers, Dorothy knows, Lion’s den, Scarecrow’s nose.”

Oh. It was just more nonsense.

What happened to you?
I wondered. But I knew it wasn’t worth it to ask.

Ozma’s hand reached out for mine as I tried to skirt past her. Her grip was surprisingly strong for someone so frail and thin that I could practically see through her.

I tried to shake her loose, to no avail. “Ozma. Your Majesty. You have to let me go or I’ll get into trouble.”

She gave me an angelic smile and patted my hair with her free hand. It was like my mom mid-bender.

“What does the owl say?” she asked me.

I inspected her face to see if there was even a hint of understanding, if there was anyone at all at home. It didn’t look like it.

I’d taken too long to respond, so this time her question was louder, echoing through the kitchen. “What does the owl say?”

“Please be quiet, Your Majesty,” I hissed, but when it looked like she was about to ask me again, I gave in. “Who! The owl says who.”

“Are you?” she demanded, cocking her head to the side.

“Astrid,” I replied, trying to stay calm, her clammy hand still on my wrist. “I’m Astrid.”

“Mm mm mmm,” she replied, pointing at my chest. “Naughty liar.”

I yanked away from her, more violently than I’d intended. Ozma teetered like an antique vase and then started to fall over. I had time to picture the princess of Oz cracking her head on the cobbled kitchen floor; that’d make for a pretty atrocious first night of espionage. I leapt forward to steady her.

Before I could even apologize for almost knocking her over, Ozma latched on to me. She put her lips right up against my ear.

“I’ll never tell,” she whispered.

And then, out of nowhere, she grabbed my chin and turned my head, kissing me softly on the cheek. Her lips were soft and smooth.

What the hell?

I pulled back gently and looked at her. Her eyes were wide open, too. She was still studying me. This time, though, she let me go. Without another word, Ozma resumed her wandering, leaving me in the kitchen to wonder if my cover was already blown.

“Today is a beautiful day to be in Oz!”

The lilting, sweet voice wafted across the crowded table in the servants’ mess hall where I was eating breakfast with the rest of the maids.

I was starting to sweat, and not just because this was the first time my Astrid identity needed to stand up to mass scrutiny; it was humid in the mess hall, the room seeming to trap all the heat from the kitchen. There were about twenty girls huddled shoulder to shoulder around the long, rough-hewn table—no boys. The butlers and footmen I’d seen hustling around must take their meals at a different time.

Jellia Jamb sat at the head of the table—the one who’d spoken with such unironic chipperness about what a beautiful day it was to be a servant. Jellia was in charge of the downstairs staff. She had a sickly sweet smile on her face and she looked like she was a few seconds away from bursting into song. She poised her fork above her plate and held it there. Everyone else followed suit.

Jellia was pretty, with rosy pink skin and golden-blonde hair. As the head maid, her uniform was a deeper, richer emerald green than the rest of our pale, washed-out shades that were somewhere between sea foam and olive.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’d hoped I’d get the chance of a glimpse of Pete when the staff gathered, but no luck. If I was going to see him, it wasn’t going to be at mealtimes.

We were dining on a spread left over from Dorothy’s dinner last night, which meant we were eating dinner and dessert for breakfast. Braised ribs. Truffle-infused mashed potatoes. Chocolate cake. The fact that my mouth was watering felt like some small betrayal of the Order. Even the maids’ food in the palace was a million times better than what the Order cooked up in the caves. Still, I would have given anything to have Gert make me some green goo again, something other than the table scraps of a flouncy despot. And, back at the caves, I could eat without feeling that everyone was staring at me, picking up on whatever giveaway Ozma had noticed the night before. Green goo was a lot less stressful and a lot more ethically delicious.

“Praise Dorothy,” Jellia said, and nineteen forks descended in unison. Mine was just a second behind.