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 (35 page)

Screw it. I nodded. “Amy,” I reminded him.

“You look different,” he said, still not totally sold, still not releasing my arms.

“It’s a disguise,” I replied. “And it’s a hell of a lot better than yours, by the way.”

Ollie replied with a toothy grin that would’ve put even the most habitual PermaSmile users to shame.

“Amy the Outlander! But how . . . ?”

Ollie sprung off me and I rose to my feet. Before I was even all the way up, the monkey’s strong, furry arms were wrapped tight around my waist—so tight I could barely breathe.

“I’m sorry I ran off on you,” he panted. “It wasn’t my best moment.”

“It’s okay, Ollie.” I patted him on the head and he slowly released me, stepping back and looking me up and down. “Where have you been?” I asked. “How did you get away?”

“I made it to the Dark Jungle,” he said. “There’s a group of Wingless Ones there, and they’ve started a small resistance among the animals.”

“Like the Order,” I said, musing out loud.

He shook his furry head. “No,” he said sharply. “
Not
like the Order.”

“What’s wrong with the Order?” I asked in surprise.

“They can’t be trusted. What’s the difference between a wicked witch and an evil princess? Are you working with them?”

“There’re a lot of differences,” I said defensively. He looked at me suspiciously. “They trained me. They taught me magic. I can fight now. I’m going to change things. We could join forces and—”

“Never,” he cut me off firmly. “We recognize what the Order is doing. But we have been enslaved too many times. We have known witches and wizards, and we will not be bound to anyone.”

Bound. I was bound, too—Mombi had used that very word to describe it. But that wasn’t why I was here. I was no one’s slave, and I was acting of my own free will.

Wasn’t I?

I let the question go for now.

“Why are you here?” I asked. “Are you looking for your parents?”

“My parents would turn me over to Dorothy the second they saw me.”

“Then why?” I waved at our surroundings, thinking of their sadistic owner. “You know you’re nuts breaking in here, right?”

“I don’t have a choice,” Ollie replied. “It’s my sister. Maude. She’s here somewhere. The Scarecrow has her.”

“Is your sister . . . ?”

He answered my question before it was out of my mouth. “She’s a traitor, too—one of the ones who kept their wings. But she’s still my sister. I can’t let him have her. I can’t let him . . .” His eyes glistened as his voice trailed off.

I knelt down to Ollie’s level and grabbed his hands in mine. I squeezed them tight. “What does he want from her?” I asked urgently.

“I don’t know,” Ollie replied. “The Wingless Ones have our spies in the palace, but all they were able to tell us is that she was taken. That the Scarecrow has plans for her.”

“What kind of plans?” I asked, thinking of the big experiment the Scarecrow was hard at work on.

Ollie looked down at his little red patent-leather slippers. They matched mine, right down to the square, gold buckles.

“Maude was always special,” he said slowly. “A genius. The smartest monkey our kind had ever seen. Maybe smarter than the Scarecrow himself. It’s possible . . .”

“He wants her brains,” I said.

Ollie nodded, shaking loose from my hands and clenching his fists. “She tried to convince me to stay—to keep my wings and become Dorothy’s slave. She thought that compromising was our best chance for survival. For the first time in our lives, I was right and she was wrong. Those who have sacrificed always have the most to lose,” he said.

Frustrated, Ollie pounded his fists against the floor, stirring up loose pieces of straw. I wanted to comfort him, to tell him everything was going to be okay. But how could I? For all I knew, Maude could already be dead, her liquefied brains jammed into one of the Scarecrow’s needles.

Then something else occurred to me.
Those who have sacrificed always have the most to lose
.

“Ollie,” I began carefully. “What does that mean? That thing you just said.”

He looked at me blankly. “That is the motto of the Wingless Ones,” he said. “To remind us how much we have sacrificed for others, and how much we have lost because of it. It reminds us that compromise is death—that we must remain free.”

I let the words roll over in my head. Where had I heard them before?

Then I knew: the Wizard had used that exact phrase. It hadn’t made any sense at the time—I’d had no idea what he was talking about. He had hinted that something terrible was going on in the lab. He had used the motto of the Wingless Ones. He had been trying to tell me something. But why? Whatever his reason, it definitely wasn’t a coincidence.

Ollie paced across the Scarecrow’s floor, gazing into the distance. “The last time I saw Maude, Dorothy had just handed down my punishment. She allowed the Winged Ones to confront me before I was taken to the field, to be strung up. Maude spit in my face and told me that she hoped my punishment would improve my thinking.”

He winced as he told the story. I knew the feeling. Every unkind thing my mom had ever said to me was etched in my memory, too.

“Ollie—”

“My point is, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that she abandoned me. She’s my sister. I won’t abandon
her
. I need to find her. I don’t care what the risk is.”

I nodded. “All right,” I said matter-of-factly, “I’ll help.”

It was a split-second decision, not something I really thought through. But I’d hesitated yesterday, with Dorothy right under my knife, and that’d just bought me another day of feeling useless. If I could strike a blow against Dorothy and her regime, no matter how small, I was going to do it. That was my new policy. Screw waiting around.

But Ollie shook his head. “No, it’s not your fight. I have to do it myself.”

“It may not be my fight,” I replied. “But I know the palace better than you do, and I’m not a monkey wearing a dress. You’ll get killed if you keep traipsing around like that.”

“I wasn’t
traipsing
.”

“It was a miracle I spotted you instead of someone else.” I shook my head, thinking about the Wizard, the serendipity of it all. “I have a better chance of finding Maude than you ever would.”

An affronted look passed over his features, but then Ollie paused to consider it. “What would the Order say about this?” he asked. “What do they care about my little sister?”

He was right. I knew exactly what Nox would have said: that one winged monkey—no matter whose sister she was—wasn’t worth risking my cover. That my mission was about something bigger and that nothing could get in the way of it.

Well, maybe all that was true. But they weren’t here. They didn’t understand what it was like to stand by and watch Dorothy’s casual cruelty, to feel like a powerless coward hidden under a borrowed face. I was tired of waiting. I was my own person. Bound to the Order or not, I was still going to make my own decisions. And I felt deep down in my gut that this was the right one.

“The Wizard told me the Scarecrow is at work on something big. Something that could make everything the Order is fighting for irrelevant. They’ll probably thank me for finding out what it is,” I told Ollie, even though I knew it probably wasn’t true. “If Maude’s a part of it, I promise, I’ll get her out.”

Ollie scratched the top of his head. “I don’t know. How will you even find her?”

“I haven’t quite worked that out yet,” I replied.

“No way,” Ollie said, shaking his head. “You don’t even have a plan and you want me to just leave? Abandon my sister? No way.”

“You don’t have a plan either,” I reminded him. “And besides, I have this.”

With a flourish, my dagger appeared in my hand. I stuck it under Ollie’s chin and he held up his hands, eyes widening.

“Easy, Amy,” he said, glancing down at the blade. “What’s your, um, point?”

“My point is, you’ll die,” I replied. “You won’t last another hour here unarmed and in that ridiculous outfit. I’ve got weapons, I’m trained, and I sort of blend in. I’ve got a way better chance of finding her than you.”

“All right,” Ollie grunted, gently placing his hand on top of mine and pushing my dagger away from his neck. “I get it.”

I realized suddenly how long we’d been talking. Jellia would have noticed me missing by now.

“You should get out of here.” I walked to the window and flung it open. “I promise I won’t let you down.”

I looked back at him. Ollie nodded slowly, admitting to himself that I was his best option. As he walked toward me, he pointed a furry finger toward my chest.

“I’ll give you until midnight tomorrow,” he growled. “The Wingless Ones have a secret entrance in the Royal Gardens. If you’re not there, with my sister, I’m going back to Plan A—”

“Cross-dressing?”

Ollie grimaced. “You joke, but this is serious.”

“I know,” I replied, trying to sound confident. “I won’t fail.”

“Thank you,” he said quietly when he was at my side. “You’re the first kind human I’ve met since Dorothy took over.”

Ollie stood on the toes of his servant’s slippers and gave me a soft, tender peck on the cheek. Then he flung himself out the window, easily grabbing on to the branch of a nearby tree and scampering into the leafy cover, disappearing into the darkness of Dorothy’s artificial night.

No more waiting. I had made a promise to myself that I would help Ollie. Now I had a chance to make good on it.

The first step of my plan was to get out of the rest of my chores.

I found Jellia in the banquet hall, scrubbing the floors on her hands and knees. Normally, sunlight spilled in through the hall’s massive windows, but with night having already fallen, Jellia was forced to do her scrubbing by candlelight. Somehow, that made it even more depressing.

Before I approached, I took a few big whiffs of her dead-mouse stench—enough to make myself look queasy. Then, I staggered toward her, dragging my feet.

“Astrid,” she snapped, looking up. “Where have you been?”

I draped a hand across my forehead. “I’m feeling ill,” I told her. “My stomach . . .”

“This is no way to work yourself back up to second handmaid,” Jellia lectured.

“I’m sorry,” I pleaded, clutching my stomach. “But it’s better for me to get my rest than to puke all over Dorothy’s freshly cleaned carpets this close to the ball, isn’t it?”

She tilted her head, knowing I had a point. She forced a smile and I saw that there was a small fleck of red lipstick on her teeth. It made me feel even sorrier for her than I already did.

“Fine,” Jellia said. “But we need you tomorrow. Bright and early. No excuses.”

I left the banquet hall practically doubled over, straightening up only when I was sure no one was watching. I didn’t go back to my room like a loyal maid on the mend.

Instead, I headed for Dorothy’s solarium.

I’d memorized the maids’ schedule and knew the solarium had already been cleaned today. And, in cases of vanity-induced solar eclipses, you could always count on the room dedicated to sunlight being totally empty.

Nonetheless, I approached cautiously. I’d picked up a feather duster on my way here. This time, if I got busted—by the Wizard or anyone else—at least I’d have a plausible excuse. Just some extracurricular dusting around the magical artifacts.

The solarium was eerie in the early evening moonlight. The rainbow of lounges all appeared drained of color, like a furniture vampire had passed through. The dozens of floral arrangements that Dorothy demanded be changed weekly all drooped, their expected sunlight having never appeared.

Just as I’d hoped. It was empty.

I tiptoed across the room to Dorothy’s magic picture. Currently, it depicted a sprawling poppy field under a starlit sky. It was beautiful, actually, the only thing in the solarium that didn’t look washed out.

“Magic picture,” I whispered. “Show me Maude.”

Wherever Ollie’s sister was being held, it was somewhere dark. I couldn’t really even see her, only matted, sweat-slick fur that rippled with labored breathing. I could make out a set of leather straps holding her down on some kind of table. It looked pretty grim.

Well, I consoled myself, at least Maude was alive.

Then, I heard the Scarecrow. I jumped at the sound of his voice and whipped around, almost drawing my knife before realizing it was coming from the painting.

“These damn calculations,” he muttered. “Why won’t they just add up?”

A raven squawked in response.

“I know,” the Scarecrow hissed at the bird. “They
will
all laugh at me. Call me stupid. Call me . . .”

He trailed off. I heard a rustling sound, the scratching of straw shifting around, and then the Scarecrow’s wrinkled, felt-gloved hand gently caressing Maude’s cheek. She didn’t even have the strength to move away, although I could hear her breath catch with revulsion.

“Maude, my dear,” he said musingly. “Do you ever get the feeling you’re being watched?”

Did he feel me using the magic painting on him? It would make sense for the Scarecrow’s laboratory to be warded somehow against magical invasions, especially since it was so hyper-secret.