Authors: Danielle Paige
I stared at him, remembering what Nox had said about him being a manipulator. Dorothy had seemed pretty scared when I was about to stab her, and even more so when I’d tackled her off the roof—not at all like some magical immortal.
“Okay, sure,” I replied. “I’d still like to try it.”
The Wizard guffawed, a twinkle in his eye. “I love the enthusiasm, but you still don’t understand how Oz works. I wouldn’t have expected the Order to teach you
everything
, but . . . surely they know that you’re out of your league against Dorothy.”
I folded my arms across my chest.
“Out of my league? They told me I was the only one who could kill her.”
“That may be true,” he said. “And, it may not. It’s just a theory, and, after all, Mombi and her friends have been wrong before. But let’s just say the witches’ theory is correct. Just for the sake of argument. Do you suppose that Dorothy doesn’t know about it? Do you suppose she hasn’t gone to great lengths to protect herself?”
“Of course she has,” I said. “That’s why I had to spend all this time pretending to be a maid—so that I could get to her when she was weak.”
“Her Highness has wrapped herself in intricate layers of protection, it’s true. And with the Order’s help, you’ve already managed to breach many of those walls. But the princess is not the only player in this game. She may not even be the most important player. There are things protecting Dorothy that she herself doesn’t even know about. Just as you don’t.”
“She doesn’t know about them. I don’t know about them. The Order doesn’t know about them. And
you
do?”
“Oh, Amy. I’ve learned a bit of magic, here and there, since I returned to Oz, but let’s face it—I’ll always be a bit of a humbug when it comes to that sort of thing. My real wizardry has nothing to do with
spells
at all. It has to do with knowledge. I knew about you the moment you arrived here, didn’t I? Even the most unbreakable of spells are meant to be broken. You just need to know a thing or two. It’s the
knowing things
part that just so happens to be my specialty.”
This was getting very annoying. “Look. You obviously want to tell me something,” I said, checking my imaginary wristwatch. “So just stop screwing around and let’s hear it.” I looked around nervously, knowing Glinda could come magicking around the corner at any second.
The Wizard sighed theatrically and rolled his head back and forth like he was really struggling to make up his mind.
“Killing Dorothy can only be done by a certain kind of person, and some people think that person is you. But what the Order seems to have missed is that it can only be done a certain
way.
Certain . . .
tools
are necessary. Certain items to which the princess has a special connection. You may have ascertained that several of Dorothy’s
loyal companions
are not quite what they used to be. Am I correct?”
“How should I know what
anything
used to be?” I asked. “I’m new here, in case you didn’t notice.”
“Well, I hear there’s a book,” he said with a wry laugh. “Haven’t you read it? I’m talking, of course, about the Scarecrow. The Tin Woodman. The Lion. Why do you suppose they’re so different from the heroes you expected to meet?”
“Because of Dorothy,” I said. “She changed them somehow.”
“That would be the obvious answer. Maybe even the right one. But is anything ever that obvious? Haven’t you learned by now that the
real
story is not always the whole story? Dorothy’s friends didn’t just change because they were her friends. They changed because of the things that they value most. Or . . . the things they value most have been changed.”
“The Scarecrow’s brains,” I said, thinking out loud.
The Wizard twirled an index finger in the air.
“The Tin Man’s heart . . .”
“I think she’s getting it,” he said.
“And the Lion’s courage,” I finished.
“Retrieve them and you’ll be three steps closer to accomplishing your mission.”
I shook my head. It didn’t quite add up.
“Y
ou’re
the one who gave them those things. And you didn’t even know magic. You were just messing with them. Giving them what they were asking for, whether it worked or not.”
“Very true,” he said. “Funny how even they never seemed to figure that out. You must admit, though, that my gifts
did
have a certain effect. Would you disagree?”
“How can I when I don’t know what you’re talking about? The only thing I know for sure is that I don’t trust you. At all.”
“As well you shouldn’t,” the Wizard said. “You shouldn’t trust anyone. Yes, I could be lying to you. On the other hand, where’s the risk in ripping out the Tin Woodman’s heart? Just to see what happens. If you don’t, he’ll probably kill you anyway.”
He had a point.
“Why don’t you do it yourself?” I asked.
“Oh,” he said, waving the idea away, “I could never stomach violence. And anyway,
you’re
the one from Kansas. . . .”
The grass around us rustled, blown by a gentle wind. I glanced at Pete and found him staring up into the night sky. Suddenly he flinched, and put one hand on the Wizard’s shoulder.
“She sees us,” he said. “She knows where we are.”
The Wizard nodded, as if he understood Pete’s typically cryptic words. “We have to move. There’s still a battle at the palace, but it won’t last long. If she—”
“She
who
?” I interrupted, more than tired of being in the dark.
“Glinda,” the Wizard said. “Gazing at us through the damn painting I should’ve destroyed years ago—”
The night flashed suddenly white, the air around us forcefully displaced and filling with the smell of motor oil. Startled, Maude and Ollie took to the air. I shielded my eyes from the bright light as the Tin Woodman materialized in front of me, still shimmering with a pale pink glow from the spell that had sent him here. Glinda. It had to be. I was beginning to see by now that she liked to rely on other people to do her dirty work for her. Instead of facing me on her own, she had sent someone else to deal with me.
His ax was raised, as if he’d just been plucked from the middle of a fight and transplanted here. He looked around, his eyes still adjusting to the darkness. He lowered the ax a fraction, but then spotted the Wizard.
“You!”
he snarled.
“Hello, old friend,” the Wizard replied sadly. “I’m sorry to see that Glinda’s using you as her little errand boy. It’s really not very dignified, is it?”
“You,”
the Tin Woodman cried in outrage. I’d never heard so much raw emotion in his hollow, metallic voice before.
“
I should have known you were part of this.”
He rounded on me next, that all-too-familiar ax poised to strike.
“And you. What have you done with my princess? Where is she? If you’ve harmed even a hair on her head . . .”
“Whoa,” I replied. Had Dorothy gone missing after she’d teleported away from me? “I don’t have her.”
Obviously, the Tin Woodman didn’t believe me. He pulled his ax from his shoulder and took a lumbering swing at me, but I moved backward easily, feeling stronger and more confident than I had all night, and pulled my knife out. I felt my magic coursing through my body, charging the knife with energy.
The Tin Woodman was alone without his soldiers, without Dorothy and her magic. And he looked weakened: his metal body was battered; several of the frightening instruments that had once tipped his fingers had been snapped off. He had a huge dent in the side of his face, stretching from his cheek to his forehead.
The Order had only charged me with killing Dorothy—there’d been no discussion of the Tin Woodman or any of her other cohorts. But they were all just as evil, weren’t they? I hadn’t been able to kill Dorothy, but if I was able to do away with the Tin Woodman, that would at least weaken her ability to torture some innocent people, right?
I could do this.
“Kill him, Amy,” the Wizard urged me. A wounded, betrayed look scrunched the Tin Woodman’s features at the Wizard’s words. “I’ve told you what you need to do.”
I glanced over at the Wizard and saw him weaving his hands through the air—but not to help me. Instead, he was building what looked like a glowing green force field around himself and Pete. Thanks, guys. Very chivalrous.
The Tin Woodman, though, was focused only on me. He put his head down and charged, his ax extended in front of him. As he plowed forward, the ax transformed into a long, gleaming sword that almost seemed to be an extension of his body.
I was ready for him. Just before he reached me, I blinked myself behind him and he kept going, his momentum carrying him forward. He stumbled for a moment, almost falling, but then he recovered, pivoted, and—in one swift motion—hurled his sword straight for me. As it flew through the air, it transformed again: this time into a flurry of knives.
With a few lightning-fast flicks of my wrist, I was able to deflect most of them, but I felt one graze my cheek. Another plunged into my thigh.
Without slowing down, I pulled it out, feeling the warm blood seep down my leg, and tossed it aside. With that and the wound across my abdomen, I was steadily turning into a real mess. My whole body was shooting with a throbbing pain, but I didn’t care.
I didn’t feel weaker, I felt changed. Like I really had become something else—a warrior like Jellia had been when she’d confronted Dorothy—someone capable of taking the worst these assholes had to offer and then dishing it right back to them.
The Tin Woodman was unarmed now. From his posture, it didn’t look like he had much fight left in him.
I launched myself into the air and leaned into a spinning kick that connected with his midsection. The Tin Woodman toppled into the grass and I leapt on top of him.
“His heart, Amy!” the Wizard hissed. “That’s the only way!”
I lifted my knife into the air, letting it fill with heat until the blade glowed white-hot. The magic was rich in this place—I felt supercharged, more powerful than I ever had before, Oz’s natural, mercurial energy flowing like water from the grass and the air and the earth and into my body. Into my knife.
The pain from my injuries was still there, but it was easy to ignore.
“Please!” the Tin Woodman wheezed. He was powerless now—his weapons gone, his arms pinned to his sides. His metal face looked frightened and pathetic. “Please,” he repeated. “I know what I’ve done. I know I’ve betrayed the people of Oz. I only did it for
her
.”
A single tear rolled down his cheek.
I remembered what the Wizard said earlier.
Dorothy’s loyal companions are not quite what they used to be
. Whether or not the rest of what he was telling me was a lie, that part was pretty obvious, and now, it seemed oddly relevant. The Tin Woodman’s love had been twisted and perverted. It had turned into something ugly and evil.
That doesn’t just happen. Something had done it to him. I’d assumed it was Dorothy.
But what if it was his heart itself?
Well, maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t. It didn’t matter whose fault it was. It didn’t matter about the why of it all. Life isn’t fair. And I wasn’t doing this for myself. I was doing it for Indigo, and for Maude, and for Jellia, and for everyone else who had suffered because of Dorothy. People like Dorothy couldn’t be allowed to run things. They didn’t deserve a place like Oz.
My knife crackled with blue energy as I plunged it down. It sank into the Tin Woodman like a needle puncturing a balloon.
As I did it, his face collapsed in agony. He started to cry in earnest—sobbing really, his body heaving in pain. He began to look strangely human.
“Please,” he managed to spit out. “Please take pity on me.”
It was too late. I sliced diagonally across his chest and then drew the knife out only to plunge it right back in, drawing an
X
along his left side with the blade. It made a satisfying hissing noise, and met with almost no resistance. It was as simple as popping the top on a can of soda. In the end, he was only made of tin.
His jaw continued to open and close, but he wasn’t speaking anymore.
I reached into the hole I’d just made and found his heart. It was soft and velvety but a little slimy, too. I yanked it, and there was a snapping sound as it came free of the threads of artificial muscle that had held it in place.
The Tin Woodman stopped moving entirely. His eyes were wide and bulging, his face frozen in place, now a record of his fear and pain. It reminded me of the statues in the sculpture garden in the palace.
I held the heart in front of me. I had done it. It was glowing and glittering, pulsing in my palm.
“Give it here, little dear,” a voice said. “Don’t you worry. Everything will be all right as long as you hand it over.”
I spun my head around in surprise and saw Glinda standing right behind me in her frilly pink gown. The only thing that suggested everything was less than perfect was the smeared crimson around her mouth—it could’ve been messily applied lipstick, but it looked an awful lot like blood.
I jumped to my feet, still clutching the heart, and prepared to fight again. But before I could attack, a bolt of green lightning snapped through the air and hit Glinda right in the stomach. As she lurched backward, she pulled a wand tipped with a glowing star from her bodice.
“Amy!” the Wizard shouted. “I’ll hold off Glinda. Take Ozma! Ollie and Maude will take you to the rest of the monkeys.”
I whirled around. Ozma?
And then I saw. The green bubble that the Wizard had built around Pete to protect him was dissolving, and as it did, his body began to dissolve, too. Where the mysterious gardener who was my friend had been just a moment ago, Oz’s One True Princess now stood. She blinked.
“Amy,” she said. “Amy Amy Amy Amy.”
Just like I’d been hiding behind Astrid’s face, Ozma had been hiding behind Pete’s.
“Duck!” the Wizard screamed, and I reflexively followed his instructions just as a neon-pink beam of magical energy crackled above my head.