Authors: Danielle Paige
Then I let my gaze move past him, and all my thoughts of myself stopped as I realized where we were. In my temporary insanity, I had lost track of what I had been doing; I had forgotten why I had wanted to get through the wall in the first place. Now I turned and saw what it had been protecting.
We were sitting on the edge of the Emerald City. Or, I guess, what used to be the Emerald City. It was hard to say if you could still call it that—because it was different now.
It looked like it had been hit by a nuclear bomb. The once glittering, bustling thoroughfare was now empty, piled with trash and debris. The buildings that hadn’t been destroyed were
empty shells, with charred facades and shattered windows. The lavish, stately gardens that Dorothy had spent her time lounging in had been mostly destroyed, the fountains shattered, the flowers dead and covered over with vines.
But all over the place, when you looked a little more closely, traces of the city’s former grandeur remained. Amidst all the wreckage, the streets had a sheen that I realized was coming from millions of scattered jewels—emeralds, obviously, but diamonds and rubies and amethysts, too. Here and there, pools of gold melted and then hardened again, like puddles lingering after a thunderstorm.
At the center of it all, the Emerald Palace rose up, its majestic towers replaced by a dense tangle of twisting, almost tentacle-like spires that stretched so high into the sky that the tops of them were obscured by a cover of dark clouds. The whole structure was covered in grime and dust and a thick forest of ivy, but at the same time, there was something about it that took my breath away. In the still silence of everything, it looked less like a palace now and more like a cathedral; like a monument to some ancient, long-forgotten god.
As I stared up at it, something jogged my memory, and I remembered something I was pretty sure I’d heard someone say. One of the monkeys on Queen Lulu’s council.
For one thing, it seems to be growing.
At the time, I’d had no idea what that had meant. It had seemed so strange that I’d pretty much ignored it when I’d heard it. Now I understood.
It was true. Somehow, the palace was bigger than when I’d left it.
Much
bigger. Maybe it was still growing: when I stared at it long enough, I realized it seemed to be moving, like it was a living thing. It seemed to be breathing.
But before I could ask Nox what he thought had happened, I saw a movement out of the corner of my eye, and then from out of every crevice and alleyway and window, from the sewer grates and the gutters and out from behind every building, an army of monkeys emerged, coming toward us. Leading the way was Queen Lulu, who was dressed in army fatigues and carrying a small, silver pistol.
“Amy,” Lulu said. “We’ve been waiting for you. And I’ll tell you one thing. You sure know how to make an entrance.”
“You were right,” Lulu told me as she approached. The rest of her monkey guard was hanging back, watching silently. “You told me we couldn’t just sit up there in the trees, waiting for bad things to come to us. We’d been ignoring the rest of Oz for too long—and now look what happened. When I heard there was trouble afoot in the city, this seemed like the best place to come. I had a feeling you’d turn up sooner or later. I guess you chose later.”
“What happened to Mombi?” Nox cut in. “Is she here, too?”
“Nope,” Lulu said. “She disappeared from her quarters last night. Don’t know where she got herself to, but there’s no time to worry about that.”
“What happened to the city?” I asked. “Where is everyone?”
Lulu let out a cackle. “Everyone? Everyone left, I figure. Or at least, everyone who hadn’t left when you and yours attacked the place. With Dorothy gone, and the city ruined, wasn’t much
reason to stick around. And it’s not safe here. Doesn’t feel right. There’s something going on in the palace—something rottener than week-old herring.”
“I can see that,” I said.
“I don’t know what it’s all about, but I’ve sent in three separate patrols to check it out. Last I’ve seen any of them. But we have seen a
few
signs of life.”
My ears perked up. “Who?” I asked. “Who’s been through here?”
“Dorothy and Glinda passed through a few hours ago—zipped right over the top of the yellow brick wall in a pink soap bubble. Not quite as impressive as blowing the whole thing to smithereens of course.”
My stomach dropped as I looked around for signs of them. “Where did they go?” I asked. “We have to find them. Now.”
Lulu bared her teeth and narrowed her eyes. “Honey, don’t I know it,” she said. “But we monkeys haven’t just been sitting around on our heinies. The sorceress has been . . . dealt with. For now.” She gave an oblique glance toward her pistol. “Dorothy got away. Took Ozma with her and headed straight for her old haunt. The palace.”
“Did she say what she wanted?” I asked.
“What, you think we were making small talk? If you want to know what she’s up to, you’d better find out for yourself. You have a job to do, sweetheart. My people and I will protect the city. You’d better hop to.”
I clenched my jaw, with no idea where all this was heading.
“It’s that way,” Lulu said, stating the obvious as she pointed toward it. “Wish I had more time to catch up, but if you want my opinion, time’s already wasting. Good luck.”
I looked at Nox, who nodded back at me. The crowd of monkeys parted to let us pass, and we began to move on our way.
“If I were you, I’d head for the maze!” Lulu shouted after us. We were already gone.
“Now, I ask you,” Nox said. “What the hell is going on?”
I was pretty sure the question was rhetorical. Even if it wasn’t, I didn’t know the answer. All I knew was that something had brought us here, and that whatever was going on, the palace was at the center of it.
As we rushed through the abandoned city streets, the feeling of dread that was emanating from the center became more and more palpable. When I looked over at Nox, he looked almost sick.
“There’s something evil in there,” he said. “I can feel it.” He didn’t say it aloud, but he was staggering a little, slowing down, and I could tell that he was fighting with everything he had just to keep going. “It’s like it wants me to turn back,” he said.
I could feel it, too. And I could tell that it was evil. But instead of repelling me, that same feeling was pulling me closer, like there was a party going on somewhere nearby, and I was following the music. Like someone was cooking a delicious roast and I was a starving woman following the scent.
I didn’t mention that.
Nox put his head down and kept on moving.
Soon, we were there, and I saw exactly how grotesque the palace had become. It was covered in a slimy, filthy moss, and in place of the ornate, golden doors that had once served as the entrance, there was a kind of horrible sculpture: a gigantic, monstrous creature in bas-relief. Itlooked kind of like an octopus, but with more arms, and with a nasty, crowded mouthful of sharp, gritted teeth.
“What the hell is
that
?” Nox asked in disbelief.
I didn’t answer, because I had just noticed something even more disturbing.
Lying on the steps like a broken, discarded rag doll, his arms and legs splayed out in every direction, was the Scarecrow. His head was hanging limply, lolling off to the side. He didn’t look like himself.
“Shit,” I said. “It’s showtime.”
I summoned my knife, hoping to make this a fast fight, and screamed in horror at what appeared in its place: somehow, from out of nowhere, a black, hissing snake was writhing in my grip. Before I could drop it, it had wrapped itself around my arm, where it pulled its head back and unhinged its jaw, ready to strike me.
Without thinking, I sent it away, the same reflexive way I had learned how to do when I didn’t need my weapon anymore.
Nox was staring at me, his mouth wide open.
But I found that I wasn’t exactly surprised by what had just happened. “It’s this place,” I said. “The evil in here. It’s screwing with everything.”
We didn’t have the luxury to puzzle through it any more than
that, because the Scarecrow was now moving. He sat up and looked at me with his painted-on little eyes and gave a weak grimace.
“Hello there,” he said, without any of the sinister menace I was used to from him. Instead, he sounded like someone’s weird, only slightly creepy uncle. “Do I know you?”
I saw immediately that there was something wrong with him, but it took a moment longer to actually see what it was. Then it dawned on me: his head looked misshapen and oddly deflated. Like there was something missing from it.
I was pretty sure I knew what that something was.
Without my knife to rely on, I felt a little bit unprepared, but I had other weapons to work with. At least, I
thought
I did. But when I tried to fire off a flame dart at him, all that came out of my fingers was a puff of noxious, green smoke that smelled like rotten eggs, and I realized with a sinking feeling that I wasn’t going to be able to rely on my magic at all.
Luckily, for now at least, it didn’t seem that the Scarecrow would be much of a threat. As I ran up the stairs toward him, he made no move to attack me or even get out of the way. Instead, he was just muttering something to himself. A spell, I wondered, reminding myself to keep my wits about me.
No, I realized as I got close enough to hear. It wasn’t a spell at all.
“And so the imp says to the toadstool . . . ,” he was saying. “No, wait. Let me start that again. Two young harlots and a fish walk into a . . .”
When he saw me racing for him, he looked up at me again,
as if he was seeing me for the first time. “Did I already tell you this one?” he asked. His eyes rolled back, and his canvas head dropped to the side, where it flopped at his shoulder.
“I used to be very clever, you know! Everyone said so. I was even king, after a fashion. Now look at me.” With that, his painted-on face collapsed in a mask of grief and he began to weep silently to himself.
“Who?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Dorothy,”
he said. “My dear old friend Dorothy. How could she?”
It was pathetic to see him—the cruelest and most terrifying of Dorothy’s companions—in such a state. But I didn’t feel sorry for him. How could I?
I grabbed him around the throat and picked him up, squeezing tight. His cross-stitched mouth let out a gurgling sound as he gulped for air. I squeezed harder, and then harder as he let out a gurgling noise. He flailed his stuffed arms, but didn’t really resist. If anything, he looked relieved.
Then, finally, his eyes popped open and he gave a final, high-pitched whimper as his stuffed body went completely limp.
However much he had been alive in the first place was a mystery and probably always would be. But whatever it was, that life was gone. I had killed him.
Before I tossed him aside, I grabbed at the loose fabric of his scalp, and yanked his head clean off.
Second beheading in one day. I guess you could call that a record, huh?
When I examined what had been his head, turning it inside out and dumping the stuffing onto the ground, my suspicions were confirmed. All that came tumbling out was some straw, a few cotton balls, and some loose change.
Just as I suspected, the Scarecrow’s brains were gone. Dorothy had already gotten them. Now she had a full set: heart, brains, and courage. But why? What did she want with them?
I tossed the Scarecrow’s head onto the ground like the trash that it was, and stomped on it for good measure.
“Whoa,” Nox said. At first I thought he was reacting to yet another act of brazen cruelty from me, but then he put a finger to his lips and said, “Listen.”
I didn’t hear it at first, but then, in the distance, from deep in the palace, I detected a rumbling sound. The ground beneath my feet began to shake, and as it did, the octopus statue before us came to life; its arms began to wriggle and its eyes began to glow with a nasty green light. Slowly, its mouth slid open, revealing an entryway just big enough to step through.
I glanced sidelong at Nox. I’d never seen him look so terrified.
“I guess we can take that as an invitation,” I said.
Inside, the palace was nothing like the place I’d gotten to know by heart when I’d been posing as one of Dorothy’s most loyal servants.
In fact, it was no place I’d ever been before, outside of a nightmare. At first, it was hard to even understand what I was looking at. The vast entry chamber we were in had been turned upside down and inside out. No. Scratch that—inside out and upside down implies a certain order to things, and here, it was like none of the normal rules of physics applied at all. Like something out of an M. C. Escher drawing, there were entire staircases that floated in midair, leading to nowhere, furniture suspended from the slanted walls, and, overhead, an entire jungle looked like it was growing out of the ceiling.
I had no idea what this was all about, but I knew, on instinct, that Lulu had been right about where we had to go. “The maze,” I said. It was the center of everything. It was where Oz had
started. And now it was fighting back. “We have to get there.”
Nox wasn’t really listening. He appeared totally disoriented, like he didn’t remember who he was anymore, and was looking around desperately, with wild eyes, as if searching for any way out. There wasn’t one, at least as far as I could see. The door that we had just walked through had disappeared as soon as we’d stepped through it.
“Nox,” I said frantically, grabbing his hand. “Get yourself together. I know it’s hard, but we have to find Dorothy and Ozma. We don’t have a choice.”
“I . . . ,” he started to say. Then he just shook his head. He couldn’t make the words come out.
“I need you,” I said. “I can’t do this alone.”
Somehow, that seemed to have an effect. Nox bit his lip, nodded, and steeled himself. “Okay,” he said, taking a deep breath. “I can do it. It’s something about this place. It just seems . . . wrong. It’s messing with me.”