Authors: Danielle Paige
We’d stopped next to a broad meadow of periwinkle grass, bordered on one edge by a thick, lush forest. The second carriage had followed us, and I only now saw that a large contingent of the Tin Woodman’s soldiers had ridden along in the carriage. Glinda was directing them to unload the Scarecrow’s machinery from the other carriage—a bewildering array of pipes and wires and instruments. The unloading took some time, and I could sense Glinda’s impatience, although her face remained unnaturally serene. When the soldiers had finished they stood expectantly, staring at her.
“Now put it together,” she said. This time there was no mistaking the irritation in her voice, and the soldiers got busy at once, assembling the pieces in the middle of the field. Glinda didn’t seem to expect me to do anything, so I stood awkwardly at her side as she surveyed the construction.
The soldiers were moving with sharp, jerky motions, like sped-up windup toys, and soon a structure began to take shape. It was a giant contraption that looked almost like a complicated windmill with a long, flat piece that stretched out from the main body of the structure and balanced on another, smaller structure, like a seesaw.
What on earth?
I wondered.
“It’s a drill, of course,” Glinda said, as if she could read my mind.
“A drill, Your Eminence?”
“For magic,” she said. I looked up at her. The rubies in her crown dazzled in the afternoon sun. “It’s simply everywhere in Oz, as you know, going to waste. It’s high time we put all those natural resources to work, don’t you think?”
“You’re drilling magic out of the ground?” I stared at her in surprise and she raised one eyebrow. “Your Eminence,” I added quickly.
“Of course. Now that we have the technology to extract it, there’s no reason not to. Think of how much that power will improve the lives of your fellow citizens!” I wasn’t fooled by her sugary rhetoric; I was pretty sure that the only citizens whose lives would be improved by Glinda’s crazy plan were Glinda herself, and Dorothy.
“But Your Eminence, doesn’t Oz depend on that magic to survive?”
She waved a hand dismissively. “Jellia, I thought I saw something special in you in the palace, but now you sound positively old-fashioned. There’s plenty of magic to go around. Oz won’t feel a thing.”
I shut my mouth. The months ahead would be hard enough without starting out on Glinda’s bad side. We watched as the soldiers finished tightening the last nuts and bolts on Glinda’s drilling machine, and then she pushed me forward. “Now, Jellia, it’s time to do your duty for your country.”
“Me?” I blurted in surprise as two soldiers grabbed me by the arms and dragged me toward the machine. “But—”
“I need magic to power the drill,” Glinda cooed. She floated delicately after us, her heels sparkling silver several inches off the ground. “You certainly don’t expect me to use
mine
, do you?” Now that we were closer to the machine, I could see a leather harness and silver helmet attached to one end of the giant seesaw. I struggled desperately, but the soldiers strapped me in and jammed the helmet down on my head. What was happening? Glinda looked me over with an assessing gaze, and then nodded.
“Begin,” Glinda said, and one of the soldiers flipped a switch on the seesaw’s platform. I screamed as a blinding wave of pain surged through me. It felt as though I was being electrocuted. Over my own cries I could hear the machine give out a huge, creaking groan, and the platform I was strapped to shifted as the machine began to move. The pain was unbearable and unending; my nostrils filled with the scent of burning, and I realized in horror that it was the smell of my own flesh. Nothing I had been through in my life had prepared me for pain like this.
“I’m very disappointed in you, Jellia,” I heard Glinda say, and then everything went black.
I woke up on my back in the long, sweet-smelling grass. Every part of my body ached, and when I tried to open my eyes my vision was so blurry I shut them again. My head pounded with a dull, throbbing pain.
“Awake, lazybones?” Glinda’s voice came from a few feet away, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at her. “I’m afraid you’ve failed me rather badly this afternoon, and it will take quite a lot of effort on your part to make it up to me. I’ve had to revamp the entire mechanism, and all that wasted time is your fault.”
“What happened?” I croaked, my voice barely above a whisper.
“You should have had enough magic to power the device yourself. But you simply weren’t up to the job, Jellia, and now I’ll have to find a way to run it manually. How inconvenient for me.” She sniffed delicately. “I suppose I need to think of something for you to do all summer at my palace. You’re not nearly as valuable to me as I thought you would be.”
Every muscle in my body cried out in protest as I struggled to sit upright, cradling my pounding head in my hands. “Now stand up and make yourself useful,” Glinda said, her voice sharper. I heard her snap her fingers, and I yelped aloud as my body was jerked into a standing position. I was afraid I’d fall over, but her spell held me there. “Open your eyes,” she said, and my body obeyed her. Slowly, my vision returned. We were still in the field, and the sun was still high in the sky—but that didn’t mean anything. Dorothy controlled the passage of time in Oz, and she liked long afternoons with lots of sunshine. Something was moving next to Glinda’s terrible machine. I squinted, and saw that the soldiers had corralled a handful of terrified Munchkins. While a few soldiers guarded the Munchkins, another was busy taking apart the harness and helmet they’d strapped me into. When they finished, they began lifting the Munchkins up to the platform part of the seesaw.
“Munchkin labor,” Glinda sniffed, her honeyed voice underscored with disgust. “Unreliable, ineffective—and impossible to leave unsupervised. I’ll have to station some of my soldiers here, and even return myself to make sure the job is getting done properly. All of this could have been avoided, Jellia, if your magic was sufficient to power the machine.” She studied her device thoughtfully, and then looked back at me. “Perhaps with some refinements you’ll be able to help me again.” One of the soldiers barked an order, and the miserable-looking Munchkins began jumping up and down in place. With a terrific, earsplitting groan, the machine began to turn. Glinda sighed and turned away. “Onward to my palace, I suppose,” she said.
Magic. Glinda was mining magic, pulling it out of the soil as if she was just digging a well. It was everywhere—it was in the land itself.
I struggled to stay awake in Glinda’s carriage, but my body had other ideas, and I passed out again as soon as it moved forward. I had no idea how much time had passed when Glinda shook me impatiently and I snapped back to consciousness. My muscles still ached, but the rest had done me a little good; the headache had subsided, and my vision was much clearer. “Look sharp, you lazy girl,” she said. “We’re almost to the palace, and I won’t have you setting a bad example.”
I’d heard about the Summer Palace, Glinda’s famous home, but I’d never seen it with my own eyes. It was nearly a full day’s journey from the Emerald City, and Glinda’s domain wasn’t exactly a hot vacation destination. Outside the carriage, the countryside was remote and desolate. Lonely-looking blue hills, barren and rocky, surrounded us, and the trees were twisted and thorny. Here and there, huge craters dotted the landscape, and I wondered if she’d already tried out her magic-mining experiments closer to home. We were approaching a huge, sparkling pink gate, made out of some stone that refracted the setting sun’s light and sent it in dazzling sparks across the desolate, rocky ground. Beyond the gate, candy-cotton-pink towers stabbed upward to dizzying heights. As soon as Glinda’s entourage was within the castle walls, the gate swung shut. Like it or not, I was home.
Glinda’s palace was as pink on the inside as it was on the outside. The walls were coated with a textured pink paint that looked as though someone had smeared sugar over everything. Chandeliers, crusted with pale pink gems, hung from the high ceilings. Pink-framed mirrors reflected the pink light, and everywhere hung pink-hued portraits of Glinda in an endless series of pink ball gowns. Waist-high pink vases held huge bouquets of pink flowers, which released little puffs of sickly-sweet perfumed pink smoke into the air at regular intervals. I tried not to gag as a waft of scent hit me, leaving a faint pink smear like a slug’s trail on my uniform. Glinda, who didn’t seem to walk if she could help it, floated ahead of me, gesturing me to follow her down the pink-floored main hall of the palace. “I have the perfect place for you, Jellia,” she singsonged as I trotted after her, wincing at my still-sore muscles. “We’ll start you in the kitchen.”
“I’m trained as a lady’s maid, Your Eminence,” I panted as I hurried after her.
“Too good to start out at the bottom, are we?” she cooed.
“It’s not that, Your Eminence, it’s just that I thought—” She whipped around in midair, her ball gown swirling, and stared down at me.
“In my palace, you don’t think, Jellia,” she said. “Is that clear?”
“Yes, Your Eminence,” I said.
She smiled. Despite her pretty face, the expression made her look like a shark. “That’s more like it, Jellia. And don’t think I won’t be keeping an eye on you. Is that clear?”
“Yes, Your Eminence.” In a puff of pink glitter, she vanished. I stood blinking in the hallway, uncertain what to do next, when a tall, lean boy about my age with thick dark hair rounded a corner and stopped in front of me. He was one of the best-looking people I’d ever seen; I was very happy to see that he wasn’t pink.
“You’re the new girl,” he said, his curt demeanor at odds with his charming looks.
“Yes,” I said, and curtsied for good measure. He snorted.
“Save it for Glinda,” he said. “I’m here to help you stay alive.”
I was taken aback by his bluntness, but after what I’d been through on my way to the palace, I was grateful that someone was finally being level with me. “I’m Nox,” he said, stalking away from me. I realized I was supposed to follow, and hurried after him. “I oversee the kitchen, where you’ll be stationed for the time being until Glinda . . .” He paused, and a look of pity crossed his face for a second before he returned to stern indifference. “Until Glinda promotes you.”
“Promotes?” I asked as we walked. The maze of pink corridors was hopelessly disorienting; I couldn’t imagine ever being able to get my bearings.
“She has a habit of it,” he said, his tone discouraging further questions.
“What happens to people she promotes?” I persisted.
“To be honest? I’m not sure you want to know.”
“Oh,” I said, and was quiet for a moment. “I’m only here for the summer. I work in the palace in the Emerald City, normally.”
“I know,” he said.
“You seem to know a lot about me.”
“Your reputation precedes you.”
“What’s
that
supposed to mean?”
He didn’t slow down. “Glinda’s not the only one who’s kept an eye on you. It’s my job to know what happens in the palace.”
“I thought you just said you worked in the kitchen.”
“Among other things.” With this cryptic answer, he pushed open a pink-paneled door at the end of yet another pink hallway, and I followed him into what was obviously the palace kitchen. A bank of ovens took up most of one wall; next to them, pink pots bubbled on a huge pink stove. But the rest of the room was mercifully ordinary; the long counter that stretched the length of the kitchen was just plain old wood, the floors were gray stone, and the walls were painted a clean white. “Glinda doesn’t come in here,” Nox said, as if to explain the color scheme. Three Munchkin cooks bustled back and forth in front of the stove, and a bedraggled girl who looked about ten was washing dishes in the kitchen’s huge sink. Nox didn’t introduce me, and none of them looked up as we came into the room. “Glinda only eats pink food—mostly cake, which is why there are so many ovens,” Nox said. “She likes strawberry ice cream, too. If she wants something that isn’t ordinarily pink, we have to enchant it. Just hope you don’t get stuck on cleanup after bubble gum fondue night.”
“Bubble gum fondue?” He was kidding, right? But his expression was serious, and based on his demeanor so far, it didn’t seem like he kidded anyone about much of anything.
“Listen,” he said, “I don’t know how they do things in the Emerald City, but if you want to survive here you’d better not let Glinda overhear you say anything she might find unflattering. And she has ears everywhere in the palace.” He looked meaningfully at the cooks.
“Right,” I said. “Thanks.”
He took a tiny pink bird covered with pink rhinestones out of his pocket and fastened it to my apron with a little pink clip. “Don’t ever take this off, even when you go to sleep. She’ll know, believe me. This is how she summons you when she needs you. It’ll direct you to wherever she is in the palace.” As if on cue, the bird let out an earsplitting blast of noise, and I jumped about a foot in the air. Nox didn’t even flinch. “Jellia!” Glinda’s voice, tinny and compressed, shrieked across the kitchen. “Bring me a strawberry sundae!”
Nox crossed the kitchen to a tall freezer, which he opened to reveal a row of strawberry sundaes, already prepared. “When she wants something, she wants it right away. We make her favorite dishes ahead of time so she doesn’t have to wait.” He took a pink platter and a pink vase down from a shelf, filled the vase with pink roses from another cooler, set a sundae and the flowers on the platter, and handed the platter to me. “Good luck,” Nox said. “I’ll see you back here when you’re done.”
I’d hoped I would get some time to rest after my ordeal in the field, but clearly that wasn’t going to be the case. I did a mental self-assessment; I was still sore, but I’d manage. The bird pin barked directions at me as I hurried back through the palace corridors and up spiraling flights of pink stairs. Finally, I found myself at a set of pink double doors. I knocked lightly, and the doors swung open.
Glinda’s personal chambers looked as though a pink marshmallow had gotten into a losing fight with a cotton candy machine. The walls were a lighter version of the ever-present shade of the palace, and the floors were carpeted with thick patterned rugs piled on top of each other, in some places inches thick. Heavy pink velvet drapes hung on either side of the big picture windows, which let in a view of the surrounding countryside through rose-tinted glass. A huge, pink-canopied bed dominated one corner of the room, where Glinda lounged against a raft of immense, ruffled pink pillows. She had let her hair down and her soft curls framed her heart-shaped face. She looked almost vulnerable, and surprisingly young—despite what she had put me through, I found myself wondering what she was really like when she wasn’t busy being a manipulative, magic-stealing monster. She had to be pretty desperate for friends, if Dorothy was the closest thing she had to someone to hang out with.