No Place Like Oz (11 page)

“I've
tried
,” Ozma said. “Really, I have. At first, I thought Jellia and I could be the greatest of friends. But she's so focused on the fact that I'm the princess, and that she's my servant. I told her to stop calling me
miss
and
Your Highness
and that I didn't even care if she brushed my hair and brought me my breakfast in the mornings. She wouldn't listen. After that I invited the Patchwork Girl to come stay with me for a while. She's so much fun—she's stuffed, like the Scarecrow, but with cotton instead of straw, you know, which might be one reason for the lack of common sense and conversational skills. You can only keep up with someone like her for so long before it wears you down. But now that you're here, Dorothy, it's like I've finally found someone who I have something in common with. I just wish you didn't have to go home.”

“I'm not going home,” I said firmly.

Ozma twisted her lips in thought. “You really don't want to, do you?” she said.

“I don't want to and I'm not going to,” I said. My mind was made up. I was staying here. In Oz. In the palace. No matter what.

“Well,” the princess said after a bit. “We'll just have to make your aunt and uncle understand, then, won't we?” She stood up and faced me. She took my hands in hers.

I wanted to trust her. I wanted to be her friend. But as I looked back into her big, glittering eyes, she averted her gaze for just the briefest moment, and I knew that she was hiding something from me. She'd said we were friends and I believed her but something gnawed at me—and it wasn't just Glinda, or the Scarecrow's warnings.

 

The bedroom that Jellia escorted me to after dinner was everything I had dreamed. It was three times as big as my room back in Kansas, with a panoramic window that looked out over the shimmering Emerald City skyline.

There was a huge vanity and a jewelry box overflowing with earrings and bracelets and necklaces, any one of which I was sure would have cost more than Uncle Henry earned in a year back in Kansas. The ebony wardrobe in the corner was stuffed with any kind of gown I could imagine, not to mention more than a few that I never would have been able to dream up on my own.

This was what I had wanted. Sitting alone in the field back in Kansas, covered in pig slop, with Miss Millicent in my lap, I had made a wish without even realizing it, and the wish had come true.

It was
too
good to be true, though. As I stood in front of the open wardrobe, wondering which dress to try on first, I had an itchy feeling in the back of my head that was telling me Ozma knew me too well. Like she was giving me all this because she knew it was what I wanted, and that she thought that if she kept me happy, I wouldn't question her.

She had seemed so adamant when I'd asked her to teach me magic. Adamant, and a little sad, like it was exactly what she'd been afraid of. And she'd certainly been interested in my shoes.

Of course, the shoes were magic. I'd already figured out they were more than just a key that had unlocked the door to Oz for me. The way they'd been impossible to take off my feet for the Scarecrow, the strange feelings that had come from them all along my journey: all of that had suggested they could do more than I knew. And, of course, there was the way they had seemed to help me fight off the Screaming Trees in the forest.

Maybe I was a little afraid of them.

But Glinda had sent them to me to bring me here, I was
certain
of it.

And really—it seemed ridiculous that Ozma should be so against me doing magic. This was the Land of Oz. There was magic in the earth, in the
air.

At the same time, it seemed obvious that she had figured out there was more to the shoes than I was telling. I was fairly certain she knew at least part of the truth. If she really didn't want me doing magic, why hadn't she taken them away from me?

What if she knew she couldn't? What if she was
afraid
of them, too?

What if my shoes were the key to finding Glinda?

It all made a certain upside-down sense. Last time I'd been to Oz, I'd had the power in my Silver Shoes all along, and I hadn't even realized it. It would be incredibly stupid to make the same mistake twice.

So I sat down on the edge of my bed and tried to call for the Sorceress. I knocked my heels together. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to conjure her kind, motherly spirit. I pictured her smiling, impossibly beautiful face.

Something was happening. I could feel the red shoes trying as hard as I was. They constricted on my feet; they burned and tingled, glowing with energy. A few times, I even felt like I was getting somewhere: I could feel the Good Witch's presence filling the room. Once, I even thought I smelled her perfume. But, no matter what I did, she didn't appear.

I could feel the magic inside myself. I could practically
see
it sparking from my fingertips as I waved them through the air trying to bring her forth. Still nothing.

Maybe it was just that I needed to start with something smaller.

I walked to the vanity, sat down, and looked at myself. I examined my face closely. I thought about what Ozma had done earlier that day—about the way she had woven her fingers through the air and changed my hair and my clothes, and I wondered if I could do the same. So I closed my eyes.

And I know it sounds strange of me. I don't even know where it came from. I know, but I imagined myself as a giant tree standing in the center of the Road of Yellow Brick, with roots that spread out from my feet and pushed deep into the core of Oz, drawing up magic like it was water. I imagined that Oz was feeding me. That was sort of what my shoes had felt like on the Road of Yellow Brick—like the roots of a tree that connected me to Oz.

I could feel it working. I could feel the power filling my body, and the more it did, the hungrier it made me. I felt more alive than I ever had before. I felt like I could do anything.

But I was going to start small. I squeezed my eyes, touched my hair, and imagined the magic working on it. I imagined it changing colors, flipping through all the different possibilities the rainbow had to offer until I landed on the most beautiful color I could: pink. The pink of a sunset. The pink of Glinda's dress.

And when I saw myself staring back from the mirror, a lock of hair tumbled across my forehead, and it was even pinker than I had hoped.

I had
done
it. I had performed real magic. If I could change the color of my hair, what else could I do?

Well, I had the whole night to find out, didn't I?

Once I started, I almost couldn't stop. Some things were beyond me—I spent close to an hour trying to make myself fly, and the closest I could manage was something along the lines of a little bunny hop that probably wasn't magic at all. I tried to make myself invisible, but all I accomplished was a distressing pallor in my complexion. And try as I might, I just couldn't bring back Glinda.

However, there was
plenty
that I could do. Oh, just little things—useless things, really—but little is relative when you're a girl from the prairie.

I transformed a crumpled-up stocking into a little mouse that Toto chased furiously around the room before reacting with utter shock when it turned right back into a sock. He turned to glare reproachfully at me when he saw that I was doubled over with laughter in bed. I gave myself a lovely manicure; I made a fountain pen float across the room. I made a pair of earrings disappear from my jewelry box and reappear underneath my pillow. I didn't
have
to knock my heels to do any of it, but I found that if something was proving difficult, it did help.

I turned the pink stripe in my hair green, then purple, and finally gold before I decided that I liked my hair just fine the way it was before, and I waved it all away with a thought.

Once I started, it seemed like there was almost no end to it. All I had to do was think of something, and if I thought hard enough, I could at least nudge it toward reality. With a little practice—and a bit more imagination—I was certain I would be able to manage much more.

I fell asleep, still in my clothes, just as the sun was coming up, filled with happiness. I was in Oz, and in just a few hours I would be reunited with my old friends the Lion and the Tin Woodman. I was in my own beautiful room in the Emerald palace, and, for now, no one—not even Aunt Em and Uncle Henry—could make me leave.

Best of all, I had magic. It was mine, and Ozma herself couldn't take it away from me.

Fourteen

I hadn't even stepped all the way into the great hall the next morning when I was tackled. A ball of golden fur came flying right for me, knocking me backward onto the carpeted floor of the hallway. A big, wet tongue licked my face.

It only took me a short moment to figure out what was going on. “Lion!” I squealed, wrapping my arms around him. Or, at least as far around as they would go. “Is it really you?”

“Who else would it be?” he asked in a low rumble, drawing back onto his haunches and licking his lips, gazing down on me kindly.

The Lion looked different than I remembered—he was bigger and wilder now, his yellow-brown mane tangled and matted, his arms and legs more powerful. When I'd first met him, the Lion had been timid and frightened, startling at the slightest sound. Even after the Wizard had given him his courage, he'd seemed as if he didn't quite know
how
to be brave. Now, I could see, he'd grown into it.

“I can't believe it's really you,” I said breathlessly, sitting up and blinking.

“And not just me either,” the Lion replied. “Look who else is here to see you.”

At the long banquet table inside the great hall, another familiar face rose to his feet, grinning from ear to ear. The Tin Woodman stood and held out a rose. “My dear,” he said, presenting the flower almost shyly. “I didn't think it was possible for my heart to get any bigger, but seeing you again, it feels about to burst.”

I just ran to him. I didn't bother taking the flower; I just flung myself against him, planting a kiss on his cheek. And if you didn't think tin could blush then, well, you should have seen his face at that moment.

Aunt Em and Uncle Henry were seated at the table, looking on at the scene politely. I was embarrassed to see that they were back in their tatty old clothes and, though Em's hair was still green, she and Henry both had combed their new 'dos back into as close to their normal styles as they would go. They just wouldn't accept
any
changes.

Ozma had said we'd get them to come around, but I didn't see how we ever would.

While Toto and the Lion wrestled playfully on the marble floor, I joined everyone else at the table.

“It's so nice to see old friends reunited,” Ozma said, raising a champagne glass, filled with something purple, in a toast. “Here's to Dorothy—beloved by all who meet her.”

“I think a certain Wicked Witch would disagree with you there,” I said, but I clinked with everyone—even Em and Henry.

The table was covered in everything you could want for breakfast—and a lot of things I'd never thought to want.

There were fantastical fruits that sang witchy, enchanting little songs when you weren't looking at them and fresh eggs with bright yellow speckles that cooked themselves however you wanted as soon as you cracked them open onto your plate. There were oddly shaped pastries and a rainbow of juices in little crystal pitchers. Some of the food seemed like a bit of a nuisance, really—like the sticky buns that wouldn't let go of the plate and the flapjacks that flipped out of your way when you tried to take one—but it was definitely the most exciting breakfast I'd seen in all my life.

I helped myself to a little bit of everything, chattering in excitement as I heaped food onto my plate.

“You have to tell me everything!” I said. “Everything that's happened since I've been gone. The Scarecrow told me a bit, but, Lion, have you really been living up in the mountains with all the beasts? And—oh!”

I let out a scream as a piece of toast that I had just dropped onto my plate burst into flames.

Everyone laughed—even Aunt Em and Uncle Henry.

“Same thing happened to me,” Henry said, as the flame grew. “I venture to say my scream was even higher pitched than yours. Just wait.”

I waited, and when the flame burned out, a piping-hot glazed doughnut was sitting on my plate. It practically melted in my mouth as I bit into it.

“Tin Woodman,” I asked, still chewing. “How is Winkie Country now that the Wicked Witch of the West is gone? Are the Winged Monkeys happy these days? I hope that you've found yourself a lady to keep you company, now that you have your new heart and all.”

The Tin Woodman's metal cheeks flushed with a glow even rosier than before. “I can't say I have,” he said. “But I've been very happy anyway.”

“Happier now that
you're
here, Dorothy,” the Scarecrow said. “We all miss you.”

“We've all missed you,” the Lion said, finally turning his attention to those of us at the table. He picked Toto up in his jaws and carried him by the scruff of his neck over to me, dropping my panting dog into my lap.

“And there's so much for you to see and do,” the Tin Woodman said. “Oz has changed so much since you went away. With the witches killed and the Wizard gone, it's a much happier place now. You won't believe your eyes when we visit Polychrome at the Rainbow Falls. And your aunt and uncle are going to love Sky Island.”

“Oh, I don't think so,” Henry interrupted. I knew what was coming before the words were out. “We're not going to have time for sightseeing. We have to get back to Kansas just as soon as we're able to.”

I rolled my eyes openly and took a blueberry scone from a tray in the center of the table. As soon as it was in my hand, another one appeared on the tray to take its place.

“Don't you and Em have anything better to do than bother us with more boring Kansas talk?” I asked with every bit of fake-sweetness I could muster. “Maybe there are some slop buckets in the garden that you can haul around all day. Or a field to plow?”

Henry's jaw dropped in surprise at my sudden rudeness. I have to admit, I was surprised at myself, too, but I really didn't see why he had to keep picking at me like this when he could see perfectly well how much it upset me. Still, I didn't want to embarrass everyone with another nasty argument.

I decided to try something. I looked him square in the eye and focused on my shoes, feeling them grow warm.

Using magic to control another human being wasn't anything that had even occurred to me when I had been practicing back in my room. Of course, I knew it wasn't right, and I promised myself I wouldn't make a habit of it. But if I could use the power I had to make my aunt and uncle see that staying in Oz was the only sensible choice for us, well wasn't that a case where we
all
got what we wanted?

With every bit of confidence that I was doing the thing that was more than justified, I invited the magic in. With just a thought, I pulled it up through my body and then directed it out at my uncle, imagining him saying the words I wanted to hear.

“I think your aunt and I are going to go take a walk,” he muttered stiffly, just as if I had scripted it myself. Well, I
had,
hadn't I? “After all, there's so much to see in this beautiful land, and I want to take in every single bit of it if it takes me all year.”

Aunt Em looked too surprised to question him when Henry pulled himself away from the banquet table and took her hand to get up. Without even saying good-bye, they walked mechanically out of the room.

The Scarecrow and the Lion and the Tin Woodman were all staring at their backs, confused at what had just happened. “Lovely to meet you!” the Tin Woodman called after them, but they were already gone.

Ozma was the only one not watching my aunt and uncle go. She was looking at
me.
“Dorothy . . . ,” she said.

I cut her off. “Thank
goodness,”
I sighed. “Finally, we can have a real conversation without all their bothersome complaining.”

Ozma nodded slowly, her brow furrowing in concern. Frustration started to boil beneath my skin. She was just as bad as they were, in her own way. But she let the issue drop, for now at least, and silently took another dainty sip of her fizzy purple drink.

I wasn't going to let her ruin my reunion with my best friends—my
only
friends, really. Actually, I wanted to jump for joy. I had just done magic. Real, live, actual
magic
! It hadn't even been that difficult. I'd just imagined what I wanted Henry to do, and he'd done it, like he was a marionette and I was standing over him pulling the strings. If that was all it took, they would
never
be able to make me go back to Kansas. And imagine what else I could do.

I knew, suddenly, that the shoes weren't just meant to get me back to Oz. They were meant to teach me things. To show me what Ozma—the spoilsport!—wouldn't.

Now the Tin Woodman was waxing on about the beauty of Sky Island with its rivers of lemonade and its cloud mountains, and how he
so
wished we could all visit it together. The Scarecrow was listening closely, interrupting from time to time with a detail the Tin Woodman had forgotten, and the Lion roamed around the room restlessly, with Toto following after him like—well, like a puppy, actually.

Through it all, Ozma was cheerful and bright-eyed, happy to be part of the conversation, but every now and then she'd glance over at me searchingly, like she was looking for something.

I kept wishing that she would just leave. I had to talk to my friends.
Alone.
The Scarecrow knew it, too. He kept suggesting things to her—things like, “Oh, it's getting late, isn't it time for you to go find Jellia and discuss your schedule for the day?” But Ozma didn't take the bait. I wondered if she was just having a good time or if there was more to it—if maybe she didn't trust us to be alone together.

It was risky to try using magic on her. Doing a little spell on my uncle was bound to be different than doing it on a fairy who already knew a thing or two about spells herself. Then again, my shoes were powerful. When she'd given me my makeover yesterday, her own magic hadn't even been able to touch them. If they were powerful, it meant that
I
was powerful, too. Maybe even more powerful than she was.

So I gave it a spin. I changed her mind. This time, I tried to be more precise about what I was doing, so she wouldn't be able to detect it and fight back.

I envisioned the magic as a tendril of ruby-red smoke, as thin and delicate as the smoke rings that Henry sometimes blew to make me laugh when he was smoking his pipe. I pulled it up from my shoes and sent it drifting invisibly across the table to burrow itself into Ozma's ear.

A distant, distracted look made its way across her face. She looked as though she was trying to remember something. “I . . . ,” she said.

Go
, I commanded silently. As soon as I thought the word, Ozma's expression resolved itself into one of surprised realization.

“Please excuse me,” she said. “I think I left something in my chambers. Give me just a few minutes.” With that, she stood up, set her napkin down, and hurried out.

He didn't say anything, but I was pretty sure I saw the Scarecrow smirk approvingly in my direction.

It wasn't right. I do realize that. People aren't little marionettes to be pulled this way and that without their say-so in the matter. On the other hand, just because it wasn't right didn't mean it wasn't fun.

As soon as Her Royal Highness was out of earshot, he turned to me.

“Did you learn anything?” he asked. “Do you know where Glinda is?”

Everyone looked at me eagerly. Apparently the Scarecrow had filled them all in on his suspicions.
Our
suspicions, now.

“We've been waiting to hear,” the Lion rumbled. “We've all had our doubts about the princess from the very get-go. The way she just marched in here and acted like she owned the place. As if the Scarecrow here hadn't been ruling perfectly well in her absence.”

The Tin Woodman set his fork down. “And where did she come from? How do we even know she's the real princess? Just because she says so? She'll offer up no explanation for where she'd been. I'm the governor of Winkie Country and the gentlest soul in all the land—you would think she would feel that she owed at least
me
an explanation. With my heart, I would be sure to understand.”

I leaned in and whispered. “I'm almost certain the princess is keeping something from me,” I confessed. “I don't know what, but . . .”

“Oh dear,” the Tin Woodman said, a grave expression on his face.

“My brains almost never fail me,” the Scarecrow said. “And I truly think Ozma had something to do with Glinda's disappearance. She's never showed more than the most cursory concern for the Sorceress's whereabouts. Dorothy, you're back here for a reason. You have to find our friend. But keep your wits about you. Ozma may seem sweet. But everything I know tells me she's dangerous.”

“I have to agree,” the Tin Woodman said. “I can feel it in the bottom of my heart.”

The Lion just growled softly.

I knew they were all right. But . . .

I wasn't afraid of her. Suddenly I wasn't afraid of
anything
. There was real power in my shoes. I could feel it. Every time I used them to cast a spell, I could feel myself getting better, stronger. And I wanted more.

Why should I be afraid? She was the one who should be afraid of
me.