“There’s an empty space in the Tin Man where the weapon should be. What have you done with it?”
He held his arms up so she could see his skintight armor. “You’re welcome to search me if you like.”
“You think I’m stupid? You won’t have it with you. What did you do with it?”
“What could I have done with it? Your soldiers separated us right away. If somebody took the weapon, you might want to look at your own people.”
“It seems you don’t understand the position you’re in. Why don’t you save us both the hassle of torturing you and tell me where you buried it.”
“I didn’t bury anything. I don’t have what you want. I don’t have the weapon.”
She snatched up his helmet from the chair by the door and felt around inside before tossing it back down on the floor. It bounced twice before rolling into a corner.
She narrowed her eyes at him, looking for any indication he was hiding something. “I’m glad you decided to do this the hard way.”
She spun with a flourish and stomped back out the door. One of the soldiers leaned in and closed the door quietly.
Ten minutes later, the door opened again. Benjamin, Dorothy’s father, wheeled in, his scarf tightly wound around his neck and face, leaving only his eyes exposed, but barely visible below the wide brim of his hat. He mumbled about how cold and drafty it was in this section of the castle.
A guard stepped in with him. Benjamin rotated his wheelchair in place and faced the guard, pulling the scarf away from his face.
“I’m just here to take back my armor. I don’t think he’ll be any trouble.”
“The Marshal has ordered me to…”
“I don’t care what she said. Only he and I know how to properly put on this armor. After the Marshal gets done with him, only I will know how to put on the armor, and that’s how I’d like it to stay. Wait outside.”
The soldier snapped to attention, saluted, and closed the door behind him, leaving the two of them alone in the room.
He twisted back around with a smile on his thin face. “Best idea I ever had, making the Marshal knight me as royalty in front of everyone.”
His face turned serious. “We don’t have much time. Do you have it?”
“When you first told me your plan, it sounded like a good plan. But that was before Dorothy and I were taken prisoner. You assumed we would be free to move about the castle.”
Benjamin wheeled closer. “The plan is still good. We just have to improvise a little. Do you have it?”
Caleb lifted the couch and slipped the tiny pyramid out from under it. “I smuggled it inside my helmet and hid it as soon as I was alone.”
Benjamin turned it over in his withered hands. “Everyone sure has gone to a lot of trouble for such a small thing.”
“Small, but not insignificant.”
Benjamin held it out to him. “Isn’t that the truth? There’s a compartment under my seat that will fit this perfectly. Strip off your armor. You will wear my clothes and sneak out past the guards pretending to be me. The armor piled in your lap should hide the fact that your legs are much stronger and bigger than mine.”
Now that Benjamin’s plan was in motion, Caleb worried about those they would leave behind.
“Come with us. If you stay, the Southern Marshal will kill you.”
The old man shook his head as he unwound the oversized scarf from around his neck. “My days in OZ have been numbered ever since I arrived. I’ve managed to survive this long, and I think I can survive a little longer. At least long enough for you to get my daughter out of this godforsaken place and back to civilization.”
“She won’t leave without you.”
“The airplane was designed to seat a single pilot with a little extra room for cargo. It’s already a tight squeeze getting you both into it. Even if I could, we would be too heavy and the airplane would never get off the ground. The only hope of getting my daughter out of OZ means I have to stay behind.”
“Then we’ll figure out another way to…”
Benjamin patted the armrests of his wheelchair. “With this thing I would only slow you down. I’m counting on you, Caleb. You have to get my daughter home.”
Benjamin had already made up his mind, that much was evident.
Caleb donned the clothes Benjamin had worn when he entered the room. Once the scarf was wound up around his face and the hat tilted down, unless someone bent down to look, they would not see the fur around his eyes. This crazy plan just might work.
Benjamin secured the pyramid under the seat of his wheelchair and wrestled himself onto the couch, refusing any help. He was proving that his decision was a decision not made from weakness.
Caleb sat in the wheelchair and piled the strips of armor into his lap. Placing them haphazardly around his lap, instead of neatly stacked, further hid the fact that he was not someone who needed a wheelchair to get around.
Benjamin looked him over and nodded approvingly. “There’s just one thing left to do.”
This was the only part of Benjamin’s plan that Caleb was not particularly thrilled with. There were many things about Benjamin’s plan he didn’t like, but this part was the worst.
Benjamin motioned him closer. “I’m a fighter, Caleb. I’ll be okay. Every success is built on sacrifice.”
His heart thudded deep in his chest. “Does Dorothy know about this?”
Benjamin smiled. “Of course not. Now give me…”
Benjamin did not have the opportunity to finish his sentence. Caleb’s balled fist collided with Benjamin’s skull so hard, he heard his teeth rattle before he flopped unceremoniously off of the couch and onto the floor, unconscious.
For a moment, panic shot up his spine as he thought he might’ve hit the old man too hard. Then he saw the faint rise and fall of Benjamin’s chest.
He breathed a sigh relief. Dorothy’s father was still alive. He did not want to be the one to kill him.
He bent down and repositioned the old man, trying to make him more comfortable for when he woke up. He was going to have a splitting headache for a couple of days, that was for sure, but he didn’t need any extra aches and pains from lying there awkwardly on the floor.
As he adjusted the old man, he spoke softly to him. “I don’t think we can ever repay you for everything you’ve done to help us. Thank you.”
Back in the wheelchair, Caleb banged it against the door. A guard started to open it when he shoved his way through, mumbling about how cold it still was on this side of the castle.
The other guard jumped out of his way before he rolled over his foot. He wheeled past them and around the corner.
Once out of sight, he abandoned the wheelchair and ran for the secret passage that would lead down to the airport hangar.
Was that the first left and then two right turns to get to the corner with the secret panel? He tried desperately to recall the directions hastily given to him when he skidded to a halt.
The pyramid!
He had left it in the wheelchair. He was so worried about getting away, all he could think about was how much faster it would be to run rather than use the wheelchair.
He spun back around and rounded the first corner back to the hallway where he had abandoned the wheelchair.
He collided with a soldier running the other way. They both went down hard, the soldier’s rifle skidding across the floor.
Caleb rolled to his feet, snatching the rifle up at the same time, and brought the butt of the rifle down on the face of the soldier.
Lights out!
He skidded on his knees in front of the wheelchair and yanked the pyramid out from its hiding spot.
He vaulted over the fallen soldier as he ran back down the hallway and took the first left and the next two rights.
And stopped at a dead end.
It must’ve been the first two rights and then a left.
He ran back the way he came.
As he rounded the corner, a loud crack echoed in the hallway and a bullet ricocheted off the corner, spraying bits of shattered stone over his head. He fired two shots from the hip as he ran back around the corner. The soldier at the other end of the hallway responded with two more shots of his own.
He stuck the rifle around the corner and fired off two blind shots. That should keep the soldier held back for the moment.
He searched the hallway for any sign of the secret passageway, but there was no medieval suit of armor holding a spear that he could pull down on to open the passageway behind it.
This hallway was empty.
There were no doors or windows anywhere in the hallway. Just an empty space that terminated at a stone wall on one end. Why would anybody build a hallway that didn’t go anywhere?
Another bullet ricocheted off the corner, reminding him of how bad his situation really was.
He was pinned down with nowhere to go.
Caleb went over the directions again in his mind. He was sure it had been the first left, and then the next two rights. This had to be the place.
But where was the medieval suit of armor that would trigger the secret panel?
The hallway had been quiet for a little too long. Rather than peek around the corner and risk getting his head shot off, he poked the rifle around and fired off another two shots. The second shot resulted in a quiet click. He’d had only one bullet left, and he’d just used it.
It wouldn’t take long for the soldier at other end of the hallway to figure that out.
He backed into the dead end and noticed an outline of dust in a rectangle shape on the floor. He inspected the floor more closely and saw scratches in the stone where something big and heavy had been recently removed.
This must be where the medieval armor had stood.
If this was the right place, then the secret panel was here.
He was on his hands and knees, studying and pushing down on each stone with his fingers. He pressed down on a tiny stone that was almost perfectly round and it sank with a click into the floor.
In front of him, the wall popped out and swung open like a door. The wall wasn’t made from stone after all. It was a wooden door with thinly carved stone faces glued to it to match the full-sized wall stones on either side.
A volley of bullets chipped away at the corner behind him. Other soldiers had joined the first, and they were letting him know that they were coming.
By the time they realized he wasn’t shooting back and charged the corner, he would be gone without a trace.
Dorothy slid the wall paneling to the side and peeked out into the massive airplane hangar. As much as she wanted to pace back and forth to burn off some of this nervous energy, her hiding spot gave her little room to move.
Where were Caleb and her father? They should’ve been here by now.
If she had her Tin Man suit, she could go find them.
No. She had to stop thinking like that. Down that road was darkness, and death.
She was finally back in control of herself, and wouldn’t let the suit take her back to a place she should never have gone in the first place.
The rhythmic pounding of someone running through the hanger echoed off the walls and ceiling. She peeked out again and saw Caleb running toward the airplane.
Relief washed over her and she ran out to meet him.
They reached the airplane at the same time.
It was just Caleb.
“Where’s my father?”
Caleb reached inside the cockpit and pulled on the choke.
“I’ll tell you once we’re in the air.”
He ran around to the front and grabbed a propeller blade.
“Where is he?”
Caleb pulled down on the propeller and it spun to life, black smoke chuffing from the noisy engine. This new engine burned a flammable fuel and didn’t require them to wait for it to heat up, or build pressure. As soon as it started, they were ready to go.
She took a step back and crossed her arms.
Caleb pleaded with her. “This plane was built for one person. We’ll be lucky if we stay in the air with both of us in it. Your father knew that.”
“That’s not what he told me?”
“He told you what you needed to hear to get you on this plane.”
She took a step backward, not liking the look in Caleb’s eye. “I’m not leaving without my father.”
A new voice echoed from across the hanger. “Hey! What are you doing?”
One of the Southern Marshal’s soldiers, drawn by the noise of the airplane motor, raised his rifle when he recognized Caleb.
Caleb snatched her around the waist and pushed her ahead of him into the cockpit of the airplane. She went headfirst into the airplane as bullets pinged off the fuselage.
The same lead shielding her father had built into the plane to mask them from the perimeter defense system around OZ, easily deflected the bullets.
Caleb shoved the throttle to full with one hand and grabbed the flight stick with the other.
The plane surged forward and the soldier was forced to duck away from the propeller as they shot out through the open hangar doors.
The elongated wings lifted up at the tips as they gained speed.
Within seconds, the plane lifted off the ground and Dorothy’s stomach somersaulted inside her body.
The ground fell away from them quickly and, after a couple of terror inducing maneuvers, Caleb quickly transitioned his theoretical knowledge of how to fly this plane into practical application.
Behind them, the Southern Marshal’s castle receded until it looked like a dollhouse.
They were the fastest moving object in the sky. No airship could even match a third of the speed they had attained in less than a minute.
They had escaped, and nobody would be catching up with them.
Caleb shifted to one side so they were both sitting comfortably in the seat designed for one.
Caleb turned the plane, and the sun angled around until it was to their right. The closest way out, was to the south.
He pointed the plane in the direction of the small island of New Kansas that was hundreds of miles off the southern coast of the Australis Penal Colony.
Dorothy was finally getting out of OZ, but without her father.
She had not felt this way in a long time. The same emotions she had felt when her emerald heart necklace faded to black, the first time she had lost her father, swept through her again.