Suddenly the throne seems to ignite. A Ball of Fire rages without consuming anything. In a shower of sparks, it disappears and becomes a lovely Lady and then a snarling Beast. Finally it settles in the form of an enormous Head with blood-hued skin and faceted eyes.
"What do you want of the Wizard?" it booms.
Timorously each contestant states his or her wish.
The Head answers, "I will grant your favors."
The contestants rejoice. The Head interrupts.
His roar cuts into their celebration. "If you meet my condition!"
They fall silent.
"You must kill the Wicked Witch of the West!"
Dorothy stammers. Glinda shakes her head. "Clever old b.a.s.t.a.r.d," she repeats, "Taking advantage of the show. He"s given them his own challenge."
"Doesn"t matter now," Flashgleam answers.
Glinda drops the curtain. It sways back into place. She departs the anteroom on her own mission.
The conspirators" voices rise as they enter the final throes of their plans.
Flashgleam"s fingertips brush mine. "We"re almost ready. Don"t worry about anything. He"ll be incapacitated. He won"t be able to hurt you."
I look toward the curtain.
"What are you going to do about Dorothy?" I ask.
Flashgleam blinks. Her brow draws down. "What do you mean?"
"Dorothy. How are you going to get her home?"
"That"s not what we should be worried about now."
I push past her and tear the curtain aside. The contestants in the audience chamber don"t notice the noise. The Tin Man looks poised to attack the throne. The Lion"s low growl fills the room.
Dorothy sniffles into her ap.r.o.n. The Scarecrow wraps his arms around her shoulders, and she turns into the embrace. Tears leave glistening marks on her cheeks. I lose my breath.
Even the most jaded Citizen of Oz feels tenderly toward a child who has lost her home.
I round on Flashgleam. Angrily I repeat, "What are you going to do for Dorothy?"
She"s still staring at me as if my words make no sense. She gives some calculated, rea.s.suring answer, but I don"t even hear her. The spike is cold in my hand. Lurline emerald.
All my life I"ve been the one who held the loupe to my eye, who strove to see beyond the superficial. All my life I"ve been the one who looked for imperfections.
All my life I"ve been a fool. All my life I"ve looked for the flaws in what stands before me, not for the flaws in my own thoughts.
It"s foolish to hope for a ruler who will be benevolent and just. Ozma XVI, the Wizard, Lady Flashgleam Sparklea"they"re all the same. No monarch is ever going to care more about the people than they do about themselves.
I rush forward. Lady Sparkle exclaims, "They"re not ready yet!"
I push past her. Everyone looks up as I enter the audience chamber. Even the Wizard"s giant avatar regards me with surprise clouding his faceted eyes.
Lurline emerald can break through a man"s sternum. It can break through anything.
The Emerald City is named for the emerald from which it was carved. It"s held together by magic that keeps it from shattering, but the magic in a Lurline emerald is stronger than any other enchantment.
I pa.s.s the Wizard"s hidden niche without a glance. Nearby, a place in the wall shines with a translucence I"ve learned indicates a weak point in the rock.
I"m a jeweler. I know the vulnerability of stone.
There"s a horrible noise as I drive the spike into the wall. A crack appears. Slowly it branches toward the floor, casting its roots into the ground. The tower shudders.
Lady Flashgleam rushes toward me, but she stops when she sees the fracture. She staggers backward. For once, even her seemingly perfect lips are stunned into silence.
The magic will die slowly. There will be plenty of time for everyone to get out.
But the Palace will splinter. The Palace will fall.
Its collapse will resonate throughout the Emerald City, of course. The City is all built from one piece. One can"t extricate the Palace from the City without consequence, just as one can"t depose a ruler without pain.
But I know this City. The highest spire is the weakest. The rest may tremble, but it won"t collapse.
We won"t collapse.
I push between the Tin Man and the Scarecrow. They"ve intuited that I"m on their side. They let me pa.s.s.
I take Dorothy"s hand and lead her and her friends out of the audience chamber and down into the City. I don"t know if I can grant her wish. I don"t know if I can grant any of them their wishes. It"s a flawed world we live in, and not everyone can get what he or she wants. But at least I won"t forget her. At least I won"t cast her aside while I search for power.
Even the most jaded Emerald Citizen can feel for a child who"s lost her home.
A TORNADO OF DOROTHYS.
BY KAT HOWARD.
When a path has been set, it is very hard not to take it. That difficulty increases when the path is one that has been made just for your feet.
Or at least made for the shoes your feet are wearing.
Everything changes after a storm.
Kansas was gray. The fields were gray and the dirt was gray. The sun, which was not gray but was merciless, faded everything that might once have had color into one flat tone. Even the people of Kansas were gray: Aunt Em, the harsh, unbending gray of steel, and Uncle Henry, the thin pale gray of the shadow that stood behind her. The only thing that was not gray was Dorothy"s small dog, Toto, whose comforting fur was a dark, unfaded black.
The tornado was gray, too, at least until Dorothy was inside it. Then the clouds were striated purple and the light was an acid green. Dorothy looked out the window as the house spun in the center of the tornado, her hands toying with the ends of Toto"s shiny black fur.
Dorothy did not notice when the spinning stopped, nor did she feel the b.u.mp when the tornado set the small house on the ground. What she did notice was the color. Even through the worn gray calico of the curtains, she had to narrow her eyes against the strength of the blue. Dorothy blinked, then looked again. She nudged the half-awake Toto from her lap, then walked to the window.
Dorothy stared at the blue of the sky, the green of the gra.s.s, the clearness of the air, until her eyes burned and tears wet her cheeks. Something inside of her fell, caught, flew. Her hands made fists in her dress. "We"re home, Toto. We"re home."
The door of the house flung open behind her. "So you"re the new one, then? Well, I"m sorry for you. Put on the shoes, and off you go."
Dorothy turned around. There was a girl, about her age, holding a pair of silver shoes.
"Those are beautiful," Dorothy said. And they were, the shoes, as bright and beautiful as everything else here, wherever this was. "But the new what?"
"The new Dorothy," said the girl. "Soon to be the new Witch of the East. If you"re lucky." The girl extended her arm with such force that one of the silver shoes slid from her grasp and clattered to the floor.
"I"m Glinda. The Witch of the South. South is always the Glinda. That"s the way it has to be.
"Once you get to be East, you can be the Eva. But until you get there, you have to be the Dorothy."
Dorothy looked at Glinda. "I am Dorothy."
Glinda rolled her eyes and tossed the second silver shoe on the floor with the first. "That"s what I just said. Until you"re East, you"re the Dorothy. Now put on the shoes. They"ll take you where you have to go. But hurry up. Oz doesn"t like to wait."
The shoes gleamed at Dorothy, brilliant as the sky outside. Outside. Glinda was rude, and Dorothy had no idea who Oz was, but the shoes were beautiful, and she wanted to go outside. She sat and began to put them on.
"It"s my name, I mean. Dorothy. The name I was born with. Dorothy Gale."
"Well, maybe that will help you, maybe it won"t. But you"ve got to be the Dorothy now, until you"ve become East. Oz needs to have a Dorothy."
Dorothy had finished buckling the silver shoes while Glinda was talking. She stood up and took a couple of steps. The shoes were comfortable, more flexible and less heavy then she had expected. She clicked her heels together, and they rang like the tolling of a bell.
Glinda looked at Dorothy and sneered. "This isn"t the story where doing that takes you home, even if you had said the words."
"I don"t know what story you"re talking about, and I don"t want to go home." Dorothy pushed past her, out the door of her transplanted house, and into the fantasy of color beyond.
Behind her she heard Glinda say, "You will."
When a path has been set, it is very hard not to take it. That difficulty increases when the path is one that has been made just for your feet.
Or at least for the shoes your feet are wearing.
There was a path outside the door to the house that had carried Dorothy and Toto from Kansas. It was laid with bricks, bricks a rich, welcoming color, the golden yellow of b.u.t.tercups. Dorothy stepped onto it, because that is what you do when there is a path right outside your door.
You do not think that it is strange that your house that has been picked up and flown elsewhere in a storm, has also been set down so perfectly in its new location that the door frame lines up exactly with the boundaries of the path. Nor do youa"if your eyes are dazzled by the glint of silver on your feet, the gold of the path, the emerald of the surrounding gra.s.sa"look back on the one gray splotch in the midst of this rainbow: that very house.
And because you do not look back, you do not see that your house has begun to fade. Not further into gray but into invisibility, as if it has become less present now that you are out of it. As if it no longer matters.
Nor do you see the bare feet, small enough to fit into the silver shoes that you are now wearing, attached to the legs that are crushed beneath that house.
Everything changes after a storm.
When twilight fell, even Technicolor Oz became gray. A textured gray, a gray with nuance and depth, but gray all the same. Perhaps because she was used to seeing in such a palette, when the colors of Oz faded with the light, Dorothy saw what the rainbow brilliance of the day had been hiding.
Oz was full of the shades of girls.
They were there, in the fields just beyond the yellow-gold path she walked on, in the fields of corn and the fields of poppies, in the forest beneath the twisted limbs of the trees. So many girls. Watching.
They looked to be about Dorothy"s age. They watched her as she walked, and Toto"s ears and tail drooped under the weight of their eyes. He whined, and Dorothy wanted to droop and whine as well.
She looked deeper into the gray, at the girls hanging in the air. None of the girls were wearing shoes.
When she stopped for the night, Dorothy tried to take her shoes off.
The straps had seemed to glue themselves together, and she could not unfasten them. She tried to slide the shoes from her feet, but they wouldn"t move.
Dorothy hit the shoes with a stick and then with a rock. She bruised her anklea"a blossom of blue and purplea"but the shoes didn"t even scuff.
Oz needed a Dorothy, Glinda had said.
Dorothy needed to walk until she was East, Glinda had said. Dorothy hadn"t asked, not then, whoa"or whata"Oz was. She had just wanted to put on the shoes, to go outside, to walk into the bright and into the color, and questions would have gotten in the way of that. But she wondered now, in the watching dark, and she wished that she had asked those questions.
Dorothy did not think the other girl"s name was really Glinda, not anymore. She didn"t think it was Dorothy either, though she thought that maybe the other girl had been called that once, as she walked south in a pair of shoes that wouldn"t come off her feet.
She thought that maybe all the girls she had seen, hanging shoeless in the shadows, had been called Dorothy, once. She wondered whoa"or whata"had watched them, in the gray twilight, in the dark.
Dorothy patted her lap so that Toto would come and rest his head in it. She did not fall asleep until it had gotten so dark she could no longer tell his fur from the night.
The sunrise was brilliant, shades of lavender and orange. The air smelled like flowers, and the clean scent of hay. The path of yellow brick unrolled beneath Dorothy"s feet, secure in her silver shoes.
The path had moved in the night.
Dorothy had stepped into the gra.s.s when she sat down to rest the night before. Not fara"she was a sensible girl, and she didn"t want to get lost, but she had wanted to sleep somewhere comfortable. She had curled up near enough to still see the curving line of yellow, and she had not moved during the night.
But with the rising of the sun, the yellow bricks were there, beneath her shoes as she stood.
Dorothy stepped off the path. Nothing happened.
She walked farther away from it, her feet getting heavier, and her steps getting smaller, until it was impossible for her to take another step. The air shimmered with purple, hung green at the edges, and in a small whirla"a tornado in miniaturea"the yellow bricks were in front of her again.
Oz needed a Dorothy, and seemed to have specific ideas about what it was that Dorothy needed to be doing. There was only one path for her to take, and it was the path that Oz put in front of her.
East.
Dorothy took a deep breath, stepped onto the inescapable road, and kept walking.
"Have you asked yet?"