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She told me that, whatever anyone at school said, a trailer was where I lived, not who I was. She told me that it was the best home in the world because it could go anywhere.
Was resentment something that grew better in small spaces, like those flowers that Mom used to force to bloom inside in little vases?
My stomach dropped and kept dropping. I felt my body getting heavier, my back plastered to the cushions now, and suddenly—with a mix of horror and wonder—I knew that I was airborne. The trailer was flying. I could feel it.
“Am I dead?” I asked. It certainly seemed possible. Likely, even. It was hard to believe that I had survived any crash. “Of course not. If you were dead, would we be having this conversation?”
“I’ve never seen anything like it. Your tin farm. It must be very precious. A house made out of metal.” I guess they didn’t have trailers where he was from. Lucky him. I realized, looking around for the first time, that we weren’t in Dusty Acres anymore. But where were we?
Everything around here seemed to have that tint to it, actually. The air, the clouds, even the sun, which was shining bright, all had a faded, washed-out quality to them. There was something dead about all of it. When I looked closely, I saw that tiny blue dust particles were floating everywhere, like the wispy floating petals of a dandelion—except that they were glittering, giving everything a glowing, unreal feeling.
But not everything was blue. Underneath the boy’s feet, yellow bricks, as vivid as a box of new crayons, were almost glowing in stark contrast to the blown-out, postapocalyptic monochrome of the landscape. The golden path led all the way up to the ravine and then dropped off into nothingness.
I had been dropped here by a tornado, and now I was standing on something that looked remarkably like a road of yellow bricks. This had to be some big mix-up. Maybe Kansas had finally cashed in on the whole Dorothy thing with a theme park and the tornado had just happened to drop me there. In which case, this guy was just a really hot park guide. I stared at him, waiting for him to explain. “Welcome to Oz,”
Guess we're not in Kansas anymore
Was I crazy? My head was swimming. If this was a fantasy, it was a strange one: this wasn’t the Oz that I had read about or seen in the movie. It was as if someone had drained out some of the Technicolor and introduced some serious darkness. Where were the good witches, the fields of enormous poppies? Where were the jolly Munchkins? I guess even in my concussion-induced fantasies, I’m not creative—or cheerful—enough to come up with all that. Instead, I’d conjured up something that looked suspiciously like Dusty Acres right after a nuclear explosion.
“If this is Oz . . . ,” I trailed off, searching for the question that was on the tip of my tongue. Then I found it. “What happened here?” I asked.
I think most of us would like to know tbh
She didn’t need to. I knew the answer already: what I was going to do next was the same thing I’d been doing my whole life. I turned back. Just put one foot in front of the other. Nothing had changed except the color of the road.
everything cast in the eerie blue light that reminded me of the glow of a television from underneath the crack of a closed door. There were no singing birds. The only signs of life were the giant ravens that occasionally swooped overhead, startling me every time they crowed. There were no trees to be seen, but the air smelled vaguely of burning leaves.
“Don’t make the same mistakes she made.” Could he have been talking about Dorothy? “This is where it all began for her,” he’d said. Who else could he have meant? And what “mistakes” had she made? I thought about it some more. What if Dorothy had been here, just like the book said, but she had somehow gotten it wrong? Like, what if the witch had killed her instead of the other way around? If so, this depressing version of fairyland definitely felt wicked enough to be the result. It was a weird idea—so weird that I felt my headache coming back as I tried to wrap my head around it—but what if
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Of course, I recognized it immediately. With her kind, smiling face, her jaunty gingham dress, and her neatly curled pigtails, there was no mistaking her: it was Dorothy. The silver plaque on the pedestal confirmed it: Here Stands Dorothy Gale, it read. She Who Arrived on the Wind, Slayed the Wicked, and Freed the Munchkins.
Why am I feel creeped out by this staute.
Even so, it was kind of unreal to confirm the alternative with my own two eyes: that I had been thrown into a fairy tale.
“They talk about Oz where I’m from. I’ve heard about it my whole life. But this is messed up. What happened here?” Indigo’s impassive face twisted into a snarl. “Dorothy happened,” she said.
That would explain alot
When I’d watched The Wizard of Oz with my mother, Glinda had always been my favorite character—because who wouldn’t want to travel around in a flying soap bubble wearing an awesome dress? She’d been my mom’s favorite character, too, but for a different reason. “She’s a witch, but she’s Good,” Mom always said. “Now that’s what I call the best of both worlds.”
The both have a good point if you ask me
Instead of the beautiful, flowing dress that the character had worn in the book, this gown was more like armor: thin metallic petals made up the voluminous skirt while magenta jewels dipped and curved across her chest in a tight, plunging bodice. It wasn’t my style, okay, but it was still pretty amazing. She seemed perfect. And yet, as I approached, an uneasy feeling prevented me from calling out her name. Something wasn’t right. From far off, she looked beautiful, ethereal, otherworldly. But up close, there was something ugly about her. Something was wrong with her face.
I paused for a moment. Glinda and Dorothy the bad guys? It was all so upside down—and yet, something about what Indigo was saying seemed right. I didn’t want to believe her, but I knew all too well that you can’t always get what you want. So I followed.
“She’s magic mining,” Indigo explained, with the tone of someone explaining why the sky is blue to a toddler for the five hundredth time. I half understood. Maybe. “Magic mining? But she’s a witch. Doesn’t she already have magic?” Indigo gave a loud, angry snort. “It’s never enough. Never enough for her, and sure as hell never enough for Dorothy. They’re digging holes from here to the capital and sucking it right up out of the land. Why do you think all of Munchkin Country’s such a dump? Oz needs magic to survive. Without it, it just dries up.” “So magic is like—in the ground?” I thought of
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“East, West, South,” I said. “What about the Witch of the North?” I asked. Indigo just looked away. “You ask too many questions,” she said.
The world had been changing color while we’d talked. The closer we got to the Emerald City and away from Glinda and her machine, the more the chilly blue glow of the sky melted into something sunnier and pleasant. The grass grew greener and thicker on the ground, too, and every now and then I noticed a few crocuses poking their heads out of the earth. I wasn’t positive, but as I listened carefully I was pretty sure I even heard some birds singing a tentative song.
it was one thing to believe that Oz had been corrupted by someone truly evil, but Dorothy had been good once. She had fought the Wicked Witch of the West and freed Oz. How had things gone so wrong for her?
Every time I came home to find her sprawled out on the couch, or on the floor, the orange bottle still in her hands, I found myself amazed that something so tiny could hold so much power over her. If what Indigo said was true, Dorothy had gotten a taste of magic, and when it was gone, it had left her hollow. How much magic did she have now?
I found myself studying the Munchkin’s tattooed arms, trying to untangle the elaborate, inky swirls that were etched into them, but it was weird—the more I stared at the designs, the more they seemed to be a blur. It was like they didn’t want me to understand them; like they were hiding their true meaning from me.
As she spoke, the tattoos began to form themselves into a picture before my eyes and I saw what she was talking about: her arms were a history. It was a beautiful, picturesque panorama, filled with flowers and animals—some of which I didn’t even recognize—and happy, smiling people. The craziest part was that the picture was moving. Just barely, but moving for sure. The Munchkins on Indigo’s biceps were dancing a jig. The animals were frolicking; the flowers were rustling in the breeze.
“It’s better here since we’re farther away from the mines, but nothing’s what it used to be. It’ll just be one big pit soon.”
She looked so sad. It was the worst kind of sad, too—the kind where you’re sad about something that you know will never change. The kind of sad you can’t even bother getting angry about anymore. Did all of Oz feel this way? If so, it must be a terrible place to live.
For the Crime of Sass, This Monkey Is Hereby Sentenced to Official Attitude Adjustment. Do Not Tamper. By Royal Order of Princess Dorothy. “The crime of sass?” I whispered angrily. They’d made that a crime?
“We’re in the wildest part of Munchkin Country,” he said. “Once we step off the road of yellow bricks, things get turned around. Directions stop making sense. We’ll be lost in no time.” “You’re going to the city, too?” I asked. Ollie nodded. “They say that the entrance to an underground tunnel is hidden somewhere in the city walls. The tunnel leads north, to where the rest of the Wingless Ones live. I’m going to find it.”
“My people have always been used by those who are more powerful,” he began to explain. “Even before Dorothy rose to power, we were slaves to others. It’s part of our enchantment. The wings are vulnerable to magic; they make us easy to control. When we were freed from the witches we thought we would never have to serve anyone again. But then Dorothy came back. This time, some of us decided that the price of freedom was worth paying.” “So you cut off your wings,”
brains aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.
But she has fairy blood, which meant she had a right to the crown. It’s deep magic—since she was finally of age, no one could do anything to take it away from her.” “Dorothy did,” I pointed out. “Not exactly,” Ollie said. “Ozma was in charge for a long time,” Indigo said. “Things were good with her. The best. The sun rose and set on time. There was magic everywhere. . . .” “The monkeys flew wherever they wanted while Ozma
“The funny part is that when Dorothy came back, everyone was happy at first. She was a hero, you know. And nothing changed for a while, except that she moved into the palace. She and Ozma became friends. They did everything together. No one even minded when Ozma made her a princess, too. It seemed like she deserved it.”
“My grandmother was a sorceress,” she said. “She may not have been as powerful as Glinda, but she taught me a thing or two. She would have taught me more, if Dorothy hadn’t banned it. But the Winged Ones are more susceptible to magic than almost anyone. I think a misdirection charm will get us past them.”
“It worked. Misdirection’s not that powerful, but it will do the job. It won’t hide us from them totally; it just makes us easy to overlook. They’ll simply be distracted every time they look in our direction. Trust me.” The thing is, I was having a really hard time concentrating
Crossing the flying road was like trying to walk on a breeze. It rippled and dipped and swayed back and forth, and every time you lifted your foot you had to wonder if there would be anything under it when you put it back down.
Talking about walking on cloud 9
I wasn’t going to let anything as stupid as a breeze or a few wobbly bricks knock me off my feet. That’s what it means to be from the prairie. It was something I had in common with Dorothy.
But I’d always wondered what it would be like to touch a cloud. Now I knew the answer to that, at least when it came to Oz clouds. It turned out they were just as soft and fluffy as they looked on Wheel of Fortune, as solid as cotton balls, but they were nothing you’d want to curl up and take a nap on. Every time my fingers grazed one, it sent an icy shock up my arm and down my spine into my toes. Some of them were as small as party balloons and others were as big as couch cushions, and soon they were so thick in the air that I had to swat them out of my path in order to keep moving.
Cloud 9, anyone?
Finally the road began to curl in on itself, rising up in a steep, tight coil until I came to the top and stepped onto a small, circular platform twice as wide around as a hula hoop. This was the top. I was so high up that even the monkeys were beneath me now. It was all downhill from here. Literally: on the far edge of the platform, the yellow road plunged back toward the ground at a steep, straight incline, the rough texture of the bricks suddenly slick and smooth. It was a Yellow Brick Slide.
Coming this summer to your local water park
I looked at the talking monkey next to me, remembering that anything was possible here. “Did that tree just move?” “They talk, too, but they’ve taken a vow of silence.” “Voluntarily?” “The princess felt that their conversation ruined the apple-eating experience and was therefore a violation of the Happiness Decree.”
Those poor trees
And then. It started to get dark. But it wasn’t the sun setting. The sky was as sunny as ever. Instead, it was like the world around us was being covered in shadows, starting with the yellow road. Then the shadows began to rise up from the ground, curling and inflating and twisting into forms. They were taking on shapes. Shapes that looked oddly, eerily familiar to me. It was the Tin Woodman. He wasn’t alone.
Behind the Tin Woodman, four people in black suits materialized out of the shadows a moment after he did. They weren’t made of tin, but they weren’t exactly people either. Each of them was mostly flesh—with a few mechanical modifications.
One of them had a silver plate bolted to his face where his mouth should have been; another was round and squat with huge copper ears the size of his entire head. The third was a girl, probably about my age, with a glinting sword in place of an arm. But it was the last one who was the creepiest: He was just a disembodied head grafted to the body of a bicycle, with two robotic arms where the handlebars should have been, the knuckles of his mechanized hands scraping the bricks on the road. “Run,” I said. It came out as
“by order of Princess Dorothy, I—the Tin Woodman of Oz, Grand Inquisitor of the Emerald Police and commander of the Tin Soldiers—hereby arrest you for crimes of treason.”
He held out a piece of paper with a gold seal on it, and for the first time I got a look at his hands. A chill ran through my entire body. He had fingers like knives and needles, each one of them twisted into a slightly different shape. Like dentist tools.
We were standing in the middle of the road and then we weren’t. The world blurred before me for a second in a swirl of colors. I blinked hard, trying to keep from getting dizzy, and when I opened my eyes again, I was standing on a glossy marble floor.
On every wall, stained-glass windows seemed to tell a story. I knew most of it already: it was the story of Dorothy. There was Dorothy’s house in the cyclone. Dorothy walking down the road of yellow bricks, arm in arm with her famous friends. Dorothy facing off with the Wicked Witch of the West. They all went on like that. The last panel showed Dorothy kneeling, as a girl I recognized as Ozma placed a crown on her head. But where was the one that explained what happened after that?
I had never seen anyone die before. I’d thought it would leave me scared, but now all I wanted to do was fight. More than anything I wished to put my fist through the Tin Woodman’s face. Or worse.
With a few clicks, her shoes appeared right under my nose. They were bright-red high heels, at least six inches tall and made from the shiniest leather I’d ever seen. Or maybe they weren’t shiny, exactly. They didn’t reflect the light as much as they seemed to shine from within.
