“Is this your bedroom?” I asked in awe, looking around the room in search of a bed. Did she sleep on a divan? Or maybe fairies didn’t need to sleep at all.
Ozma giggled. “No, silly,” she said. “It’s my closet.”
My closet back home could barely fit a coat hanger, much less all this furniture.
But if it was a closet, there was something strange about it. Even stranger than a bedroom with no bed. “Where are the clothes?”
Ozma smiled mischievously. Then she closed her eyes and moved her hands in the air like she was playing an invisible harp. The lights dimmed, and the air grew heavier, like we were standing in a pool of warm water. Goose bumps crept over my skin.
It was magic. Real magic.
As she moved her hands through the air, plucking unseen strings, I felt a rush of energy coursing through my body. A feeling that reminded me of the shoes. Catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror, I saw that she was working magic on me. On us.
Our hair changed first: mine began weaving itself into a complex series of braids while hers whirled itself up into an elegantly messy chignon. Next, my clothes tingled against my skin. I felt buzzy all over as my dress became shorter and more fitted, glistening with silver embroidery across the chest. Sparkling bracelets appeared on my wrists, and a glittering necklace materialized around my neck.
I stared at myself in the mirror. “It’s beautiful,” I said, truly shocked. I’d never believed I could look this alive before. I didn’t think I ever could back in Kansas—the gray sky and gray plains washed out everything, eventually. “I look beautiful.”
“Something funny happened when I was doing the spell, though. I tried to give you new shoes. It didn’t work.”
I looked down at my feet. The red heels I’d gotten for my birthday were still there. They looked more beautiful than ever with the stunning dress. I shrugged. “I guess it’s because they’re already perfect,” I said guiltily, hoping Ozma would buy it.
She smiled. “They are beautiful,” she said. “Where did you get them?”
“Birthday present.” I twirled, admiring my reflection. I couldn’t believe it was even me. Was it really just yesterday morning that I had been hauling pig slop across the field? I felt like someone brand-new. Someone better than I had been before; someone who belonged here, not there.
Ozma was still looking at my shoes. “Who gave them to you?” she asked.
“My friend Mitzi,” I said quickly.
“I see,” Ozma said with a tight smile. “Well, your friend Mitzi has wonderful taste.”
She knew something in my story wasn’t right.
But I couldn’t tell exactly what she did know. Could she tell that the shoes had come from Glinda? What would happen if she figured out I was lying? And, finally, why had the Scarecrow asked me to hide the truth in the first place?
I thought about telling her everything right there. She had been so nice so far, and I found it hard to believe that she was anything other than what she was presenting herself as. But my shoes were burning on my feet and their heat spread through my whole body. No, they seemed to be saying. So I followed the Scarecrow’s advice and kept my mouth shut.
“Can you teach me?” I asked instead.
“Teach you?” Ozma asked.
“To do this.” I gestured at my new clothes. “To do magic.”
Ozma looked at me long and hard, searching me like I was a puzzle to be worked out. Finally, she shook her head. “No,” she said softly. “I can’t. Magic is dangerous. Even for those of us who are native to Oz, it’s dangerous. For people who aren’t from here, it can be too much to handle. It can do . . . strange things to you.”
“Strange things like what?” I was annoyed. How did Ozma know what I could handle? How did she know anything about people from my world, when I was the first that she had ever met?
“It can twist you,” Ozma said. And then, as if she was reading my thoughts, “You know, Dorothy, you’re not the first visitor to come here from the outside world. The Wizard wasn’t the first either. There have been others, over the years.”
“Who?” I asked.
She just shook her head, like the story was too sad to tell. And then she brightened and flung herself onto one of her lounges. She threw her feet up, took off her crown, and dropped it carelessly to the floor. “It gets heavy,” she explained. “It all gets heavy. The crown, the scepter, this big empty palace. It’s so much responsibility. It’s so lonely. I’m just happy you’re here.”
“I’m happy I’m here, too,” I said. But I didn’t like the way she had changed the subject so quickly. Who were the others who had come here before me? What had happened to them? What had happened to Glinda? And what was Ozma keeping from me?
“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.
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—li
ke 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.”
No Place Like Oz Page 10