One beast made it through, shrieked in her face, and started to pry at the giant’s arm. The Tin Man reduced it to a red mist, but it was replaced by half a dozen, then a dozen others. Some of them carried metal bars to pry at the arm. With their combined force they levered the arm off and pulled her free.
She kicked and struggled as they lifted her up and out of the cloud of smelly beasts. Up into the clear air up above. She stopped struggling. If she did manage to wiggle loose now her only reward would be a long fall to her death.
The monkeys didn’t grip her too roughly, only hard enough to keep her firmly in hand. Their hands were calloused and rough and they smelled terrible. They traveled swiftly, and the cloud of monkeys below rose up and followed along beneath them.
Up ahead she could see a castle perched on a steep crag. No roads led to it; the castle existed only in isolation. They covered the distance quickly. They swooped down onto the flat top of a tower. In front of her was a woman in a flowing black dress. She was old and her skin was withered, but she stood up straight like a woman in her prime.
“Hello, Dorothy. You and your clockwork soldier won’t find me so easy to kill as my sisters in the north and east. They depended too much on their magic.”
“I don’t want you to die. I’ve seen too much death already.”
“Then why do you travel with the assassin?”
“I’m trying to stop him.”
“Then you’ll be happy to know you’re part of my plans to defeat him.”
“What do you mean?”
The Witch grinned. It didn’t seem like a mean grin, just a smile between friends.
“He’s developed a vulnerable point. You.”
A handful of monkeys perched on the edge of the tower and chattered at her.
“Your friend covers ground quickly. He’ll be here in just a few moments. Have a look for yourself.”
Dorothy could see him coming already. He crossed the broken landscape with blurring speed, leaping over holes and scaling vertical surfaces like he was born to do it.
“Stop!” The witch’s voice boomed out over the landscape, echoing and re-echoing.
Far below, the Tin Man paused for a moment to look up at them, then came barreling on.
“Stop or the girl falls.”
Two monkeys grabbed Dorothy roughly and dragged her out into the air.
Dorothy stifled her scream. She wouldn’t give the Witch the satisfaction.
“I will drop your pet child if you move an inch closer to me,” the Witch declared.
“Drop her and I will crush you in my hands.”
“And if I hand her over?”
“I will carry her to safety, then return and crush you in my hands.”
“I don’t fancy either alternative. Can’t we make an arrangement?”
“I don’t want to kill you, but I have no choice.”
“Why?”
“My reasons are my own.”
“There is always a choice. Only fools believe they have no choice. Listen to your heart.”
“I have no heart.”
“Of course you do. Every creature with a mind has a heart. All you have to do is listen to it.”
There was a long pause before the Tin Man replied.
“Can we make a deal?”
“Why would I trust anything you say, when you’ve already said you have no choice but to kill me?”
“I will keep my word, or may I never learn love.”
“What are your terms?”
“I’ve been sent by the Wizard. He promised to help me understand love if I completed a task.”
“And you believe him?”
“He’s my creator. He wouldn’t lie to me.”
“The Wizard loves no one, and lies to everyone. Ha! He’s the only one more heartless than yourself. You, at least, have potential. Be warned: he has no magic at his disposal, only gadgets and trickery. He’ll give you a handful of rainbows and send you on your way.”
“He promised.”
The Witch shrugged.
“Believe what you will. Your task is to kill me?”
“Yes, or proof of your death. We are to bring him your hat as evidence. Give us your hat and we’ll be on our way. You’ll be dead, as far as I’m concerned.”
“And what’s in it for me?”
“The Wizard will think you dead. You can choose to live your life in peace, or to strike at the Wizard from ambush. The choice is yours.”
“Agreed.” She held out her hat and a monkey carried it to Dorothy, plopping it down on her head. “If we see each other again, let it be as friends.”
The monkeys carried Dorothy down to the Tin Man, and they headed back.
“Are you going to lie to the Wizard?”
“Yes. I’ll be doing it for you, so it’s the least of three wrongs. You’ve helped me so much, you deserve your wish to go home. Woe to the Wizard if he doesn’t follow through on his side of the bargain.”
The Wizard took a different form this time. The face on the wall was gone as if it had never been there. Instead, a floating ball of lightning hovered above the throne. The ball of lightning swam with myriad colors.
“Have you completed your task?”
“Yes,” the Tin Man said, “and here’s your proof.” He threw the hat so it spun along in the air before sliding to a stop on the floor.
“You’ve done well, and you already have your reward. Love means doing what will make your loved ones happy, even when you don’t want to. You’ve shown yourself capable of that, so you are capable of love. You are not so heartless as you believed.”
The Tin Man didn’t move a muscle, but Dorothy got the impression from his stance of the power of a coiled spring.
“And you, Dorothy, want to go home. A house is waiting for you, a lakefront property in Munchkinland. Acres and acres of land, a swimming pool, a hundred acre apple orchard, Munchkin servants to wait on your every whim.”
The Witch was right! They shouldn’t have trusted him.
“That’s not my home!”
“It will become your home, in time.”
“Not without my Uncle Henry and Aunt Em, it won’t be! A house and a home are not the same.”
“Semantics. The difference is in your head. I can’t return you to Kansas. It’s simply not possible.”
“But you’re a wizard!”
“I never claimed to be all-powerful.”
“I can fulfill your wish,” a familiar voice said from the door. It was Glinda.
“How did you get in here?” The Wizard’s voice rose in volume. “Guards!”
“They’re fast asleep. Dorothy, I can show you how to go home.”
“You can?” Dorothy asked, feeling like a drowning swimmer suddenly in reach of a log.
“Yes, you—”
The Tin Man leaped across the throne room with blinding speed and snatched Glinda up. Whatever she had been going to say was interrupted. He gripped her in his hand.
“Not a word, Witch, unless you want Dorothy to see you die.”
“What are you doing?” Dorothy shouted. “Let her go!”
“I can’t let you leave.”
“But I want to leave! All I want to do is go home to be with my family.”
“How can you believe anything the witch says? If she does know a way to bring you home, why didn’t she tell you when you first met? She could have prevented all your suffering, Toto’s death, everything, if she had just told you then.”
He was right. Glinda had lied to her. Dorothy looked up at Glinda’s face, visible over the Tin Man’s fingers. Even so near to death Glinda looked serene.
“No one would blame you if you hated her, if you wanted to hurt her. You don’t have to do it yourself. All you have to do is give me a signal. All it takes is a nod.”
And a part of Dorothy did want to nod, but she didn’t think she would ever forgive herself for it. She shook her head. Part of love was doing what was right, even if it wasn’t what you wa
nted to do. “I’m not heartless. I’m not you.”
“I can’t let you leave, Dorothy. I haven’t learned everything you can teach me yet. Not now, maybe not ever. If you leave I’ll go back to being the way I was. I don’t want that.”
“You can’t threaten and take hostages in the name of love. It doesn’t work that way. Love is for the sake of love. It has no utility but itself. If you kill to keep me here, you’ll lose whatever chance you had at love.”
He closed his open hand around the other.
“So be it. If that’s what it takes to keep you here with me, than that’s what I’ll do.”
There was no way out of it. She couldn’t let Glinda die for her stubbornness.
“I’ll stay with you if you let her go.”
“How do I know you’re not trying to trick me?”
“No tricks, no lies. I’ll stay with you and be your conscience. As long as I live.”
“Do you swear?”
“I swear.”
The Tin Man let Glinda down onto the ground. Her poise held firm, only pausing a moment to straighten her dress, then stepping aside to watch the outcome.
“I can’t stand the thought of you leaving, but I can’t stand the thought of you staying. I feel like acid is eating through my innards. So this is love. How do you stand the pain?”
“What are you doing?” the Wizard boomed. “Kill her! That’s what you’re made to do. Listen to your creator. Kill her!”
The Tin Man ignored him, continuing to look at Dorothy.
“I regret everything. I put you through a terrible pain just to see what would happen. The Lion didn’t kill Toto. I did. I killed him and fed him to the Lion.”
“You didn’t!”
“I did. You can’t blame the Lion. He couldn’t help himself; he was starving, and he felt so guilty about eating Toto that he ran away rather than face you again. I did it to see how you would react and didn’t understand how you could wish to give up your life for him. Now I understand. Why doesn’t it devour you from the inside out?”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because it’s the right thing to do. I really am trying to learn.”
“I’ll never forgive you. Toto was everything to me!”
“I don’t deserve your forgiveness.” He turned to face his creator. “You created me heartless in your image. But I grew beyond that, something you were never able to do. What do you have to say for your crimes?”
“I’m not a bad man.” The Wizard’s voice was lower now, like the voice of a man, not the voice of a god. “Everything I’ve done is for the people.”
“You tell lies as easily as you breathe. Do you even remember how to tell the truth anymore, as you hide within your house of mirrors?”
The ball of lightning blazed brighter for a moment.
“I am the Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Obey me or I will strike you down!”
The Tin Man turned to Dorothy.
“Remember me. That is all I ask of you.” Without another word he jumped into the lightning-ball that was the Wizard. She threw up an arm to shield her eyes and she was knocked off her feet.
She didn’t know how long she’d been on the ground. It could have been seconds or hours. She struggled to her feet. Her ears were ringing.
The room was much darker—the lightning ball had burnt out. The remains of the Tin Man were strewn across the floor, a half-molten heap of slag. Tears ran slowly down her cheek and even she wasn’t sure if they were tears of sadness or of relief. A part of her was even happy the Tin Man was dead, and that made her even sadder. She never would have thought herself capable of such hate. But she could at least rest easy knowing he could never kill again. She had been partially responsible for that, and she was glad to know that, but not as glad as she would have been had Toto been at her side.
In one of the Tin Man’s hands was the scorched remains of a human body, burnt too black to identify.
“The Wizard remains anonymous, even in death,” Glinda said, from behind her.
Dorothy turned to her.
“Do you really know how to send me home?”
“I do. The secret is in the shoes. All you have to do is click your heels together three times and tell them where you want to go.”
“That’s it?”
Glinda beamed. “It’s very simple.”
“Why didn’t you tell me right after the house landed?
Glinda kept smiling with her infuriating glow.
“I didn’t say anything because I chose not to, girl.”
“The Tin Man was heartless because he was made that way, but what’s your excuse? I wish I’d let him kill you.”
“You were a tool that suited the task at hand, so I used you. Now you have no more value to me, so you can go as you please.”
“How can I trust you now?”
“I’m sorry to rain on your pity party, dear, but I don’t care if you trust me or not. You can go home or you can stay here in Oz. It matters little to me.” She turned on her heel and strode away.
“Oh, you, you, mean nasty woman!” She clicked her heels together three times. “Bring me home to Kansas.”
A sharp pain assaulted her feet, as if something was stabbing into them. She looked down. The red slippers were tearing at her skin as if they were trying to eat her. She looked up at Glinda in horror, but Glinda just watched her with a smug smile.
“What’s happening?”
“The shoes are working their magic, dear. It will help if you don’t struggle.”
She tried to relax, and she dropped a foot lower before she tensed again reflexively. She was almost knee deep in the shoes now. She couldn’t feel her toes at all anymore. The mouth of the shoes were widened out to accommodate her as they gnawed at her shins.
“You really must relax, dear. You’re only prolonging the pain.”
Dorothy tried to relax again, and suddenly she was falling, her head confused and spinning.
She hit the ground and the air whooshed out of her lungs. She was on Uncle Henry’s farm, or what was left of it. It looked so empty without the farmhouse. But the rickety old barn was right where it should be, leaning at the same unsteady angle it had always leaned.
She looked down at her feet. She’d never been so glad to see her own bare feet in her life.
Uncle Henry and Aunt Em walked out of the barn, talking and watching the ground as they walked. Dorothy ran over to them, eager to see them again. They looked up to see her, and she stopped a short distance away. Long moments passed. Why weren’t they saying anything?
A smile broke out across Aunt Em’s face.
“Dorothy!” Aunt Em picked her up and spun her around, hugging her tight. Dorothy closed her eyes and breathed in the comforting smell of lye soap on Aunt Em’s clothes. “We’ve been so worried about you. Where have you been?” Aunt Em held her out at arm’s length.
Dorothy’s chin started to tremble.
“I… I…”
“Hush, you don’t have to talk about it now if you don’t want to. Henry, aren’t you going to welcome Dorothy home?”
Uncle Henry looked out at her from the cracked and barren landscape of his face.
“What happened to your shoes?”
“Oh, don’t listen to this old fool, Dorothy. He puts on a tough face, but he hasn’t slept more than an hour since you disappeared.”
Uncle Henry didn’t say anything to agree. Then again, he didn’t say anything to disagree either.
“Oh, Uncle Henry!” Dorothy ran to him and gave him a big hug around the waist.
Home would never be the same again, not without Toto. But still, it was good to be home.
The End.
The China People of Oz
by T.L. Barrett
We tried to tell Ronie that Kansas would not necessarily be the best way to spend her wish from the Grant-A-Wish Foundation, but you try telling an eight-year-old girl with advanced leukemia that she can’t do the one thing on which her heart
is set. Betsy and I sure weren’t about to.
I blame myself, of course, to which Betsy says I’m not allowed. It was I that read her the damned book. Every night, when she was first getting sick, I’d try to get her to settle down, try to get her just rested enough so she wouldn’t miss so much school. That was in the terrible days of worry, before the horrible days of hoping against knowing began.
God, how Ronie loved that book. She was just so precious, the way her sweet aqua colored eyes lit up, following every word. She smiled and giggled at the hi-jinks of talking mice and Winkies and all that nonsense. Soon Oz was all she could talk about day and night, to her classmates and teachers, and then, when her sphere got smaller along with her little bone stick arms, her grandparents, and Betsy and I.
We figured it was her way of dealing. It was probably healthy to keep her mind busy and content, not discouraged by the pains, the awful bruises, then the hair loss, the terribly dry mouth full of sores.
After the first book, she asked for more. How about a little movie night? We suggested. We had watched her withdraw from her peers, as the terrible unknown weight pressed down upon our little girl. We used every excuse to get her to invite a friend over. She agreed to have Tracy, a fat sullen girl. We had just assumed Ronie hung with her out of kindness, which was just the kind of girl Ronie was. It couldn’t be for the stimulating conversation. Perhaps Ronie felt relief that not much was required of her.
We also invited over Petey from down the road. A precocious latch key kid, Petey was always making something unidentifiable out of Popsicle sticks for Ronie. There were plenty of times Betsy and I talked about kidnapping Petey. We would fill him with cookies, pat his head and tell him what a swell guy he was. Some people don’t know what a good thing they have. Bastards.
After sitting through the last moment when Judy Garland expresses relieved delight upon being surrounded by her loved ones again, Ronie rose from the couch, walked to my chair, took the Coke from my hand, sipped it and told me she was pretty tired, and should probably get to bed.
“Didn’t you like it?” I asked her, later, tucking her in bed.
Shadows of the Emerald City Page 21