“What is that?” he said. “Faeries?”
“Hardly,” Scarecrow said. His head was half buried in sand. “Could be a hallucination brought on by madness. Doesn’t explain why you’d hear it too though, unless that’s all part of my delusion. On the other hand it could just be a wind chime.”
I hate when you talk like that,” Tin Man grumbled. “It’s confusing.”
“Well, maybe there’s an old airship or something in the dunes out here. Maybe it is really a wind chime. We should check it out, because it there’s shelter to be had, we could use it to get away from that sandstorm.”
“May as well,” Tin Man said. “We’re headed in that direction anyway.”
The sounds weren’t wind chimes. It didn’t take long for them to realize there couldn’t possibly be an airship out here. It would have been long buried in sand by now. But there was something ahead. Something Tin Man had never seen before.
There were tree-like forms in the gloom ahead of them, and as they neared it became obvious the sound was the wind and sand blowing off these objects. They were tall, black, and appeared to be made from strands of ash. there were more of them around, here and there, randomly scattered about with no discernable pattern. In a couple spots they appeared to overlap each other, grow together. in others they started together and grew apart. They tinkled and made grinding noises as the wind pushed them to and fro, and where their hollow trunks were exposed to the wind they whistled, the way you might whistle by blowing on an empty rum bottle.
“What are they?” Tin Man said. He walked close to one so they could inspect it. “It doesn’t look like any tree I’ve ever seen.”
Me either,” Scarecrow said. “Is that even wood? It doesn’t look like anything but a long string of burnt charcoal coming out of the ground.”
“It’s not wood,” Tin Man said. He reached out and pushed on the trunk. There was a sharp crack as it shattered under his touch and then fell to the ground with a tinkling of shattered crystal.
“It’s glass,” he said, rubbing his fingers thoughtfully.
“Oh of course,” Scarecrow said. “If I had a hand I would slap my forehead with it. These aren’t trees, they’re fulgarite!”
“Huh?” Tin Man said.
“It’s glass alright!” Scarecrow said. “These are stalks of petrified lightning! The heat from the lightning turns the sand to glass and makes these wonderful sculptures!”
“If you say so,” Tin Man said. “They look like burnt string covered in soap froth, if you ask me. Hardly wonderful at all.”
“Well, each one is totally unique, depending on how the lightning strikes it. What I don’t get is these are formed in the ground when lightning strikes the surface. how can they be jutting out of the ground like this?”
“Maybe they used to be underground,” Tin Man said. “Maybe the desert moved on and left them behind.”
“You’re right of course,” Scarecrow said. “The amount of displacement around here is stupefying.”
Just then the wind gusted, and the petrified lightning erupted in crystalline song. Somewhere ahead of them in the dust, another monstrous crash roared over the wind.
“How many of these things are out there?” Tin Man said.
“Hard to say,” Scarecrow said. “But maybe we should move on huh? Wouldn’t do to get struck by lightning out here.”
They walked carefully between the tall stalks of petrified lightning. Tin Man hugged Scarecrow close to his body to keep the sand out of the bucket, but it did little to stop the bucket from filling. before long all that was visible of the straw man was his eyes, which bounced back and forth worriedly. The wind grew stronger until the chimes turned to shrieks, and the crashing became a constant scream over the wind. Tin Man stepped lively, avoided the crashing stalks of glass, and tried to keep the wind on his right side. It was the only possible way he could even tell which way he was going.
The storm rumbled and chain lightning arced through the sand. Not far off. Tin Man felt the angry roar of thunder as it passed by. Somewhere close, new stalks of petrified lightning were being made.
Tin Man turned the bucket to drain sand, but stopped when he noticed he was losing straw as well. instead he turned Scarecrow’s head so his mouth wasn’t buried.
“It’s inside me,” Scarecrow yelled. “It feels cold. I don’t like it”.
“I know,” Tin Man said. “We’ll get you fixed up when we get out of this.”
“Statistically speaking,” Scarecrow yelled, “we have an eighty-two percent chance of…”
He trailed off, as though he lost his train of thought.
“You smell that?” he shouted instead.
“Are you kidding?” Tin Man yelled.
“Thought I smelled orange blossoms, for a moment there.”
Tin Man shook the sand from his face. His joints were screaming with every movement. Sand worked its way into every crook in his body. He wouldn’t be walking much longer.
Another crash close by, followed by the hum of static in the air and and arc of burning white light not far off. The roar of thunder almost knocked Tin Man off his feet. He could feel the charge in the air. The constant abrasion of sand was causing him to gain a charge of his own; particles of sand and debris began sticking to him on the right side. There were shards of glass in the sand and it made a distinctive plinking noise when it hit him.
Scarecrow was screaming something. Tin Man couldn’t hear over the roaring wind.
The world was nothing but sand and glass. There was no sound but the roar of wind and the crash of lightning. Tin man couldn’t even see his feet anymore. There was too much debris in the wind.
Then lightning crashed into him, from the back, knocking him flying. The bucket flew from his hands, Scarecrow’s screaming face visible for an instant before the wind carried him away, and Tin Man rolled over and over, his metal flesh burning, his skin white hot, the sand melting and coating him like syrup, and he rolled in the sand collecting more of it, his limbs glowing in the after shock and a crack of thunder that made his head feel like it had been split with an axe, and then he was gone and that’s all there was to that.
And at some point he became aware that he wasn’t dead.
At some point he groaned, and tried to work his mouth bit felt like it had been fused shut. His hands were stuck too, but he forced them to move and whatever was holding them gave away cleanly, and there was a soft tinkle and crunching sound as he brought his hands up to his face. It was perfectly smooth in places; in others it felt pitted and coarse, and he realized that the lightning strike and made him hot enough to melt some of the sand and he was now a lumbering piece of petrified lightning. Fulgarite, as the Scarecrow called it.
And where had he gotten off to?
Tin Man sat up. He slapped at his face until the glass fragments gave way, then painfully opened his eyes.
It was a gray world. The sky was a gloomy blanket that blocked out the sun. There was sand around him, but this wasn’t the desert. He was sitting in a field, long dead, with endless rows of corn stalks shunted about a foot from the ground. Bone coloured and brittle, and they crumbled in Tin Man’s hand. He stood up and looked around.
It was the same in every direction. Corn stalks. Tin Man didn’t know where he was. was this place Kansas? it was possible; certainly the stories Dorothy had told them of the gray world she came from seemed to fit what he was seeing now. If this was Kansas, Dorothy had no business ever wanting to come back here. For anything.
“Scarecrow!” Tin Man yelled, putting both hands to his lips. His voice was gravel and dust, and it didn’t carry far.
He shouted again, and then started walking. The gray land could have been Oz, if not for the lack of snow. It was just as cold though, and the wind limped along the ground and dragged dirt and pieces of corn stalk with it. Nothing, after the desert wind they’d been through. Not even a nuisance. He leaned over and allowed the sand to escape from the holes in his belly. One was la
rge enough to fit his hand in now. There were spots on his right arm and torso where the rust had actually been scoured away and the dull gleam of metal was visible in streaks. He right ear was completely missing, as was the handle on the whistle at the top of his head.
A short time later he saw a bucket upturned and half full of sand; it was just as rusty as Tin Man himself was and he was sure it was the bucket he’d been keeping Scarecrow in.
He tried to run but it was impossible, so he limped stiffly as fast as he could to where the bucket lay. Scarecrow’s head was still inside it. He heard him before he saw him.
“Brubrubrubrubru!”” was the noise he made, as though he was trying to make a raspberry noise with his lips.
“Scarecrow,” Tin Man said, reaching down and picking up the bucket. He instantly regretted doing so, because he wanted to use both his hands to cover his face.
“bluthel elthel elthel,” Scarecrow said, his eyes rolling in his head. They moved at different speeds, the left one moving much faster than the right. His head was partially deflated, and there was a nasty looking crease running across one side of his face. He’d lost a lot of straw, and what was left was mixed heavily with desert sand. His head was only half filled.
Tin Man picked Scarecrow up. The straw man responded by yodeling a stream of nonsense syllables. He strained the sand from the bucket through his fingers and was careful to grab every last piece of straw. Then he placed the straw back into the bucket and carefully tipped Scarecrow’s head so much of the sand drained off. He was careful not to lose a single piece of straw. Then he carefully stuffed the small amount of straw from the bucket back into Scarecrow’s head and placed him face up inside the bucket. It was easier now that half of his stuffing was gone.
“Tin Man,” Scarecrow said. His eyes were still off-kilter, but they had ceased rolling insanely in their sockets. “Can’t see good.”
“You lost a lot of straw, old friend. But you’re better now. You can speak again.”
“Not straw,” Scarecrow said. “Bran. Pins make it sharp.”
“Do you know where we are?” Tin Man said. “It’s just as bad here as it was in Oz.”
Scarecrow looked up into the dull sky. His left eye sank miserably to the side.
“Not Oz,” he said after a minute. “The Heart wants what it wants.”
“Kansas,” Tin Man said.
Scarecrow looked at him but said nothing.
“So we walk, I guess,” Tin Man said.
He carried the bucket on the left side to balance out the limp on his right, and tried his best not to swing it or move it in any way which might cause the Scarecrow discomfort. The straw man seemed to fade in and out of consciousness, or sometimes his face would slacked and his eyes would go dead. When that happened Tin Man would knock the bucket with his knuckles and Scarecrow would come back.
Eventually they left the cornfield altogether. The ground stayed the same texture, like packed dust with the occasional mass of dead weeds. The colour stayed the same. Gray on gray. As far as the eye could see. At some point Tin Man realized his axe was gone. It hardly seemed to matter.
And then there was a small grouping of buildings on the horizon and Tin Man picked out a barn and a livestock pen among them. A single naked line of smoke drifted from the house.
“I think I see it,” said Tin Man. “There’s a farm ahead.”
“Nono,” mumbled Scarecrow. “We be looking for a guhrl.”
“Hush now,” Tin Man said. “Let’s talk later.”
He walked toward the house. The farm appeared deserted from where he was save for that slender line of smoke. The grass and trees were dead on the property. There were pig skeletons in the animal pen. A mummified horse, dry, like an old bug husk on the front lawn.
Tin Man stepped around the horse. There were jagged squares cut into the side of the animal, and one leg was nearly picked clean. He went across the front of the house to the door. It was dark inside. The air was thick with greasy smoke. Then there was a click of machinery and as the Tin Man’s eyes adjusted to the darkness he saw the dangerous end of a rifle pointed at his head.
“Best move on,” a female voice said. “I’ll take your head off iffin’ you try anything.”
The woman was a heaving sack of bones and squalor. Greasy hair clung to the sides of her face in filthy clumps. She was wearing pants and a sweater, with a hood, but the hood was down and her clothes were soiled and ruined.
Tin Man stood still, watching the woman. He wasn’t exactly sure what might happen if she fired the weapon at him. He’d never been shot before. In his rusted state, however, she might take out a piece of his face the size of his fist.
The rifle started to shake. Then the barrel dropped. The woman was crying. She tossed the rifle aside and stood there, staring at the Tin Man and his bucket. Tin Man nodded grimly at her. That same beautiful face, now aged, lined with dirt and ash and starved, tanned with hard years that her eyes merely hinted at.
Joy had moved on from Kansas, too.
“Hello, Dorothy.”
“Are we here?” Scarecrow said.
“Yeah,” Tin Man said. “We’re here.”
Dorothy embraced the Tin Man and ran her fingers over the jagged scales of rust. She made cooing noises when she touched the holes in his chest, and Tin Man’s heart stirred at the sound. He gently pulled her hands away and handed her the bucket instead. He felt like he had an anvil on his chest and he couldn’t bear the weight of it.
“Oh my,” Dorothy said, touching Scarecrow’s face. “Oh my dear sweet friend.”
“Hello Dorothy,” Scarecrow said, his voice sweet and friendly. “We’ve been looking all over for you.”
The straw man smiled up at his old friend, and then his left eye sank to the edge of its socket and he made a soft groaning sound. Tin Man knocked the bucket, and Scarecrow snapped out of it.
“Hello Dorothy, he said sweetly. “We’ve been looking for you.”
“How long has he been like this?” Dorothy asked.
“Since we got here,” Tin Man said. “I lost hold of him in the Duster, and his head filled with sand. He lost half his stuffing. Before that his mind was slipping, but he was still a brilliant man. Now I’m afraid he’s only half what he once was.”
“Come inside,” Dorothy said. “You never know who might be about.”
Dorothy lead them into the house—A near perfect copy of the one they’d passed through in Munchkin Country. This one was just as ragged and old, beaten nearly to death by the ravages of Dorothy’s world. There were burnt records and magazines mixed with kitchen utensils, rotting furniture and strips of jaundiced wallpaper hanging like string. Dorothy made her way across the filth with practiced ease, Holding the Scarecrow’s bucket close and speaking softly to him. Tin Man stumbled and crashed his way through; his bad leg wasn’t doing him any favours in this cramped space.
In the kitchen there was a hole in the floor partially covered by the kitchen sink, which Dorothy had ripped from the counter. The sink was full of ash and burnt furniture; the low heat caused a reeking blue-gray line of smoke that danced to the ceiling then out through a hole in the roof.
“It’s my escape hatch,” Dorothy said. “Raiders never look under the fire when they come. I just need time to put it back in place and they don’t even notice our tornado shelter. It doubled as a fallout shelter, but Uncle Henry didn’t understand about radiation and all that science. He was just a dumb farmer.”
Her breath hitched when she said that. She gave a guilty look to the Tin Man, then sat down cross legged with Scarecow’s bucket in her lap. She laid the rifle down beside her, within easy reach.
“I can’t believe you two are really here,” she said, her hand caressing Scarecrow’s face. “I dreamt about you forever. I dreamt about you so long I was beginning to think that’s all you were. Just a dream I made up to get past the sadness.”
“We didn’t know where else to go,” Tin Man said. He took a spot beside her.
His rusted frame shuddered from the strain of sitting, and a dusting of rust flakes took to the air with the impact. Dorothy watched them hang in the air, then reached out to catch them in her hands.
“I don’t understand what happened,” she said. “Why are you two like this?”
“It’s not just us,” Tin Man said. “It was everything. Oz is gone, Dorothy. Destroyed. it looks exactly like this place, but it snows over there and the snow makes you sick. It’s mixed with ash that’s like an acid and it burns through everything it touches. The colour is all leached out of the world. The only colour left behind is gray.”
“It’s not a colour,” Scarecrow said. “It’s a toe. Toe? Tony? No that’s not it. It’s something like a toe. Something with colour.”
“Then Oz is no better than here,” Dorothy said, ignoring the Scarecrow’s ramble. “Would but there have been a chance to escape this tomb. I would have gladly gone to Oz and spent the rest of my life there. This world is burnt and dead now. There’s nothing left anywhere.”
“We thought the same thing,” Tin Man said. “It was Scarecrow’s idea. He thought if we made it to Kansas you might be able to help us.”
“Me?” Dorothy choked. “What could I do?”
“I don’t know,” Tin Man said. He sighed deeply, his breath rattling in his chest. it whistled from the hole in his stomach, bringing a shower of sand with it.
“Does it hurt?” Dorothy said. She started to reach for it, but Tin Man moved faster and covered the gaping wound with his own hands.
“I feel nothing anymore,” Tin Man said.
“Toe-toe,” Scarecrow said. “I meant toe-toe? What is that?”
“Toto,” Dorothy said. She looked like she’d been hit in the face with a stick. “He’s dead.”
Then she was crying again.
Later Dorothy made a simple supper from a half can of beans and Tin Man watched her eat in silence. Scarecrow had faded out, and for now the woodsman was content to let him stay quiet. Every time he opened his mouth Dorothy cried, and it made Tin Man’s chest hurt. He’d asked her about straw to fill Scarecrow’s head, but she’d shaken her head sadly. There was no straw to be had. She’d burnt it all months ago.
Shadows of the Emerald City Page 25