“I don’t know. I can try.”
“Please do,” she says.
As I reach down into my power, I imagine all the broken pieces reforming and unleash a prismatic pulse of rainbow mist that fills the space. After a moment, it clears revealing a pristine, crack-free porcelain city. All the Bisque People are brand new with a Dorothy twist—I may have done a little redecorating.
Princess Wawa now looks as badass as she is with a riot grrrl edge that suits her personality far better. She’s got holsters for her knives, a bob like the lead singer of Bratmobile—curled under at the chin with the short Betty Page bangs—and a pair of porcelain combat boots instead of those cracked high heel shoes that make her wobble when she walks. Everything has a different color scheme with a lot more blacks and reds, but now when they get covered in grime it’ll look cool. Even though I also repaired the Joker, the darker edge just makes him look scarier, and that might be a necessity in Oz.
“What did you do to me?” Princess Wawa asks as she looks at herself.
“I fixed your cracks and gave you a new look. If you hate it, I can try to fix it—” I say, and she cuts me off.
“It’s as though you saw inside me and made me what I have always been but was too broken to realize,” she says as other Bisque People come and surround us.
“What happened?” I hear repeated in the crowd.
“The Rainbow Witch has healed our country! Hail, Dorothy!” Princess Wawa shouts and raises her sword. All the Bisque People gathered around follow suit, raising their fists as they bow their heads and shout, “Hail, Dorothy!”
“Oh, no, it was no trouble,” I say, so uncomfortable.
Hailing is weird. What is that anyway? Maybe it’s good that I’m leaving because I’d make a terrible queen. I’ve learned a lot about myself on this journey, and one of those things is that I dislike being bowed to.
“Enough of the bowing, please,” I beg, and they start to stand upright. “I’ve done something for you I hope helps you in your lives. I’m not sure if it worked, but I suppose you’ll find out soon enough. What I tried to do was make you unbreakable,” I say, and they all gasp and cheer. “But there’s a catch,” I add, and they quiet. “As long as you are good-hearted with good intentions, you will remain unbreakable, but if you are evil or become evil, you will no longer have that privilege.”
“Thank you,” Princess Wawa says as a red crystal tear falls from her neon pink eye.
The ground rumbles again, but this time, nothing breaks.
When the rumbling stops, everyone cheers and shouts, “Hail, Dorothy!” and “Long live the Rainbow Witch!”
“All right! Make a hole!” Princess Wawa shouts and shoos away the crowd to let us through. “They are on their way to Glinda’s Castle and need to get to the other side of town.”
“Take the trolley! It’s faster,” says a prince doll that looks like a porcelain David Bowie wearing a gold leaf crown.
Wawa leads the way through the crowd of Bisque People, their little footsteps clinking on the porcelain floor as they shuffle aside to let us through. When we arrive at the trolley stop, so does the trolley, and my rainbow magic decorated it like a riot grrrl zine with ‘Bisquemobile’ written on the side. We hop on and the crowd follows us and waves goodbye as we trolley away.
Through the Country of Bisque and Bone, the trolley speeds past bone shops and grind houses, careens around apartment blocks, winds through porcelain parks and gardens, and zips by bisque farms where bisque milkmaids milk bisque cows. Even with everything I’ve seen since I arrived, this may be the most mindboggling. When we reach the far wall, the trolley comes to a screeching halt.
Princess Wawa jumps off and we deboard after her. This side is so different from the other—it’s an eerie gothic suburbia. Gothic style porcelain houses with porcelain wolves growling at us from their porcelain lawns behind tall black porcelain fences that line the roads. Toto barks and growls his most intimidating growl. The bisque wolves stop growling and whimper away.
“Here you go!” Princess Wawa says as she shows us a large vaulted door in the porcelain wall. “The way out of our minacious country.”
“Thanks, Wawa,” I say, and she smiles, her sharp teeth twinkling in the light.
“Thank you, Rainbow Witch. We are indebted to you,” she says and turns the wheel on the door three times before it opens.
Once we say goodbye, we step outside to find maroon marshes and cerise swamplands for miles. I use my rainbow magic to bring us back to our normal size, and we make our way into the humid quagmire beginning our long trek to Glinda’s Castle.
29
The Shifter King
After hours upon hours of falling in muddy holes while climbing through bogs and marshes covered in burgundy grass so tall it hid us from sight, we reached solid ground—a forest of thick wine tree trunks with lush cherry moss and blackberry leaves growing out of crimson soil speckled with ruby crystals.
Werelion fell in love with the place straightaway, unlike Ardie who finds all the red far too severe. He says he prefers the greens of Emerald but I find all the monochromatic landscapes of this realm to be surreal. If you combined the spookiness of Halloween with the lusty reds of Valentine’s Day you’d get the feeling this forest gives me.
When it gets dark, we stop and camp for the night then wake up early with the sunrise. After a quick breakfast, we pack and go on our way again, but soon into our hike we come upon a clearing surrounded by trees and within it is a gathering of shifters. Lots and lots of shifters—birds, wolves, rabbits and rodents of all kinds, bear shifters, even lizards and turtles—and at the front of the massive group standing on a ruby dais is a female peregrine falcon shifter with no clothing on at all and a rocking bod.
“Wow,” Werelion breathes as we step closer to watch and listen.
“We have to leave! It’s not safe!” someone calls out from the group.
“No,” the falcon shifter says with a firm stare. “This forest is ours.”
“It killed our King!” someone else calls out.
“And everyone else who’s tried to kill it!” another shouts.
“Are you all so weak, so ignoble that none of you want to be King?”
“No,” Werelion calls out, shocking the hell out of me.
The falcon looks out toward us and spots Werelion and then us at his side.
“Who are you, shifter? And why did you bring humans and a zombie into our forest?”
“Call me Werelion,” he says as he steps forward through the crowd, right up to the stone dais where she stands and walks right up to her. He towers over her, although he towers over everyone—Werelion is enormous.
With her eyes wide at the sight of him, she looks up at his face and says, “I am the Shifter Queen, Shahina,” and Werelion bows, bending down on one knee and lowering his head before her, and somehow, he is still far taller. “Please, stand. What brings you this way?”
“We are traveling to see Glinda, the Red Witch. This is Dorothy, the Rainbow Witch, and her animal Toto,” he says and the crowd gasps. “Emperor Nick Chopper of Winkie Land and the Wise Zombie Millard, Ruler of Emerald.”
“Did you say the ruler of Emerald? The Wizard rules Emerald.”
“The Wizard has gone away into the clouds and left the Wise Zombie in charge in his stead. Now what is your trouble?”
“There is a great threat to Shifter Forest. A threat that murdered our King—my brother, Balam—and everyone who has hunted his murderer has lost their life. Whoever dares to kill the thing that kills so many of us will be our new King, but it already took the bravest among us with its venomous jaws.”
“Another shifter?”
“We do not think so.”
“It’s not a shifter!” a female Bengal tiger shifter shouts as she walks up from the crowd.
“How do you know this?” Werelion asks.
“With my own eyes I saw it. What Shahina says is true—we are all threatened by a fierce enemy. It is
a great spider with eight legs as long as a tree trunk and a body as big as an elephant. As the monster crawls through the forest, it seizes shifters by their legs and drags them to his mouth, where he eats them as a spider does a fly. Not one of us is safe while this creature is alive, and we had called a meeting to decide how to take action when you came among us.”
A pensive look takes over Werelion’s mien before he says, “Are there any other werelions in this forest?” he asks.
“No. There were some, but the monster has eaten them all. And, besides, they were none of them so large and brave as you,” Shahina says.
“If I put an end to your enemy, you say you will obey me as King of the Forest?”
“We will,” returns the tigress shifter, and all the other beasts agree by cawing or roaring a mighty roar. “We need a King who is brave, strong, and fierce. If you kill the creature, there is no doubt you are the King we need, but beware—this is no ordinary creature.”
“Where is this great spider of yours now?” asks Werelion.
“Yonder, among the redwood trees,” says Shahina, pointing with her wing.
“I will go fight the monster,” he announces.
The crowd of shifters roar and caw and hiss their approval as he steps off the dais and makes his way toward us at the back of the crowd with the falcon and tigress shifters at his back.
When he stops before us, he says, “Wait here for me, and if I do not return by morning, go on without me.”
“Uh, we’re going with you,” I say, befuddled he would think otherwise.
“But you cannot—I must do this on my own,” Werelion insists.
“Why would you—” Nick starts and Werelion cuts him off.
“If I am to be their King, they must know I was the one who defeated the monster. Not you or Dorothy or Ardie, but me and me alone.”
“He is right—he must go alone to claim the throne,” Shahina says, and I can see the tigress shifter clench in irritation—it’s clear she disagrees.
“Is that true?” I ask the tigress, and she sighs.
“Yes, but it is foolish.”
“Do not worry for me,” Werelion says to her. “I will defeat the monster.”
Confident and assured, Werelion turns and walks into the redwoods without a goodbye as if he has complete faith no harm will come to him, but I’m not so sure.
“If it pleases you, you may make camp here among us while you wait,” Shahina says with a soft smile.
We thank her and she walks over to a group of bird shifters waiting a few feet away, and when she reaches them, they run off into the ruby and red rock formations at our backs.
“If you dare go, you should,” the tigress shifter says to us in a low voice.
“We cannot ruin his chance to become King,” Ardie says.
“If he is dead, it will not matter either way, will it?”
“She’s right,” I say. “We can just follow him. Just in case. We don’t have to interfere unless it’s required.”
“I think that is the best way,” Nick agrees.
“Right,” Ardie sighs, and after a moment, he nods in assent.
“Follow his tracks, but if you lose him, he will find the creature in a web it has built at the base of the mountain just inside a cave mouth about two ozmeters southwest of here.”
“Thank you. I’m Dorothy.”
“I am Onna,” she says with a polite smile, but it is clear Werelion going alone worries her. “You should go,” she says with pleading eyes, and we take her advice and hurry after Werelion, into the trees.
Werelion’s tracks disappeared a half hour ago, but thanks to Toto’s bloodhound nose, he’s led us right to the monster’s cave at the base of the mountain, and that means Werelion is somewhere around here. I only hope it has not caught him in its web already.
“Is that it?” Ardie asks in a whisper, pointing to the cave mouth on the face of the ruby mountain, just where Onna said it would be.
When she called it a cave mouth, I wasn’t sure if that was what you call a cave opening in my realm, but I see why she used that word now—it’s an actual mouth on an actual face. But the face is not human—it’s the face of a spider with eight eyes, those pincher things, long fangs, and a tube mouth that is this cave opening. Ugh. I hate spiders.
As Toto trots toward the cave he stops and sniffs the air. The cave is about fifty feet ahead and Toto seems unsure of where to go from here.
“Where to next, Toto?” Ardie asks him.
Toto takes a few steps forward, sniffs the ground, then he turns his head toward the cave so fast it’s obvious he’s heard something none of our ears can hear. At first, I think he might have caught Werelion’s scent again, but then he growls a low warning. In an instant, a large sticky strawberry colored stream of what I’m sure is a red spider’s silk shoots out of the ruby spider cave and covers my Toto before it snatches him back into the cave with force.
“Toto!” I scream as Toto flies into the mouth of the spider cave.
As my armor covers all of me in a blink, I speed forward and another thick stream of sticky strawberry spider’s silk shoots out at me striking my torso. I grab the cord and pull it with all my might, knowing how strong spider’s silk is, and I try to drag it out of the cave so I can kill the thing before it kills Toto.
Nick rushes over, axes drawn, ready to chop the stream of silk, and I shout for him to stop, “Don’t!”
Midair, he stops his swing and looks at me with his brows drawn in confusion, but then he notices me pulling on the silk and he drops his axes, wraps his arms around the silk, and pulls with me. Soon after, Ardie joins in, and we heave with all our might dragging this wretched spider from its cave.
First its head emerges, and it is huge with one row of four big eyes and a row above with four smaller eyes, all iridescent crimson with a reflective burgundy sheen. Its fur is a vibrant candy apple red with a black baccara rose stripe down the center of its head. Its red fangs are at least a foot long and bloodied. If that’s Toto’s blood, I swear I will gut this thing.
We yank so hard it comes out of the cave altogether sniveling, pushing back with legs as long as a short city block—it’s a red tiger spider the size of a brownstone, coarse red hairs cover its body, and its head joins to the pudgy backside with a neck as slender as a wasp’s waist. As it lengthens its silk, we pull harder faster while running backwards to keep it from retreating into its cave. With the stealth of a leopard, Werelion flies in from above jumping down onto the back of the colossal red tiger spider. And with his giant paws and sharp claws, he slices the spider at its slender neck. Its head falls off and flies forward as we pull, and we land on our butts as both halves of the giant spider go limp.
As my armor shrinks back into my boots, it releases the spider’s silk at my torso, and we scramble to get into the cave. If Toto is dead, I don’t know what I’ll do. Werelion is the first one inside and I enter right after him. The gateway within me opens and my rainbow magic lights up the space. All at once I gasp in horror and sigh in relief. Toto is alive, cocooned in the strawberry-colored spider’s silk and stuck in an elaborate web of massive proportions. Bones lie scattered everywhere, and in the web are other shifters, cocooned and paralyzed, perhaps already dead. Werelion uses his claw to cut Toto loose, opening up his spider silk cocoon, taking him out, and giving him a cuddle. Toto barks and I sigh with relief as I take him out of Werelion’s hands and hold him tight to me.
“Oh, Toto, I’m so sorry,” I say, feeling so guilty I wasn’t more cautious—I should have been holding him.
He licks my chin and cheek and I kiss his head as Werelion cuts down the other shifters cocooned in the web with Ardie and Nick’s help.
“What are you doing here?” Werelion asks as he removes the last shifter from the web.
“We followed you,” I say.
“Why?” Werelion asks, irritated. “I told you to stay behind.”
“For just in case.”
“Now they will
think you helped me kill it.”
“No, they won’t,” Onna says as she enters the cave, “because I saw the entire thing. You saved their lives, the lives of every shifter in that web, and every shifter in this forest. I witnessed it myself. You are very brave. There is no one more worthy to be our king.”
“Why are you here?”
“I have seen far too many brave shifters fall to that beast, so I told your friends to go after you, and I knew you would need a witness to claim the throne, so I followed them.”
“Thank you for your concern, but I told you not to worry for me. I would have been fine on my own.”
“It seems so. Thank you, Werelion.”
The way they’re looking at each other is making me feel as though I’m intruding on a private moment, so I turn away and gaze further into the dim ruby cave. And holy crap, that’s a problem.
“Guys,” I say but no one pays attention—Nick and Ardie help shifters to their feet, although most cannot walk. “Guys,” I say louder, getting their attention. “I think we have a problem.”
I point to the giant egg sack toward the back of the massive cavern and Onna gasps.
“Oh, my!” she breathes.
“Somebody had to fertilize those eggs—that means there’s another spider.”
“What do we do?” Onna says, her tiger eyes wide with worry.
“Light it up,” I suggest.
“The fire could spread,” Ardie says.
“Maybe I can contain it at the cave mouth.”
“What if you can’t?” Nick suggests.
“Then that would suck,” I say with a baffled laugh. What’s that supposed to mean? “This magic has been working for me. I think I can figure out something that’d work.”
“Like what?” Werelion asks. “Because Nick is right—you have never done it before, and if you cannot, the fire could spread, destroy the homes of many shifters, and take many lives in an instant.”
Dorothy In the Land of Monsters Page 46