I tried to smile my widest, most ass-kissing smile—the one I usually used on Dr. Strachan at school. When I remembered that it had never worked with him, I made it even wider. If anyone noticed, they didn’t mention it.
“In the name of Ozma of Oz,” the Tin Woodman said grimly, his voice robotic and scratchy, “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.
I had avoided cavities my entire life exactly because I’m not good with pain. My body tensed up, anticipating one of those sharp things pressing into my skin.
“Treason?” I squeaked.
At the Tin Woodman’s words, Ollie, who had been frozen at my side, suddenly came to his senses. He began to screech his ear-shaking monkey wail and he sprung into the air like he’d been shot from a slingshot. Hooking his tail onto the branch of the nearest apple tree, he used it to pull himself up into its leafy boughs.
It all happened in an instant. I got one last glimpse of his tail as he swung into the next tree and then disappeared into the orchard completely.
As he went, Bicycle-body reared on his hind wheel to chase after him but the Tin Woodman put up a calm hand. “Let him go,” he said. “The Lion knows the movements of all the beasts. He will take care of him. He won’t make it beyond the forest.”
Ollie had gotten away. He had abandoned us, if you wanted to be technical about it, but I didn’t blame him. For a second, I almost wanted to cheer. I hoped he made it far, far away.
I was happy about it, but Indigo and I didn’t have that option. And we were in big, big trouble.
She had been right all along. There were consequences in Oz. Supersized consequences that didn’t fit the crime. If Ollie had been tied to a post for “sass,” then what would our punishment be?
I wanted to tell her I was sorry. She had warned me—begged me, even—and I had ignored her. But was I sorry? Should I not have freed him? I didn’t think so. What else could I have done?
It had been right to free Ollie. But was that what we were really being punished for? Her frozen face broke, and she collapsed to her knees, sobbing.
“P-p-please,” she sputtered through her tears. “I was trying to help Dorothy. I was bringing the traitor to be interrogated! I swear! I just wanted to help! I can give you information!”
She was betraying me. She had to, of course, and I didn’t blame her. This was on me, and if her pleading helped her then at least one of us would get out of this.
I knew that, but still, it stung to listen to her selling me out.
“Is that so, little one?” the Tin Woodman asked coldly. “You were delivering the outlander to your princess?”
“Of course!” Indigo pleaded. “I love Dorothy more than words. Why would I ever betray her when she’s made me so happy?”
I had to help her. Since I wasn’t from Oz and didn’t know all of Dorothy’s rules, maybe they’d be more lenient on me. I stepped forward. “She’s right. She had nothing to do with any of this.”
Indigo glanced at me now. I think she seemed grateful, but it was hard to tell.
The Tin Woodman looked her up and down for a second and then nodded to the man with the plate over his mouth. The plate slid open to reveal a spigot-like device that telescoped outward in Indigo’s direction.
“What are you doing? I was the one who took the apple. I was the one who freed the monkey.” The words tumbled out wildly. Whatever the thing was that they were pointing at Indigo, it looked like it was going to hurt.
He grumbled to himself, as if he didn’t owe me any explanation. “Save your confession for Dorothy, outlander. Loyalty is very important in Oz. The Munchkin must be punished for her cravenness.”
“She just told you she’s been loyal to Dorothy.”
“Perhaps. But she was not loyal to you. Either way, she is guilty of the crime.”
“What are you talking about? You can’t have it both ways—either she’s guilty of being disloyal to Dorothy or she’s guilty of being disloyal to me.”
“Indeed.” The Tin Woodman’s metal face somehow managed to look smug. “Now. For her punishment.”
The gunlike nozzle extended from the Tin Soldier’s lips. It twisted and pivoted, adjusting itself as he put Indigo in his sights. She was heaving and shaking on her knees.
“Run,” I said again. “Run!” I cried, willing her to get up. She didn’t listen. She didn’t even open her eyes.
The Tin Soldier fired and the device made a popping sound.
A tiny sigh of desperate relief escaped my lips when I saw what came shooting out of his mouth: a stream of iridescent bubbles. That was it? I wanted to laugh as the innocent-looking bubbles floated toward Indigo, zipping forward in a happy little stream. They began to swarm her like bees on honey.
But instead of popping when they touched her, they clung to her clothes and skin. She swatted at them frantically but it was no use. They didn’t budge. My eyes widened in horror as the bubbles began to melt into her flesh.
I made a move forward to help her—to do anything—but before I could get to her, Sword-Arm’s blade snapped out at me. She pressed it tight against my jugular.
“I’m sorry!” I told Indigo. “I’m sorry.”
She looked at me then. “No. You were right. Please help us,” she said. “You’re from the Other Place. You’re like her. You can do something.”
A calm look came across her face—too calm. Like, good-bye calm. Then the bubbles covered her face, too.
As they merged with her body, her tattoos separated from her skin and slipped off her, the ink puddling in a shiny, mercurial mass. Indigo was melting.
She was barely recognizable now. She was just a big lump of sticky, pinkish flesh, her arms and legs only barely discernible as limbs, her features only little misshapen blots where her face should have been.
“Make it stop,” I begged, still crying. “Please. I didn’t mean to—I didn’t know. She shouldn’t pay for what I did. Please.”
“I hate to burst your bubble,” the Tin Woodman said with a sly grin, “but ignorance is no excuse. You can tell the whole story to Dorothy. The princess is . . . curious about you.”
Pop!
All I could see of what had been Indigo was a red splatter of bone and blood where she had knelt just a few seconds ago. I felt myself gagging, but nothing came up. I leaned over, hands on my knees, trying to get a breath.
She had painstakingly written the history of the world on her body so that it would live on. And the Tin Woodman and his goons had just erased her with the push of a button.
“It’s very messy, but we find it’s a deterrent,” the Tin Woodman said.
This place was insane. He was insane. I thought they’d given him a heart—how had he become this?
“Now as for you,” I heard him saying. It sounded like he was talking to me from the end of a long tunnel. “The princess is very interested to meet the girl who dropped out of the sky.
“Take her,” he told his men. I didn’t resist as they grabbed me. I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t say anything.
Everything went black. I became a shadow, like them.
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.
I looked up. The Tin Woodman and his metallic backup band were standing beside me. We must have traveled by magic.
The room we were in was the biggest I’d ever been in. It was bigger than my high school auditorium that doubled as a gym, and, where there should have been a ce
iling, an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of rainbows formed a majestic dome, casting a shower of vivid colors down upon the pair of gold-and-emerald thrones that sat majestically on a raised dais.
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?
“Don’t speak until spoken to,” the Tin Woodman was saying brusquely, and I realized that he was talking to me. “And don’t look Her Highness directly in the eye.”
I felt nauseous. He had just killed my friend, and now he was giving me an etiquette lesson.
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.
But I was no match for him, let alone him and his whole death squad. If I tried to lift a finger against any of them, I knew that the last thing I would see was one of Dorothy’s sick, sad, phony rainbows. It wasn’t worth it.
The Tin Woodman either didn’t notice my anger or didn’t care. He was too busy lecturing me: “And for heaven’s sake, stand up straight. The princess deserves respect.” With that, he overcorrected his own already perfect posture and frowned at something on his metallic arm.
It was bubble splatter. Indigo splatter. I swallowed hard, fighting my gag reflex as he used a little blade from his Swiss Army fingertip to scrape it away with a look of private satisfaction.
Just then, a flourish of trumpets began to play out of nowhere. The Tin Woodman and his men bowed down awkwardly—all except the one on wheels who just bowed his head. Their metal limbs creaked as they kneeled. I rushed to kneel along with them. I kept my eyes trained steadily on the ground.
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.
I heard a thumping sound beside me. It was coming from the metal shell that was the Tin Woodman.
“Well, look who we have here,” a sharp voice said. “Go ahead. Stand up.”
I took a breath and rose slowly to my feet to face the owner of the shoes. She was both exactly and nothing like I could have imagined.
This was not the same girl I’d read about. She was wearing the dress, but it wasn’t the dress exactly—it was as if someone had cut her familiar blue-checked jumper into a million little pieces and then put it back together again, only better. Better and, okay, a little bit more revealing. Actually, more than a little bit. Not that I was judging.
Instead of farm-girl cotton it was silk and chiffon. The cut was somewhere between haute couture and French hooker. The bodice nipped, tucked, and lifted. There was cleavage.
Lots of cleavage.
Dorothy’s boobs were out to here, her legs up to there. Her face was smooth and unblemished and perfect: her mouth shellacked in plasticky crimson, her eyes impeccably lined in silver and gold. Her eyelashes were so long and full that they probably created a breeze when she blinked. It was hard to tell how old she was. She looked like she could have been my age or years older. She looked immortal.
She had her hair pulled into two deep chestnut waves that cascaded down her shoulders, each one tied with red ribbon. Her piercing blue eyes were trained right on me. I knew I was supposed to look down, like the Tin Woodman had instructed. Instead, I found myself falling into her gaze. I couldn’t help it.
Her eyes didn’t look evil. They looked curious and almost kind. Like she was just trying to figure me out. She was so pretty that it was hard to imagine she was responsible for Indigo’s death or any of the other atrocities I’d been told were her fault.
As we stood there, face-to-face, the Tin Woodman creaked back up from his bow and began to speak.
“In the name of Ozma of Oz,” he said. “By order of Princess Dorothy, I, the Tin Woodman of Oz, Grand Inquisitor of the Emerald Police, present—”
Without looking away from me, Dorothy flicked a flawlessly manicured hand at him and he shut right up. She cut him off in a bored voice. “Let me get a look at her. What is your name?”
“Amy Gumm.” My voice came out louder than I had expected. It sounded like it belonged to someone else.
I tried to inhale as shallowly as possible as she walked in a slow circle around me, the heels of her shoes clack-clack-clacking against the green marble floor.
As she examined me, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that while I’d been focused on Dorothy, two more people had entered the room.
I knew them both instantly. In one of the thrones—the larger one—sat the girl I recognized from the hologram—or whatever it was—back on the road. It was Ozma, looking dazed and vacant. Her eyes were open but no one was home. I wondered if this was really her or if she was just another illusion.
At Ozma’s side stood a tall thin man dressed in a baby-blue, one-size-too-small suit. Beneath a small hat, bits of straw and yarn stuck out in every direction. His face was a skein of tightly pulled burlap with two unnervingly lifelike buttons sewn on in place of eyes. His lips were thin lines of embroidery stitched in pinkish-brown yarn underneath a painted on red triangle for a nose. His buttons were fixed right on me.
A chill shot through my body. It was the Scarecrow. Like the Tin Woodman, he had been twisted and warped into something I hardly recognized.
“Now, Amy,” Dorothy was saying. “This is very, very important—and I need you to be completely honest with me.” She casually began to amble over to the empty throne next to Ozma’s, where she sat, tossed her head, and crossed her legs.
If I hadn’t read the story, I wouldn’t believe that she had ever lived on a farm. She had shed that girl long ago and replaced it with a poised, haughty princess. Her neck stretched upward as if she were searching for the perfect light. Her voice was perky, but there was a threat lurking somewhere in there, too.
I steeled myself for whatever she was going to ask, getting the distinct impression that she would be able to see through any lie.
“What do you think of my hair?” she demanded. She ran a long red nail through one of her curls.
She had to be kidding.
“Well?” she asked.
She wasn’t kidding. My life was about to be judged by how sincerely I delivered a trivial compliment.
Luckily, I had a lot of practice with humoring popular girls. Madison Pendleton had taught me well.
“It’s so pretty,” I said sweetly. “And so shiny!” I added for good measure when she looked unconvinced.
Dorothy smiled and clapped her hands together and leaned over to Ozma with an expression of deep confidentiality. “Ozma likes my hair, too,” she said in a stage whisper. Ozma just stared straight ahead with an unchanging expression.
Feeling like I was on a roll, I decided to keep going. Maybe flattery would get me somewhere—for instance, the hell out of here. “I’ve read tons about you. I saw the movie like a million times.”
Dorothy beamed. “Really? What do you mean?”
“Oh, you know,” I replied shakily. “You’re, like, an icon where I come from.”
Suddenly she narrowed her eyes at me. “And where, exactly, is that?” she asked.
“Kansas,” I said. “The United States.”
Her face instantly darkened. “Kansas,” she said slowly. “You’re from Kansas.”
“You’ve heard of it?” I asked, a hint of unwise sarcasm creeping into my voice. I knew it was the wrong thing to say, but I couldn’t help myself. It’s my gre
atest weakness: I never can.
“And how did you get here from Kansas, Miss Gumm?” she said sharply.
“Well . . .”
She arched an overplucked eyebrow and cocked her head, waiting for my answer. In my pocket, I felt Star wriggling, and I squeezed her tightly, hoping that she would get the message to calm down. I had a pretty good feeling the princess wouldn’t take kindly to the fact that I had brought a rodent into her royal court.
Star cooled it, thank goodness, but she had momentarily distracted me and now Dorothy was waiting for her answer. She cleared her throat testily. “What brought you here, Miss Gumm. Don’t make me repeat myself.”
I knew I should have made up a lie. But what was the point now? I had a feeling they knew more about me than they were letting on anyway. It was probably the only reason I was alive and Indigo wasn’t.
“A tornado,” I said, mustering a smile.
The hairs on the back of my neck were standing at attention. Inside the pocket of my hoodie, I felt Star quivering. I was pretty sure they didn’t know about her at least.
“Why you little . . . liar,” Dorothy spat. “How dare you!”
I opened my mouth to lie—an actual lie this time. To say that no, I hadn’t come from Kansas at all.
It was too late. Dorothy’s face was burning with aggrieved rage. “I am the only one. There can only be one.”
My gut twisted. I understood. We had the same story. It was like we were wearing the same dress to the prom. Only it wasn’t a party. Dorothy thought her landing here was fate—that it made her special. Another girl from Kansas meant that it was just a regular occurrence and that she wasn’t special at all. Or—worse—that I was here to take her place.
I did my best to scramble, trying not to trip over my words. “Your Highness, I’m just a regular girl from Kansas. I’m nothing like you. You’re a princess. Look at you. Me, I’m not interested in that. I just want to be myself—I’d never want anything that you have.”
I was only trying to placate her, but as I spoke the words I realized they were true. I didn’t want anything Dorothy had. I didn’t want to be anything like her.
Dorothy Must Die: The Other Side of the Rainbow Collection: No Place Like Oz, Dorothy Must Die, The Witch Must Burn, The Wizard Returns, The Wicked Will Rise Page 7