The image disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.
“So is that your superpower? Making people see things that aren’t there?”
Nox didn’t answer. He disappeared in a blink and reappeared beside me. “I can make them see things that are there as well. Like Mombi said, I’m a fighter. We should get started.”
When he moved into his fighting stance I noticed a speck of green paint in his black hair.
“What?” he asked, noticing my staring.
He must be Oz’s mysterious graffiti artist. The one tagging the frowny faces I’d seen in Munchkin Country.
“Nothing,” I said quickly. “I’m ready.” He was working really hard to put up the whole “fighter” front, but I wondered what else was there beneath the surface. What else it meant to be a boy witch.
“Liar,” Nox whispered with a mean glint in his eye. “Don’t worry. The spring will be able to heal you up when you break something.”
“I’d prefer not to get hurt in the first place,” I countered.
“Is wit highly valued in your world? You seem to rely on it.”
“Is being a total jerk highly valued in your world?” Sarcasm was how I survived back home. I wasn’t about to give it up now.
His gray eyes opened a little wider. “Your words will do nothing against her unless you can use them in a spell.”
I sighed loudly. If they wanted me to train, I would train. A few self-defense techniques would certainly come in handy around here. For that matter, they’d come in handy if I ever made it back to Dwight D. Eisenhower Senior High and had to face down a leaner, meaner, postpartum Madison Pendleton.
Still. Just because I was willing to learn how to fight, it didn’t mean I was going to assassinate anyone. I suspected Nox knew it.
“Why don’t you just give me one of those magical knife things and be done with it?”
“I could do that,” he mused, pulling a knife from one of his black boots and throwing it from one hand to the other. He tossed it in my direction, but I wasn’t fast enough and it fell to the floor with a clatter. I let it lay there, wishing I’d never said anything. “But you might drop it,” he finished with a smirk.
“I wasn’t ready,” I argued.
“Would you rather have the knife or be the knife? It’s that simple. And that hard.”
He opened his hand and the knife whizzed into it. I’d seen Mombi do the same thing before. He slid the knife back into his boot, then spread his arms out wide at his sides, daring me to punch him.
I curled my hand into a fist and took a weak, halfhearted swing at him. Nox hopped back and rolled his eyes. “Give me a break,” he said. “You have to try or it’s no fun.”
Before I could respond, Nox took his own jab at me, aiming right for my chin. I rocked back on my heels, barely getting out of the way in time, and then, without thinking about it, I hit back. For real now.
This time I connected square in the center of Nox’s chest. My fist hit a hard wall of flesh and muscle. My knuckles stung from the impact, but he didn’t flinch. It was like he hadn’t even felt it.
All he did was laugh. “All right,” he said. “Well, that’s something, at least. Now do it again. This time, I’ll try, too.”
I looked at the cocky expression on his face. I wanted to wipe it off, just to show I could. So I swung with all my strength and almost fell over from the momentum as he stepped easily out of the way. His smirk hadn’t wavered for a moment.
“Keep going.”
I kept punching, getting angrier and angrier with every try. Nox dodged each blow as smoothly as if I were moving in slow motion.
It took me until I was sweaty and out of breath to realize that something wasn’t quite right. Nox was more than just fast.
“That isn’t fair,” I said. “You’re using magic.”
“Of course I am. Lesson one: she’ll be using everything she has against you—and I promise it will be a lot more than I’m using right now.”
He had a point.
“Fine,” I said. “Then why are we even bothering at all?”
When he opened his mouth to reply, I took it as an invitation to hit him right in the solar plexus. His eyebrows shot up as his arrogant smirk transformed into a grin.
“Aha,” he said. “Lesson two: your fists aren’t your only weapon. Your weapons won’t be your only weapon either. Dorothy’s biggest vulnerability is her—”
I kicked him in the stomach with everything I had, and he went stumbling backward, his mouth wide with surprise. That would show him not to underestimate me.
But instead of retreating, or even slowing down, he came flying right back at me. This time I was ready for him. I ducked.
Over the next hour, Nox didn’t let up. He just kept coming at me, using his fists and feet and elbows and knees and everything else he had. The whole time, he never stopped talking—pointing out everything I was doing wrong.
And everything I was doing wrong was everything. The way I was standing. The way I was avoiding his gaze. The way I was holding my hands.
But for all I was doing wrong, there was one thing I was doing right. I wasn’t letting up any more than he was. I was aching and exhausted, but I kept going.
“Stay loose,” he said. I didn’t know how he had the breath to keep talking when he was moving twice as fast as I was. “Don’t waste your energy keeping your muscles tight. Don’t focus on where I am. Focus on where I’m going to be.”
Before the sentence was finished, Nox was gone. I spun around just as he materialized behind me, already ready for him, and caught him right in the jaw. Finally, for the first time, he flinched in pain. But before I could draw my arm away, he’d grabbed me by the wrist and held my closed fist against his face. I tried to pull free, but I couldn’t.
He just stared at me, his gaze intense. I couldn’t look away any more than I could move my arm. Energy crackled between us, and I felt a strange pull to him. Moth to flame. Magnet to magnet. Stupid girl to impossible, slightly mean witch boy. Wizard. Whatever.
“Close your eyes,” he said. “I want you to feel something.”
“I already feel something,” I said. “Tired.”
“Just do it,” Nox said.
So I closed my eyes and felt a strange, warm energy pulsing through my body, starting where my fist still touched his face and traveling up through my arm and shoulder into my chest. It wasn’t hot and it wasn’t cold. It was like nothing I’d ever felt before—including the time when I was little and I put my finger in a lightbulb socket to see what would happen. That had hurt like there was no tomorrow. Like the surge of electricity was killing every cell as it flowed through my arm. This was the opposite. This felt like every inch of me was waking up.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Isn’t it obvious?” He let go of my hand and it dropped to my side, heavy as stone. “It’s magic,” he said.
Suddenly I felt a breeze. I opened my eyes.
We weren’t in the training area anymore. Instead, we were standing at the edge of a grassy plateau that jutted out from the mouth of a cave at the top of a mountain.
The sun was bright and perfect and the sky was brilliant blue with just the slightest tinge of lavender. I looked down over the edge of the precipice we stood on and caught my breath. We were don’t-look-down high. We were skyscraper-high. Not that I had ever been in one, but I imagined this is what it felt like. The drop between us and the treetops was dizzying. Below us was a vast expanse of wildness.
In the distance, fields and flowers gave way to a lush, dark forest. Farther on the horizon was a hazy, shimmering mountain range that blocked the rest of Oz from my view—mountains so high that their peaks were hidden by a thick veil of quickly moving clouds.
Everything was still and quiet. This was a different quiet from the creepy, dead quiet of Munchkin Country. This quiet was pristine and charmed and full of life. It felt like Nox and I were the only two people in an undiscovered world.
&nb
sp; “How’d we get out here?” I asked. My voice came out in a whisper.
He looked at me like I was the dumbest person alive. “You have to stop asking those kinds of questions,” he said. “You know exactly how we got out here.”
Of course I knew. It was the same as the answer he’d given me before.
“Magic,” I said under my breath, without even really meaning to.
“Yup,” he said. “I zapped us up here. I can’t work the same kinds of teleportation spells that Mombi can, so we didn’t go far. The Order’s headquarters is all inside these caves.” He gestured at the cave opening behind us.
I breathed deep, enjoying the first fresh air I’d tasted since I’d been taken to the Emerald Palace who knows how long ago. I felt it buzzing in my lungs and my whole body tingled. It was the same feeling I’d felt back in the caves when I’d touched Nox’s face and closed my eyes.
“I think I feel it,” I said finally. “The magic.”
“You can’t not. Not up here,” he said. “This is Mount Gillikin. It’s one of the most magical spots left in all of Oz. Dorothy hasn’t quite gotten to stealing it yet—it’s too much trouble. See those mountains a ways off? They move. Every night, they rebuild themselves; every day they’re different than they were the day before. Can’t build roads through them. Can’t even draw a map. You never know what you’re going to get. Some days they might be covered in snow, other days they could be so hot you’ll get sunstroke. Or anything in between. People go up those mountains and they never come back. Sure, you can get past them—you can fly, or teleport, or whatever—but it’s not easy. They’re part of what keeps Gillikin Country more protected than the rest of Oz. Still, it’s only a matter of time.”
“It’s incredible.”
“All of Oz used to be like this. There was so much magic floating around that you almost couldn’t help picking it up here and there. Now most of it’s just in a few scattered spots like this, places Dorothy can’t be bothered with.”
“Maybe she’ll never bother,” I said. “Why does she need more than she already has?”
Nox snorted. “You don’t know Dorothy. The more she gets, the more she wants. That’s the way it is with you people,” he said.
“You people? What people?”
“People from your world. Like Dorothy. The Wizard. Like you, probably. Magic’s dangerous for outlanders. You’re not built for it.”
“But you’re going to teach me anyway. That’s what Mombi said.”
“They think the risk is worth it,” Nox said. “Not everyone agrees.”
“You don’t think I can handle it. “
“Maybe you can and maybe you can’t. I don’t really know you. What I think doesn’t matter. The question is what you think.” He shrugged.
I shook my head. I needed more.
“It’s your choice,” he said. “It’s not magic that makes you who you are. It’s the choices that you make. Look at Dorothy.”
“What about Dorothy?”
“That’s exactly what makes Dorothy evil.”
After my training session with Nox, it was a relief to see Gert. I didn’t know what she had in store for me, but I had a feeling it wouldn’t involve having to hit anyone. Despite the whole almost-drowning-me-on-purpose incident and her being up in my brain all the time, she had not told the others that I had no intention of killing Dorothy. I was still confused about what it meant to be a witch—a Wicked witch, for that matter—but somehow she seemed less Wicked than the rest. Maybe it was stupid Stockholm syndrome, that thing people get when they start liking their captors. But I didn’t feel like I was a captive when I was with Gert.
Gert’s room was like an old-fashioned apothecary, with a wall of glass jars filled with a million different liquids, big canisters heaping with I don’t know what, and plants and herbs I didn’t recognize. The light was dim, but warm and cozy, too. I couldn’t figure out where it was coming from—although there were candles crowding almost every surface, none of them were lit. Her walls were covered with some kind of white gold, which further intensified the glow.
In the corner leaned a broom made out of wood so dark it was almost black, with long, thorny bristles. I reached out to touch it but drew my hand back when Gert spoke sharply.
“You’re not ready for that yet, dear,” she warned. I looked at her, but she smiled like it was no big deal and began to bustle around the cave.
“Amy,” Gert said. “I know this is all new. I know you’re scared.” She walked over to a shelf and absentmindedly plucked a jar down before glancing at it, shaking her head to herself, and placing it back in its spot. “But we need you,” she said. “And I have faith in you. And now, for our first lesson. I like to think of this project as my little Get Witch Quick scheme.” She giggled at her own joke.
She sat back down on a stool on one side of a big wooden table in the middle of the room and indicated that I should follow suit. Every inch of its surface was covered with candles, and as she looked down at them, they began to light, one by one.
Gert’s face glowed in the light that she’d made. She smiled, a secret, satisfied little smile, and then clapped her hands and they all went out. “Your turn now,” she said.
“How?” I asked. I was confused. She hadn’t taught me anything yet. Wasn’t I supposed to say a spell or wave a wand or brew up something with eye of newt? From what Nox said and from what I’d seen so far, magic only looked easy. It took concentration and practice and time.
Gert waved her hand in the air, and as she did, sparks trailed behind it, like tiny, crackling fireflies. “Think of magic like electricity in your world,” she said. “In Oz, it’s all around you. It flows through the ground and the sky and the water. It keeps Oz alive. In most places, there’s not nearly as much as there used to be, but it’s still there.”
“Okay . . . ,” I said. It sort of made sense, but not really.
“To use it,” she went on, “you just need to know how to find it. You need to gather it up and tell it what to do. It’s just unstable energy. Magic always wants to be something different from what it already is. It wants to change. That’s what makes it magic. And that’s what makes lighting a candle the simplest bit of magic you can do. You just take the energy, and you tell it what to be. In this case: heat.”
It always wants to be something different from what it already is. Now that made sense to me. It reminded me of myself.
I frowned at the candles. I stretched out my fingers and moved them through the still, slightly damp air around me, trying to get back to that place Nox had taken me to—that tingly, warm feeling.
Nothing.
“You have to want it,” Gert said. “Do you want it?”
“Of course I want it,” I said. I did, didn’t I? I passed my stiff palm over the candles.
Again, nothing happened. The wicks remained completely flame free.
“Do you really, child?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“Forget about what you are supposed to do. Just do what comes naturally to you.”
I slumped over. “I hate to break it to you,” I said, “but none of this comes naturally to me.”
“Amy,” she said. “It will. Soon. What you did in that cell with Mombi, part of that was the knife, yes. But an even bigger part of it was coming from you. You have the talent. Once you learn how to harness it properly, you’ll be unstoppable.”
I couldn’t help but remember the fact that I had hurt someone, or something. He deserved it, but still. It felt so easy in the moment. Maybe too easy. I remembered what Nox had told me, about how dangerous magic was, about how it corrupted people from my world. How they wanted more and more. It was magic that had made Dorothy who she was now. What would it do to me? What if, in training to fight Dorothy, I became just like her?
“You’re not Dorothy, dear,” Gert said. I felt myself shiver involuntarily. She must have overheard my thoughts. “Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you never become her.” I wonde
red if Gert was making this promise just to stop me from worrying, or if it was a promise she could keep. “Which leads us to a very important question.” She paused, and looked me up and down appraisingly. “Who are you?” she finally asked.
I pulled back, surprised at the question. “What?”
“If you’re not Dorothy, then who are you?”
I didn’t know how to respond. “Um,” I said. “I’m Amy?”
“I bet there are a million Amys where you are from, dear. Amy is what you are called.” Gert laughed liltingly. “One thing you have to understand,” she said, “is that all magic users have our own specialties. We each have our own affinities for certain kinds of magic. It has to do with your personality. Once you understand what kinds of magic you’re best suited for, it will be easier. But before you can do that, you need to know who you are. The essence of what makes you you. So. Who are you?”
I thought about it. Before I’d gotten to Oz, I would have been able to answer the question more easily, I think. But I also think I might have answered it wrong. Now, I didn’t know where to begin.
Was I the Amy Gumm I’d always been, who took care of my mother even though I sometimes hated every vomit-y, thankless moment of it, who got by in school not even breaching the surface of all that potential that Dr. Strachan said I had? Was I Salvation Amy, the girl who always took the bait when Madison Pendleton pushed me too far? The girl who couldn’t keep her mouth shut literally when her life depended on it? The girl whose future looked as bleak as the Kansas sky she stared at every night through her tiny circular trailer window?
Or was I someone more extreme, someone I never imagined—a killer. A warrior. A girl who could stab someone in the face and know that she was doing the right thing? A girl who had strength she never even knew about?
“Who am I supposed to be?” I asked.
“It’s not a matter of who you’re supposed to be. The truth is, I already know exactly who you are. But my telling you—that won’t do you any good at all. You have to be the one to figure it out. Here, try again. Light the candles.”
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 12