I knelt down to pick her up, but she darted away from me.
“Star?” I stood back up and watched her closely. Something was up—she was frantically running around in a circle like she was trying to get my attention.
“What are you trying to tell me?” I asked.
As if she understood what I was asking, she scurried over to the door and began scratching at it.
She wanted me to follow.
“Are you serious? Now?”
It was a bad idea. Worse than bad. Colossally bad. The Tin Woodman was tearing the rooms apart one by one, the whole palace was in chaos over the missing monkey, and I wasn’t sure whether or not I was a suspect. Plus, Jellia had already covered for me once this morning, and I still wasn’t sure exactly what that was all about. The safest course of action, for now, was to keep my head down and be ready to run.
Or ready to fight.
“Star . . . ,” I said.
She squeaked. She’d never behaved like this before. It was a far cry from her lethargic Dusty Acres days, usually spent napping in her exercise ball. Maybe there was some natural phenomena in Oz that made animals smarter. I mean, the monkeys talk after all.
I sighed. They do say rats are extremely intelligent. If she wanted me to follow, I would follow.
As soon as I opened the door, Star raced out without hesitation. I chased after her. I guess if anyone caught me, I could tell them I was trying to strangle the rat on Dorothy’s behalf.
I was nervous, still unsure what exactly was going on. But Star wasn’t. Star moved quickly and hugged the side of the hall as if she knew that she was supposed to be inconspicuous—as if she knew exactly where she was going, exactly what she was doing.
After a couple of turns, past rooms where other maids were too busy diligently cleaning to notice us, Star came to an unexpected stop, right in front of a life-size statue of Dorothy. I’d probably dusted this a few times—there were others like it scattered all over the palace. In this one, Dorothy peered hopefully toward the horizon (the wall), while clutching a picnic basket, Toto’s scruffy head poking out of it. This version of Dorothy reminded me of the sweet, innocent one I was familiar with, the way most people back home thought of her: sweet and smiling, her hair pulled into two plaits. Too bad she was fictional. I looked at the statue. I looked down at Star. She was twitching in expectation.
“Okay,” I said, keeping my voice low. “Now what?”
Star rolled over onto her back, then back to her feet, and looked up at me.
I didn’t understand rat sign language, but I knew she was trying to show me something. I looked at the statue again. I thought about all those movies where a statue conceals a hidden door and almost laughed, looking down at Star.
“Is this when I, like, lean on the statue and fall through a trapdoor?” I poked stone Dorothy in the eye for emphasis, and nothing happened.
In response, Star started running around in a circle, chasing her tail.
“Star, I don’t have time for this,” I said. “Things are already screwed up and why am I talking to you, you’re a rat.”
Star stopped chasing her tail and looked at me, lifting one of her front legs off the ground. It was like she wanted to shake hands.
Rolling over. Chasing her tail. Shaking hands. These were dog tricks.
I looked back at the statue. Toto’s front paw was sticking out of the basket. I looked dubiously back at Star, who squeaked. Feeling a little dumb for humoring my pet rat, I shook Toto’s paw.
It moved under my hand like a lever. Something inside the statue clicked, and then an almost imperceptible ripple went through the marble, like the shimmer of heat coming off a sidewalk in the summer.
Star squeaked and raced up to the statue’s base, running right through it, almost like the statue was a hologram. Tentatively, I reached out and touched what seconds ago had been cold, solid marble. Although it looked no different to the naked eye, now my hand passed right through it.
I glanced down the hallway in either direction. The coast was still clear.
Well, I’d followed Star this far.
I took a deep breath, fighting back the instinct that said I was about to smash my face against a rock, and walked through Dorothy’s statue.
I found myself on a stone staircase lit by glowing, shimmering orbs of energy that lined the cracked, ancient walls. I glanced over my shoulder and for a moment I could see the back of the Dorothy statue, but then it faded into solid rock. In front of me was a staircase that led nowhere but down. Great.
I heard Star chittering up ahead, so I pressed on. The ceiling above the staircase was so low and cramped that I had to duck my head to walk down it. Probably built for Munchkins, I thought.
I caught up with Star at the bottom. The ceiling opened up down here, the same orbs from the staircase illuminating an ancient chamber with a dirt floor. Dust tickled my nostrils. It didn’t seem like anyone had been down here for a long time. I wondered if this was like one of the tunnels Ollie and Maude had disappeared into last night.
“What did you get me into?” I muttered to Star.
We followed the tunnel, the only sounds my soft footfalls and Star’s clicking nails. I glanced over my shoulder once and watched as my footprints quickly filled back in, like some invisible force was making sure to erase all trace of my passing. I started walking a lot faster after that. I had the constant sense that something might start chasing me at any moment.
After only a few minutes, the tunnel came to an abrupt dead end. I looked back again and couldn’t see the staircase we’d come from, even though it didn’t seem like we’d gone that far. Instead, the tunnel stretched on forever behind me. Something told me there was no going back.
A ladder was built into the wall in front of me. It was wooden and rickety and led up through a narrow hole in the ceiling. I tested it, rattling it hesitantly to be sure it would support my weight.
It shook, but it didn’t give way. So I put Star in my pocket and began to climb, not knowing where it would lead me. It was a tight squeeze; like the staircase, this tunnel was basically Munchkin-size. I’d never been claustrophobic before, but I was still supremely relieved to see a square of light overhead.
At the top of the ladder, I reached up and lifted a square door. I opened it slowly, peeking out, not sure where I’d be popping up. From above, dirt shook loose into my face.
It was a flap carved into the grass, just like the one Ollie had used the night before. Except this one appeared to lead into a bunch of shrubs. Well, at least no one would be able to see me emerging from the earth.
I crawled and clawed my way up and out, through leaves and thorns and branches. When I was finally able to stand, I looked around, pulled a bunch of leaves from my hair, dusted myself off, and found that I was in the palace’s sculpture garden, a place I’d seen in the distance, out the window, but had never been in before. It wasn’t that far from the greenhouse, and I was a little nervous to be in the proximity of the Scarecrow’s lab again so soon, but no one was around. The search for Maude must have gone to the other side of the palace—to the Royal Gardens—where they’d probably discovered her mutilated wings by now.
The sculpture garden had always looked green and peaceful from a distance. Up close, it was nothing like that at all. Giant topiaries trimmed into the figures of Oz luminaries—the Lion, the Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow and Glinda, as well as others that I didn’t recognize—all towered over my head, all of them dark and shadowy in the moonlight as they stared creepily down at me.
Life-size stone statues were mixed in among them. They were made from a flaky, brittle shale; all of them with eyes that seemed strangely lifelike, as if they were watching me sneak through their ranks. I pushed down the sudden desire to draw my dagger.
The statues were carefully arranged along a spiraling stone path through the hedges. They appeared to represent every race and creature in Oz—humans, Munchkins, Quadlings—and also stranger humanoids like an armless
brute with a hammer-shaped head, and a gang of sprite-size people with horns sticking out of their foreheads.
As I moved quickly down the path, Star wriggled in my pocket. I reached down for her, but she squirmed free of my hand and jumped onto the stone path. She darted on ahead: this wild-goose chase wasn’t over. This time, I didn’t question it. Clearly, she had a destination in mind.
So I followed her as she scurried along, trying not to look at the gruesome faces of the statues staring at me until we reached the entrance to the hedge maze.
There I stopped short. This was one place I didn’t want to go. While the sculpture garden had always looked like a peaceful retreat from the vantage point of the palace windows, the hedge maze, on the other hand—even from a distance—had always given me the creeps.
I don’t know why. Maybe it was just the way it exuded magic; the way it seemed to change and rearrange itself every time you looked away from it. Even in the dark, the leaves of the hedges were Technicolor-green, so saturated that the color almost bled into the atmosphere.
It seemed like the kind of place you could get lost in. The kind of place you could enter and never leave.
Unfortunately, Star didn’t seem to share my fear—she was already several yards ahead of me, and if I didn’t hurry, she would be out of sight before I knew it.
“Slow down!” I hissed after her, but she didn’t listen. I took a deep breath and followed her into the maze.
As soon as I stepped inside, the leafy walls on either side of me began to rustle, suddenly sprouting little pink buds. The climbing ivy grew and twisted.
My heart pounding, I looked back. The opening I’d just run through was no longer there. It had sealed up behind me with new growth.
“Damn,” I swore under my breath. I’d almost expected those frozen statues to come to life, but I hadn’t expected the maze to.
Keeping Star in my sights suddenly seemed more important than ever—it was no longer just a matter of not losing her. It was a matter of me not getting lost. Rats were supposed to be naturally good at mazes, right? Star seemed to have some sense of where she was going, but I knew that, on my own, I would be stuck in here for good.
There was no point in looking back, so I didn’t bother.
Relying on a rat to guide me through a magic maze pretty much summed up my last twenty-four hours. I felt out of control, isolated, and uncertain where I was headed. I plunged forward regardless. Sometimes the path was narrow and claustrophobic, the hedges so high I couldn’t even see their tops. Then I’d turn a corner into a sweeping cobblestone boulevard where the topiary walls were short enough that it seemed like I might be able to dive over them with a running start.
We turned a corner and found ourselves in a long, leafy corridor—grown over with ivy—where there didn’t appear to be any more turnoffs. The hedges stretched out in a rigid line, nowhere to go except straight ahead. Unfortunately, the path looked like it went on forever, extending so far into the distance that I couldn’t see an end. The maze felt massive, like an entire world unto itself.
The endlessness terrified me. Even Star slowed down and sniffed at the air, looking around like she was trying to get her bearings.
“Come on, Star,” I urged quietly. “Don’t fail me now.”
The hedge wall on my left was covered in a blooming honeysuckle-like vine that dripped with a sweet-smelling nectar. Without really realizing what I was doing, I reached toward one of the blossoms to sample the nectar—it smelled so sweet and alluring. A purple ladybug landed on the blossom just in front of my fingers and the flower snapped close with a crunch and a squish. I jumped back. The flowers had teeth.
I started forward, wanting to put some distance between me and the flowers. Star ambled along at my side, no longer leading the way.
“What did you get me into, Star?”
Just as I said it, her head popped up into the air and she doubled back on the path we’d been following. She began to examine one of the hedges we’d passed. It looked like any of the rest of them to me, but Star, having now made up her mind, circled around and ran straight toward it. As she did, the branches slid aside, forming an opening as wide as a doorway. I gasped—more from joy than surprise—a way out! Star ran through—and I ran right behind her.
We kept running, no longer obeying the paths laid out by the maze. The walls continued to slide aside for us as we charged on, closing at our backs as soon as we slipped through.
And then, finally, we reached the center of the maze. It was so unexpected that I almost tripped over my feet while skidding to a stop. It was a large, circular area, paved with jagged flagstones. Wildflowers bloomed everywhere, the moonlight beaming down brightly on their open faces.
Dead center in the middle of the plaza was a stone fountain that looked older than time itself. Its water spiraled up into the sky in a corkscrew and didn’t seem to come back down again.
Sitting on the edge of the fountain was Pete.
As usual, he had found me when I least expected it. Like the Order, Pete was just another of my supposed allies that couldn’t be relied upon.
“You,” was all I could manage, still catching my breath.
“Hey,” he said casually. Clearly, he’d been expecting me. He sat there like there was nothing strange at all about meeting up in the early morning darkness for some fun times in the nefarious hedge maze.
Actually, with the way the bright-yellow half-moon shone on his dark hair, the colors around us supercharged, Pete looked almost beautiful. He looked better than normal—like an artist’s rendering of his ideal self. He looked perfectly at ease here, like he belonged.
“You brought me here,” I said suspiciously. “You had Star come get me.”
“Yes,” he said. He stood up from his perch on the fountain but didn’t come any closer.
“How?”
“Star may not be able to talk, but it’s not so hard to communicate with her if you know the trick,” he replied.
More half answers. This was way beyond its expiration date.
“What about the maze? Did you do all that? Do you control it?”
He laughed. “No one controls the maze. Especially not me. It’s a living thing—like you or me or Star. If you’re kind to it, it remembers. If it’s your friend, it will help you.” He smiled and gestured at everything around us. “These hedges and I go way back,” he said. “So I asked it for help.”
What was he saying? That he had trained this place?
I took a step closer.
Who are you? I wanted to ask. What do you want from me?
I wanted to ask those things. But I had asked them before. I knew he wouldn’t give me a straight answer. And if he somehow did now, I wasn’t sure I would like it.
“If you wanted to talk to me, why didn’t you just come to my room—like before? Why go through all this?” I asked instead.
“Things are about to get messy around here, Amy,” he said. “It’s not safe for me in the palace.”
I wanted to laugh. “And it’s safe in here? I hate to tell you this, but the flowers have teeth.”
Pete laughed. “Okay, true,” he said. “If you make it here to the center, though, you’re in the safest place in the whole Emerald City. Maybe in all of Oz. Dorothy’s afraid to come in here. Even Glinda’s afraid. They should be—it’s more powerful than they are. More powerful than Mombi, for that matter.”
He raised an eyebrow mischievously.
“You know Mombi,” I said. Of course he did. I should have known.
“I do,” he said. “Mombi and I go way back, too.”
“So you’re my handler. The one who’s been keeping an eye on me for the Order. Are you the one who told her to rescue me in the first place?”
Pete shook his head emphatically. “I don’t work with the Order. Just because I know Mombi doesn’t mean I like her.”
“How do you know her, then? Wait, never mind. I don’t know why I thought you’d answer that, since you haven
’t answered any of my other questions.”
Pete’s expression darkened. “She may say she’s working for the good of Oz, but Mombi doesn’t do anything for the good of anyone except herself. Take it from me.”
I rolled my eyes and walked over to the edge of the fountain.
“Pete,” I said. “Why should I take anything from you?”
“I guess you shouldn’t,” he said. I couldn’t decide whether he sounded apologetic about it.
“So what do you want from me? Why did you bring me here?”
“I wanted you to know how to find the center,” he said. “I wanted you to understand this place. To introduce you, I guess. It might be useful to you someday.”
“Introduce me.”
“Yeah.”
“You wanted to introduce me to a bunch of magical hedges.” I was pissed at how evasive Pete was being, but the logical part of me knew this was a valuable place to know about. With things getting hot in the palace, the Tin Woodman sniffing around, the magic I’d used last night—I might need a place with carnivorous flowers to hide in.
Pete just shrugged. He tried to take my hand in his, but I pulled it away.
“And I wanted to say good-bye,” he said. “I have to leave the palace. I couldn’t before. But Dorothy’s weak right now. She’s being hit from too many angles. I don’t even think she realizes it. I have to leave while I can.”
I felt it like a punch in the gut. Mysterious and flighty as he was, at least Pete usually tried to be helpful. But now—just like the Order—he was leaving me behind. And I still didn’t have any answers. Was it a coincidence that he had just been walking by when my trailer fell out of the sky, that he kept showing up and disappearing?
I backed away from him. Pete was more than he seemed. That much was clear.
“Who are you?” I asked.
“I had started to think that there was no hope for Oz,” he said, again not answering the question. “Things were just so bad. The day I met you I was walking around looking at all the damage. Thinking there was no way things could ever get better. That we shouldn’t even bother trying. And then you dropped out of the sky. You reminded me that there was still Good here. Even if it was just the promise of Good.”
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 29