“Then why are you in this ditch?” Vashti asked. “You said you were hiding.”
“In fact you said we were hiding,” Ednah began, “and we never confirmed as much, although we also never denied as much, which could lead you to the assumption that your assumption was the correct one, but even though one could infer that we were hiding, one could not in any way infer that we were hiding from the soldiers commissioned by our most beloved ruler, the fairy princess Ozma of Oz, for indeed—”
“If you’re not hiding from Ozma’s soldiers, who are you hiding from?” Zerie interrupted.
“Oh, from the most hideous of beasts, perhaps the most hideous of creatures that exist or ever did exist in the entirety of the world’s time, although such things cannot be determined without a great deal more study and contemplation,” Ednah said.
“Try to talk in shorter sentences,” Vashti coached her. “You try it, Edmond.”
“We’re hiding from Kalidahs,” Edmond said. Then he began to twist his hands together, turning to Ednah. “What if they can hear all this racket we’re making? What if they’re right above us now?”
“Kalidahs?” Zerie cut in. “Kalidahs don’t live anywhere near here.” She had heard of the fearsome creatures from Tabitha. Kalidah territory was in Munchkin Country, and they were now in Quadling Country.
“Kalidahs go wherever they please,” the Glass Cat said. “It’s one of the two things I have in common with them. We both wander the entire Land of Oz. And we both have razor-sharp claws.”
Edmond cried out in fear and backed away from the cat.
“I thought Kalidahs were just a myth,” Brink said. “Creatures with the heads of tigers and the bodies of bears. Or is it the other way around?”
“No, you’re right, for a change,” the Glass Cat said. “The tiger heads have sharp teeth and an intelligent feline brain. The bear bodies can walk upright and rend you with their fearsome claws.” She daintily licked one glass paw as she spoke. “They’re very vicious beasts. If they find us, they will surely kill you all.”
.11.
“Are you positive that there are Kalidahs around here?” Vashti asked Ednah after an hour of hiding in the ditch.
“Two of the terrible things chased us off the road of yellow brick, and if we hadn’t fallen into this ditch they certainly would have found us,” Ednah began.
“Oh, what if we hadn’t fallen?” Edmond said. “What if the Kalidahs had caught up to us before we fell through the bushes? If they’d caught us, they would have torn us apart for sure. And if they tore us apart—”
Ednah hugged him as he cried in fear. “They didn’t catch us,” she said simply.
“So what are we supposed to do?” Zerie asked Brink and Vashti. “We can’t just hide here forever, but Kalidahs . . .” She wrapped her arms around herself, frightened. She’d never really thought much about the awful beasts—none had ever come near her village. But what would she do, face-to-face with a monster that wanted to attack her?
“I knew we might get caught by the Winged Monkeys, but I never realized there would be other dangerous things, too,” Vashti said, echoing Zerie’s thoughts. “We should’ve just stayed home.”
“We didn’t have that choice,” Brink replied. “The Winged Monkeys were coming for us.”
Zerie nodded, but Vashti sighed. “Then we should’ve let them take us. If we go back to the road right now, maybe the mounted soldiers will come back and we can turn ourselves in. At least we’d be safe from Kalidahs. I’d rather lose my talent than be killed by a wild beast.”
Brink didn’t answer, and Zerie wasn’t sure what to say. She was terrified of the Kalidahs, too, but the idea of turning herself in made her furious.
“No,” she finally said. “If we lose our talents, we lose ourselves. Vashti, if they captured you and put you in the Forbidden Fountain, the person who came back out wouldn’t be you. She might look like you and talk like you and remember all the different weaving patterns that you know . . . but she wouldn’t be the real you.”
“Zerie’s right,” Brink said. “It isn’t fair that Ozma should decide which parts of your personality you get to keep and which you don’t. You’ve never used your magical talent to do anything wrong, so you shouldn’t be punished.”
“This is all very philosophical,” the Glass Cat said, “but we are running out of nighttime. We won’t reach Glinda’s Palace by sitting in a ditch.”
“Isn’t there some other way we can go?” Zerie asked. “There’s got to be a safer path.”
“You are running from the leader of Oz, traveling through the wilderness to your only hope of help,” the cat replied. “Nothing you’re doing is safe. You won’t be safe until you reach Glinda.”
The words felt like a splash of cold water in her face. Zerie blinked a few times, trying to absorb what the cat was saying. She was right, of course. There was danger every way they turned, and no way out of it. Even going back home wouldn’t be safe.
“But what do we do about the Kalidahs?” Vashti’s voice sounded small.
“Hide from them!” cried Edmond. “What if they catch you? What if they eat you?”
“No more what-ifs,” Zerie cut him off. “We can’t hide forever.”
“We also can’t just climb out of here and start walking,” Brink said. “I’ll go look around and see if there are any signs of them.” Without waiting for an answer, he tickled some of the red branches out of the way and clambered from the ditch.
“That was brave,” Zerie said to Vashti. “Brink has really been great. I always thought he was kind of annoying before, but I was wrong.”
“Me too,” Vashti replied. “I paid so much attention to Ned that I never even noticed Brink. But without him I’m not sure we would’ve made it this far.” She stood up to peer through the branches after him. “Plus, he’s cute. I never noticed that either.”
Cute? Zerie thought, surprised. Brink?
She’d never considered how he looked. Ned was the handsome one, with his broad shoulders and his muscled arms. And his friendly smile. And his big brown eyes.
But Brink? The whole idea of Brink being cute just seemed . . . strange.
Zerie had liked Ned forever. And she had always thought of Brink as just being Ned’s annoying little brother. She’d never even really thought of him as a boy.
“What if the Kalidahs find him and he never comes back?” Edmond moaned. “What if he never comes back and we never know what happened to him? What if we hear them fighting, and then he comes back here and he’s hurt? And what if he comes back and leads the Kalidahs right to us? What if they trap us in this ditch and we can’t escape them?”
Zerie tried to tune him out. There was no point in trying to coach Edmond to drop his worrying right now. It was clear that both the Flutterbudget and the Rigmarole couldn’t control themselves as well when they were scared or upset.
Just as Ednah was about to start whatever long-winded answer she was planning, Brink stuck his head back through the bushes. “I don’t see anything or hear anything or smell anything,” he said. “Let’s go.”
“Don’t we need a plan?” Vashti asked anxiously. “Are we going back to the road?”
“No,” said the Glass Cat. “I told you there would be soldiers, and there were.”
“I hate to say it, but I agree with her,” Zerie said. “We barely made it a mile before we heard the horses. The soldiers must be patrolling the road.”
“Then how do we get there? Just wander around and hope we don’t get eaten by a Kalidah?” Vashti demanded.
“We don’t wander. We head south,” the cat replied. “It will be difficult. There are The Trenches, and then the Tilted Forest, before we reach Glinda’s Palace.”
“What do you mean, trenches?” Brink asked, swinging back down into the ditch.
He held onto one of the overhead branches for a moment before he jumped, and Zerie noticed that his arms were nearly as muscular as Ned’s. How had she never seen that?
“The Trenches are trenches, obviously,” said the Glass Cat. “This ditch is probably one of the outlying trenches. Most of them are far deeper and far wider.”
“Trenches?“ Zerie said. Her heart sank at the thought of having to climb in and out of holes in the dark. “Can we make our way around them somehow?”
“Perhaps. But it would require you to walk at least twenty miles in each direction every time,” the cat replied. “Shall we go?”
“I guess.” Zerie reluctantly turned toward Ednah and Edmond. “Do you two . . . want to come with us?”
“Good heavens, no!” cried Edmond. “You could be caught by soldiers! You could be caught by Kalidahs! And what if you get into a trench that you can’t get out of? What if you’re climbing out of a trench and your rope breaks and you fall? What if there’s a Kalidah at the bottom when you fall? What if it’s a hungry Kalidah and you—”
“We thank you for the offer,” Ednah put in, “though whether it be generous or self-serving is entirely unclear, largely due to the fact that our acquaintance has been one of only an hour or possibly a little more than an hour, or possibly a few minutes less than an hour. Without a reliable clock it is nearly impossible to know for certain how many minutes have ticked by, and a reliable clock—”
“Okay, well, good luck!” Brink interrupted.
Vashti laid her hand on Ednah’s arm. “Remember to use fewer words. And Edmond, stop saying ‘what if.’ If you learn to calm down a bit, you two can live anywhere in Oz, because you won’t be a Rigmarole and a Flutterbudget anymore.”
Edmond and Ednah watched with worried eyes as the three friends climbed up out of the ditch. They had to tickle their way through the bushes, and Zerie was glad when Brink got to the top and reached back to help her. He pulled her up onto the ground and smiled.
Zerie jerked her hand away from his, her cheeks heating up. Why was she suddenly so aware of Brink’s hands, and his arms, and his smile?
Vashti’s right, he is cute, she thought. And now I can’t stop thinking about it.
“It’s almost midnight. We’d better start walking if we want to get anywhere tonight,” the Glass Cat said, winding her way between their legs.
“How can we tell if a Kalidah is nearby?” Zerie asked in a low voice.
“Usually the snarling and growling gives them away,” the cat replied, calmly picking her way through a patch of tickle bushes.
“We’ll stick together and keep our ears open,” Brink said, helping Vashti from the ditch. He linked his arm through hers and held his other arm out to Zerie. She was almost afraid to touch him, but it would look weird not to.
“Tigers with bear bodies,” she murmured, sliding her arm through Brink’s and trying hard to ignore the little tingle she felt as her skin touched his. “That’s what we’re looking for. Tigers and bears.”
“Tigers and bears,” Vashti repeated, her voice shrill with fear.
“Tigers and bears,” Brink agreed.
Arm in arm, they began to walk. Zerie felt better holding on to her friends, as if she were not one girl, but part of a bigger thing.
Friends are always strongest together. If any of those tiger-bears tried to attack, it would be facing all three of them, not just one.
They moved faster and faster until they were practically skipping, following the Glass Cat through the wilderness.
Even though she was terrified, Zerie felt strangely free. She had her friends, and she had her talent, and she was traveling the Land of Oz— just like she’d always wanted to for her whole life. If that meant she had to be scared sometimes, she could handle it.
The first trench appeared about three miles away.
“The Trenches? This is a cliff!” Vashti cried when the ground suddenly dropped away before their feet.
“How many of these are there?” Zerie asked, gazing down into the dark chasm. She couldn’t see the bottom.
“Four or five,” the cat said. “Or six. I forget.”
“Well, what are they?” Vashti demanded. “When you said trenches I thought you just meant holes in the ground.”
“Technically, that’s what a trench is.” The Glass Cat stretched her back as she spoke. “These Trenches are exceptionally large, cutting through many miles of the wilderness. Oh, and there are quite a few different ecosystems in them, as well. Nothing very interesting, of course.” She jumped off the edge, her glass body glittering in the starlight until she fell out of sight.
“I’m not doing that,” Brink said. “Cats might land on their feet, but I don’t.”
“What did she mean, different ecosystems?” Vashti asked.
Brink shrugged. “Did Tabitha have any stories about The Trenches?”
“Nope,” Zerie said. “I’ve never even heard of them before.”
“I wish I’d still never heard of them!” Vashti said, peering over the edge of the cliff. “How deep do you think it is?”
“Deep,” Brink replied. “If we can’t see the bottom, we have to assume it’s at least twenty or thirty feet.”
“Maybe we can find something to use as a bridge,” Zerie suggested. “Like a tall tree we could cut down and put across. Then we could walk over it.”
“There are no tall trees around here, just the tickle bushes,” Vashti said. “And we don’t have an axe, anyway.”
“Well, there are trees on the other side. It looks like a jungle over there. Maybe the whole landscape is different on that side of the trench.” Zerie squinted, trying to see across, but the most she could make out were the shapes of shaggy trees and vines. “Maybe that’s what the cat meant by a different ecosystem.”
“The cat’s already across!” Brink pointed to the other side of the trench. Tthe Glass Cat was climbing up the wall. “It must be pretty narrow at the bottom if she jumped in and ran across so fast.”
“It’s hard to tell in the dark.” Zerie squinted across the trench. “I guess it’s deeper than it is wide. I’d say it’s probably only fifteen feet or so wide.”
“That’s still too far to jump. I wish we could climb like the cat,” Vashti said. “Or that we had a rope.”
“A rope!” Zerie cried. “Maybe I can make one.” She stared across the trench, focusing on the closest tree she could see. A vine looped down from its branches and twined itself around the trunk. Zerie closed her eyes and pictured the vine growing . . . growing . . . longer and longer until it could reach over the trench.
“What are you doing?” Brink’s voice brought her out of her imagining.
Zerie opened her eyes and tried to see the vine again. It was hanging just as it had been before. “I was trying to use my magic to make that vine grow longer so we could use it as a rope,” she said. “But it didn’t work at all.”
“That’s a bow-vine. They never get any longer than that,” Vashti said. “Us weavers use them all the time because once they attach to something, they tie themselves into a bow and stay put. You have to untie them from the tree to harvest them, which is a pain because they never want to be untied. But they make really strong baskets, since they always stay tied.”
“Would they make good ropes?” Brink asked.
“Sure, if you tie a few together, they would stay tied forever,” Vashti replied. “But they’re kind of short. The longest one I ever saw was about eight feet.”
“So I can’t make it longer because that would be unnatural,” Zerie said. “I guess I thought that speeding up the growth would help, but I can’t make it do what nature doesn’t want it to.”
“It was a good idea, though,” Brink said.
“Maybe . . .” Vashti said hesitantly. “Maybe I could levitate us all across.”
“That’s a great idea! Try it,” Zerie told her.
“Okay.” Vashti shook out her arms and shoulders to relax herself. Then she took hold of Zerie and Brink’s hands, and puckered her brow in concentration.
Nothing happened. Zerie shot Brink a questioning look, and he shook his head. He didn�
��t feel anything either. Vashti closed her eyes and kept trying.
A moment later, she said excitedly, “It’s working!”
Zerie frowned. Her feet were still on the ground. So were Brink’s. But Vashti was rising into the air, floating six inches above the grass. She wore an eager smile.
Brink slipped his hand out of Vashti’s and motioned for Zerie to do the same. She did, trying to let go softly so that Vashti wouldn’t notice. It seemed to work, because Vashti rose higher into the air without opening her eyes.
“Picture us floating over the trench,” Zerie told her, hoping her friend would still think they were all together. She didn’t want Vashti to realize that anything had gone wrong—she was already feeling insecure about her talent.
Vashti rose farther off the ground, but she stayed right above them.
Brink pulled Zerie close so he could whisper in her ear. “Speed her up,” he murmured. “Like you did back in the woods at home. She could lift things, but you had to move them.”
He reached out and—as gently as possible—pushed Vashti’s legs, aiming her toward the trench. Immediately, Zerie screwed her eyes shut and pictured Vashti moving across the trench, landing on the far side where the Glass Cat was now waiting.
“Wha—” Vashti’s cry of surprise turned to a scream, and Zerie’s eyes snapped open. Vashti had felt Brink pushing her, and it had broken her concentration. Her levitation faltered, and she began to sink.
But she was already over the open trench, moving fast with Zerie’s magic.
“Vashti, no! Pull yourself back up!” Brink cried. “Concentrate!”
Vashti kept sinking. Zerie couldn’t force herself to look away, or to close her eyes and use her talent. Her best friend was suspended over a deep pit, and she was going to fall!
Vashti’s panicked eyes met hers, and Zerie instantly felt a surge of magic. She wouldn’t let Vashti plummet. Would not.
“Levitate!” she yelled at her best friend. “You can do it! You are doing it!”
This time Zerie didn’t need to close her eyes or to spend any time picturing what would happen. She thought about Vashti moving fast, fast, fast . . . and Vashti did. She flew like a slingshot over the trench and crashed to the ground on the far side. She was safe.
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