by S. D. Stuart
Foam formed around the edges of his lips and he drooled as he spoke. “Run …”
The octopus yanked Munch out of her hands and sucked him down through the hole in an instant.
“Nooooo!”
She bent over the hole on her hands and knees and flailed her arm around in the water.
She had to save him.
Water sloshed up in her face from the hole and she jumped back just as it exploded and tentacles reached out to grab her.
She crab-walked backward quickly on her hands and feet to get out of reach of the tentacles.
Three more geysers exploded around her and tentacles reached for her from every direction. Word had spread quickly that there was food on the land bridge.
She leaped to her feet and ran straight for the castle.
Geysers exploded on either side of her as she ducked to avoid the tentacles that reached for her.
A geyser exploded directly in front of her and she jumped through the air, her foot catching on a twisting tentacle. She landed hard on her side and hydroplaned across the lake’s surface for a second before coming to a dead stop in the shallow water.
A tentacle twisted around and touched her boot. She tried to pull her foot back but a second tentacle wrapped itself firmly around her ankle and yanked hard. Her leg twisted with the sudden motion and pain shot up all the way through her spine.
She flopped to her belly and dug her fingers in the sand trying to slow her progress to the hole and the waiting beak of the hungry octopus. It took only moments for the octopus to drag her to the edge of the hole. She took one last breath of air and, just as she went under, a second octopus reached in from above and grabbed her wrists.
She was caught in a tug-of-war between starved cephalopods.
She would be the loser regardless of who won the battle. Her eardrums suddenly compressed painfully and the water pressure increased around her, forcing the last of her air out of her lungs.
The first octopus let go of her legs and disappeared down the tunnel, leaving the second octopus its reward.
The second octopus pulled her quickly up out of the hole.
Sensing air around her, she opened her mouth to suck in the life-sustaining oxygen.
She looked down and saw the lake recede as she continued to rise up in the air. She looked up at the second octopus wrapped around her wrists and instead saw the familiar furry hands of Caleb holding her firmly. He in turn was tied by a rope to an airship that lifted them away from the water.
He smiled down at her. “I’ve got you.”
She looked up at him. “Why did the octopus let go?”
“We dropped a barrel full of gunpowder into the water on a delay fuse. They’re sensitive to loud noises.”
They were getting closer to the airship as someone pulled the rope back up.
She looked up at Caleb, who looked much thinner with this fir matted down on his body. “Thank you for rescuing me.”
Caleb did not smile. “I don’t know if I would call this a rescue.”
Several hands reached over the edge of the airship gondola loading platform and pulled Caleb and Dorothy into the airship.
Once inside, the door closed and rough hands forced them to kneel on the floor. She saw boots walk in front of them and turn to face them. Dorothy looked up slowly at the owner of the boots until her eyes met those of Amanda.
Standing next to her was a smiling Captain Stiles. “Now, where were we? Ahh, yes. Now I remember.”
He raised his rifle over his head and brought the butt of it across Caleb’s face.
Chapter 24
Dorothy tripped as the guard shoved her violently into the cell. The clang of the steel bars echoed off the cobblestone walls of the dungeon deep in the underbelly of the West Marshal’s castle.
Two other guards tossed the unconscious Caleb into the adjoining cell.
She regained her footing and ran back to the bars, calling out after the guards who were already climbing the stone steps leading up and out of the dungeon.
“I demand to see the West Marshal.”
The guards ignored her and disappeared around the bend.
“Do you hear me? My friend could be dying. He needs help.”
A voice came to her out of darkness of a neighboring cell on the other side. “There is nothing you could say to convince them to let you out.”
She leaned back away from the bars and let her eyes adjust to the darkness. “How do you know?”
A frail looking man, malnourished, with unkempt hair and a matted snow-white beard sat casually against the back wall of his cell. “Because I have tried everything.”
“You haven’t tried everything.”
He frowned. “Why would you say that?”
“You’re still here.”
He waggled a finger at her. “I didn’t ask you why you said that. I asked myself why would you say that.”
“Sounds like the same thing to me.”
“Ahh, but it is not. They are very different questions. You see I was asking …”
She was not about to get into a philosophical discussion with an ancient prisoner. She cut him off with a wave of her hand. “Hush and let me think.”
She circled her cell and inspected every crack and crevice for signs of weakness. She tugged on the bars and pushed at the stone walls.
The old man watched her intently and, after she covered every square inch of her cell a second time, finally spoke. “There is no way out of here.”
She turned away from him and looked at the stone steps, the obvious way out of the dungeon. “Why does everyone keep saying that?”
He spoke barely above a whisper. She almost missed it because he had said it so quietly. “Because it’s not true.”
She spun around and stared at the old man. “What did you just say?”
He smiled and said nothing.
A moan emanated from behind her.
She spun around as Caleb slowly got to his hands and knees.
She ran over and pressed herself against the bars. “Caleb. Are you okay?”
Caleb flopped back into a seated position on the dusty floor and winced when he touched a spot on his forehead. “I think so.”
“I thought you were in the southern fields. How did you get caught?”
His deep brown eyes sought her out in the semi-darkness. “There aren’t too many hybrids working the fields. I kind of stuck out.”
The old man chuckled behind her. She turned around. “What’s so funny?”
“Your friend there overstates his situation. There have not been any human animal hybrids in the West in over five years. Just long enough that it should be unexpected for someone like him to be here but not long enough to forget how normal it felt to have them around us all the time.”
She glanced back at Caleb and saw that his face registered just as much confusion as she felt from what the old man had just said.
She directed her question at the old man but watched Caleb while she asked it.
“But all the hybrids were killed off a long time ago.”
Caleb looked past her toward the man on the other side of her cage. “I’m the last of my kind.”
“And who told you that?”
She and Caleb exchanged a quick glance before he responded.
“Mr. Nero.”
The old man laughed. “I should’ve guessed Nero would be involved in such a warping of the truth.”
Caleb stood and looked past Dorothy at the old man. “Are you telling me he lied? To me?”
“I don’t know exactly what he told you son, but if you think you are the last of your kind, you are greatly mistaken.”
“If I am not the last then why have I never seen anyone else like me? And I’ve been all over OZ.”
The man clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and stared at Caleb. “The only thing I know is rumors and hints of rumors.”
“What kind of rumors?”
“Have you been to the Sout
hern Territories?”
Caleb squinted his eyes. “We both know the answer to that question.”
The old man clicked his tongue on the roof of his mouth some more.
“While I was in the Southern Territories, I came across a vacant town. It was not deserted, you see. It was newly built but never lived in. The neighboring towns said it was for the hybrids. I assumed they meant the hybrids already in the Southern Territories. They certainly couldn’t mean the hybrids anywhere else in OZ. Nobody gets past the wall or the Southern Marshal’s defenses.
“About a year after I was imprisoned down here I heard that every hybrid in the West just disappeared in the middle of the night. There were plenty rumors going around as to what happened to them, but not a single one mentioned the town in the south. Nobody else knew about that but me. I can only assume that is where they went.”
Caleb stared at him in silence for a full minute. “You’re lying.”
“What do I gain from lying to you?”
“I don’t know. Some sick satisfaction?”
The old man tilted his head to one side. “A most interesting reason. Now ask yourself this; what did Nero gain from lying to you?”
Caleb opened his mouth and then shut it again.
Dorothy thought of the question as well. Nero gained Caleb as his own personal bodyguard and servant ever since he was a baby. Nero had gained Caleb’s entire life in return for lying to him. If he really did lie.
She felt the cold steel of the bars of her cage in her hands and realized they were way off track from what they needed to do. It did not matter who lied to whom if they did not get out of here.
She spun around and marched to the other side of her cage.
“You said something earlier about there being a way out.”
The man’s face registered shock. “I did?”
“When I asked you why everyone said there was no way out, you replied ‘because it’s not true’.”
The old man smiled. “I thought you caught that.”
“Well!?”
“Well what?”
“Do you know a way out of here?”
“Yes I do.”
Caleb pressed himself up against the bars of his cage. “Then get us out of here.”
The old man studied the both of them for moment and then slipped out a carved chicken bone from between two stones in the wall.
He reached around the front of his cage and inserted the chicken bone into the lock. Within seconds, his door popped open.
He shuffled over and unlocked Dorothy’s cage. As the door swung open, her mouth dropped open in surprise. “Who are you?”
The frail old man smiled. “Isn’t it obvious? No prison can contain me. I’m the Wizard.”
She straightened up in surprise. “We already met the Wizard. Back in his castle.”
The old man shuffled toward Caleb’s cage. “The wizard you met is only a figurehead. A puppet, if you will, put in place by Nero after he drove me out. Nero is the one who pulls on that puppet’s strings.”
She stepped out of her cage. “Why are you helping us?”
“Because I’m not really the monster that the world was told this place was built to contain.”
Her eyebrows furrowed. “Then who are you?”
The old man turned to face her and bowed slightly. “The name’s Jetharo Malonzo, to be precise. I was a spy for Queen Victoria. The best, actually.”
He turned back and continued his slow trek to Caleb’s cage door. “However, I was betrayed by those closest to me and the enemies of Queen Victoria captured me and imprisoned me. They quickly learned that, given enough time, I could escape. And escape I did, but unfortunately not long enough to make my way back to England. I was recaptured and this time they moved me from prison to prison, not giving me enough time to formulate my escape from any one jail cell.”
He jiggled his sharpened chicken bone in the lock to Caleb’s cage until he heard a satisfying click.
“When my captors discovered that moving me around so much and keeping it a secret were at odds to each other, they came up with the idea to build a massive prison that could hold me. The part about me being the Wizard because I can escape from any prison is true. The part about me being some indiscriminate street thug is not.”
As soon as the cage door swung open, Caleb pounced. He knocked the old man to the ground and growled deep in his chest as he held him down on the floor.
“Why should we believe you?”
Jetharo remained remarkably calm even though he was pinned under a snarling beast. “Easy there, tiger.”
Caleb bared his teeth. “I’m a lion.”
“Of course you are. My mistake.”
Dorothy leaned over Jetharo. “If you really are the Wizard, and you’ve been able to escape all these years, why are you still here?”
He turned his head to look past Caleb and gave her a warm smile. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
Chapter 25
Dorothy looked around her at the dungeon and at the three open cages. She listened, but did not hear the sounds of guards rushing down the steps to capture them again.
If this was some kind of trick, she still did not know how she was being played.
She looked down at Jetharo who claimed to be the real wizard. Caleb still had him pinned to the ground and growled down at him with each exhale.
She had to know what he was talking about. “What do you mean you’ve been waiting for me?”
The old man shifted slightly under Caleb’s weight. “You are the daughter of Professor Gale, are you not?”
Dorothy’s eyes widened as she audibly gasped. This old man had known her father enough to recognize that she was his daughter.
She pushed on Caleb’s shoulder. “Let him up.”
He barely moved even though she pushed hard on him. He was an immovable object, but she was not an unstoppable force.
He looked up at her. “What do you mean let him up?”
“Let him go. He knows my father.”
Instead of letting Jetharo up, Caleb leaned in, pushing the weight of his knee into the old man’s chest. “Do you know her father?”
He winced from the increased pressure on his body. “Ben and I were about to escape from OZ when we were captured by the Southern Marshal.”
Caleb leaned in even closer, their noses almost touching. He stared silently into Jetharo’s eyes before leaning back and getting off him. “He’s telling the truth.”
Jetharo wheezed with the release of pressure off his chest. The wheezing became a series of violent coughing spasms before he regained his composure and sat up. “Usually big cats are just little cats with a lot of fur. But your friend here is a lot of cat.”
Dorothy held out her hand and helped him standup. “Where is my father?”
“Why are you asking me?” He pointed to her chest. “You’re the one with the crystal.”
Her hand instinctively reached to where her emerald heart necklace hung around her neck. “How do you know about that?”
“I spend a lot of time in the dark. My eyes have adjusted. I saw the faint glow of the necklace through your shirt when the guards brought you in. Your father showed me his crystal and explained they would glow when they got near each other.”
“Is my father here?”
“I haven’t seen him since the Southern Marshal traded me to the Western Marshal in exchange for medical supplies.”
She slipped the necklace out from under her shirt and saw the faint glow. “Then why is it glowing?”
He shrugged. “It’s possible that he was also traded to the West Marshal at some point and could be somewhere in the castle. Its faint glow would indicate that he is here.”
“I have to find him.”
“We will not be able to walk around the castle without being discovered. I can get us out of here, but if you plan to look for your father we cannot escape just yet.”
“What you mean?”
“The only on
e who knows if your father is here or not is the West Marshal. The only way to find out the answer to your question is to ask her.”
“And how do you propose I do that?”
Jetharo smiled. “I have a plan if you’re not averse to a little risk.”
Chapter 26
Caleb half-listened to Jetharo as he outlined a plan to find Dorothy’s father and escape from the castle. It did not matter what this old man said. Another plan was already in place.
So far, everything had taken place almost exactly as Nero told him it would. Even when they became separated upon entering the volunteer fields and he thought Nero’s plan was shot to hell, they still ended up right where Nero wanted them to be.
Caleb cut Jetharo off mid-sentence. “That’ll be enough of that from you.”
They both looked at him.
Dorothy had a confused expression on her face. “What’s the matter, Caleb?”
He ignored her and called out in a loud voice. “I am ready to see the Queen now.”
Three guards turned the corner quickly as if they had been waiting just out of sight. Behind them, Amanda descended the steps at a slower pace.
She smiled at Caleb. “Nero was not kidding when he said you could use Dorothy to get the Wizard to reveal his escape plan.”
Dorothy’s look of confusion shifted quickly to anger.
Amanda looked at Jetharo. “We will be closing up the weaknesses you discovered in our security. Looks like you’ll be staying with us a while longer.”
She turned to Caleb. “And you, lion boy …”
He bared his teeth in a sneer. “The name’s Caleb.”
She waved her hand dismissively. “Whatever. You’re to come with me while your girlfriend meets with my mother, the Queen of OZ.” She looked over at Dorothy with a smile. “You will do well to remember that while you are in her presence.”
Jetharo spoke up. “She is not the Queen of OZ.”
Amanda looked at him and bored deeply into his eyes with her own. “She will be by this time tomorrow.”
The hint of a smile played at the corners of her mouth. “And I know what her first act as Queen should be.” She slid her index finger across her neck in a slicing motion. The hint of a smile broke into a full grin before she spun around and addressed her guards.