Dorothy Must Die (14 page)

Since I got here, Glamora had been judging my every move based on some crazy standard of etiquette. So the kind words threw me.

“What’s underneath is everything, Amy. But that doesn’t mean you can’t enhance it. Beauty has its own kind of magic. And the appearance of something can have power, too.”

She tossed her own hair, and it changed from deep auburn to pale lavender. Then back again.

She touched my hair.

“What will it be?”

“You don’t like the pink?”

“When I first saw you, Amy Gumm, your hair was the thing that gave me hope for you. For all of us.”

“Seriously?”

Glamora scrunched up her perfect nose as if hair color were something too sacred to make light of.

“When Dorothy landed here in that precious gingham number I knew she was trouble.”

“You knew Dorothy when she first arrived?”

“Back then I was where my sister was. That is, until she found her place at Dorothy’s side. No one else sensed it, I don’t think—but I did. Something about that much sweetness didn’t feel right. But you, you didn’t have an ounce of sweetness and that hair was just the exclamation point.”

“Thank you?” I said. “I think.”

“It is a compliment. I’d take a million Mombis over one Dorothy. I don’t know about your tin farm, but here, sugar can be a poison.” She fluffed out my hair with her hands, as if shaking off the Dorothy cloud that passed over her face.

“I want to keep it. I like the pink,” I said, more brightly than I usually said anything.

Glamora’s fingers passed through my hair, adjusting the color—first blue, then green, then back to pink—a better pink—with depth of color and shine that my hair had never had even when it was its natural color, the dirtiest of blondes. Now it was just north of cotton-candy pink. I remembered rinsing out my hair in the sink of the trailer just a few days and a tornado ago. I had thought that changing my hair would change something about my gray little life. And now? Now I had the perfect shade of pink and more change than I knew what to do with.

She blinked and my cheeks were rosier. Again and my lips were a deep red gloss. And again and a delicate pattern of green and gray shadow made half-moons over my eyes. And again and my lashes seemed to grow a quarter of an inch. One more time and glitter showered from above me.

Glitter made me think of Madison. Sparkling like a damn disco ball in the hallway back at school—

But then I saw that Glamora’s glitter was nothing like Madison’s. It knew exactly where to go—highlighting just above my cheekbones, my eyelids. Dusting my clavicle and shoulder blades. Complementing what she did with the makeup. Not like blush but like something more natural. Or rather, supernatural.

In the mirror, I saw Nox appear in the mouth of the cave. I hadn’t seen him since yesterday, when he’d disappeared with the injured girl.

“Is she . . . ?” I asked, turning to face him.

Nox’s mouth opened but nothing came out as he stared at me.

Glamora giggled.

Nox found his voice.

“She’s doing fine,” he said with a cough. “The wounds were deep, but she’s strong.”

Glamora’s eyes lit up on Nox. “What wonderful timing you have. Doesn’t she look beautiful?” She winked, but I couldn’t tell if it was at Nox or at me.

Soon after Nox’s arrival Glamora had declared we were done for the day so Nox walked me back to my room—but that could have been because my room was on the way to his room.

I wondered what Nox’s room looked like. He probably slept on the floor or some austere stone slab like the one back in my cell in the Emerald City.

Nox didn’t comment on my makeover.

“What happened to them?” I asked Nox as we walked. “What was that scar in the middle of her forehead from? Why did the other one—why is she . . . did the Lion do that to her?” I thought of the girl’s bloody, half-tin face and shuddered.

Nox shook his head. “Melindra’s been half tin for a long time. She is one of the few people to escape from the Scarecrow’s labs.”

“The Scarecrow did that to her?” I’d seen him in the throne room. But he had looked pretty harmless compared to the Tin Woodman.

He nodded and continued. “Annabel’s a Horner.
Was
a Horner—from Quadling Country. Their horns contained powerful magic. Dorothy offered large rewards for them. There aren’t any Horners anymore.”

I tried to picture a unicorn horn in the center of Annabel’s pretty forehead. Magical or not, having something growing out of my forehead was not something that would have gone over well where I came from. But when I imagined someone trying to chop it off, I shuddered. Ollie’s wings, Melindra’s arm and face, Annabel’s horn—the body part count was rising every time I learned anything new about this place.

“They’re just kids,” I said slowly. “They should be going to school. They should be doing normal kid stuff like having fun and torturing girls like me.”

Nox shook his head like the idea of kids being kids had never even been a possibility for any of them. He sighed and looked at me like I didn’t understand anything. “When Dorothy rolls through a town, she takes the adults—the people who can work. Some of them go to work for Glinda in the magic mines, or for Dorothy in the palace. Some of them get brought to the Scarecrow to be his toys.”

“His toys?”

“He got it in his big brain to ‘help’ Dorothy. Finding ways to extract magic. Helping the Tin Woodman build a better army. But in his spare time he experiments.”

While I digested this he went back to Dorothy. “Sometimes she’ll take some of the kids, too, but most of them get left behind.”

“So you guys scoop them up and put them to work for you instead.”

It sounded like an accusation, like I was judging them. And maybe I was.

Nox nodded.

“Is that really any better?” I asked.

He just shrugged. “It was for me,” he said. “I was one of them. It was Mombi who found me. My parents were dead. I was almost dead myself. It was Mombi who taught me magic—taught me everything I know now. She taught me to be a person again. If it wasn’t for her . . . ,” he trailed off.

I tried to imagine Nox as a little boy, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t imagine him being carefree or vulnerable or innocent. I tried to imagine Mombi rescuing a little boy, taking him in, and being a mother to him. That was even harder to imagine.

“And as repayment she made you fight?”

“Dorothy took everything from me. Dorothy took everything from those kids back there. I
choose
to fight,” he said fiercely.

Sometimes it felt like we were in the middle of some argument that I had already lost. He was just so sure of everything. But what if he was sure about something that was more wrong than right? I didn’t know what to say to that so I didn’t say anything until we got to the opening of my cave. I dragged my fingers through my freshly colored hair and mumbled a good night.

“I liked it before.”

“What?” I asked, turning back to him.

“That face.”

“My face?” He liked my face before? Was this a setup for some kind of insult?

“Don’t get me wrong, Glamora’s magic is effective. But it’s almost a shame to see it change. I haven’t seen one with so much written there—every thought right there on the surface. It’s a rare thing in a place like this.” For the first time I didn’t think that he was trying to hurt me. Maybe he spoke only one language. The truth, and nothing but. It had stung like hell, but it made what he was saying now sound all the more real. In a place like this, that little bit of truth might be a compass in an upside-down world.

“But I suppose Glamora’s thinking ahead. If you’re going to fight Dorothy, you need to build a wall instead of a window.”

“Is that what you did?”

He shrugged noncommittally.

“I don’t think mine was ever a window.” His chin jutted up the tiniest bit further into the air, like he was rising above something.

I wanted to know what. But he was already walking away.

The next day I woke to see that Glamora’s makeoever had stuck. Pink cheeks, perfect hair. But the change in my appearance didn’t help me with my lessons.

In the morning I saw Nox for training, which resulted in more bruises for me to wash off in the spring. With Gert, I still wasn’t able to produce any magic. Finally, almost out of sympathy for me, she cast a listening spell with the snap of her fingers and we listened to Glamora singing in her room. Later, I found some small success with Glamora. I poured tea without spilling a drop.

After dinner I found a trunk in my room filled with dresses. A note in Glamora’s purple cursive said
Wear one.

Was it a reward? Was it possible that in all my classes, I was doing best at the etiquette? If Mom could see me now . . .

I sifted through the gowns and pulled out a pretty pale gray one that somehow complemented my hair. It was strapless silk and floor-length. Although I wasn’t much of a fan of dresses, this one seemed to know exactly where to hug and exactly where to fall. I didn’t know if magic could be woven into fabric or not, but it was perfect.

A few seconds later, a bat wearing a purple ribbon flew in, landing on my bed.

It wore a note around its neck, written in the same purple script:
Follow me
.

I followed the bat deeper into the labyrinth of the mountains into a cave I hadn’t been in before. It was totally Glamora, grand, like old movie Grand-with-a-capital-G. A real crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, and a bank of what I could only guess were windows along one wall overlooked a stunningly realistic panorama of the Emerald City. But the real spectacle was beneath my feet. The floor was made of glass, and underneath it was rushing water. It must be the water that fed the spring. The effect was like standing on top of a river. It made me dizzy—for a second I almost lost my balance.

“It’s not nearly the same as my ballroom back home, but it will have to do. . . .” I spun around at the sound of Glamora’s voice to find her in the corner, watching me.

Just then, Nox appeared in the doorway of the cave.

“You didn’t wear the suit?” Glamora accused sweetly.

Nox made a face and shook his head, as if whatever she’d left for him was too awful for him to even consider.

Glamora waved her arms and music filled the air. It was somewhere between jazz and pop with a soulful pretty voice that wrapped and unwrapped itself around the beat. It was a love song. If I didn’t know better I would think that Glamora was trying to play at matchmaking. . . .

“Very well, but a gentleman never keeps a lady waiting,” Glamora insisted.

I stifled a laugh, not sure which was funnier: the idea of me being a lady or him being a gentleman.

But the laugh didn’t escape because Nox was striding toward me, rearrranging his face and his swagger to make it seem like this was his idea entirely.

He gave a little bow. His pointy hair didn’t even move when he bent over. I curtsied, determined not to give in too easily to what must be another one of Glamora’s etiquette lessons.

Nox took my hand and pulled me closer, putting a sure hand on the small of my back, steadying me. We began to dance. I breathed him in against my will. He smelled like the healing spring back in the caves, fresh and alive and full of magic.

Glamora called orders at us after every rotation we made around the room.

“Posture!”

“I don’t know how they dance where you’re from, but here in Oz no one leads.”

“You are equal partners in the dance. In the circle. In life.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at that one.

“Are you ever serious?” Nox finally demanded, but even he was starting to break under Glamora’s ridiculous instruction.

“Are you ever
not
?”

The dance wasn’t quite a waltz—something that I’d never done but had seen in enough old movies on TV. It was more of an elaborate pentagram that crisscrossed the room over and over.

Another couple appeared beside us—a pretty woman with caramel skin and green hair, and a handsome man beside her in a top hat. I opened my mouth to ask who they were.

“Illusions,” whispered Nox as a Munchkin appeared behind him.

“Look at your partner!” Glamora barked.

In seconds the ballroom had filled with fake couples, swirling around us.

It made sense that Nox could do this. He was the most coordinated, most physical being I’d ever met. But still, with every step we took in unison, I grew more aware of him. Even if he was annoying, and arrogant, and too serious all the time, I had to admit it: he was hot.

I didn’t look up. I didn’t want him to see anything other than indifference in my eyes.

Prom was coming up in a couple of months back at school. There were already posters in the halls with a really cheesy silhouette of a couple lit from behind by the moon. The theme was “A Night to Remember.” I was never going to go to prom anyway. And it’s not like anyone would be dancing even remotely like we were now. But I suddenly realized that this might be as close as I would come to “A Night to Remember.” Dancing with a witch boy who didn’t want me here.

As we danced, I dared to steal glances at his face. In this moment, Nox didn’t look like he didn’t want me here. Maybe it was years of Glamora instruction, and he was simply good at being a gentleman. Maybe it was the tapping of her foot to the music against the floor that was almost hypnotic. But he didn’t look completely tortured.

“Remember,” Glamora said, her voice floating across the dance floor. “This isn’t a battle. Unless it is—in which case you should still keep your eyes on one another, to make sure that no one makes a move that isn’t wanted.” Glamora laughed, like it was an inside joke with herself.

Nox’s face shifted suddenly, like he was remembering something.

“You think that you’re too good for us,” Nox said, the brightness of his voice not matching up with his words.

“Excuse me?” No one ever thought I was too good for anything. I grew up in a freaking trailer.

“Gert says you’re holding back. You’re afraid to be like us.”

“That’s not true. I’m afraid to be like Dorothy. Not the rest of you.”

“You’re already like us, you know. You wished for this. You wished to be as far away from your mom as you could get and your wish came true.”

“How do you know that? And anyway, that doesn’t make me Wicked. Or formerly Wicked either,” I argued. I tried to drop his hand but he wouldn’t let me go.

“You’re afraid to do anything but wish for things to happen to you. You wish you could go show up on your dad’s doorstep, meet his new wife and new kid—you wish you could say all the things you want to say to him. You wish you could have left your mom on your own. You’ve wanted to run away for almost as long as you can remember. But it took a tornado to do it. You couldn’t even make that happen on your own.”

He gripped my hands even tighter and pushed me forward in the dance like I was a puppet.

Why was he saying all this? More importantly, how did he know?

Gert. Nox wasn’t in my head reading my thoughts. Gert was. She’d fed him my secrets, my entire life it seemed.

I had never done anything, he was right. I did go through my life just reacting to other people. When I was young I had escape plans—big, grand, dumb ones. I was going to start fresh somewhere where no one knew me and no one would call me Salvation Amy. But that part didn’t sting as much as the Dad thing did. I did think about going to visit him, all the time. I’d have some excuse like I was selling candy for school. And I would see the life he left us for. The pretty wife who was no prettier than Mom before she started with the pills. The little girl or boy, technically
my sister or brother
,
who she was pregnant with when they moved away to Jersey. I was going to show up and meet them and warn that little girl or boy that one day Dad would get tired of him or her, too.

Glamora tapped her foot on the glass floor to the beat of the music. “You’re losing the beat, Amy.”

Nox leaned in and dropped his voice to whisper words that I hadn’t heard since I stepped into Oz.

“Am I right, Salvation Amy?”

The room spun. I wasn’t sure if I was dizzy from him or from my anger. I dropped his hand.

He reached for me—but his hand missed me completely and grabbed the air next to me.

I was standing in a new spot. Across the room from where I started.

“What the hell? How did I . . . ?”

Had I—? Was it possible—? Had I moved myself across the room?

Don’t you see? You did it.
I heard Gert’s voice. She appeared in the center of the room. She’d been here all along. I felt hot. More specifically, my hands felt hot from casting the spell.

She had done this on purpose, made Glamora and Nox bring me to this room and beat at me until I couldn’t take it anymore. Like dipping me under the spring, she did what she thought she needed to do. But this time she’d gone too far.

The room spun again. My hands got hotter—light seemed to shoot from them. Not the gentle glow I’d seen from Gert. A searing red glow. Like darts of fire.

The fire darts seemed to be seeking Nox. But Nox lit up with a weird blue light of his own and the darts seemed to deflect off him. More darts came off my hands even though I wasn’t actually directing them. They shot straight up into the air and showered down like firecrackers.

I was angry. Too angry. No-turning-back angry.

I wanted to run away from him, from Gert, from all of them, but I couldn’t move. Nox made a beeline toward me and grabbed my glowing hands with his own. In a blink we were standing outside the caves on the same spot he’d taken me the first day of training—the peak of the mountain, this time looking out into a deep black sky dotted with strange constellations where the familiar ones should have been.

These stars were different from any stars back home. For one thing, they were brighter. For another thing, where the constellations I was used to never seemed to match the images they were supposed to resemble, these formed themselves into clear pictures the longer you gazed at them. There was a horseshoe and a bear and a tiger and a dragon, all as clear as pictures in a book.

“Gert thought
home
was stopping you from doing magic. We had to push. We had to know.” He pointed into the distance. “Look. That one’s always been my favorite.” As he pointed, a group of bright-white pinpricks rearranged themselves into the image of a bicycle. As I looked at it, a memory came back to me: my mother teaching me to ride a bike when I was five, before we’d moved to Dusty Acres.

It was the first time I’d ever tried it without the training wheels, and Mom had promised to hold on so I didn’t fall. But at some point, as I’d raced down the hill, the wind in my hair, I’d let out a whoop of triumph. I was doing it. It was only at that moment that I’d realized Mom had let go. I was on my own.

That was when I went crashing to the curb. When I crawled back to my feet, my knee scraped and bloody, my bike in a tangled heap on the ground, I’d looked up the hill to see my mom standing at the top, clapping for me.

I had been pushing back thoughts of Mom on a regular basis now. All Gert’s talk of forgiveness had planted a seed that I did not want to let grow. I’d told myself that all I’d been thinking about was where my fist was going next. About trying to light a candle just by thinking about it and remembering all the stuff in all the books Glamora had given me.

But it wasn’t true. She was still there no matter how much I didn’t want her to be. And now, standing on the top of the mountain with Nox, all I could think about was my mother.

I was an idiot. For a few minutes I had been thinking about prom and dancing with Nox and how he maybe didn’t hate it—and he was just following witchy orders.

And somehow that almost made me more angry.

“It matters how you do this,” I said through clenched teeth, staring him down. “What you do to get there. You can’t just
kill
someone. The ends do not make it okay.”

His eyes shifted away from mine and then back again. I saw something pass over his face. Guilt. Regret. No, it was maybe something else—like curiosity or realization—like he was happening upon completely new information.

Like it had never occurred to him that I would be hurt or mad or anything like that. Like being able to do magic trumped everything.

“We’re the only ones
willing
to take her down. The only ones capable. It’s us or nothing. We’re doing one bad thing for the good of Oz.”

“Do you ever not speak the witch party line—do you ever make a decision that is all your own?”

His eyes flicked away from mine.

“Do you always ask so many questions?”

“Do you ever ask
any
? You know absolutely everything there is to know about me and I don’t know anything about any of you. Not really.”

The cockiness from the dance floor was gone. He slipped out of it so easily it was a surprise.

“Do you really want to know who I am?” he asked.

I should have said no and backed away from him. But even though I was mad at him, I still wanted to crack him open and see what was inside. I nodded.