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 (111 page)
Authors: Danielle Paige
“Make no mistake, Wizard, the magic of Oz is our magic, the magic of the fairies—and we want those gifts
back.
The corruption of the Lion, the Scarecrow, and the Tin Woodman is on your shoulders. You must bring back to us what was not yours to give.”
“You want the gifts back?” the Wizard asked, his mind whirling. “But why?”
The king rose from his throne, fierce and imperious. “The doings of my people are no business of yours, Wizard. The magic of Oz is ours to keep safe, ours to protect. You have let loose something that must be stopped, and it is up to you to make amends. The pool offered you a choice, and you chose Oz. Do not challenge Oz’s rightful rulers.”
“Look,” the Wizard said crossly, “I went through kind of a lot to get here. Pete said you could help me, and now you’re asking me to go off on some crazy quest. Is he one of you?”
The fairies stirred restlessly, and the fairy king looked almost shifty. “Is that what he told you?”
“He didn’t tell me anything,” the Wizard said. “Except that you had the key to my memories, and that I’d be tested—a test I just passed. I’m not helping you until you tell me who Pete is and why you sent him to me in the first place.”
The fairy king considered the question, his eyes half-lidded, before he answered. “Pete is one of us, in a way,” he said finally. “We have been waiting a long time, Wizard, to see if you might be able to help Oz with your . . .” The king paused delicately, and someone behind him snickered—“
powers
.”
“What do you mean, you
waited
? You knew I was in that field? For twenty-five years?” The king didn’t answer. And then the worst thought of all occurred to him. “Someone sent that storm to keep me in Oz—someone with real magic. That was
you
, wasn’t it?” The fairy was silent, but his expression gave him away. The Wizard felt fury rise in his chest. The fairies had been using him all along, and for longer than he’d even imagined. They’d left him in that field until they thought he might be useful—and they would have continued to leave him there forever if he wasn’t. And if the king lied about that, no doubt he was lying about the gifts—lying about protecting Oz. He wanted the gifts for himself—but to what end? Did the fairies want to restore Ozma to the throne, when the pool itself had told
him they were corrupt? Was the fairy king imagining
himself
on the throne in the Emerald Palace? The Wizard schooled his features, keeping his expression neutral. He couldn’t let the fairy king guess that he knew there was more to the fairies’ demand than simply the well-being of Oz. And suddenly he was angry again, angry like he hadn’t been since he’d faced the Lion. The voice in the pool had made him believe he could be good again—but this lying pack of fairies was only out for themselves. Why should he be selfless, when no one else in Oz was? What did he care about their petty power plays? Who was to say that Ozma was any better?
Maybe everyone who rules Oz is destined to put themselves first
, he thought bitterly.
Maybe it’s not me. Maybe it’s this place—and now I’m stuck here.
Ozma had tricked him in the pool—tricked him into believing in the possibility of his own goodness. But what felt good about being good? He squashed down the thought of Iris—after all, even she had been trying in her own way to stab him in the back. No, the only thing that felt good was power. He’d had power once. And now he wanted it back.
“We felt you had more to do in Oz,” the fairy king said smoothly, interrupting his thoughts. “Bringing your balloon down was not the most graceful way to keep you here, and for that I apologize.” The king coughed, and the Wizard noted how difficult it was for him to so much as admit to the slightest wrongdoing—even if he was only doing it to sweet-talk the Wizard into doing his bidding. “I hope you can forgive us. Sometimes when the good of Oz is concerned we—ah”—the fairy king
looked as though he was about to bring up a hair ball—“we can, er, make mistakes. Not that that happens
often
, of course,” he added hastily.
The Wizard drew himself up to his full height—which was, admittedly, not very tall. “I accept your apology,” he lied, “and I accept your task. I will not fail. Do not forget that I
did
rule Oz, and well.”
“‘Well’ is not precisely the word I would have used,” the fairy king said, laughing, “but I have no doubt you will do your earnest best on our behalf. I offer you a token—and a reminder—of our . . . esteem.” The fairy king bent forward and scooped up a palmful of water from the black pool. He took his palm away, and the globe of water floated there; with both hands, he pinched and shaped it, drawing it out into an ebony cane. When it was finished, he presented it to the Wizard with a flourish. “Do not forget us,” he said lightly. “We will be watching you, Wizard. Of that, you can be certain.”
“I have no doubt,” the Wizard said coolly. “But I have no need of your gifts.”
“I insist,” the king said coldly, holding it out. The Wizard hesitated, and then accepted the cane. He tapped it experimentally against the ground; it was as solid as an ordinary cane, though the wood was shot through with an obsidian slickness that echoed the water of the pool. As he looked at it, an eye opened in the dark wood and winked at him before disappearing again. So this was how they would watch him. He would have to be very careful, indeed. He had no doubt that if he found a
way to get rid of the cane they would punish him for it somehow. Now was not the time to defy them. No, he’d wait until the moment was right.
“Then we are agreed,” the fairy king said, and the Wizard smiled, matching the king’s oily grin with one of his own.
“But of course.” A flicker of uncertainty crossed the fairy’s face before vanishing again, and the Wizard smiled to himself in triumph.
Not so sure of yourself now, are you?
he thought.
“Then let us celebrate,” the fairy king said, “and afterward, we shall return you to the world above to begin your most noble quest.” He clapped his hands, and a parade of extraordinary creatures—lithe, beautiful girls with the bodies of human women and the heads of deer, a fat little troll in an ermine coat far too big for him, a frog the size of a man dressed in a tuxedo with tails—capered into the throne room, bearing platters of steaming dishes and a host of folding tables. Wine poured itself from floating bottles into heavy goblets of silver and gold that settled themselves onto trays, to be whisked about by mournful-looking specters as insubstantial as mist—as the Wizard saw when a fairy walked right through one of them, snatching up a wineglass as the ghostly waiter dissolved and then re-formed. The king himself served the Wizard a heaping portion of roast venison on a white china plate and drew up a folding table and a comfortable little chair before returning to his throne with a plate of his own. And though the room was full of merriment—fairies chatting, gossiping, exclaiming over this delicacy and that—they all ignored the Wizard as completely as if he were
invisible, so that a miserable sense of loneliness punctuated the feast and turned the taste of the meat to ashes in his mouth.
“I had better be going,” he said aloud. No one paid him any attention as he pushed away the table and got up. Without his even reaching for it, the cane found its way to his hand. A dull, shabby corridor that bore a resemblance to the one that had led him to this awful room opened up in the wall before him. And as he stumbled down it, the Sunfruit Schnapps churned in his belly, and he wondered if he was going to be sick. As he left, the fairies’ laughter echoed behind him, high-pitched and cruel, and it rang down the hallway after him for a long time.
The climb up the stairs from the fairies’ kingdom was not as long as he remembered it, and he soon emerged, blinking, into the sunlit meadow where Pete and Iris had left him. Pete was sitting with his back against a tree, eating an apple.
“So you made your choice,” Pete said. “And you remember now what you are.”
“So I did. And yes, I do.”
They were both quiet, looking at each other.
“The fairies can be—”
“Awful?”
“I was going to say complicated,” Pete said, smiling a little, “but yes, that, too. But you have to understand, the good of Oz is what they care about most. No matter how they seem to the . . . unprepared visitor.”
“Is it,” the Wizard said. Pete looked at him, surprised, and for the first time since the Wizard had met him he looked uncertain.
“Of course,” Pete said. “That’s all any of us want. What’s best for Oz.”
“Of course,” the Wizard echoed.
“That’s why you chose this,” Pete said. “That’s why you chose to stay. To fight for what Oz once was—and will be again. We won’t fail. We’ll defeat Dorothy, and restore the balance.”
“That’s all I want,” the Wizard said smoothly, and Pete’s face collapsed into relief.
“Good,” he said. “I’m sorry I—underestimated you.” Pete took a deep breath. “Listen—I owe you an apology. All along, I expected the worst from you.”
“I can’t really blame you,” the Wizard said gently. “I did things that were unforgivable. I can hardly expect you to simply forget the past.”
“I can’t forget the past,” Pete said nobly. “But I did forget something just as important. I forgot that people can change. Even people who have done terrible things.”
“I’ve learned so much from you,” the Wizard said easily. Pete smiled, and the Wizard almost laughed. So easy to fool them; so easy to play the part of penitent revolutionary, vowing to do right by his adopted home. What would they say, Pete and the fairies, if they could see what he really wanted?
Oz had been his once, and it could be again. Not just his in name, as it had been before, but his wholly—now that he knew he had real power, now that he could access the Old Magic of Oz. He had liked the throne, liked it very much. He didn’t know why the fairies wanted the three gifts so badly, but the answer
had to be their power. If he had the Old Magic, the gifts, the throne—nothing would be able to stop him. Not Dorothy, not Glinda, not a bunch of goths in black bathrobes, chain-smoking cloves underground and longing for the good old days. And Dorothy—oh yes, he remembered her. Dorothy owed him. And he was going to make her pay.
Pete took a step forward, and the long grass parted to reveal the most familiar highway in Oz: the Road of Yellow Brick. Waiting, as it always was, to take travelers to the Emerald City, no matter where their journey began. The Wizard smiled to himself. Like Dorothy had once said, there was no place like home. He found he was very much looking forward to his return.
“Are you ready?” Pete asked, taking the first step onto the golden road.
“Oh yes,” the Wizard said, tapping his cane lightly against the yellow bricks. “I am very ready indeed.”
THE WIZARD RETURNS
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