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 (5 page)

I had to hunch a little to peer inside the nearest window, which barely reached my chin. Inside, there was a table set for five with moldy food on each plate, like whoever had once lived there had left in the middle of dinner.

“They could really use some Munchkins around here, huh?” I said to Star, who hadn’t moved from her perch on my shoulder. She just stared back at me balefully and didn’t bother squeaking a response.

I jumped back in surprise when I stepped into the square. Someone was smiling down at me triumphantly. Then I realized it wasn’t a
person
at all. It was a statue cast in marble, and it was the first thing I’d seen in the whole town that wasn’t dirty and crumbling. In fact, it was so white that it was glowing—all except for the pair of glittering silver shoes on its feet.

Of course, I recognized it immediately. With her kind, smiling face, her jaunty gingham dress, and her neatly curled pigtails, there was no mistaking her: it was Dorothy. The silver plaque on the pedestal confirmed it:

Here Stands Dorothy Gale
,
it read. She Who Arrived on the Wind, Slayed the Wicked, and Freed the Munchkins.

By now, I’d given up on the idea that I was dreaming—my body felt too heavy and solid, and as bizarre as everything was, none of it had the sticky, underwater quality of a dream. Even so, it was kind of unreal to confirm the alternative with my own two eyes: that I had been thrown into a fairy tale.

“Dorothy likes her statues,” a voice said, from out of nowhere. Startled, I looked around to see where it was coming from, and saw a face peering down at me from the second-story window of a house a few paces off. “Me, I have to say, I’m pretty sick of them.”

There was a thud as a small black knapsack landed next to me. Unthinkingly, I reached down for it.

“Don’t touch that!” the voice growled. I jumped back and saw her scrambling out the window. She dangled by her fingers before dropping to the ground, landing softly as if the height were no big thing. It was a girl. She looked up at me with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity, and when she sprung to her feet, I saw that there was no way she was more than four feet tall, even in her platform boots.

Now
this
was more like it. I was face-to-face with a real, live Munchkin.

At least, I was pretty sure that’s what she was. Her hair was inky blue-black and her eyes were caked in thick eyeliner with triple fake lashes. She was wearing a vampy eggplant-hued lipstick and a leather skirt. Her T-shirt revealed arms covered in complicated tattoo sleeves.

But she was short, and she moved with a springiness and agility that was something more than just plain old human. Anyway, I’d already been here long enough that I wasn’t shocked to find out that there was such a thing as a goth Munchkin.

“Excuse me?” the girl barked as I looked her up and down curiously. “Do you have a problem?”

Heat rose to my face as my mind flashed to Madison Pendleton.

“Nope. Do you?” I snapped right back at her. I couldn’t even look at a
Munchkin
without starting trouble. Was she going to punch me now, too?

She didn’t. Instead, she let out a wry cackle and rolled her eyes. “Let’s see,” she said. “Do I have a problem? How about, do I have
five thousand
?” She marched right over to where I stood and grabbed her bag from where it lay at my feet. It was stuffed to the seams with what I figured must be an entire leather wardrobe. “The answer’s yes, by the way.”

“I’m Amy,” I said, hoping this was what passed for friendly in Munchkin Country. I reached out a hand, which she ignored.

“Indigo,” she replied. She eyed my shoulder. “Cool rat, by the way. I love rats. Does it talk?”

I glanced at Star, still hoping she would decide that the answer was yes. She didn’t respond.

“Nope.” I shrugged.

“Too bad.” Her eyes traced up to my head. “But I don’t know about the hair.
She’s
not going to like it.”

I put a hand to my scalp and brushed a pink lock from my eyes.

“Why would my pet rat care what my hair looks like?”

Again, Indigo hooted. “Not your rat, dumbass.
Her.
”

“Who’s
she
?”

Indigo scrunched her face up and swiveled her neck like I was a complete moron. “Oh yeah,
who’s she
? she asks. Please.”

“No, seriously,” I said. “I’m new around here. Tell me who you’re talking about.”

“
I’m new around here,”
Indigo mocked me in a squeaky falsetto, slipping her backpack on. But as she did it, she looked at me. Really looked at me.

“Wait, you’re not kidding, are you? You really
aren’t
from around here.” She was staring at my clothes. I guessed that jeans and a hoodie were not what the kids were wearing in Oz.

“No,” I said simply. “I’m not.”

Her jaw dropped open in slow motion as it dawned on her. “Holy
shit
,” she said. “You’re from the Other Place, aren’t you?” She looked over one shoulder and then the other, then asked quietly: “How did you get here?” I couldn’t tell if her tone was one of excitement or fear.

“It was a tor—” I began, but before I could finish, I was cut off by a loud, metallic clanking sound from somewhere off in the distance.

Indigo took a step backward. “You know what?” she said, her eyes darting nervously from building to building. “Never mind. It’s better if I don’t know. In fact, it’s better if I don’t talk to you at all.”

“What? Why?”

She busied herself with her backpack, her tiny face scrunched up with worry.

“Like I said, I’ve already got about five thousand problems, give or take a thousand. Getting caught conspiring with an outlander would be five thousand and one. I’d love to hear your story, but it’s not worth it. Good luck. You’ll need it.” With that, she hoisted her pack on her shoulders and began to walk away.

“No way!” I yelled. “Just let me ask you some questions. I have
no
idea what’s going on.”

“If you’re lucky, you’ll never find out,” she said, not slowing her pace or bothering to look back.

I wasn’t going to let this happen again. She was speeding along, heading off the road, but my legs were longer. I raced after her and grabbed her by the elbow.

“Hey!” she said, whirling around to face me. “Don’t touch me!” She yanked her arm away, but I yanked right back. And I was stronger.

“Let me come with you,” I whispered urgently. I didn’t know where she was going, but she was the best hope I had. Hope of what, I wasn’t sure, but I would figure that out later. “I promise—I’ll do whatever you want. I swear I won’t get you in trouble. But I’m alone here, and I have no idea what I’m doing.”

She bit her lip. The thing is, I could tell she was as curious about me as I was about her. I could tell part of her wanted to relent.

But then we heard that clanging noise again. This time it was louder.

“You seem like a nice person,” Indigo hissed. “And I love rats. But get your fucking hands off me and get the hell away from me. The best thing you can do right now is get your ass back to wherever it is you came from and hope you never wind up in this sorry place again.”

“I don’t know
how
to go home,” I said. But I let her elbow go. This wasn’t getting me anywhere.

“It looks like you’ve got problems, too, then.” Indigo folded her arms across her chest, planting her stocky body firmly in place. “See ya,” she said.

Honestly, I was starting to think this girl was kind of an asshole. But if she wasn’t going to help me, I couldn’t think of any good way to force her. All I could do was keep following the road and hope it led me somewhere better than this.

So I walked away, back to the famous road paved with yellow bricks. At least I had a general sense of where that would take me. When I looked back over my shoulder, the angry little Munchkin was watching me go.

As I passed the statue of Dorothy, I changed my mind one more time. “Just tell me one thing,” I asked her, spinning around. She shrugged, noncommittal. She hadn’t budged from the spot where I’d left her. “They talk about Oz where I’m from. I’ve heard about it my whole life. But this is messed up. What happened here?”

Indigo’s impassive face twisted into a snarl. “
Dorothy
happened,” she said.

Dorothy happened. I’d tried to ask Indigo what she’d meant, but her eyes had gone from blue to black and she’d threatened to punch me in the face if I came one step closer or asked her another goddamn question. I had already been punched in the face once today—that had been today, hadn’t it?—so I did what she wanted and kept on moving.

It was only a few minutes before I put the tiny little town behind me. Now I was back on the road. Ahead, it led up a steep hill that was completely devoid of any grass at all, the raw dirt interrupted only by a few stunted, sickly shrubs here and there.

Dorothy had been here, I reminded myself. She had walked this very same path.
You’re like her in so many ways
, the boy had said.

Kansas, tornado, blah, blah, blah. I mean, the similarities were pretty obvious, right? But there were plenty of differences between us, too. First off, from what I remembered it hadn’t taken her long at all to make friends. It was like everyone she’d run into—witches not included—had wanted to jump on the Dorothy Express.

As for me, I’d come across two people so far, and exactly both of them had wanted nothing to do with me. It was kind of depressing to think that I could travel all the way to Oz and still be just as unpopular as I was back in Flat Hill, Kansas.

I didn’t know where to go next, but the Emerald City seemed as good a place to start as any. That’s where Dorothy had gone for help. The road would take me there. It
wanted
to take me there.

So I trudged up the hill, and as I did, the banging sound I’d heard back in the village continued. It was still intermittent—there were a few minutes of welcome silence for every thirty seconds of racket. It was getting louder with every step I took, though, and soon it was so loud that I had to cover my ears every time it started.

When I finally reached the top of the incline I saw where it was coming from.

In the distance, across a periwinkle field of dust and dirt and beyond a tangled maze of gnarled, thorny trees, stood a towering seesaw contraption that was attached by a mess of pipes and wires to something that looked like a cross between an oil rig and a windmill.

When I squinted, I saw at least twenty people of less-than-average height piled on either end of the seesaw thing. Every few minutes, the Munchkins would start bouncing up and down in place, and as they did, the taller machine would begin spinning and clanging, jackhammering into the earth.

Above all of the action a statuesque figure in a glittering ball gown floated serenely in midair, just watching them at work. I tried to see what was holding her up but as far as I could tell she was just . . . floating.

Wait, a
ball gown
?

I couldn’t make up my mind which part I was more curious about: the fact that she was levitating or the fact that she was doing it above a field of dirt, dressed like she was on her way to the prom.

I stared at her with rapt curiosity. Even from here, I could tell that she was no Munchkin. Not just because she was too tall to be one either. There was just something
different
about her. Something familiar that I couldn’t place. She had to be at least a couple of hundred feet away, but it was like her image was burning right through all that distance and imprinting itself right onto my retinas.

She was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen. Her hair was red, and her skin was glowing, and her body was radiating a shower of glittering pink sparks.

I smacked my head as it came to me.

Duh. It must be Glinda. She was supposed to be the Good Witch of the South, right?

I felt my face light up at the sheer insanity of it all. When I’d watched
The Wizard of Oz
with my mother, Glinda had always been my favorite character—because who wouldn’t want to travel around in a flying soap bubble wearing an awesome dress? She’d been my mom’s favorite character, too, but for a different reason.

“She’s a witch, but she’s
Good
,” Mom always said. “Now that’s what I call the best of both worlds.”

Finally, Oz was living up to its name. I had to see her up close.

As I stepped off the road and began to push my way through the thick mass of gnarled and twisted trees, I saw that they had sickly pale blue bark. They were thorny, too, and I had to gingerly push the branches aside, being careful not to cut myself. The whole time, I stared into the sky, mesmerized by the sight of Glinda. I couldn’t wait to meet her. I didn’t even care about the fact that my skull was vibrating from the noise the machine was making.

As I wound my way toward her, Star began to get uneasy. She clawed and fidgeted at my shoulder. There was something about all this that she didn’t like.

“Will you stop it?” I whispered to her. “It’s
Glinda
. Jeez.”