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 (6 page)

I could somehow hear Glinda’s voice echoing over the deafening noise, like she was speaking through a megaphone.

“There is no crying, little ones,” I heard Glinda call out, her lilting voice full of kind, gentle encouragement.

The Munchkin boy she was talking to couldn’t have been older than seven or eight. He was sitting in a little chair near the top of the seesaw, and from his red cheeks and puffy eyes, it was clear he’d just finished one major sob session and was working himself up for another. Glinda was talking him down from it. “What we do, we do for the good of Oz,” she cooed. “You do love Oz, don’t you?”

The kid nodded, sniffing up his tears and wiping the snot from his nose, and then he threw himself back into the motion of the seesaw.

The clanging began again. My skull was vibrating so hard that I thought it might explode. My hands flew to cover my ears, but that did virtually nothing.

I was close enough to really see her now. Her dress was even more extraordinary from this vantage than it had appeared in the distance. Instead of the beautiful, flowing dress that the character had worn in the book, this gown was more like armor: thin metallic petals made up the voluminous skirt while magenta jewels dipped and curved across her chest in a tight, plunging bodice. It wasn’t my style, okay, but it was still pretty amazing.

She seemed perfect. And yet, as I approached, an uneasy feeling prevented me from calling out her name.

Something wasn’t right. From far off, she looked beautiful, ethereal, otherworldly. But up close, there was something ugly about her. Something was wrong with her
face
.

Yes, she was delicate-featured with exquisite bone structure, her perfect strawberry-blonde curls escaping from underneath a blinged-out golden crown as she smiled benevolently down at her loyal subjects. But that smile. It was—I don’t know how else to put it—kind of super-gross.

It stretched unnaturally wide, spreading out maniacally all the way across her jaw from one cheekbone to the other, and it was twitching at the corners like her lips had been pinned into place.

Other than the twitching, it didn’t move. At all. Even when she talked.

“What’s with her mouth?” I asked Star under my breath, after the machine had halted its banging once again.

I jumped when an actual voice answered in a hoarse whisper from behind me.

“(A) it’s PermaSmile, and (B) are you out of your dumbass
mind
?”

I whirled around to see Indigo’s bright, aquamarine eyes staring out at me from somewhere within the shadowy web of the tree branches.

“Have
you
been following
me
?” I whispered back at my stalker, and then—my curiosity winning out over my annoyance—added, “And what’s PermaSmile?”

“I wasn’t
following
you,” Indigo replied with a petulant scowl. “I was just going in the same direction you were going in.” She paused. “Besides, I couldn’t let you just wander up to Glinda like she’s going to give you a kiss and a cookie. I’m a softer touch than you think. And
this
is PermaSmile.”

She pulled out a small tube and held it up. “I never wear it, but it comes in handy to have around,” she said, uncapping the top and smearing it across her mouth like lipstick. As she did, her scowling lips stretched like putty into a wide, maniacal grin and stayed that way.

“Ew,” I said, unable to help myself.

“I know,” she said. “I hate it.” Her huge grin barely moved as she spoke. It was like Botox in a tube. Then she drew it across her face again, in the opposite direction this time, and, just like that, her mouth returned to its customary half scowl. “Everyone wears it in the city, and since that’s where I’m going, I’ll need it.”

“The Emerald City?”

“Yes, the Emerald City,” she mimicked. “Where else? Now come
on
. We can’t just hang around down here. She could smell us at any second.”

“
Smell
us?” I asked, genuinely confused. “What is she, a hunting dog? Besides, isn’t she supposed to be a
good
witch?”

“Sure,” Indigo snorted. “
Good.
Like that means anything around here. I hate to break it to you, but just because someone has pretty hair and good skin tone and a crown instead of a pointy hat doesn’t mean she’s not the baddest bitch this side of the Emerald City. Seriously. I can’t believe I’m risking my own neck to help you out.”

“But—” I said.

“No buts,” Indigo said. “Look, I’m giving you a chance. If you want to stay here and hope she takes a liking to you, be my guest. If you’d rather not get killed, follow me.”

Then she was scampering back toward the road, effortlessly weaving through the thorns and branches like they weren’t even there.

I paused for a moment. Glinda and Dorothy the bad guys? It was all so upside down—and yet, something about what Indigo was saying seemed right. I didn’t want to believe her, but I knew all too well that you can’t always get what you want. So I followed.

By the time I made it back to the road I was a scratched-up mess, my shirt torn and my arms crisscrossed with tiny cuts. Indigo was waiting for me, looking typically sour.

“Don’t get too excited,” she grumbled, but I could tell that somewhere underneath all that, she was happy I was joining her. “You can come with me as far as the city and then you’re on your own. And you do what I say, got it? You’ve already proven you have no survival instincts.”

“Deal,” I said.

I craned my neck back up at the so-called good witch, who was still floating eerily in the sky. How could I come all the way to Oz and pass up a chance to meet the one and only sorceress herself? It was like going to Disney World and not getting your picture taken with Cinderella.

I don’t think I have to tell you that my mom never took me to Disney World.

I was still wavering when Star hissed at me angrily. I knew what she was trying to tell me. With a twinge of regret, I chased after Indigo.

Sometimes you just have to trust your pet rat’s instincts.

“Now, can you tell me what was going on back there?” I asked when we were back on our way.

“She’s magic mining,” Indigo explained, with the tone of someone explaining why the sky is blue to a toddler for the five hundredth time.

I half understood. Maybe. “Magic mining? But she’s a witch. Doesn’t she already
have
magic?”

Indigo gave a loud, angry snort. “It’s never enough. Never enough for her, and sure as hell never enough for Dorothy. They’re digging holes from here to the capital and sucking it right up out of the land. Why do you think all of Munchkin Country’s such a dump? Oz needs magic to survive. Without it, it just dries up.”

“So magic is like—in the ground?”

I thought of the dark, gaping pit that had swallowed my trailer. Was that one of Glinda’s excavation sites? If so, Greenpeace would have a few bones to pick with the Witch of the South if they ever made it to Oz.

“Yup.” Indigo nodded. “Well, it’s everywhere, but it starts in the ground and seeps out from there. Dig it all up and take it for your royal self, though? No more magic. The end; unhappily ever after.”

I’d never thought of myself as someone who was slow on the uptake, but this was all very confusing.

“Okay,” I said eventually. “Back up. You keep talking about Dorothy like she’s still here. But she went back to Kansas. That’s, like, the whole point of the story.
There’s no place like home
and all that.”

Really, it was the one part of
The Wizard of Oz
that I’d never liked. Girl gets whisked away to fairyland and all she can think about is
going home
? Sure, she missed her auntie Em. But you’d think her aunt would be happy for her to have gotten out of Kansas. Personally, I’d always thought Dorothy should have knocked her heels together and wished for something better than a trip back to Nowheresville.

“You only heard half the story. She
did
go home,” Indigo said. “Turns out home wasn’t so great after all. So Glinda brought her back here. Or, at least, most people think it was Glinda who brought her back. That’s like, how the legend goes. One way or another, when Dorothy got here, that’s when the problems all started.”

“What do you mean?”

Indigo shrugged and waved her hand over the landscape. “See for yourself. She was okay at first—I guess—but then they gave her a crown and made her a princess. And somewhere along the way she got a taste for magic. Pretty soon nothing was enough for her. The more she got, the more she wanted.”

“So the magic made her go off the deep end and start digging pits? Why is Glinda even helping her?”

“Think of it this way,” Indigo said. “You’ve got your Witch of the East. Dorothy crushes her with a house. The Witch of the West—Dorothy melts
her
with a bucket of water. Glinda’s the Witch of the South. Notice that she’s the one who’s still standing? Glinda knows what’s good for her. She knows that the worst thing you can do around here is get in Dorothy’s way.”

“What about North?” I asked.

Indigo gave me a puzzled look.

“East, West, South,” I said. “What about the Witch of the North?” I asked.

Indigo just looked away. “You ask too many questions,” she said.

The world had been changing color while we’d talked. The closer we got to the Emerald City and away from Glinda and her machine, the more the chilly blue glow of the sky melted into something sunnier and pleasant. The grass grew greener and thicker on the ground, too, and every now and then I noticed a few crocuses poking their heads out of the earth.

I wasn’t positive, but as I listened carefully I was pretty sure I even heard some birds singing a tentative song. On the other hand, maybe it was just the residual sound of the drill ringing in my ears.

“Why do the Munchkins cooperate?” I asked. “If it’s ruining their home, it seems like they wouldn’t go along with it.”

Indigo leveled me with a cool stare.

“How about you stop asking about things you’ll never understand,” she said. “We’re going to get you to the Emerald City and you’re going to find some nice witch who will know how to send you right back to Kansas where you and your pink hair belong.”

After that, we walked in silence. Every time I tried to find another avenue for conversation, she shot me right down.

I thought about what she’d said about Dorothy. The explanation that she’d given me was barely any explanation at all: it was one thing to believe that Oz had been corrupted by someone truly evil, but Dorothy had been good once. She had fought the Wicked Witch of the West and freed Oz. How had things gone so wrong for her?

Suddenly my mother’s face flashed into my head, and I remembered what it had been like for her.

It hadn’t happened overnight. She’d been in a lot of pain after the car accident, and at first the pills just made her happy again. In some ways, it was happier than I’d seen her since my dad had left and we’d sold the house. Which made
me
happy, too.

It always wore off, though, and then it started wearing off faster and faster. She always wanted more. When she got more, she wanted more than that. And that was the end of life as we knew it. Every time I came home to find her sprawled out on the couch, or on the floor, the orange bottle still in her hands, I found myself amazed that something so tiny could hold so much power over her.

If what Indigo said was true, Dorothy had gotten a taste of magic, and when it was gone, it had left her hollow. How much magic did she have now?

It wasn’t a question worth asking. To someone like her, or someone like my mom, it wasn’t a matter of how much she had. It was how much she
didn’t
have.

All of this was making me wonder where my mom was. I hoped she was okay.

It felt like we’d been walking for hours. My feet were shooting with pain but the sun showed no signs of waning. Although our surroundings had brightened up considerably, it was monotonous and unchanging. The novelty was wearing off. I was too bored to even be creeped out anymore.

I kept waiting to come across a unicorn or a talking scarecrow or a river of lemonade, or some other magical Oz thing. I would have settled for a regular tree or a river made out of water. Or even, maybe, a monster.

So far, there was nothing.

“I have to sit,” I said finally. Indigo twisted her lips and then nodded.

“Fine,” she said, plopping herself down onto a rock by the side of the road. I sat down next to her. I took Star off my shoulder and placed her on the ground, and she took the opportunity to scamper away into a patch of weeds. I knew she’d be back.

“How far is the city?” I asked. “We’ve been walking forever.”

“Dunno,” Indigo said. “I’ve never been.”

So we sat in silence. I wished I could pull my phone out just to have something to do, but my phone, along with everything else I’d ever owned, was at the bottom of the pit. If the pit even had a bottom. Instead, I found myself studying the Munchkin’s tattooed arms, trying to untangle the elaborate, inky swirls that were etched into them, but it was weird—the more I stared at the designs, the more they seemed to be a blur. It was like they didn’t want me to understand them; like they were hiding their true meaning from me.