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 (7 page)

Indigo noticed me staring, and she rolled up her T-shirt sleeves to let me take a better look. “It’s Oz. The
real
Oz,” she said. “I wanted to remember how it used to be. So I got it inked. They’ll have to skin me if they want me to forget now.”

As she spoke, the tattoos began to form themselves into a picture before my eyes and I saw what she was talking about: her arms were a history. It was a beautiful, picturesque panorama, filled with flowers and animals—some of which I didn’t even recognize—and happy, smiling people. The craziest part was that the picture was moving. Just barely, but moving for sure. The Munchkins on Indigo’s biceps were dancing a jig. The animals were frolicking; the flowers were rustling in the breeze. There was even a witch, green and wicked with a pointy black hat, cheerfully dancing something like a hula.

“Magic ink,” she said. “Cool, right?” She said it like it was no big deal, like she was talking about the new shoes she’d just bought at the outlet mall. She waved her hand in the air, gesturing at the landscape around us. “It’s better here since we’re farther away from the mines, but nothing’s what it used to be. It’ll just be one big pit soon.”

She looked so sad. It was the worst kind of sad, too—the kind where you’re sad about something that you know will never change. The kind of sad you can’t even bother getting angry about anymore.

Did all of Oz feel this way? If so, it must be a terrible place to live.

I stood up and brushed myself off. “Come on,” I said. “We’re going to the Emerald City.”

Indigo stared up at the sky like she was looking for a clue. I was beginning to wonder when the sun was going to go down. The sky was just as light as it had been when we’d started walking. It didn’t even feel like it was the same
day
, much less the same afternoon.

“I don’t know,” she said after a while of just looking. It sounded more like she was talking to herself than to me. “I don’t actually really know anything. I don’t even really know why I want to go. We’ll probably get caught before we make it there anyway. She has spies everywhere.” She sighed a long sigh. But she followed me back onto the road.

“You asked why they work for her,” she said. “You asked why the Munchkins don’t just tell Glinda to fuck off and take her machine somewhere else.”

“Yeah. I was wondering that. Maybe it was stupid of me.”

“It was,” Indigo said, shooting me an annoyed look. “Do you think they have a choice? I was one of those kids bouncing up and down on a seesaw for hours, you know. But I got away. Now my family’s gone, my house is empty, and I have no idea what I’m going to do with myself. If I get caught, they’ll kill me. So. That’s why they do it, okay?”

“I didn’t know,” I said. “I’m sorry.” And I was.

“When we get to the Emerald City, we’re going to find someone to send you home. And when we do, they’re going to send me along with you. Anything’s better than this.”

She saw it before I did.

“What the hell?” she said, stopping dead in her tracks in the middle of the road.

Ahead of us, we heard a screechy, unearthly caterwaul. Star squealed in response. I sped up to see what was going on. Then I wished I hadn’t seen it at all.

A few paces off, something was tied to a post at the edge of the road. The something was furry. It screeched again.

“One of the monkeys,” Indigo said, almost in a whisper. The creature was dangling upside down from the post, a thick rope binding his ankles in place. This wasn’t your normal monkey, though: he was dressed like a little preppy in khaki pants with jaunty red suspenders and leather Top-Siders on his feet.

Despite his outfit, he looked a long way from Nantucket. He appeared to be in so much pain: his eyes were half closed, blood-crusted, and unfocused. His mouth was dry and cracked; his fur was dirty and matted. He didn’t look at us—I was pretty sure he couldn’t even tell we were there.

But he was conscious enough to express his anguish, and he let out yet another earsplitting scream. Indigo raced forward and when I caught up with her, she was kneeling, reading a sign that was nailed just below where the monkey’s head swayed inches from the ground.

For the Crime of Sass, This Monkey Is Hereby Sentenced to Official Attitude Adjustment. Do Not Tamper. By Royal Order of Princess Dorothy.

“The crime of
sass
?” I whispered angrily. They’d made that a crime?

Indigo seemed paralyzed. She didn’t respond.

Well, at least
I
was here to help him. “Poor little monkey,” I said. “Let’s get you down from there.” I made a move to untie him, but Indigo grabbed my wrist. She was almost shaking.

“No,” she said. “We can’t.”

“What are you talking about? You can’t just leave a defenseless animal tied up by the side of the road. Look at him. I’m surprised he’s still alive. And what the hell? This is what she calls an
attitude adjustment
? What’s wrong with this place?”

Indigo shook her head sadly. “We have to leave him. If we don’t, we’ll be considered just as guilty as he is. I’ve seen it before.” She looked up at me with tears in her eyes, and I somehow understood that this had already happened to someone she loved. “Welcome to Oz,” she said. Her voice caught, and then she stood and dusted herself off. Her face, which had just a moment ago looked close to crumpling, hardened back into her typical scowl.

“Come on. Let’s keep moving. Forget we even saw it.”

I shook my head at her.
It
was wearing pants.
It
had dried blood all over it.
It
was in eardrum-busting pain.

“You saved me from talking to Glinda.”

“That was different. You hadn’t been convicted of anything.”

I looked at her and then back at the monkey. I couldn’t leave him. There was just no way. So without hesitating—without thinking, really—I reached up and began to untie the ropes that held him to the post.

“No!” Indigo cried. But she didn’t try to stop me. Within seconds I’d gotten him free. I caught him in my arms—he was heavier than he looked—and as I laid him carefully down on the yellow bricks, I felt two rough, bald little stumps on his shoulder blades.

It took me a second to realize what they were, and when I did, I felt sick to my stomach. This monkey had once had wings.

“Shit,” Indigo said, running her fingers through her hair in panic. “Shit, shit, shit shit.” She had scampered to the middle of the road and was looking up and down in either direction like she thought they would be coming for us at any moment. But no alarm bells started ringing. No gunshots rang out; no flare was sent up. Nothing happened at all.

“What do you think is coming?”

“You don’t understand. They have their ways. They know everything. They see everything.”

“How? Who?”

“They just do.”

“If
they
knew everything that went on around here, they’d have already caught us. Come on—you must have some water somewhere in that giant pack of yours, right?”

Reluctantly, Indigo dug around in her bag and came back with a canteen. She handed it to me, and I poured the water over the animal’s cracked lips and waited. After a moment, his eyes fluttered open. He gurgled and sputtered for a moment before registering our presence.

“There you are . . . ,” I said, leaning over to give him another sip.

“Thank you,” he said in a weak, hoarse voice.

“Oh my God!” I exclaimed, jumping back. “He can talk!”

“Of course I can talk,” he croaked. Even in his weakened state, he managed to sound offended. “I’m an educated monkey. My name is Ollie.”

Although I was still freaked out, I bent down to help him sit up. My fingers brushed against the jagged, stumpy nubbins poking out of his shoulder blades.

“Don’t mind those,” he explained, seeing the look of confusion on my face. “That’s just where my wings used to be. Before I cut them off.”

“We need to move,” Indigo said. “That post he was tied to was probably enchanted. They’ll know that we freed him.”

“Maybe we should leave the road,” I said. “We’re too exposed. If they’re looking for us . . .”

Indigo was shaking her head emphatically. “No,” she said. “The road leads to the Emerald City. That’s where we’re going.”

Ollie agreed. “We’re in the wildest part of Munchkin Country,” he said. “Once we step off the road of yellow bricks, things get turned around. Directions stop making sense. We’ll be lost in no time.”

“You’re going to the city, too?” I asked.

Ollie nodded. “They say that the entrance to an underground tunnel is hidden somewhere in the city walls. The tunnel leads north, to where the rest of the Wingless Ones live. I’m going to find it.”

“There are others like you? Without wings?”

“Dorothy wanted to harness them,” Indigo snapped, her face suddenly red. “Make them her slaves. She wanted a thousand of them pulling her sicko flying monkey chariot. What else were they supposed to do?”

It was good to see her mad, actually. At least anger can get you somewhere. I liked this Indigo better than the Indigo I’d been sitting with on the rock an hour ago, the Indigo who seemed like she’d just given up. I liked this Indigo better than the one who had been so terrified that she’d wanted to leave Ollie strung up by the side of the road.

I just didn’t know what she was talking about. I looked at Ollie quizzically.

“My people have always been used by those who are more powerful,” he began to explain. “Even before Dorothy rose to power, we were slaves to others. It’s part of our enchantment. The wings are vulnerable to magic; they make us easy to control. When we were freed from the witches we thought we would never have to serve anyone again. But then Dorothy came back. This time, some of us decided that the price of freedom was worth paying.”

“So you cut off your wings,” I said. I couldn’t imagine that kind of sacrifice. I thought I understood it, though.

“I would rather be free than fly,” Ollie said firmly. “Not all of my people agreed.” A look of pure disgust crested his face. “The ones who would be free went north, into hiding.”

“Why are you here, then?” I asked. “Why aren’t you up north with them?”

“I couldn’t leave them.”

“Who?” I asked.

He looked at the ground. “My parents,” he said. “My sister. They thought their wings were what made them special. So they stayed behind. Now they pull Dorothy’s chariot. I thought I could help them. I thought I could convince them. . . .” He faltered, his voice breaking.

“I guess Dorothy must not have liked that plan,” I said.

Indigo was getting antsy. “We need to go,” she snapped. “We don’t have time for Oz History 101.”

There was still so much more I wanted to ask Ollie, but Indigo was right. If everything they were telling me about Dorothy was true, we were asking for trouble just sitting around like this.

“Can you make it?” I asked Ollie. “You still look pretty weak.”

But Indigo was already marching ahead of us, her boots stomping against the brick road. Ollie shrugged and he and I followed a few paces behind, moving as quickly as we could.

I was starting to get tired, not to mention hot. The sun, which had had an eerie, icy-blue tint to it back in Munchkin Country where I’d landed, was now a bright, fiery yellow, beating down on my skin. I could feel a bead of sweat forming at the base of my scalp.

The sun had changed colors; it had gotten hotter. But it hadn’t actually
moved
: it was still hanging in exactly the same place, dead center in the sky, that it had been when I’d set out on my way. It didn’t show any signs of budging.

“Is it just me, or has this day been really long?” I asked Ollie.

He groaned. “The day’s as long as Dorothy wants it to be,” he said. “She controls the time around here. Sometimes it’s ages before she remembers to turn the hands on the Great Clock and make it night again. The princess gets distracted easily.”

I shuddered. In addition to everything else, Dorothy controlled time itself. We kept walking.

The girl took us all by surprise when she appeared in the middle of the road out of nowhere, blocking our way. She had dark hair and flawless, ivory skin, and was dressed in a silk sheath dress in emerald green, setting off huge green eyes. She must have been about my age, and she was more beautiful than any girl I’d ever seen before. She also had way more bling: strapped to her head was a tall gold crown that burned in the endless afternoon sunlight. Her ears were covered by giant, jewel-encrusted poppies that looked like really fancy earmuffs.

As soon as they saw her, Indigo and Ollie dropped instantly to one knee. Indigo grabbed my arm and pulled me down with her.

“Dearest people of Munchkin Country!” The girl was talking to us as if she were addressing a huge audience, except there was no one else here. “I am pleased to announce this auspicious day for all of Oz! A day when sadness bids its final farewell and joy begins its eternal reign! By royal order, under punishment of death, I hereby declare Happiness henceforth!”

Indigo sighed in disgust and rose to her feet just as the girl was starting her speech all over again. It was like someone had set her on repeat. “Dearest people of Munchkin Country!” the girl cried again.