Yellow Brick War (9 page)

“What's going on in here?” Mr. Stone asked peevishly, stepping into the library. We were hidden by the shelves, but if he came any farther into the room he'd see us, and there was no way we could explain what we were doing going through a stack of old boxes next to a busted closet door. Dustin jumped up and headed for the door. Instinctively, I threw the old graduation banner over myself and the pile of boxes. My arm brushed up against the last box I'd found. It didn't sting me this time; it
burned
. Like the feeling of metal cold enough to freeze to your skin and peel away the outer layer. And then the awful burning faded and a strange sensation crawled across my skin, like the chill you feel when you've been out in the snow too long.

Everything around me dimmed until the edges of the room were lost in dense, thickening shadow. Tendrils of darkness crept across the floor toward me. A slender, silvery form stepped out of the shadows and looked down at me. It was mostly hidden
by the darkness, but I could make out swirling black robes and a pale, bald skull topped with a twisted iron crown.

So
, it hissed. I heard its voice inside my head rather than out loud and clapped my hands over my ears in a futile attempt to shut it out.
You have found what I have hidden, little witch. My congratulations.

I struggled to say something, but the creature's magic had glued my mouth shut.
Who are you?
I thought desperately.

I could
feel
its smile cutting into my thoughts.

You'll find out soon enough, little witch. You are strong and clever to have uncovered so easily what I had concealed so carefully. Your witches could not see what I had put away here so many years ago. Even your Dorothy could not find what once had been hers. But you found it without magic, as if it was calling to you. You are very strong indeed—perhaps even stronger than my other little friend.

What other little friend? Did it mean Dorothy?

We will see each other again, my dear. I am beginning to think you shall be quite useful to me. But now is not the time for explanations. Give my regards to your . . . friends.

A knife-sharp flash of pain stabbed into my skull and I cried out in agony. I could
see
Mombi, Gert, and Glamora, darkness swirling around them, looking up in fear and alarm. Nox, out on the prairie somewhere, staring upward as if he knew I was looking down at him, opening his mouth to say something. The creature laughed and flicked its fingers, and a roiling cloud of darkness descended on the four of them, erasing their faces from my mind.

Until next time, little witch. Watch your back. Not all your friends are trustworthy.
And then it stepped back into the shadows and disappeared. I felt its magic loosen its grip on me and I slumped to the floor, tears of pain leaking from my eyes.

“. . . Amy? She's in the bathroom,” Dustin was saying. “Everything's cool here, Mr. Stone.”

The shop teacher grumbled something I didn't catch and the library door swung closed again. “Phew,” Dustin sighed, his footsteps coming toward me. “That was, like, really clo—Amy? Where are you?”

“I'm right here,” I said thickly. My mouth tasted like ashes and dirt. With effort, I pushed away the graduation banner and sat up. Dustin was staring at me with his mouth open.

“How did you do that?” he breathed.

“Do what?”

“You just . . . you weren't there,” he said. “Amy, you weren't
there
. And then you were. You just, like, appeared. Are you okay?”

“I'm fine,” I said, faking a sneeze. “I didn't go anywhere, I hid under this dumb banner.” I was still stunned from the effects of the creature's magic, but I had to convince Dustin he hadn't seen anything out of the ordinary. “It's so dark back here, you just missed me. I totally thought I could
hide
under this thing, can you believe that?” I babbled. “Like a little kid playing hide-and-seek, ha-ha. So silly. Um, anyway, there's another box in there.”

Dustin was still looking at me like—well, like I'd vanished
and then reappeared out of thin air. But the fact that it wasn't physically
possible
to vanish and reappear out of thin air was working in my favor. Whatever explanation he was coming up with for what he'd just seen, it definitely wasn't “some kind of really scary mind-stabbing supernatural entity just walked out of the walls, made Amy briefly invisible in order to drop a bunch of vague sinister hints, and then disappeared.”

“What's in it?” he asked, his curiosity getting the better of him. Wrapping my hands in the dust cloths, I gingerly lifted the box from the back of the closet. But whatever magic had been protecting it had disappeared with the mysterious visitor, and it felt like an ordinary box this time when I touched it. It was light and small, but something thumped inside it. I lifted the flaps, and breathlessly, we looked in.

There was nothing in the box but an old notebook. I took it out and flipped through the pages. Every one of them was blank. My heart sank as I stared at the book, turning the pages over and over again as if looking at them again would make words appear. A secret, a spell—heck, even a map to Dorothy's shoes. Nothing. I wanted to cry. All this, and for what? I'd never find the stupid shoes, even if they existed. The witches and I were stuck in Kansas forever. Dorothy was going to destroy Oz, and we had no way to stop her.

“Amy, what's wrong?”

“I was just hoping for an answer,” I said.. Whoever the mysterious visitor had been, it had been wasting its time protecting a blank book.

“We can keep looking, Amy,” Dustin said, anxious to cheer me up. “We can—I don't know, Topeka probably has a library. I can drive you over there if you want as long as Mad doesn't mind watching the baby. It's no big—”

The library door swung open again and we both nearly jumped out of our skins. “Time's up!” Mr. Stone bellowed. “Go home, you little miscreants.” Thankfully, he stomped off without bothering to check our work. I shoved the boxes back in the closet and covered them with the banner. At the last minute I shoved the notebook into my bag. Maybe I was trying to remind myself that my mission was more hopeless than finding a needle in a haystack. We locked the library door behind us and returned the keys and our vacuum to a sullen Mr. Stone.

“I can give you a ride home,” Dustin offered.

“Thanks,” I said.

I was silent in the car, leaning my head against the glass and looking out, trying to see some beauty in the dull gray sky and flat, dusty earth.
I might as well get used to it
, I thought.
This time, I'm here for good.

My mom and Jake were sitting side by side on the couch when I got back to her apartment, holding hands and watching the news. When I walked in they jumped apart, blushing, like I'd just caught them doing something actually scandalous. I stifled a giggle.

“Honey!” my mom exclaimed. “I wasn't expecting you to be so late. Where have you been?”

I was definitely not in the mood for conversation, but I'd already been enough of a jerk to my mom. I explained about detention, and she beamed at me. “What a mature decision to make, Amy. I'm so proud of you.” Even Jake was nodding. At least I'd done something right, even if it was for the wrong reasons.

That night, Jake cooked. He was so nice to my mom it was hard not to like him, against my better judgment. My mom had had a few boyfriends here and there—if “boyfriend” was the
right word for the losers who hung around the trailer for a month or two, eating all our food and burping in front of the TV with a six-pack before disappearing again—and she had an unerring instinct for jerks, deadbeats, and creeps.

There was the guy who liked to follow me around when she wasn't home, eyeing me in a way that made me start carrying pepper spray everywhere I went. Thankfully, he didn't last long. There was the guy who “borrowed” a bunch of money from her and then vanished without paying her back. Amazingly, she was surprised. There was the guy I never saw sober. But Jake actually seemed nice. Maybe he even
was
nice, not just putting on a show until he got whatever it was he wanted. My mom turned off the TV, and we sat around her little card table and ate the casserole he'd made like we were an actual family. I kept waiting for him to say something mean to my mom, or stare at my boobs, or spout off something really sexist or racist or just gross, but he was actually . . . normal. I'd only been gone a month of my mom's time, but it was like I had come home to a different planet.

“How was school today, Amy? It must be hard to adjust to being back after your—” He paused, as if he wasn't quite sure what to say. “Accident,” he finished. I wondered how much my mom had told him about her theories about my disappearance. “It was fine,” I said politely. “I'm not as far behind as I thought I would be, actually. Dwight D. Eisenhower Senior High isn't exactly Harvard.” He laughed at my dumb joke as if I'd said something incredibly funny. My mom smiled as he asked me more questions about myself. What books did I like to read?
What were my favorite movies? How about favorite foods? If he was trying this hard to impress me, he must be really into my mom. I was surprised by how happy I was for her. I needed him to be this good for after. For when I was gone again.

Jake even did the dishes after dinner—I offered, but he insisted. I told Jake and my mom that I was tired, although mostly I just wanted to give them some privacy—and be alone to think. No sooner had I shut my door than the air in front of me began to shimmer, and Mombi materialized. “Again?” I hissed. “I can't exactly explain away a random old lady standing in my room if my mom comes in!”

“‘Old lady' isn't very polite, missy,” Mombi growled. “That's ‘old witch' to you. Anyway, I'm not really here. Gert, Glamora, and I are still hiding out in the Darklands. I'm just projecting to check in. You and I need to talk.”

“I thought your magic was too weak to just zip around like you're on vacation,” I said. “Or are all bets off when it comes to spying on me?”

“I only spy because I care,” Mombi hissed. “Unlike some people who seem to have forgotten what they're here for.”

“I haven't forgotten a thing,” I snapped. “Now what's going on?”

“We seem to be adjusting to being outside of Oz. Still a long way from shipshape, but at least we're getting strong enough for a little astral projection.”

“I'm not sure that's going to help,” I said dully. I sank down onto my bed and told her everything. About the newspaper
article, breaking into the library closet, finding the mysterious box. When I got to the creature who'd dropped in on my and Dustin's party, Mombi stopped me.

“Tell me this part again,” she said, her voice low and urgent. “What did you see?”

“Something tall and skinny. Black clothes. Bald. I think it had a crown.”

“And what did it say to you?”

I struggled to remember, but it was like trying to look through fog. “I can't remember exactly. Something about how I'd found what it had hidden. I think it has to be the person who covered up the truth about Dorothy—that she was real, I mean.” I shuddered. “Dustin couldn't see it.”

“He wouldn't be able to,” Mombi said grimly. She stared off into space for a moment, rubbing her chin with one thumb. “It can't be him,” she muttered. “Ozma thwarted him. Has he really been here all this time?”

“Who?” I asked. Mombi kept talking to herself. “Mombi,
who
?”

She sighed and shook her head. “The Nome King,” she said. “I think what you saw was the Nome King. But if it was . . . we are in a mess of trouble indeed.”

“What's a Nome King? It sounds like a kind of mushroom.”

Mombi snorted. “Who, not what,” she said. “
Who
. The Nome King is a king of the Nomes,” she said. “That's nome with an
n
not a
g
, mind you. Don't screw it up. He gets very prissy about the spelling. He pulled one of his diggers limb from limb while
he was still alive just because he pronounced it with a
g
.”

I swallowed. That fit pretty well with the creepy dude who'd magically dropped in on me in the library. My interest in meeting up with him again was at—well, let's say an all-time low. “Diggers? He digs stuff? What is he, like some kind of a troll? Don't they live in mountains?”

Mombi gave an exasperated sigh. “All that time Glamora spent teaching you the difference between a scone and a crumpet, and no one ever bothered to teach you about the Nome King. Typical.”

“Well, don't blame me,” I said.

Mombi spoke through gritted teeth like it hurt her to have to explain something so elementary. “A troll is a big, stupid monster. You bop it hard enough over the head—no more troll. A troll is easy-peasy. A Nome is more like a cross between a fairy and a demon. Nasty things. They live in the underworld of Ev, across the Deadly Desert.”

“Never heard of it,” I said.

“Frankly, it's not much to write home about,” Mombi said. “The point is, the Nome King tried to invade Oz, ages ago, but Ozma stopped him. Made him swear an oath to leave Oz in peace as long as she ruled . . .” Mombi trailed off and looked at me as she let it sink in.

“Ozma isn't in power anymore,” I said. “Congratulations, teacher's pet.” I ignored her witchy sneer. “But if he's trying to invade Oz, what's he doing here?”

“I don't know yet. But at least part of it makes sense. If he's
the one who erased any proof that Dorothy was a real person, he
must
know about the shoes. It's possible he's using them to travel back and forth—or he has some other power of his own. Magic in Ev isn't like magic in Oz. It doesn't follow the same rules. Ev is as different from Oz as the Other Place is. What exactly he's up to is impossible to guess, but there's no way it's good news for us.”

“He said something about how I was stronger than the ‘other one.' I think he meant Dorothy. And he told me not to trust anyone,” I said, remembering.

“Oh dear,” Mombi said quietly. Her leathery face went white. That's when I knew we were in serious trouble. “He knew who you
were
? That's not good at all.”

“You're not being very reassuring.”

“It just means we have to find the shoes before he does anything else. Do that, and we may be back in business. Maybe.” She frowned. “But I don't like the sound of that, little missy. You be on your toes. If he's using Dorothy somehow and decides you'll make a more valuable pet . . .” She didn't have to finish. I didn't want to think about the rest of that sentence. Not here, in the one place I'd almost felt safe for the first time in months: the frilly little pink bedroom my mom had created as she held out for my return. I knew the safety was an illusion. I'd learned in Oz that safety always was. But I couldn't help it. Some part of me wanted to pretend it was enough to protect me. That I could just stay here and go back to being ordinary. That I could check out of this never-ending mission and let someone else take over for a while.

But I couldn't tell the old witch any of that—even though, from the way she was looking at me, I was pretty sure she could guess at least some of it. I turned my thoughts back to the mission. Which was, after all, in pretty serious trouble on its own.

“Mombi, I don't know how to find the shoes. I thought I could find something in the library, but that turned out to be a dead end.”

“Why would the Nome King descend on you in a pool of darkness if you were looking at a dead end, Amy?” She had a point there.

“But I didn't find anything. Just this old blank notebook.”

“Let me see it,” she ordered. I dug through my bag and pulled out the notebook, handing it to her, but it passed through her hands. “Goddamn projecting,” she muttered. “I always forget. Turn the pages for me.” Yet again, I flipped through the book as Mombi's keen eyes watched the blank pages turn.

“I can feel the power in that book. Can't you?” I closed my eyes, concentrating on the weight of the book in my palms. And once I paid attention, I understood what Mombi meant. It was barely there, but unmistakable—like the charge on a television screen after you turn it off. “You're right,” I said. “There's something there.”

“I'm going to funnel my magic through you,” Mombi said. “It should work—you won't need any power of your own, you'll just need to be a conduit. But it may be too much for me to unlock whatever that book is hiding and keep projecting myself here. If I disappear—you're going to be on your own again. And if
there's no clue about how to find the shoes . . .”

She didn't have to finish. If I didn't find the shoes, we were screwed.

“Let's do it,” I said with more confidence than I felt. The idea of Mombi using me as a funnel was weird and kind of scary, but at least we were doing something. If Mombi wasn't ready to give up, neither was I. “No one would go to this much trouble to hide a book if it didn't hold something important.”

Mombi eyed me appraisingly, and I saw something like respect flicker in her eyes. It was kind of nice. We hadn't always seen eye to eye, and I still had no idea if she even had my best interests at heart. (Let's face it: probably not.) But it still meant something to me to have the old witch's respect. She closed her eyes and began to mouth the words to a spell. Suddenly, I remembered what I'd seen when the Nome King had paralyzed me. The witches, looking out in fear. And Nox, all alone out on the prairie somewhere. Was what I'd seen real? What was he doing out there?

“Wait!” I said. She opened her eyes again, this time looking slightly irritated. Too bad. “How's Nox? Where is he?” Mombi gave me a look so withering that if she had actually been in the room I probably would have flinched.

“He's
fine
, and you don't need to know anything else,” she said disgustedly. “Are you ready now?”

I wanted to ask more, but I knew better than to push my luck. Wherever Nox was, he either couldn't or wouldn't contact me—and neither option was all that appealing. If the witches had sent
him on some secret mission, Mombi obviously wasn't going to tell me. Mombi had already closed her eyes and was going back to her spell. The book in my hands began to radiate heat.

I could feel Mombi's magic moving through me, but it was strange and alien, not the familiar feeling of sharing power that I'd tapped into before. Like I was just a piece of pipe that her power was pouring through, as unimportant as a lifeless hunk of plastic. I struggled to let go of the feeling of wrongness, to let Mombi work through me.

“Don't fight me,” she hissed between gritted teeth. The strain of the spell was evident on her face. She was pale, and the deep wrinkles on her seamed old cheeks stood out in harsh relief. The book flapped open in my hands of its own volition, its pages riffling frantically in an invisible breeze. I gasped out loud and nearly dropped it as a tiny black cloud of swirling ink formed over the pages, dripping downward and shaping itself into tiny lines that became letters. The pages whipped faster and faster, filling with words. The book blazed with heat in my hands, its cover smoking. I couldn't take it anymore; I dropped it on the ground with a yelp and heard its spine crack as it slammed to the floor.

“Amy!” Mombi gasped. “You have to—” But her outline was already fading, and whatever else she had to say was lost as her image flickered and vanished.

“Everything okay in there, honey?” my mom called, rapping lightly on the door.

“Great!” I yelped, kicking the still-smoking book under my bed.

“Were you asking me something?”

“Just talking to myself!” I reassured her. She said good night again and I heard her settle back on the couch with a sigh. I waited long minutes until I heard her soft snores through the door, and then I got out the book. It had cooled enough to touch, but I still handled it gingerly, half expecting it to bite me.

It was still just an ordinary old journal, the leather cover blackened in places where Mombi's spell had singed it, but now the pages were filled with a cramped, old-fashioned cursive script. I opened it to a random page and, squinting, tried to make out the tiny, elegant letters.

. . . Millie is growing so beautifuly. Every day she lays at least 1 egg. Em says she will be a Prize Layer & maybe I can even entre her in the Fair next summer! I wood be so proud if she won a meddle!