The final confrontation with the Nome King came flooding back. “The Nome King wanted me to come back to Oz,” I blurted. “He said that Dorothy wasn’t useful to him anymore but that I might be.”
Mombi and Gert exchanged glances. “I don’t like the sound of that at all,” Mombi growled.
“Is it possible . . .” Glamora trailed off and the witches stared at each other.
“Glinda brought Dorothy back to Oz,” Gert said. “We’ve assumed all along that she’s been orchestrating Dorothy’s return to power in order to put herself behind the throne. But if she’s been working with the Nome King . . .”
“Or under his control,” Mombi said quietly. “We have no real idea how powerful he is. He can move back and forth between Ev, Oz, and the Other Place. He’s wanted to take power in Oz for centuries.”
“Centuries?” I asked.
“He’s very, very old,” Glamora said. “Some say he’s even older than Ozma’s ancestor Lurline, the first fairy who came to Oz.”
Magic’s dangerous for outlanders. You’re not built for it. Nox had warned me what felt like a lifetime ago, when I’d begun my training in the secret underground caverns of the Wicked. “Dorothy’s not useful to him anymore because Oz’s magic has corrupted her,” I said. If Dorothy’s magic was so destructive it had transformed her from the sweet, innocent girl who’d written about her chickens and her dog into the bloodthirsty, insane tyrant she was now, what was it going to do to me? Because as soon as I started thinking of her as a real person, it was easy to see how much like me she had once been. The Nome King had told me I was stronger than Dorothy, but Oz’s magic had already turned me into a monster.
Gert nodded, reading my mind. “That settles it,” she said. “You can’t use magic any longer, Amy. It’s too dangerous.”
“But how can I fight without magic?” I protested. “You’re the ones who trained me. You made me into what I am. You want me to just pretend none of that ever happened?”
Nox had been quiet as we talked, but now he spoke up. “It’s not worth it, Amy,” he said. I remembered the conversation we’d had what felt like months ago but had just been a few days. If Oz’s magic turned me into another Dorothy, the Quadrant would have to kill me. And I knew Nox would do it, too. He’d see it as an act of mercy—and it would be. I thought of what Dorothy had done, and shivered. I’d rather die than end up like that. But how could I protect myself in Oz if I couldn’t use my powers? I had Dorothy’s shoes, but what if using them again was just playing further into the Nome King’s plans?
Suddenly, I thought of my mom. Magic for me was as destructive as pills had been for her. The same addiction—and the same results. I’d fallen in love with power the way she’d fallen in love with oblivion. I’d hated her for what her addiction had done to her—to us—but was I really any different?
Where was she now? What did she think had happened to me? What time was it in Kansas? How much of the school had been destroyed by the tornado? Someone must have told her I was gone again by now. Another tornado sweeping me away—what were the odds of that one? This time, Dustin had watched me get swallowed up by the storm. And Dustin—had he survived the battle with the Nome King? Eventually, the police would have to declare me dead. How did that stuff even work? How long would it take before my mom was forced to give up hope for good? And what then? Would she start using again with no reason to stop, no one to stay sober for? If she thought I was never coming back, there was no telling what she might do. I felt tears welling up in my eyes. I was stuck in Oz with no ability to protect myself, dependent on a boy who couldn’t love me, unable to save my mom from the thing that was going to destroy her. It was too much to think about.
“I need some air,” I said, shoving my chair back from the table.
“Amy, you have to be careful,” Gert said. “Dorothy could be anywhere.”
I heard Mombi behind me, murmuring, “It’s all right, let her go. We can protect her if anything happens.”
I didn’t know where to go, so I took the first staircase up I saw, and then the next. After a few minutes of stumbling through the palace, I came to a big room that looked like it had once been a bedchamber. The air smelled faintly of machine oil. There wasn’t a bed, only a tall wooden cupboard at the far end of the room that was blackened as though someone had tried to set it on fire. I remembered the Tin Woodman’s chambers at the Emerald Palace, and I felt a creepy shiver up my spine as I realized what I’d found. He slept standing up. I was in his old bedroom.
Directly across from where I assumed he stood was a portrait of Dorothy. I had taken the heart right out of his chest, but standing here now in his room I realized—if he had never met Dorothy, he would never have become so evil. I wonder what I would be if I had never met Nox.
I almost turned to leave but then I saw a set of double doors that led outside and I pushed through them, gulping in the fresh air as I stepped onto a balcony with a panoramic view of the kingdom.
It was some view. First, the gardens surrounding the palace, which were overgrown and trampled in places. But beyond them, I could see all the way to the mountains in one direction and the Queendom of the Wingless Ones in the other. Underneath bright blue, wide-open sky—with all of Oz laid out before me—I still felt invisible walls closing in on me. I had traveled so far, had learned so much, and fought so many battles, and I didn’t feel like it had made any difference at all. If anything, Oz seemed worse off than it had been before I came along.
“Amy?” Nox’s voice was tentative behind me. I didn’t turn around.
“I want to be alone, Nox.”
But I heard footsteps, and a moment later he was standing next to me. We were both silent for a long time.
“I used to think it was so beautiful,” I said, still not looking at him. “Even when things got really bad, it was still beautiful, you know? It was still, like, amazing. Now, though, it’s like it doesn’t matter how beautiful it is. It’s just more stuff for someone to ruin.”
“You’re right,” he said.
Now I looked at him. He seemed much older than he had when I’d first met him, even though it really hadn’t been so long ago.
“I don’t want to be right,” I said.
“What do you want me to say?” He brushed a strand of hair from his face. “You’re right. Everything got so messed up. And you know what I wonder sometimes?”
“Do I want to know?”
“Sometimes I wonder if it’s even Dorothy’s fault, or if this place was just rotten from the start, underneath everything. If maybe that’s the price you pay for magic.”
“My world doesn’t have any magic, and it’s pretty messed up, too.”
“Is it? It seemed okay to me. Better, at least.”
“You didn’t see much of it.”
“Yeah, I know,” he replied. “But you know what I liked about it?”
“What?”
“It reminded me of you. Everywhere I looked, I couldn’t stop thinking, This is where Amy’s from. This is the dirt that she walked on. This is the sky that she grew up under. It’s the place that made you who you are. And that’s what made me like it.”
“It’s made Dorothy, too.”
“Oh, screw her,” Nox said. And we both laughed. But just a little bit, because it really wasn’t that funny at all.
“I wish I could see where you came from,” I said.
“You’re looking at it, aren’t you?”
“No, I mean, like, where you really came from. Your village. The house you grew up in. All that stupid little stuff.”
He winced. “It’s gone,” he said bitterly. The pain in his voice shot through me like it was my pain, too. At this point, maybe it was. “You know that. Burned to the damn ground.”
“I know,” I said. “I wish I could see it anyway.”
“The rivers were full of sprites who sing to you while you go swimming. In the summer, you could walk through the Singing Forest and watch the mountains rearrange
themselves . . .” He trailed off, with a sad, faraway look in his eyes.
“Maybe . . . ,” I started. Maybe what? Maybe everything will be okay? Maybe things aren’t really so bad? There was no way to finish the sentence without sounding faker than the knockoff Prada purse that my dad sent me for my thirteenth birthday, with the label misspelled to read Praba.
I didn’t need to finish, though, because Nox did it for me. “Maybe it’s not worth fighting for,” he said. “Maybe we should just give up.”
“No!” I said. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I know. It’s what I meant. I don’t think I’ve ever said it aloud, but it’s what I really think sometimes. Like, maybe it would be better to just let them all kill each other off. Mombi, Glinda, Dorothy—everyone. Let them keep fighting until they’ve destroyed every single thing. And then maybe it would all grow back. I bet it would. Eventually, I mean.”
“No,” I said. “I mean, maybe you’re right; I don’t know. But we can’t give up. Not after all of this.”
A minute ago, I had been ready to give up myself. But hearing Nox say it made me realize how wrong I had been to even think about doing something like that.
“Look,” I said. “Things aren’t all they’re cracked up to be in my world either. You think wandering around Kansas camping on the prairie for a couple of days was good? Yeah, so it’s beautiful out there, but our planet is freaking out. The oceans are rising, people are fighting more and more wars every day, plants and animals are dying out, every other week some kid takes one of his parents’ guns to school and starts shooting. . . .” I stopped short at the look on Nox’s face. “The world I grew up in is gone, too,” I said quietly. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to give up on it. Because if you give up—then what is there left to live for?”
We were both silent for a long time, looking deep into each other’s eyes. He was so close to me. I could smell his faint rich sandalwood smell. I could have reached up to brush the hair out of his eyes. I could have leaned in the barest amount and our mouths would have met. And I wanted it so badly my heart was thundering in my chest.
“How about this?” Nox asked, not looking away from me. The purple-pink light from the setting sun reflected in his gray eyes, making them look practically neon. “How about you and I just leave. Let them have their war. We’ll just find a place to hide, just the two of us, and then, when it’s all over, we’ll climb out from the wreckage, and start the whole thing all over again. We’ll rebuild it all. Together.”
He reached forward and took my hand, and my heart nearly skipped a beat. It sounded so beautiful. Just him and me. On our own. No more war, no more suffering. No more running. It was like a beautiful dream—except that it was impossible, no matter how much some part of me wished it could come true. I couldn’t sacrifice the people I loved just to be with the boy I wanted. And I knew Nox well enough by now to know he’d never be able to do it either. It would tear him apart. And then we’d just be two bitter, brokenhearted people in a dead and ruined world. I knew it. And so did he.
“You don’t believe that,” I said.
“What if I do?”
“You don’t. That’s the most selfish thing I’ve ever heard you say. It’s not you.”
“Maybe I’m an asshole.”
“You might be an asshole, but you’re not a selfish asshole.”
“How do you know that, Amy?”
“Because I couldn’t possibly love a selfish person,” I said.
His eyes widened in shock. “Amy,” he said hoarsely, “I . . .” But he didn’t finish. He was staring over my shoulder, at the view below the Tin Woodman’s balcony.
“You what?” I said softly, not sure if I had said too much.
That was when I realized it wasn’t what I had said that had surprised him. It wasn’t even me he was looking at anymore. He was staring over my shoulder out onto the horizon.
“I think we’re in trouble,” he said. I whirled around.
In the plain below the palace, an army was waiting for us. But not just any army. They were clones. A sea of creepy clones with cornflower-blue eyes and clear, ageless skin. Tendrils of golden hair spilled from their helmets. They were all virtually identical, and behind those flat blue eyes there was a terrifying blankness. And there was no mistaking the glittering pink figure who floated at its head.
Or the girl and the boy in chains at her side.
TWENTY
“Go get the Wicked,” Nox hissed, tugging me down so that Glinda couldn’t see us over the railing of the balcony. “Now.” He didn’t have to tell me twice. I pelted down the stairs until I crashed directly into—
“Melindra!” I gasped. She looked the same as she had when I’d last seen her, tall, fierce, and ready for battle. The blond hair on the human half of her head was shorn close to the skull, and the tin half of her body was dented and battered. Behind her stood Annabel, the red-haired unicorn girl with the purple scar on her forehead who’d trained with me, too. There were more people in the room I didn’t recognize, all of them with the same tough, wary warrior’s stance. Glamora was rubbing Gert’s back, and Gert looked exhausted. She must have used her power to summon the Wicked one at a time.
“Amy, what is it?” Gert asked when I crashed into the room.
“It’s happening!” I gasped. “Upstairs, now!” I turned around and ran back to Nox, not waiting to see if they were following me.
Glinda had come prepared for battle: instead of her usual ruffled dresses, she was dressed in a tight pink catsuit that looked like leather studded with little scales. Her golden hair was drawn back in a severe bun, and she carried a huge pink staff in one slender hand.
“Oh dear,” Gert said as she gazed down at Glinda and her legions. They wore matching silver armor, polished to a blinding glow that made me think uncomfortably of the Tin Woodman, and their silver-tipped spears glittered like diamonds.
“When did she get an army?” I asked.
“She’s always had an army,” Mombi said. “She just doesn’t use it very often.”
“What do you mean, very often?”
“General Jinjur invaded the Emerald City and deposed the Scarecrow before Dorothy returned to Oz,” Melindra said. “Didn’t they teach you this?”
“I skipped the history lesson on the way to the battle.”
Melindra rolled her eyes. Whatever problem she had with me, she hadn’t gotten over it. Great.
“Glinda summoned her army then and drove Jinjur out of the palace,” Mombi filled in. “Together, Glinda and the Scarecrow put Ozma on the throne.”
“Wait, I thought Ozma was the one who banished Glinda,” I said, confused.
Gert nodded. “She was. Glinda thought she’d be able to control Ozma—to rule Oz through her. But Ozma has—had—a will of her own. Glinda tried to oust her. Ozma banished her. It wasn’t until Dorothy returned to Oz that Glinda was freed.”
“Dorothy’s not with her,” Gert said, looking down at the battlefield, where Glinda’s troops were moving into formation.
“If she’s moving against us without Dorothy, that’s a big deal,” Melindra said. “She’s never openly gone against Dorothy’s wishes before. She couldn’t be more clear about trying to take power for herself now if she posted it on a banner.”
“If she is working with the Nome King somehow, he could have forced her hand,” Mombi said. “Either way, I don’t like it. Facing a united Dorothy and Glinda is bad enough—but with both of them acting on their own . . .”
“Don’t make the mistake of thinking those pretty little girls won’t tear you to pieces,” Melindra said. “Trains ’em herself, Glinda does, and you can imagine the kinds of exercises she thinks up.” We all shuddered collectively. “They’ll gut you soon as look at you. Some of the best fighters in Oz.”
“They used to be some of the only fighters in Oz,” Gert said.
“Well, those days are long gone,” Mombi said shortly, “and they’ll shoot us off the ba
lcony if we stand here like fools for much longer. Nothing to do but go inside and prepare for battle. Luckily the walls are three feet thick. The palace will be easy enough to defend, as long as we stay inside.”
“We haven’t prepared for this,” Melindra said, and the tough girl sounded almost plaintive.
“You’ve trained for battle,” Nox said curtly. “That means you’ve trained for this.” Melindra flashed him a hurt look and I tried not to gloat.
Glinda’s army had finished moving into tight formations and the Sorceress hovered above them at the center of it all. Flanking her, Pete and Ozma sagged in their chains. The enchanted princess was staring around her with that all-too-familiar vacant air. Pete looked miserable and sullen. You deserve it, I thought in disgust, remembering the way he’d betrayed me and Nox to Glinda in Polychrome’s palace. Pete had escaped with Glinda—if escape was the right word for what she’d done to him.
I didn’t care if he was suffering now. I remembered Polychrome’s crumpled body, Rainbow Falls burning. Polychrome’s unicorn-cat Heathcliff lying broken and bloody. Pete could go to hell for all I cared. But Ozma was different.
Ozma was an innocent in all of this. But it was more than that, too. She was also the rightful ruler of Oz. There was every chance that she was the only one with the power to change anything. If only we could unlock it.
“We have to rescue her,” Nox said, echoing my thoughts.
“There’s got to be a way,” I agreed, and was gratified to see the flash of approval in his eyes. Maybe I was faking it until I made it, but Nox was right. Acting confident did give me a renewed sense of strength. How could what we faced possibly be worse than what we’d already been through?
Below us, a trumpet sounded, and Glinda rose even higher in the air to hover over her army.
“Good afternoon, dear Wicked,” she said, and even though she was speaking quietly and still hundreds of feet away, she sounded as if she was close enough to reach out and touch.