“I can’t explain it,” I said, knowing how stupid I sounded. “I can just tell. The shoes are trying to help me.”
“Help you do what, though?” Mombi asked. No one answered for a long time.
“Anything we try will come with risks,” Glamora said finally. “I think we should let Amy use the shoes.” Mombi glanced at Glamora, her expression unreadable. There’s something Mombi knows that she isn’t telling us, I thought suddenly. Something about the Nome King? Or about what Glinda had been planning? I sighed. Secrets on top of secrets. Whatever. I’d had one job in Oz—to kill Dorothy. I might as well do my best to make sure the job got done.
“It’s your decision,” Gert said, reading my mind.
“We don’t have a choice,” I said.
“There’s always a choice,” Melindra said sharply, drumming her tin fingers against the table.
“I don’t have much of a choice, then,” I amended.
“We can use our power to try and protect you,” Mombi said, gesturing to the other witches. I nodded and they stood up, forming a circle around me. I could feel the current of power running between them, creating a bubble around me like a shield.
“Let us guide you,” Gert said. I could sense each of them in their magic: Nox’s felt blue and cool, like a stream in fall. Mombi’s was thicker, denser, like a gnarled old oak tree. Gert’s was warm and comforting, but with a hint of steel underneath the softness. And Glamora’s was a little too sweet, like overripe fruit. I let their magic flow into me and course through my body before settling into my feet. Dorothy’s shoes blazed with a white light and I staggered, only held in place by the Quadrant’s net of magic. “Concentrate, Amy!” Glamora cried.
The room around me faded away, the way the battlefield had when I’d used the shoes. I was in a cavern underground; I could feel dank, stagnant air on my face. Somewhere in the dark, a thundering ticking reverberated through the cavern. And the air was full of magic, so thick I could touch it with my fingers. The Quadrant’s power was keeping me tethered to my body like a lifeline, but I knew if they faltered I’d be swept away. And something was wrong, I could feel it. There was something that wasn’t supposed to be there. The pale thread of their combined magic thickened and began to turn darker, as if poison was running through it. Faintly, I could hear Nox and Gert screaming my name.
Let go, something seemed to be saying to me. Let go. It would be so easy to give in. To let myself sink into it. Finally, I’d be able to rest.
Dorothy’s shoes glowed even more brightly and suddenly I thought of Nox’s sandalwood smell, Gert’s comforting hug, Mombi’s gruffness. Even Melindra’s bitchy, disdainful attitude. Lulu’s snores. Ozma’s huge green eyes. I thought of everyone I cared about in Oz, and I threw myself toward them with everything I had.
The cavern vanished around me and I crashed through the circle of the witches’ arms, hitting the floor with a thump that jarred my bones. Gert and Nox were at my side in an instant, helping me up.
“What happened?” Nox asked. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, but I didn’t see Dorothy. I saw some kind of cavern. And I could hear this crazy ticking sound, but I don’t know what it was.”
“The Great Clock,” Mombi said. “Dorothy’s trying to tap into its magic.”
“What’s the big deal? Wasn’t she already using it to make the days as long as she wants them?” I asked.
“The Great Clock is connected to the oldest, deepest magic of Oz,” Gert said slowly. “Even the fairies, the true rulers of Oz, have never understood how it works. Dorothy’s been siphoning its magic off a little at a time. But if she’s trying to unleash the full power of the clock . . .” She trailed off into silence.
“So what happens if she tries?” I asked. No one answered. Gert stared at Glamora. Glamora stared at the ground. Mombi stared at Nox. Nox stared at the door. None of this seemed like a very good sign. Nox sighed and looked at me.
“If Dorothy somehow taps into the magic of the Great Clock, it’s pretty likely she’ll destroy all of us. Oz, the Other Place—”
“Wait, you mean Kansas? How can Dorothy destroy Kansas with a giant stopwatch?”
“Oz and your world are intertwined,” Gert said. “You know that, Amy.” I remembered what the Wizard had said about Kansas and Oz being two sides of the same place. The strange ways in which Dorothy and I were linked. And the way that magic-crazed Dorothy was tied to the innocent farm girl she’d been in Kansas.
“Oz is layered over the Other Place like another dimension,” Mombi said. “The two worlds don’t interact, but they’re dependent on each other to survive. No one’s ever tried to tap into the magic of the Great Clock before. If Dorothy does, the power will be uncontrollable.”
I’d never really missed Kansas much, but the idea of it being wiped off the map was a totally different prospect from the idea of just never having to go back. I thought of my mom, totally oblivious to the fact that Dorothy was about to drop doom on the whole universe like she’d dropped a house on a witch all those years ago. Dustin and Madison and their baby. Even bitchy old Amber and dopey Mr. Stone. I put my head in my hands as if I could shut out reality myself by covering my eyes.
“Can I stop her?”
Gert looked at Mombi, who shrugged. “You’re connected to the same power she is. You have her shoes. You’re connected to her. I’m pretty sure you’re the only one who can.”
“You or the Nome King,” Glamora added. “But I don’t think we can exactly count on him to help us.”
“He can’t possibly mean for Dorothy to destroy Oz,” Gert protested.
“We still don’t know what he wants,” Nox said. “And if he’s still in the Other Place, we don’t know if he even knows what Dorothy’s doing. Maybe he thinks she’s too powerless now to do any harm.” He shook his head. “But I don’t like it. You keep saying Dorothy’s shoes are protecting you, but how do we know for sure that’s true? What if this is all a trap? I don’t think it’s safe for you to go after Dorothy. We have to think of another way.”
“There is no other way,” Glamora said sharply.
“Amy’s risking her life!” Nox protested.
“We’re all risking our lives,” Mombi pointed out drily.
“I won’t let you just use her!” Nox said fiercely. “You took my life away—fine. I don’t have anything left to lose. But Amy can still go back to Kansas someday. She has a family out there. People who love her. It’s not right for us to ask her to risk this much for a place where she doesn’t even belong.”
That stung. Was that how Nox saw me? After everything we’d been through together? “Don’t I get to decide for myself?” I snapped. “My life will be a hell of a lot better without Dorothy in it, too, remember?”
“You have a family to go back to,” he said softly. “You have a life, Amy. And you’re not strong enough to fight Oz’s magic alone.”
“You don’t get to make that decision for me!” I said sharply. “This is everything I’ve trained for, everything you taught me to do!”
“I know,” he said brokenly. “Believe me, I know.”
“Joining the Quadrant requires we set our personal feelings aside,” Glamora interrupted smoothly. Nox looked like he was about to hit her, but he only shook his head in anger. I almost laughed. The Quadrant’s rules wouldn’t let me be with Nox, but they couldn’t stop me from volunteering for a suicide mission to save him.
“I’m going,” I said.
“You make me sick,” Nox said to Glamora, his voice cold. “All of you. You ask too much. You use people up and throw them away. I might be bound to you, but I don’t have to agree with what you’re doing.” He turned on his heel and walked out of the room.
“Well,” Mombi said after a short, uncomfortable silence. “If we’re leaving for the Emerald City in the morning to save the world, we should all probably get some rest.”
TWENTY-NINE
There weren’t really enough blankets to go around,
and the monkeys had already nabbed most of the palace stock. Ozma was sleeping peacefully with her head pillowed on Lulu’s back, and I paused for a moment to look at them both. Lulu was still snoring gently with her mouth open, looking a far cry from the fierce warrior I’d so recently seen in battle. And Ozma—was she really still in there somewhere? I’d seen her moments of clarity, but none of them ever lasted long enough to give me faith that she’d be back to normal anytime soon. I’d been fighting Dorothy for so long now that I’d never given much thought to what would happen once she was finally defeated. If Ozma was still loopy, who’d take over? The Nome King wanted it to be me. But I was tired of being a pawn in someone else’s story. Nox was right. I didn’t belong here. If Dorothy’s shoes had taken her back to Kansas, they might work a second time for me, too. Once I’d defeated her for good, I was going home, Nome King or no Nome King. Oz would have to solve its own problems.
Gert, Glamora, and Mombi had drifted off—to find private chambers of their own, probably. But as tired as I was, I didn’t want to go to sleep. Instead, I walked out into what had once been the Tin Woodman’s gardens.
The gardens were probably well-kept when he lived here, but they’d long since become overgrown and gone to seed. Still, as broken down as they were, most of the worst of the fighting had been far enough away from the palace that they weren’t any worse for wear than they already had been—save for some trampled patches and a scattered spot of blood here and there.
But elsewhere, flowers bloomed in the moonlight: huge, nodding blossoms that reminded me a little of dahlias, sighing on the wind and releasing little puffs of perfume into the cool air. A swarm of big-winged butterflies drifted past, flapping velvety-soft wings and singing a tiny, almost inaudible lullaby. A big yellow moon hung in the sky, so low that I thought I could touch it if I climbed up high enough. Like the moon at home, this one had a face; only Oz’s moon was a gently smiling woman who reminded me a little bit of Gert.
I wasn’t sure how long I had been standing there when I realized Nox was next to me.
“You should go to sleep,” he said. “Tomorrow will be . . .” He didn’t need to say it. We both knew. But sleep was the last thing I could think about. Suddenly, he grabbed my hand. I startled at the warmth of his touch. The feeling of his skin against mine.
“Look,” he breathed. “Night-blooming tirium.”
“What’s that?”
He held a finger to his lips and beckoned me to follow him, tiptoeing toward a tall plant the size of a sunflower. “Be totally quiet,” he said into my ear, his voice sending a thrill through me. “If you frighten it, it won’t bloom.” He settled down on his haunches to wait and I squatted next to him.
He was watching the tall plant as intently as a cat guarding a mouse hole. The seconds stretched into minutes. I fidgeted. He put one hand on my knee to caution me and left it there. All my senses felt totally alive. His sandalwood smell. The heat of his body. The movement of his breath. He smiled, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the plant.
A single pale tendril was unfurling from the top of the stalk, as slow and elegant as a ballet dancer pirouetting across a stage. Another delicate frond followed, and then another, waving gently in the night breeze. The tendrils sent out shoots of their own, like a silken spiderweb weaving itself in front of our eyes. Slowly, the strands knitted themselves together into a huge, white flower, sparkling with moonlight and moving back and forth almost as though it had a will of its own. I realized I was holding my breath and let it out in a long, slow exhale. The tirium flower was beautiful and impossibly fragile—a reminder that no matter how comfortable I got here Oz would always be an alien land, governed by rules I didn’t fully understand.
The tirium blossom turned toward me and then exploded silently into a starburst of tiny white lights, like fireflies, that swirled around us and drifted away across the grass. Where they caught on leaves or branches they hung glowing until the soft white light finally faded away. The flower was so gorgeous—and so fragile. Like everything good in this crazy world. Like hope. Like whatever had started between me and Nox that we weren’t allowed to finish. I felt my eyes filling with tears, and Nox reached up to brush them away.
“I forgot Dorothy didn’t destroy everything beautiful in Oz,” I said.
“She didn’t destroy you.”
“Not for lack of trying,” I said, and then realized the implication of what he was saying and blushed. I was grateful for the darkness that hid my flaming cheeks.
“My mom would have loved to see something like this. I wish I could’ve said good-bye to her, at least,” I said quietly.
“You’re not going to die,” he said fiercely. “Not tomorrow anyway.”
“I hope not. But I meant when we came back to Oz. I want to go home somehow. But let’s face it, I’ll probably never see her again. I just wish there was some way I could have told her I love her.”
“You can see her,” Nox said. He pointed to a puddle of water at the base of the tirium plant, closing his eyes. I remembered the scrying spell Gert had used to show me an image of my mom back in the caverns of the Wicked. I bent down for a closer look as power flowed from Nox’s hands into the clear water. At first, all I could see was grass and leaves. But then the surface of the water shimmered and grew opaque, and I was looking into the living room of my mom’s new apartment. She was sitting on the couch, her eyes red as though she’d been crying. Jake was sitting on one side with his arms around her. And on the other—
“Dustin and Madison?” I breathed in surprise. Dustin was saying something while Madison nodded, bouncing Dustin Jr. on her knee. And over them all loomed Assistant Principal Strachan.
There was something in my mom’s lap, I realized. Something they were all looking at. A leatherbound book with charred edges. “Dorothy’s journal!” I exclaimed. “My mom must have gone through my room after the tornado and found it. But if they realize what it is—”
“They might figure out Oz is real,” Nox breathed.
“They couldn’t,” I argued. “You don’t understand how hard it is for people from my world to believe in this stuff without seeing it with their own eyes. If they realize what the journal is, they’ll probably just think it proves that Dorothy was a real person—who was totally bonkers.” A strange feeling crept down my spine—warm, heavy, and itchy, like a drop of molten metal rolling along my vertebrae.
“But I thought . . . ,” I said, trailing off as I leaned forward. Assistant Principal Strachan looked up, as though he could sense me. And then, impossibly, his eyes met mine.
And they weren’t Assistant Principal Strachan’s angry eyes. They were the silvery-pale eyes of the Nome King. I gasped. He smiled at me and put one hand on my mom’s shoulder and the other on Madison’s as they turned the pages of Dorothy’s journal.
Do not forget, Miss Gumm, how much you have to lose.
His voice slid into my thoughts and I flinched.
Remove our little friend Dorothy or do not; it is no matter to me either way. But I will come for you very soon. And then, Miss Gumm, what you do will matter very much to me indeed.
I gasped aloud as his thoughts pushed into my mind as if he was just trying to show off how easy it would be to control me. No! I thought fiercely. The boots sent a warm pulse of magic through my body and the Nome King’s grip loosened.
Do not think your shoes are enough to keep me at bay for long, Miss Gumm, he hissed. As suddenly as it had come, his hold on my mind was gone. The vision of my mom’s living room burst like a bubble popping and the puddle evaporated with a steaming hiss, knocking me back to the ground.
“Amy?” Nox was shaking me. “What happened? What did you see?” I was groggy and my thoughts were sluggish as if I’d just woken up from a long, bad dream.
“The Nome King,” I said thickly. “He’s with my mom. He said he’s coming for me.”
Nox breathed in sharply. “Coming for you to do what?”
“I don??
?t know. He doesn’t care if we kill Dorothy. He’s got something else in mind.”
Nox was silent, thinking. “I don’t like this,” he said finally.
I laughed. “You think I do? But we have to kill Dorothy, even if it’s part of the Nome King’s plan.”
“I think you should give me the shoes.”
I shook my head fiercely. “So far they’ve protected me. They helped me fight off the Nome King just now. I don’t want to give them up.”
“Don’t want to? Or can’t?”
We both knew what he meant. Dorothy’s red stilettos, fused to her feet, had transformed her into a monster. I had nothing but my intuition to tell me that my boots wouldn’t do the same thing. It was entirely possible they were transforming me already. That giving me a feeling of protection was just a trick. But I couldn’t use magic and stay myself any other way. And there was no way I was going up against Dorothy without the ability to use my power.
“Promise me something,” I said, not taking my eyes off his. “Just in case.”
“Depends on the promise,” he said. He was standing so close to me I could feel the heat from his skin. I had to bite my lip to keep from kissing him.
“These shoes,” I said, gesturing to my feet. “After tomorrow, if they turn me into . . . you know. Her. If I try to take them off and I can’t. I want you to promise me you’ll do whatever you have to to get them off.”
His eyes widened. “It won’t come to that.”
“Nox, don’t lie to me. It can come to that. So promise me. You’ll get the shoes off no matter what. Even if you”—I took a deep breath—“even if you have to cut off my feet. Even if you have to kill me.”
“Amy, that’s crazy.”
“It’s not crazy, and you know it.”
“I never wanted this for you. I’m so sorry that you—that this—” He made a helpless gesture.
“I know. Promise me, Nox,” I said. He opened his eyes and looked deeply into mine, as if he was trying to drink me in.