Glinda immediately tipped out the contents of the pail. Hundreds of little rocks and stone chips skittered across the words and blanks, reminding her of the game pebbles scattered over the Magical map. She only hoped she could remember the scant bit of terminology her geology professor had halfheartedly imparted in class.
The first of the stones to catch her eye were the bright gemstones: a golden-hued topaz, a gleaming pink tourmaline, a deep blue sapphire, a bloodred garnet. Mixed in with these were opal and onyx, apatite and amethyst, moonstone and malachite.
Picking up a random handful, she spoke the names aloud. “Shale, igneous, granite . . . Aha!”
With eager fingers, she placed the granite chip on one of the blanks in the puzzle.
From his throne, Roquat gave a little nod of approval.
Scooping up another bunch, Glinda quickly picked out an apatite and an agate to add to the paragraph, then continued to search by lining up several more stones and tapping each one in turn, as she said their names out loud.
“Gneiss, basalt, topaz, marble, tuff . . . oh, wait!” She walked her fingers back and chose the topaz, which she placed on what she hoped was the proper blank. “Yes! That’s right. At least I think so. It’s a bit of a pun, I think. Tricky, but it works.”
Next she positioned a blazing blue sapphire, and lastly, a flat stone of dullish gray that bore the lovely name of howlite, which Glinda considered a complete misnomer, since there was no shine to it at all.
“There!” she cried, leaping up from the ground and pointing down at the slate. “I’m finished. I’ve filled them all in!” Indeed, where before the puzzle had been shot through with empty spaces, it was now dotted with stones of various sizes, shapes, and hues. “Now, please, release Ben and tell me how to get to the Mystic!”
“Not so fast, let me see,” fussed Kaliko, bowing low over the slate on the floor.
Then he cleared his throat and recited what Glinda had, indeed, “written in stone.”
“ ‘A hero on a journey must have an apatite for adventure. You must take nothing for granite. Take notice of howlite shines you toward the path you are to follow. But first, you must be brave enough topaz through agate. Beyond it you will find a door; its color is a sapphire.’ ”
“Marvelous!” proclaimed the king. “Most excellent indeed!”
“So . . . I won!”
“No!” Roquat shook his head. “Oh no. No, no, no. You most certainly did not win. In fact, you lost. Failed miserably, I’m sorry to say. Well, not that sorry.”
“But how could I have failed?” Glinda argued. “Look, I even got the tricky ones. Topaz—to pass—through ‘a gate.’ I even reasoned that granite would translate to ‘granted’ when read aloud.”
“No one said your game play was not impressive,” Roquat conceded. “It’s just incomplete.”
“No, it isn’t! Look. I filled in every blank space.”
“Turn it over,” said the king smugly.
Kaliko tipped the slate, spilling off Glinda’s carefully placed stones, then flipped it over. There on the back was one final sentence, ending in a blank.
“That’s not fair!” said Glinda. “You didn’t say there was more on the back.”
“And I didn’t say there wasn’t. You might have checked, mightn’t you? It wouldn’t have been against the rules. You just assumed that the entire puzzle was there before you, when in fact, there was more to see, if only you had been looking.”
Glinda clenched her fists, and her face turned the color of rubies. “Cheater!”
“I prefer ‘winner,’ ” said Roquat. “But there’s no need to be such a spoilsport. You have your consolation prize right there! The part of the puzzle you did solve is the key to finding Mythra—assuming you can interpret it.”
“What about Ben?”
“Good question.” Roquat uncrossed his thunderous stone legs, then crossed them again. “How about this: if you do happen to locate your missing Mystic, there is something she has that I would very much like for myself. A belt.”
Glinda was sure she’d heard him wrong. “Did you say ‘belt’?”
“Oh, it’s not just any belt,” Roquat assured her. “It’s all studded with gemstones and—unless I miss my guess—loaded with Magic of the highest quality.” He patted his boulder-like tummy. “And besides, I occasionally have trouble keeping my robe closed, so . . . there’s that.”
“Fine,” said Glinda. “I will bring you Mythra’s belt—”
“If you can find her,” Kaliko cut in ominously.
He’s lucky I lost my sword, thought Glinda. “And you will give Ben back to me!”
“Yes, yes, contingent of course on whether you survive your dealings with Mythra, as she is known to be very, very—” He snapped his fingers, and the stone Glinda had earlier identified as tuff appeared in his hand; he tossed it to Glinda, who caught it.
“She’s tough,” said Glinda. “I get it.”
“Aren’t you even curious,” Kaliko asked, “about the final line of the game? You know, the one you got wrong?”
“I didn’t get it wrong, I just missed it,” Glinda returned sharply. But she was curious, so she nodded, and Kaliko read the question scratched onto the back of the slate.
“ ‘When shadows fall, for light you’ll call, to make it right, use . . . . . . blank!’ ” The steward flashed his stony teeth. “It’s a difficult one. I doubt you would have solved it anyway.”
“Off with you now,” said Roquat.
Luckily, Glinda was able to recall which stones she had placed on which blanks in the game. Ignoring the inspirational preamble, she focused on the part that seemed to be the directions. Looking around the throne room, she noticed that the iron fence blocking the archway was flanked by two flaming torches and saw instantly “how light” shone on the rusted bars. She marched straight to it and gave it a little push. It swung open on creaky hinges. The sound was ominous, and the corridor it led to foreboding, but according to the puzzle, she must be brave enough “to pass” through “a gate.”
And so she did, only to find herself confronted with three doors.
Glinda studied them, wondering what might become of her if she chose the wrong one. Each was painted in a brilliant shade. The first was a dazzling blue, the second a brilliant orange, the third a pale pink. “Its color is a sapphire,” she said, remembering the last line of the word game. “Why, it’s almost too easy. The most common and popular color of sapphires is blue.” Her hand reached for the silver knob of the blue door. But she drew it back quickly, realizing how unlike Roquat it would be to make this challenge so unchallenging. Closing her eyes, she pictured the words on the slate: ITS COLOR IS A SAPPHIRE.
Not just sapphire but a sapphire. Or, if one were clever: as . . . a . . . pphire.
Its color is as a fire! And after her experience with the Elemental Fairy Ember, she certainly knew what color that was.
Heart racing, she reached for the diamond-like knob and opened the flame-colored door.
16
TIN AGAIN, BEGIN AGAIN
Shade had been tramping along the Road of Red Cobble for miles, taking full advantage of its Magic when it presented itself, and employing her stealth methods when it did not. It was on those occasions when the road, for its own unknowable reasons, had disappeared, that Shade had been forced to tread the yellow bricks. These were the times when she’d had to dodge Witch minions out on their military rounds, or disappear into crowds. She took every opportunity to listen in unfamiliar doorways or read over unsuspecting shoulders in her attempt to glean information about Tilda and Nick. It was not until she’d stumbled upon a quintet of fiddlers that she’d learned something useful.
The band had just come to an earsplitting halt, mid-tune, so that the leader could scold the hurdy-gurdy player, who (even Shade could tell) was not playing the instrument so much as torturing it. The hurdy-gurdy player took offense, blaming his sour notes on the fact that he was in a bit of romantic turmoi
l at the moment, having seen that hatchet-holding heartthrob Nick Chopper on his sweetheart Nimmie Amee’s doorstep.
So Shade set out again, and it wasn’t long before she heard shouts of alarm.
With her cape whipping around her, she ran until she skidded to a halt in front of a little stone house. A pretty Munchkin girl stood on the front porch, wringing her hands, watching in terror as the black cloud, so familiar to Shade, came swirling up from the roots of a tall tree.
Tilda and Nick were caught right in the middle of it. It was circling them as though to bind them to the trunk like a rope. Shade bolted for them, bringing the red road with her; she reached out to grab Nick by his tin arm and jerked him onto the Magical path. The smoke gave no indication that it had noticed the abrupt disappearance of the young woodcutter. Indeed, it seemed concerned only with enveloping Tilda.
“Mistress Gavaria!” screamed Shade, reaching beyond the edge of the road as far as she dared. “Give me your hand.”
But the smoke had grown so dense so quickly that Shade could no longer see Tilda in its depths.
“If only I had some manner of long stick for her to cling onto,” said Nick, his eyes taking in the low-hanging branches of the tree.
“No, Woodcutter,” Shade commanded. “You can’t.”
But Nick had already flung himself off the red road and was chopping with all his might, hacking at every bough he could reach, swinging his ax over and over again, until he had chopped clean through one of the longest branches. As it broke away from the trunk, the girl on the porch let out a wail of pure anguish. Because Nick’s cursed ax was not finished yet.
Shade had never witnessed such a horrible sight as that of Nick’s own ax slicing through his shoulder and removing him of his last real limb. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the girl leap from the porch and sprint off toward town. How Nick Chopper could fall for such a coward, Shade could not imagine. For she was sure there was no Munchkin braver than the woodcutter who even now, with his arm severed clean off, refused to give up the fight.
Dropping his ax, he used his arm of tin to pick up the fallen bough, which he thrust into the smoke, calling out, “Sorceress, take hold!”
But the bough, too heavy for him to support in one hand, wobbled and nearly fell from his grasp. Mindless of the peril, Shade jumped off the road to help him, and together they steadied the branch and extended it into the darkness.
When the smoke saw what the tin boy and the cloaked girl were about, it rolled away from Tilda and swept toward them instead. In a flash of gleaming metal, Nick planted his tin foot on Shade’s back and gave her a good hard push, away from the approaching cloud and back onto the red road. A moment later he was enshrouded in darkness!
Shade whipped her head around to Tilda, who was glowering at the enemy haze.
“Run, mistress!” she cried, flapping her cape madly, beckoning the Sorceress to the safety of the red cobbles.
But Tilda did not obey Shade’s plea. Instead she roared, “Take me, smoke! I am the one you came for. Take me and leave the boy of tin.”
And so it did.
With one raging swirl, the smoke of the fifth Witch surrounded Tilda as though it would happily suffocate her in its depths. Then it lifted itself from the yard of the stone house to billow skyward and away, with Tilda obscured within, its prisoner.
Shade did not wait for the cobblestones to sink into the blue Munchkin dirt. Dropping to her knees beside Nick, she bunched up a section of her cape and held it to the place where his arm should have been, applying gentle pressure.
“Why did you chop that branch?” she asked softly. “You knew the ax would slip; you knew it would remove you of another limb.”
“Indeed I did,” said Nick with a nod and a grimace. “But in that moment, I did not care one splinter about that darned curse! All that mattered was saving Tilda.”
Shade whirled at the sound of footsteps rushing in their direction. It was the girl from the porch, and she was practically dragging someone along with her. A Munchkin man in a thick leather apron, carrying an armful of tools.
The girl crouched down beside Nick and smoothed his hair from his forehead.
“Nimmie Amee,” he whispered, and even his excruciating pain did not stop him from blushing at her nearness. “You brought Ku-Klip. How kind. And how necessary. I’m thankful he is here to lend his expertise to my current tribulation.”
The tinsmith set about his work, and suddenly the air was filled with the clanking, banging, and creaking of the tinsmith’s “expertise.” Silvery sparks flew from the speed with which he hacksawed and hammered.
Shade adjusted the compress and was rewarded with a strained smile from Nick.
“What brought you here, my spy-ish friend?” he asked. “Is there news from Quadling?”
“Only that Mythra is dead.” She looked up from under her lashes at Nimmie, who was gazing at Nick adoringly and looking quite troubled by his pain. While she no longer thought the girl cowardly, Shade still wasn’t sure she trusted the stranger enough to say much more.
“Dead,” Nick repeated. “That’s rather tragic, isn’t it? And now Tilda has been taken captive. It’s more than my heart can bear!”
“Who in Oz’s name are you nattering to, Chopper?” Ku-Klip asked, looking up from the tin he was molding. When he saw Shade, he seemed surprised to find that someone other than Nimmie Amee was present. With a shake of his head, he went back to his smithing. Nick gritted his teeth as Ku-Klip continued the agonizing process of attaching the new arm to the old torso.
“I’m sorry, spy,” said Nick. “I did all that I could, but it was still not enough. Please tell Glinda that I did my best, will you?”
“I shall tell her you were dauntless,” Shade assured him in her softest voice.
She stayed by the woodcutter’s side until the last rivet was secured. Then she leaned down, placed a kiss on his cheek, and rose to her feet. Pulling her gray hood up over her head, she was about to step onto the red cobblestones, but Nick’s voice stopped her.
“Girl in the cloak?”
She turned back to face him. “Yes, woodcutter?”
“If you ever find the Sorceress—and I pray that you do—would you kindly pass on a message from me to her?”
“Of course,” said Shade. “What would you have me tell her?”
“Tell her that she will forever and always hold a very special place in this tin woodman’s heart.”
17
DEBUNKING MYTHRA
The orange door opened on a flight of tightly coiled steps carved into stone—a far less delicate version of the nautilus spiral that had taken Glinda from the toolshed into the pool. The glow spilling from Roquat’s chamber lit the stairwell only as far as the first curve; the rest of the way was swallowed up by shadow.
Glinda all but leaped onto the top step, continuing downward at a near gallop until the borrowed light was spent and she was forced to slow down. Descending into darkness, she felt for each step with the toe of her boot. The only sound was the scuff of her heels as they scattered a thick coating of pebbly dust. It was clear that no one had used this stairway in ages; even the air felt lonely, having gone far too long without someone there to breathe it.
The already snug staircase grew more narrow with every step, chasing itself in an ever-tighter circle; the walls were now brushing against Glinda’s shoulders, snagging at the fabric of her sleeves. If the stairs did not deposit her somewhere soon, she would find herself wedged in like sap clogged in a flower stem. She briefly considered turning around and going back up, but the thought was immediately dismissed; she had to find Mythra—everything that meant anything to her, to Oz, was riding on this meeting. And besides, even if she were willing to give up and reverse direction, the dimensions of the stairwell would not allow it. She wondered how many of the world’s heroes had actually become heroes not only because they possessed the unwavering courage and commitment to sally forth, but because their circumstances had simply le
ft them no other choice but to see it through.
When at last she reached the bottom, she had to angle herself sideways and squeeze through a slender doorway. She was not surprised to see that she’d arrived in yet another cave. It was undoubtedly a dwelling place, lit by the struggling flame of a single candle stub. But unlike Roquat’s lavish audience chamber, this place offered no frills, no luxuries, no comfort at all. The dampness was already clinging to her skin, the chill burrowing into her bones. The only furnishings she could make out were a rough-hewn wooden table flanked by two hard chairs, and a straw pallet on the floor for someone to sleep on. A lumpy burlap sack slouched in one cobwebbed corner, where it appeared to have been flung and promptly forgotten.
Glinda was beginning to fear that the Nome King had, indeed, cheated and tricked her into going through that door and down those spiraling steps. Reaching for the candlestick, she swung the feeble light into each distant corner of the hovel.
“Mythra?” she called softly. “Mythra, please . . . if you are here, do show yourself. My name is Glinda. I come from Oz and I know you are not expecting me—” Her gaze fell upon the rumpled bed linens, the collection of food-encrusted wooden bowls and horn cups scattered across the table. “Or anyone else, it seems—but I urgently require your help, good Mystic. I need it in abundant amounts. So if you could please just reveal yourself, I would very much appreciate it.”
Out of the silence came a scuffling sound; a ripple in the stillness that became the hunched figure of a woman tiptoeing out of the shadows. Glinda tried to shine the candlelight on her, but her face was hidden under a hooded shawl. It was clear from the shambling approach and the stoop of the shoulders that she was very old; her form was frail, and her hands poking out from beneath the shawl were wrinkled and gnarled with age.
Impossible, Glinda thought. The Mythra she’d seen in the statue had been tall and strong, thrumming with Magical confidence. She refused to believe that a Fairy of such might could have diminished this dramatically.