To Glinda’s right was Pete. He was wrapped in chains—and from the scarlet aura around them, I could tell they weren’t ordinary chains binding him, but magical ones. In addition to being tied up, he was gagged. I tried to meet his gaze, but he looked away, and I instantly knew my suspicion about what he had done was the right one.
I didn’t even bother being disgusted. Pete, and the way he had betrayed me, were the least of my concerns. Because standing to Glinda’s left was none other than Dorothy Gale herself. She wore a menacing, self-satisfied grin, like the cat who had just eaten the canary.
Crouched at her feet, looking more like a cat who had just eaten one too many canaries, was the Lion. Like Pete, his body was wrapped in a thick, heavy chain, one end of which Dorothy was clutching like a leash. He was whimpering pathetically, hiding his face with his huge paws, quivering in fear. A coward.
“Amy Gumm,” Dorothy said. “Just who we were hoping to run into. Somehow I had a feeling we might find you here—and when I say a feeling, what I mean is that this guy told us.” She nodded smugly in Pete’s direction. “Careful who you trust, hmm? That’s a lesson you could both stand to learn. Can you imagine? He thought Glinda would actually help him.”
“I’m glad you found me,” I said, mustering more confidence than I actually felt. “It’s actually pretty convenient. Everyone I want to kill, and you’re all lined up in a neat little row so I can pick you off one by one. Now who wants to go first?”
I couldn’t help shooting daggers at Pete. “How about you?” I asked. “Nah. Not worth my time.”
At that moment, my reinforcements came bursting through the wall of flames, the charred rainbow that had carried them expending itself in a final sputter of exhaust as they landed: first Polychrome, followed by Nox, Heathcliff, and, finally, a dazed-looking Bright.
Polychrome didn’t waste any time. In one quick move, she jumped astride her cat, and they seemed to merge into one: together, they were undulating with color, a panther and unicorn and girl and rainbow all at once, a single form burning with even more intensity than the flames that were everywhere around us.
“Witch,” the creature bellowed, rearing on sinewy haunches and launching itself straight for Glinda, claws extended and long as kitchen knives. As it flew through the air, its churning colors shifted up the spectrum until it was a radiant beast of pure light.
Glinda simply flung her arms out, throwing up protection, and the whole sky lit up in a blinding flash as the creature collided with her in a shower of multihued sparks. It looked like someone had just set off a whole entire barge of fireworks in one go. But the sorceress just let out an uncharacteristically harsh cackle as she stood there, unharmed.
The monster that had been Polychrome just a minute ago drew back, undeterred, and struck again, quick as lightning. The battle was on, and I had to trust that Polychrome could handle her part of it. I had another enemy to fight.
Suddenly Nox was at my side. “Ready to raise the body count?” he asked.
“I’m ready,” I said. As if it would ever be a question. It had taken me sixteen years to figure it out, but this was what I had been born for: to fight. When I looked down on the knife that was already in my hand, I saw that it wasn’t a knife at all anymore, but now a sword with a shining ebony blade.
Dorothy hadn’t moved an inch. She was observing the scene in unconcerned amusement. She looked down at the Lion crouched at her feet.
“Cowardly one,” Dorothy commanded. “Prove your worth.”
“But . . . ,” the Lion whimpered. Dorothy yanked at the chain that bound him, pulling it tight around his neck, choking him with it.
“Kill them,” she said.
He roared, not with menace but with rageful anguish, and attacked, bounding for us. Nox hadn’t come bearing a weapon, but he didn’t need one: his magic was made for battle. His hands began to crackle with mystical energy. He dropped to the ground, letting the Lion sail over him, and then reached up and plunged his burning fingers into the beast’s belly. The Lion yelped and rolled away as Nox bounced right back up.
“I’ve got him,” Nox said. “You take Dorothy.”
I teleported myself ten feet over Dorothy’s head and dove for her, swinging my sword with both hands like a batter ready to hit the game-winning home run.
She just laughed and ducked.
I kept on going, feeling like a windup toy. I was hitting her from every possible angle, slicing and dicing and shooting off one fireball after the next, moving with the grace and precision of a ballerina. But every shot I took missed, and she barely seemed to have broken a sweat.
She was still holding tightly to the end of the chain that she seemed to be controlling the Lion with, and she kept glancing over at him, muttering things under her breath like she was giving instructions. Was she controlling him with magic? It was like she was fighting in two places at once, her mind—and maybe her power—divided between me and Nox.
It should have given me an advantage to have her distracted like this. It didn’t. Nothing I did seemed to even come close to hurting her.
But I couldn’t give up. I wouldn’t give up. I had been brought here to do this. It was my only purpose, and I wasn’t going to fail again.
Then a voice pulled me out of my fugue. It was Pete. “Amy!” he shouted. I snapped my head toward him, only to see Bright lying unconscious on the ground and Nox in the clutches of the Lion, who had him by the collar of his shirt and was dangling him aloft. Nox writhed and fought, helpless in his grip.
Dorothy shot Pete a look of disgusted consternation. “Oh, shut up,” she snapped, sending a bolt of energy flying for him. “You can’t keep changing sides like that.” As the magic connected with a ruby-red flash, Pete disappeared, replaced, once again, by Ozma.
That was the least of my worries. If I didn’t do something fast, Nox was a goner.
“Kill the warlock,” Dorothy cooed at the Lion, who was baring his fangs in threat. I realized he was trembling. Once a coward, always a coward. “I want to see him suffer,” Dorothy said.
“I . . . I . . . ,” the Lion stuttered. “I don’t . . .”
Nox gave me a wide-eyed look of panic. “Forget me!” he shouted. “I’m not important.”
I looked from him, to the Lion, to Dorothy, making a calculation. Nox was right—this wasn’t about him anymore—but at the same time, what good would it do for me to keep on fighting hopelessly against Dorothy just to let him die?
For her part, Dorothy just looked annoyed at the Lion’s inaction. “Do it, coward,” she said. She gave a sharp yank on the chain she held the Lion with, and I saw a wave of energy ripple through it. So that’s what she was controlling him with.
It gave me an idea: a cord can always be cut. So instead of striking directly at Dorothy again, or at the Lion himself, I stepped forward and brought my sword down on the leash.
A freezing jolt zinged through my body as the metal links shattered. The Lion collapsed to the ground, dropping Nox from his grasp, and Dorothy screamed, recoiling. Whatever I had done, it had wounded her.
I probably should have gone straight for her while I could—hit her while she was down. But I only had a moment to make my choice.
I was now certain that my decision to let the Lion go the last time I’d seen him had been stupid, and I could have weakened Dorothy before now, before she’d had a chance to bring us all together like this. And I should have put him out of his misery when I’d had the chance.
As he heaved on the ground, covering his face with his paws, I blinked myself to his side and in a single, determined stroke, sliced his head off.
I did it with no pleasure. I hardly thought about what I was doing at all, but I was surprised at how little resistance I felt as my dark blade tore through his thick, muscular flesh; at how effortlessly I drew blood.
At how little remorse I felt.
He didn’t even have time to scream: a geyser of blood shot up from the stump at his neck as his head separat
ed from his body and dropped to the smoking rock. It bounced once and rolled over to where Nox was crawling to his knees and staring in disbelief at everything that had just happened.
“Help Polychrome,” I told him tersely. Nox nodded, springing instantly back into action. He teleported across the field to where the rainbow’s daughter was still locked in combat with Glinda.
Based on what I could see of how she was faring, she needed all the assistance she could get. Glinda had surrounded herself behind a barricade of magical protections, and was crouched with a shimmering longbow from which she was letting loose one zinging arrow of pink energy after another. Each one flew through the air faster than the last toward the creature Polychrome had transformed herself into, which was flailing on the field, dodging in vain and stumbling to keep going as light poured from the many wounds that had already pierced its body.
And the moment that Nox materialized at her side was the moment it was all over. One final arrow sailed through the air from Glinda’s expert hand and ripped through the creature’s chest. The creature fell from the air and separated, once again, into two figures: Polychrome and Heathcliff, both of them now limp and inert, landing with two thuds on the ground.
“No!” screamed Bright, who had come to and was now on his knees, watching in horror.
Nox didn’t let it give him pause. He spun toward Glinda, drawing his fist back and bringing it toward her, letting loose a torrent of purple bolts that rained down on the makeshift walls she’d built around herself and shattered them like glass.
I wanted to watch him take down Glinda, to relish her demise, but I had to deal with Dorothy. She had recovered herself, and was now smoothing out her dress. She glanced over at where the Lion’s head lay and tossed her hair.
“Good help is so hard to find these days,” she said. “Just as well, I guess. What use is a Lion who doesn’t even want to eat people?”
She gave the head a kick with a cruelty that made me shudder. “Now, Amy,” she said. “You and I have a score to settle.”
I couldn’t disagree. It was time to finish this. I just wasn’t sure how I was going to do it.
Dorothy and I stared each other down, slowly circling each other. There was something crackling between us now, a repellent attraction that I couldn’t ignore, and I tried to let the battle still raging around us slip away. She was the only thing that mattered right now. I had to fight smarter, not harder.
As for her, she wasn’t concerned at all.
“You know one thing I miss from home?” she asked pleasantly as she reached up and pulled a red ribbon from her hair, letting her ponytail come loose and fall in shiny waves around her shoulders. “Malt shops,” she said. “You have no idea how many servants I’ve been through trying to find the one who could brew me up a decent strawberry phosphate. They never quite get it right. Have you ever had a strawberry phosphate? Do you love them?”
I pictured all the different ways I wanted her to die.
I wanted to drive a stake through her heart like she was a vampire. I wanted to bring my fists together and smash her skull open. I wanted to drop a house on her. It was too bad that I didn’t have one handy. I took a step back, unsure of myself, as she bit her lip and began to twirl the ribbon absentmindedly around her finger.
But it wasn’t as empty a gesture as it appeared: as she twisted it, the ribbon began to take on weight and heft. It began to grow until it was twice and then three times the length of her body, and then she began to whirl it over her head, where it thickened, its satiny texture transforming into something metallic, until it was no longer a ribbon in any way, but instead a thick metal chain just like the one she’d used to bind the Lion, spinning above her.
Game on. I flung off a fireball as a warning shot, and was surprised that when it emerged from my hands, it burned not red but black as night. Dorothy watched it shoot toward her like it was moving in slow motion and, with her free hand, flicked it away as easily as a normal person would swat a mosquito. As it hit the ground, it exploded into a ring that surrounded us in a wall of black flames.
In the distance, I heard Nox howling in pain. I felt a wrench in my heart. I wanted desperately to help him, but I knew that he was now as much beyond my reach as I was beyond his. Dorothy wanted me alone, and so that was how we would fight.
And even as I felt my body pumping more power than I was sure I could handle, I also felt a spiraling sense of helplessness. All the training and fighting techniques and all the magic that I’d come to rely on felt suddenly like they were useless against her. I pushed my doubt out of my mind, but I knew that if I didn’t come up with a plan, fast, I was a goner.
Dorothy didn’t miss a beat as I teleported myself through the shadows to a place behind her. She just pivoted on her red heels to face me, her chain still whistling in the air as she twirled it faster and faster.
“Someone’s getting awfully familiar with the darkness, isn’t she?” Dorothy singsonged. She cracked the chain like a bullwhip, then swung it toward me.
I dodged, my magic pulsing in my veins like a drug, pushing me to move faster than she—or anyone—could ever possibly anticipate, so fast that it was hard to know if I was actually teleporting or not. I sliced my sword through the air in a graceful arc. I’d used it to hurt her once before; maybe it would work again.
In order for that plan to work though, I would have to actually make contact, and that was easier said than done.
As fast as I spun and dodged and blinked in and out of reality, she swung her chain faster. Whenever I thought I was close enough to slice the thing in two, it slithered out of my reach just in time.
Then it struck, shooting forth and grabbing me by the neck, where it coiled itself tightly around me.
Just like that, my sword disappeared from my hand, and I felt my windpipe closing up. I clawed at my neck, trying to break free, but the more I struggled, the tighter the chain pulled.
“What about tuna noodle hot dish?” Dorothy mused, caught up in some game she was playing with herself. “My aunt Em always made the most delicious hot dish. Tuna noodle hot dish and strawberry phosphate. Now there’s a meal I’d waste a few calories on! It’s not that I miss Kansas. It will be burned to the ground soon enough anyway. Just like this place. But, oh, there are a few things it will be a shame to lose for good.”
If I’d been just slightly stupider, I would have thought she’d forgotten I was even there. And if I’d had any breath to speak, I would have asked what she meant about Kansas being burned to the ground. But at that second, it was all I could do just to keep breathing.
Dorothy’s voice was filled with smug satisfaction and just a touch of wistfulness. “I’ll need a new slave now that I’ve lost my dear, cowardly companion the Lion,” she said. “And you, Amy Gumm, have more power in you that he had in one of his his teeny weeny pinkie-claws. You’ll make a perfect henchgirl.”
She curled a spindly finger toward me, beckoning, and, almost as an afterthought, gave a tug on my leash. As much as I wanted to stay where I stood, I couldn’t. There was some kind of power the chain gave her over me. I felt myself walking obediently toward her.
“That’s a good girl. I can already tell that you’ll make quite the little trained monster.”
I was so tempted to just give in. Nothing could have felt nicer, in that moment, than to stop fighting for good. To let it all go, and be under her power once and for all. To not have to worry about this crap anymore. I kept moving forward, halfway relieved to have it all be over.
And yet, another voice in the back of my head was urging me not to give in. The voice was no one’s but my own. I couldn’t give in. As much as I wanted to, as good as it would have felt, I knew that I couldn’t. Not after all this.
If anything separated me from Dorothy, it was that. We had been the same, once, except that she had given up. Had given in. To the magic, to her shoes, to Glinda, whispering in her ear.
I wouldn’t.
Now we were eye to eye
, so close that the stench of her breath was overpowering as she spoke. It smelled like rancid strawberries.
“I’ll give you this,” she was saying. “You’ve developed a certain flair in the short time since I last saw you. A sense of magical style, I suppose. You’re really coming into your own. But, like I say, you’re leaning too much on the same old, same old. The shadow teleporting thing is getting to be old hat, don’t you suppose? A little predictable, hmm? Well, we’ll just need to teach you a few new tricks.”
New tricks. After I had made it to the Fog of Doubt, I’d thought for sure I had been sent there to fail. To lose myself; to give up. Now I realized that I had been wrong. I had been brought there by the Road of Yellow Bricks, and the Magril had been waiting for me for a reason. It was only because I had made it through the fog that I knew now what I had to do. It was simple. It was what the Magril had taught me. I just had to become myself.
I could. And I would. I didn’t need my blade to do it, either. The blade was a part of me.
“How’s this for tricks?” I croaked at Dorothy, tearing with my bare hands at the leash. From out of my fists, a swirling blackness enveloped the shackles that bound me, and the links in the chain began to crumble. There was a snapping sound as I freed myself, and the leash she held me by crumbled to pieces and fell to the ground, melting into shadow.
Dorothy recoiled in shock, and as my knife returned to me in a flash, a look of even deeper surprise crested her face.
In her moment of confusion, I drew the knife back and plunged it through her heart. I pushed it straight through her body until I saw the bloody tip come out the other side.
Dorothy screamed, doubling over in pain. Her mouth dropped open and her eyes bugged out; her smooth, china-white skin began to sag and wrinkle as she aged what looked like twenty years in the fraction of a second. She began to turn green.
I had done it. I had killed her.
I towered over her, raised my fist to the sky, and called down more of the darkness, letting it rip through me. I had done it. I had killed her. This was who I was. This was who I was meant to be.