Dorothy Must Die

Chapter Four

Star and I walked, following the road, and when she seemed to get tired, I took her and placed her on my shoulder, where she perched patiently and looked out into the distance. She knew just as well as I did that we were very far from home.

Despite my crash landing in Oz, my body was surprisingly free of bruises, aches, and pains. Actually, I felt pretty good. The headache I’d had when I’d first landed had subsided, and now I felt full of energy.

I was hoping that the place would cheer up as I got farther away from the pit. I was still hoping for a tree that grew lollipops or a welcome committee of cheerful Munchkins—or anything cheerful, really. But as I walked down the road, the countryside remained as grim and desolate as before, everything cast in the eerie blue light that reminded me of the glow of a television from underneath the crack of a closed door.

There were no singing birds. The only signs of life were the giant ravens that occasionally swooped overhead, startling me every time they crowed. There were no trees to be seen, but the air smelled vaguely of burning leaves.

After a while, the bedraggled fields by the side of the road turned into huge cornfields on either side, with stalks as tall as my body. I was used to cornfields back in Kansas, obviously, but these were different: every ear was as black and shiny as oil. It looked like each one had been dipped in tar. Or like all the life had been sucked out of them and had something dead and evil pumped back in their place.

Curious, I reached out to pull one of them from its stalk. Before I could even touch it, a black vine sprung up from the ground and curled around my arm like a whip, squeezing tight. It burned. I yelped and pulled away, managing to twist myself free, and retreated to a spot in the center of the road that I hoped was safely out of reach. I made a note not to go poking around at anything else here. This wasn’t Dorothy’s Oz.

It was Oz, wasn’t it? The boy had called it that, and the fact that I was walking along a road made of yellow bricks was enough to convince me I wasn’t in Canada or Argentina. I just had no idea what this Oz had to do with the story I knew. It would have been nice if he’d given me a little more information.

Or maybe he had: Suddenly I remembered what he’d said to me before he’d disappeared into the pit. “Don’t make the same mistakes she made.”

Could he have been talking about Dorothy? “This is where it all began for her,” he’d said. Who else could he have meant? And what “mistakes” had she made?

I thought about it some more. What if Dorothy had been here, just like the book said, but she had somehow gotten it wrong? Like, what if the witch had killed her instead of the other way around? If so, this depressing version of fairyland definitely felt wicked enough to be the result.

It was a weird idea—so weird that I felt my headache coming back as I tried to wrap my head around it—but what if Dorothy had screwed everything up and someone had decided to bring over another girl from Kansas as some kind of do-over?

I shuddered to myself. I had enough problems of my own back in Kansas. Why couldn’t I have been swept away to an imaginary kingdom where nothing was wrong at all—where I could just kick my legs up and enjoy a nice, relaxing vacation? I racked my brain, trying to remember if there were any books or movies like that, and realized there weren’t any.

Well, one thing was for sure—I didn’t have any magical shoes to take me home. Even if I could click my heels together and be right back in Kansas where I’d started, I wouldn’t. This place was dark and scary and a little evil seeming, but it was something new and different. Now I just needed to find someone to tell me what was going on here.

So I felt my heart leap when the road dipped down into a shallow valley and curved to the right, heading right toward a cluster of buildings that was sprawled at the foot of the hill.

A town. There had to be people living there. This time, I would make them give me some answers.

As I made my way toward it, though, I began to see that my hopes for human contact might need to wait a little longer. The buildings, which were arranged around a decrepit stone plaza, were all cracked and crumbling and grown over with ivy that looked like it had never been tended. The facades of some of the houses had been spray-painted with some kind of graffiti tag: an angry, green frowny face.

The whole area had the distinct look of a place that had slowly been deserted, kind of like the town a few miles away from Flat Hill that everyone had abandoned when the plastic flower factory had shut down.

“Hello?” I called out when I had reached the ring of buildings encircling the town square. There was no response.

From up close, it was clear that this place had actually been nice, once. Even abandoned like this, there was something cheerful and quaint about the way the houses—all of various heights—were built so close together that they were practically stacked on top of one another, as if personal space wasn’t something they cared about around here. And although they were falling apart now, each house was beautifully crafted, with domed roofs and round windows and ornate wooden shutters with fancy iron hardware.

I had to hunch a little to peer inside the nearest window, which barely reached my chin. Inside, there was a table set for five with moldy food on each plate, like whoever had once lived there had left in the middle of dinner.

“They could really use some Munchkins around here, huh?” I said to Star, who hadn’t moved from her perch on my shoulder. She just stared back at me balefully and didn’t bother squeaking a response.

I jumped back in surprise when I stepped into the square. Someone was smiling down at me triumphantly. Then I realized it wasn’t a person at all. It was a statue cast in marble, and it was the first thing I’d seen in the whole town that wasn’t dirty and crumbling. In fact, it was so white that it was glowing—all except for the pair of glittering silver shoes on its feet.

Of course, I recognized it immediately. With her kind, smiling face, her jaunty gingham dress, and her neatly curled pigtails, there was no mistaking her: it was Dorothy. The silver plaque on the pedestal confirmed it:

Here Stands Dorothy Gale, it read. She Who Arrived on the Wind, Slayed the Wicked, and Freed the Munchkins.

By now, I’d given up on the idea that I was dreaming—my body felt too heavy and solid, and as bizarre as everything was, none of it had the sticky, underwater quality of a dream. Even so, it was kind of unreal to confirm the alternative with my own two eyes: that I had been thrown into a fairy tale.

“Dorothy likes her statues,” a voice said, from out of nowhere. Startled, I looked around to see where it was coming from, and saw a face peering down at me from the second-story window of a house a few paces off. “Me, I have to say, I’m pretty sick of them.”

There was a thud as a small black knapsack landed next to me. Unthinkingly, I reached down for it.

“Don’t touch that!” the voice growled. I jumped back and saw her scrambling out the window. She dangled by her fingers before dropping to the ground, landing softly as if the height were no big thing. It was a girl. She looked up at me with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity, and when she sprung to her feet, I saw that there was no way she was more than four feet tall, even in her platform boots.

Now this was more like it. I was face-to-face with a real, live Munchkin.

At least, I was pretty sure that’s what she was. Her hair was inky blue-black and her eyes were caked in thick eyeliner with triple fake lashes. She was wearing a vampy eggplant-hued lipstick and a leather skirt. Her T-shirt revealed arms covered in complicated tattoo sleeves.

But she was short, and she moved with a springiness and agility that was something more than just plain old human. Anyway, I’d already been here long enough that I wasn’t shocked to find out that there was such a thing as a goth Munchkin.

“Excuse me?” the girl barked as I looked her up and down curiously. “Do you have a problem?”

Heat rose to my face as my mind flashed to Madison Pendleton.

“Nope. Do you?” I snapped right back at her. I couldn’t even look at a Munchkin without starting trouble. Was she going to punch me now, too?

She didn’t. Instead, she let out a wry cackle and rolled her eyes. “Let’s see,” she said. “Do I have a problem? How about, do I have five thousand?” She marched right over to where I stood and grabbed her bag from where it lay at my feet. It was stuffed to the seams with what I figured must be an entire leather wardrobe. “The answer’s yes, by the way.”

“I’m Amy,” I said, hoping this was what passed for friendly in Munchkin Country. I reached out a hand, which she ignored.

“Indigo,” she replied. She eyed my shoulder. “Cool rat, by the way. I love rats. Does it talk?”

I glanced at Star, still hoping she would decide that the answer was yes. She didn’t respond.

“Nope.” I shrugged.

“Too bad.” Her eyes traced up to my head. “But I don’t know about the hair. She’s not going to like it.”

I put a hand to my scalp and brushed a pink lock from my eyes.

“Why would my pet rat care what my hair looks like?”

Again, Indigo hooted. “Not your rat, dumbass. Her.”

“Who’s she?”

Indigo scrunched her face up and swiveled her neck like I was a complete moron. “Oh yeah, who’s she? she asks. Please.”

“No, seriously,” I said. “I’m new around here. Tell me who you’re talking about.”

“I’m new around here,” Indigo mocked me in a squeaky falsetto, slipping her backpack on. But as she did it, she looked at me. Really looked at me.

“Wait, you’re not kidding, are you? You really aren’t from around here.” She was staring at my clothes. I guessed that jeans and a hoodie were not what the kids were wearing in Oz.

“No,” I said simply. “I’m not.”

Her jaw dropped open in slow motion as it dawned on her. “Holy shit,” she said. “You’re from the Other Place, aren’t you?” She looked over one shoulder and then the other, then asked quietly: “How did you get here?” I couldn’t tell if her tone was one of excitement or fear.

“It was a tor—” I began, but before I could finish, I was cut off by a loud, metallic clanking sound from somewhere off in the distance.

Indigo took a step backward. “You know what?” she said, her eyes darting nervously from building to building. “Never mind. It’s better if I don’t know. In fact, it’s better if I don’t talk to you at all.”

“What? Why?”

She busied herself with her backpack, her tiny face scrunched up with worry.

“Like I said, I’ve already got about five thousand problems, give or take a thousand. Getting caught conspiring with an outlander would be five thousand and one. I’d love to hear your story, but it’s not worth it. Good luck. You’ll need it.” With that, she hoisted her pack on her shoulders and began to walk away.

“No way!” I yelled. “Just let me ask you some questions. I have no idea what’s going on.”

“If you’re lucky, you’ll never find out,” she said, not slowing her pace or bothering to look back.

I wasn’t going to let this happen again. She was speeding along, heading off the road, but my legs were longer. I raced after her and grabbed her by the elbow.

“Hey!” she said, whirling around to face me. “Don’t touch me!” She yanked her arm away, but I yanked right back. And I was stronger.

“Let me come with you,” I whispered urgently. I didn’t know where she was going, but she was the best hope I had. Hope of what, I wasn’t sure, but I would figure that out later. “I promise—I’ll do whatever you want. I swear I won’t get you in trouble. But I’m alone here, and I have no idea what I’m doing.”

She bit her lip. The thing is, I could tell she was as curious about me as I was about her. I could tell part of her wanted to relent.

But then we heard that clanging noise again. This time it was louder.

“You seem like a nice person,” Indigo hissed. “And I love rats. But get your fucking hands off me and get the hell away from me. The best thing you can do right now is get your ass back to wherever it is you came from and hope you never wind up in this sorry place again.”

“I don’t know how to go home,” I said. But I let her elbow go. This wasn’t getting me anywhere.

“It looks like you’ve got problems, too, then.” Indigo folded her arms across her chest, planting her stocky body firmly in place. “See ya,” she said.

Honestly, I was starting to think this girl was kind of an asshole. But if she wasn’t going to help me, I couldn’t think of any good way to force her. All I could do was keep following the road and hope it led me somewhere better than this.

So I walked away, back to the famous road paved with yellow bricks. At least I had a general sense of where that would take me. When I looked back over my shoulder, the angry little Munchkin was watching me go.

As I passed the statue of Dorothy, I changed my mind one more time. “Just tell me one thing,” I asked her, spinning around. She shrugged, noncommittal. She hadn’t budged from the spot where I’d left her. “They talk about Oz where I’m from. I’ve heard about it my whole life. But this is messed up. What happened here?”

Indigo’s impassive face twisted into a snarl. “Dorothy happened,” she said.