Shadows of the Emerald City (37 page)

“
You could serve it with your corn water tea,” Tin Man said.

Dorothy laughed.

“
I bet I could at that,” she said. “I bet Ozma herself would have even popped her royal ass down in the grass and drank a big cup of the famous Dorothy Gale Fallout Tea and chewed down as many old corn cobs as she could handle.”

“
I doubt it,” Tin Man said. “She turned into a real priss once she got turned back into a girl. Making up for lost time, maybe, from when she was a boy.”

Dorothy giggled and spit chewed corn. It made her laugh harder and she covered her mouth.

Tin Man smiled.

Dorothy refilled her cup one last time then took the leaves out and left them to dry on the floor. She had Tin Man fish her out another corn cob, which she sucked the water off while she waited for it to cool enough to eat.

“
They do look pretty good,” Tin Man said. “It’s been so long since I tasted corn I almost forget what it’s like.”

“
The corn in Oz is nothing like Kansas corn,” Dorothy said, blowing on her tea. “Everything tastes like magic over there. Magic candy, magic fruits and veggies. It’s wonderful, to be sure, but sweet Kansas corn is what I grew up on, and that’s what I love.”

“
Tasted,” said Tin Man.

“
Huh?”

“
You said tastes. It’s tasted. Everything
tasted
like magic in Oz. It’s all gone now. If you found food in Oz now it would only taste like charcoal and bitter ash.”

“
Yeah,” Dorothy said quietly. “I suppose you’re right.”

Tin Man stared at the fire. He wished he could have taken that back. It had been so long since he’d seen anyone smile, and he’d reminded the one girl with the most beautiful smile that ever graced Oz that there was nothing left to smile about. Worse, he didn’t know if it would happen again anytime soon. Dorothy certainly had nothing to smile about here in Kansas. There was only the two of them, and all the corn she could eat. He wondered what would happen when Dorothy died. He might wander the fields then, looking for a tornado to hitch a ride back to Oz. Or maybe he’d be like that apple tree he and Scarecrow had seen when they crossed the bridge, and go find a brook to lay down in. Let the sludge and poison wash over him til he dissolved and the nightmare came to an end.

“
I’m tired,” Dorothy said after a while. “I’m gonna catch some sleep.”

“
Goodnight,” Tin Man said.

She rolled over and slept. Tin Man stirred the fire. When it started to burn down he let it go; and stirred it until it was nothing but hot ash and bits of charcoal.

They went back to the corn bin every day after that. Dorothy stocked as much of it as they could in the basement. She explained that the cool dry air down there was good for storing veggies, and if they were stored underground they were less inclined to catch a dose of radiation.

When she was coming up out of the hole she swooned on the ladder, and would have fallen if Tin Man hadn’t grabbed her arms.

“
Easy kiddo,” Tin Man said. He pulled her up to ground level and put her gently down on her feet. He kept his hand on her because she still looked dizzy and sick. “You all right?”

“
Just a little woozy,” she said. “Guess I need a break.”

“
Guess so,” Tin Man said. “You should lay down for a bit. I’ll get you some water.”

Dorothy slept for fourteen hours, but not well. When she finally opened her eyes again she was sweaty and pale and complained of nausea. Tin Man built up the fire, crushed corn onto the cooking pot and made a kind of paste from the ruins of the cobs.

“
It tastes terrible,” Dorothy said. She grimaced while she ate.

“
I have no sense of taste,” Tin Man said. “Plus the last thing I made was a peanut butter and peppermint jelly sandwich about a hundred years ago.”

“
Well, that explains it,” she said. “
Peppermint Jelly?
”

“
It’s made from peppermint berries,” Tin Man said. “From what I remember they were quite tasty.”

“
I wish we had one here,” Dorothy said. “I think the Corn Paste Soup Berries are starting to go bad.”

Tin Man clucked his tongue, then chuckled softly. The sound made Dorothy smile. She took to a coughing fit, and then laid back down.

“
Oh, I don’t feel good at all,” she said. “I bet the corn is bad. Wouldn’t that just beat all.”

“
Well don’t eat any more, to be sure. I’ll make you some bayleaf tea”. Tin Man stood up, his joints screaming metal on metal and flaking rust everywhere. He grabbed the pot of corn and tipped it out the window where it slopped on the gray earth. It was yellow and black. It left an expanding patch of mud beneath it.

Dorothy retched behind him, and he got out of the way just as she was rushing to the window. She stuck her head out and vomited in the same spot where the corn was. She wiped her mouth with her sleeve, spat, and then went back to where she’d been lying down. She buried her head on the cushions and moaned into the crook of her arm.

Tin Man banged the pot again, sloughing out the last of the corn. He looked down at the pile of corn slop. There was blood in the vomit. It swirled through the corn like a ribbon of strawberry sauce in vanilla ice cream.

The next morning Dorothy was worse. She took to vomiting in the pot from her makeshift bed. She couldn’t stand, she said; she was too spinny to hang off the kitchen window. Tin Man stroked her hair and was shocked when it began coming out in clumps. Later in the evening sores began appearing in the folds of her skin; her neck, her armpits, and several spots below. Tin Man boiled water all day and kept it in a cooling rotation so that she always had clean water to drink. He dug around for more blankets in the house (no easy task since some of the back rooms had floors that creaked dangerously when he stepped on them).

In the evening there was more blood in her vomit than water and bile.

“
It’s the
ruh-radia-tion
,” Dorothy said the next morning, between retches. “It gets inside you and breaks you apart.”

“
Inside me?” Tin Man said, not understanding.

“
No, I meant inside…” her words slowed down until they were crawling out of her mouth like bugs.

Tin Man stared at her helplessly.

“
Me,” she said. She was scowling at him.

“
Oh,” said Tin Man. “Sorry, I misunderstood.”

“
You told me that snow and ash was falling out of the sky in Oz,” she said.

“
It was,” Tin Man said. “Scarecrow kept telling me to get out of it because it was poison and it was making me rust away.”

“
But you walked in it for days, right? maybe weeks?”

“
Weeks
, yes.” Tin Man said. “I walked to the Emerald City after all the Winkies died and it was a ruined mess. That’s when I found Scarecrow. Someone had set him on fire, but he’d put himself out by crawling into a fish pond. That’s where I found him, lying in the water, surrounded by dead and rotting Greenfish. After that he said we should come here looking for you. Said we should follow the Yellow Brick Road back to where you were dropped on the Witch. Then we could find our way to Kansas. Of course, later he told me all we had to do was leave Oz and think about you, but it didn’t matter. It was pretty much the same distance no matter which way we went.”

“
Tin Man,” Dorothy said. “It wasn’t the corn.”

“
It wasn’t?” Tin Man said weakly.

“
It was
you
,” Dorothy said.

“
But…” Tin Man said.
“I didn’t know.””

It wasn’t entirely true though, and he knew it. He had felt the heat of something growing inside him, and he’d hated the feeling of it. He didn’t know exactly
what
it was, but he had known it was something bad. Something he wanted out of him. It never occurred to him that it might make others sick, but why would it? He was the one with the
heart
, not the one with the
brain
. Scarecrow should have known.
He
should have said something.

“
How could you know?” Dorothy said. “You’re just a fairy tale. They don’t write fairy tales about nuclear war.”

“
I don’t know what to tell you,” Tin Man said. “I should go. I don’t want to make you any more sick.”

Dorothy turned on her side.

“
It’s too late,” she said softly. “I want you to stay until the end. Please don’t leave me to die by myself.”

“
Alright, Dorothy,” Tin Man said. “Alright.”

Within two days Dorothy was too sick to do anything but lay in bed. She couldn’t even drink the water Tin Man boiled for her. She soiled herself and vomited on her pillow; she took no notice of the filth she was creating. She was voiding bits of flesh, however, and Tin Man certainly noticed that. He tried to keep her as clean as he could without disturbing her rest.

It was night. Dorothy was rasping badly. Each breath sounded like it was being sucked through a wet straw. Occasionally she coughed blood and mucus into her mouth, then Tin Man would gently wipe it from her face with parts of some old clothes he’d found and made into rags. Dorothy smiled when she saw the pattern of the cloth.

“
That’s my dress
,” she rasped. “
The one I wore to Oz.
”

Tin Man looked down at the blue and white pattern, marred by bloody phlegm.

“
Why so it is,” he said. “What a lovely dress it was.”

“
You know those were the best times on my life,
” Dorothy said. She reached out and put her hand over Tin Man’s wrist. “
Being there with all of you. Nothing in Kansas ever touched it. Ever came near it. I should have never left.
”

“
Try to rest, Dorothy,” Tin Man said. “Oz loved you too. You saved us.”

“
I want to tell you one more thing,
” Dorothy whispered.

“
What is it?”

“
When Scarecrow asked about Toto…
” Dorothy said. Large yellow tears pooled in the corners of her eyes, and she blinked them away. “
I told him Toto was dead.
”

“
I remember,” Tin Man said.

“
I never said how he died,
” Dorothy said. “
Because I was ashamed. The truth is, about six months ago I was starving so bad I thought I was gonna die. I’d been splitting my food with him, even though he was old, and I knew I shouldn’t be feeding him, but I loved him so much.
”

She was wracked with a fit of hacking, bloody coughs then, and Tin Man turned her on her side until they subsided. When she finally took a breath again, it was shallow and liquid, and her face was marred with bloody slime.

“
Try not to speak anymore, Dorothy,” Tin Man said. “You need to save your breath.”

“
I wanted to tell someone before I die
,” Dorothy whispered. “
Because I’m ashamed, and I’m so sorry. I ate him, Tin Man. I killed Toto and I ate him
.”

“
Oh Dorothy,” Tin Man said. he’d known, of course. At least sensed it, the way she’d reacted when Scarecrow brought Toto’s name up. But hearing her say it; confessing before her death;
a death he himself had caused
; it was too much. Somewhere deep in his chest there was a
thunk
, and something inside him that hadn’t done anything in a long while; something he had grown accustomed to not feeling because the world just hurt so bad finally broke for the last time.

His heart.

Under his hands, Dorothy shuddered. She gagged once, then let out a soft breath and lie still.

“
Goodnight, Dorothy of Kansas,” Tin Man said. Something hot and liquid was running from his face.

They were oily, rust filled tears.

The End.

by Frank Dutkiewicz

“
Caw!
”

“
Good morning Mary Ann,” the Wicked Witch of the East said to the crow sitting on her windowsill. “What are the servants up to this morning?”

“
Caw! Caw!
”

“
Is that so?” She stepped up to the ledge and looked out at her lands from the top spire of her mansion. Laborers were bent over cultivating the crops in the fields. Workers dug and set bricks into the road that connected it to the YBR in the distance. Far off she could see a black cloud from the miners dismantling a mountain to get to the coal within. The sight of the peasants of Oz toiling for her own gains made her smile. “There always has to be at least one slacker, right Mary Ann?”

“
Caw!
”

The witch slipped on her silver slippers.

“
Breakfast does sound like a good idea.”

She closed her eyes and clicked her heels together.

“
There’s no place like the kitchen. There’s no place like the kitchen.”

Her sudden appearance caused the cook to scream, once again.

I will never get tired of that.

The gardener, who was seated at the table, spat the orange segment out of his mouth and fell backwards in the chair, landing hard on the stone floor. He quickly rose to his feet, bent on one knee and bowed his head in submission.