Shadows of the Emerald City (51 page)

A new song spilled out of the music box, this time slow and sensual. She stepped onto the rickety makeshift catwalk, running her calloused hands across her stomach and thighs. The black silk felt cool under her fingers and more real than anything else she owned.

The tempo sped up. Kansas let the robe slide off her shoulders. The blue checkered teddy barely covered her tits, and hardly anything further south. Damp pigtails slapped her face and her prop wicker basket was so old it sagged every time she swung it.

Her shoes, though.
Those
still shone silver, tinted like the harvest moon rising above her aunt and uncle’s farmhouse, back when her life made sense. Back when she gave a damn if she ever made it home again or not.

“
Come on! Dance!
” someone shouted from the crowd.

“
Shake it, baby! Yeah!
”

“
Take it off!
”

She obeyed. What else could a lost farm girl from Wichita do?

Rain spattered against the covered the patio, the awning just wide enough to keep her cigarette dry. Dawn rose over the horizon. Another day, another dollar down her g-string, and another man thinking he had the right to take her to bed.

She may have bruises in the morning, but that Pumpkinhead would never get it up again.

“
Dorothy? Dorothy Gale from Kansas?”

She growled, fingers bent, ready to claw the bastard that
dared
say that name.

Kansas spun around, ready to lunge.

A scrawny figure stood in the rain, jaunty hat cocked to the side and painted smile wide as the day they’d met.

“
Scarecrow?”

“
In the flesh! Well, straw, at least.”

His voice had so many echoes—of friendship, of happiness, of comfort, and all the things Kansas had left behind long ago.

She felt like her fourteen-year-old self as she ran into his arms. Kansas didn’t care who might be watching, or if his straws poked her skin. It didn’t matter. He was
here
.

“
Sweet crow in the morning, I’ve missed you.” He released her and took a step back. His black-button eyes raked her up and down. “What’s happened to you, girl? You look like something the barn cat coughed up.”

Still clad in her costume, she was inclined to agree.

“
Where have you been, Scarecrow? I haven’t seen you in an Oz Age.”

The painted smile slipped.

“
I’ve seen
you
.”

“
You have? When? Why didn’t you come and say hi? I thought the Witch—”

His gloved hand covered her mouth. He smelled like damp grass and singed leaves.

“
When’s the last time you left
Shiz?
”

She couldn’t remember.

“
What’s the point in leaving? Here I get food, a bed, and smokes.”

Scarecrow shook his head.

“
There’re posters of you all over Bunbury City. Everyone knows your name and rumours are flyin’ about this place.”

Was it bad if Kansas didn’t care if someone found her?

“
So?”

“
If they find you, they’ll kill you.”

Kansas looked away.

“
Dorothy—”

“
Don’t call me that!
”

He backed away, hands raised.

“
You’ll always be Dorothy to me.”

It was too much. His kindness was more than she could bear. She had to get out of there. Away from old wounds.

A straw-filled hand grabbed her shoulder.

“
Let me go!”

“
Not ‘til you’ve heard me out.”

Slapping him wouldn’t work—he couldn’t feel pain.

“
I swear if you don’t let me go right now, I’ll set your hay-covered carcass on fire!”

His hand didn’t slip.

“
You can’t be happy here. I know you’re not. And you deserve better than this.”

The fight flooded out of her.

“
What does it matter?”

He cupped her face. Great Oz, how long had it been since someone touched her with tenderness?

“
You
matter. I think you’ve forgotten that.”

She swallowed. “Oz makes people forget.”

“
Good thing I’m not a
people
then.” Scarecrow reached into a tattered pocket and pulled out a piece of parchment. “Here.”

Kansas reached for it, hand shaking. Why did she feel that something bad was about to happen?

Oh, right. It’s Oz. Bad things always happen here.

She unfolded the thick paper. Curved shapes scored the cream-colored sheet, swirling like cigarette smoke. If she squinted, she could almost make out a rocking chair and striped sock from the jumbled nonsense.

“
You an artist now?”

“
Huh?”

“
Looks like doodling to me.”

Scarecrow looked confused.

“
I don’t get it. How come I can read this and you can’t?”

Kansas couldn’t care less.

“
Well? Don’t you want to know what it says?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. “It’s a map. A
treasure
map.”

Wonderful.

“
Well, have fun with that. I’ve gotta get some sleep. The Wiz has me working a double tonight.”

She turned to leave, knowing she’d probably never see Scarecrow again.
Hay-headed idiot’ll probably get himself picked apart by flying horses or something.

“
It leads to a time portal!”

Kansas stopped, silver shoes glued to the porch.
Did he just say…

He spun her around, childlike enthusiasm in his every glance, every word.

“
It’s where I’ve been all this time, looking for a way to get you back home after the slippers turned out to be a hoax. I remembered what you told me once about
wadges
.”

It took her a minute to translate his words. “Do you mean ‘watches?’”

“
Yeah, those timey-
whymy
things you said people used to change the time.”

Just like that, her hopes crashed and burned. Served her right for letting herself get carried away, even for a second.

“
You can’t change time with a watch, Scarecrow. It doesn’t affect anything.”

“
Maybe not where you’re from,” he said, grin ridiculously wide. “But they do in Oz.”

Kansas didn’t know whether to believe him or get him a good stiff drink.

“
Tell me more.”

“
The map leads to the Time Dragon. It’s a ma-chine that
makes
time. All we gotta do is find him and ask to turn back the Great Clock to before you came to Oz. It’s as simple as a cornfield!”

“
You’ve forgotten one thing, Straw-for-Brains.” She crossed her arms. “We do that, the Witch comes back to life. Remember what Oz was like before I doused her?”

“
Yeah, I do. Animals were free to speak, the Emerald City had jobs, and you didn’t have to wear things like
that
just to earn a couple o’buckeroos.”

Kansas’ breath caught in her throat.

“
Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

Scarecrow took her hands in his and gave them a little squeeze.

“
Yup. I’m sayin’ we ask the Time Dragon to send you home and bring back the Wicked Witch of the West.”

The yellow glare of the bricks hurt Kansas’ eyes. Never in a million Oz Ages had she thought she’d ever
willingly
step foot in this place again, map or no.

Ten years was a long time. And yet, not long enough.

Munchkinland looked like the victim of a runaway corn thrasher. Everything was brown and gray. None of those bright flowers bloomed or sent sweet perfumes into the air like she remembered. The colorful paint on the houses had chipped and flaked off. Doors and shutters hung off their hinges like deflated hot air balloons.

Through the open windows, Kansas could see upturned cups and plates, covered in rotting food, as if whatever happened here was sudden. The place smelt like old vomit and urine, and not a sound broke the silence, save Kansas’ own raspy breaths.

Of course, the dead bodies strewn everywhere made it all so much worse.

Scarecrow’s whispers sounded like an explosion in the silence.

“
Great crow in the morning, what happened here?”

Everywhere Kansas looked, Munchkin bodies lay on the broken road, propped against the sides of the buildings, or half-hung out of windows, hands spread wide as if begging for mercy. Clothing rotted off their bodies, as black and formless as their decaying skin. The forgotten, nameless corpses lay over piles of bloody straw and hay.

All were headless. Just broken bodies and limbs. But no faces. No ears to hear or mouths left to scream.

A terrible smell wafted from the water well. Kansas didn’t want to think about what she might find down there.

“
What could have done this?”

“
I…I don’t know.”

The wheat fields were all brown and dead. It reminded her of the farm after a hard summer with no rain. A river ran through the field, the thick water painted red. If she closed her eyes, she could still see the Munchkin children playing in those fields; hear their laughter and music as they celebrated their freedom from the Witch of the East. Her gaze drifted toward the ramshackle house, the hut that had been her home and prison for more than half her life. It looked like a headstone in this cemetery of death. She felt the weight of the cigarette lighter in her pocket and the urge to set the damn shack on fire. The town, too.

Kansas took a deep breath through her mouth.

“
There’s nothing we can do here. The Munchkins are long dead. Let’s keep moving.”

Scarecrow looked like he might cry. Kansas wondered if he even could.

“
B…but, they were our friends.”

Kansas stepped over a tiny headless corpse, Kansas slippers tapping a staccato rhythm against the golden flagstones.

“
I just want to go home.”

Scarecrow sputtered, but followed, his loose hay scraping the stones clean.

“
The map says this should be a corn field. But I don’t see no corn.”

Kansas shrugged. The map looked like something Toto might have used as a chew toy, before a Roc Roc ate him seven years ago.

“
Maybe the river flooded and turned the field into a swamp,” she suggested. The brown reeds that poked out of the bubbling mud
might
once have been maize stalks. The place certainly smelled like something had rotted here.

“
Come on.” She tapped the soaked ground with a toe. “Follow my footsteps so you don’t fall in.”

Spongy earth squelched with each careful step she took. Pools of oily-colored water bubbled and steamed on either side of her path. Clumps of dead grass sagged as she stepped on them, sloshing mud over her shoes and up her bare legs. The foul ooze coated the bottom of her robe. Grimacing, she followed the zigzag of half-submerged stones as they wound through the maze-like swamp.

A thick fog hung over the pools of water. Kansas clapped her hands over her nose and mouth. She knew that smell.
Liquefied
flesh.
Like the Witch, after Kansas threw the bucket of water at her.

Kansas gagged. Scarecrow started to rub her back, but she jerked away. She didn’t like people touching her. Especially
there
.

They were halfway across the swamp before Scarecrow spoke again.

“
Doro—”

“
I told you! Don’t call me that!”

He huffed, then cleared his throat.

“
Uh,
Kansas
, do you hear that?”

Only the sounds of her own stilted breathing and the wet squelch of the muddy earth reached her ears.

She frowned. “I don’t hear anything.”

“
Exactly.”

“
What—”

Something grabbed her foot. Pain flared through her whole body. Kansas screamed and fell to her knees. A white tendril with barbed hooks rose out of the muck, curling around her ankle, drawing blood. The spur dug into her leg, pulsing and quivering, yanking on her bones. Scarecrow shouted something, but Kansas couldn’t understand it over the sound of her screams.

Then, the pain disappeared…along with all the bones and nerves and muscles in her foot. Just a formless lump of flesh hanging off her leg.

Dazed, she stared down at the hooks embedded in her skin, rippling like overfed slugs.

Sweet Ozma, the thing was
drinking
her!

She ripped the bone-white creature off her foot and threw it into the muck. More ghostly tendrils shot up out of the swamp, surrounding them like an endless field of grotesque spider-like legs.

Scarecrow grabbed her, hauling her off the ground so fast that her world swirled in a dizzy fog. Her heart pounded in her ears. Cradling her to his scratchy chest, Scarecrow ran. Tendrils chased them, shooting out of the mud faster than a flying monkey. Scarecrow dodged a low-lying tendril and tripped. Kansas flew out of his arms.