The Wizard Returns (5 page)

Hex followed the path through the trees for what could have been hours or days. In the dark, endless forest, he lost all sense of direction and even the time of day. Anytime he so much as thought of stepping off the sandy path or heading in a different direction, the leaves around him rustled menacingly, and the branches clacked their thorns together as if to say, “Don't even bother.”

Finally, when he felt as though he couldn't possibly walk any farther, he stumbled into a broad clearing whose ground was covered with the same dry, sandy earth as the path. He sank gratefully to the ground. Pete hadn't said anything about not stopping for the night—if it was even night. Nothing about the dim woods had changed in any way to indicate whether it was daytime or nighttime, or whether the sun was proceeding across the sky at all. The sinister, diffuse light seemed almost to come from the trees themselves.

Hex was also beginning to wonder what exactly he was supposed to eat or drink, when he spotted a brown knapsack at the far side of the clearing that he could have sworn wasn't there a second ago. Too hungry and thirsty to be cautious, he got to his feet to investigate. Inside the pack was a rough woolen blanket. Underneath it, there were a few pouches containing some stale bread and hard cheese. He realized the last actual meal he'd eaten had been his oatmeal breakfast with Iris, however long ago that had been, and his stomach grumbled loudly. He had a feeling that if there was anything alive in the woods around him, it would be a lot more likely to make a dinner out of him than to bring him a menu. He washed down the bread and cheeses with water from a bottle he found in the pack. The water, at least, was sweet-tasting and clear, and after another long drink he felt refreshed and clearheaded.

Below the water bottle, he found the clothes he'd been wearing when Pete pulled him out of the poppy field. He took them out and carefully unfolded them, fingering the soft material as though it could tell him who he was: a jacket, vest, spats, a pair of pants, a dapper collared shirt, and a top hat. But as much as he racked his brains, nothing came. If Pete was right, he hadn't yet passed the test that would unlock his past and show him how to help Oz—assuming he wanted to. But what if he uncovered his memories and discovered he couldn't stand this country of talking monkeys and flying wolves? What if Pete was right, and his true self was a terrible, selfish person? Wouldn't it be better to stay as he was, in this state of oblivion? The cheerless forest did
nothing to distract him from these depressing thoughts.

His body was aching, and he was ready for a rest. He unrolled the blanket, stretched out on the ground, and was asleep almost as soon as his head hit the earth. But his dreams were awful: the monkeys battled each other savagely with their miniature swords, hacking at one another until the ground ran red with their blood, screaming in rage and pain—and then he jerked awake and realized the screams were real, and they were coming from somewhere ahead of him in the forest. His heart pounded in his chest. The screams were alarmingly near, and somehow familiar. Someone was in desperate trouble.

“Pete!” Hex shouted. “Help! Pete!” His voice barely carried past the clearing, and there was no response. The screams wavered for a second, and then continued even more awfully. He saw that there were now two paths leading out of the clearing—one toward the source of the noise, and the other away. He groaned aloud. Was this a test, or a trap? Either way, not very subtle.

Abruptly, the screams cut off with an awful gurgling sound. He stood poised in the clearing, listening intently. Perhaps it was too late. Whatever was happening out there, it was over. There was nothing he could do. Far better to protect his own skin; after all, he could hardly recover his memories if he was dead. And then, through the trees, he heard a faint, pleading—and familiar—wail. “Somebody please help me!” The voice sobbed. There was no mistaking it for anyone but Iris.

He stood a second longer, wavering with indecision. He was
a bad person. Pete had told him as much. And bad people put themselves first—and came out ahead. No one could possibly fault him for wanting to protect himself. It wasn't his problem. He thought of the pain and reproach in Iris's face as he'd betrayed her in front of the queen, and sighed. So far, he'd done nothing but prove Pete right: that he was nothing more than a con man and a coward.

But the feeling of persistent shame kept nagging at him, and he suddenly found himself wanting to do better. Even if it meant putting himself in danger. Even if he was risking his life for a cranky, spear-happy monkey with a persecution complex. He might not go down in the annals of history for trying to rescue Iris from whatever terrible thing was happening to her, but a more noble quest had yet to present itself. Maybe he had been a terrible person in the past, but being a terrible person in the present wasn't turning out to be very much fun. He took a deep breath, wishing Pete had thought to pack him a weapon of some kind, and took off running on the path that led to Iris.

He didn't have to go far before he found her. She was in another clearing like the one he'd left, so covered in blood she was almost unrecognizable. She cowered in a heap at the far edge of the clearing; opposite her, a huge, awful lion, spattered with her blood, lounged against a tree picking his teeth with one giant claw. The lion's mane was filthy and matted, and his huge muscles bulged grotesquely. Iris was sobbing, which at least meant she was still alive. The lion looked up as Hex entered the clearing. He grinned savagely, exposing his terrible, jagged fangs.

“Two for the price of one,” he growled. “It's my lucky day: dinner buffet special.”

“Leave her alone!” Hex said faintly, and the lion laughed.

“I don't think so, little man,” he said, sneering. “I'm hungry. And when the Lion is hungry, the Lion gets his meal . . . or else.” The Lion? Something about the horrible animal sparked at Hex's memory as fear flooded through him. The Lion's voice had a terrible power; across the clearing, Iris whimpered, even though the Lion hadn't been speaking to her. Hex's chest flooded with a sick, nameless dread. It was as if the Lion was fear itself, formed into the body of a terrible, powerful creature. “That's right,” the Lion sneered, gloating. “Now you understand why I rule the forests of Oz. No one can withstand their fear of me. And now, little man, I'll feed on your terror—and then I'll feed on
you
.”

The Lion rose to his feet, lashing his long, sinuous tail like a whip as he advanced toward Hex. His tail. Something about his tail. And then a whole memory came back to Hex, sudden as a tidal wave: a different Lion, a real one, cowering before him, begging for the gift of courage.
“Only you can help me,” it cried, its golden fur gleaming in the warm Oz sun. “Please, Wizard! If only I had the courage of a real lion, I could stop being ashamed of myself—I could be free.”
So Hex
had
been a wizard, then—but what kind? Had he somehow created this awful monster out of an ordinary beast? Would he have done something like that? Once, long ago, the Lion had wanted to be braver—but this perversion wasn't just a creature filled with ordinary courage. Pete
had said Oz was changing, its very magic twisted. Was the Lion a part of that? Was this transformation somehow Hex's fault—or was he a victim of it, too?

He'd deliberated too long, and the Lion had crossed the clearing and was standing in front of him, leering at him. Up close, the Lion's breath smelled like a slaughterhouse crossed with a sewer.

“Don't they teach you to brush your teeth in this crazy country?” Hex said, and suddenly he found that his fear had fallen away from him. He
remembered
: not everything, and not enough, but he knew this terrifying creature had once been something else. Something desperate and even more cowardly than he was. Something ordinary and cowering and meek. And without fear, the Lion had no power over him.

The Lion halted in mid-pounce, rearing back so quickly that he almost fell over backward. “You fool,” he snarled, a menacing growl so deep it almost seemed to come from the very earth itself. “Do you really think you can challenge me and win?”

Hex wasn't swayed. “Be strong,” he called to Iris. “I'll be there to help you as soon as I can.”

“Oh-ho!” the Lion chortled, leaping away from Hex and toward Iris. “Have I found your weakness, human? It's all well and good for you to think I can't hurt you, but your monkey friend here is a different story.” The Lion stood over Iris, one enormous paw upraised, as though he meant to disembowel her.

“Leave her alone,” Hex hissed, and the Lion laughed, bringing his paw down with all his might—and stopping just short of
a killing blow, cuffing Iris roughly on the side of the head.

“No,” the Lion said, “I don't think I will. But the longer she suffers, the more I get to enjoy watching you squirm. I don't know who you are, but I don't like you.” He nipped lightly at Iris's arm, tearing away a piece of flesh. Iris howled in pain and fear.

Hex suddenly found that he was furious. Furious with Pete, for telling him nothing and leaving him here to battle this awful creature; furious with Iris, for getting herself into such an awful predicament and—worse—making him
care
about her; and above all else, furious with this disgusting, brutal lion, sneering and tormenting someone so small and helpless. Anger flooded through Hex's body, and with it something else—a force that seemed to come from the very earth itself. Something strange and powerful rushed through his body, but instead of feeling swept away he realized he was in total control. “ENOUGH,” Hex said, and he could
see
his voice traveling across the clearing in a roiling wave of dark energy that surged toward the Lion and knocked him to his knees. The Lion roared in anger, springing to his feet again, but Hex held up one hand and pushed against the wall of power, and the Lion flew away from Iris and crashed into a tree.

“I made you what you are, animal,” Hex said, and his voice was as strong and fierce as a thunderstorm. “To me, you are still nothing but a coward. Begone from this place.” He raised his hand again and the Lion rose into the air; with a flick of his fingers, he summoned more power and sent the Lion cartwheeling
through space, head over tail, before slamming him into the ground again. The Lion moaned feebly, his own eyes wide with fear. “Now you know how it feels,” Hex said. “Think twice, before you inflict pain on the innocent. And get out of here, before I regret sparing you.” The Lion grabbed his greasy, lashing tail, staring at it in bewilderment, before he shot Hex a look of pure hatred and bounded away through the trees. All the power rushed out of Hex in a flood and he stumbled, almost falling to his knees. Iris was struggling to prop herself up on her elbows. “No!” he said, scrambling over to her. “You must rest. You're badly wounded.” Up close, he saw just how much blood she had lost, and his heart sank. Her uniform was so soaked he couldn't even tell its original color. Her eyes were glazed, and her breathing was fast and shallow.

“That was a dirty trick you pulled back there in the palace,” she wheezed, staring up at him. “But I think you just saved my life. Does that mean I have to thank you?”

“No,” he told her. He stripped off his jacket and shirt, tore the shirt into strips, and did his best to bandage the worst of Iris's wounds. If it had been magic that he had somehow summoned back there battling the Lion, it was gone now. But without it, he didn't know if he could save the plucky little monkey he'd risked his life for.

“That hurts,” she said crossly as he tied off a bandage too tightly.

“Complain to the Lion,” he said, trying to keep the fear out of his voice. There was no mistaking it: Iris was close to death.
And, he realized, he desperately wanted to save her. The feeling was so alien he didn't know what to make of it. Another fit of coughing wracked her broken body, and he hushed her gently, cradling her in his arms. She closed her eyes. “Too bad you went to all that trouble,” she coughed. “I was following you, you know. To stab you in the back.”

“Iris, hush,” he said. “Save your strength. You wouldn't really have stabbed me anyway.”

“Probably not,” she conceded, and then her head rolled back and she lost consciousness. Hex lowered her to the ground, frantically feeling for a pulse. There it was, at the side of her throat—faint, and growing fainter. “Iris,” he pleaded. “It's my fault you're even here. Please don't die.” He felt an unfamiliar wetness coursing down his cheeks. Was he bleeding? But his hands came away wet with something clear.

“Tears,” a voice said behind him, and he whirled around. Pete was looking over his shoulder, staring at Iris with an expression of intense concern.

“Tears? You leave me like this—leave her like this—and that's all you can say?”

“You're crying,” Pete said curtly. “Now get out of my way if you want her to live.”

Hex moved aside, and Pete knelt over Iris's body, holding his hands just above her chest. As they hovered over her, they began to glow. This time, Hex could see tendrils of magic rising out of the earth, forming a web that wrapped Iris's body over and over again until she was an Iris-shaped purple light. Pete's face was
tense with concentration, his eyes closed, his lips moving silently as the magic intensified. His arms began to tremble and his forehead grew slick with a sheen of sweat, and Hex worried that he might faint. Finally, with a gasp, Pete slumped backward and opened his eyes. Iris was still out, but her breathing had evened, and the worst of her wounds had stopped bleeding.

“She'll be all right,” Pete whispered. “But the Lion did more than just harm her body. His power is to feed on others' fear—on their very essence. She has to rest for a while, and so do I.”

Hex covered Iris with the blanket from his pack; mysteriously, two more had appeared beneath it, along with a loaf of bread that looked decidedly fresher than what he'd eaten earlier. He spread out the blankets while Pete did his best to start a fire. It took him several tries, but finally he coaxed a feeble magical blaze out of the air.