Dorothy Must Die (25 page)

“Good girl,” Dorothy cooed. “See? Was that so bad?”

Jellia opened her fist, where the mouse lay inert, now just a little ball of fur and blood. “Where should I . . . what should I do with it?” she asked in a strangled voice.

“You have pockets in that frock of yours, don’t you?” Dorothy asked. “I want you to hold on to it. To remind you of what happens when you disappoint me the way you did today. As well as to make sure I never see one of those disgusting creatures in my palace again.”

Without a word, Jellia took the mouse’s little corpse and placed it in the front of her apron. Dorothy applauded in delight.

“Wonderful. All is well. Now go wash those hands. I can’t have any mouse guts on my nails, now can I?”

Jellia stood and left the room, and Dorothy let out a little giggle.

“She’s lucky I didn’t make her eat it,” she said, and looked directly at me for the first time. “Isn’t that right, Alison?”

I nodded mutely, literally biting my tongue. The Tin Woodman chuckled adoringly.

Five hundred sixty
, I counted off in my head, trying to keep my temper in check. I should’ve stabbed her.

The next morning, I held Star extra close before depositing her safely in one of my bureau drawers. My mother’s rat wasn’t happy about being confined, but now that I knew how Dorothy reacted to rodents, I wasn’t taking any chances. I couldn’t let her run around free.

A night’s fitful sleep hadn’t helped me shake the events of yesterday. Could I have actually done it—could I really have sliced Dorothy’s throat? I had been ready—or so I thought. Why did I hesitate? Was I that weak?

I told myself that I didn’t want to ruin the Order’s plans—they’d told me to wait—but I knew that wasn’t entirely it. I’d chickened out.

I slammed out of my room, frustrated with myself, and headed off to meet Jellia. We had an appointment to go through my new duties as Dorothy’s second handmaid.

When I found her in the empty banquet hall, Jellia was more distracted than I’d ever seen her. Unruly strands stuck up on her normally perfectly coiffed hair; her smile flickered every now and then into something
almost
like a frown.

Also, she smelled. Like,
really
smelled. She was still carrying around the poor little mouse’s body in her apron and apparently it was starting to decompose in there, giving her a foul, rotten stench that turned my stomach.

Worse yet, the first thing she told me was that there had been a change of plans. I’d already been demoted.

Her tone was impossible to read when she said it. “After yesterday’s debacle, Astrid, the princess has decided that you are not the best girl for the job.”

My heart sank. That was the last time I would brush Dorothy’s hair, the last time I would find myself in her royal chambers with a clear shot. Had I wasted my best opportunity to kill her? Had she realized that’s what I’d been about to do, after all? I was back to square one. No path to Dorothy, no contact from the Order, and no sign of Pete.

Would I be stuck here forever, abandoned by the Order, and fully transformed into Astrid? Gradually, I’d stop being afraid of being found out and transition into the other maids’ perpetual state of Dorothy-induced anxiety. Amy would be gone and I’d just be another blank-slate maid, stuck in a place somehow more monotonous and horrific than Kansas.

I returned to my mind-numbing chores. Scrubbing floors, sweeping, hand washing an endless supply of gingham skirts that I could swear hadn’t even been worn. And then, as if my day wasn’t already gloomy enough, the sun went down a little after midday.

“It’s the party,” one of the other maids told me during our break. “Her Highness needs all the beauty rest she can get before the big day. We should just be thankful she turned the Great Clock at all.”

So now sunlight was dictated by the condition of Dorothy’s skin. Perfect.

The day—or night, I suppose—wore on. As I went about my work, I found my anger growing. Yesterday, it’d been Dorothy and her psycho actions that had set off my temper. Today, it was the people who’d convinced me this was a good idea in the first place—Glamora, Gert, especially Nox—and left me stranded in this horrible place where the sun didn’t even shine anymore. Weren’t they worried about me? How much of this did they expect me to endure?

As I aggressively dusted the lamps in Dorothy’s reading room, Jellia and her stench swung by.

“It’s time for the Scarecrow’s hay delivery,” she said, keeping her distance, probably self-conscious about her own odor. “Run that up, would you?”

I grunted a yes. I hadn’t seen the Scarecrow since that first night. He’d been locked away in his laboratory, working on this hush-hush experiment, his finest work according to the Wizard. The maids had been taking turns lugging his daily bales up to his room and leaving them outside his door. The bales were starting to pile up. I imagined the Scarecrow—shriveled and wrinkled from not stuffing himself—and shuddered.

The bale was heavy, but after all my training with Nox it felt good to do something a little more physical than dusting. By the time I’d ascended halfway to the Scarecrow’s chambers, my palms were raw from the bale’s wire handle and a sheen of sweat had spread down my back. When I finally reached the top, I dropped the bale with a thud, preparing to push it the rest of the way down the hall. That’s when I noticed something that didn’t quite fit.

Outside the door to the Scarecrow’s room, an exceptionally short, dark-haired maid seemed to be fiddling with the doorknob. I didn’t recognize her. Was she new? Hadn’t she been warned not to enter the Scarecrow’s space without permission?

I left the bale and rushed down the hall. If the Scarecrow came back, this Munchkin girl would be his next experiment. I’d seen enough maids tortured this week, thank you very much.

“Hey,” I hissed. “What’re you doing?”

Startled, the maid turned her head in my direction. I skidded to a stop just a few feet away. That wasn’t a maid at all.

It was a monkey clumsily disguised in a maid’s uniform. And it wasn’t a
she
any more than she was a maid.

She was Ollie. His face was no longer gaunt and blistered and the hair had grown in over his scarred wrists. He had put on a little weight. He was wearing a dress.

“On a special mission from the Scarecrow,” Ollie growled at me. “Go find something else to clean.”

I could tell he was lying. A half smile played on Ollie’s face—mischievous and sad all at once—like I was just another puppet maid to be brushed off and pitied. He went back to his tinkering and a second later the door popped open with a click. Ollie waddled inside, not seeming to care that I’d caught him picking the lock.

“Ollie, wait—!”

Before the door could slam shut, I slipped in after him.

As soon as the door closed, a cyclone of fur sprung at me, Ollie’s feet slamming into my chest and knocking me backward onto the filthy, junk-strewn floor of the Scarecrow’s room. Before I could recover myself, he was crouched on top of me, pinning my arms down.

“Don’t scream,” he hissed, his angry face inches from mine. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if I have to.”

“What are you doing?” I whispered back. “It’s me.”

I realized how stupid I was being. I had been so excited to see him alive that I’d forgotten what I looked like. Ollie had no way of recognizing me in my borrowed face. It’d been so long, he might not have even remembered me as I used to look.

“Just keep your mouth shut,” he said. “I’m here for some information and then I’ll be on my way. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll pretend this never happened.”

I couldn’t suppress a smile. Even after all this, it was still hard to get used to a talking monkey, and it was even harder to take him seriously when he was wearing a dress. I could have screamed with joy. Who cared that his claws were digging into my arms so hard that they were going to leave bruises? Ollie was alive! Not only that, he was up to something. Anyone breaking into the Scarecrow’s chambers was a friend of mine.

I could have flipped him over and freed myself without much effort. Even with his monkey strength and reflexes, I was certain he wasn’t half the fighter I’d become. It made me proud to think about, but I didn’t struggle. I didn’t want to escalate the situation and risk a real fight where either one of us could get hurt. I nodded like the milquetoast maid I was supposed to be.

Ollie’s grip slackened for a moment, but then his monkey brow wrinkled as if realizing something. His brown eyes narrowed into slits and his grip intensified.

“You said my name,” he said with a menacing growl. “How do you know me?”

“I—” My mind raced. Did I dare break my cover? The last time I’d seen Ollie, he was bailing on me and Indigo. I didn’t blame him for running, but it didn’t exactly recommend him as trustworthy.

Before I could come up with a suitable lie, Ollie leaned down and sniffed my neck. When he lifted his face up, he looked totally confused.

“You smell like—” I realized he was trying to place my scent.

I thought of Star; she had recognized me immediately. I hadn’t questioned why at the time—I’d figured it was just some animal owner sixth sense, but something else was even more likely. My Astrid disguise didn’t change my Amy scent.

“The girl from the road?” Ollie asked, a baffled look on his face. “The one who saved me?”

Screw it. I nodded. “Amy,” I reminded him.

“You look different,” he said, still not totally sold, still not releasing my arms.

“It’s a disguise,” I replied. “And it’s a hell of a lot better than yours, by the way.”

Ollie replied with a toothy grin that would’ve put even the most habitual PermaSmile users to shame.

“Amy the Outlander! But how . . . ?”

Ollie sprung off me and I rose to my feet. Before I was even all the way up, the monkey’s strong, furry arms were wrapped tight around my waist—so tight I could barely breathe.

“I’m sorry I ran off on you,” he panted. “It wasn’t my best moment.”

“It’s okay, Ollie.” I patted him on the head and he slowly released me, stepping back and looking me up and down. “Where have you been?” I asked. “How did you get away?”

“I made it to the Dark Jungle,” he said. “There’s a group of Wingless Ones there, and they’ve started a small resistance among the animals.”

“Like the Order,” I said, musing out loud.

He shook his furry head. “No,” he said sharply. “
Not
like the Order.”

“What’s wrong with the Order?” I asked in surprise.

“They can’t be trusted. What’s the difference between a wicked witch and an evil princess? Are you working with them?”

“There’re a lot of differences,” I said defensively. He looked at me suspiciously. “They trained me. They taught me magic. I can fight now. I’m going to change things. We could join forces and—”

“Never,” he cut me off firmly. “We recognize what the Order is doing. But we have been enslaved too many times. We have known witches and wizards, and we will not be bound to anyone.”

Bound. I was bound, too—Mombi had used that very word to describe it. But that wasn’t why I was here. I was no one’s slave, and I was acting of my own free will.

Wasn’t I?

I let the question go for now.

“Why are you here?” I asked. “Are you looking for your parents?”

“My parents would turn me over to Dorothy the second they saw me.”

“Then why?” I waved at our surroundings, thinking of their sadistic owner. “You know you’re nuts breaking in here, right?”

“I don’t have a choice,” Ollie replied. “It’s my sister. Maude. She’s here somewhere. The Scarecrow has her.”

“Is your sister . . . ?”

He answered my question before it was out of my mouth. “She’s a traitor, too—one of the ones who kept their wings. But she’s still my sister. I can’t let him have her. I can’t let him . . .” His eyes glistened as his voice trailed off.

I knelt down to Ollie’s level and grabbed his hands in mine. I squeezed them tight. “What does he want from her?” I asked urgently.

“I don’t know,” Ollie replied. “The Wingless Ones have our spies in the palace, but all they were able to tell us is that she was taken. That the Scarecrow has plans for her.”

“What kind of plans?” I asked, thinking of the big experiment the Scarecrow was hard at work on.

Ollie looked down at his little red patent-leather slippers. They matched mine, right down to the square, gold buckles.

“Maude was always special,” he said slowly. “A genius. The smartest monkey our kind had ever seen. Maybe smarter than the Scarecrow himself. It’s possible . . .”

“He wants her brains,” I said.

Ollie nodded, shaking loose from my hands and clenching his fists. “She tried to convince me to stay—to keep my wings and become Dorothy’s slave. She thought that compromising was our best chance for survival. For the first time in our lives, I was right and she was wrong. Those who have sacrificed always have the most to lose,” he said.

Frustrated, Ollie pounded his fists against the floor, stirring up loose pieces of straw. I wanted to comfort him, to tell him everything was going to be okay. But how could I? For all I knew, Maude could already be dead, her liquefied brains jammed into one of the Scarecrow’s needles.

Then something else occurred to me.
Those who have sacrificed always have the most to lose
.

“Ollie,” I began carefully. “What does that mean? That thing you just said.”

He looked at me blankly. “That is the motto of the Wingless Ones,” he said. “To remind us how much we have sacrificed for others, and how much we have lost because of it. It reminds us that compromise is death—that we must remain free.”

I let the words roll over in my head. Where had I heard them before?

Then I knew: the Wizard had used that exact phrase. It hadn’t made any sense at the time—I’d had no idea what he was talking about. He had hinted that something terrible was going on in the lab. He had used the motto of the Wingless Ones. He had been trying to tell me something. But why? Whatever his reason, it definitely wasn’t a coincidence.

Ollie paced across the Scarecrow’s floor, gazing into the distance. “The last time I saw Maude, Dorothy had just handed down my punishment. She allowed the Winged Ones to confront me before I was taken to the field, to be strung up. Maude spit in my face and told me that she hoped my punishment would improve my thinking.”