The Wicked Will Rise (21 page)

Glinda, Dorothy, and Ozma were gone. The falls, and the islands revolving around it, had been destroyed. The sun was rising, and the purple sky was filled with floating ash and ember and the sad, wilted remnants of barbecued rainbows.

Off in the distance, the place in the skyline that had been occupied by the Rainbow Citadel now held only a billowing plume of blue-black smoke.

It all looked like the morning after a surprise party gone really, really wrong.

Nox and I couldn't even bring ourselves to look each other in the eye.

Meanwhile, Bright stood stoically, gazing out at the wreckage as the sun rose slowly above it. He shook a single cigarette from his case. “My last one,” he said. “Ever, I guess. No more rainbows left. I guess I should savor it, huh?” But instead of lighting it, he put it carefully back into the case and patted it like a precious object.

He walked over to Polychrome's sad, limp body and knelt to touch her face. “She was something,” he said. “Y'know, I never figured out what she saw in me, not really.” He bent over and kissed her tenderly.

As his lips touched hers, her body began to glow one last time, and when he pulled away, a small, weak tendril of yellow light curled from out of her mouth and began to eat away at the rest of her until she had melted into a shapeless puddle that danced with color like an oil slick. When there was nothing left of her, the puddle began to unwind, rising—first slowly, then quickly—into the sky in a luminous, vibrant thread.

A rainbow.

We watched her go. And when the last of the last rainbow had faded, Bright turned his attention to Heathcliff. He carefully untied the ribbon at the giant cat's chin, and removed the horn that Polychrome had given him. “Here,” he said, handing it to Nox. “This will come in handy. It's real, you know. It came from a real unicorn. Polly got it off one when it crashed through the window by the breakfast nook and died. Stupid things are dumber than birds. God, that was ages ago. Anyway, it's rare you find one of these. And it's magic. Does some crazy shit. You'll see.”

“You don't want to keep it?” Nox asked. “It should be yours.”

“Nah. It'll just make me sad. And what am I going to do with it anyway? It'll probably just get lost, like everything else. It's time for me to get moving again.”

He reached behind his ear and pulled out a golden button.
“My only trick,” he said, holding it up to the morning light. “But it's a good one. My parents always said I was bright as a button, and Polly knew I'd get bored if she tried to keep me cooped up, so she magicked these for me so I could get out whenever I wanted.
Don't want my bird in a cage
, she said. Didn't even care if I sometimes left without telling her when I'd be back. Anyway. I only have a couple of these left, but I guess I don't really need 'em anymore. Won't be coming back here, will I?”

He pulled out another button and handed it to me. “Do good, babe,” he said. “Maybe I'll see you around.”

“Where are you going to go?” I asked him.

“Where else?” he asked. “I'm going to get lost.” He flipped the button up, and it spun a few times, then exploded in a shower of glitter, leaving in its place an ordinary wooden door, standing free amidst the rock, connected to nothing.

Bright turned the dull, glass knob, pulled the door open, and stepped through the frame. It disappeared as he closed it behind him, but I kept staring at the empty place where it had just been.

Instead of saying anything, I stepped to the precipice of our flying hunk of burned-out rock and sat down, letting my feet dangle off into the vast, empty sky. Nox slid down next to me and we just sat there in silence, watching the last of the sunrise.

“Well,” I said to Nox when it was over. “I guess it's just us. What do we do now?”

“I don't know,” he said. “I really don't.”

“You know what I wish?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I think I kinda do.”

I knew he knew. I said it anyway. “I wish we could just stay here. Just the two of us. See if we could rebuild this place. Maybe not the same as it was, but, maybe like we would want it to be.”

“Like it was ours.”

“Exactly. Make it a home.” I didn't need to say what we were both obviously thinking. The first real home either of us had.

“I wish that, too,” Nox said. His voice cracked. “Maybe next time.”

“Yeah. Next time.” I turned away, and Nox stood and walked to where Heathcliff's body still lay.

“You were right,” I said. “About Pete, I mean. I should have listened.”

“It wouldn't have mattered,” Nox said. “It was already done.”

“I shouldn't have trusted him in the first place.”

“Yes,” Nox said. “Yes, you should have. Because that's who you are.”

I hadn't thought of it that way, but maybe he was right.

“Maybe we should find Mombi,” Nox offered. “Maybe she's better now. Maybe she'll know what to do.”

No. I was sick of maybe. I was sick of witches, sick of searching, sick of chasing mysterious objects. Sick of being ordered around and used like a pawn. Now, if I had to trust anyone, it was myself.

“Forget Mombi,” I said. “We're going to find Dorothy and kill her. And then we'll finally get a happy ending.”

Nox seemed too tired to argue with me. I was tired, too, but I was also jittery and restless and suddenly not in the mood to
waste time. I took the button that Bright had given me and tossed it up just like I'd seen him do. Like before, a door appeared.

Screw it. I didn't know where it would take us, but I stepped through it anyway. Maybe, I thought, the magic will be on my side for once.

Instead, it sent me walking right into a brick wall. Literally.

A
yellow
brick wall, to be precise.

Bright's portable doorway had deposited me back on solid, non-floating land, where the clouds were now once again hundreds of feet above my head rather than miles below my feet. Nox was just a second behind me, and as soon as he stepped through the portal, it slammed shut and disappeared. We both stared up in amazement at what was standing in our way.

Rising up out of the field in which we stood, the Road of Yellow Brick had turned itself into a gleaming wall. A wall so high that there was no hoping to see over it, and so wide in either direction that it appeared to go on forever, with no sign of any way through it.

I pressed my hands against it. “Does this count as lost?” I asked, wondering if maybe we should have found another way back down to earth than the one we had chosen.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” Nox said, echoing my thoughts. “What do you think's on the other side of this thing?”

“I guess I'll find out.”

Before I even tried teleporting to the other side of the wall, I had a feeling it wasn't going to be so simple. My gut was right. When I tried to melt into the shadows—what Dorothy had called the Darklands—and slither through the wall, some kind of force stopped me. Instead of finding myself on the other side of the barrier, I rematerialized ten feet back from where I'd started, with a woozy sensation and a sudden headache, like I'd just tried to butt my head against the bricks. I tasted something metallic in my mouth.

“Weird,” I said.

“Not really,” Nox replied. “The road is serious business. Mombi once told me it's as pure an expression of Oz's magic as there is—and now that the magic's coming back, I bet it's getting
more
powerful than it was before. You've seen how it can be. It has a mind of its own. I guess it decided that it doesn't want anyone going past this spot. And it looks to me like it's not going to give up without a fight.”

I felt the wall, running my fingers along the smooth bricks, which were glittering golden in the sun. It was so beautiful that, under other circumstances, I would have been awestruck.

I don't know what I was looking for. A secret button that would open a door, like in a Nancy Drew book?

I laughed at the irony of that. Come to think of it, though, how nice would it have been to find myself in any other storybook world than this one, with nothing to worry about except missing heiresses and stolen jewels?

Next time, I promised myself.

For now, I was out of luck. Even if there was a hidden switch somewhere in these bricks, I had no way of finding it—it would take me weeks, if I was lucky, to cover every inch of the wall looking for it.

“So what do we do?” I wondered aloud, giving the wall a kick. “Know any flying spells?” Flying had never been my thing. Hovering, maybe, a little levitation here and there, fine, but actual flying was something I'd only seen Mombi do, and it took a lot out of even her.

“Nope,” Nox said. “But there's no law saying we have to go through it. Who knows what's on the other side, you know? Maybe we should head the other way and try to regroup. Go find the Order and get a real plan together.”

“News flash,” I said. “There is no Order anymore. Mombi's sick, Glamora's probably dead. Who knows where the rest of them are? That leaves you and me. Look, I say Bright's doorway took us here for a reason. If something's trying to keep us from getting through here, there must be something important on the other side.”

“Maybe we can climb it,” Nox said thoughtfully. “I never was so great with horticulture spells but . . .”

He moved his fingers over the earth and a pair of thick, green vines sprouted up from out of it, quickly crawling up the sides of the wall.

I shuddered, remembering rope climbing in gym class, and how I'd never been able to even make it halfway. I wasn't sure I
wanted to test my improvement on a day like today.

I didn't need to worry about it. When Nox tugged at the newly created vines to test their strength, they wilted instantly under his touch.

“Damn,” he said. “No surprise, though.”

I just stood there, trying to think of what to do. Maybe we
should
just turn around and head off somewhere else.

I was so exhausted.
Rest
. That was what I wanted. Somewhere to rest.

Not rest like sleep though. I could have used that, too, of course, but what I really wanted was rest as in, like, a break from always having to be on alert, never knowing what was coming next, a break from watching people die and not being able to do anything to stop it.

A break from being the one who had to kill them.

More than anything, I wanted this to be someone else's responsibility.

I let out a scream of pure frustration and slammed my fist against the wall. When that felt good, I did it again.

That was when I felt something inside of me snap. I kept on screaming and punching, and screaming and punching. It felt good, in a weird way. This was everything I wanted to do to Dorothy, and Glinda. To Mombi and Glamora, for getting me into this. To Pete, for selling us out. To the Wizard, for just being the Wizard. Screw it—to
everyone.

This is what I'd always wanted to do to all the people who had ever underestimated me, to everyone who had ever picked
on me, or cast me aside. Just hit them. I hadn't even gotten to hit Madison, but I'd been suspended for it anyway.

So I kept on whaling on it, not caring that my knuckles were bleeding, or that I knew it was all completely pointless. Actually, there was something about the pain, and the pointlessness, that was exhilarating.

“Amy!” Nox said, sounding shocked at what I was doing. I ignored him. I didn't care.

I was so caught up in my fury that I didn't notice that, as I kept on punching, the pain became less and less apparent. I didn't notice that, with every blow I took at the wall, I was getting bigger. Stronger. Or that, as I punched, the blood pouring out of my fists was seeping into the bricks, and that, one by one, they were turning black.

But then I realized my punches weren't just bouncing off it anymore. As I hammered blindly away, small pieces of rock began to fly. I don't know how long I kept going, but whether it was five minutes or an hour, or a day, the whole wall had turned black, infected with the dark magic I could no longer control.

When I gave another scream—a scream so loud that the wall actually shook just from the sound of it, a thin, golden fissure appeared, spidering across the wall's surface, and when I punched it again, there was a sound loud as thunder as that crack split wide open, and bricks came tumbling down around me like dominoes, first just a few and then hundreds and thousands. The wall crumbled around me.

I had torn it down. The whole damn thing was obsidian dust
in my hands, and I was kneeling on top of it.

Still, I didn't stop. Even when it was all gone, I kept slamming my fists into the dirt. I felt more powerful than ever, like I had taken its magic for my own, and I liked it.

“Amy,” I heard Nox saying. I ignored him until I felt his touch on my shoulder, and then I turned around to face him, and I growled.

Growled.
Like an animal.

“Amy,” Nox said. “It's okay.”

He knelt down next to me, wrapped his arm around my shoulder, and pulled me into his chest. I was still shaking, and I nestled into his body, which suddenly felt very small.

“It's just too much,” I said. I felt like I would cry at any second. I
wanted
to cry, and at the same time, I couldn't. I was in a place past crying.

“I know,” Nox said. “I know. But it will be over soon. It has to be.”

I began to melt into him. There in his arms, I felt so secure—for the first time in maybe my whole life—that if I could have, I would have let myself become part of him. Just so I could feel that safe forever.

But then I looked into his eyes, and I saw how haunted they were, and suddenly I realized that he was afraid of me. At first, I thought it was only because of what he had just seen me do, but then, I caught a glimpse of myself—just a glinting image reflected in his pale gray irises—and I realized that it wasn't what I had done that had frightened him.

It was what I had become.

Startled, I wrenched myself from his grip and stared down at my own body.

Was this really me? My hands, my arms, and even my legs—all of me—were rippling with muscle and bulging veins, and were covered with a fine dusting of something like fur, a deep emerald green and the texture of velvet. Each of my fingers was tipped with a blood-red, razor-sharp claw.

Beginning to panic, I pressed an open palm to my forehead, hoping that what I had just seen had only been my imagination. It wasn't. At my temples, just below my hairline, two hard, curling nubs protruded. They weren't big, but they were there.

I had grown horns.

“Amy,” Nox repeated. I jumped to my feet, but he grabbed me by the wrist and pulled me back toward him. I was so ashamed of myself that I just wanted to run away. And I could have. I was so much stronger than him now, and bigger, too—his body had seemed small because he
was
small now, at least compared to me. Because as I had been tearing down the road of yellow bricks, I had grown into something new. Something huge and terrifying. The very thing I had been afraid of turning into.

I had become a monster.

I didn't want Nox to see me like this, and still, I stopped myself from pulling away from him and hiding. I didn't want to hurt him by accident either. I didn't know my own strength. So I let him hold me.

“I didn't mean to . . .”

“I know,” he said. “I know.”

We stayed like that for a long time, me shaking in his arms while he held me and told me everything was going to be okay. As he said it over and over again, I felt myself calming down, and the thing that was inhabiting me began to slip away, leaving my body.

The most messed-up part is that I wanted to hold on to it. I didn't want it to go. But I forced myself to relinquish it, and soon I felt my horns shrinking away, my claws pull back into my fingers, and my skin return to normal. I was myself again.

“What happened?” I asked when I finally felt able to really speak.

“You got carried away,” he said. “It was the magic. You let it take over. That wasn't you.”

I wanted to believe him, but I wasn't sure that I did. What if it
was
me?

Then I let my gaze move past him, and all my thoughts of myself stopped as I realized where we were. In my temporary insanity, I had lost track of what I had been doing; I had forgotten why I had wanted to get through the wall in the first place. Now I turned and saw what it had been protecting.

We were sitting on the edge of the Emerald City. Or, I guess, what used to be the Emerald City. It was hard to say if you could still call it that—because it was different now.

It looked like it had been hit by a nuclear bomb. The once glittering, bustling thoroughfare was now empty, piled with trash and debris. The buildings that hadn't been destroyed were
empty shells, with charred facades and shattered windows. The lavish, stately gardens that Dorothy had spent her time lounging in had been mostly destroyed, the fountains shattered, the flowers dead and covered over with vines.

But all over the place, when you looked a little more closely, traces of the city's former grandeur remained. Amidst all the wreckage, the streets had a sheen that I realized was coming from millions of scattered jewels—emeralds, obviously, but diamonds and rubies and amethysts, too. Here and there, pools of gold melted and then hardened again, like puddles lingering after a thunderstorm.

At the center of it all, the Emerald Palace rose up, its majestic towers replaced by a dense tangle of twisting, almost tentacle-like spires that stretched so high into the sky that the tops of them were obscured by a cover of dark clouds. The whole structure was covered in grime and dust and a thick forest of ivy, but at the same time, there was something about it that took my breath away. In the still silence of everything, it looked less like a palace now and more like a cathedral; like a monument to some ancient, long-forgotten god.

As I stared up at it, something jogged my memory, and I remembered something I was pretty sure I'd heard someone say. One of the monkeys on Queen Lulu's council.

For one thing, it seems to be growing.

At the time, I'd had no idea what that had meant. It had seemed so strange that I'd pretty much ignored it when I'd heard it. Now I understood.

It was true. Somehow, the palace was bigger than when I'd left it.
Much
bigger. Maybe it was still growing: when I stared at it long enough, I realized it seemed to be moving, like it was a living thing. It seemed to be breathing.

But before I could ask Nox what he thought had happened, I saw a movement out of the corner of my eye, and then from out of every crevice and alleyway and window, from the sewer grates and the gutters and out from behind every building, an army of monkeys emerged, coming toward us. Leading the way was Queen Lulu, who was dressed in army fatigues and carrying a small, silver pistol.

“Amy,” Lulu said. “We've been waiting for you. And I'll tell you one thing. You sure know how to make an entrance.”