Yellow Brick War (11 page)

The first thing I heard was birdsong. Panic seized me. If I didn't get my butt in gear, I was going to be late for school. My eyelids seemed to be stuck shut. I lifted one hand to rub them, and winced as pain coursed through my body. Everything hurt, from my head to my toes. Moving only made it worse. Something heavy was pinning down my other arm. And the birdsong I was hearing was nothing anyone in Kansas would recognize. For one thing, it was all the wrong notes. For another, it was coming from the ground.

“Amy? Are you okay?” The voice was familiar. Rough and low. A boy's voice. “Hold still,” it said again. “I think you might be hurt.” The weight on my unmoving arm shifted, and gentle fingers touched my cheek. “We need to get you help.”

Finally, I opened my eyes. Inches from my face, someone was looking down at me in concern. Someone I recognized. I struggled to remember his name.

“Nox,” I croaked. “What happened? Where are we?”

“You did it, Amy,” he said. “We're back in Oz. Outside the Tin Woodman's old palace. I think we landed in the vegetable garden.”

In spite of myself, I started to laugh. It hurt like hell, but I didn't care. “I think I might be pissed at you,” I said.

“I know,” he said, and then he kissed me.

I couldn't move without pain surging through my body, and I figured Nox was in about the same shape—he just happened to be lying on top of me. He tasted like Oz: like a field of singing, sweet-smelling flowers, or a handful of Lulu's sunfruit—wild and clean. His lips were so soft. Everything still hurt, but suddenly I didn't care. I closed my eyes again and lost myself in the sensation of the kiss. He shifted his weight and grunted with pain, and I started to laugh again. After a second, he laughed, too. His mouth moved to my neck, and then my ear. “Amy,” he said softly, his voice rough with emotion. “I am so not supposed to be doing this, but—”

I knew kisses didn't solve what was wrong with us. But I wanted his lips on mine. I wanted him this close for as long as it lasted. The kiss tasted stolen.

Someone coughed loudly, and he jerked his head up. I yelped as his movement set off a new chain of aches in my body, and then opened my eyes reluctantly. Mombi loomed over us, a frown of disapproval across her face.

“How did you get here?” Nox said, bewildered.

“How do you think? We're all bound together through the magic of the Quadrant.”

“As one of the Quadrant witches, Nox, you are connected to us now,” Gert explained. “We can see what you see and feel what you feel.” Wait—did that mean I'd just made out with
all
of them? That thought was too disgusting for words. Gert raised an eyebrow at me before continuing. “We realized what was happening as soon as you found Dorothy's original shoes and we were able to piggyback on the magic that pulled you both back to Oz.”

“This was the first safe place we could think of, so we teleported you here,” Glamora added. “The palace is abandoned; the Winkies are gone, the Woodman's dead, and it's not a likely place for anyone to look for us. But it won't be long before Dorothy and Glinda figure out where we are. We can't hide forever from their magic.”

I waited for them to tell me what a good job I'd done in finding the shoes, but Mombi wasn't done tearing Nox a new one.

“You
know
better,” she snapped at Nox. “This isn't a game. You disobeyed us in the Other Place and you're disobeying us now.”

“I thought we were equals now as members of the Quadrant,” Nox said matter-of-factly. Had Nox ignored their orders in Kansas in order to watch over me? That would explain why he'd shown up out of nowhere at the school. I darted a glance at him but he wouldn't meet my eyes.

“You have a responsibility to Oz now that is far greater than anything else,” Mombi yelled. “Is that somehow unclear?”

Mombi was the most pissed I'd ever seen her, and that was saying something. Nox looked like a little kid who'd gotten
busted stealing cookies as he jumped to his feet, apologizing in a babble.

“I know, Mombi,” he said. “I'm so sorry. You're right.”

She was still looking at him like he was a piece of something rotten she'd gotten on her shoe. “Do you take the Quadrant seriously or not, Nox? There are others who could take your place.”

There were? I glanced at him. He looked startled. If there were other witches who could take Nox's place, maybe that wasn't a bad thing. Maybe he could just . . . retire. Maybe we had a chance at being together.

Stop it
, I told myself. I was behaving like I was back in high school. This was way more important than my feelings—or Nox's.

“I will do my duty,” he said quickly, not looking at me. I couldn't help a flash of hurt at how easy it was for him to give me up, but I told myself to quit being such a baby.

“We believe you, Nox,” Gert said, much more gently than Mombi. “I know this is difficult for you.” She looked at me. “We must all sacrifice for the greater good,” she said, and I felt certain her words were directed at me. “Amy, you're badly hurt,” she added. “You need the healing pool, but I'm afraid we don't have that luxury here. Hold still, please.”

I could feel the warmth of her magic spreading from her palms and flowing through me. I could sense it probing outward into my arms and legs. At first it felt good, like getting a really great massage.

But you know how there's always that moment during a
massage when you're like
okay, that's enough?
Gert crossed that line, and then some.

I yelped in agony as her spell wrenched my bones and muscles, shoving them into place and knitting them back together. It felt like my entire body was being squeezed through a tiny keyhole.

Just when I thought I couldn't endure the pain a second longer, it stopped. I wiggled my fingers cautiously, and then moved my arms and legs. Gert had done it again. I was still bruised, worn out, a little angry, and a little sad. But I was here, and I was alive.

The source of the birdsong chirped again, and I looked down to see a little yellow frog regarding me with bright eyes and trilling merrily. “Singing frogs?” I said. “How did I miss those?”

“The singing frogs of Oz are indigenous to Winkie country,” Glamora said.

“We've got more important things to talk about than frogs,” Mombi growled. Nox glanced at my feet, and I followed his gaze to where the silver boots gleamed softly on my feet. The events of the past few days came flooding back. Madison. Dustin. The Nome King. Dorothy. My mom.

“Why are we at the Woodman's palace?” I asked. “And where's Dorothy?”

“Come on,” Mombi said, beckoning. “Let's have this conversation inside.”

The Winkies' palace was actually pretty gross. What did I expect, I guess, considering that its previous tenants had been the Tin Woodman, and before him, the Wicked Witch of the West.

It basically looked like the palace had been sacked. Dusty tapestries hung crazily from the walls, and most of the doors were splintered as though they'd been kicked open. Here and there, the floors or walls were stained with something that looked suspiciously like blood. All of the furniture was overturned or broken. Mombi waved a hand as we entered the palace's banquet hall, and an invisible hand righted a few chairs and arranged them around a table.

I flexed my fingers, feeling my own power tingle to life in response. Whatever had happened to my magic in Kansas, it was back now. And it felt different in a way I couldn't explain.
The shoes
, I thought. The shoes were doing something to me, that much I was sure. But was that a good thing or a bad one?
And could I even use magic anymore without it turning me into Dorothy?

“First things first,” Mombi said. “We don't know where Dorothy is. We're assuming she went back to the Emerald City as soon as she returned to Oz, but we have no way of knowing yet. And we have to move fast before she figures out we found a way back ourselves.” She turned to Glamora. “It's time to summon the rest of the Wicked,” she said, and Glamora nodded in agreement. “The Nome King is moving against Oz, and now we have three enemies to deal with. All our old plans are off the table. This is a whole new ball game.”

The final confrontation with the Nome King came flooding back. “The Nome King
wanted
me to come back to Oz,” I blurted. “He said that Dorothy wasn't useful to him anymore but that I might be.”

Mombi and Gert exchanged glances. “I don't like the sound of that at all,” Mombi growled.

“Is it possible . . .” Glamora trailed off and the witches stared at each other.

“Glinda brought Dorothy back to Oz,” Gert said. “We've assumed all along that she's been orchestrating Dorothy's return to power in order to put herself behind the throne. But if she's been working with the Nome King . . .”

“Or under his control,” Mombi said quietly. “We have no real idea how powerful he is. He can move back and forth between Ev, Oz, and the Other Place. He's wanted to take power in Oz for centuries.”

“Centuries?” I asked.

“He's very, very old,” Glamora said. “Some say he's even older than Ozma's ancestor Lurline, the first fairy who came to Oz.”

Magic's dangerous for outlanders.
You're not built for it.
Nox had warned me what felt like a lifetime ago, when I'd begun my training in the secret underground caverns of the Wicked. “Dorothy's not useful to him anymore because Oz's magic has corrupted her,” I said. If Dorothy's magic was so destructive it had transformed her from the sweet, innocent girl who'd written about her chickens and her dog into the bloodthirsty, insane tyrant she was now, what was it going to do to me? Because as soon as I started thinking of her as a real person, it was easy to see how much like me she had once been. The Nome King had told me I was stronger than Dorothy, but Oz's magic had already turned me into a monster.

Gert nodded, reading my mind. “That settles it,” she said. “You can't use magic any longer, Amy. It's too dangerous.”

“But how can I fight without magic?” I protested. “You're the ones who trained me. You made me into what I am. You want me to just pretend none of that ever happened?”

Nox had been quiet as we talked, but now he spoke up. “It's not worth it, Amy,” he said. I remembered the conversation we'd had what felt like months ago but had just been a few days. If Oz's magic turned me into another Dorothy, the Quadrant would have to kill me. And I knew Nox would do it, too. He'd see it as an act of mercy—and it would be. I thought of what
Dorothy had done, and shivered. I'd rather die than end up like that. But how could I protect myself in Oz if I couldn't use my powers? I had Dorothy's shoes, but what if using them again was just playing further into the Nome King's plans?

Suddenly, I thought of my mom. Magic for me was as destructive as pills had been for her. The same addiction—and the same results. I'd fallen in love with power the way she'd fallen in love with oblivion. I'd hated her for what her addiction had done to her—to us—but was I really any different?

Where was she now? What did she think had happened to me? What time was it in Kansas? How much of the school had been destroyed by the tornado? Someone must have told her I was gone again by now. Another tornado sweeping me away—what were the odds of that one? This time, Dustin had watched me get swallowed up by the storm. And Dustin—had he survived the battle with the Nome King? Eventually, the police would have to declare me dead. How did that stuff even work? How long would it take before my mom was forced to give up hope for good? And what then? Would she start using again with no reason to stop, no one to stay sober for? If she thought I was never coming back, there was no telling what she might do. I felt tears welling up in my eyes. I was stuck in Oz with no ability to protect myself, dependent on a boy who couldn't love me, unable to save my mom from the thing that was going to destroy her. It was too much to think about.

“I need some air,” I said, shoving my chair back from the table.

“Amy, you have to be careful,” Gert said. “Dorothy could be anywhere.”

I heard Mombi behind me, murmuring, “It's all right, let her go. We can protect her if anything happens.”

I didn't know where to go, so I took the first staircase up I saw, and then the next. After a few minutes of stumbling through the palace, I came to a big room that looked like it had once been a bedchamber. The air smelled faintly of machine oil. There wasn't a bed, only a tall wooden cupboard at the far end of the room that was blackened as though someone had tried to set it on fire. I remembered the Tin Woodman's chambers at the Emerald Palace, and I felt a creepy shiver up my spine as I realized what I'd found. He slept standing up. I was in his old bedroom.

Directly across from where I assumed he stood was a portrait of Dorothy. I had taken the heart right out of his chest, but standing here now in his room I realized—if he had never met Dorothy, he would never have become so evil. I wonder what I would be if I had never met Nox.

I almost turned to leave but then I saw a set of double doors that led outside and I pushed through them, gulping in the fresh air as I stepped onto a balcony with a panoramic view of the kingdom.

It was some view. First, the gardens surrounding the palace, which were overgrown and trampled in places. But beyond them, I could see all the way to the mountains in one direction and the Queendom of the Wingless Ones in the other. Underneath bright blue, wide-open sky—with all of Oz laid out before
me—I still felt invisible walls closing in on me. I had traveled so far, had learned so much, and fought so many battles, and I didn't feel like it had made any difference at all. If anything, Oz seemed worse off than it had been before I came along.

“Amy?” Nox's voice was tentative behind me. I didn't turn around.

“I want to be alone, Nox.”

But I heard footsteps, and a moment later he was standing next to me. We were both silent for a long time.

“I used to think it was so beautiful,” I said, still not looking at him. “Even when things got really bad, it was still beautiful, you know? It was still, like,
amazing
. Now, though, it's like it doesn't matter how beautiful it is. It's just more stuff for someone to ruin.”

“You're right,” he said.

Now I looked at him. He seemed much older than he had when I'd first met him, even though it really hadn't been so long ago.

“I don't want to be right,” I said.

“What do you want me to say?” He brushed a strand of hair from his face. “You're right. Everything got so messed up. And you know what I wonder sometimes?”

“Do I
want
to know?”

“Sometimes I wonder if it's even Dorothy's fault, or if this place was just rotten from the start, underneath everything. If maybe that's the price you pay for magic.”

“My world doesn't have any magic, and it's pretty messed up, too.”

“Is it? It seemed okay to me. Better, at least.”

“You didn't see much of it.”

“Yeah, I know,” he replied. “But you know what I liked about it?”

“What?”

“It reminded me of you. Everywhere I looked, I couldn't stop thinking,
This is where Amy's from. This is the dirt that she walked on. This is the sky that she grew up under
. It's the place that made you who you are. And that's what made me like it.”

“It's made Dorothy, too.”

“Oh, screw her,” Nox said. And we both laughed. But just a little bit, because it really wasn't that funny at all.

“I wish I could see where
you
came from,” I said.

“You're looking at it, aren't you?”

“No, I mean, like, where you
really
came from. Your village. The house you grew up in. All that stupid little stuff.”

He winced. “It's gone,” he said bitterly. The pain in his voice shot through me like it was my pain, too. At this point, maybe it was. “You know that. Burned to the damn ground.”

“I know,” I said. “I wish I could see it anyway.”

“The rivers were full of sprites who sing to you while you go swimming. In the summer, you could walk through the Singing Forest and watch the mountains rearrange themselves . . .” He trailed off, with a sad, faraway look in his eyes.

“Maybe . . . ,” I started. Maybe
what
?
Maybe everything will be okay? Maybe things aren't really so bad? There was no way to finish the sentence without sounding faker than the knockoff
Prada purse that my dad sent me for my thirteenth birthday, with the label misspelled to read
Praba
.

I didn't need to finish, though, because Nox did it for me. “Maybe it's not worth fighting for,” he said. “Maybe we should just give up.”

“No!” I said. “That's not what I meant.”

“I know. It's what
I
meant. I don't think I've ever said it aloud, but it's what I really think sometimes. Like, maybe it would be better to just let them all kill each other off. Mombi, Glinda, Dorothy—everyone. Let them keep fighting until they've destroyed every single thing. And then maybe it would all grow back. I bet it would. Eventually, I mean.”

“No,” I said. “I mean, maybe you're right; I don't know. But we can't give up. Not after all of this.”

A minute ago, I had been ready to give up myself. But hearing Nox say it made me realize how wrong I had been to even think about doing something like that.

“Look,” I said. “Things aren't all they're cracked up to be in my world either. You think wandering around Kansas camping on the prairie for a couple of days was good? Yeah, so it's beautiful out there, but our planet is freaking out. The oceans are rising, people are fighting more and more wars every day, plants and animals are dying out, every other week some kid takes one of his parents' guns to school and starts shooting. . . .” I stopped short at the look on Nox's face. “The world I grew up in is gone, too,” I said quietly. “But that doesn't mean I'm going to give up on it. Because if you give up—then what is there left to live for?”

We were both silent for a long time, looking deep into each other's eyes. He was so close to me. I could smell his faint rich sandalwood smell. I could have reached up to brush the hair out of his eyes. I could have leaned in the barest amount and our mouths would have met. And I wanted it so badly my heart was thundering in my chest.

“How about this?” Nox asked, not looking away from me. The purple-pink light from the setting sun reflected in his gray eyes, making them look practically neon. “How about you and I just leave. Let them have their war. We'll just find a place to hide, just the two of us, and then, when it's all over, we'll climb out from the wreckage, and start the whole thing all over again. We'll rebuild it all. Together.”

He reached forward and took my hand, and my heart nearly skipped a beat. It sounded so beautiful. Just him and me. On our own. No more war, no more suffering. No more running. It was like a beautiful dream—except that it was impossible, no matter how much some part of me wished it could come true. I couldn't sacrifice the people I loved just to be with the boy I wanted. And I knew Nox well enough by now to know he'd never be able to do it either. It would tear him apart. And then we'd just be two bitter, brokenhearted people in a dead and ruined world. I knew it. And so did he.

“You don't believe that,” I said.

“What if I do?”

“You don't. That's the most selfish thing I've ever heard you say. It's not you.”

“Maybe I'm an asshole.”

“You might be an asshole, but you're not a selfish asshole.”

“How do you know that, Amy?”

“Because I couldn't possibly love a selfish person,” I said.

His eyes widened in shock. “Amy,” he said hoarsely, “I . . .” But he didn't finish. He was staring over my shoulder, at the view below the Tin Woodman's balcony.

“You what?” I said softly, not sure if I had said too much.

That was when I realized it wasn't what I had said that had surprised him. It wasn't even me he was looking at anymore. He was staring over my shoulder out onto the horizon.

“I think we're in trouble,” he said. I whirled around.

In the plain below the palace, an army was waiting for us. But not just any army. They were clones. A sea of creepy clones with cornflower-blue eyes and clear, ageless skin. Tendrils of golden hair spilled from their helmets. They were all virtually identical, and behind those flat blue eyes there was a terrifying blankness. And there was no mistaking the glittering pink figure who floated at its head.