It was the dead of night, and Ozma and I were making our way through the jungle. Yet again, I was reminded of the dream I’d had that wasn’t quite a dream. The feeling of déjà vu was so visceral, tingling in my pores, setting the hairs on my arms on end. I ignored it and pushed ahead, following Ozma, and tried not to let it get to me.
I was holding a tiny orb of flame in my palm, just bright enough to light our way. But still, the woods around us were black, and we were moving more quickly than I thought possible. Ozma walked ahead of me with a strange purpose, not seeming to even need my light to see by. She didn’t hesitate with a single step, but she didn’t seem to be following any particular path either; she was weaving and zigzagging through the thick clusters of trees, sometimes doubling back on herself, sometimes groping oddly at the air as if feeling for something. In her flowing white dress, with her luminous ivory skin flickering in the glow of my flame, she looked like a teenaged ghost.
I just hoped she knew what she was doing, because I thought there was a distinct possibility that she was leading me in a circle.
With every step we took, I second-guessed myself. Was I doing the right thing? It didn’t feel like it. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so alone. I wished I had Star. I wished I had Indigo, or Ollie, or anyone. I wished I had Nox.
Ozma didn’t count. Tomorrow I would try to summon Pete back—at least he would be someone to talk to—but for now, I just wanted to get out of the woods, find a place to rest, and take stock of things in the daylight.
So I walked, letting Ozma lead the way. My hand was clenched hard around my knife, which had appeared in my hand without even being summoned, the way it always did when I sensed danger or felt out of my element. The knife was beginning to feel so much like a part of me—like an extension of my body—that it was easy to forget Nox was the one who had given it to me, had spent hours carving the bird-shaped hilt himself not just because he wanted me to be able to protect myself, but because he wanted me to have something that he had made; something that was just mine.
I felt a pang of loneliness at the thought, but instead of getting sad, I tried to take that feeling and use it, to shape the pointless emotion into something more like determination. It felt almost like working with magic—the way you could take it and mold it into something different from what it had started as. Into something you could actually use.
The thing about Nox was that I didn’t even know him that well. I really didn’t.
We had kissed, what—twice? Three times? And most of the time that we hadn’t been kissing, it wasn’t even obvious that we were friends. Much less anything more than that.
Look, it didn’t matter what we were to each other. It didn’t matter whether I really knew him or not. I just knew that I wanted to find him.
But Nox wasn’t why I was roaming through the dark forest in the middle of the night. I wasn’t doing it for Mombi either, or for the Order, or for Ozma, although I had to admit I was starting to feel a certain amount of protectiveness toward her. I wasn’t doing it for Oz, or for justice. Some of those things were part of it, but they weren’t the main reason.
For some reason, I had kept it from myself, because it had made me feel somehow selfish, but isn’t everyone allowed to be selfish sometimes?
The real person I was doing this for was me.
In my old life, I had been picked on by Madison Pendleton, taken advantage of by my mother, and ignored by pretty much everyone else. Because I had never been special. I had never been powerful.
When I’d dreamed of getting away from Kansas, what I’d really wanted was to find a place I could matter. Where I could be someone, and have a purpose.
Now I had found the place where I belonged. Yeah, it might have been nice if it had been a fairyland with fewer problems—someplace a little harder to mistake for a nightmare—but on the other hand, the more I settled into this nightmare, the more I began to realize that the insanity of the place was what gave me this feeling of purpose that I’d never had before.
Before Oz, I’d never been needed by anyone other than my mother, and apparently I wasn’t even much of a help to her. Oz, though, I could try to fix, and I was going to.
Some people spend their whole lives searching for the one thing that they can do to say, I changed the world. I had found that thing. I might not be able to accomplish it, but I was going to die trying. So call me selfish.
But that didn’t mean I wasn’t scared. I tried not to think about what else was out there in the woods, in the dark, beyond the glow cast by my fire. The jungle might not have been the Lion’s domain anymore, but there were still monsters who lived here, and they didn’t need the King of Beasts to tell them I would make a delicious snack.
Lions, tigers, bears. None of those really bothered me. It was the thought of things I wouldn’t even be able to put a name to.
It wasn’t just an abstract fear of creepy-crawlies. Ever since we’d left the monkeys’ treetop village, I’d had the sensation that we weren’t alone. I couldn’t quite place the feeling, or give any evidence to prove my suspicion was right. But I could feel a lurking, heavy presence somewhere just over my shoulder, creeping behind me through the trees, almost close enough to reach out and grab me.
At first, I told myself it was just my imagination, but after an hour of walking, I heard a telltale crunch of branches and a faint, wheezing grunt.
I spun around and shone my flame up and down in the dark, but the only movement I saw was a giant spider half skittering up the trunk of a tree to take cover from the light.
There was a time when just that would have been enough to have me running for my life. Now it was nothing.
I knew in my gut that there was something else, though. Call it magical insight or just good old Kansas intuition. There was something bigger, badder, something dangerous. It had been stalking us this whole time.
I tried to shift my focus, the way I’d done earlier in the day, trying to see if whatever was out there was using magic to hide. But nothing revealed itself except for the vague shimmer of energy that coated everything in Oz. And considering how jumpy I was feeling right now, I couldn’t be sure that even that was anything other than my overactive imagination.
Ozma had noticed that I was hanging back, and had looped around to join me. She looked at me curiously and gazed out at the forest.
“Mommy,” she said. A slow smile spread across her face. And then, more urgently, she repeated it: “Mommy!”
Between her demented smile and the flickering light on her face, she looked like a horrible, beautiful jack-o’-lantern.
Mommy. Was she talking to me? Was she trying to say Mombi? Or was it something else? None of the options really reassured me. I put a finger to my lips, and Ozma narrowed her eyes and nodded as if she understood.
Without any further warning, I let the flame in my hand extinguish. Everything went black, and I was already a shadow, effortlessly sinking into the in-between place I’d somehow learned to unlock over the past few days, then I was back, myself again, ten paces behind the place where I’d started.
I couldn’t waste any time; I had to move before our pursuer figured out what I was doing. In one swift motion, I stabbed my knife into the air and brought it down in a crackling arc that lit the whole forest for a split second, as if I’d just set off a flashbulb.
But that split second was enough: I saw it. The thing that had been following us was crouched menacingly behind a tree, its shoulders heavy and muscular. It spun its head toward me, and I saw its yellow eyes staring back at me in two thin, yellow slits.
A chill went up my spine as I thought of the cloaked figures I’d seen in my dream last night.
But those had been witches, and when this thing rose up onto its hind legs, I knew that it was not a witch. It was a monster.
An enormous ball of orange fire was already bursting forth from my outstretched palm, and before I could see my flame hit the target, I was teleporting straight for where I’d seen it hiding.
When I reappeared, I expected to hear whatever it was screaming as it burned. But I’d gotten cocky. When I materialized, there were no screams, my fire had already extinguished itself, and I couldn’t see anything in the blackness.
Hopefully that meant it couldn’t see me either. Instead of trying to light things up, I decided I would try to use the dark to my advantage, and I mumbled a few words to cast a simple amplification spell. This way, even if I couldn’t see my attacker, I’d be able to hear it.
I listened, turning in a careful, clockwise circle, until I had picked out the creature’s thumping heartbeat and labored breathing.
I came up with nothing and stumbled forward.
Suddenly, before I’d recovered my balance, a flying ball of muscle hit me out of nowhere like a bag of bricks. I grunted loudly and, instead of falling, let my body roll into a sideways somersault, and then flipped easily back to my feet.
I was fast, but the thing was faster. It had ricocheted away from me before I’d even managed to get a look at it, back into the trees where, even with my magically heightened senses, I could barely make out the sound it made as it crawled from branch to branch.
Just a few minutes ago, I had been feeling lonely and a little helpless. In other words, I could use a good fight.
“Come and get me!” I shouted, brandishing my knife, knowing I barely needed it. Once again, my loneliness had turned, like magic, into fury. I would kill this thing with my bare hands if I had to. “C’mon, asshole!” I screamed, my voice reverberating through the trees. “I don’t care who you are. Mess with me again. I dare you.”
I stopped, picking through all the sounds around me until I heard a soft heartbeat, a few feet away, behind a tree. But when I listened more closely, I realized that it didn’t belong to my stalker. From its steady, even pace, I knew it could only be Ozma—no one but her could remain so calm in the midst of all this.
So I tuned it out, glad she was safe, and then focused on all the other sounds.
I scanned through all of it, casting aside the noises that weren’t relevant—the crickets and owls in the trees, the snakes slithering through the grass, the wind in the leaves—building a picture of my surroundings in my head. When I listened hard, it was almost like being able to see again.
It only took me a minute but then I found it. Thump. Thump. Thump.
The noise wasn’t coming from anywhere near where I’d been looking for it, but once I found it, it was unmistakable. The beast’s heart was racing from adrenaline; its breathing was heavy and hungry.
But I didn’t want to use the same trick twice, and so instead of throwing another fireball, I decided to try something new. I called down a bolt of lightning from the sky to fry my mystery attacker before it knew what hit it.
There was a sizzle, and the electrical smell of ozone, as a blue bolt zigzagged in through the leaves, striking at the place where I’d guessed my target to be hiding. The creature shrieked as my spell connected.
But if I’d thought that would be enough to kill my enemy, I was wrong again. There was a whistling sound of a vine swooping through the air, and then the creature was on top of me, its legs wrapped around my midsection as it scratched at my face with giant, almost human hands.
I felt its claws drawing blood, but I spun on my heel, using the thing’s momentum against it, tackling it to the jungle floor. We landed together, me on top, and I pressed my forearm to its chest, pinning it—whatever it was—to the ground.
“Game over,” I said. It had been easier than I’d expected, and I found myself almost disappointed that my workout had been cut short. I was getting pretty good at this.
I raised my knife to go in for the kill. I didn’t even really care what it was that I was killing, I just wanted the fight to be over.
But then it spoke in a voice I recognized. A surprisingly squeaky voice.
“No! Uncle! Uncle! I give up already!”
It couldn’t be. But who else sounded like that?
I willed my knife to glow, illuminating my now captive enemy.
“You!” I exclaimed. Looking up at me in shamefaced, pathetic defeat was none other than Queen Lulu of the Wingless Ones. One second ago, I’d been ready and eager to kill. Now I wasn’t sure what to do.
I looked over to Ozma, who was leaning against a tree a few feet away, observing the whole scene with a kind of birdbrained calm. After a moment’s pause, she gave the monkey a dopey, sad little wave.
Under me, Lulu blanched at the sight of Ozma.
“What do you want?” I demanded slowly, debating whether to put my knife away. “Why were you following us? Don’t lie to me.”
“Didn’t mean to scare you . . . ,” my captive wheezed. “Wasn’t gonna hurt anyone. I just wanted to see her. I didn’t . . .” She stopped herself, seemingly overcome by something she couldn’t say.
“See her? You could have seen her whenever you wanted. You wouldn’t even let her into your throne room. Now you expect me to believe you just wanted to see her? Do you think I’m stupid? And why do you even care?”
She wriggled under my weight, trying to crane her neck toward where the princess was hanging back. Lulu blinked. I would have thought she was fighting tears, if I hadn’t known she wasn’t the type for sentimentality.
“I was afraid she’d remember,” she finally said.
“Remember what?”
“She was so little when it happened but . . . you never know with fairies. What if she remembered?” She sounded almost frantic.
I looked at her quizzically. I had no idea what she meant. Then I remembered, and with a jolt, I suddenly understood what Ozma had meant by Mommy.
“She was mine. I was supposed to protect her. I was all she had, and she was happy anyway. She loved me. Trusted me. I left her, see? Left her all alone. When she came to the village . . . I couldn’t look her in the eye, not after all I did. How could I? But I didn’t want her to leave like that either. Barely there a day. And not even a simple sayonara?” Queen Lulu bit her lip and clenched her eyes shut. “My spies told me you were trying to dip out, and I knew I had to say good-bye. I had to see her. Just once, that’s all. I wasn’t going to hurt anyone.”
Lulu was quiet but almost panicking, too, so different from the imperious, fast-talking dame who had haughtily held court at Mombi’s trial. Her brassy bluster had faded in the bright, searing light of her own memories, leaving only regret.
Maybe I was being stupid—weak, a pushover—but I believed her. I lifted myself off the monkey queen and stood, now holding on to my knife only for the light it was casting.
Lulu breathed deep in relief.
“Thank you,” she said. She didn’t stand; instead she crawled forward on her haunches in a crouch, just looking Ozma up and down.
Now that the monkey’s attention was on her, Ozma’s calm demeanor melted away, and she began to shake her head manically. She clenched her fists to her temples, yanking frantically at her hair. “No, no, no,” she chanted to herself. But she didn’t back away.
Lulu hardly paid attention to the way Ozma was freaking out. It was like she had expected it.
“She’s so different now,” the monkey queen murmured, half to herself and half to me. “You should have seen her before, witch girl. When she was born, she was so tiny I could hold her in the palm of my hand. Now look at her, all grown up and pretty as a penny fresh from the mint. Powerful, too. So I hear.”
“She is,” I said. It might have been a lie. Or it might not have been.
“And she was a good queen, when she had to be. I wish I’d visited, but I didn’t know what to say. Still, I knew. She was one of the best. I’m an awfully good queen myself, so I should know.”
“You are,” I said.
Lulu seemed very far away now. “I didn’t expect any of this,” she said. “Didn’t ask for it, didn’t want it, it just happened. I was just a monkey. Don’t know why I was the one to stumble into all this. I just was. Stranger things happen.” She glanced at me sheepishly. “But not that much stranger.”
Lulu bowed her head to the dirt and didn’t say anything else. Her shoulders were trembling now, and she took her sunglasses out and put them on again to hide her face as she wept.
Somehow it made everything even sadder that she was so proud of Ozma—the girl she’d loved as her own—and sadder still when you thought about everything that she wasn’t saying. About what had been done to her, what had been done to Ozma. About everything that can go wrong even when you have every best intention.
Lulu was a monkey queen and I was a girl from Kansas, but we were the same in a few ways. I wondered what it was like for her, how it must feel to see Ozma again now in a place and time as strange as this, with both of them so changed. I wondered if I’d ever find out the answer for myself.
Okay, so I was crying, too. Only a little bit. Even a wicked witch like me has a heart, you know?
The confusing show of emotion must have been what got Ozma’s attention. She was now looking back and forth from me to Lulu, thinking god knows what.
Lulu was still stooped over, but she had recovered herself and lifted her head with a graceful, stubborn pride.
Ozma bit her thumb nervously, and her eyes locked with Lulu’s for the first time. The fairy queen took a tentative step forward, looking a little frightened and a little curious and maybe—I mean, maybe—like something was coming back to her.
Just that tiny move, that small show of familiarity, was enough to make Lulu brighten. But when Lulu stood up and began to open her arms, the princess jolted and backed away again. Lulu looked like she understood.
“I’m sorry, honey pie,” Lulu said softly. “It’s only me. Good old Nursey Lu.” At that, Ozma just turned her back to us, facing out into the darkness beyond my magical ring of light.
“Lulu—” I said.
“No,” she interrupted. “It’s what I expected. I understand.” With that, it was like we were making a silent agreement to pretend we hadn’t noticed what had just happened.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
I wiped my eyes and shook my head. “It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t even have a choice. They made you a slave. It’s demented.”
She made a loud buzzer noise, like the sound on a game show when someone messes up. “Wrong! I could have done something. Maybe I couldn’t have done anything about the deal the Wizard made with the Western Witch, but I could have stopped Dorothy from . . .”
Instead of finishing her thought, Lulu fluttered her oversize paw halfheartedly in the air. I understood. It was too much to talk about.
The silence was heavy but something she had said snagged my attention. “The Wizard. He’s the one who made the deal with the witch. He sold you out.”
“Sure did, toots. No use thinking about it. That’s yesterday’s news and I canceled my subscription to that paper a year ago anyway.”
I was confused. “But you’ve worked with him. He’s the one who gave Ollie and Maude their paper wings. I thought he was your friend.”
“Nah, not a friend, but not an enemy either. Not anymore. He made his mistakes a long time ago. Time might move slow around here, but everything else changes fast. It wasn’t his fault anyway, not really, and Mr. Wiz paid the price. Got himself right with me and mine. I can’t say I ever know what the hell is going on underneath those dinky little hats of his, and I won’t be picking his nits for him anytime soon, but he’s okay by me until he messes with the monkeys again. Or with her.”
Lulu jerked a thumb toward Ozma.
“Seriously? How can you forgive him?” I couldn’t decide if I admired her willingness to put the past behind her or if I thought it just made her seem a little bit weak.
“Forgive him? I didn’t say I forgave him. Didn’t say I didn’t either, though. It’s not the point. Don’t worry about me, hon. No need to go poking your beak into my birdseed. But I want to tell you something and I want you to listen like I’m talking real quiet. You need to be worried about yourself. I heard all about what you did with the Lion. Heard you scared the fur off half the monkeys.”
“I did what I had to do,” I said. “He was a monster. He’s lucky I didn’t kill him. I probably should have.”
“It’s not what you did. It’s how you did it. Something came over you. Something not quite kosher. You have to be careful—magic doesn’t always sit well with people from the Other Place. You think you’re the one using it, then one day you wake up and realize it’s using you.”
“That won’t happen to me,” I said emphatically. “I’m careful.”
“Most of the monkeys didn’t want to let you in, to tell the truth,” Lulu went on. “Too dangerous, they said. Someone like you—too unpredictable. Just the unsavory type of broad we don’t want to get involved with. Lots of people around here think you’re like her. Meet the new witch, same as the old bitch. We monkeys have dinged enough dongs to know. But I saw what you did for Ollie and Maude, and I had a feeling. I went out on a limb for you. Me, I said, Nah, she’s different. I said We’ll give her a chance. Just a feeling, like I told you. I trust my gut.”
“I’m not like her,” I said, feeling my spine straighten. “I’m nothing like her. I could never become her.”
“Prove me right, okay? Keep ahold of yourself. People are on your side. I hope you’re on theirs.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” I said firmly, wishing as I said it that I could be as sure as I was trying to sound. “Come with us,” I said, on impulse. “You know this part of Oz better than anyone. You can keep us safe.”
But she was already shaking her head. “No can do, babe,” she said. “Whether I like it or not, I’m not a nursemaid anymore. I’m the queen, string bean. I have my subjects to take care of. I need to stick around with them for whatever’s coming down. Anyway, the kid’s better off with you than she would be with me. I’m no one, really. I’m brave, but I’m just a monkey. Not much use unless you need someone to peel a banana with their feet. You? You’re something else—it’s just too soon to say what. But I know you can keep her safe. Because you want to.”
Lulu reached into the black bustier that I guess counted as undercover gear among the monkeys and pulled out a pink, lacy handkerchief. I thought she was going to use it to wipe her still-lingering tears, but instead, she folded it neatly into a little square and handed it to me. “Here,” she said gruffly. “Take it.”
I took the cloth from her and looked down at it. “Um,” I said. “Thanks?” I was a little confused about why she was giving me a hanky. I mean, I had been crying, but if anyone needed it, it was her.
“Magic is against the laws of the Wingless Ones,” Lulu explained, “but when you’re the queen, you have to have a few tricks up your sleeve, don’t you think? I ‘borrowed’ that one from Glinda way back when; it comes in handy sometimes. Throw it on the ground when you need to rest. It will keep you safe—hidden.” She paused. “Well, mostly hidden. Cozy, too. Glinda travels in style.”
I didn’t ask any questions. It didn’t seem like the right time for it. “Thanks,” I said again.
Lulu made a move like she was turning to go, and then stopped. Ozma still had her back to us, but Lulu decided to talk to her anyway.
“I know you don’t really understand what’s happening, hon. You don’t even understand what I’m saying, most likely. Maybe it’s better that you don’t. If you did—if you could—you’d probably give me a piece of your mind. I don’t even know you, really, do I? When you were in diapers doesn’t count. I wish I’d gotten a chance to see you grow up. Get to find out what you’re like. First I let you get kidnapped, then, when you were back where you belonged, I missed my chance. Coulda come back and visited when you were living it up in the palace, if I hadn’t been too proud. Maybe it will make sense to you someday.”
Slowly, Ozma turned around to face us, casting her eyes to the ground. I could see Queen Lulu struggling; I could see that all she wanted was to reach out and hold the girl she’d once thought of as a daughter. But she held back.
“Somewhere inside you, I hope you know who you are. I hope you know what you are. I hope you know that you’re powerful. We need you.”
Ozma looked up.
“And I want you to know that I love you, even if I haven’t done the grandest job of showing it. Somewhere in there, I hope you can hear me.”
Ozma’s shoulders twitched. Was she listening? Could she understand what Lulu was saying?
Lulu turned to me. “Keep her safe. I don’t care how. It’s the least you could do, dollface. Help her get better. Help all of us.”
At that, Her Highness Queen Lulu of the Monkeys, royal nanny and loyal protector to the rightful queen of the Land of Oz, born a scullery maid and an outcast, now a wise, and only slightly silly ruler, grabbed on to a thick vine and shimmied up, into the vast, unknowable wild, and out of sight.
Just as I was wondering if I would ever see her again, I heard her funny, foolish cartoon voice echoing down from somewhere high above us: “Remember—don’t be wicked. Unless you really have to!” Parting words, I guess. It was good advice. I promised myself that I would try to follow it.