he Plain of the Forgotten was a long carpet of yellowed desert grass that stretched through a thin forest of crooked trees. The trees were black like they’d been charred. Mangled roots gripped their trunks into the ground. Entangled vines hung off branches like serpents.

On the other side of the plain was a massive cornfield. It rested beneath the watchful shadow of the North Mountains. The plain continued on either side of the cornfield—the tree density getting thicker farther out—but the corn grew so close together that there seemed to only be one way to enter the cornfield. This entrance was housed under a tall metallic arch with “Maze of the Mindless” woven in dark wire over the top.

According to Julian, if Paige was in Oz she was here. He’d seemed certain of it. So my friends and I forged ahead into the maze.

Even with the blue sky overhead, it was eerie. The corn stalks stretched nine feet in height. The North Mountains loomed over us like an overlord of nature—purple and gray and ominous. Adding to the weirdness, every couple of turns we ran into creepy-looking scarecrows. Some were attached to traditional wooden stakes. Others were propped against copper stakes with an assortment of silver and copper wires securing them tightly.

There were two kinds of scarecrows. The first was a homogeneous type—wearing a traditional outfit of a plaid shirt, overalls, and a straw hat. These scarecrows were the ones attached to plain wooden stakes. The second kind of scarecrow—the ones bound to metal stakes—wore torn remains of fine dresses, suits, leather jackets, and other clothing. While the homogenous scarecrows had frightening grins sewn into their burlap faces, the heterogeneous ones donned scared, lifelike expressions.

I walked up to one of the heterogeneous scarecrows. She was wearing a light blue shirt and khaki skirt. Blonde straw hung around her worn face. Her expression was wistful. In studying her more closely, I noticed that her specific kind of scarecrow wasn’t simply made of straw. The heterogeneous scarecrows’ limbs were a weird mutation of straw and skin and burlap. It was like someone had crossbred a scarecrow with a human. A mossy, green rash grew on the top layer of straw-skin, which spread over the scarecrow’s entire body.

A chill went through my blood. There were way too many similarities with this place and my recent dream of that crow absorbing purple energy from the woman face-planted in a cornfield. Was this the same setting?

I leaned in to analyze the scarecrow further. Suddenly she looked up. Her eyes blinked and met mine. “Hello.”

Startled, I jumped back and rammed into Jason and Daniel.

We all stared at the scarecrow. She stared back. “Who are you?” she asked.

Daniel took a step forward. “What in the . . .”

“Noodles!” the scarecrow blurted.

My friends and I glanced at each other.

“I’m sorry, did you say noodles?” Jason asked.

The scarecrow nodded. “Yes, I was supposed to have some for lunch today you see and I . . .” her eyes rolled to the side like lost marbles. “Some time you see. See you some time. Time you saw me. Me oh my oh me?”

Blue snapped her fingers in the lady scarecrow’s face. “Hey, you. Eyes in front.”

Lady scarecrow raised her head and furrowed her straw brow. “I’m sorry. I drifted off, didn’t I?”

“Um, something like that,” I responded. “What . . . what are you?”

“What am I? This morning I was a who, now I am a what. Isn’t that sad?”

“She’s gone loopy again,” Blue huffed.

“Not just yet,” lady scarecrow insisted. “Probably any minute I will, but for the moment I have my marbles. Most of them anyway . . .” She nodded at her arms, which were bound to the copper stake. “I used to be called Bridget; now I am called scarecrow seventy-eight.”

“I don’t understand,” Blue said.

“I don’t understand much of anything anymore,” Bridget replied sadly. “But I’ll help you. See those mountains up there?” She tilted her chin at the North Mountains.

“Yes,” SJ said.

“That’s where the Wicked Witch lives. And we are hers.”

“Hold up,” Blue interjected. “The Wicked Witch of the West is dead. That’s not an opinion; it’s a fact. It’s been catalogued in at least a hundred different storybooks.”

“The Wicked Witch of the West is not dead. She is gone. But that’s neither here nor there. Her sister Glinda the Good has come to power. Now Glinda is known as the Wicked Witch of the North.”

“Anyone following this?” Blue asked.

“Barely,” Jason responded.

“Pay attention,” Bridget said, her tone growing more urgent. “When Glinda’s minions catch you here, they will turn you into one of us. Like they did to me this very morn.”

“Which brings us back to the question—what exactly are you?” Daniel asked.

“I am a brainless scarecrow,” Bridget said. “Glinda cannot leave the North Mountains, but she has minions that spy on the realm for her. She sometimes sends these minions to capture Ozians. The nobodies are kept as prisoners. Others are brought here and turned into brainless scarecrows. Glinda likes to collect people’s minds, you see. So when we become brainless scarecrows, her minions gather our minds and bring them back to her for her collection.”

A second chill quaked my bones. The energy that crow had absorbed from the woman in my dream, that woman had been Bridget and that energy must’ve been her mind. While I was sleeping safely in Neverland last night, I’d foreseen this poor woman’s early morning doom in this very cornfield.

I recalled a dream I’d had long ago of a sponge being wrung out in a river in the mountains. A pair of feminine hands had held the sponge, and it exuded the same purple energy. My gaze darted to the North Mountains looming over us.

Glinda.

“That’s . . .” I didn’t even know the word for it. It was terrible, terrifying, and rather disturbing, but none of the words seemed to do the situation justice.

“Their memory is forgotten,” Daniel thought out loud. “That’s what the Wizard said about the people in the Maze of the Mindless. We assumed he meant that others forgot about them. But if their minds have been taken, the people here are the ones doing the forgetting. Julian tricked us.”

“It looks like,” Blue said. “But that doesn’t mean Paige isn’t here. The woman’s been gone for ten years. Maybe she was turned into a brainless scarecrow?”

Hm. If Paige had been turned into a brainless scarecrow, I honestly didn’t know what that meant for us. Blue got closer to Bridget and poked her in the arm.

“What’s the life span of these things?” Blue asked.

“How long have you been trapped here, Bridget?” I rephrased.

“I am not sure. There is no way to tell time in the stalks.”

“Is there a way to reverse it? To help you?” Jason asked.

Bridget tilted her head. Her eyes got that distant look again and she began mumbling. “Help you? Yes, yes, help you.”

“Bridget?” SJ repeated.

Our scarecrow friend struggled to focus, but her eyes began to quiver in their burlap sockets. Whatever clarity she’d possessed in the last minute was quickly leaving her.

“The stalks,” she mumbled. “The stalks are bad, get out of the stalks or they’ll be mad. And you’ll be sad. Get out while you can or the crows will know and . . . Noodles!”

Bridget’s grin distorted as her head dropped to her chest and she continued to quietly mumble to herself about noodles and shampoo.

“Bridget?” Blue poked her in the straw-skin arm again, but our scarecrow friend did not respond anymore.

“I think we lost her,” Jason said.

Blue put her fingers to Bridget’s neck. “She has a pulse. So she’s still alive.”

“What do you think she meant by ‘get out while you can or the crows will know’?” Jason asked as the five of us continued through the maze, reluctantly leaving poor Bridget behind.

“I don’t know,” Daniel responded. “She probably was trying to warn us to watch out for the Wicked Witch of the North.”

“But she said they’ll be mad, not she’ll be mad.” I commented. “Bridget must’ve meant something else.”

“I am beginning to wonder whether or not it is wise to continue our exploration of this place,” SJ interjected. “The pronoun of the threat is irrelevant. If Glinda’s ‘minions’ find us, we will either become prisoners or get transformed into one of these brainless scarecrows. Maybe we should head back?”

“Calm yourself, Negative Nancy,” Blue replied. “We’ve done a lot more with a lot less.”

“Yes, and how many times have those situations ended well?”

Blue shrugged. “All right, not that often. But we didn’t come all the way to Oz so we could give up in a cornfield. This is the only solid lead we’ve got. We have to follow it and see if we can find Paige.”

“And just how do you suggest we do that? This place is enormous.”

“Why don’t we just ask someone,” I suggested, as we came across another scarecrow.

I turned to the hay dummy in question. Like Bridget, he was a disturbing amalgam of skin, straw, and burlap. His body was mounted to a metal stake and his skin had the same mossy, green rash coating. He wore the ragged remains of a suit—matching pocket-square and all—and had brown straw for hair and leather shoes.

“Might as well.” Blue shrugged, approaching him. “Hey, scarecrow guy. Do you know where we might find a Paige?”

The scarecrow tilted his head and a goofy, creepy grin spread across his face. “Paige . . .” he mused.

“That’s right.” Blue nodded. “Paige Tomkins. She’s supposed to be around here somewhere. Any idea where we could find her?”

“Paige, page, page of a book. The pager buzzed the business schnook. By the book; business crook. Pretty Paige and the pages she took.”

“I’m guessing that’s a no,” Daniel said.

“So let’s try another,” Blue replied. She stomped over to a dummy in the corner. This was one of the homogenous scarecrows—red plaid shirt, old overalls, and a torn straw hat complimented by an unsettling smile sewn into his face.

“Yo, scarecrow,” Blue continued. “Do you know where we might find a rogue Fairy Godmother hiding out here?”

The creature did not answer. He didn’t move or mumble.

“This one’s different,” Blue commented, studying him. “He doesn’t have that green rash and just looks like a normal scarecrow, no skin.” Blue moved to poke him in his hay chest, but before she could, a high-pitched voice shouted for her to stop.

“Don’t touch him!”

A tiny white mouse wearing a light blue suit jacket scurried out of one of the thick stalk walls. He stood on his hind legs next to Blue’s boot and waved his petite paws in warning.

“Please, keep away,” he said. “If you touch it, it’ll wake up. Then the crows will come and signal the others to wake up as well.”

SJ knelt to address the mouse. “What do you mean? These scarecrows are victims of the witch, are they not?”

“Some of these dummies are brainless scarecrows that used to be people,” the mouse explained, climbing onto the hand SJ offered. She lifted him to eye level as he continued. “But the others—the ones that look like normal scarecrows—are StalkWalkers. They’re the keepers of this maze and are minions of the witch, just like the crows that live here. If trespassers are detected, the crows will wake the StalkWalkers to hunt down intruders. The first time I saw it happen I was only a mousling. It was awful. Those poor villagers.”

The little mouse’s expression went dead for a second. “Please go. You’re not safe here.”

“Trust me,” I said. “It’s not safe for us out there either. But maybe you can help us so we can get out of here without being detected. How well do you know this place?”

“Pretty well.” The mouse shrugged. “My family has lived in the area for a few generations and a team of my subjects and I have been mapping the maze for years. I’m Donahue Van Winklevolt III—prince of my people and future Mouse King. But you can just call me Kevin. I always really liked the name Kevin.”

“Um, okay, Kevin,” I said. “We’re looking for someone. She’s a Fairy Godmother named Paige Tomkins. The Wizard told us we might find her here, but we don’t know where to look. We think she might’ve been turned into a brainless scarecrow.”

“I’ve had a few conversations with a nice scarecrow named Paige over the years. She’s more coherent than the other brainless scarecrows. The smarter and more powerful the person was before getting transformed, the more likely they are able to be a bit lucid sometimes.”

“Can you take us to her?”

“I really shouldn’t,” Kevin responded. “I can stay undetected pretty well here because of my size. But it’s a miracle you guys haven’t been found by the crows yet. You should leave now before it is too late.”

“See,” SJ said.

“Oh, hush, SJ,” Blue said. “Kevin, we’re not leaving until you take us to Paige. So lead the way.”

“All right, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Kevin motioned for SJ to set him back on the ground. “Just keep your heads down and move fast. The crows could appear at any time.”

Kevin began to scuttle through the maze and we hurried after him. We swiftly made our way through the cornfield for a few minutes before the mouse stopped in a small clearing. On one side was another StalkWalker. Across from it was a petite brainless scarecrow bound to a copper stake. Her straw hair was short and black, her burlap sack face was vaguely heart shaped, and she wore a silver dress that may have once been beautiful, but now looked like cobwebs.

I’d seen a picture of Paige before, in a file Arian had on her. Was this the same woman?

I walked slowly toward the brainless scarecrow. “Paige?”

She did not stir.

“Paige Tomkins?” I tried again.

The scarecrow lifted her head and met my green eyes with her navy ones. They were dull, but the color matched the glittering navy scarf around her neck. “Paige . . .” she repeated back to me. “Paige is a good name. Paige is my name. It was my mother’s name, but now it’s mine. I am Paige. You are who?”

It was her. This former Fairy Godmother had been reduced to a slightly smelly amalgamation of hay, straw, and mossy green human tissue.

“Paige,” I started slowly. “My name is Crisanta Knight. I’m Emma’s goddaughter.”

Paige’s eyes seem to lift with clarity at the mention of Emma’s name.

“Emma? Crisanta? You’re bigger than I thought. I promised to help Emma protect a little girl; you’re big.”

“It’s been a long time,” I replied. “You’ve been gone a long time.”

Paige hung her head for a moment and sighed. “I have, haven’t I?” She looked at the five of us. “I remember Crisanta, but I also recognize you.” Paige nodded to Jason. “When I was at the Fairy Godmother Agency, I worked on the case file of your brother Jack. You are all protagonists, aren’t you?”

Jason seemed stunned. “Um, yeah. We’re protagonists.”

“Antagonists have come looking for me. Some have found me. But none get what they want. That’s why I put myself here, you see. No one can hide forever, so I hid myself and what they want from me in separate places.”

“What do you mean you put yourself here?” Jason asked.

“What are you hiding in a separate place?” Blue added.

“And why are the antagonists looking for you?” I threw in, hoping she could answer all three pressing questions.

“Your questions share an answer,” Paige replied, her voice gaining clarity with each sentence. “At the Fairy Godmother Agency, my job was to hold many secrets in my head, like the knowledge of the genies. Long ago, genies were common. But when their magic threatened the balance of the realm, the Godmothers decided to remove them. We set a trap and the genies were caught.

“To protect everyone, an enchantment wiped the memories of all involved. All but me. I was chosen to guard the knowledge. Only I would know where the genies were imprisoned, where they are all still imprisoned. But people started coming after me because of it, people who wanted to find the genies and use their power. I got scared about what would happen if they found me, so I ran. I ran for a very long time—always hiding and looking over my shoulder—until one day I came to Oz and learned about the brainless scarecrows. I knew they were my best option. If the witch took my brain, the knowledge I carried within it would be safe.”

Holy cow. That’s what the antagonists were after. They wanted to find Paige because they wanted to find Book’s genies. And if that happened—

“Can you imagine what kind of havoc that would wreak on the realm?” SJ said, reading my mind. “Every genie grants three wishes. Even one under the control of the antagonists would be devastating, but all of them?”

“All that stuff with Crisa and the prophecies and the Eternity Gate might not even matter,” Blue said. “Genies might not have the power to take life—just like Fairy Godmothers—but the antagonists could lay waste to everyone and everything in a bunch of other colorful ways. We’d be doomed.”

“Which means we need to find Paige’s memories before they do,” Jason responded.

“Hold on,” Daniel said, turning his attention to Paige. “If the witch has your knowledge, your memories, how are you able to tell us any of this?”

Paige attempted a shrug. “A person’s mind can’t be removed entirely. As long as it’s still out there, I’m still connected to it. But I can only get surface memories. And the clarity never lasts. I probably only have another minute before my mind goes wonky again.”

“Well, we’re getting you out of here before that,” Blue declared.

“I can’t leave,” Paige said as Blue walked closer to her. “These metal stakes we’re tied to are electric. If we try to get free, they’ll instantly ignite and we’ll be swallowed in fire. The whole maze will probably go up in flames as a result.”

“There has to be a way to shut them down. Just give us a minute. We’ll figure something out,” I said as I began to examine the stake with Blue.

“I gave you answers because you are protagonists—whom Fairy Godmothers are pledged to serve—and because of my promise to Emma many years ago,” Paige said. “But you must go. This is a trap. The Wizard sends people who are looking for me to the Maze of the Mindless so they’ll get captured by StalkWalkers and turned into brainless scarecrows. Only the Wizard actually knows how to regain my memories. But no one ever returns from the maze to press him for more answers. You have to leave before you meet the same fate as the others he’s sent here. Kevin, tell them.”

“I did,” Kevin squeaked. “They’re not afraid of the StalkWalkers.”

“Then they’ve never seen one,” Paige replied. She looked over my shoulder. “But I have a feeling they’re about to.”

Blue and I turned around slowly. A crow was perched on one of the cornstalks behind SJ, Jason, and Daniel. It sat there looking at us curiously, its beady eyes shining. A gray collar around its neck held a little mechanism with a blinking red light. We all stood still.

“Blue?” I muttered.

“I’m on it,” she whispered back.

Blue slowly inched her hand toward her utility belt and removed a throwing knife from its holster. The crow suddenly opened its mouth to caw, but Blue’s knife sailed through the air before the bird could make a peep. The blade made a direct hit, and the crow was knocked back into the cornfield, dead.

“That took care of that,” Blue said.

My face went dark. “Somehow I don’t think so.”

On the edge of the clearing, seven crows were now perched upon the cornstalks. They eyed us threateningly. There was no time to think of a plan. There wasn’t even time for Blue to fire off more throwing knives to thin out the bunch. The crows opened their beaks and cawed.

At first it was just the one screech, which they all exerted in deafening unison. But moments later, we began to hear their calls from all over the cornfield. Dozens upon dozens of unseen crows called out in response to the signal these had set off. The noise escalated until the cornfield echoed in their low-pitched screams.

“Go! Now!” Paige shouted. “The StalkWalkers are waking up!”

Across from us, the StalkWalker planted in the ground began to slowly lift its head. Its eyes glowed bright green and its smile distorted into a menacing glower. The ropes binding the creature to its wooden stake began to come undone on their own. Wait, no. Those weren’t even ropes. They were tendril-like extensions of the StalkWalker. Creepy.

“Come on!” Kevin squeaked. “I can get you out of here, but we need to move!”

“What about Paige?” Blue said above the murderous screeching of the crows.

“No one can help me,” she answered. “I can’t be saved!”

“Guys!” Jason shouted. The StalkWalker was almost loose.

“Go!” Paige urged again.

“Fine, but we’re coming back for you,” I said as I began to back up with the others. “I promise you that; you hear me, Paige? We will save you.”

The StalkWalker ripped itself free and landed in a crouched position, the last of its rope-like extensions wriggling around its straw hands.

“Run!” Kevin squeaked.

Our guide took off through the maze with us charging after him. The crows filled the sky, swarming overhead like a cyclone. The cornstalk walls seemed to be shaking. We turned a corner and skidded to a stop. Six StalkWalkers stood directly in front of us. They charged—arms outstretched, eyes viciously viridescent, and mouths full of . . .

Holy crud! What is that?

Crackling inside the StalkWalkers’ crooked mouths was some kind of green magic that conducted itself like sparks of electricity.

Kevin u-turned and continued to lead us, but he was clearly growing frantic. The brainless scarecrows laughed goofily as we raced past them. SJ’s portable potions would have come in handy, but the StalkWalkers were too fast, too close, and too erratic for her to get a clean shot. Running was all we had time for. Alas, even that was starting to fail us. Our lead was diminishing. The crows cawed louder. My heart pounded faster. The stalks rustled harder. And then, from out of the cornstalk wall, a straw hand shot out. Rope-like tendrils whipped around my wrist and yanked me into the depths of the cornstalks.

Eeep!

I struggled, but couldn’t regain my footing; the cornstalks smacked me in the face and distorted my vision. I was pulled with the speed of a trout hooked on a fishing line. When the dragging stopped, three StalkWalkers stood over me. Two of them held me down. The third released its rope tendrils from my wrist and hovered in front of my face. I looked into its flaming green eyes as it opened its mouth wider—showing me the snapping green magic inside.

I thrashed about and shouted for help, but it was too late. The StalkWalker sank its sharp teeth into my left shoulder. I screamed. Suddenly, a sword and axe slashed through the stalks around me. Daniel and Jason appeared behind their gleaming weapons and sliced the heads off the StalkWalkers.

Daniel stretched out his hand. “Come on!”

I took it and he, Jason, and I pushed back through the stalks until we reached the others. SJ managed to fire off one of her ice potions, freezing four oncoming StalkWalkers where they stood. We resumed our flight, zigzagging through twists and turns, veering out of the way of monsters when they cut us off, and dodging to avoid more of their arms, which kept popping out of the stalk walls.

The enraged crows were now taking shots at us too—their claws outstretched to tear our hair and skin. As we rounded a turn, I felt myself falter a bit. I glanced at my arm. The area where the StalkWalker had bitten me was turning green. And the black, slit-like bite marks were emanating small sparks of green magic. The wound stung violently.

“Awgh!” I lashed out and swatted another crow.

I transformed my wand into a shield to protect my head as best I could, but doing so impaired my vision and made running for my life a lot more difficult. A large cluster of StalkWalkers was only thirty feet behind us.

“There! Up ahead!” Blue pointed to the arched entrance of the maze. It was only twenty feet away, but blocked by a dozen StalkWalkers.

“Everyone stand back!” SJ shouted.

She grabbed another ice potion from her sack and launched it at the barricade. With a giant implosion, all the StalkWalkers were encased in frost. The five of us leapt over their icy collection and dashed out of the Maze of the Mindless with Kevin scurrying right behind.

“Will they keep following us?” SJ asked Kevin when we’d put about forty feet between the entrance and us.

The mouse shook his head. “No. Just listen.”

Much to our relief, the caw of the crows had died down. The birds had flown off and disappeared into the cornfield. No StalkWalkers emerged from the archway.

“Glinda has enchanted her crows to patrol certain areas. Same with the flying monkeys,” Kevin said. “She might be evil, but she’s very organized. When there are no more threats within their domain, the minions retreat.”

“That’s lucky,” Blue said as we gazed back at the death trap we’d escaped.

“Yeah,” I gulped, looking down at the greenish rash on my shoulder and the green energy that kept snapping off it. “Lucky.”

“Knight, you okay?” Daniel asked as he came to my side.

“Um, I . . . I can’t feel my arm,” I said, only then realizing this for myself. I started to feel dizzy, and sick, and heavy. “I . . .”

The world was spinning. Colors blended together like an exotic smoothie. My friends were jumbled blobs of ink. Daniel’s concerned, garbled face was the last thing I saw.