Soon after we left the cornfield, the sky darkened into dusk and the picturesque fields and farmland we had been traveling through began to give way to a barren, burned-out landscape of stunted, sickly trees and shrubs, which made the constant screaming even eerier. The grass thinned out until the ground was mostly just blue-gray dirt dotted with sad and dried-out patches of weeds. Even the road itself was different here, dull and worn down, the bricks cracked or loose or missing entirely. Crows swooped overhead, their dark wings casting long shadows on the pale yellow bricks.
Up ahead, a forest loomed. It was deep and black, thick with vines. It stretched on and on endlessly in either direction.
The screaming was coming from somewhere deep in the forest, a deep guttural wail that shook me to my core.
It was a scream, but it was also something like a song, too. It was like all the pain and sorrow in the world was being dredged up from the bottom of the earth and was twisting itself into a horrible, tortured melody.
We all stopped walking. Even Toto, who was usually brave in the face of any danger, crouched in a ball at my feet, quivering with fear.
“I don’t like the sound of that, Dorothy,” Uncle Henry said with a grave expression.
“No,” Aunt Em agreed. Her face turned pale. “I don’t like it one bit.”
I had to give them credit for putting it so mildly. Sometimes people you think you know well can still surprise you. They were being brave. Or, at least, they were trying.
I wasn’t sure if I was capable of the same. Everything in my body was telling me to give up and run away. Back to the cornfield, to the Munchkin village, to the little old farmhouse by the riverbank in the woods. Back to Kansas, even.
But when I turned around, I saw that single path we had been following now forked out behind us in five unfamiliar directions. Some force wanted us to pick one of those paths in the hope it would lead us back to where we had come from.
I had a feeling none of them would. In my experience, when a dark force you don’t understand wants you to do something that badly, it’s best to do exactly the opposite.
I looked into the distance. The road plunged straight ahead like a golden knife through the heart of the forest. However horrible that screaming, the only choice was straight ahead.
“Come on,” I said.
My aunt and uncle and my dog all looked at me like I had lost my mind. But when I took a step forward to show them it was possible, I saw that my shoes were burning red in the dusky, spooky, evening light, their comforting glow pulsing against the washed-out yellow bricks in time with my heartbeat, and I knew it was the right thing.
“Come on,” I repeated, firmer this time. I took another step. Then Toto took one, too, still shaking, and then Aunt Em did the same. Uncle Henry grabbed her by the elbow and followed. If she was going, he was going, too. You could always count on him for that much.
So we moved slowly toward the woods, together, and as we got closer that moaning yowl shattered and reshaped itself into something else: a scratchy, violent squall so loud that my whole skull vibrated from the force of it.
Aunt Em and Uncle Henry doubled over as it hit them, both screaming and covering their ears in pain.
As unpleasant as it was, though, I wanted to hear it. The only way to understand it was to listen.
It was the sound of ravens screeching and rivers running dry, the sound of milk curdling into blood and children being torn from their mothers’ arms.
It was the sound of death. The sound of evil.
I took one more step forward anyway, feeling as if I was being propelled by a force outside myself, and that was when I saw their faces.
Each tree had one, and each face was worse than the last, each formed out of thick, silvery-black bark, gnarled and distorted into tortured grimaces and angry, curled scowls and gape-mouthed expressions of terror.
That’s when I understood: the sound wasn’t coming from inside the woods. It was coming from the woods themselves. The trees were screaming.
And I recognized them. Sort of.
“They’re not supposed to be here,” I said under my breath. I don’t think anyone heard me over the noise.
On my first trip to Oz, after the Wizard had gone home, the Scarecrow, the Lion, the Tin Woodman, and I had all made our way to Quadling Country to see Glinda the Good in the hopes that she would have the key to sending me home. Along the way, we’d had no choice but to travel through the Forest of the Fighting Trees.
That forest had been a lot like this one. The trees there had been mean and cruel, with ugly, hollowed-out faces and branches that bent and twined around you, tossing you to the ground when you tried to pass underneath them.
But they hadn’t screamed like this.
Were the two forests related? And if so, how? This one hadn’t been here the last time I’d walked this road. Where had it come from?
It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except getting through it. I forged ahead with Toto at my side and my aunt and uncle only a few steps behind.
The screaming became louder and louder until it hardly seemed like sound at all anymore, and more like a hopelessness so strong I could almost feel it as an aching pain, lodged somewhere in the back of my gut.
It was so loud I wanted to tear my hair from my skull, to scratch at my face until it bled.
And then it was over. Just like that, everything went silent. Deadly silent.
I looked to Aunt Em and Uncle Henry, and they looked back at me, just as shaken and surprised as I was. None of us said anything for fear of upsetting the quiet.
Then we all looked up together, and saw the trees towering over us. We had made it to the edge of the wood.
They were tall and thin, hardly wider around than Aunt Em, and were almost entirely bare of leaves. Their cruel, twisted faces took up almost the entire lengths of their trunks, and their knotty, spindly branches spidered out into sharp claws.
Two trees, taller and older-looking than the rest, stood on either side of the brick road at the spot where it disappeared into the dark tangle of woods. Their faces were frozen into gargoyle masks of torment and despair.
I wondered how they had gotten this way. Had they been people once? Were they being punished for something they had done in another life? Or was it something else entirely?
In the time I’d been back in Kansas, I’d almost let myself forget this part of Oz: the witches and the monsters and the ugly, dangerous things. I’d let myself forget that magic is slippery and unpredictable. It likes to change things. Sometimes it changes it into something incredible and wonderful—something to take your breath away. Other times it twists it and corrupts it into something you barely recognize.
For everything that’s wonderful, there’s something wicked, too. That’s the price you pay for magic.
It’s worth it, I thought. Even here, standing at the mouth of a place that radiated the purest evil I’d ever felt, I knew it would always be worth it.
Because without magic, you’re just left with Kansas.
Without warning, there was a loud creaking sound, followed by a groan, and then a crack as the large tree to the left side of the road lurched forward and began to uproot itself from the ground, scattering dirt everywhere.
It pulled itself toward us by its roots, dragging itself in our direction. My feet began to tingle.
It was coming right for me. It hissed and snapped its jaws.
The only way out was through. So I began to run.
I picked up Toto, ducked around the tree, and plunged myself into the forest, knowing from the sound of footsteps that Uncle Henry and Aunt Em were right behind me.
The road through the forest wasn’t anything like the road that had taken us through Munchkin Country. The bricks were still yellow, but they were grown over with leaves and brush; they were crumbling and warped where the roots of the trees were moving in on their territory.
I didn’t care. I raced down the path as fast as I could, as narrow and obstructed as it was, praying with each stride that my foot found a solid landing.
The forest was dark and overgrown. The trees grasped and clawed; they swiped at me with their sharp branches and bent their trunks to trip me.
Instead of screaming, they were now grunting and hissing and whispering taunts in my ear that I couldn’t quite make out.
Behind us, I could hear that sick, scraping, creaking sound as the first tree dragged itself across the bricks in pursuit of me and my aunt and uncle and my dog. When I heard more snapping and cracking sounds, I knew that it wasn’t just one anymore: his brothers and sisters were uprooting themselves to chase after us now, too.
I ran faster, still baffled how easy it was in my five-inch heels.
The whole time, I made sure I was listening for the sound of Aunt Em and Uncle Henry close behind me. They might have been old, but at least they could still outrun a few trees.
And then Aunt Em tripped. She let out a sharp scream and went flying onto the ground in front of me, landing on her chest with a thump.
“Em!” I cried.
“I’ve got her!” Uncle Henry raced up from behind me. It’s a good thing my aunt was so tiny and a good thing Uncle Henry was stronger than he looked, after all those years of working alone in the fields. Without even pausing in his stride, he swept Aunt Em up into his arms, threw her over his shoulder, and kept on running.
It didn’t matter. It was too late. The trees had closed in on us, blocking the path forward.
They were behind us as well, their branches weaving tightly into one another, trapping us completely.
One of the trees snarled and lunged for Aunt Em. She cried out in terror as it slashed its wooden claws against her face, leaving three thin lines of blood on the ridge of her cheekbone.
I didn’t look at him, but I could feel my uncle trembling next to me. I should have been scared, too, but I wasn’t. Just the adrenaline, I guess. Instead, I felt myself go white-hot with rage.
How dare these trees threaten me? How dare they harm the people I cared about? I didn’t even think they wanted to hurt us. I think they were just trying to humiliate me. Just like Suzanna and Mitzi had done at my birthday party.
Maybe that would work back in Kansas, but here in Oz, I demanded respect.
“Stop,” I commanded.
My shoes pulled tight on my feet, like they’d just gotten a size smaller. A shock of energy sizzled up from where my heels dug against the bricks and spread through my body. It felt strange, but I welcomed it.
It felt like another person had taken hold of me. “I am Dorothy Gale,” I said. The words sounded strange and foreign as they came out of my mouth, reverberating through the endless tangle of branches.
The trees were listening. “I am the Witchslayer. Allow us to pass, or suffer the fate of all the others that have stood in my way.”
Just like that, the trees began to relax their branches. They shrank away, stifling their hissing like it had all been one big accident. Slowly, they crawled out of the road and back into the forest, where, one by one, they began to settle their roots back into the dirt.
We were free to go on.
I had done that somehow. All I’d had to do was ask. Were the trees just big pushovers in the end? Or was it something about me that had scared them?
“How—” Aunt Em said. Uncle Henry dropped her out of his arms and placed her upright again.
“What came over you, girl?” my uncle asked. “Not to say I’m not grateful, but . . . you didn’t even sound like yourself.”
“I don’t know how I did it,” I said uncertainly. I had found a power somewhere within myself, and I had used it. Or had it used me? It was hard to tell. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer.
“Next time,” Aunt Em suggested, “it might be wise to bring an ax.” She glanced over at me nervously. There was relief in her eyes that we’d made it through the woods alive but I thought I saw something like fear, too. Not fear of the trees either. Fear of me.
“There’s not going to be a next time,” Uncle Henry spat. “Because we are going home. I’ll spread my own butter if it means I never have to go through anything like that again as long as I live.”
The four of us carefully made our way through the rest of the forest not saying anything else about what had happened. The trees were still scowling and making jack-o’-lantern faces at us from the side of the road, but they didn’t make a peep. We walked quickly. Toto hopped into my arms, where he stayed, keeping careful watch on our surroundings.
Soon, moonlight began to streak through the gaps in the branches, and then the path opened up. We had made it out of the woods. A silvery vista unfolded before us, the winding path of yellow bricks shimmering like water and dipping down into a huge, breathtaking valley. All along the road, little flowers lit the way, their centers glowing with flickering blue flames.
I collapsed onto the road and caught my breath, finally able to let down my guard. I put a palm against my face and drew back blood from where one of the trees had scratched me. My calves were shooting with pain from running. Or was it from something else?
And yet, I wasn’t really tired. Winded, yes, but not tired. Actually, I felt more alive than ever, like I had energy seeping from every pore on my body.
I followed the road into the valley and then up the crest of the next hill, and I saw that we had finally reached our destination: there on the horizon was the Scarecrow’s house, golden and radiant against the night sky, lit from within. Just like the Munchkins had told us, the house was made entirely from enormous corncobs as tall as trees and five times as wide around, each one forming a single, towering turret. It wasn’t just a house. It was a castle, really.
I pointed. “That’s where we’re headed. That’s where my friend the Scarecrow lives.”
Uncle Henry whistled. “I’ve heard about the Corn Palace in South Dakota, but I don’t think it’s anything compared to that.”
We followed the road down the hill, into the valley. The evening was cool and the breeze felt good against my skin and everything was so pleasant that our frightful experience in the woods was almost forgotten. Almost.
What had I done back there? I wondered. Had the trees’ bark simply been worse than their bite? Or had my shoes had something to do with it?
I was still considering the question when a certain feeling of familiarness came over me, and then I saw it: at the edge of the field, a wooden post was sticking up out of the ground at a lopsided angle.
Something about seeing it there, like nothing had changed, made me almost want to cry. I knew that post. It was where I had first found the Scarecrow. Without him, I would never have made it to the Emerald City, would never have been able to defeat the Wicked Witch of the West. I would never have learned how brave I could really be.
Seeing it there, for the first time I knew that I was back. I was really, really back. He had been my friend, and I had missed him so much. Now I was going to see him again.
“What is it, Dorothy?” Aunt Em asked, seeing a small smile on my face.
“Nothing,” I said. “I’m just happy.”