On every wall, stained-glass windows seemed to tell a story. I knew most of it already: it was the story of Dorothy.
There was Dorothy’s house in the cyclone. Dorothy walking down the road of yellow bricks, arm in arm with her famous friends. Dorothy facing off with the Wicked Witch of the West. They all went on like that. The last panel showed Dorothy kneeling, as a girl I recognized as Ozma placed a crown on her head.
But where was the one that explained what happened after that?
“Don’t speak until spoken to,” the Tin Woodman was saying brusquely, and I realized that he was talking to me. “And don’t look Her Highness directly in the eye.”
I felt nauseous. He had just killed my friend, and now he was giving me an etiquette lesson.
I had never seen anyone die before. I’d thought it would leave me scared, but now all I wanted to do was fight. More than anything I wished to put my fist through the Tin Woodman’s face. Or worse.
But I was no match for him, let alone him and his whole death squad. If I tried to lift a finger against any of them, I knew that the last thing I would see was one of Dorothy’s sick, sad, phony rainbows. It wasn’t worth it.
The Tin Woodman either didn’t notice my anger or didn’t care. He was too busy lecturing me: “And for heaven’s sake, stand up straight. The princess deserves respect.” With that, he overcorrected his own already perfect posture and frowned at something on his metallic arm.
It was bubble splatter. Indigo splatter. I swallowed hard, fighting my gag reflex as he used a little blade from his Swiss Army fingertip to scrape it away with a look of private satisfaction.
Just then, a flourish of trumpets began to play out of nowhere. The Tin Woodman and his men bowed down awkwardly—all except the one on wheels who just bowed his head. Their metal limbs creaked as they kneeled. I rushed to kneel along with them. I kept my eyes trained steadily on the ground.
With a few clicks, her shoes appeared right under my nose.
They were bright-red high heels, at least six inches tall and made from the shiniest leather I’d ever seen. Or maybe they weren’t shiny, exactly. They didn’t reflect the light as much as they seemed to shine from within.
I heard a thumping sound beside me. It was coming from the metal shell that was the Tin Woodman.
“Well, look who we have here,” a sharp voice said. “Go ahead. Stand up.”
I took a breath and rose slowly to my feet to face the owner of the shoes. She was both exactly and nothing like I could have imagined.
This was not the same girl I’d read about. She was wearing the dress, but it wasn’t the dress exactly—it was as if someone had cut her familiar blue-checked jumper into a million little pieces and then put it back together again, only better. Better and, okay, a little bit more revealing. Actually, more than a little bit. Not that I was judging.
Instead of farm-girl cotton it was silk and chiffon. The cut was somewhere between haute couture and French hooker. The bodice nipped, tucked, and lifted. There was cleavage.
Lots of cleavage.
Dorothy’s boobs were out to here, her legs up to there. Her face was smooth and unblemished and perfect: her mouth shellacked in plasticky crimson, her eyes impeccably lined in silver and gold. Her eyelashes were so long and full that they probably created a breeze when she blinked. It was hard to tell how old she was. She looked like she could have been my age or years older. She looked immortal.
She had her hair pulled into two deep chestnut waves that cascaded down her shoulders, each one tied with red ribbon. Her piercing blue eyes were trained right on me. I knew I was supposed to look down, like the Tin Woodman had instructed. Instead, I found myself falling into her gaze. I couldn’t help it.
Her eyes didn’t look evil. They looked curious and almost kind. Like she was just trying to figure me out. She was so pretty that it was hard to imagine she was responsible for Indigo’s death or any of the other atrocities I’d been told were her fault.
As we stood there, face-to-face, the Tin Woodman creaked back up from his bow and began to speak.
“In the name of Ozma of Oz,” he said. “By order of Princess Dorothy, I, the Tin Woodman of Oz, Grand Inquisitor of the Emerald Police, present—”
Without looking away from me, Dorothy flicked a flawlessly manicured hand at him and he shut right up. She cut him off in a bored voice. “Let me get a look at her. What is your name?”
“Amy Gumm.” My voice came out louder than I had expected. It sounded like it belonged to someone else.
I tried to inhale as shallowly as possible as she walked in a slow circle around me, the heels of her shoes clack-clack-clacking against the green marble floor.
As she examined me, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that while I’d been focused on Dorothy, two more people had entered the room.
I knew them both instantly. In one of the thrones—the larger one—sat the girl I recognized from the hologram—or whatever it was—back on the road. It was Ozma, looking dazed and vacant. Her eyes were open but no one was home. I wondered if this was really her or if she was just another illusion.
At Ozma’s side stood a tall thin man dressed in a baby-blue, one-size-too-small suit. Beneath a small hat, bits of straw and yarn stuck out in every direction. His face was a skein of tightly pulled burlap with two unnervingly lifelike buttons sewn on in place of eyes. His lips were thin lines of embroidery stitched in pinkish-brown yarn underneath a painted on red triangle for a nose. His buttons were fixed right on me.
A chill shot through my body. It was the Scarecrow. Like the Tin Woodman, he had been twisted and warped into something I hardly recognized.
“Now, Amy,” Dorothy was saying. “This is very, very important—and I need you to be completely honest with me.” She casually began to amble over to the empty throne next to Ozma’s, where she sat, tossed her head, and crossed her legs.
If I hadn’t read the story, I wouldn’t believe that she had ever lived on a farm. She had shed that girl long ago and replaced it with a poised, haughty princess. Her neck stretched upward as if she were searching for the perfect light. Her voice was perky, but there was a threat lurking somewhere in there, too.
I steeled myself for whatever she was going to ask, getting the distinct impression that she would be able to see through any lie.
“What do you think of my hair?” she demanded. She ran a long red nail through one of her curls.
She had to be kidding.
“Well?” she asked.
She wasn’t kidding. My life was about to be judged by how sincerely I delivered a trivial compliment.
Luckily, I had a lot of practice with humoring popular girls. Madison Pendleton had taught me well.
“It’s so pretty,” I said sweetly. “And so shiny!” I added for good measure when she looked unconvinced.
Dorothy smiled and clapped her hands together and leaned over to Ozma with an expression of deep confidentiality. “Ozma likes my hair, too,” she said in a stage whisper. Ozma just stared straight ahead with an unchanging expression.
Feeling like I was on a roll, I decided to keep going. Maybe flattery would get me somewhere—for instance, the hell out of here. “I’ve read tons about you. I saw the movie like a million times.”
Dorothy beamed. “Really? What do you mean?”