This was getting very annoying. “Look. You obviously want to tell me something,” I said, checking my imaginary wristwatch. “So just stop screwing around and let’s hear it.” I looked around nervously, knowing Glinda could come magicking around the corner at any second.
The Wizard sighed theatrically and rolled his head back and forth like he was really struggling to make up his mind.
“Killing Dorothy can only be done by a certain kind of person, and some people think that person is you. But what the Order seems to have missed is that it can only be done a certain way. Certain . . . tools are necessary. Certain items to which the princess has a special connection. You may have ascertained that several of Dorothy’s loyal companions are not quite what they used to be. Am I correct?”
“How should I know what anything used to be?” I asked. “I’m new here, in case you didn’t notice.”
“Well, I hear there’s a book,” he said with a wry laugh. “Haven’t you read it? I’m talking, of course, about the Scarecrow. The Tin Woodman. The Lion. Why do you suppose they’re so different from the heroes you expected to meet?”
“Because of Dorothy,” I said. “She changed them somehow.”
“That would be the obvious answer. Maybe even the right one. But is anything ever that obvious? Haven’t you learned by now that the real story is not always the whole story? Dorothy’s friends didn’t just change because they were her friends. They changed because of the things that they value most. Or . . . the things they value most have been changed.”
“The Scarecrow’s brains,” I said, thinking out loud.
The Wizard twirled an index finger in the air.
“The Tin Man’s heart . . .”
“I think she’s getting it,” he said.
“And the Lion’s courage,” I finished.
“Retrieve them and you’ll be three steps closer to accomplishing your mission.”
I shook my head. It didn’t quite add up.
“You’re the one who gave them those things. And you didn’t even know magic. You were just messing with them. Giving them what they were asking for, whether it worked or not.”
“Very true,” he said. “Funny how even they never seemed to figure that out. You must admit, though, that my gifts did have a certain effect. Would you disagree?”
“How can I when I don’t know what you’re talking about? The only thing I know for sure is that I don’t trust you. At all.”
“As well you shouldn’t,” the Wizard said. “You shouldn’t trust anyone. Yes, I could be lying to you. On the other hand, where’s the risk in ripping out the Tin Woodman’s heart? Just to see what happens. If you don’t, he’ll probably kill you anyway.”
He had a point.
“Why don’t you do it yourself?” I asked.
“Oh,” he said, waving the idea away, “I could never stomach violence. And anyway, you’re the one from Kansas. . . .”
The grass around us rustled, blown by a gentle wind. I glanced at Pete and found him staring up into the night sky. Suddenly he flinched, and put one hand on the Wizard’s shoulder.
“She sees us,” he said. “She knows where we are.”
The Wizard nodded, as if he understood Pete’s typically cryptic words. “We have to move. There’s still a battle at the palace, but it won’t last long. If she—”
“She who?” I interrupted, more than tired of being in the dark.
“Glinda,” the Wizard said. “Gazing at us through the damn painting I should’ve destroyed years ago—”
The night flashed suddenly white, the air around us forcefully displaced and filling with the smell of motor oil. Startled, Maude and Ollie took to the air. I shielded my eyes from the bright light as the Tin Woodman materialized in front of me, still shimmering with a pale pink glow from the spell that had sent him here. Glinda. It had to be. I was beginning to see by now that she liked to rely on other people to do her dirty work for her. Instead of facing me on her own, she had sent someone else to deal with me.
His ax was raised, as if he’d just been plucked from the middle of a fight and transplanted here. He looked around, his eyes still adjusting to the darkness. He lowered the ax a fraction, but then spotted the Wizard. “You!” he snarled.
“Hello, old friend,” the Wizard replied sadly. “I’m sorry to see that Glinda’s using you as her little errand boy. It’s really not very dignified, is it?”
“You,” the Tin Woodman cried in outrage. I’d never heard so much raw emotion in his hollow, metallic voice before. “I should have known you were part of this.”
He rounded on me next, that all-too-familiar ax poised to strike.
“And you. What have you done with my princess? Where is she? If you’ve harmed even a hair on her head . . .”
“Whoa,” I replied. Had Dorothy gone missing after she’d teleported away from me? “I don’t have her.”
Obviously, the Tin Woodman didn’t believe me. He pulled his ax from his shoulder and took a lumbering swing at me, but I moved backward easily, feeling stronger and more confident than I had all night, and pulled my knife out. I felt my magic coursing through my body, charging the knife with energy.
The Tin Woodman was alone without his soldiers, without Dorothy and her magic. And he looked weakened: his metal body was battered; several of the frightening instruments that had once tipped his fingers had been snapped off. He had a huge dent in the side of his face, stretching from his cheek to his forehead.
The Order had only charged me with killing Dorothy—there’d been no discussion of the Tin Woodman or any of her other cohorts. But they were all just as evil, weren’t they? I hadn’t been able to kill Dorothy, but if I was able to do away with the Tin Woodman, that would at least weaken her ability to torture some innocent people, right?
I could do this.
“Kill him, Amy,” the Wizard urged me. A wounded, betrayed look scrunched the Tin Woodman’s features at the Wizard’s words. “I’ve told you what you need to do.”
I glanced over at the Wizard and saw him weaving his hands through the air—but not to help me. Instead, he was building what looked like a glowing green force field around himself and Pete. Thanks, guys. Very chivalrous.
The Tin Woodman, though, was focused only on me. He put his head down and charged, his ax extended in front of him. As he plowed forward, the ax transformed into a long, gleaming sword that almost seemed to be an extension of his body.
I was ready for him. Just before he reached me, I blinked myself behind him and he kept going, his momentum carrying him forward. He stumbled for a moment, almost falling, but then he recovered, pivoted, and—in one swift motion—hurled his sword straight for me. As it flew through the air, it transformed again: this time into a flurry of knives.
With a few lightning-fast flicks of my wrist, I was able to deflect most of them, but I felt one graze my cheek. Another plunged into my thigh.
Without slowing down, I pulled it out, feeling the warm blood seep down my leg, and tossed it aside. With that and the wound across my abdomen, I was steadily turning into a real mess. My whole body was shooting with a throbbing pain, but I didn’t care.
I didn’t feel weaker, I felt changed. Like I really had become something else—a warrior like Jellia had been when she’d confronted Dorothy—someone capable of taking the worst these assholes had to offer and then dishing it right back to them.