Free. But was I? In some ways, it felt like I had traded one prison for another.
We’ll make a Wicked one out of you yet.
What had I gotten myself into?
I stood there, waiting for my eyes to adjust, but they didn’t. Maybe it wasn’t even dark at alclass="underline" maybe it was just like outer space, where it’s only dark because there’s nothing to see.
I was alone.
I had been lonely a lot in my life—enough to know that there are different kinds of lonely. There’s the lonely I had felt at school, surrounded by people who only paid attention to me long enough to remind me that they didn’t like me. There was the lonely I felt when I was with my mother, which was different from the lonely that I felt when I watched her leaving just before the tornado hit, and different from the lonely that I felt when my trailer was being whisked away from everything I’d ever known.
Then there was the bottomless loneliness that I’d felt in Dorothy’s sick, white dungeon, the kind of loneliness that had made me feel like I was running through an endless maze.
Standing there in the dark, it was like all those alones had just been tiny, interlocking pieces of a picture so big that you could only see the whole thing from a mile away. Now it was clear: I had nothing except myself. No matter what happened, it would always be that way.
And yet: I took a step forward and was surprised to feel solid ground underneath my feet. I took another. I stumbled on something and caught myself before I hit the ground.
I was just about to move forward again when I heard a voice echoing all around me. It belonged to a woman, and it was kind and gentle and strangely familiar. “I think you’re starting to understand,” she said. “It will take a while, but you’re getting there.”
I stopped in my tracks and jerked my head up. “Who’s there?” I called out to the emptiness. “What do you want from me?”
Instead of an answer I heard the sound of fingers snapping. Just like that, the world returned to me. It was less like a light being turned on and more a blindness being suddenly lifted.
I was standing in a huge cave, the rocky walls pulsing eerily with a dim purple phosphorescence. High above my head, clusters of stalactites dangled perilously from the rocky ceiling.
In the center of the cavern a massive tree loomed, its trunk as thick around as five people, overgrown with vines and moss and tiny flowers. Hundreds of limbs curled upward until they merged with the rock formations on the ceiling; a tangle of roots covered the ground before disappearing into the walls.
The longer I looked at the tree, the more I couldn’t decide where it ended and the cave began.
“Why does there have to be a beginning and an ending?” the voice asked. “If you ask me, it’s all middle.”
I spun around, trying to figure out where it was coming from, and saw nothing.
“Who are you?”
And from out of the tree, a squat, round old woman in a shapeless white dress and a pointy white hat emerged like she was walking through an open door. Except there was no door. There was no opening in the tree at all.
“People have called me lots of things over the years,” the woman said. “It happens when you get old. But you can call me Grandma Gert.” She brushed a stray flower from her silvery-white cloud of hair.
Her face was old and wrinkled but it was nothing like Mombi’s. It was round and kind and so chubby that she had at least three chins. Maybe four. Her eyes twinkled as she smiled at me.
Grandma Gert. I liked the sound of that. There was something about her that I trusted.
It was all so strange. I should have been afraid. Or angry. Or at least startled or confused. I felt none of those things. When Gert reached out for my hand, I let her take it and clasp it between her own, squeezing tenderly, and I realized what I did feel. It was a warm sense of peacefulness starting in my chest and spreading through my body.
“Welcome home, dear,” she said.
“Home?” The word startled me, and when I repeated it, it caught in the back of my throat. I had no idea where I was, except that it was about as far away from home as I could possibly get. And yet . . .
“You’re a long way from Kansas, I know,” she said. “But there’s more than one kind of home. And you’re right. You are on your own. We all are, and we all have to learn it sooner or later. If you have to be alone, though, wouldn’t you rather be alone among friends?”
Alone. I looked up, startled. How had she known what I had been thinking, back there in the darkness?
Grandma Gert’s face flushed with embarrassment. “Oh dear,” she said quickly. “I’m sorry, Amy. Sometimes I forget how strange it can be at first. I don’t do it on purpose—but when someone’s thoughts are as loud as yours it can be hard to know the difference.”
It took a moment for me to understand what she was saying.
“You can read my mind,” I said. Or maybe I just thought it.
The old woman nodded. “Something like that. Please don’t be afraid—it’s almost always what’s right there on the surface. I try not to go too much deeper than that. Not without permission.”
I didn’t know what to say and then I realized I didn’t have to say anything at all. Anything I could say, Grandma Gert already knew.
There was actually something comforting about that.
She was staring deep into my eyes. “Thank you,” she said. At first I didn’t know what she was thanking me for and then I did. It was for understanding. For not being afraid.
Then she gathered herself up, dropped my hand, and squared her shoulders.
“There will be plenty of time to talk about all of this later. First we need to get you cleaned up.” Her eyes drifted down to my scratched, bruised arms and bloody T-shirt. “Mombi certainly does know how to start a fight.”
Gert waved her hand, and the tree at the center of the cavern began to transform before my eyes. The roots swirled at my feet, the branches drew themselves down from the ceiling, the trunk began to melt like tar into the ground.
When it was done, she and I were standing next to a deep pool where the tree had stood before. Foamy white water bubbled up from somewhere beneath the ground, and steam wafted off the surface. It smelled clean and fresh.
“Go ahead,” Gert said, placing a hand on the small of my back and nudging me forward. “It will heal you.”
She didn’t have to tell me twice—I stepped right into the spring, not even bothering to take my clothes off. I didn’t need to: they began to disintegrate as soon as they touched the water.
I didn’t care that they were gone, and I didn’t care that I was naked in front of an old woman I’d just met. The minute the warm, clear water touched my bare skin, I felt my muscles melting as bubbles spun around me. I looked down at myself and watched, astonished, as days’ worth of dirt slid right off my body. But I was also surprised to see exactly how hurt I really was. Bruises peppered my arms and legs. Thick red tendrils of blood slipped from a gash across my abdomen that I didn’t remember getting in the first place.
When I looked up, I saw that Gert was beside me in the water, still fully clothed, her white dress billowing around her. I wasn’t sure why the water hadn’t affected her clothes the way it had mine. I hadn’t even noticed her get in with me.
She looked concerned, too, frowning down at my wounds. “This may hurt, Amy,” she said.
“Huh?” I asked, stretching. “No—it feels wonderful.”
“Take a deep breath,” she said, her tone now serious. With no further apology—before I’d even had a chance to do as she’d told me—she put her hand on my head and shoved me under the water.
The wound on my belly throbbed now with a deep, searing pain. Instinctively, I opened my mouth to scream as I struggled against the old woman’s grip. It was no use. Invisible hands grasped me from somewhere deep below the water, holding me in place. Somehow, I knew that all of them belonged to Gert.