I was on fire. I had escaped Dorothy, escaped the Tin Woodman and his metal army, only to find someone I trusted—someone who wanted to help me—and it had all been a trick.
All she meant to do was kill me.
Why? I screamed in my head, knowing she’d be able to hear. Why would you do this?
Sometimes only pain can heal, a cold, distant voice answered.
Just when I thought my lungs would burst—just as I felt consciousness beginning to leave me—the hands let go. My body floated up to the surface, where I gasped for air and found my footing on the smooth rocks lining the pool.
I spun around and faced Gert angrily. “Why?” I demanded again, this time out loud. “Why would you . . .”
“Because it was necessary,” Gert said shortly, pursing her lips. “I saved your life.”
I didn’t believe her at first, but my fingers touched smooth skin when I reached for my wound. I looked down. No gaping bloody hole. No invisible sutures. No scar. The wound had healed like it had never happened at all.
The bruises were gone, too. My skin looked dewy and softer than it had ever been, peachy-pink like all the dead skin had been sloughed off, as if every imperfection healed from the outside in.
It didn’t matter. She had saved me, okay, fine, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that it still felt like a betrayal. Gert had been one thing, and then she had become something else. I didn’t understand why. I didn’t know if I wanted to.
You had to trust me, Gert said. Her lips didn’t move. But you also have to learn not to trust anyone. Even me.
She sank slowly into the pool, and then she was gone.
By the edge of the water, I saw that a stack of towels and a gorgeous silk robe had been laid out for me. Had Gert put them there when I wasn’t paying attention? Or had they just appeared by magic?
I didn’t really care. I wanted to stay in here forever, but I knew that I couldn’t. When I felt the water beginning to turn lukewarm, I reluctantly stepped out and dried my newly healed body. I couldn’t help thinking that this was all another trick—something to try to lure me into a false sense of security. But my clothes were gone. I couldn’t walk around naked. The robe felt soft against my skin.
Gert reappeared as soon as I looped the belt around my waist, as if she sensed I was ready to move on to the next part of whatever fate awaited me. “They’re waiting,” she announced.
“They?” I asked, not looking at her. “Who’s they?”
I crossed my hands over my chest like a five-year-old. Gert’s face softened.
“Forgiveness doesn’t come easy for you, I see. Sometimes you have to bend so as not to break, dear.”
“You manipulated me,” I said. “I know it. You used your magic on me to make me think you were my friend.”
“Maybe I did and maybe I didn’t,” Gert said. “But if I did, maybe it was for a reason? And if I did, then what’s stopping me from doing it again?”
I glanced suspiciously at her, and she shrugged. I guess I would have to take that as an apology.
I didn’t know where we were going or who was waiting for us, but I followed Gert obediently as she led me out of the cavern and through a series of caves. I didn’t particularly want to, but I knew by now that I didn’t really have a choice.
We walked through a room that was entirely empty except for stark silver walls, and as we moved through it, the air changed. It was heavy and humid all of a sudden.
Clouds hovered near the ceiling of the cave, spitting down raindrops on our heads. A thought suddenly occurred to me: if these witches could make weather indoors, if they could control it—could they create a tornado?
Did they bring me here? I wondered.
“If we could do that we would have done it long ago,” Gert said curtly. “Your arrival in Oz is no coincidence. Someone—or something—sent for you. But whatever force might have brought you here is beyond even the witches’ knowledge.”
I just ignored her.
Gert paused when we reached a new tunnel. She reached up and adjusted the collar of my robe before pulling me into another room that was almost entirely taken up by an enormous table made of what looked like glittering black diamonds, surrounded by rough wooden chairs. Mombi stood at the head of the table, smiling at me, well, wickedly. At her sides were two other people I’d never met before. It wasn’t a huge leap to guess that they, too, were witches.
“Amy,” Mombi greeted me from the other side of the table. “I trust you’ve recovered from our journey. I was very pleased at the gumption you showed back in the dungeons. And we’re all happy to have you with us.”
My eyes immediately snapped to her left. Standing there was a boy with smooth olive skin who looked like he was around my age, maybe a little older. His dark hair stood on end as if he had stuck his fingers in a light socket years ago and hadn’t bothered to comb it since. He was cute, sure, but there was something arrogant in the way he looked at me with pale gray eyes. Or maybe not arrogant—maybe he looked angry. I straightened and stared right back.
Who was he? The idea of Gert or Mombi having kids just didn’t seem right. And he was a little scary, really. Which was saying a lot given the fact that he was sitting next to Mombi.
“She had a nasty slice in her side, Mombi,” Gert said, looking her in the eye. “But she didn’t much care for the healing process.”
Mombi didn’t blink. “Tin Soldiers. The cell was protected. I had to improvise.”
Gert nodded, but I didn’t think she believed her. Was she suggesting that Mombi was just testing me out?
Standing on Mombi’s other side was a curvy, statuesque woman wearing a tight purple wrap dress. A hood concealed her face—but when she pulled it away, my heart skipped a beat and then sank.
It was Glinda. Glinda the not-so-good witch. The one who was besties with Dorothy, who had made the Munchkins her slaves and was using them to mine giant holes all over Oz.
She wasn’t wearing PermaSmile, but she was smiling at me.
She spoke in a sickeningly sweet voice that scraped at the back of my spine.
“No rest for the Wicked, is there, Amy?”
A chill rushed through my body. I should never have come with Mombi, should never have trusted Gert. But what choice did I really have when I was standing in the palace dungeon, about to go on trial for a Fate Worse Than Death, the Tin Soldiers advancing? It’s not like I had a ton of options.
“She’s one of you?” I asked. My voice echoed through the cave.
Was this some kind of trap? Was this Dorothy’s idea of a twisted punishment? They’d rescued me, cleaned me up, and now they were just going to turn me over to Dorothy’s evil pink BFF?
Like hell.
I took a step back. And another. Then I turned toward the mouth of the cave and began to run. I’d have to navigate the weird maze of caves we’d come through, but it beat being trapped in the room full of witches with crazy superpowers behind me. And if Grandma Gert could read minds, who knew what the others could do? No, I had to get out of here.
Out of nowhere, I slammed into a cold, hard surface and then slid down awkwardly onto the stone ground. But there was nothing there. I’d run into an invisible wall.
Glinda’s laugh echoed around me. I guess it probably was funny. From her perspective, I mean. I must have looked like a duped Wile E. Coyote falling off a cliff.
I felt my face turn red. I wasn’t embarrassed. Or at least, I wasn’t just embarrassed. I was scared. And I was angry. But I couldn’t fight it as an invisible hand clawed into my shoulder, pulling me up to my feet. It set me standing again, turned me around to face my captors, and marched me back toward them.