Again, Indigo hooted. “Not your rat, dumbass. Her.”
“Who’s she?”
Indigo scrunched her face up and swiveled her neck like I was a complete moron. “Oh yeah, who’s she? she asks. Please.”
“No, seriously,” I said. “I’m new around here. Tell me who you’re talking about.”
“I’m new around here,” Indigo mocked me in a squeaky falsetto, slipping her backpack on. But as she did it, she looked at me. Really looked at me.
“Wait, you’re not kidding, are you? You really aren’t from around here.” She was staring at my clothes. I guessed that jeans and a hoodie were not what the kids were wearing in Oz.
“No,” I said simply. “I’m not.”
Her jaw dropped open in slow motion as it dawned on her. “Holy shit,” she said. “You’re from the Other Place, aren’t you?” She looked over one shoulder and then the other, then asked quietly: “How did you get here?” I couldn’t tell if her tone was one of excitement or fear.
“It was a tor—” I began, but before I could finish, I was cut off by a loud, metallic clanking sound from somewhere off in the distance.
Indigo took a step backward. “You know what?” she said, her eyes darting nervously from building to building. “Never mind. It’s better if I don’t know. In fact, it’s better if I don’t talk to you at all.”
“What? Why?”
She busied herself with her backpack, her tiny face scrunched up with worry.
“Like I said, I’ve already got about five thousand problems, give or take a thousand. Getting caught conspiring with an outlander would be five thousand and one. I’d love to hear your story, but it’s not worth it. Good luck. You’ll need it.” With that, she hoisted her pack on her shoulders and began to walk away.
“No way!” I yelled. “Just let me ask you some questions. I have no idea what’s going on.”
“If you’re lucky, you’ll never find out,” she said, not slowing her pace or bothering to look back.
I wasn’t going to let this happen again. She was speeding along, heading off the road, but my legs were longer. I raced after her and grabbed her by the elbow.
“Hey!” she said, whirling around to face me. “Don’t touch me!” She yanked her arm away, but I yanked right back. And I was stronger.
“Let me come with you,” I whispered urgently. I didn’t know where she was going, but she was the best hope I had. Hope of what, I wasn’t sure, but I would figure that out later. “I promise—I’ll do whatever you want. I swear I won’t get you in trouble. But I’m alone here, and I have no idea what I’m doing.”
She bit her lip. The thing is, I could tell she was as curious about me as I was about her. I could tell part of her wanted to relent.
But then we heard that clanging noise again. This time it was louder.
“You seem like a nice person,” Indigo hissed. “And I love rats. But get your fucking hands off me and get the hell away from me. The best thing you can do right now is get your ass back to wherever it is you came from and hope you never wind up in this sorry place again.”
“I don’t know how to go home,” I said. But I let her elbow go. This wasn’t getting me anywhere.
“It looks like you’ve got problems, too, then.” Indigo folded her arms across her chest, planting her stocky body firmly in place. “See ya,” she said.
Honestly, I was starting to think this girl was kind of an asshole. But if she wasn’t going to help me, I couldn’t think of any good way to force her. All I could do was keep following the road and hope it led me somewhere better than this.
So I walked away, back to the famous road paved with yellow bricks. At least I had a general sense of where that would take me. When I looked back over my shoulder, the angry little Munchkin was watching me go.
As I passed the statue of Dorothy, I changed my mind one more time. “Just tell me one thing,” I asked her, spinning around. She shrugged, noncommittal. She hadn’t budged from the spot where I’d left her. “They talk about Oz where I’m from. I’ve heard about it my whole life. But this is messed up. What happened here?”
Indigo’s impassive face twisted into a snarl. “Dorothy happened,” she said.
Dorothy happened. I’d tried to ask Indigo what she’d meant, but her eyes had gone from blue to black and she’d threatened to punch me in the face if I came one step closer or asked her another goddamn question. I had already been punched in the face once today—that had been today, hadn’t it?—so I did what she wanted and kept on moving.
It was only a few minutes before I put the tiny little town behind me. Now I was back on the road. Ahead, it led up a steep hill that was completely devoid of any grass at all, the raw dirt interrupted only by a few stunted, sickly shrubs here and there.
Dorothy had been here, I reminded myself. She had walked this very same path. You’re like her in so many ways, the boy had said.
Kansas, tornado, blah, blah, blah. I mean, the similarities were pretty obvious, right? But there were plenty of differences between us, too. First off, from what I remembered it hadn’t taken her long at all to make friends. It was like everyone she’d run into—witches not included—had wanted to jump on the Dorothy Express.
As for me, I’d come across two people so far, and exactly both of them had wanted nothing to do with me. It was kind of depressing to think that I could travel all the way to Oz and still be just as unpopular as I was back in Flat Hill, Kansas.
I didn’t know where to go next, but the Emerald City seemed as good a place to start as any. That’s where Dorothy had gone for help. The road would take me there. It wanted to take me there.
So I trudged up the hill, and as I did, the banging sound I’d heard back in the village continued. It was still intermittent—there were a few minutes of welcome silence for every thirty seconds of racket. It was getting louder with every step I took, though, and soon it was so loud that I had to cover my ears every time it started.
When I finally reached the top of the incline I saw where it was coming from.
In the distance, across a periwinkle field of dust and dirt and beyond a tangled maze of gnarled, thorny trees, stood a towering seesaw contraption that was attached by a mess of pipes and wires to something that looked like a cross between an oil rig and a windmill.
When I squinted, I saw at least twenty people of less-than-average height piled on either end of the seesaw thing. Every few minutes, the Munchkins would start bouncing up and down in place, and as they did, the taller machine would begin spinning and clanging, jackhammering into the earth.
Above all of the action a statuesque figure in a glittering ball gown floated serenely in midair, just watching them at work. I tried to see what was holding her up but as far as I could tell she was just . . . floating.
Wait, a ball gown?
I couldn’t make up my mind which part I was more curious about: the fact that she was levitating or the fact that she was doing it above a field of dirt, dressed like she was on her way to the prom.
I stared at her with rapt curiosity. Even from here, I could tell that she was no Munchkin. Not just because she was too tall to be one either. There was just something different about her. Something familiar that I couldn’t place. She had to be at least a couple of hundred feet away, but it was like her image was burning right through all that distance and imprinting itself right onto my retinas.
She was the most beautiful creature I’d ever seen. Her hair was red, and her skin was glowing, and her body was radiating a shower of glittering pink sparks.