She giggled. And then-and then she closed her eyes tightly, and she did it.
Click. Click. Click.
Three times she touched her heels together. The shoes made a slight, plasticky sound. Dorothy started to giggle again.
A sudden, sharp pain lanced through her chest, and her giggle turned to a gasp. She struggled to breathe, but her lungs cramped. She couldn’t open her eyes, either, and beyond the closed lids was only darkness. Something was wrong.
She couldn’t tell what was happening. She heard a loud rush that seemed familiar, like a great, whirling wind, and then, in the darkness, came a stupendous silence. Dorothy went spinning into the blackness, shooting into some place where up and down had no meaning, where gravity was gone. She flew backward, and then tumbled forward. She clenched her hands together, having nothing else to hold on to. Had she had breath, she might have screamed, but there was nothing in her lungs, and her throat wouldn’t work.
And then, just when she felt as if her chest would burst…
Thud.
Her lungs released, all at once, and a great draught of sweet, moist air rushed to fill them. The pain in her chest vanished all at once, leaving a sense of lightness. There was light beyond her closed eyelids now, golden light. The silence was filled by the burble of running water, the whisper of a gentle breeze. Cautiously, she opened her eyes.
Her cluttered bedroom, with its unmade bed, her apron on the floor, was gone. The farmhouse was gone. Kansas was gone.
Around her, on every side, were green fields and blue houses and vivid flowers. A stream sparkled between grassy banks. The sun was gentle on her head, and Dorothy felt as if she had opened her eyes inside a kaleidoscope, her eyes dazzled by pink and rose and yellow and violet and other colors she had no name for, colors that existed nowhere else.
With a soft cry, she sank to her knees on the soft grass. Her palms crept to her cheeks, and she gazed about her in wonder. It was still here! The magic had waited for her all these years. She spread her arms wide, to embrace the bright world. “Hello!” she called. “Hello!”
For long moments she was alone in the world of color, and then, as if they too had been waiting, they began to come, creeping forward through the banks of flowers, popping up from hedges, peering around the blue houses. They were as perfect as she remembered, and as funny, small and smiling, bright-eyed. Dorothy laughed to see them and held out her hands.
The little people in their motley clothes crowded around her, twittering in their high voices. They patted her arms and then her cheeks with soft hands. They touched her hair, and the cotton of her dress. They hugged her.
They smelled of berries and cotton candy and sweet tea, scents that mixed with the perfume of flowers, the smell of new grass, the taste of rain not long past. For a long time they greeted her in this way, welcomed her back, and Dorothy remembered how good it felt to be touched, to be caressed.
After a time, they tugged at her arms, and she stood up.
She was twice as tall as they were.
Their twittering ceased, and their eyes went round with confusion. They stared up at her, dismay in their soft faces, their hands falling by their sides.
Dorothy said, “What-what’s the matter?”
They stared at her shoes and then at her face. They backed away, now beginning to murmur urgently to each other. One or two turned and ran, like fat puppies tumbling over the grass.
Dorothy put one hand on her chest. “It’s me,” she said, a little diffidently. “Don’t you remember me?”
Heads were shaken, brows furrowed.
“You have to remember me!” Dorothy cried. “I remember you so well! I remember all of you, and I remember this place, and the flowers, and the sky…”
“Oh, but, Dorothy,” came a melodic voice behind her. “Of course you remember us! We haven’t changed. But you-you have changed a great deal.”
Dorothy whirled.
She was just stepping out of her iridescent bubble, her spangled skirt as white as pearl, her hair like spun gold.
“Oh!” Dorothy cried. “Oh! I can hardly believe it’s you!”
Bright blue eyes twinkled up at her. “Of course it’s me, dear. But I would hardly have known you if it weren’t for the shoes! You’re not the same girl at all.”
“I know,” Dorothy said mournfully.
“Why is that, Dorothy? Is that because of Kansas?”
Dorothy’s shoulders sagged. “I don’t know. I think it’s because of growing up-and growing dull.”
“Dull? But you were so strong, so bright and clever!”
“I lost myself,” Dorothy whispered.
The little woman tipped her golden head to one side. “You’ve come back to find yourself, then. And about time. What took you so long?”
“I didn’t know I could come back,” Dorothy said. “And I didn’t think I should! I just-I was having such an awful day-”
“And you ran away?”
“Oh, no,” Dorothy said. “I can’t run away. I’m a grown-up now. Grown-ups don’t run away.” She looked around her at the vivid scenery. “And grown-ups don’t believe in magic.”
“You believe in magic!” the tiny woman said stoutly.
“Well, but-grown-ups in Kansas don’t.”
“Then I think,” the little woman said, putting her hands on her hips, “that Kansas must be a terrible place.”
Dorothy sighed. “It’s not, really… it’s just… oh, I wish I could stay right here and never leave!”
“Why can’t you?”
“I have responsibilities. I’ve made promises.”
Her companion only laughed. “Break them!” she said in her tinkling voice.
“I just-I don’t think I can do that.” Dorothy looked around her. All the little faces had disappeared, except for one brave one peeping over the hedge. But the colors were just as bright, the sweet breeze just as inviting, and there was a glimmer of gold in the distance, winding through emerald fields.
Her companion put a small, cool hand under her arm. “Come, Dorothy. Look!” She turned her around to face the shining bubble. “Let me show you something.”
She lifted her arm and waved at the bubble. The side of it opaqued, its iridescence fading until it turned as gray and hard as a television screen. And there, reflected or projected, Dorothy couldn’t tell, was Kansas.
The vivid green grass on which the bubble sat, and the bright blue of the sky above it, made the farmhouse and the wheatfields and the dusty lane look painfully drab. As Dorothy watched, her mouth open in wonder, the view zoomed through the screen door and into the kitchen. And there, bent over the sink scrubbing potatoes, was…
“It’s me!” Dorothy cried. “But that can’t be!”
The tinkly laugh again. “Of course it can be, Dorothy dear! So little of you was there in the first place-just a shell, really, a shadow-that it cost you nothing to leave that much behind. The main part of you-the real part-is right here!”
Dorothy stared at her own dumpy figure moving about the kitchen. She saw the graying hair, the thickening ankles, the rounded shoulders. Past the barn, she saw the thin plume of dust raised by the tractor, and coming down the lane, a thicker stream of dust whirling behind the school bus. “Oh, no,” she breathed. “Lin!”
She watched her daughter jump down from the bus, wave to her friends, and run across the yard. She could hear nothing, but still her nerves jolted as Lin slammed the screen door. She tossed her backpack into a corner and went to the refrigerator. Dorothy-the shell of Dorothy-turned from the sink with a potato in her hand, and her lips moved.
Lin didn’t even look at her.
Dorothy watched in bewilderment as Lin took her sandwich from the fridge, turned her back on her mother, and ran lightly up the stairs to her room. A moment later, Phil came in and sat at the kitchen table with a newspaper in front of him. He didn’t speak either.