“We’re in Kansas,” she said, her voice hoarse and weak. “You brought me back to Kansas. And I hate Kansas.” She struggled to her feet and the witches’ spell dimmed as her shoes began to glow even more fiercely. She flicked her fingers at us and scowled when her magic failed to appear. “I want my palace back,” she hissed. “And my power. And my dresses.” She looked down at the red shoes and they blazed with a brilliant crimson light.
“No!” Gert cried. “Stop her!” But the pale glow of the witches’ spell dissolved into a puff of iridescent glitter as Dorothy’s shoes radiated light and power. She wobbled a little, clearly exhausted. Her eyes were sunk deep in her skull. Her skin looked dry and stretched over the bones of her face. Her hair was lank and bedraggled.
“Take me home,” she whispered feebly. “Please, shoes, take me home.” Mombi lunged forward, her own hands radiating the light of a spell, but it was too late. With a flash of red and a sharp pop like a champagne cork shooting out of a bottle, Dorothy vanished.
Dorothy had gone home. And we were stuck in Kansas. For good.
TWO
Mombi and Glamora quickly conjured up a silk tent that, fragile as it looked, kept out the dust and the relentless Kansas wind. I hadn’t seen much of Glamora lately, and her resemblance to her sister Glinda startled me all over again when I first saw her in the gentle glow of the strands of lights she strung up inside the tent. In a flash, the memory of the time I’d spent with her in the Order’s underground caverns came flooding back: her lessons on the art of glamour, her love of beautiful things, and the intense determination in her face when she told me about what Glinda had done to her. She’d nearly lost that first battle with her sister, and I knew how badly she wanted to bring Glinda down. But it still shocked me how close to impossible it was to tell the sisters apart. I’d seen more than enough of Glinda in action for her sister’s face to creep me out a little, no matter how much I knew Glamora was on the side of the Wicked. The thing I needed to figure out now, I was realizing, was how much the Wicked were on the side of me.
I tried getting Mombi, Glamora, and Gert to answer my frantic questions, but they ignored me as they bustled around our temporary home plumping cushions and pulling dishes and silverware out of thin air. “What just happened?” I hissed at Nox. He gave me a helpless look, and I wanted to smack him.
“There was too much to tell you, Amy. You know the Order has always had to keep secrets to survive.” I shook my head in disgust. When had anyone ever told me the whole truth? I’d thought I could trust Nox at least. Clearly, I’d been wrong. I was furious. More than that, I was hurt. Nox and I weren’t just soldiers who fought together anymore. My feelings for him were way more complicated than that—and I’d thought he cared about me.
“Amy, talk to me,” he said. “Please.”
“Forget it,” I snapped.
Glamora being Glamora, she’d also summoned a Pottery Barn’s worth of beautiful, soft carpets, heavy throw pillows, decorative tapestries, and a big antique-looking wooden table where the witches were conjuring up a meal. I remembered the handkerchief that Lulu had given me—the one that had created Glinda’s version of the same tent. In some ways, the sisters were uncannily alike. Glamora’s special touches even included the same votive candles and arrangements of flowers as Glinda’s. I wondered, not for the first time, how two people so alike could have possibly turned out so different. Were there other ways the sisters were similar? I’d thought foolishly that I’d been safe in Glinda’s tent. Maybe Glamora’s was just as dangerous.
“Amy,” Glamora said gently, “why don’t you come get something to eat?” I ignored the expression on Nox’s face as I turned my back on him and followed her to the table. What did he expect from me? The silk of the tent rustled and I knew he’d slipped outside, which made me even angrier. It was bad enough that he hadn’t told me what was going on. But refusing to face me afterward? That was worse.
Mombi, Gert, and Glamora were already sitting around the table over plates of food. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten, but I wasn’t hungry.
“How can you just sit there?” I exploded. “How is Gert still alive? What just happened back there? What are we doing in Kansas, and how do we get back to Oz? This is Kansas, right? Is that why I can’t use magic?” Mombi put down her fork and looked at me.
“You can’t use magic?”
“No,” I said. “Not here. It’s just . . . gone, somehow. But that’s not the point. You owe me answers.”
Gert sighed. “You’re right, it’s probably time.”
“It’s way past time,” I said.
Gert chuckled. “That’s my girl. No beating around the bush, our Amy.”
“I’m not anybody’s girl,” I said. “I’m tired of being jerked around. You obviously know a lot more than I do about what’s going on here.”
“That’s not entirely true,” Gert said. “But I do understand your confusion, and I’m sorry you feel hurt. I know all this has been difficult for you.”
“It would be a lot less difficult for me if you would just tell me what the hell is going on!” I yelled. I’d been through so much, and still hadn’t managed to kill Dorothy. Tears started to fall and I cried. I cried because Nox, possibly my only friend, probably wasn’t such a great friend after all. I cried for poor Polychrome, who’d I’d watched die trying to fight Glinda, and I cried for her dead unicorn. I cried for Star, my mom’s pet rat, who the Lion had swallowed whole in front of me. I cried for all the friends I’d lost already in this stupid, senseless, never-ending yellow brick war. And maybe, just maybe, I cried a little for myself, too. When I was done I lifted my tearstained face to find Gert, Glamora, and Mombi looking at me with eyes full of concern. I’d doubted them all, and for good reason. I was more than tired of doing other people’s dirty work. But maybe they really did care about me.
“You done?” Mombi asked, gruffly but not unkindly. “Because we have work to do, kid.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, embarrassment already beginning to replace my outburst of emotion.
Mombi waved a hand at Gert. “Tell her what she wants to know so we can get on with it,” she said.
Gert looked at me questioningly, and I nodded. “Okay, let’s start with the easy question first. You asked how I’m still alive,” she said. “The truth is, I never died.”
If that was the easy question, I couldn’t wait for the hard ones. “But I saw you,” I said. “I saw you when you died, right in the middle of the first battle I ever fought.” I pushed back the gruesome memory of my first meeting with the Lion and his awful animal army. Like a lot of things that had happened to me in Oz, it was something I never wanted to think about again. “I saw you fight the Lion, and lose. It happened right in front of me.”
“You did see that,” she agreed. “And I did lose, there’s no doubt about that either.” She shuddered briefly and closed her eyes as if in pain. I wasn’t in a mood to be sympathetic to the Order, but it was hard to stay mad at Gert. It was like holding a grudge against your grandmother for accidentally burning your favorite cookies. “But witches are very, very difficult to kill,” she went on, opening her eyes again. “Even in a battle like that one. I’m honestly not entirely sure what happened to me when the Lion defeated me. The best guess I can come up with is that Dorothy’s magic is weakening the boundaries between your world and ours. When the Lion won, everything went dark for me for a long time. It was as though I was wandering through some kind of shadow country.”