Dorothy Must Die (16 page)

“You didn’t think I could do it, did you?” I asked. He just shrugged like,
Hey, can you blame me?

“Now I have to find you,” he said, standing. “Go ahead. Just
try
and hide from me. But I’m warning you—I could find you anywhere.”

Over the course of the next week, I learned how to use misdirection to hide from Nox in the cornfield. I learned how to direct my fiery darts at a target instead of setting structures (not to mention myself) on fire. I learned how to concentrate on what I wanted—which meant
figuring out
what
I wanted. It wasn’t easy, but Gert and Nox were patient.

Every afternoon, I would spar in the training room with Melindra or Annabel or Nox. I was still so much slower than the rest of them but I could tell I was getting better.

After a few weeks, I was stretching in the training room, about to go up against Melindra, when Mombi materialized in the corner of the room. I hadn’t seen her or Glamora in days.

“What is she doing here?” I whispered to Nox.

“Ignore her,” he said under his breath. But it was hard to ignore someone like Mombi. It felt like some kind of test. Was she here to check up on my progress? To see if I was ready yet? I still hadn’t beaten Melindra, which didn’t bode well.

Now that I’d fought her a million times, along with Annabel and Nox, I’d realized that Melindra was by far the best of us all. Most of my sparring sessions with her just boiled down to staying out of her way, which I’d gotten good at doing.

But she’d also seemed to develop a grudging respect for me. Now, when we fought, she was all business, not bothering to insult me or snipe at me. She always beat me. Then again, she almost always beat Nox and Annabel, too. When she had me where she wanted me, she’d just shrug, toss her hair, and raise her arm and its built-in blade up in victory.

Today, as Melindra and I began, I could feel Mombi’s critical eyes tracking me as I moved and dodged Melindra’s weapon. I managed to hold my own, ducking every time she swiped at me with her arm. I was proud that I hadn’t let her get within striking distance. This fight was lasting longer than most of our previous ones had, and I could tell we were both getting tired. Maybe today would be the day I’d finally beat her. Maybe all I’d needed was an audience.

Melindra forced me back toward the corner, near where Mombi and Nox stood. “She’s still reacting,” I heard the old witch mutter. “Not acting.”

Her words hit me in the gut almost as hard as Melindra did.

“Oof,” I cried as Melindra surprised me—feinting with her blade and then kicking me right in the stomach. Now she reared back, ready to strike again, this time with the sharp metal blade of her tin arm.

I did the only thing I could think to do. I disappeared.

I found myself outside of the cave where Nox had taken me the night I made it snow ashes. I took a second to catch my breath again. Mombi’s words had affected me more than I’d expected them to. I’d thought I’d made so much progress, learned so much in the past few weeks. But in an instant, she made me feel like all those lessons hadn’t even happened.

It made me angry that Mombi had shown up for just one fighting session and was passing judgment on me—she didn’t care how I was doing, how much I’d changed. All she cared about was whether or not I was ready to fight.

You are stronger than you think. Stronger than Mombi thinks,
I told myself.
You can take Melindra. Gert believes in you. So does Nox.

I repeated these lines a few times like a mantra until I began to believe them. I thought about Gert’s training, focusing on something other than anger to feel the magic begin to thrum in my fingers.

I concentrated on the room again and materialized just as Melindra was righting herself after having fallen through the air where I should have been standing. Without hesitating, I flipped through the air, and pinned Melindra to the ground.

Melindra’s eyes widened with surprise. “Ow,” she said. “Not fair!”

“There’s no such thing as fair out
there
,” I said. I’d learned as much from Nox.

I jumped to my feet.

“Need some help getting up?” I asked, extending a hand to Melindra. When I stole a glance at Nox, I saw him watching intently. It could have been my imagination but it looked like he was actually on the verge of a smile.

I didn’t dare look at Mombi.

Melindra took my hand in her metal one, crushing my bones just a little too hard. She leaned in.

“Let me guess,” she hissed. “He told you you were special. He took you to a place he never takes anyone else. Sound familiar?”

Something twisted in my gut, but I managed to keep a smile on my face. It was the halls of high school all over again.

Salvation Amy’s jealous. She wishes this were
her
baby.

I squeezed even harder and narrowed my eyes. “Never underestimate a girl from Kansas,” I said.

Before Melindra could say anything back, Mombi had stepped in front of me. She was looking at me like she was seeing me for the first time.

“You handled yourself well against our best,” Mombi declared. “Training is over. The Lion is on the move, heading toward the village of Pumperdink, just south of here. We leave at first light.”

“You were good back there,” Nox said. “Really good.” He had caught me in the corridor below the training area as I was heading to my room. It was dim and narrow down there, with a hazy, purple light that glowed from somewhere within the rocky walls.

“Thanks,” I said. “Melindra had it coming. She’s too used to winning. She let her guard down.”

“Yeah,” he said. “But you beat her fair and square. You’ve gotten so much better. It’s not just the magic. It’s the rest of it. I don’t even think you know you’re doing it. The way you move; the way you think on your feet. You’ve gotten so good so fast. You’re a natural, you know.”

“I wonder what happened,” I said.

He gave me a funny look. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I was never like this before. Back home. Where does it come from?”

“Amy,” he said. “It comes from
you.
”

I couldn’t help thinking back on what Melindra had said after I’d beaten her. She had just been trying to provoke me, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true. In some ways, I wondered if she was the only one that I could trust around here. At least she was for real with me.

Everyone in this place had an ulterior motive. It wasn’t even all that ulterior. Everything anyone did, everything they said to me, was all designed to push me in one way or another, was all meant to force me into becoming the person they thought I was. To become the weapon they needed. Nox was no exception. It would be stupid to think he was.

And yet, every now and then, it was like he was trying to tell me something that had nothing to do with Dorothy, or with the cause.

“What do you think you would be like?” I asked. “You know, if it weren’t for Dorothy. If you’d had the life you were supposed to?”

He looked at me in surprise, like it was something he had never even considered. “I . . .” He paused. “I don’t know. That’s the funny thing, isn’t it? As much as I hate her—as much as I wish Oz was how it was supposed to be, that we could all just be happy—I would be a totally different person, then. I can’t even imagine who I would be. Maybe someone better, I don’t know. Maybe someone worse. I like who I am.” He rolled his eyes and laughed ruefully to himself. “Maybe I owe her.”

“Let’s not get carried away here,” I said. But I knew what he meant. It was like me and my mom. Yeah, she’d been pretty crappy at the whole parenting game, but what if she hadn’t been? Who was to say I wouldn’t have turned out like Madison Pendleton?

“My whole life has been about fighting her, you know?” Nox was saying now. “Who will I be when she’s gone?”

“Do you think it will ever really happen?”

He tilted his head, pushing his fingers through his wild mane of hair, looking both vulnerable and certain of something. “I know it will,” he said. “I wasn’t sure at first, but now I know.”

“How?”

“I don’t know who brought you here or how they did it. But I know there was a reason for it. You’re here to help us. And I know you can do it.”

Suddenly I was aware of how close we were standing—so close I could smell his familiar sandalwood scent. I felt a pull toward him. One I didn’t just attribute to magic.

“And then what? Then who will we be?”

He leaned in toward me the tiniest bit.

“Then everything changes,” he said quietly. “Then I’m different. You’ll be different, too. You’re different already. I knew it from the beginning, but . . .”

I leaned toward him now, too, and, as if I were channeling Gert, anticipated something I really wanted. Wondered if I actually could make it happen. Without any magic at all.

Suddenly his face changed and he looked away. “You have to promise to be careful tomorrow,” he said. “I didn’t want to bring you, but Mombi wouldn’t listen. The Lion’s no joke. You have to promise me you won’t do anything stupid. I—we need you too much. You’re too valuable.”

For a second, I’d thought he’d been saying something different. But now his jaw was set, and I remembered again.

“I know the deal,” I said. “I know why I’m important to you.” I was testing him now. I wanted him to correct me.

He stared at me for what felt like the longest time. But he didn’t say anything else.

I turned around.

“Dorothy must die. I get it. But in the meantime, what are you living for?” I asked.

He didn’t answer. “I have to go,” he said. I was already walking away. “There’s planning to do. You should try and get some sleep.”

A screeching sound woke me in the middle of the night. When I opened my eyes, still groggy, I saw it. A bat.

It was zigzagging around my room, wings flapping, howling with a voice that was ten times bigger than its body.

I knew what it meant. It was a signal. It wanted me to follow it.

When I got to the war room a few minutes later, everyone else was already there, dressed for battle and clustered around Glamora’s scrying pool. Melindra and Annabel had grim looks on their faces. In other words, some things were the same as ever.

“What is it?” I asked.

“The Lion’s moving faster than we thought,” Gert said. “It’s time to go.”

Glamora pointed to the pool, where the shadowy image of an enormous lion breaking through the door of a small thatched house appeared. It was too dark to really make him out, but he didn’t look so cowardly to me. He looked mean—and hungry.

Behind him, I could see other silhouettes. The bumpy outlines of some kind of reptile, and a furry blur that looked like it might be some kind of enormous rodent.

“The Lion spent so long afraid of every creature in the forest. Now he commands them,” Nox whispered.

“What are those things?”

“You name it. If it has claws and teeth and it drools, it probably answers to the Lion.” I felt myself shiver as my imagination filled in the blanks.

“What are they doing?” I asked quietly, fighting back the irrational fear that he could hear me.

“What they do best,” Glamora replied. “Going door-to-door. Some of the villagers he’ll capture to bring back to Dorothy; the rest of them he’ll kill. For fun. After he eats, of course.” She trailed her fingers through the water, and the image disappeared in a swirl of red. “It’s too late for this village—it’s already lost. But he’ll be on to the next one soon, and if we act fast we can stop him before he gets there.”

“Not to mention get to
us
,”
Nox said.

“Exactly,” Mombi interjected. “He’s less than a hundred miles from us. If he gets any closer, we run the risk that his senses will be able to see past the magical barriers that keep us hidden here.” She looked at me. “I hope what I saw yesterday wasn’t a fluke, Amy. This isn’t a test anymore.”

“Mombi,” Nox said, cutting in. “Please. Think about it. Amy should stay behind. We can’t risk her on something like this. It’s too dangerous.”

Mombi dismissed him with a wave of her gnarled hand. “We’ve already been through this, Nox. I wouldn’t expect you, of all people, to let your feelings get in the way of what must be done. We need all the strength we can muster tonight.”

“If we can’t count on Amy now, when all the rest of us will be there, she won’t be much good alone against Dorothy anyway,” Melindra added, shooting a sidelong glance in my direction.

I was annoyed. They were talking about me like I wasn’t even there. And why was Nox trying to prevent me from going? Didn’t he think I’d improved? “I’m going,” I said coolly, all heads turning in my direction. “Melindra’s right. And I’m a member of the Order now. I’m not just going to hide out here while everyone else fights.”

Nox’s forehead creased in frustration, but he let it drop. It was settled.

Mombi, Gert, and Glamora left the war room to make the final preparations. I was about to leave when Nox pulled me aside. “Here,” he said, pushing something hard into my hand.

I turned the object over in my palm. It was a knife, but it wasn’t
only
a knife. I could tell it was special just by the way it felt. It was heavy, heavier than it looked, and it was almost vibrating with something that I now recognized immediately as magic.

I didn’t want to like it. I didn’t want to like anything that Nox gave me. But I couldn’t help it: the knife was too beautiful. It was nothing like the kitchen knife that Pete had given me. It had a glinting silver blade with mysterious symbols engraved into it. The hilt was smooth and white, and was intricately carved into the figure of a bird with wings outstretched, ready to take flight.

“I carved it by hand from a Kalidah’s bones,” he said, looking down to avoid meeting my eyes. “The blade’s made from the claw. Gert spelled it and Mombi sealed it. It’s designed to channel your magic for you—to store it and make it easier to access. Not so different from Dorothy’s magic shoes, really. Except, hopefully, you know, not totally evil.”

I rubbed my fingers over Nox’s handiwork. It must have taken hours. I knew that he’d done it for the cause, so that I could be a better fighter. But it was still a gift and it was still beautiful.

“It will protect you,” he said. “And there’s another spell attached to it, too—push the wings down.”

The wings didn’t look like they would move, but when I pressed gingerly on them, they ceded easily to my touch and folded up neatly against the side of the bird’s body. As they did, the knife sparkled in my hand and then evaporated into smoke that drifted off into the air.

“Where’d it go?” I asked.

“It’s still with you,” Nox said. “Just not anywhere someone else can find it. Now picture it in your hand again.”

I looked down at my empty, open palm and imagined I was clutching the weapon. Its image entered my mind, and as it did, I was holding it again.

“Thank you,” I said quietly. I wrapped my fingers gently around the hilt. I couldn’t remember the last time anyone had given me anything, and this was something that Nox had made just for me. Something magic. I felt my spirit lift inside myself. The corners of my mouth threatened to turn upward, but I didn’t want him to see how happy the present had made me. “What kind of bird is this?” I asked. It didn’t look like any bird I’d seen before.

“It’s a Magril—a bird that’s native to Gillikin Country. It spends half its life as a beetle, and when it’s an adult, it goes to sleep for a year and wakes up as this majestic creature.”

“Kind of like a butterfly.”

“Kind of like you,” he said. I didn’t have an answer to that.

I didn’t need one. At that moment, Mombi appeared before us. She looked down at the knife and up at me, and then Nox.

“It’s time to go,” she said.

We all gathered a few minutes later in the training room—me, Nox, Gert, and Mombi—and held hands. Glamora would be staying behind, along with Melindra and Annabel.

Melindra complained about being left behind—she wasn’t the type to want to miss out on any action—but she seemed placated when Mombi reminded her that it was important that our most skilled fighter guard the headquarters in case it was a trap. Melindra didn’t look happy about it, but she knew better than to argue with Mombi.

I felt myself envying her. Now that it was time to go, I suddenly wondered if I should have been so eager to fight.

But it was too late to think about that. In the training area, we all stood in a circle, all of us chanting at once as we worked together to cast the spell that would take us to the village.

Glamora took a step back, still chanting, and stepped out of the circle, followed by Annabel and Melindra. We all joined hands.

Nox looked over at me. “Hold on,” he warned me with a sly, nervous grin.

He squeezed tight.

I felt an invisible force start to lift me, then it yanked me upward like a bullet, and we shot straight up.

I screamed and closed my eyes, knowing I was about to be smushed like a bug against the roof of the cave.

Instead, I felt wind on my face. I opened my eyes and found that my body was horizontal, my arms strained to their limits as I held on to Nox. Everyone else still had their eyes closed, their mouths forming the same chant over and over and over, and we were all fanned out like skydivers in formation, the mountain below us, hurtling out of sight.

We were flying.

It was the most incredible feeling I’d ever had. The sensation of free-falling made me giddy and light-headed, like I was a balloon and my insides were helium. I laughed, almost forgetting that I, Salvation Amy, was on my way to battle the Not-So-Cowardly Lion and his army of monsters. How could my stomach tie itself into knots about what was coming when I was busy tumbling into the sky?

“It never gets old,” Nox said, opening his eyes. “In case you were wondering.”

His normally spiky hair was flattened against his head by the wind, but for some reason his voice came out normal, like we were still standing right next to each other in the training room.

“You could have warned me,” I said. “I thought we were going to teleport.”

“It takes too much energy to teleport this many people,” he said. “By the time we got there, we’d all be ready to pass out from exhaustion. This is more efficient. Plus, it’s fun.”

“Won’t they see us coming?”

“Nope,” Nox said. “We’re traveling in the Space Between Space. They can’t see us if we’re not really here. It’s how we passed through the mountain.”

“Oh,” I said, pretending I knew what he was talking about.

“I’ll explain later,” he said.

“Should we still be chanting?” I asked nervously, seeing that both Mombi and Gert still had their eyes squeezed tight.

“Nah,” he said. “The takeoff is the hard part. Now that we’re on our way, it only takes Gert to keep us in the air.”

“What’s Mombi doing then?” I asked.

Nox wiggled his eyebrows and lowered his voice to a conspiratorial stage whisper. “Mombi’s afraid of heights,” he said. “She’s not casting a spell. She’s saying her prayers.”

“Who exactly do wicked witches pray to?”

Nox laughed. “Who knows? She’s just trying to stay distracted so she doesn’t piss herself before we land.”

Our ascent had slowed down by now and we floated easily through the air, a mist of lavender clouds hovering just inches above our heads. In the distance, the sun was rising over the Deadly Desert. Instead of looking down, I looked at Nox as he took in the landscape.

Seeing him like this, away from the caves, away from the cause, I could almost see the boy he could have been. The boy he
would
have been if Dorothy had never come back. He looked happy. He looked beautiful.

Then he turned dark again. “Almost here,” he said. I followed his gaze and saw thick, black smoke rising up from a forested area at the foot of a mountain range, curling into the sky.

“Get ready,” Gert said, not opening her eyes. “We’re coming in for a landing.”

The knot in my stomach tied itself right back up as our velocity reversed itself and we hurtled for the ground, picking up speed.

But her warning was unnecessary. We landed like feathers in a field on the outskirts of what must have been Pumperdink. It was on fire, its small, dome-shaped houses consumed with flames as panicked townspeople raced in every direction.

The smell filled my nostrils and stayed there, churning. It was disgusting—a horrible combination of smoke and blood and burning flesh and other things, I’m sure, that I didn’t even want to know about.

As I looked around, unsure what to do next, I saw something moving above me. Monkeys—they were weaving through the burning sky. The almost humanlike way in which they swooped and dove into the chaos made me shiver.

“Mombi and I will take down the beasts left in this village and save as many of the children as we can,” Gert said, turning back to me and Nox. “Amy, you go with Nox to find the Lion. Send a summoning spell when you’ve got him in your sights. Don’t try to defeat him yourselves—he’s too powerful for either of you to take on without us.”

Nox nodded and Mombi and Gert disappeared.

He balled his hand into a fist, and when he opened it he was holding a glowing ball of blue flame, which he blew on gently. It spun from his hand and hovered a few inches in the air. Nox blew on it again—it circled lazily around us, then darted back and forth for a few seconds before zinging off in the opposite direction of the village, leaving a trail of blue energy in its wake.

Nox jerked his head wordlessly toward the forest on the other side of the field. I pulled the knife he had given me out of the air, like he’d taught me to do, and his eyes met mine. The rest of his face was stony and emotionless, but his eyes were flashing with something else that I couldn’t place. Pride, maybe? They seemed to be saying,
See? This is it. This is what I told you about
.

I nodded, hoping he knew that I understood. And we went racing off, chasing the light.

It got darker as we went farther into the trees, until finally the only illumination was the dim light from the tracing charm that was leading us. But my training served me well now, and my feet nimbly avoided every obstacle as if I’d run down this path a thousand times.

After a few minutes, we heard a roar in the distance. Nox put a finger to his lips and slowed down until we reached the edge of a clearing.

“Stay back,” Nox whispered. “They won’t notice us yet if we’re careful.”

The clearing was crowded with animals, some I recognized and others I didn’t. There were foxes and crocodiles and wolves and tigers and bears. A few were walking around on their hind legs, while others were pacing on all fours. It was a nightmare zoo—a menagerie of wild mutated animals of every size and shape. These were the Lion’s beasts.