Oz Reimagined: New Tales from the Emerald City and Beyond (11 page)

Your loving sis,

Nell

My dearest Dotts,

I’ve asked the Shaggy Man to bring you this letter. When you’ve read it, I want you to tell Mamsie the whole story—from when I first started investigating Mary Lang’s disappearance. Make sure she’s sitting down on the parlor sofa, and tell her slowly. It’s not good for her to be startled or upset. But she was the one who always told us stories about Oz, so maybe she won’t be as startled as you or I would be.

Once you’ve told her, I want the both of you to pack up whatever you need—but only what you need. The Shaggy Man will bring you back to Oz, and there isn’t much room in the Gump. Do you remember the Gump? Ozma made it when she was a boy, out of two sofas lashed together with palm fronds for wings, a broomstick for a tail, and a head that looks as though it once belonged to a peculiar sort of moose. It’s the most sarcastic creature, but quite safe to fly in. It will carry you across the Deadly Desert and into the Emerald City. The Shaggy Man will make sure that you arrive safely.

You might be surprised by this letter, after the last one I sent you. But when I sent it, I had just arrived in Oz, and I didn’t understand how important this war is—how it must be waged and won. (That’s pretty good, isn’t it? Waged and won. I think I’m going to use that in my next article.) Ozma has appointed me Royal War Correspondent of Oz, and I’m proud to fulfill that role. Once the war starts, it will be important for you and Mamsie to be safe—and no place will be safer than the Emerald City.

But I’d better tell you what changed my mind about this war. About a week after we had begun our training, General Dorothy came into our tent. She said, “Sally and Jane, you’ve been chosen to join Glinda’s personal guard. Are you willing?” Jane and I looked at each other in amazement. Glinda’s personal guard is an elite unit in the army—it contains the bravest, best-trained girls from our division. We both nodded. “You’ll be going down to Quadling Country,” said Dorothy. “There you will continue your training with Glinda herself. Make me proud, girls!”

That afternoon we packed our kits and set off, about a dozen of us. It took us several days to reach Glinda’s palace, but the journey was pleasant—we walked through green fields and sunlit forests, mostly following the road of yellow brick,
and had no trouble at all from Hammer-Heads or Fighting Trees. Sometimes we slept in tents, and sometimes we passed farmhouses, where we were given food and beds for the night. When the Quadlings heard we were joining Glinda’s personal guard, they bowed and curtseyed with great respect.

Glinda’s palace is not as large as Ozma’s in the Emerald City, but when I first saw it, with its spires glowing in the light of the setting sun, I was impressed! Instead of tents we were put in barracks made of marble and rare woods, with the most luxurious baths I have ever seen, and were given new uniforms of rose silk.

The next morning we began the most intensive training we had yet received. Do you know, little sis, how to kill someone with a pocket comb, or a mirror, or even a handkerchief—everyday items that a girl might carry in her purse? Do you know how to pick any lock with a hairpin, or make a bomb out of ordinary household ingredients? Well, I do! Glinda’s guards aren’t just soldiers—they’re spies. We were trained by a roly-poly sergeant who could flip any of us on our backs before you could say “Boo!” I can tell you that we gave each other many bruises! At the end of the day, I would lie in one of the baths, in rose-scented water, to ease my aching muscles.

When we had been at Glinda’s palace for about a month, we were told that Glinda herself wanted to see us. I thought we would be taken to a throne room of some sort, but instead we were shown into a pleasant parlor. There were sofas and armchairs upholstered in rose chintz, and on the low tables were trays with heart-shaped cookies and chocolate cake. There was also a cut-glass bowl of strawberry punch. As we stood in that room, not quite sure what to do with ourselves, Glinda herself entered. She looked about our age, although I’ve heard that she’s more than a thousand years old. She wore a long rose-colored gown and a gold crown on her
head. She was not as beautiful as Ozma—at least, she looked less like a film star and more like a Sunday school teacher, with calm gray eyes. She said, “Girls, please pour yourselves some punch and take some cookies and cake. And then sit down and make yourselves comfortable. I’ve asked you here because I like to get to know my new recruits.”

I piled cake and cookies on my plate—the training had made me hungry! We all sat—some of us on sofas, some in armchairs, some on the floor. When we were all comfortably seated, Glinda said, “Girls, I’d like to hear your stories.” So we went around the room and all told where we had come from before we came to Oz.

Oh Dottie! What some of those girls had gone through. I felt ashamed of myself, telling the made-up story of Sally Russell. Some of the girls cried and held each other, and I could see that sometimes tears flowed silently down Glinda’s cheeks, although she remained silent.

“Thank you girls for sharing your stories,” she said when we had all spoken. “You have gone through pain and loss and grief. I hope that here, at my palace and in Oz, you will find what you have so often missed in the outer world—a sense of sisterhood and of family.” Before we left she embraced each one of us.

“I feel so much better now,” said Joan when we were back in the barracks, sitting on our bunks. “As though my heart were lighter. Listen to me! Can you believe I just said that?” And you know? It was the first time I had seen her actually smile.

That night I couldn’t sleep. I lay awake in the darkness, remembering the stories those girls had told; one had shown us cigarette burns up and down her arms.

The next morning, before the other recruits were awake, I went to the sergeant’s quarters. She was already awake, of
course, doing her calisthenics. “I need to talk to Glinda,” I said.

She looked at me for a moment, keenly, then nodded. “Glinda will be in her study,” she said. “If you’re not sure of the way, ask one of the porters.”

I did have to ask one of the porters, a girl in a rose-colored dress and ruffled apron, who was mopping the marble staircase. She led me to Glinda’s study and opened the door. Glinda sat at her desk, doing whatever sorceresses do in the mornings. I walked up to her, boldly enough, and said, “I’m not Sally Russell.”

“Who are you, then?” she asked with a kind look on her face.

“My name is Eleanor Dale, and I’m a reporter for the
San Francisco Ledger
. I came here under false pretenses so I could figure out where all the missing girls had gone. Are you going to have me court-martialed?”

Glinda smiled. “My dear, I knew all this long before you arrived at my palace. I was waiting to see if you would tell me.”

I stared at her. “How did you know?”

“I have a book that tells me everything that happens, all over the world. It told me you were coming here as soon as you thought of it yourself. The words appeared on the pages of the book as though written by an invisible pen. I do wish it had an index—it can be most unwieldy to use.”

“But then why did you let me come into Oz, and come here from the Emerald City?”

“Because you’re a brave girl, and I thought that we could use you on our side. Anyway, if your letters had fallen into the wrong hands, Ozma could simply have wished them to disappear. But you’re willing to fight for us now, aren’t you, Eleanor? To fight for Oz and everything it represents?”

I nodded. “Should I go back and join the others in the barracks, then?”

“No,” said Glinda. “I let you train with my guards until you were ready to tell me the truth, but now that you’ve shown your honesty and loyalty, I have a more important task for you. We need someone to write about the war effort, to create leaflets and pamphlets and articles for the
Emerald City Daily
and all the smaller newspapers in Munchkin Country and the other countries of Oz. You’ll be syndicated, my dear.”

Well, you can imagine what I thought of that!

So here I am, sitting in my office in Ozma’s palace in the Emerald City. Later today I have an interview with Professor H.M. Wogglebug, who developed the Wogglebug strategy, and then I’m reviewing the troops with General Betsy Bobbin and touring a Tik-Tok Man factory. And I’m meeting Scraps the Patchwork Girl for dinner, but that’s just because we’re friends. Oh, and you won’t believe this—I found Mary Lang! She’s in the Munchkin division and is becoming a demolitions expert. She says she’s happy here in Oz and looking forward to contributing to the war effort. She wanted to let the real Sally Russell know that she was all right, and I said the Shaggy Man could post a letter for her.

I can’t wait to see you and Mamsie again! I have a lovely apartment here in the Emerald City, which I’m sure you will both love. And I will be glad to know that you’re safe in the coming months as Ozma begins her invasion of California. I’m looking forward to covering the siege of San Francisco! Remember, the Gump is perfectly safe, and the Shaggy Man will be with you the whole time. See you soon, darling!

Your loving sis,

Nell (Royal War Correspondent of Oz)

BY TAD WILLIAMS

I
t was hard to imagine anything was actually wrong here.

It was the nicest Kansas spring anyone could imagine, the broad prairie sky patched with cottony white clouds. Redbuds cheeky as schoolchildren waved their pink blooms in a momentary breeze, and a huge white oak spread an umbrella of shade over the road and for quite a distance on each side.

As he crossed a little wooden bridge, Orlando Gardiner saw the birches rustling along the edge of the stream, exchanging secrets with the murmuring water. The stream itself was bright and clear, flowing over large, smooth rocks of many colors and festooned with long tendrils of moss that undulated in the current. Fish swam below him and birds flew above him and it seemed like it would be May in this spot forever.

But if everything was as nice as it looked, why was he here?

To: HK [Hideki Kunohara]

From: OG [Orlando Gardiner, System Ranger!]

RE: field dispatch, kansas simworld

i’m sub-vocalizing this while i’m actually onsite investigating, so sorry for any confusion. i know you think the kansas world was hopelessly corrupted from the first, and if it really has gone bad you’ll utterly have my vote to de-rez it, but first impressions are that everything looks pretty good here, so let me finish checking it out before we make any moves. Like you said, I’m “the one who’ll have to deal with the bullshit if it goes wrong,” and that’s what I’m doing.