Chapter 9

Nine

Her traveling companions were already up and preparing to leave by the time Dorothy mustered the energy to drag herself out of the moth-eaten sack she'd used as a sleeping bag. Straw was a morning "person," humming to himself, crying "good morning" to the sun. Nick might've been a morning person, but his expression rarely changed, so it was hard to tell. Toto was merrily chasing dust motes, while Lional paused and braced a paw against the wall, holding his stomach and grimacing in obvious hunger.

"Are you okay?" Dorothy asked as she reached up to the overalls, still hanging from the beam by the useless fire. They were dry enough now that she could excuse herself to change before they got under way. A dirty, disused storage closet toward the back of the millhouse seemed as good a changing room as any.

Fighting her pants past Glinda's enchanted, immoveable silver shoes the night before had been a chore; she imagined it wasn't going to be too much better this morning. Why she couldn't have kept her comfy blue Vans and carried the shoes in her pack was beyond her, but at least they'd kept her feet bone dry, and they were pillow-soft to walk in.

"I'm afraid the call of food has become too great, yet again," the bestial prince replied through the closet door as Dorothy shimmied and wriggled out of the hunting pants. "And though I am thankful for your previous offer of snail bars, they will not help this particular hunger. Nor would I be upholding my vow, for snails are sentient beings."

Zipping up her overalls, hunting pants and shirt draped over her shoulder, Dorothy stepped back into the main space. "Trail bars. Nothing living in them. Barely anything nutritious either," she corrected. "Surely, they'll take the edge off? It wouldn't hurt to try."

And with that, Lional showed more emotion than Nick had during their entire trip.

"If you would all excuse me," he continued, voice hitching. "I will catch up with you further down the road." The lionman lowered his head and pushed his way through the door and into the morning air. Dorothy wasn't certain, but she could've sworn she heard a great, guttural sob drifting back from the regal prince.

"Does that mean he has to go kill something to eat?" Straw asked with the genuine curiosity of someone still trying to understand the world around him.

"I would assume so," Nick replied as he pulled his own shirt down off the beam and stuffed it into his pack.

"You don't think he'll eat the stork, do you?" the scarecrow asked innocently.

Nick's voice was calm as ever as he replied, "I don't think so, but I would not want to be a rabbit around here this morning, for sure."

Something had been bothering Dorothy all night long, and it dawned on her what it had been as Nick explained things to their magically made companion. Two times, Straw had shown incredible skill with math and geometry—once with knowing exactly which elm and where to cut, once by rolling the tree over with the waterwheel and the rope—but seemed to lack even the most basic understanding of the world around them. She had been in Oz less than half a day and she bet she understood the place a hundred times better than him.

"Straw," she said.

"Yes, Dorothy? Can I help with something?" he asked excitedly.

"Just a quick question."

"I'm happy to answer!" He swayed over to her.

"What's four thousand times twenty-five?" She didn't need to calculate the answer; it was another one of the running jokes between her and her Uncle Henry. They would say they could be millionaires if they could just make twenty-five bucks, four thousand times.

"One million even," he answered immediately.

Nick paused as he took down his now-dry pants.

"Lucky guess?" Nick said to Dorothy and looked back at the scarecrow. He seemed to sense the same thing she did as he asked the next question. "Can you use only eights to add up to one thousand?"

"Sure can!" Straw answered and smiled his painted smile.

"Do you mind elaborating?"

"Oh. Sure. It's eight hundred and eighty-eight plus eighty-eight plus eight plus eight plus eight."

Dorothy thought that was more of a math riddle than an equation, but one look at Nick told her Straw had gotten it right, nonetheless.

What about geometry? Dorothy wondered.

"What are the angles of a hexagon?" She only knew the answer because she had argued with a math professor about it, only to have misunderstood what the teacher had been wanting to know on the test.

"Six equal angles of one hundred and twenty degrees on the interior, and sixty degrees on the exterior. This is fun!" Straw clapped his gloved hands together.

Now for the real test. "If I plant corn in the summer but I find wheat in the same field in the fall, how could that be?" Dorothy asked.

Straw stood silent for a long time, his painted canvas eyes blinking. He frowned and lowered his head. "This isn't fun anymore. I don't like that I can't answer. Can you ask another math question? I like those."

"Frankly, I don't know either," Nick told Straw.

"Okay, maybe that one was too hard, but I figured you might know it at least, farm boy," Dorothy teased Nick. "It's because we planted wheat the year before. Inevitably, some of them don't grow the first year and pop up with the next year's crop."

"Rotate crops?" Nick asked. "Whatever for?"

Dorothy was not about to get into the crop rotation theory with them at that moment. She needed another, simpler test.

Nick stepped in before she could come up with one simple enough, seeming to have sensed where she was going with her line of questions.

"Can two girl bunnies make a baby bunny?" he asked.

"Sure," Straw replied. "It wouldn't be fair if they couldn't."

Very open minded of him… or maybe Oz bunnies can? Dorothy looked to Nick for confirmation that Oz bunnies and Earth bunnies had the same limitations when it came to parthenogenesis. Nick discreetly shook his head, and Dorothy turned her attention back to Straw. It was as if he were a mental supercomputer that only understood math.

"Did I get that right?" Straw asked nervously.

"What's forty-nine divided by seven?" Nick answered.

The scarecrow grinned. "Seven! A lucky number! That was an easy one, Nick." He lifted his floppy hat, shyly scratching his version of hair. "I think five is my favorite number."

Dorothy smiled at the exchange. Nick definitely had a heart in that broad chest of his, sparing the scarecrow his shortcomings by distracting him with his strengths. A subtle gesture of softness.

"Why is five your favorite?" Nick asked, but Straw had lumbered off toward the door, where a chubby bumblebee buzzed around a stray wildflower, sprouting down from the warped lintel.

Toto watched the scarecrow closely, ready to pounce if he began his aimless ambling again.

"I should change," Nick said.

Dorothy looked at him, admiring the flowy, light gray shirt and tight beige pants that were so patched, they barely possessed any of the original fabric. "I don't know; I think you're just fine as you are."

He made an odd sound, like he'd swallowed Tylenol dry and had the pill stuck in his throat. "I won't be a minute."

He practically dove into the closet with his other pair of pants, and Dorothy thought she heard him curse as he knocked around inside the cramped room. She definitely heard a metallic clang, figuring he'd stumbled over a bucket in his rush.

She stifled a laugh, but it faded quickly—she couldn't, for the life of her, recall there being a bucket in there.

The stork followedthe group as they found their way back to the right fork of the yellow brick road, the one that would lead them on toward the as-yet-unseen Emerald City, but that was where their paths parted.

"Journey well!" the stork called down. "And thank you once again for your Good Deed. My children and I shall not forget it!"

Dorothy waved up to the majestic bird. "No more nests so close to the river!"

"No, indeed!" the stork replied. "Farewell, friends!"

"Goodbye!" Dorothy and Straw chorused, while Nick remained silent.

The stork wheeled around and headed back the way the group had walked, leaving Dorothy in brighter spirits as they pressed on. Lional had said that no Good Deed went unpunished, so maybe she'd get pecked by a horde of angry storks when she got back to Kansas, but for now, she felt pretty darn good.

"Shouldn't we wait for Lional?" she said to the others, now that he was on her mind.

Nick shrugged. "He said he'd catch up."

"What if he can't find us?" Dorothy hesitated, reluctant to carry on without everyone present and correct.

Straw nodded. "It's wrong without five."

Toto barked and, with a sassy little sniff, started off down the road.

"Toto, come!" Dorothy commanded.

He ignored her, his fluffy butt wiggling with the unrivaled confidence of a small dog with a big-dog complex. Apparently, he was now calling the shots.

"Looks like we have our pack leader," Nick said dryly. "I'm not going to disagree with him."

Straw nodded. "I couldn't—I don't speak his language."

With a sigh and a roll of her eyes, Dorothy readjusted her backpack and hurried after her beloved free spirit. Maybe Toto knew something they didn't, and if Lional had found them once, he could find them again.

He did, about an hour later.

It was just before midday when he bounded up on all fours, rising to two as he neared. The fur around his mouth was stained rusty at the tips, which Dorothy was certain hadn't been there before. A not-so-gentle reminder of how wicked the witch that helped to bring Dorothy to Oz was.

"Apologies," was all he said as he fell in two-legged step with them, rubbing self-consciously at his mouth every so often.

The ensuing conversation was sparse, but with Lional's return, the need to fake a jolly attitude to keep him from feeling his cursed burden swept through Dorothy. The trouble was, no one seemed to know what to say. She surely didn't.

She was just thinking of a round-robin song they could sing to pass the time, despite her having the vocal talent of a seagull with strep throat, when the scarecrow put his foot in his mouth—not literally, though he could have without much effort at all.

"You have red on your chin, Mr. Lional. Were you eating blushberries? I would love to eat a blushberry!"

For a terrible moment, everyone halted, and it looked like Lional might burst into tears. Instead, he straightened up, smoothed out his waistcoat, licked the palm of his paw with a giant, sandpaper tongue and said, "Might you point out the spot, my good scarecrow?"

One vigorous cat grooming later, and they were underway again, though the easy back and forth of yesterday was nowhere to be found. They'd left it in the watermill, apparently, the yellow brick road now scattered with invisible eggshells around Lional.

"Everyone seems to be in a foul mood," Straw announced, at the very moment that the awkwardness became unbearable. "Perhaps I can cheer us up with a joke I've created about the stork."

Nick replied almost instantly, "Well, there's no better way to get rid of a fowl mood than joking about birds."

It was the pun that Dorothy needed to finally break the self-imposed curse of their mood.

"I don't want to egg you on," Dorothy replied, "but I'll do anything to scramble this current gloom we're incubating."

Lional chuckled, a deep and booming sound that resonated from his thick chest, and Nick missed a footstep at her joke, though he neither laughed nor showed any signs of enjoying the humor.

Nick's the ultimate straight man, Dorothy thought.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry," the scarecrow pleaded. "I'm genuinely not sure why almost everyone is laughing when I haven't told the joke yet."

"Go ahead, Straw," Nick said. "I'm certain it'll be better than the puns that Dorothy and I are trying to fly around."

This got another laugh out of Dorothy.As it kept turning out, Nick did have a touch of wit about him. It was as dry as British gin, and possibly as potent, but there was definitely a sense of humor layered in there somewhere.

"Don't worry, scarecrow," Dorothy said. "Nick and I are just playing around at one-upmanship. I would explain it, but it's already not funny enough."

The lionman entered the conversation at this point. "It's nice to see you two enjoy the same amusements. As they say, birds of a feather flock together, and the pair of you are certainly hatching some mutually rotten yolks."

Dorothy snorted so hard she ejected some of yesterday's river water, while Lional's wit gained a tensing of Nick's shoulders.

Straw looked worried. "Why are you laughing? Did I tell the joke and forget already? Oh, goodness. If you were to blow into one of my ears, it would whistle out of the other."

Dorothy immediately gathered herself, feeling guilty. "We're laughing in anticipation of your joke, Straw. Go ahead and tell us. We're ready."

"Well, Lional told me that storks deliver babies to expectant mothers, but I doubt a stork delivered Nick." Straw beamed. "As heavy as he is, it would have required a crane."

It took Dorothy far too long to process the fact that a crane was a bird and a piece of construction equipment. Where the scarecrow had plucked that stroke of genius from, despite their little tests an hour earlier, was yet another Ozian mystery. Still, when the joke finally processed, her river-water snort was nothing compared to the stomach-aching, rib-tickling, face-twisting hysterics she collapsed into. The little group ended up having to stop so Dorothy could catch her breath.

The ever-stoic Nick let out one coughing laugh at Dorothy's red-faced lack of breath and paused on the road in front of her. It seemed to have actually pained him to show his own amusement, and Lional's rumbling chuckle was regally restrained, which made her embarrassed to have actually laughed so hard.

"Did my joke make you sick, Miss Dorothy?" Straw jittered anxiously. "Is wheezing good or bad?"

"It's good," Nick replied for her.

Lional nodded. "She laughed so hard she could not breathe. An excellent indication of a very good joke."

Straw seemed pleased, and by the time Dorothy had gathered her breath, the little troupe was underway again.

Toto bounded around, performing his land-dolphin act through the wildflower fields that bordered the road, chasing six-winged dragonflies and sending up rainbow bursts of enormous butterflies. He attempted to rip the head off a vivid purple orchid, only for it to lunge and bite back, prompting him to skitter back onto the yellow brick road with his tail between his legs. Of course, two minutes later, he was back in the fields, avoiding the orchids, harassing the wildlife to his heart's content.

But Nick was another matter. His limp had returned, only this time, it seemed to afflict both his legs.

She debated asking, but it felt like that road was painted red.

"These bricks are smooth and flat, unlike the rest we've walked," the scarecrow said, as their speed increased on the level route ahead of them. "Do they not get used as much?"

"You wouldn't think it to see the road," Nick replied, "but this section probably sees even more traffic. Likely, it gets more repairs than the stretch on the other side of the Fighting Trees. But other than merchants and farmers, there's not a lot of reason to go from town to town. Most people find it's best to keep traveling to a minimum, considering the dangers between towns."

"Dangers like those tiger-bears?" Dorothy asked.

"Among others," Lional added, before Nick could reply.

It was a good thing Nick had decided to escort them; the twists, turns, forks, and run-offs of the road would have gotten her lost a hundred times by now. The whole network of thoroughfares was paved in the same yellow brick, and the signs were so strangely lettered she knew it would have taken her months, if not years, to learn to read them.

They had already passed a couple of smaller villages but hadn't taken the side roads to investigate as a walking lionman would likely cause a little too much excitement and fear among the locals. Not to mention the walking, talking scarecrow and the silver woodsman. But when a small village appeared in the distance, shortly before their dinner time, Nick declared they would risk frightening the locals if it meant a decent meal.

Dorothy found herself immediately agreeing.

The sign pointed down a small two-rutted path through a field of red poppies— each stalk as tall as Dorothy, each flowering head the size of a cereal bowl—leading to a smudge of thatched roofs peeking just above the blooms. Coils of smoke puffed up from the far-off chimneys, hopefully suggesting that dinner was in the midst of being cooked.

"It still looks like quite a ways to get to that village," Dorothy said as they stepped into the dried ruts. "I'm near dying of thirst. Let's go fill up my canteen, and maybe dip our faces in what's likely a nice little creek over there somewhere."

Something was slaking the giant poppies' thirst, and she could hear a faint babble of running water.

"Agreed," Lional said.

Toto barked a couple of times and danced around Dorothy's legs before cutting a furry, shark-like path through the poppies, kicking up yellow pollen in his wake. He didn't attempt to rip off any heads this time, his lesson learned.

"We better follow him," Nick said," or he'll drink the creek dry before we get there."

The group cut off the double-rutted path and trailed the terrier who weaved in and out of the towering stems, utterly in his element, his nose to the ground, sniffing out the much-needed water.

Once they were truly in the thick of it, the road far behind them, the lionman stopped just ahead of them and reached down into the carpet of moss that surrounded the poppies, lifting up a small furry object. At first, Dorothy thought it was part of Toto's fur, and then saw that the little furry thing was scurrying across Lional's palm.

"I am sorry our noble scout scared you, good friend," Lional said to the mouse he held aloft. "We will be more careful from this point forward."

The mouse chirped something at Lional, and Nick leaned over to Dorothy to say, "The mouse just said he forgives the dog since at least it wasn't a cat."

"You can speak mouse?" she asked in disbelief.

"There's a family of them living near my cabin in the Blue Forest. They keep the cabin clean for me while I'm away, and I bring them treats and snacks from the local village where you met me."

"Are you messing with me again like the farm stuff?"

"I promise you that's what the little guy said," Nick said, obviously expecting her to already believe that they cleaned his house for him.

"Very much so," Lional agreed as he carefully lowered the mouse back into the carpet of spongy moss below the sea of poppies. "Although, he did not use the polite word for cat."

Dorothy narrowed her eyes at the lionman. "Doesn't he realize that you're a cat? A big one, at that." She hastened to add, "For the time being, I mean."

"Graciously, no," Lional replied, puffing a pleased chest.

Nick leaned in again, whispering conspiratorially, "Walking on two legs must have bamboozled it."

"Right," Dorothy said with a chuckle, "that must be it."

It was another reminder of how unusual Oz was, but this time a sweet one. Not only were there good creatures in Oz, but Nick was a friend to them. Despite his lack of obvious emotion, at his core he seemed to be a good person. After all, if a mouse trusts you, how bad can you be?

Dorothy meant to tell him so, wanting to lavish some praise on him—something she had never gotten from her parents, so she made sure to do it as often as possible with her friends, and Nick was definitely a friend at this point.

But she yawned instead. Laughing at her own embarrassment, she tapped her shoulder into Nick's in a friendly "let's keep walking" motion and continued forging forward through the field of poppies.

They were halfway toward a tree line that had risen into view behind the flowers, when Lional stopped again, stretching his back and opening his mouth in a lion-like yawn. He shook his head and looked back at Dorothy.

"I think there's a problem," the prince said as he pointed to the ground in front of him.

Dorothy stopped next to him, her vision phasing between clear but wobbly and butter-slick blurry. Rubbing her heavy eyelids, she looked at the place the lionman was pointing to. There, curled up, dead asleep, was Toto. His entire face was covered with lurid-orange poppy pollen, and he lay there snoring quietly, forelegs twitching as if he were digging in his dreams.

She bent over to grab her slumbering puppy, but as soon as her shoulder knocked into the back of a huge red petal, her vision blurred completely, and the feeling of tiredness plummeted into a bone-deep weariness. She could barely turn her heavy head to look back at Nick and Lional. The lionman rubbed his pollen covered nose with the same paw he had used to pick up the mouse.

The big beast went down, tumbling into a cluster of poppy stems, exploding a whole dust cloud of orange pollen into the air.

"What's happening?" Dorothy asked, knees buckling. She looked at the splotchy silhouette of Nick, unable to make out a single handsome feature.

"I don't know," Nick replied, lurching forward to catch her even as she swooned into his strong, hard arms.

"Stay with me, Dorothy," Nick entreated, a rush of panic in his voice.

Dorothy had often given up sleep to study for a test, and her guard would go down the longer she stayed awake, nudging her toward a sort of alcohol-free drunkenness. As sleep's insistent call broke through her emotional barriers, she reached up and touched the side of Nick's face.

"See? Not cold," she murmured, a loopy smile on her lips. "I knew it wouldn't be." His tender cheek was as warm as her need to be held by him.

As Dorothy drifted away, her college stamina betraying her, the last thing she saw was the finger trails of orange pollen she had brushed onto Nick's silver face. He reached up to where her hand had been and stumbled forward. The sudden weightlessness of falling slipped through her, and into a dream wilder than Oz she spiraled.