Chapter 12

Twelve

Nick couldn't stop looking at Dorothy. He tried—Oz knows he tried—but instead of taking in the passing landscape, noting their progression toward the Emerald City, his gaze kept drifting back to her. He'd become like that compass of hers, and she was the north. Though, also like that compass, he was currently spinning wildly. His thoughts were, anyway.

"Is that it?" Dorothy suddenly yelped. She, on the other hand, had barely glanced his way since they'd woken up two days ago, squished together like field mice dozing in a poppy cup.

He hadn't slept so well in years. Eight, to be exact.

Last night, stopped at the side of the road, he hadn't slept at all. Amika had been pleased, since he and Straw could guard the poppy bales while she got some shut-eye, but his eyes hadn't been on the canvas-covered rectangles.

"Yup, there it is," Amika replied, turning to the travelers who sat closest to the driver's bench, the stacked poppy bales behind them. "Bet you're glad you met us, eh? You'd still be walking, otherwise."

The hue-horses were renowned for speed, but the heavy load and the not-quite-perfect brick road had slowed Amika's progression to the Emerald City—as she'd kept insisting during the journey, like they might judge her for the pace—but they'd still made it there faster.

"Unceasingly glad and grateful," Lional said.

A lone ribbon of yellow zigzagged amongst a sea of gently sloping hills. Rising up where the yellow ended, atop the highest of those hills, and rendered in a wholly different, glittering shade of unmistakable emerald, was the namesake city. A marvel to behold—at least what they could see of jewel-green spires, spiking upward like a raw crystal cluster, fresh from the earth. After all, a solid wall of brighter green, thirty feet tall, rather minimized the travelers' view of what lay behind.

"Are those… people?" Dorothy squinted at the distant, final stretch of road that led right up to a pair of gargantuan bronze doors, weathered into a jade patina. Almost as tall as the wall, and wide enough that three wagons could easily pass without having to worry about their wheel hubs clashing. Doors that were closed and sealed.

Nick shielded his eyes from the sun to get a better look. Smudges moved against the vivid yellow. "I think so."

After another twenty minutes of the bumps and jolts of the wagon, they all knew so.

A line of individuals had built up from the entrance and was winding all the way down the hillside to the foot of the slope where a small village of tents had sprung up. Men, women, and other Ozian beings were coming down from the shut doors grumbling and complaining, while those going up wore expressions of determination.

Nick caught the friendliest face among the downward stream, which wasn't saying much considering how angry most appeared, and asked, "What's going on?"

The merchant he had stopped lowered the handles of his wheelbarrow and clapped his hands together in obvious annoyance.

"They won't let nobody in is what's going on," he groused to them as he pulled on his dark blue beard. "Turning everybody about, even us who would have trading to do with them."

"I see," said Amika. "Even the farming supplies?"

"Everything and everybody who has trade with the city has to come down here to do it, they said." He gestured toward the scattering of tents and lean-tos.

"You can try your luck," he continued. "But the only ones that seem to get in are the someones that already live there."

The merchant tipped his hat to Dorothy and Amika, nodded to Nick and Straw, and blinked wide eyed at Lional, before grabbing the handles of his wheelbarrow and jingle-jangling his metal wares to the largest of the tents at the foot of the hillside.

"Then it seems this is my stop," Amika said. "No sense wearing the horses out on this hillside if I have to come back down here anyway."

"It seems Mayor Jahn was correct," Nick commented. "The Emerald City is closed." Which made their entire journey useless, not merely the last stretch of it.

Amika nodded in agreement as the rest of the travelers dismounted off the sides of the wagon.

"We'll try our luck anyway," Dorothy declared as she landed on the ground, reminding Nick of their first encounter.

Lional licked his paw and slicked it over his tufty head. "As delightful as the journey has been, it is the destination that is of most vital importance. We shall try more than our luck, Miss Dorothy, we shall try everything."

Nick didn't miss the faint note of desperation in the lionman's voice. A feeling he understood all too well, though he would never show his.

The rest joined Dorothy on the last bit of the yellow brick road… and the long, glacially paced queue.

Evening slowly gaveway to the first hint of night, the moons and stars appearing with far greater speed than the line was moving, with as many souls now behind the quintet as ahead. The travelers had found themselves behind a small group of women who barely came up to Nick's knee and seemed to be made entirely of porcelain, from Quadling Country near Glinda's palace. The small town they lived in was only a dozen miles from Nick's old hometown, and he'd spent many a summer day chatting with their people whenever they passed through on the way to the palace.

Behind Nick and his friends were a trio of women with sweet faces, and bodies that seemed more mist than person. The fabled mist maidens from the northern reaches of Gillikin Country. They would have had to travel quite the distance to get to the Emerald City. Their need must have been dire to risk such a long journey from the Zamagoochie Mountains.

Dorothy's gaze flicked back and forth between the uniquely Ozian peoples, the entire line a smorgasbord of diversity.

"You know," she whispered to Nick, a look of wonder on her face, "if our journey hadn't already been so dangerous, I would actually be having the time of my life."

He didn't want to admit that his joy likely matched her own. It had been so long since he'd been in the company of others he'd forgotten how good it felt. Not that he could show it to anyone.

"Here we are," she continued, "doing the most mundane act of all, standing in line, but even that feels magical."

Nick nodded again. What else could he do? Despite dealing with his Curse, he was finding the whole journey magical as well. Especially that night in Mayor Jahn's tiny guest bedroom, his arm around her, her head slipping onto his chest. He'd nearly metaled-up, but then he'd listened to her steady breathing, matching his own with hers, and the broken-glass, ripping sensation had faded into nothing. That was magic.

When it was finally their turn to stand in front of the solid-bronze gates, they looked up at a small face-sized door some fifteen feet above them.

It was currently standing open, and a guard's green-bearded face, made darker than the oxidized bronze around him by the backlit glow of one of the former Wizard's renowned Sciencitch lamps, stared down at the group.

"Nature of business in the Emerald City?" the guard stated in a mechanical voice, not that he was an automaton or under a Curse. It was simply the words of a man who had been forced to endure the brunt of countless disappointed and angry visitors.

"We wish to see the Wizard of Oz," Dorothy declared in a friendly voice. "Glinda the Good has sent us."

Nick mentally applauded Dorothy's mentioning of Glinda. If there were any names to open the door for them, hers should be at the top of the list.

"Nobody sees the Wizard. Not now, not never," the guard stated. "And this gate is officially closed for the night." He slammed the face door shut, leaving the group of travelers in the dark shadow of the wall and the quickly approaching night.

The mist maidens behind them grumbled a few sordid complaints but peeled out of the line and began the slow trudge down the hillside toward the city of tents sprawled beneath them. They muttered the same answer to everyone they passed, relaying what the guard had said. Everyone else followed suit, heading back down the way they'd come.

"Not to be a Karen about this and insist on a store staying open past their regular hours," Dorothy said, "but I don't think I can take ‘we're closed' for an answer right now."

"Allow me," Nick said, and he banged his hard metal knuckles against the bronze door.

The face door opened again. "Go away!" the green-bearded guard called down on them. "No one comes in right now!"

"What are you talking about?" Dorothy shouted up to him, fists on her hips. "We've seen some people that are allowed to come and go."

"They're delivering things or live here already."

"Well, we have to deliver a message to the Wizard," she tried next.

She was right in a way; they were technically delivering a message from Glinda. That task just happened to be behind a few others.

"We're closed," he said without further explanation or elaboration.

"The whole city?" Nick asked.

"Yes."

Lional growled up at the door next, flexing his sharp claws. "The whole city's closed?" The prince repeated the words in disbelief.

The guard looked incredulously at the lionman. "For someone with such big ears, you don't hear too well."

Straw finally entered the conversation. "Why is the whole city closed?"

"We're redecorating."

"Excuse me?" Dorothy blurted out. "What is happening?"

"Re-deck-oh-rate-ing." The guard stretched out the words into single syllables as if he were explaining something to a child or someone without enough common sense to understand the word.

Dorothy looked like she wanted to pull the man through the door by his chin whiskers. She sucked in a breath to ask another question, obviously not enjoying the twenty questions game the man seemed to want to play, when Nick jumped in.

"Why is the whole city redecorating?"

"How have you not heard?" The guard muttered something unintelligible but undeniably rude, before continuing, "The Nome King sent his rock soldiers and took nearly a quarter of our emeralds away. Until we redecorate or buy enough emeralds to fill the gaps, no new visitors."

The guard started to reach out for the knob on the small door to pull it shut.

"What does that matter?" Lional interrupted before the guard could finish.

"It matters because everything in here now has gaps showing white, and it's all quite mismatched," the man replied.

Dorothy craned her neck. "Looks fine to me."

Nick would've agreed, but he suspected that the cosmetic issues were below the top line of the enormous wall. That was why no one was allowed in—no one was allowed to see. If the spires had suffered in the robbery, the Emerald City probably would've thrown a giant tarp over the entire thing.

"It is not fine!" the guard shot back. "The mayor is embarrassed and doesn't want anyone new coming right now. Especially with the Emerald City Ball only months away. He wants everything perfect for his son's engagement. And perfect means emerald. Now, enough with you. Go away."

A snatch of the knob, a slam of brass, and the group of traveling companions were staring at the back of the small door.

A ball? Maybe it was for the best that they couldn't get in; Nick had done enough dancing to last him a few years. And that was with no one but bees and mice watching. He'd be far too embarrassed to try to dance in front of Dorothy since his feet were so steel-skin clunky. Still, he might not have minded rocking back and forth on a dance floor with the fire-spark heat of Dorothy warming up his arms.

"Are you freaking kidding me?" Dorothy growled in a pretty good imitation of their lion companion, more proof of her fiery nature.

"Ideas?" Nick asked everyone.

"Perhaps you could cut the door down?" Lional jested. At least Nick thought it was a joke. He answered anyway, just in case.

"I suppose I could cut the hinges here at the bottom, but I'd never be able to reach the top ones." Nick pointed way up the thirty-foot-high door to the other massive hinges holding the metal thing upright. "Besides, if it fell off, it'd likely take half of us out."

"We could tie Dorothy's rope to me, and you could fly me like a kite over the wall and I could open it up for us?" Straw suggested.

"I'm not sure there's enough wind for that," Dorothy told the scarecrow, leaving out the whole physical impossibility of it. For one thing, he'd need to be unstuffed first and that was a whole other brand of horrifying.

Toto barked a few times, obviously feeling everyone's frustration.

"Maybe it is for the best if we go down to the tents," Lional said.

"Nick?" Dorothy asked for his opinion in a single word.

"If they're so worried about us seeing the place, maybe we can offer to be blindfolded or something," he suggested.

"Hey now," she said with a smile, "that gives me an eye-dea." He could practically hear the pun in her voice.

Dorothy reached up and knocked on the door herself this time. The guard ignored it—or wasn't there anymore. The patinaed bronze doors were likely half a foot thick, and her tender knuckles weren't exactly rapping against it as hard as her frustration probably would've liked.

Nick's knuckles, however, were hardened by his annoyance at the man's behavior.

"Allow me, again," he told Dorothy.

She stepped back and gestured to the door like she was a gentleman letting a date enter before them.

The thundering boom of five knocks from Nick's metallic fist rang like war bells over the top of the wall, the bronze trembling in its wake. The face door flew open, and the guard appeared again, his green beard complementing his angry red face.

"What?!" he snarled.

It was Nick's turn to gesture Dorothy forward in kind. She faked a skirt-lifting curtsy to him that rang his heart harder than the bell-call clanging of his door knocks.

She looked up at the guard. "I don't suppose you have green sunglasses you could give us? We promise we won't take them off the entire time we're in there. That way, everything will be green."

The man sucked in a breath to obviously tell them to get lost again, but Nick's movement caught his eye. He took a step back from the group and looked directly into the guard's eyes. Knowing it was going to flush his skin with aching hardness, but risking it anyway, Nick softened his face, looked at Dorothy, then back up at the green-bearded man, and mouthed a simple word: Please…

It was the gentleness of the request and the unveiled desperation in Nick's eyes that likely made the simple request work. Nick had banked on the man having dealt with screaming and angry tirades all day, maybe some gratitude and respect and discreet groveling would work.

The guard's expression softened for an instant, the exact opposite of the hard locking of Nick's spine as metal wrung itself around it in punishment for the show of emotion.

"Say!" The guard backpedaled. "That's a swell idea. I'll go rustle up a pair for each of you."

When the face door closed this time, it was with a simple click and not the harsh slams of before.

"Green sunglasses. That was quite the scheme," Nick told her as she turned around to him, her face win-the-day happy.

"Welp, as we say in Kansas… Ozian problems call for Ozian solutions."

"They actually say that?" he asked.

"No."

Lional laughed, and Nick wished he could.

"Still, excellent idea nonetheless," the lion-prince said.

"I just figure the more absurd the idea," Dorothy replied, "the more likely it is to work in this crazy place."

Straw seemed perplexed. "That is why my kite idea was no good. It wasn't crazy enough." He brightened. "Next time, I will think crazier! Like you, Miss Dorothy!"

"I'll take the compliment." She grinned, and Nick wished he was the one who had curved her lips like that.

They waited at the massive doors long enough that Nick began to worry the guard had changed his mind.

Finally, the face door snapped open, and the green-bearded guard lowered down a basket on a string from above. Inside lay a mismatched group of green-tinted sunglasses: big round ones, downward-triangle ones, and a pair of star-shaped ones. Nick dug around, but he wasn't mistaken—there were only three. Before anyone could ask, the guard was already talking.

"Could only find the three," he said. "So, only three of you can come in. I don't have a set for the dog, or one that will fit that walking scarecrow's bulbous head."

"It's okay," Dorothy said as she slyly dipped her hand in the basket and claimed the round ones. "The dog is colorblind, and so is the scarecrow."

"Are you?" Lional whispered to Straw—a little too loudly—beside them.

"I don't know," the scarecrow replied. "Maybe? I'm not sure what color is. But if Dorothy says so, it must be true."

The guard shrugged. "Fine. Whatever. Hurry up before everyone down there starts getting notions." He closed the face door again.

Lional, Nick, and Dorothy put on their glasses, and the great bronze doors began to winch open, offering the group their first glimpse of the Emerald City.

Having endedup with the downward-triangle sunglasses, it wasn't too difficult for Nick to secretly take a peek at their surroundings as they walked through the city, flanked by two guards. He just had to tilt his eyes.

To his surprise, the yellow brick road continued into the city, providing the only other color aside from the promised white patches of missing emeralds. Although, he figured that was technically a lack of color. Everything else was a multitude of green shades from the lightest pistachio to the darkest bottle green. He tried to not think about Zolesha, but standing in a city the color of her wicked emotions forced up memories of her time chasing him. His encounter with her and Myrsina in the poppy fields didn't help, making the nightmare of her an altogether more recent fever dream. Luckily, he kept grim thoughts from surfacing any higher and adding to the stiff back he still had from begging to get through the doors.

The tour of the Emerald City lasted only the length of time it took their escort to bring them to a large green tower sitting adjacent to an opulent, pearlized palace, made greener than its normal color by the tinted glasses they wore.

The guards walked them into the base of the tower and stood at the sides of the entryway: a more ordinary-sized bronze door.

Presently, a petite teenage girl wearing a plain green dress—though maybe that was the glasses—came out and bowed deeply to the visitors and then dismissed the guards.

The teenage girl smiled and curtsied before she spoke to the troupe. "Hello, friends of Glinda. I am Jellia Jamb. I was sent to fetch you, but I do not see the Good Witch. Is she coming along soon?"

Dorothy looked over at Nick, obviously waiting to see what response they should give. Nick took the lead at that moment, knowing more about the etiquette involved.

"Glinda has dispatched us to you on her behalf, Jellia. I'm afraid she is resting down at her palace after an unfortunate mishap and sends her best wishes, along with a request for the Wizard to grant us some assistance."

"Oh," Jellia replied. "And you are?"

Nick made some hasty introductions, and Jellia's dainty eyebrow raised as the lionman was introduced as Lional, Prince of Winkie Country, and she looked curiously at the scarecrow.

"Straw, you say?" she asked.

"That's me!" the scarecrow said. "If you don't think it's a good name, you can make up a new one for me. I love all things new! And as you have such a pretty name, I bet you could come up with a really pretty name for me." He attempted to curtsy as she had, nearly tumbling in upon himself.

Jellia laughed softly behind her hand and replied, "I don't think I've got the creativity to come up with a new name for you, Straw, but if I should happen to hear a fitting one and you truly are tired of your own, I'll let you know."

Straw nodded happily, attempting to curtsy again. He managed to get his leg behind him, and promptly crumpled down on top of it. A moment after, he was up and wobbling again, pleased with himself.

"As for the rest of you," Jellia continued, "I'm afraid to say that if Glinda is not here, the Wizard cannot see you at this time. I'm sure you understand that it's for safety's sake. With East and Zolesha's agents running about, it is not very wise for him to receive complete strangers." Jellia curtsied again and turned to leave.

But Nick had one more card up his sleeve, and this one was definitely a wild one.

"Before you go and send us away," Nick said, "perhaps you could relay a simple message to the Wizard. And it is that we have traveled a great distance, but some of us even greater still. Dorothy Gale here is from Earth. Kansas, in fact."

"Just like the Wizard?" Jellia asked in awe, looking at Dorothy anew.

Seeing her "in," Dorothy quickly nodded her head. "Yes. Please tell the Wizard that I'm from San Francisco by way of Wichita."

Everyone knew the Wizard was from Earth. In fact, it was the job requirement for anyone who wanted to hold the vaunted position. Dropping a few Earth words might just be enough to open the door, as only the Wizard and the few other people who had come from that far-off world knew enough detail to prove they really were from there.

"San Francisco by way of Wichita," Jellia repeated, her lips moving long after she'd stopped speaking, as if to memorize the words.

Dorothy smiled. "That's me."

Jellia nodded and left, sealing the door behind her with the sound of a bolt sliding into a lock.

The nearby guards, who had up until that moment been treating the group with caution, were now more curious than wary.

They waited in companionable silence. Straw moved over to a large tapestry on the wall inside the foyer, attempting to trace the intricate geometric pattern with his finger and constantly looping back to the start. There was no frustration in his movements. He appeared to take enjoyment in following the pattern as he got lost in the complex weaving.

Meanwhile, Lional was observing his reflection in an oval mirror, bordered by a frame of green glass and gold. He turned this way and that, murmuring, "I rather like these glasses. Yes, very fetching indeed!"

Toto barked and bumped his forehead against the lionman's legs.

"No, Sir Toto. Fetching, not fetch—I have nothing to throw," Lional replied.

Clearly disappointed, Toto pottered off to sniff around.

With a wince, Dorothy unslung her pack and reached inside to pull out the wooden tube that contained East's wand, slipping it into the big pocket of her "overalls," as she called them. That done, she handed the pack off to one of the two waiting guards that had escorted them to the tower.

"I imagine they're going to say we shouldn't take our packs in, and I don't want to forget it," she told Nick.

He took off his own pack in response and handed it to the other guard, who nodded as he put it down on the ground at his feet.

By the time the scarecrow had made another six attempts to trace the intricate geometric pattern in the green-and-black tapestry, the door reopened, and the young girl stood there, a pleasant smile on her face.

"Come in, one and all! It's time to meet the Wizard."