Chapter 15
Fifteen
It's a terrible thing to be falling in love, knowing you have to leave, Dorothy thought. She'd never had a summer romance, but if this was what everyone raved about, they must've been mad. At least she wasn't alone—poor Toto had already left his crush behind, his scampering more sedate than normal, his head turning back every so often as if Jellia might have somehow followed.
They were half a day outside of the Emerald City, and Dorothy was trying not to relive every wonderful moment of the ridiculous play she'd strong-armed Nick into going to. It had taken him a while to walk off the seizure he'd had that night, but by the time they'd made it back to the Wizard's tower and their guest rooms, Nick only had the slightest limp. And even that impairment was gone the next morning.
Not for the first time, Dorothy wondered what exactly was going on with Nick, and her speculations felt like they were gamboling closer to the truth with each passing day.
Lional had eagerly joined their group on their way out of the city, rusty-muzzled and ready to oust the witch from his castle and rescue his cursed servants. Although, he kept insisting that no one was to get hurt. Surprisingly, he had even included Zolesha in that list.
Nick had rested his hand on the top of his axe head, which was back at its normal place on his hip, and had nodded once, saying, "I promise if we can do this without anyone getting injured, I'll do my best to keep it from happening."
"That's all a man can ask for," the prince-turned-beast responded.
The formerly smooth yellow brick road on the west side of the Emerald City quickly became a pockmarked and potholed snaking lane, the color dirty gold instead of dandelion bright. Toadstools and thriving weeds poked through the endless cracks, while dark trees crowded the edges of the travelers' route.
Oddly, when compared to the apple-throwing, eldritch-faced Fighting Trees, the new ones in what Lional had labeled the "Black Forest" felt somehow more menacing. Their silence, their stillness, not a rustle or creak to be heard. Toto's raised hackles had seemed to agree that it wasn't… natural; the absence of wildlife and their comforting sounds rang serious alarm bells.
The danger was proven when Dorothy had ducked under a low-hanging, far-reaching branch and came up with a papercut-like slice on her shoulder from the serrated edge of what looked like a velvet leaf. A nettle's bloodthirsty, bigger cousin.
Nick had gently cleaned and patched her up with the first aid kit in her hiking pack and then whip-stitched the slice in her T-shirt closed with his sewing supplies. It was a valuable lesson and an accidental warning: stay in the middle of the road.
A lesson they kept challenging as even though they should've walked in single file, Nick seemed uncomfortable with Dorothy walking behind him where he couldn't see her all the time, nor in front of him where she would run into danger first. So, he walked next to her, pacing his strides to hers and risking the occasional brush of the razor-sharp leaves where the branches clawed too close.
Thankfully, Toto was too short for the leaves to tangle with him, but he was dutifully following in a straight line behind Lional, occasionally barking and yipping. The lionman would nod and pretend like he could understand the terrier.
Nick's new shirt would look as tattered and out at the elbows as his old one, nicked from the right shoulder to the top of his forearm, by the time they got to where they were going.
"You know, you can walk behind me," Dorothy told him. "Lional's leading the front anyway. If someone's going to risk these trees and come at us from the side, I'm not sure even your axe will stop them, and if they come from the front, they'll have to risk him first."
"He would scare most things off," Nick admitted, "but if something actually attacks him, you know he won't fight back."
"Maybe he has a self-defense clause for his claws that he hasn't had to use yet. Either way, I'm not sure how well you could defend me if we're standing right next to each other," she pointed out, trying to make light of it.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you uncomfortable." Nick slowed down his pace, falling behind her.
Dorothy could have kicked herself for suggesting it in the first place. She had been rather enjoying walking shoulder to shoulder with him—despite the danger from an errant nettle-on-steroids—but she had let her empathy rule the day, not wanting to see him possibly get injured. Although, a look to Nick's arm that had been tracing against the trees only showed that his tough, silver skin was unmarred.
Dorothy purposefully slowed down until she was side by side with him again.
"I thought…" Nick began.
"I know what I said," Dorothy replied. "But I feel safer when you're right next to me."
"Me too."
"Don't worry!" Straw called out from behind them. "I've been practicing—I'll shoo away anything that tries to harm us."
Dorothy looked back at him in time to see that he had pushed too close, too many times, against the razor-sharp leaves, and more than a fair bit of straw was tufting along the sleeves of his arms. A whole sheaf protruded from his elbow, making it look like he had one weirdly hairy joint.
"Good lord, Straw!" Dorothy cried out. "You're falling apart!"
"Am I?" The scarecrow held his arms out and looked down his front. "Are you sure that wasn't there before? Hello friend!" A ladybug crawled up a stalk of his exposed straw, vibrating her wings. "Five spots! Oh, how lucky!"
Dorothy halted, but Straw kept walking. Before he could knock into her, she grabbed him by his shoulders and said, in a gentler voice, "Why do you keep saying that—that five is your favorite number?" She figured numbers would help him to concentrate on staying still. Plus, she was dying to know.
Straw grinned. "It's a riddle!"
"A riddle?"
"Like the one with the… um… potatoes and… uh… that other vegetable. I didn't know the answer to that one, but I know the answer to this one."
Behind her, Dorothy heard Nick call to Lional: "Hold up! We've got to restuff this walking hay bale."
"If our dear scarecrow can hold himself together for a moment," Lional hastily replied, "my lion eyes spotted an opening further ahead. I believe the forest peters out shortly."
"I don't feel a thing! Don't worry one bit; I'm not yet falling apart at the seams. Once they pop, you can just carry me in a bucket until Mr. Nick can sew me back together," Straw said cheerily, tottering past Dorothy, catching his arm on yet another saw-edged leaf that spilled a thin trail of chaff and straw-dust onto the bricks as he continued on.
She didn't know whether to groan or applaud the scarecrow's fortitude, as she followed his breadcrumbs, wafting tiny flakes and earthy powder away from her face as they drifted backward.
A couple hundred yards later and they were sitting on large boulders at the edge of the Black Forest, gazing out at the patchwork quilt of muddy brown that made up Winkie Country's fields, and stitching up the scarecrow's countless cuts. Keeping him from wriggling around was proving to be harder than keeping the backstitching straight, or so Nick kept grumbling.
Lional stood guard, crouching on one of the larger boulders, and Toto took it upon himself to copy that sentinel stance on the tiniest of boulders, closest to Dorothy. The breeze ruffled both of their fur, their noses twitching and sniffing in unison. Meanwhile, Dorothy observed her companions, the whole image a pleasant distraction as Nick confidently repaired slice after slice of torn fabric with the pull and drag of the needle and thread, sewing the straw man together as carefully and neatly as possible, with only a few grunts of frayed patience.
The beastly prince breathed out a deep sigh that drew all of their attention.
"It is a shame to see my once-fertile land looking so desolate in such a short time," Lional declared, adding in a softer, to-himself voice. "I hardly recognize it, but then, I hardly recognize myself."
"How short a time?" Dorothy asked, lassoing a conversational rope to keep him from tipping over the edge into a pit of despair.
"I lost the castle to her at the last Winter Solstoz, when she was at the height of her power."
"Just two seasons ago, huh?" Nick muttered, shaking his head, while continuing to patch the scarecrow up.
He'd cut some squares from his old shirt to reinforce the worst of Straw's tears, and Dorothy couldn't stop staring at those pieces of him, given without hesitation to their friend, even though it meant Nick had lost his spare. It might've been the most heartwarming display of kindness she'd ever seen, greater than the coat he'd instantly put around her shoulders when it rained.
Are we… swooning now? Is that who we are now? She swallowed before she started drooling all over the place, diverting her focus back to Lional. The conversational lasso went both ways, it seemed, each tugging the other back from somewhere they couldn't dare to stumble into.
"How short are the seasons?" she asked, too abruptly. "Come to think of it—how many seasons do you guys have here?'
"The Ozian calendar is complicated," the lionman replied, scratching the downward pointed fluff of coarse fur that covered his chin. "We have four seasons: winter, spring, summer, autumn."
"Same as us," Dorothy noted.
"That's not the complicated part," Nick put in. "I've heard there are three months per season for you back home."
"Depends on the country and how badly we've pissed off the weather gods, but you're more or less right," Dorothy conceded with a smile. "Why, how many are there in Oz?"
"Twelve months."
"That's the same as us." Dorothy felt like she was repeating herself.
"No. Twelve months per season," Nick emphasized.
"You have 412 days per season!" Dorothy asked incredulously, remembering Straw's correction about Ozian years.
"No. There's only about 100 days per season. We have 412 days per year."
"Wait, wait, wait—so, you're telling me you have forty-eight months in a year? Why do you have so many?!" Dorothy's mind was trying to calculate the possibilities.
"We possess three moons, Mademoiselle Dorothy," Lional stated. "I have heard that your lands have only one."
"And we only have 412 days per year every other year," Nick added.
Lional nodded. "Except for the sixth year. Then we have a square four hundred."
"But only if the quag-hog sings the six-year song when he comes out of his mystical mound after the Winter Solstoz," Nick went on, as Dorothy's brain promptly melted. "If he sings a different song, then we have 413 days that coming year instead, and we add two-and-a-quarter days to every year after until the next sixth year."
Hearing this, the scarecrow spoke up, his painted pupils somehow enormous in his triangular eyes. "This is going to get very confusing for me." He fanned himself with a gloved hand. "I like numbers, but I'm not sure I can figure out the days of the month of the year of the sixth year of the other years when the quag-hog sings his song."
"You're telling me!" Dorothy laughed. How could she do anything but laugh, when their calendar was as crazy as everything else. She said as much. "With respect, of course."
Lional bowed. "We did say it was complicated."
"Ah, but you didn't say it required a doctorate in quantum physics to understand. How does anyone know what year it is? How does anyone know the season or the month? Do you just guess and hope for the best?" She scrunched up her eyes, physically pained by the insanity of it. "What if you tell a friend you're going to meet them on X day at Y time of Z month? Folks must get stood up a lot."
Straw nodded. "If they fall down, someone must stand them up again. It's the kind thing to do."
"Or they could do the truly surprising thing," Nick said quietly, lifting his gaze to Dorothy, "and lie down with them, so they don't feel embarrassed and alone."
The detonation fuse fizzling in her overwrought brain, whizzing toward a mass of barrels stuffed with numbers and nonsense, sputtered out. She met his eyes, seeing a new nuance in his handsome face: a tiny furrow above his right eyebrow, worlds apart from the worried crease he wore on his left. And maybe it was the reflection of the sun bouncing off his silver skin, but his steely eyes seemed to shine as the pair stayed that way, staring at one another, Dorothy too stubborn to be the first to look away.
Straw, however, wasn't having any of that. "No, I don't think so. You'd get dirty, especially if you were in my old field." He stroked one of the new patches on his arm. "I don't remember, but I think when I fell down in the field, the farmer used to just nail me back onto my frame. What a helpful fellow he must be!"
Nick looked away, concentrating on the next few slashes in the scarecrow's clothes and "skin." He flexed his metal hand—his right arm seemed to be giving him some trouble, refusing to extend from his shoulder at any pace faster than an arthritic snail.
He's been thinking about it too… The realization knocked the wind out of Dorothy's lungs. She'd hoped, of course, with all the foolishness of a woman who'd been summer-raised on Auntie Em's Sunday afternoon, black-and-white movie omnibuses from Hollywood's golden era. But his grayscale face hadn't given her any confirmation, not until that moment.
He hadn't said anything after the coat, he hadn't said anything after the poppy fiasco, he hadn't said anything after their snug night in Mayor Jahn's box room, he hadn't said anything after the play. Sure, he'd touched her cheek after their near-drowning, and she had a fuzzy memory of being carried through poppy fields in his arms—though that might have been part of her toxin dream—and he'd held her all night in that box room, and had agreed to go to the play with her, and continue the journey with her. But he hadn't said anything! Even now, she didn't know what he was trying to say, or what she wanted to hear.
Toto padded over to her and headbutted her in the knee, as if to say, Get a grip, Mama.
She reached down to scratch between his ears, taking his unspoken advice. She'd already determined that summer romances were a terrible idea, and it wasn't like Nick was two hours away in Topeka, or over the border in Oklahoma or Missouri, so they could pretend they were going to try long distance. He was from a different world that required a witchy storm to get her there, and frankly, she didn't have the boats to visit.
"What's a quag-hog?" she asked lamely. "And why the heck do you give it so much power over your calendar?"
Nick looked like he was about to answer, when Lional abruptly stood up from his place on the rock, scanning the distant horizon. Toto leaped up to join him, barking furiously.
The lionman's sudden wariness and Toto's "intruder" bark set Dorothy's teeth on edge, not least because that was also her dog's "your mother's here" bark. "You see something?"
Lional nodded. "A black wave of birds." He breathed out. "Coming for us. They will soon descend."
Everyone shot up.
Nick pulled his axe and cut the last sewing thread he'd been working on, although there were still many gashes left on the scarecrow's clothing and body. Nick dropped the needle into his pack and slapped it onto his shoulders as he scanned the horizon.
If the birds were going to attack, they had no means of repelling them. Nick's axe would only take them so far. And the lionman was unlikely to fight any of them at all.
Dorothy dared to look, following Lional's line of sight. He'd been right to call them a wave of birds. They were a rolling, roiling mass in the air, hundreds if not thousands of winged omens blending in and out of formation like a tide. A murmuration, usually reserved for starlings—but these were bigger, darker, and altogether more menacing. Crows, judging by the racket of caws that grew louder by the moment, and Straw's instinct to immediately stretch out his arms and legs in a cross shape. There wasn't a speck of beauty or wonder in their aerial display, just malevolence. At times, the wave was even strong enough to blot out the feeble rays of sunlight that managed to brave Winkie Country and its fallow fields.
"Ideas?" Dorothy gasped, scooping Toto up as the feathered air force neared.
No one replied.
Within minutes, the living, breathing, flapping cloud of dark fury circled overhead, giving up their murmuration in favor of a slow-spinning cyclone. It narrowed with each rotation, as if the birds meant to cut the group off entirely and sweep them up into the current. Never had a flock of crows felt so murderous.
One solitary, sleek-feathered corvid separated itself from the tornado and landed on the boulder which the lionman had been using as a lookout.
The gleaming bird cocked its head toward the group of travelers, its black eyes sizing them up and sending a shiver down Dorothy's spine. Not because of its behavior, but because the expression was all too human.
"Give us the shoes, Dorothy of Kansas," the crow said in a voice not its own.
I know that voice, Dorothy thought, remembering the shrill shriek of it, hurled down the center of a yellow brick road at her. Her mind made the connections like a dot-to-dot puzzle, conjuring up the memory of green skin and a different pair of legs that had somehow transformed into ash and… black feathers, beneath the Kansas Folly.
But how could Zolesha know that Dorothy was from Kansas? One look at that haughty bird on the rock, and she had her answer: the witch had spies everywhere.
The sailboat-snap and flutter of countless wing beats pounded on her eardrums, and Dorothy wished she had never watched Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds with her Uncle Henry. She'd thought the film cheesy at the time, but now understood, intimately, every terrified scream that had come out of Tippi Hedren's mouth.
"We've gone over this already, Zolesha," Nick said as he took a step closer to the bird, putting himself between Dorothy and the implied danger. "She can't take the shoes off until Glinda allows it."
"Still so eager to defend your new girl," the crow replied in the witch's voice. "You just relish playing the white knight don't you, loverboy?"
Loverboy? Exactly what kind of history do these two have? Whatever it was, it couldn't be good. Dorothy watched Nick's silver hand become opal-knuckled on the haft of his axe.
"That sly trick you pulled wasn't very chivalrous though, was it?" the bird said, ruffling its feathers. "I don't know whether to applaud you for sipping from the Wicked well, or whether to do what I promised I would to this inferior creature. Are you afraid of heights, girl?" The crow hopped forward, craning its neck to stare at Dorothy.
Dorothy sidestepped Nick and got closer to the bird to speak to it. "Bless your heart. Not a bit. I cliff-dive in Madagascar every winter. Didn't your spies tell you? Not scared of crows either, so I'm not sure what you think you'll accomplish sending a murder of them after us." She shuddered at the M-word, regretting it instantly. "They going to peck us to death? Before you even think of giving the order, do try and remember that killing me only returns the boots to Glinda, and she's not about to let you have them either."
The crow cackled, the sound chillingly human. "You must be excellent at cliff-diving, seeing as you're jumping to such outlandish assumptions. All I'm going to do is have Nick take your feet off at the ankles with his precious axe. Three strikes and off they come, shoes and all. I'm sure it'll be much less painful than the birds. At first, anyway."
"It won't work that way," Nick replied, sliding back between the bird and Dorothy. "The Good Witch was very specific. If the shoes come off of Dorothy's body in any way, they return to Glinda."
Dorothy wasn't quite so sure that was what Glinda had said, or that those were the actual rules, but she was more than happy to believe him. Tucking in behind him, poking her head over his shoulder, she drew comfort from his words and his closeness.
"There. You see. No real need for the crows after all," Dorothy said, feeling ridiculous for even putting the words in the air. "I'd say you overdid it, to be honest. With so many, I wonder how they'll fare against those leaves in the Black Forest? Worse than us, for sure. Then again, too few and I guess it doesn't pack the same punch, huh?"
She didn't know why she was trying to rile someone who'd earned the title of "Wicked Witch," but she couldn't shut herself up. Nervous energy had her babbling.
Nick discreetly reached behind him and put his hand on whatever part he touched first, which happened to be her stomach, as if to say, You really need to be quiet now.
"Oh, my dear, you aren't listening," the crow said in the witch's voice. "These crows aren't here to kill you, despite their quantity—they're here to pick your bones clean when my other guests are done."
Dorothy whipped around, half-expecting a troll or a golem or the witch herself to stride out of the swirling wall of birds.
The bird cawed delightedly. "You always choose the gullible ones, Nicholas." It winked at him. "The birds are a distraction, silly girl, to delay you until I can send something a little more significant to bring you to me. When I've had my fill, then they'll feast."
"Well, we're coming to you anyway," Dorothy shot back. It was obvious she was tracking them, so surprise was no longer an ally. "So, call off the horde before we redefine the words ‘murder of crows.'"
"Soon," the crow replied. "I thought they deserved a little snack first, while I prepare for your arrival. See, I'm not yet ready for visitors."
Dorothy read between the lines, recalling what Nick had said about Glinda's weakened state, and the Wicked Witch's condition likely echoing it.
"Call them off, Zolesha," Nick demanded, the hand on Dorothy's stomach slightly colder than it had been before. There was nothing in his voice to suggest it, but she could sense him panicking inside that tough exterior. That, in turn, panicked her.
"Nick, what is she going to do with the birds?" Dorothy said, her voice barely above a whisper.
"You'll find it hard to get to me before I'm ready," the bird replied, like it had been waiting for that very question, cackling at the joke of it all before it finished, "if you don't have any eyes to find the way."
The crow shot up into the sky, joining the whirling throng.
Dorothy dropped down onto the nearest boulder, setting Toto down, and began pulling hard on the silver shoes. But, just as before, they stayed attached to her feet.
"Pull, Toto!" she urged. "Pull!"
But the pup wouldn't have bitten her, not even to save them.
"Oh no!" Straw said. "I don't have any eyes for them to take, so I'm still going to end up seeing you all get hurt. I wish I could help!"
"I wish you could help too," Dorothy sighed. She had given up tugging on the shoes and was standing on one of the heels, trying to use leverage to slip it off. Glinda's magic holding them to her feet seemed to not like that, and the shoes flashed hot for a second. Dorothy stopped before she burned her toes off.
She peered back up at the sky. The mass of crows was slowly tightening in smaller circles than before, finally permitted to get closer, funneling down like a black, feathered tornado. Soon enough, the group of five would be trapped in the tail, pressed in and pecked at from all sides.
Nick grabbed Dorothy, jerking her to her feet and dragging her swiftly in the direction of the maybe-safety of the razor-leaf Black Forest. He had his axe up, ready to cut a hole in the whizzing wall of crows if he had to, Lional's vow be damned. Toto was in hot pursuit, teeth gnashing for a taste of crow.
But Dorothy stopped abruptly, pulling out of Nick's grasp and turning around. An absurd idea surfaced in her mind. But the crazy Land of Oz seemed to run on absurd ideas.
"You can help," Dorothy declared, practically screaming at Straw above the din of flapping wings and the whip of wind they'd conjured. "You were literally born to help!"
"What can I do?" He danced forward and eagerly asked.
"You're a scarecrow! You were born to scare these bastards!" she stated and gestured all around them. "Put everything you've learned to good use and be what you've always been destined to be!"
Nick growled out a curse and reached for her arm again to pull her toward the forest.
"That's never going to work," he said.
But Dorothy held her ground. She scooped Toto up and shielded him with her arms, just in case her wild idea was as stupid as it felt.
Lional puffed his chest and nodded. "She is right, Straw. This is your calling. This is why Glinda awoke you, for this very moment." He leaned into Dorothy, whispering close to her ear. "Put your spectacles on."
"I can help!" the scarecrow shouted, his voice swelling with happiness as he marched his janky-legged march into the center of the increasingly angular tornado. He stretched out his arms as they had been when he was on the pole in the field, only this time, he resembled a knight of old, charging into a relentless wave, preparing to hold back the tide.
The tornado seemed drawn to the courageous scarecrow, the tail immediately rushing forward into a narrow point, past the others, swallowing up the fearless scarecrow in a cacophony of vengeful caws. It took Dorothy a few seconds to realize she was on the outside of it, but there was no relief, her green-tinted gaze trained on the spot where Straw had been. Now only a thrashing whorl of feathers, wings, and claws, with no visible sign of the scarecrow at all behind the dense corkscrew of birds.
"Do something," she wheezed, though she wasn't sure who she was talking to. "I made a mistake! They're going to rip him apart!"
But instead of smashing through him, the tornado seemed to lose adhesion, thinning out as birds fled straight away from Straw, shooting out in every direction, as far and fast from the scarecrow as possible, as if he were the devil himself.
Dorothy suddenly found herself in Nick's embrace, his back to the scattering flight of crows who were racing blindly away from the scarecrow. She felt as much as heard the impact of the terrified animals slamming into Nick's back and legs as he sheltered her from the murderous storm, Toto wedged safely between them.
The dissension of a thousand screeching birds eventually faded to the broken-wing warbles of the crows who had chaotically flung themselves into the unyielding Nick, or who'd panic-raced into the razor-sharp leaves of the Black Forest behind them. Only when even that sound quieted to a murmur did Dorothy risk peeking out from behind Nick's sheltering arms.
Standing rigid and upright, his arms still spread wide, was the feather-covered and wing-shredded scarecrow. Clumps of straw were spilling on the road all around him and sweeping into wind scattered piles, his seams popped, his new patches ripped and ragged, his hat gone. The breeze breathed some of his stuffing into the air, hurling bits of straw against his body, as if it would put back what he'd lost if it only could.
The only thing keeping their hero on his feet was the wooden skeleton frame the farmer had built him on. Straw's thin, sagging face turned happily toward his friends.
"I did it!" he declared in a joyous voice, before tumbling, unmoving, onto the road.