Chapter 17

Seventeen

Like a startled sailor who had no idea how they'd reached the shore, Dorothy stood shakily on the prow of the Kansas Folly. The wreckage of the Kansas Folly might've been a better description. Two rough landings had left the boat no good for anything but kindling.

"No," she whispered, heaving great breaths, a sob stuck somewhere between her lungs and lips, the pressure increasing. "No, no, no."

She was back in the broken, roofless barn where this whole thing had started. Sent home by the Oz sunrise to look upon another sun that crept almost sheepishly across the sky above.

"Toto!" she all but screamed, though there was another name she wanted to scream with it.

The terrier staggered out of the tiny wheelhouse and paused to shake off his discomfort. His wet nose sniffed the air, and his tail managed a half wag, like he wasn't sure how he was supposed to feel. In that, they were in total agreement.

She scooped him up, kissing his fluffy head, doing her damnedest not to cry. And with him in her arms, she made a limping round of the shipwreck, just in case one or more of her companions had somehow traveled with her. She'd known she wouldn't find anyone, but the disappointment still hit like a Curse to the gut when she found the boat empty.

"We're… home, Toto," she said quietly, her head still ringing from the journey back.

It had been a gentler storm than the first, the wind carrying her back to the boat, then on toward Earth. She didn't remember much of the ride, but her body wore the memory in aches and patches of red that were already starting to bruise. As for any trace of Oz—the only proof it hadn't been a dream all along were the silver shoes, still sparkling on her feet. Unscathed.

A fury bristled through her as she wedged the toe of one against the heel of the other, putting all of her weight into trying to get at least one shoe off. "Take me back," she hissed. "Let me say goodbye. I owe them that much!"

Let me say goodbye to him… on the one day where he could be himself. She could still see him in the dawn light, a shy smile edging onto his lips, the silver disappearing from his skin as his hand held tightly to hers. It was cruel to snatch her away like that, and everyone had said that cruelty had no place on the Summer Solstoz.

The shoes held fast. Magically so.

Toto stretched his neck up to lick her face, sniffing the tears that must've escaped.

"I know it's stupid," she muttered. "I barely know him. But… I just wanted to have today, after everything we've done together. With all of them. A Curseless day."

The terrier rubbed his face against hers, whimpering his understanding.

"This wasn't supposed to happen," she said, kicking the side of the bulwark. A red-hot flush swept up her foot, not pain but a burn—the shoes didn't like that.

"Okay, I get it!" she growled. "Glinda's Blessing extends all the way here. Wait… Glinda's Blessing extends all the way here!"

Toto flicked his ears and tilted his head.

"Toto, are you thinking what I'm thinking?"

He barked.

If Glinda's enchanted shoes still had their "magic" all the way on Earth, then that had to mean that she hadn't been sent back permanently. She gazed up at the sunrise, wondering if she'd be stormed right back to Oz when it sank again, or when Oz's sun sank again. In fact, she was glad none of her travel companions were there; she'd have made a pathetic image, sobbing and kicking things because her slapped-around brain hadn't caught up to the situation.

"But I'll still miss it…" Her leaping heart sank again, realizing that when the end of the Solstoz brought her back to Oz—if it brought her back—Nick would be Cursed again. He'd be in pain again. He'd shut down again, and she'd never see how wide that shy smile could curve or hear all of the things about his Curse that she was certain he'd been about to say.

Toto barked again, wriggling in her arms.

He took off, and Dorothy hurried to follow, bolting out of the destroyed barn. Up ahead, the familiar sight of the Gale family farmhouse stood resolute in the hazy blue of dawn. Other than a few missing and damaged slate shingles, the old Victorian-era home stood undamaged by the storm that had stolen Dorothy away.

The screen door slammed, and a voice called out in surprise from the front porch. Auntie Em had stepped outside, probably hearing Toto's barking through the front windows.

"Get out here, Henry!" her Kansas voice shouted back to the house. "Hurry!"

Dorothy jogged the rest of the way, Toto slowing his pace to run alongside her, making it to the porch steps at the same time that Uncle Henry burst out from inside the family home.

Uncle Henry and Auntie Em's embrace felt more like home than seeing the intact farmhouse. Emma was already three sobs into her tears, which severed the restraints Dorothy had wrapped around her own, both of them falling to pieces while Uncle Henry held the two women that he adored most in the world. A sturdy, quiet, stoic presence.

Only when the two women had managed to recover a little did Uncle Henry clasp Dorothy's face in his hands, a shine of happy tears on his own cheeks.

"We thought the worst," he said. "When they only found little pieces of the boat, and not much of the work barn, we'd given up hope that they'd ever find you. There've been folks out searching every day."

"We've been searching," Auntie Em choked. "Even when Sheriff Harkley said they were stopping, we didn't. No one down this way did."

Uncle Henry took out his handkerchief and dabbed Dorothy's cheek. "Where have you been, kid? Why didn't you call?"

The scent of camphor nearly buckled her at the knees. Sometimes, Auntie Em threw Uncle Henry's handkerchiefs in with the cleaning rags she used for her silverware, and the aroma never properly washed out.

Dorothy looked into her uncle's eyes. "I don't think you'll believe me, even if I tell you the truth, but it answers why I haven't called."

Toto yipped and pranced around between Uncle Henry and Auntie Em's ankles, as happy to see them as Dorothy was.

"We didn't forget about you, scout," Henry said, sweeping the dog into his arms, rubbing his knuckles between the terrier's ears.

Meanwhile, Emma grabbed Dorothy, ushering her into the house. "Let's get inside, and you can tell us all about it. Doesn't matter how bad it is. You just go on and tell us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but."

It was the first time Dorothy had sat in that kitchen since her mother's arrival. They sat around the laminate-top table on the chrome-and-vinyl chairs, and Dorothy knew that Auntie Em was unbearably eager to hear the story as she hadn't even started a cup of tea or offered Dorothy a lemonade. Although, there were cookies stacked high on a plate in front of her.

However, she'd lost her appetite for foods she recognized when she'd seen the clock on the wall. It wasn't dawn here at all. It was evening. And that blue hue outside was dusk.

"I don't know how to explain what happened," Dorothy said, petting Toto for comfort, the dog curled up on her lap. "In fact, maybe it's best if I just don't say anything at all. I don't want you to have to get Sheriff Harkley out here again, to lock up a crazy woman."

"That's okay," Uncle Henry replied. "Whatever you have to say, we don't care. We love you, and we're just happy to see you're alive." He reached across the table to her aunt's clasped hands and took them in his own, joining their love together and showing it to Dorothy in a way that her own parents never would have.

Dorothy basked in it for as long as she could before launching into what was about to be the strangest story she would ever tell the two people she loved the most, and she'd had a few zingers in her time.

She was only a few sentences in when she dropped the name "Land of Oz," and her aunt stiffened, wide eyed.

"Oh, my dear," she said thickly. "You've been to Oz?"

It was Dorothy's turn to be surprised, the wind completely whipped from her sails.

"You believe me?" she asked hesitantly.

"Yes, Dorothy, I believe you," Auntie Em replied.

Henry, however, was even more lost than when Dorothy had started her tale, and she hadn't even made it past "accidentally squashed a Wicked Witch with the boat."

"Hold up, hold up—be kind and rewind for your old uncle. Far as I'm understanding, that storm swept our Dot all the way to Australia, but I'm guessing I'm missing a couple pieces in the jigsaw here, since I'm 91 percent sure they've got cell service in Australia and no storm I've heard of can carry anyone so far," he said, scratching his head. Instead of releasing hold of his wife's hands, he squeezed tighter.

"Not Australia, sweetheart. Oz. Just Oz." Emma puffed out a breath. "It's… a different world. Literally a different world. A… fantastical place."

Henry frowned. "Are you saying you know about this supposed fairytale land Dorothy was sucked into?"

Auntie Em nodded a couple of times, pulled her hand out from Henry's own, and patted the top of his comfortingly.

"Yes, my love. I know because I've been there before." She turned to look at Dorothy. "And so has your namesake, your great-great aunt."

"If this is true," Henry said, obviously shaken but trying to rationalize his way through it, "why have you never mentioned it before?"

"Oh, you mean while we were courting?" she playfully retorted. "Or when you introduced me to your family? Or once we were married?" She shook her head. "Let's just say there wasn't a very good segue into ‘I've been to a magical land that some of my family can pass back and forth between. Why yes, there are magical creatures and spell-casting witches.' How long do you think our relationship would have lasted if I hit you with that doozy? You'd have thought I was puffing the jazz cabbage, though we all know that you?—"

"I need a minute, sweets," Henry interrupted, clearing his throat loudly. He let go of her hands and leaned back in his chair, blinking into space.

"You can be upset with me later," Dorothy's aunt said to her husband, swatting at his disbelief and shock. "Right now, let's hear the rest of Dorothy's story. Go ahead, Dot—you were saying?"

Dorothy echoed her uncle, blinking down at the orange-and-yellow pattern on the laminate tabletop, struggling with her aunt's revelation. It was almost easier dealing with her own journey to the magical land than to find out that her family had a whole history with it. Great-great history, at least. But it was going to make things go a whole lot quicker if she didn't have to explain every little detail, which might have been as tooth-pulling exhausting as trying to explain an idiom to Straw. If the magically sealed silver shoes on her feet were any indication, there was a ticking clock to worry about.

"Do you know how to get back and forth?" Dorothy lifted her gaze back to her aunt.

"No," Auntie Em replied. "I was whisked away to Oz during my early teens. Gaylette the Good needed a special magical mouse-made jacket that had been on your great-great aunt when she made the leap back home. I happened to be wearing said coat when I was transported with it to Oz. She couldn't send me back right away because reversing the Blessing would have sent the item back as well. I spent a summer there, basically a princess at Gaylette's palace in Gillikin Country. When she no longer needed the jacket, she sent me home with an apology letter explaining everything to my parents." She sighed. "I still miss that jacket. Looked good with everything. I'd have snapped your Uncle Henry up twice as quick with that."

She was clearly trying to break Henry out of his "what in the county fair is happening here" trance, but he remained frozen. Thinking. Processing. Staying silent until he had something to say.

"Did my dad know any of this?" Dorothy asked.

"No," Auntie Em replied, and Dorothy could almost predict the words as she continued. "He thinks I was kidnapped by a cult for a summer, as he was far too young to comprehend it and my mom didn't want him trying to find a way over. Though, with his analytical mind, I doubt he would have believed it anyway."

"I know I'm struggling to," Henry said. He was more relaxed in his chair, but the look of disbelief he was sporting had all the appearance of permanently etching onto his face.

"Did you meet Gaylette the Good?" Auntie Em asked.

"No, Glinda the Good," Dorothy replied. "But speaking of Gaylette, I might be the bearer of bad news. According to one of the Wicked Witches, if she's to be believed, Gaylette may no longer be with us."

The whole conversation was so surreal that Dorothy's mind could barely process she was having it with her aunt. Emma's reaction to the news was definitely real, though.

"Oh my goodness. Oh no. Oh…" She reached down and brought a corner of her checkered apron up to her teary eyes. When she opened them again, Dorothy reached out and grasped her hand, offering comfort where Henry couldn't. His understanding of the world was tilting upside down, after all.

"I hate to rush through this, and not give you the proper time to grieve," Dorothy said, "but I don't know how long I have until the magic pulls me back, and I don't want to leave anything unsaid."

For a second, she was on a mountaintop bluff with Nick, a gust of violent wind whirling around her. His hand still holding hers.

"Wait," Uncle Henry interjected. "Did they just send you back to get something specific and then they want to take you away again? Not a snowball's chance in hell! I absolutely forbid it. You're to stay here, young lady!" It took him a moment to realize what he was saying. He shook his head and leaned back in his chair. "I have no idea what's coming out of my mouth. Ignore me. You've got… business to do, and I'll stay out of it."

"Don't say that," Dorothy replied in earnest. "I love that you care and want me to stay. And you really are taking this like a champ."

He smiled dryly. "It's because I think I'm asleep and will wake up any minute."

"That was basically me the whole first day there."

Henry nodded and waved at them both as if to say, Continue, I won't interrupt again.

"But to answer your actual question," Dorothy said, grabbing one of his hands too. "We thought, or at least the Wizard said, the shoes were supposed to keep me in Oz during the Solstoz, but they didn't. And when the Summer Solstoz neutralized the witch's curse that dragged me to Oz in the first place, I came back. And I suspect when the sun goes down again, the magic that brought me there is going to sweep me back again."

Henry stood up and looked out the open window, through the screen to the dark yard beyond. "The sun already set."

Dorothy gave an apologetic shrug. "It was just rising when I was there half an hour ago."

Auntie Em was already nodding as if she might have expected this. As for Uncle Henry, he was forced to nod; he had traveled enough in his youth to understand time zones. Or at least attempt to understand for Dorothy's sake. Which was why she wasn't even going to try to explain the Oz calendar.

"Well, honey, you look half starved, no matter what's happened to you," Uncle Henry said. "Can't have you just eating cookies. Not a single ingredient in one of them things that anyone can pronounce, and if you can't pronounce it, imagine what it's doing to your innards." He went over to the fridge and started pulling out the ingredients for a late evening meal. "You talk, Auntie Em will listen, and I'll cook."

It was somewherebetween three and four in the morning when Dorothy finally finished telling the story. Uncle Henry's farm-weary, up-at-dawn body had put him to bed an hour or two earlier, but not before he'd pulled Dorothy into the kind of hug reserved for last goodbyes, just in case she wasn't there when he woke up.

Dorothy suspected he could have stayed up later but had gone to bed in order to give his wife and her niece time to say their own goodbyes.

"I guess the biggest question," Auntie Em said into the quiet before the dawn, "is whether you'll be attempting to return home again once the magic takes you back to Oz."

That's the thousand-dollar question, Dorothy thought.

"Also," her aunt added, "what do you want us to tell your mother?"

And that's the million-dollar one. Dorothy shook her head. "I haven't had much time to think about all of that, between crash landing and regurgitating everything at breakneck speed," she replied with a sleepy smile. "But there might be a reason for me to stay in Oz. For a while, at least. A summer or more."

"I assume you mean this Chopper boy?"

Dorothy stole a sip from her sixth cup of tea, to hide her grin. "I meant, because of everyone I've met. Curses to be undone, Wicked Witches to battle, Good Witches to visit, shoes to get off—it's a lengthy itinerary."

Auntie Em raised a knowing eyebrow. Rather than saying anything, she stayed perfectly quiet, letting the silence become unbearable. An interrogation tactic, expertly applied.

Dorothy groaned. "Was it that obvious?"

Her aunt cracked a smile, staring into her cold tea, apparently still not feeling the need to respond. She knew Dorothy would fill the silence. They both did.

"It's just that…" Dorothy began. "It's just that I'm not sure how he actually feels. I suspect it has something to do with his Curse, but he's harder to read than a weathered, cuneiform-covered slab with half of it missing."

"And you're worried…" Emma prompted.

"I'm worried that… I'm worried that he's just like my father, and my therapist would be waving a red flag at me if she heard about this." Dorothy paused to order her thoughts. "Sometimes, I thought Dad actually loved me. That he might've been louder with his affection if it wasn't for Mom, making him miserable. But then… he couldn't be bothered to pick me up after school, or remember my birthday, or congratulate me on graduating, or meet my prom date and give him a hard time about dating his daughter, or the thousand other things that millions of other dads do for their kids. And I don't think that was because of Mom. I think it's because he just… didn't have it in him to care. He had spreadsheets where a heart should've been."

Dorothy had hoped for some miracle piece of advice or flawless pearl of wisdom from her aunt, considering Auntie Em knew Dorothy's father a quarter of a century longer than Dorothy had. But her aunt only nodded, a deep sadness in her sympathetic eyes.

Dorothy sighed and continued, "There are times I think I see Nick showing signs that he cares for me and is interested in more than helping a lost and wayward soul traverse a far-off land. But how can I be certain? Especially when I can't get him to even smile or laugh—heck, I'd even take him getting mad at me."

But he was smiling, just before the wind came…

"What do your instincts say?" Em asked.

"You mean those same instincts that were honed by years of being raised by a narcissistic mother who constantly lied and manipulated me?" Dorothy sarcastically replied.

"I would think that would help with your BS detector."

"I think it magnetized the needle backward, so I'm constantly aimed at liars."

"Do you think that's why you're attracted to him? It's less that he reminds you of your dad, and more that, since he isn't showing you any emotions, he can't be lying to you through them?"

"No. Maybe? I don't know."

Emma put the cup of tea to her lips and then seemed to second guess drinking it so cold and so late. She put it down on the table and stifled a yawn. "Sorry," she said. "At least he sounds different than that one boy you had around for a while."

"Daniel? Yeah, but that didn't last for a whole other reason. He said I acted like I was babying him. I said I was just showing I cared. He said that I cared too much, then, and it was suffocating him. Ironic that we were in a tiny tent at the time." Dorothy shuddered.

"You do tend to gush praise on others," her aunt replied.

"Do I?"

"You do. Not that it's a bad thing, but it does come off as disingenuous at times—to those who don't know you properly, at least."

"Why do I do that?" Dorothy asked.

The question itself was rhetorical, but apparently her aunt had pondered on it herself at some point as the answer came pretty quick. "Knowing your mother, and how transactional her affections are, it's no wonder you taught yourself that the only way to receive affection was to heap praise on others, just like your mother wants, all the time, from everyone."

"I wonder why she was with Dad, then? Getting praise out of him was like trying to change a tire on the John Deere without a jack."

"Maybe because he didn't praise her," Emma said, absently blowing on her already cold tea. "‘We want what we can't have' isn't a cliché for nothing. Or maybe the family money. Maybe both. But let's get back to what you really wanted to talk about. The Chopper boy."

Dorothy wrapped her hands around the cold porcelain of her own empty teacup. She was instantly reminded of the dinner they had in that poppy-bordered village with Amika, and how readily Nick had filled her cup without asking.

Her aunt took the cup from Dorothy and headed to the kitchen sink to rinse it out. "For what it's worth, I don't think he sounds anything like your father," she said, her back to her niece. "He has helped you time and again, asking nothing in return. He gave you the coat off his back in a downpour. He covered you when the crows fled without a thought for himself. When things got difficult, he showed his care for you in acts of service. Sounds more like someone else we know, if you ask me."

Dorothy blinked.

"The question you have to ask yourself is," Em continued, "can you make that place your home and be happy if he never says how he really feels about you?"

"I don't know, Auntie Em," Dorothy put her face in her hands, her elbows hard on the chilly laminate table. "I really don't know."

Em turned. "Well, honey, this home will always be waiting, whatever happens."

It wasn't a pearl of wisdom, instructing Dorothy in what to do about Nick, but it was exactly what she wanted to hear. A comfort more precious than all of the Emerald City, to have a home she could return to, no matter what. Perhaps this whistlestop visit had been a Blessing after all, guided by a Good Witch's hand.

Dorothy and Totosaid goodbye to Emma shortly before the sun rose, hugging on the porch, where her aunt stayed as Dorothy walked down the dirt road, away from the Gale Farm. Every so often, Dorothy turned back to wave, smiling as her aunt waved back.

You should be in bed, she chided inwardly. Still, it was nice to feel her aunt's presence, as if she were just heading off to college for the day and not waiting to be swept back to Oz for who knew how long.

Emma had talked about wanting to watch her to see if she went back, but there was the fear that the magic might decide to bring her aunt along with her. Emma had been there before and who knew what wonkiness could happen.

So, it had been decided instead that Dorothy would walk as far from the farm as she could; the last thing anyone wanted was for the whole house to come along with her as well. It would be just her luck if she dropped her family home on somebody, just like the houseboat. Although if it were Zolesha, Dorothy couldn't really say she would've minded too much.

The silver shoes continued to magically adhere themselves to Dorothy's feet, cushioning her footfalls as she reached the gate and headed out onto the open road with Toto trotting alongside and a new pack of supplies on her back. She'd debated taking her uncle's coyote rifle before hearing Lional's voice in her head saying, "That is not how one should fight Wickedness. Allow me to break that wretched thing over my thigh. It shall make an excellent trophy for my lodge wall."

Soon enough, the porch became a speck in the distance, then completely out of range of her eyesight.

Pressing ever onward, Dorothy knew the inevitable return to Oz was going to happen. She could feel it in the shoes. A tingling warmth, like they were limbering up for a marathon. What she didn't know was whether she would continue to stay in Oz once she got there, or continue looking for a way home to Kansas again. Permanently, this time.

Either way, plans had been set in motion that seemed to lean one way more than the other. Dorothy had written an email to be delivered to the college in a few weeks' time, suspending her education indefinitely, and had handed her passwords over to her aunt. Then, she'd quickly recorded a video message on Em's phone—although not exactly a heartfelt one—to her mother, stating that she was going to be gone for an unknowable amount of time on a worldwide sabbatical, and if her mother still wanted to put Toto down, she was welcome to try to find Dorothy to make that happen.

Skippingrocks and digging in to the lemon bars her aunt had made, Dorothy and Toto spent the rest of the morning down by Farmer Johnson's creek, waiting for the magic to take her away. She kept telling herself, Any moment. Any moment now. But the sun taunted her, climbing higher and higher, the hours passing from dawn to morning to noon, forcing her to find shade beneath a weeping willow.

She tangled a frond around her fingertips, remembering the mother stork, and looked down at Toto through sleep-deprived eyes, gritty and smeared.

"Well, my fuzzy boy," she said, "it looks like the decision is going to be taken out of my hands anyway."

Toto barked a couple of times and then whimpered, flopping down onto her legs.

"I think the Curse must have broken during the Solstoz, after all. Surely it's dark over there by now."

Toto just lifted his head and set it back down.

Dorothy tested the magic of the shoes to see if they were still adhered to her feet by stepping on one heel and then on the other, as she'd done on the Kansas Folly, attempting to slip her foot out cowboy-boot style. All she succeeded in doing was scraping her ankles, the shoes not budging an inch as she grunted in frustration and lifted her leg up with all her might. "This is ridiculous. I wish the magic would just hurry up and take us back to Oz if it's going to, instead of keeping me guessing!"

A warmth radiated from the ground around her, and the willow she was standing beneath began to thrash like a headbanger at a heavy-metal gig, a fierce wind whipping in to grab her and Toto. She pulled him to her chest, in case he accidentally slipped from her grasp, and buried her face in his fur as Kansas disappeared.

As the magic whisked them from the Sunflower State and flung the two of them back to the weird and wonderful Land of Oz, a sweep of joy and anticipation flooded Dorothy, telling her mind what her heart already knew.

There was no place like home, and she wanted that home to be in Nick's arms.