Chapter 4

Four

The tailor and his family had survived the witchy conflict on their front doorstep. The house would need some repairs, and after awakening from a slumber that had lasted the length of time it had taken Nick to check on the family and the surrounding villagers, Glinda had promised to do exactly that.

Unfortunately, the Good Witch wasn't going to be able to do it anytime soon. Apparently, most of her wands had been broken during the fray, and she was fresh out of Good Deeds.

"The three wands I have left will only cover aiding our new arrival and getting me home." Glinda had tossed a glance at Dorothy, sitting on a stool in the corner of the tailor's shop, inhaling the steam from a cup of tea. "It may take the strength of any Good Deeds I might be able to do here, too. I could pay for a mason, perhaps?"

Nick should have left at that point. Let Glinda and her ilk deal with the lost woman and her dog. But something had anchored him there, making him hover about and watch the byplay between the two women.

"Don't waste your wands—I'll wake up from this dream any time now, any minute," the beautiful Earth girl insisted, hands shaking around the cup of tea. A moment later, her head snapped up, eyes clear, urging, "Send me back. Use your princess magic. Send me back, right now."

She'd been doing the same thing for the past twenty minutes or so, giving Nick's ears whiplash, waffling back and forth, one moment insisting that none of them were real and it was all a dream and then to forcefully asking—not quite, but almost demanding—that Glinda send her back immediately.

That's where the problem had really reared its ugly head. The two Wicked Witches had intertwined a pair of Curses to hit Glinda with a storm. It was this double magic that caused the main issue with sending Dorothy back.

"Dorothy, dear, I have already explained this," Glinda said, her voice on the brink of exasperation. Thankfully, they'd found East's unbroken wand near the socks and skirts filled with nothing but feathers and tar. But if two wands brought her, and Zolesha had absconded with her own, would only half of Dorothy go back?

A morbid question, for certain.

"And that is why," the Good Witch continued to Dorothy, "I must insist on you going to see the Wizard in the Emerald City. There is no one in all of Oz with greater knowledge of wands. Not even myself or Gaylette knows more." She seemed to stumble on the name Gaylette, and Nick couldn't blame her. The Good Witch of the North had been Glinda's teacher, just as Glinda had been for Zolesha. Though only Zolesha would mourn East's loss, all of Oz would mourn the loss of Gaylette, if it turned out that Zolesha and her sister had been telling the truth.

"Will you be going with me?" Dorothy asked Glinda.

"Not in this condition. I need to get back to my castle and do as many Good Deeds as possible if I'm going to have enough magic to help you. It will take an… immense amount, I suspect."

"Can't you just do those Good Deed things around here and then send me that way? I can wait a couple of days. Will it take longer than that?" the Earth girl asked.

Nick knew the next part before Glinda even said it.

"The only way to undo a witch's Curse is to use their wand to reverse it," the Good Witch said.

"And you said it might send me back in halves with just the one." Dorothy returned to staring into the steam, eyelids twitching. "Unless we can prove it was just one of the two wands and not both?"

"You see the dilemma, my child," Glinda responded.

"I'm feeling the dilemma."

"Go to the Emerald City and see the Wizard," Glinda repeated as she took East's wand and handed it to Dorothy. "Rumor has it that he has dedicated much of his life to the study of used wands and may be able to identify if this actually brought you by itself or if both are needed."

"This thing isn't dangerous, is it?" Dorothy asked, caught-snake holding East's wand between two fingers and as far from her body as she could. She set down the tea as if the wand might do something to it.

"One spell. One wand," Glinda replied with a wistful glance at the two dozen unused but broken ones on the fallen-boat-disheveled brick road.

"Fine," Dorothy said, throwing her hands up in the air. "Point me toward the Emerald City. I know a lucid dream when I'm in one. The quicker I get there, the sooner I can wake up and deal with my mother."

She paused for a second and then continued, "I suppose she's the inspiration for this… nightmare. Pretty as you." She gestured to Glinda, who seemed to preen under the compliment. "But mean as that other witch."

The Good Witch adjusted her crooked crown and smoothed down her wind-tossed hair. After a few seconds of fiddling, she blew out an exasperated sigh and lifted the hem of her skirt to get it out of the way of her crystal slippers. She lifted her foot, swung it back a bit, and then match-struck it forward against the brick. Her appearance instantly returned to its perfect self, from now-flawless dress to perfectly coiffed hair.

"My child, I promise you are not dreaming," Glinda insisted.

She would have turned heads in any room she walked into, but Nick couldn't seem to keep his eyes from flicking back to Dorothy and sipping up every bit of her.

"If it's all the same to you, I'll keep thinking I am," Dorothy replied, shuddering.

Glinda rested the point of a sapphire encrusted wand against her chin. "Perhaps it would be best if I sent someone with you. The yellow brick road has many twists and turns and forks, all leading elsewhere. And some stretches of it can be quite dangerous to go it alone on, especially now." She looked expectedly at Nick.

Because Zolesha has put a target on your back, and she never misses, Nick neglected to chime in. No point in making it worse for the girl.

Dorothy let out an unsteady laugh. "Now I know it's a dream," she said. "You're straight up quoting Zelda at this point."

But there was no doubt that she was the most dangerous thing on the road from Nick's point of view. Twin braids of freshly tilled field-brown draped over slight-but-strong shoulders and glowed warm in the sunlight filtering in from the calm, bright world outside the tailor's shop. A summer smell of a wheat harvest yearning to become bread trailed around her. A crooked smile that knew secrets and poetry played across her freckled face.

It was that unsaid poetry that Nick was most afraid of. It was a broken-heart kind of dangerous, thanks to his Curse. Being around her would surely pry open the whole spectrum of emotions, freeing everything he had tamped down, and he doubted he would be able to stuff even the smallest feeling back into his tin-can core. He'd already risked an armor coating when he'd lumbered in front of her as Zolesha fired, though he guessed the bubble had somehow given him a temporary pass.

Either way, if he followed that girl up the yellow brick road to the Emerald City, he'd be a statue before he even got out of Munchkin Country.

"Perhaps you can accompany her, Nick?" Glinda asked him, putting to words the unsaid request he had chosen to ignore a moment earlier.

He said the exact opposite of what was in his heart.

"No."His careful voice seemed to annoy Oz's newest arrival, and she raised a questioning eyebrow at him.

"I didn't expect to find any Kansas kindness wherever the heck this place is," Dorothy said, frowning. "But you could have at least tried to come up with some kind of lame excuse as to why not."

"I'm quite certain you will find kindness in Oz," he countered. "Just not from me."

Glinda cut in that point. "We may have to figure something else out, then." She weighed the three remaining wands in her hand, obviously thinking on it.

He appreciated that the Good Witch didn't guilt him into helping. Perhaps she sensed the turmoil bubbling below his silver skin and knew it would only lead to pain for him. Or perhaps she was beginning to believe what others took for granted, that Nick was becoming as cold on the inside as the out.

"It's a simple matter of following the yellow brick road and always heading west," he said in a small attempt to be somewhat helpful. Which was all he was willing to risk for a complete stranger. "You'll have to double back a few times, but you'll eventually reach the Emerald City in a week."

"A week?" Dorothy croaked the words.

"Maybe sooner," Nick replied. "It's a good eighty miles to the Emerald City from here, as the crow flies, but the road meanders anytime it feels like it."

"Then I'm definitely going to need to get my camping pack." Dorothy looked dubiously out of the doorway at the ruined boat. "Assuming any of it survived in there."

"Gather anything you need, and I'll think of something." Glinda put the back of her hand to her mouth in a stifled yawn.

"Why don't you just rest up, like Dorothy suggested," Nick offered. "You can do some Good Deeds around here and bubble her to the Emerald City. The tailor's house could sure use a repair, even without magic. And the road is a wreck."

"I'm not sure what counts as a Good Deed," Dorothy cut in. "But road repair doesn't seem like a likely candidate. Then again, if you ask my Uncle Henry, he'd say someone was a saint if they took care of the potholes out on Route 2."

Glinda and Nick looked at her in unison.

"Never mind." She waved her hands at them. "Carry on."

Glinda looked cautiously to the sky as if she expected Zolesha to come sweeping in on a flying broom. He understood the Good Witch's hesitation. She had nearly been killed by the Wicked Witches, and her fear was thick on her face. If Zolesha were to return again, it would likely be lights out for Glinda… and then the Earth girl.

"Are you certain you can't just…" she asked him again with a nod toward Dorothy.

And once again, despite the fact he actually did want to volunteer, the yellow brick road would only be a path to eventual emotional and physical pain. Curiosity alone might make him break out in steel and blistering agony.

"No," he repeated. Though it was harder to keep it completely detached that time.

"Listen," Dorothy said, "if you can just draw me a map or something, I'll be fine. Not my first orienteering rodeo."

Glinda gave Nick a disappointed look. The same kind his mother used to give him when he ducked out on a hard chore and someone else had to pick up the slack. The heart-crushing weight of it sank into his stomach and released a little too much emotion to his exterior. His muscles ached with the metal twisting into the fibers.

He breathed in and out, letting calmness roll over him, hoping it would wash out some of the Curse-driven sting.

After a moment, Glinda responded to Dorothy. "I think I can do better than a simple map."

She picked out one of her three remaining unused and unbroken wands, slipping the other two into the empty quiver on her right hip.

Heading out of the tailor's shop with the others in pursuit, and carefully picking her way across the bricks and boat debris, she stepped right into the storm-blown, flattened blue corn stalks of the field opposite. An unusual heap poked out of the ruined vegetation: the tip of a wooden, cross-shaped beam and what looked like a straw-stuffed canvas glove and shirtsleeve, like someone was reaching out of the accidental grave.

Glinda tapped an amethyst crystal wand against the glove in the late afternoon sunlight and spoke. "Wake, friend scarecrow, do as you are asked; your help is needed on important tasks."

The hand twitched.

Even though he had known magic was coming, Nick flinched. He paid for the show of emotions with a sudden tightening at his elbows. Dorothy responded even more vehemently, backpedaling away from the edge of the field and reaching up to the side of the ruined boat like she was going to scramble into it.

"What in the horror-movie hells is that?" she asked, not taking her eyes off the shifting corn cobs as a once-inanimate scarecrow lurched up on wobbly feet, pulling itself off the fallen wooden support it had been mounted to. The ripping sound was enough to make even Nick a little queasy.

Dorothy's face was a mask of terror and morbid fascination.

It settled more into the intrigued side of things when an innocent and helpful voice came out of the comically painted face of the scarecrow: rosy-red cheeks, huge triangle-shaped white eyes with big black pupils, lopsided eyebrows, a wide cheery smile, and a literal button nose.

"Oh my, I seem to be covered in corn!" the thing said, stumbling up to his full height and speaking to Dorothy from across the field.

Nick risked a shiver, secretly glad it wasn't addressing him.

"It's alright, my dear," Glinda said. "I assure you, he's quite harmless. In fact, he'll be very much eager to please."

The terror melted off Dorothy's face, replaced with doubt. Still, there was something about the charming and eager expression of the newly animated scarecrow that waylaid the fear of seeing it move about. Nick's own hesitation seemed to drain away as the automaton shambled through the torn and shredded corn field, tripping and falling multiple times on the bent and broken stalks. "Oof." Then another fall. "Argh." Another. "Ugh. Silly me."

By the time he finally made it to the road, he seemed so helpless that Nick wanted to help him get the last few feet—but that might have just been frustration at the sheer amount of time it took the thing to get out of the field. Still, Nick stayed put, breathing deeply, refusing to let any of his frustration or pity rise over the metal-pain-hell threshold. It was a tricky balancing act at the best of times.

The scarecrow lifted his floppy brown hat, revealing a rope-tied, broom-like bushel of bristling straw that stuck up and out in all directions, and bowed to Dorothy.

"Hello, friend!" he said cheerfully. "I'm afraid I don't know who I am or where I am. Can you help me?"

Dorothy didn't respond. Instead, she hooked her newly silver-shoed foot around the front of her dog and scooted him safely behind her.

The scarecrow turned to the Good Witch next.

"Hello, friend," he repeated. "I'm afraid I don't know who I am or where I am. Can you help me?"

"I think your magic is a little stuck, Glinda," Nick said. "Shouldn't he be offering to help, not asking for it?"

Glinda's mouth puckered. "Well, I am scraping the bottom of my Good Deed barrel, so to speak. It's a wonder I can enchant him at all, let alone give him all the knowledge on how to get to the Emerald City."

"Are you Dorothy?" he asked Glinda.

For her part, Dorothy looked like she was almost going to introduce herself, but she kept a wary eye on the walking automaton.

"She's Dorothy." Glinda gestured to the new arrival.

"Oh! I'm so sorry. Yes, of course she is." He turned back to Dorothy and gave her a canvas patched grin. "Hello, Dorothy. I'm going to lead you to the Emerald City. Follow me."

He proceeded to turn in the wrong direction and wobble-walked his way down the yellow brick road, coming within half an inch of a splinter that protruded from the front of the boat—the kind of shard that could tear apart and unravel a straw man with one pull. Nick grabbed the scarecrow's shoulder just in time and spun him around to face the actual direction he needed to go.

"The Emerald City is that way." Nick pointed to the west.

"Thank you, good sir. Are you with Dorothy? Are you our friend?"

Nick couldn't even bring himself to look in her direction. The scarecrow's question had been genuine and sweet but accidentally laden with a broken boatload of emotional cargo. It had been a long time since he'd had a friend, much less anything else.

"No, scarecrow, I'm not with her," Nick told the thing. "That's why you're here."

"That's wonderful!" the scarecrow declared. "I'm so glad I have a reason to be here." He stepped back to Dorothy and crooked his arm out for her to take. All he got in response was a raised eyebrow.

"Curses." Glinda slid into the conversation and then instantly stifled another yawn. "If my magic did not map out the way to the Emerald City in your mind, then I am afraid you will not be able to help."

The scarecrow looked genuinely disappointed, his wooden framed shoulders slouching over.

Glinda gave Nick another "Are you sure you can't help?" stare-down.

The scarecrow hadn't given up hope though. "Maybe I can offer aid in another way? I feel like I was born to help. That, and be a farmer. Yes, I was born to help and be a farmer. Can a person do both?"

"The more I have to keep asking for someone to just draw me a map, the more stupid I feel like I'm sounding," Dorothy talked over the rambling scarecrow. "I've got a compass in here and everything." She pointed again to the wrecked boat.

"Unfortunately, it's not just the distance and the location." Nick tried, unsuccessfully, to keep his annoyance at the whole situation from bubbling over and was penalized for letting the emotion into his voice with a tightening of his throat. "There are tigers, wolves, and other beasts between here and there! Not to mention, you've upset the Wicked Witch of the West. You're not going to need just a map, you're going to need protection."

He regretted saying it out loud. He looked like an absolute cad for continuing to say no.

Dorothy flashed a pointed look at the magical axe swinging on his hip. "Give me that, and I'll forgive you for not being my escort."

Glinda opened her mouth to say something, and Nick silently raised a hand to stop her. "I'll take you." He huffed out a calming breath. "But you have to do exactly what I say, exactly when I say it."

"As long as you don't ask me to do the Macarena, I can live with that," she responded.

He had no idea what that meant and had a feeling he was about to experience a lot more confusion in the days to come.

Nick looked back at Glinda. "As for you, get your Good Deeds in order. When you get this girl home, you're going to have to finally go deal with your former student."

Glinda's normally pleasant and peaceful expression dipped into sadness. "I will do my part," she said. "But I would ask you to do one more thing for me, too. When you reach the Wizard, give him a message from me. Tell him that I will come to him as soon as I recover. I may need some new wands, as my own supply has run low. Have them ready for me."

Nick nodded.

Glinda picked out the sapphire wand she had been holding earlier and spun it around herself.

"I don't want to roam, as there's no place like home," she said.

A new pink bubble appeared, this one only around the Good Witch herself. It floated her into the sky until it was well above the tree line and then rocketed off toward the south.

"Go get your camping supplies," he told Dorothy. "I'll look after your dog while you're in there."

"His name is Toto. And if you're nice to us, I might even let you call me Dot," she replied as she turned to the boat wreck and began to pull herself up the side. He wanted to offer her a hand but couldn't figure how to do it without accidentally touching her in what was surely going to make his quicksilver heart race and be hard on his metallic-Cursed skin.

Dot… Such a small word for such a huge danger. It made his chest feel strange, prompting him to jolt his attention back to the scarecrow, who was teetering toward the snapping zone of the dog's slightly bared teeth.

"Toto!" the scarecrow cried out. "How wonderful to meet you! I'm… Well, I'm…."

The dog barked a warning, hackles raised.

"What did he say?" the automaton asked Nick, a quizzical expression on his painted features.

"How should I know?"

"Well, we better learn his language if we are going to travel with him," the scarecrow declared matter-of-factly.

Nick swallowed down his agitation and gathered up his own travel pack and coat from where he'd dropped them by the tailor's front door, when the witches, their storm, and that ruined boat hit. It was going to be a long,long trip, and even with his tools, his axe, his new shirt, his sewing kit, and his knowledge of the yellow brick road, he was woefully unprepared.