Chapter 8

Eight

Nick's lungs burned, but not as much as his guilt. It was his fault the two of them were trapped under the tree. When Dorothy had grabbed him and pulled him to safety a moment earlier, relief combined with the unsubtle joy of having her arms around him surfaced to his face even as they surfaced to the air. He just had to wipe that muck off her cheek, didn't he? He just had to gaze into her eyes and pull her closer, didn't he? Of all the stupid, reckless things he'd done… The Curse couldn't let that slide.

Worse, if she had just let go, she wouldn't be drowning with him, and it would only be his life lost by his inability to withhold his emotions.

As it was, he knew he'd killed the both of them. It was just a matter of time now.

His axe could have made short work of the willow tree drowning them, even underwater, but it was still above, lodged in the willow trunk. It wouldn't budge unless he removed it, so there was no hope of it falling into the water of its own accord, within his reach.

Nick's body was getting heavier in the mud, the thick silt slicking his back and legs even as the tree pinned him. His emotions were still fighting their way out of his control, and his weight was increasing by the second.

If he could have taken a centering breath, he would have. But the water filled his nose and fought against his metal lips, seeking any entrance it could find to finish the job and drown him already.

Dorothy struggled beside him, but a particularly thick, wooden limb lay across her chest, like a wooden arm holding her down.

Nick wasn't going to let her death be on his conscience. With a monstrous effort, using his metal to his benefit rather than her demise, he hooked his steel-like arm underneath the weak point of the tree limb, bending it back until—he hoped—it cracked.

But the tree was too newly fallen and pliant. He only succeeded in bending it for a few seconds before it slipped free and pinned Dorothy harder than before to the silt and mud. Worse, she wasn't wriggling as much anymore, the bubbles blowing from her mouth becoming smaller and farther apart. He wasn't much better off; those precious seconds of tremendous effort had used up what little air he had left. He was rewarded with a wave of lightheadedness, and with it, the shadows of the nighttime water threatened to become the black veil of death.

There was splashing in the rushing water overhead, but in the roar of the inlet, it could have been anything: another tree succumbing to the might of the river, chunks of riverbank tumbling in, some other creature struggling.

But the thrashing was followed by a snap of rope and the sawing grate of hemp against wet bark. The branch pinning Dorothy suddenly eased as the entire tree rolled away from them.

Nick grabbed that branch and Dorothy at the same time, allowing the seemingly magically moving tree to roll them up toward the surface. The first breath of air exploded into his lungs while Dorothy heaved and choked next to him.

They were alive.

Lional's strong paws grabbed both Nick and Dorothy and heaved the pair of them up by the arms, off the still-twisting tree and onto the relative safety of the grass levee that sloped up from the decaying riverbank.

He expected to see that Glinda, or some other magical being, had rescued them. But other than the stork, Toto, and the lionman, there was only an extremely pleased-looking scarecrow stick-waddling back from the nearby watermill.

Nick nodded in thanks at the cowardly lion, who had proved yet again he was not deserving of the title. Lional flopped onto the grass next to Nick and Dorothy, wet from his waistcoat to his sharp toes, and he petted Toto, who bounded around Dorothy, carrying something in his mouth. Something familiar.

"Toto?" Nick wheezed, banging on his tin chest.

The little dog trotted up to him proudly and dropped the axe, slobber glistening on the handle.

"How did you—?" Nick frowned, too wiped out to try and get an explanation out of a terrier as to how he'd managed to rip the enchanted axe out of the trunk.

"How did you…" Dorothy parroted, fighting to form words between heaving coughs. "How did you… rescue us?"

The answer was obvious: a rope that was stretched in a zigzag pattern between the surviving limbs of the waterlogged willow, the slack somehow anchored to the axle of the watermill wheel. Although, it wasn't slack now. The wooden paddle wheel was, at that very moment, stuttering and creaking in protest as it struggled to snap free of its restraints.

The rushing water that had tried to kill them had been harnessed to save them.

"That was… clever…" Nick said between his own hacking breaths.

Toto sat next to Dorothy, leaning in to lick the water off her face as she nodded her head in agreement.

"It was the scarecrow's idea," Lional replied. "I merely did the knot work."

"More than clever," Dorothy said. It sounded like her own wet lungs were starting to clear.

"Oh, no. I'm not clever at all," the scarecrow insisted. "Dorothy is. So, I thought to myself… What would Dorothy do?" He looked at her with his painted, crooked triangle eyes. "And I realized you would take the rope and tie it to the thickest limb of the fallen tree that was pinning you and attach it to the spinning waterwheel of the mill, after quickly working out the angles and the branches you would need to lash it between so the rope would roll the tree off you instead of it dragging you with it."

"I don't think I ever would have thought of that," Dorothy breathed out as she shuffled her backside to a tree stump, on the flat of the levee, and leaned against it. Toto jumped into her lap and stretched himself over her torso, paws on her shoulders, licking her furiously.

Nick looked away, fighting the strangest prickle of envy he'd ever experienced. He wasn't about to metal-up because of a dog; he needed to focus on meditative breaths to undo the metaling that was already weighing him down, easing the broken-glass stab in his joints and flesh.

"Goodness," the scarecrow replied. "I'm so sorry I got it wrong. Should we try something else to rescue you?"

"They're already rescued, good scarecrow," Lional said with a chuckle.

"Yes. Of course. Why didn't I realize? You know, I'm just no good with my head thinking." Straw prodded his forehead, leaving a fingertip divot. "I wish I was smarter."

Dorothy mustered a labored laugh. "If you're not the smartest one here, I'm a pickled onion."

"I thought you were a girl? You don't look like any onion I have ever seen." The scarecrow scratched his hessian head.

Dorothy waved the scarecrow's confusion away, clearly too tired to explain.

Keeping his gaze fixed on his sodden thighs, clenching his jaw as he massaged the knots and kinks in the white-hot muscle, Nick murmured, "You should've let go under there."

He wanted to thank her for pulling him to the surface the first time, and he wanted to beg her forgiveness for almost being her executioner. But he couldn't risk saying any of it, not even in jest. He just never knew what the Curse would do if he showed genuine thanks or indicated real remorse. A polite thank you never seemed to do any harm, but the kind he wanted to show her was full-hearted.

"We should've done a lot of things differently," Dorothy replied, with a smile that nearly killed him for a second time. "But I can categorically say that we owe Straw for the both of us being alive and kicking."

"That's quite alright," the scarecrow said. "I don't have any need for money. No sense owing me anything."

Before they could correct him, a glowing moth fluttered by his face and he wandered off following it, asking it where it was going. Toto pottered after him, herding him along the top of the grassy levee, nipping at his straw-stuffed heels whenever it looked like he might veer back down toward the river.

"That reminds me—where did the stork go?" Dorothy pulled the miraculously whole egg out of the pocket of her strange blue garment. Somehow, the branch that had pinned her underwater had been high enough up on her chest that it hadn't crushed the remaining egg.

Nick was balanced between relief to have saved all of the eggs for the stork, and minor annoyance that they had risked so much in doing so in the first place. Of course, he couldn't let either emotion show on his face as the stork landed on the tree stump, as if summoned.

"I was putting my eggs in a new nest," the stork explained, bowing her elegant head and opening her wide beak to receive the last one.

Dorothy handed the egg over with a half-drowned smile of happiness. "There you go, Mother Stork."

"Thank you!" the joyful but mumbled reply came out of the stork's full mouth.

"What now?" Lional asked. "I assume we camp for the night while we dry our river-soaked clothes."

"I think I have a change in my hiking bag," Dorothy said. She looked over to the millhouse. "Give me a few minutes to change, and we can all make ourselves comfy in something with four real walls. Get a fire going. I don't think anybody's using that place anymore, and it looks like it has a chimney." She gestured to the abandoned building.

Nick had his new shirt and one other pair of pants in his own pack, but the latter was in pretty rough condition. If he'd known he was going to get a singeing from Zolesha, several coatings of mud and grime from two watery incidents, and a prolonged dunk in the river, he'd have asked the tailor for a new pair of pants, too. His freshly purchased sewing supplies weren't going to do much to help with his older pair. Still, they were better than the soggy, torn trousers he was currently in.

The mother stork turned and bowed her head to Nick, Lional, and Straw before taking off into the starlit, moon-full sky. Dorothy took that as her cue, wandering off toward the watermill with her pack, though Toto stayed behind to continue his scarecrow corralling duties.

When the bird returned, landing back on the tree stump with her beak empty, she bowed to Lional, Straw, Nick, and Toto.

"Where is the female?" the stork asked.

"Getting changed," Nick replied as he grabbed his own pack, preparing to go in next.

"Give her my abundant regards. I dare not leave my eggs alone for too long," the mother stork told them. "You have a friend in the animal kingdom now, and I will give you whatever aid I can provide whenever you need."

Lional bowed back to her and said something in a catlike tongue.

She nodded her head and stork-waddled her way to the edge of the stump, taking off with grace to fly back to wherever she'd hidden her new nest.

"What did you say?" the scarecrow asked the lionman, once the stork was gone. Nick was more interested in how the prince was able to speak the stork's native language in the first place.

"I wished for her to see every egg hatch, and every chick within to have two wings, two legs, two eyes, and a strong beak."

Toto barked at Lional, who laughed once and gestured toward the mill. The little brown-and-black dog sprinted off to the abandoned building and shot through the gap in the open doorway.

Nick stretched out his body, a layer of drying river mud cracking into a desert landscape. He had relaxed enough that the hardened emotional shell of the recent near-tragedy was releasing its hold on his cold and tired body.

Dorothy came out a moment later wearing a pair of tan hunting pants and a bright shirt that seemed impossibly orange, even in the moonlight. The latter was loose over her shoulders and tied at the bottom to better fit her silhouette. It had obviously belonged to someone much larger and much more masculine than her.

A pang forced its way into Nick's stomach. It had naturally occurred to him that a woman as beautiful as Dorothy would have a significant person in her life, but seeing proof of it in the form of another man's shirt tightened up his skin in a sharp bristle of jealousy that he did a poor job of holding back.

"Your turn, Nick," Dorothy said with a wave to the entrance. "I promise I won't peek," she added with a half smile.

Nick quietly picked his pack up and did his best not to let his shoulders slump as he walked by the woman he now knew had someone waiting for her to come home.

Dry clothesand an even drier building helped to relax Nick again, despite the knowledge he would never have a chance with Dorothy. Sure, the Curse was always going to make that impossible, but that hadn't stopped him from daydreaming a little.

He sat propped against a column that supported the massive roof, his legs splayed out in front of him, his wet clothes hanging from one of the port beams next to Dorothy's drying outfit that, strangely, reminded him of a scarecrow. A headless one, but a scarecrow, nonetheless. Straw seemed to agree, as he kept trying to engage it in conversation, sharing bird-scaring tips.

"If I ran at the crows, I think I'd be more frightening," Straw said to Dorothy about the hanging clothes. "What do you think?"

Dorothy smiled, absently stroking Toto, who lay curled up in her lap, fast asleep. She was leaning against the wall closest to the weak fire they'd managed to get going from some old, but dry, wood left over from the millhouse's former owner.

Meanwhile, the whole interior was softly illuminated by a miraculous camping light that looked like an oil lamp without ever needing oil.

It was something from her strange world and reminded Nick yet again that she wouldn't be staying. She belonged elsewhere, where another man would have his arms wide for her return, never worrying that they'd stay that way if he let his feelings show.

The light also reminded him of the Wizard, who was renowned for a form of magic that Ozian's had taken to calling Sciencitch, the objects of science the various Wizards had brought with them from Earth and adapted to the magics of Oz. That, in turn, circled back to the fact that Dorothy wouldn't be staying. Once she'd seen the Wizard and given him the wand, that might be the end of the line. If Dorothy's arrival had been instigated by that wand alone, it definitely would be.

Lional was curled in on himself, holding his knees, his head against a half dozen empty and abandoned canvas bags, fluffed into a makeshift pillow under his gently snoring, frankly giant head.

Nick glanced away from the sleeping lionman and looked directly into Dorothy's eyes. She had been staring at him for who knew how long, a question obviously forming.

"Yes, Dorothy?" he asked, keeping his emotions from tinting his voice, which would only lead to the metal tinting his skin to harden.

For the first time, her expression revealed an almost fearless confidence.

"You know, you can call me Dot. All my friends do," she replied softly.

"Well, you look like you have a question, Dorothy," he replied, not wanting to let the attraction he was holding back find root in the endearment of her nickname.

She bounced her shoulders back and forth a couple of times as she settled against the wall, and it was obvious she was hiding disappointment that he used her proper name. But the emotional distance he was attempting to put between them was for both of their protection.

"I've been thinking about everyone I've seen so far in Oz, on the road and in the village," she began, "and what I heard between you and Glinda before we left makes me want to know—were you Cursed by Zolesha, or her sister? Is that why you look silver, even though you're obviously human?"

His automatic reply was in the air before he could stop it.

"Why would you think that?" he said.

She half shrugged, not making eye contact anymore. "Lional got furry. I guessed you got silver." A line appeared between her eyebrows. "It's just that it changes hue a lot—your skin. It gets darker, it gets lighter, and when it gets darker, you tend to limp a little more. Your movement sort of… becomes less… fluid. And in the water, you got… heavier. A lot heavier. I don't know." She shrugged again.

"Honestly, Dorothy," he admitted, hoping that the Curse wasn't going to punish him for his next words, "I truly wish I could tell you about it, but I can't even confirm whether you're right."

Nick wanted her to know, needed her to know, that he wasn't as cold hearted as he appeared. However, even the slight nod in confirmation that he had subconsciously slipped in caught the back of his neck, tightening his throat and threatening to cost him all the progress he'd made in relaxing away the metal Curse that plagued his muscles and skin after the near-drowning.

"I'm just trying to understand what I'm up against here in this wacky place," Dorothy said.

He wished he could help her understand everything, but more than that, he wished he could throw off the vestiges of the Curse, get up from his place, walk over to her, and share her warmth in the chilly night.

However, such thoughts only served to tighten metal bands around his heart; not the kind created by the Curse, but the emotional ones that came from falling for someone and not ever being able to show it.

"Speaking of the furry one," Nick said, "what do you think of our traveling companion's Curse?" He gestured toward Lional, who took that moment to snort and claw at the empty air, whiskers twitching.

"I don't know," she answered, chewing her lower lip. "The whole concept of magic and Curses and wands is frustrating because it's hard to believe. I mean, I do believe, but the good Lord knows I didn't see our scarecrows at home walking around. Though there's a whole Halloween empire built on that kind of thing."

As for the scarecrow himself, he was strolling about the inside of the mill, counting the glowing cobwebs, and saying hello to the few spiders hanging from one or two of the still-occupied webs. Unlike the stork, the spiders weren't answering back.

Thankfully.

A crow landed on the windowsill near Straw, and he lost his fascination for the spider and walked over to it. He lifted out his arms to his side and advanced on the bird. "Hurt my dog again and I'll rip you up by the roots and shove your apples where the sun don't shine!" he roared in a scarecrow-copy of the words Dorothy had shouted at the apple-throwing trees earlier that afternoon.

For its part, the night-black bird only cast a dark eye curiously about the contents of the room, ignoring Straw completely.

"Nobody is scared of me," the scarecrow lamented, as he slunk away and headed back to counting spiderwebs.

The bird darted away from the window, and with the distraction over, Nick looked back up at Dorothy, who had watched the scene unfold with a wide-eyed shock.

"I can't believe I shouted that at those Fighting Trees."

The corner of Nick's lips twinged ever so slightly. "The part where you then threatened to start using my axe right after was what really got them to settled down on you, I suspect. But I don't think Lional would have actually let you follow through with either threat." He paused. "What were we saying just now?"

She shook her head, as if dislodging the astonishment of her own savage mouth. "How I don't really understand this place," she said, gesturing at the mill house all around her, though it was obvious she meant all of Oz.

"I've lived here all my life," Nick told her, "and I don't understand half of it."

She looked over at the sleeping Lional, undisturbed by Straw's bellowing. "Speaking of strange things and Curses, do you think he'll ever be able to get rid of it?"

"I hope so, for his sake," he said, but his mind went back to his own Curse. He did his best to keep a careful voice so as to not betray his defeated heart.

"I wonder what he'll do if he gets it removed."

The first thing I'd do if I had mine removed would be to ask you to dance,Nick thought.

"I have no idea what he'll do," he said.

"I should have asked Glinda more about magic before we left," she said.

"Honestly, I'm surprised you were as calm as you were about everything," Nick replied. "And you had the forethought to grab your wondrous pack of magical Sciencitch items."

"Sciencitch? You mean the lamp?" Dorothy half smiled. "That's not the only thing in here that's magical."

She beckoned him over from her seated position, and he got his silent wish to join her. They weren't going to dance, but at least he would be able to sit close to her and feel her presence next to him. He slumped down beside her, the rush of air from the movement almost snuffing the fire completely.

Dorothy opened up the pack and started pulling items out of it. The first thing was a cardboard box with fantastical printing and images of grinning peanuts and happy little raisins on it.

"I remember those from earlier today," Nick said. "Delicious."

"Uncle Henry calls it rabbit food. I call it apocalypse food." Dorothy had shared the nut-filled snack bars with him when they'd first settled down in the mill, since Straw didn't seem to eat, Lional was content to go hungry, and Toto had munched down a scoop of something that Dorothy called "kibble."

There was a canteen made of metal with a green canvas cover. A book of empty lines with a metal spring of coil binding it. Pens. Pencils. A small square box with a picture of a helmeted-man's head on the top that she blushed at when she lifted out and then shoved deeper into the pack with a "never mind that" mumble. Something she called a compass, but the needle was spinning in fast circles, and she seemed frustrated and amused by it in equal measure.

There were dozens of other wondrous things, including a half-sized pen that shot a red dot of light onto the floor that Toto immediately leaped on and chased for a few minutes as she swirled it around the mill. She had to stop when Straw finally noticed and became as enamored with it as Toto.

"What is that?" Nick asked as she pulled out a gray box with a grill-like top and round knobs made of some material he had never seen before.

"A shortwave FM-AM weather rescue radio. It's one-way only. I can listen. I can't call out on it." She pulled up on a metal knob and a telescopic tube extended in scaling increments, easily the length of his arm, but whip-like narrow with a beaded top. She turned one of the knobs and an irritating sharp and grating sound filled the millhouse.

Lional shifted at the noise and snorted, but he fell back to sleep. Straw walked over in curiosity.

"I'm sure it's not going to pick up anything here in Oz," Dorothy said, as she flipped a few of the switches and the noise changed in response. "But back home, this is how we listen to upcoming weather reports or a possible fire warning when we're camping."

Dorothy rolled one of the dials and a small red line tracked across a face full of numbers. "In fact, when me and my ex-boyfriend were…"

Nick wasn't sure what she said after that, as the mention of ex-boyfriend snatched onto his mind harder than the sudden chill of metal riveting down his spine.

"Your ex-boyfriend used this pack for hiking?" Nick asked as casually as he could. The shirt too?

Dorothy glanced up from the "radio," clearly not sure what he meant by the question.

"Yeah," she said. "The last time he and I went camping, we went out as boyfriend and girlfriend but came back exes…" She laughed, not in a cruel way, but as if she was relieved it had happened and was behind her. "In fact, I should probably give him back his shirt." She tugged on the thick orange shirt she wore, answering Nick's question. "But frankly, I'm glad I have it for now. It's getting a little chilly."

She leaned against Nick's shoulder as if pulled by the heat her words had released inside him. The scent of jasmine hit him, a fierce uppercut to the nose that left him dazed.

Before his Curse, he would have lifted his arm and draped it around the crossbeam behind Dorothy's head, hoping that she would take the invitation to put herself in his arms, but even that gesture would have caused him more pain than he could risk.

A brief moment later, she pulled back from him and continued to roll the dial without saying anything else. The moment had passed, and all that was left was the crackling noise of the radio, playing in duet with his own crackling nerves.