5. Chapter 5
five
I awoke in a different room than the one I had fallen asleep in.
Instead of Rye’s cold stone slab, which I’d crawled onto in order to curl up next to him, I now lay in a soft and narrow bed. Or rather, a small decorative dingey-sized boat that had been fashioned into a bed complete with a downy mattress and stacks of pillows.
An iron lantern hung from the curled bow of the boat, but there was no need for the flame flittering within the fogged glass. Morning had come and gray sunlight shot through the room’s slim windows in arrow-straight shafts.
Someone, perhaps whoever had transported me out of the cathedral-like bell tower, had also buried me in furs. Across from my bed, a fire burned low in the hearth.
It spoke volumes I’d been too exhausted to realize I’d been moved.
Scanning the room, I counted two doors. The big one must lead out into the castle’s many narrow halls. The slimmer one no doubt opened to the washroom.
Another fur carpet dwelled on the floor in front of the fireplace, but aside from the boat bed, a dark wood chair, and a matching hutch, the room entertained no other furniture.
An involuntary grunt escaped me when I tried to move.
I gave myself a pause and a breath, and then, with effort, much soreness, and creaking joints, I extracted myself from the furs. After a slow-paced visit to the cold but adequate washroom, I pillaged the hutch, hopeful for fresh clothes since I still had on my now ratted, bloodstained, (and ripe) gown from the wedding reception.
After selecting a pale blue knee-length dress from the collection of simple pieces within, garments that suited me more than any of the lush gowns Rye had insisted I wear, I again retreated to the bathroom, where I drew water, filling the giant tub within.
Thankfully, the water was at least lukewarm. Not blissfully hot like it had been at the Emerald City Palace, but I was so filthy that I’d have been grateful to bathe in a vat of ice.
I shucked my clothes, climbed into the bowl-shaped copper tub, and sank gingerly beneath the waterline, my skin puckering and sprouting goosebumps all over.
I took a breath and submerged myself. While underwater, I steeled myself for what I had to do. Then I reemerged and, clearing my still-tired eyes, I spoke.
“How long have you known?”
I asked this of the empty room. Of course, though, this chamber—just like my own body, my mind—wasn’t as solitary as it seemed. Not since the clock tower. Not since Morella, whose time for silence had come to an end. And I would have my answers.
“Was it the moment I accidentally set you free?” I pressed. “Or sometime after.”
Silence permeated the room. I blinked slowly, lashes beaded with water.
I shut my eyes and kept them closed for several long seconds. I’d already prepared myself for a difficult interaction, but my fatigue certainly made this all the more grueling.
“Morella,” I intoned, as if her name was a spell I could use to forcibly summon her.
When I opened my eyes again, I found her standing near the door, which I’d left ajar. She wore a curve-hugging black dress with lace sleeves, a delicate pattern of black roses winding her jade arms. Vibrant, fire-hued tresses spilled around her shoulders. Thickly lashed ember-hued eyes rimmed in kohl and shadowed with violet dust regarded me with disinterest.
“What are you blathering on about?” West demanded, arms folded.
“I’m talking about me,” I said, gaze shifting from her to one blank stone wall.
“What about you?” she snipped, that temper flaring. “That you’re a sniveling little nobody with feathers for brains?”
When Morella had first attached herself to me, the lobbing of insults had been a daily—almost hourly—occurrence. That had been before either of us had known much of anything about the other. Before we’d come to our…understanding.
Funny how this dynamic of belittling me had suddenly reared its head again.
I drew a breath before continuing with my test.
“How long have you known I was her?” I asked in a monotone, still not bothering to spare her a glance.
“Oh, please,” snorted Morella. “You aren’t anyone.”
Her evasion wasn’t doing much to convince me she didn’t know the truth. Or that the truth wasn’t what Rye had concluded.
“I wasn’t anyone,” I agreed. “Before coming to Oz, I barely knew myself. I was shy and meek, and I thought it was a good day if I didn’t get hit.”
“You’re still weak,” Morella rasped. “And just look at you. You’re as beaten as it gets. It’s all the scarecrow’s fault, too. I told you this would happen, yet you still insist on fawning over him.”
“I want the truth about me,” I said, disallowing her to divert the conversation, distract me. “I know you know it. And that you figured it out a while ago, just like Rye. Maybe even before him. I’m just asking…when?”
“You’ve gone and lost the last bit of wit you had,” she railed, swinging one green hand through the air as though my insistence was something she could bat away. “And now you’re gobbling up the scarecrow’s newest ruse. Can you believe it? He doesn’t even need to be cognizant to control you.”
Control. From the moment of my birth, the details of which still remained a mystery, I had been under someone’s control. Mombi. Rye. Morella…
All this time, though, I had been the one with the true power.
Had I become a prisoner simply because I’d never known I had it in me to break free?
“Give me the truth or I will tell Nick about you.”
“And then The Woodsman will kill you,” she assured me, the chords in her neck going taught, her eyes wild with warning—and fear.
“He won’t,” I said. “Because if the truth about who I am came from Rye, proof or no proof, a part of Nick has to suspect, like I do, that I really might be her.”
“But you’re not,” Morella growled. “Ozma is dead. My sister had her slain. She sent her assassin. And he never failed.”
“Your sister ordered the death of a child.” It wasn’t a question. Just a cold statement, the utterance of which seemed to make the room all the colder. “If that’s true, then wouldn’t it also be true to say that perhaps Eulalie got what she deserved?”
Never in my life had I uttered anything so daring, so brash, so potentially explosive.
So callous.
But…the sudden death of Eulalie, Morella’s younger sister was, I had learned, the elder witch’s trigger point. Her weakness. Her wound.
Even if Morella as well as Jack had saved my life back in the Emerald City, even if she had tried to warn me that Rye would smash my heart to a pulp, and even if she and I had previously shared a tenuous mutual respect, I had to face the undeluded truth about her.
No matter what, she was not my friend. Always, she would be my enemy.
And what else was there to do with an enemy…but plunge the knife in, and twist?
Though I waited for Morella’s tantrum, for her fury, for a flurry of hateful words to come spewing out of her since, due to the bracers, she could not sink her claws into me and make me her puppet, silence alone resounded.
I wouldn’t look at her. If I looked at her, I might be tempted to feel something other than rage. And my anger, like my hope, currently served as a tether to reality. To my new mission.
To Oz. A place that might just be the home I had never known.
“Eulalie never ordered your death,” Morella said at last, her voice a weak whisper, crackled through with defeat.
And now I did look at Morella, my head snapping in her direction. Because even though I knew the witch—or what was left of her—was more broken than anyone I’d ever met, I had never seen nor heard so much evidence of that from her. Also, her words served as an admission. Eulalie had never ordered my death.
I blinked at Morella, whose eyes glistened with unshed tears. Her lip, too, trembled.
Maybe, though, this was just a new way of trying to exploit me. A new tier of tactics she’d been waiting to try out in the event the potency of her old ones wore off.
More than once, she’d already proven herself a better actress even than Mombi.
If this total turnover in demeanors was a ploy, I couldn’t deny that it was working. Because my heart squeezed itself of blood. I tried to hide my shock, cover it over. But it was difficult to conceal anything from someone who had literally been hiding in my shadow. And though Morella was my enemy, the two of us had seen each other’s wounds. Shared our woes. I’d even once tried to bridge the chasm between us. But Morella had rejected the notion we could ever be friends. She’d rejected me.
“The Wizard spread that rumor about the assassin when Ozma went missing,” said Morella. “I never understood the true reason why. I always figured he simply needed a scapegoat, somewhere to shift the blame for his and Glinda’s negligence when the princess vanished from Glinda’s care. But then I overheard you talking to that boy from your world. When he came to retrieve you from the Emerald City Palace, thinking—understanding—you were a prisoner there.”
“Sebastian,” I said, his name a familiar poem to my tongue—not to mention another source of horrible pain to the remnants of my heart since he had been yet another casualty of Langwidere’s invasion.
“The boy mentioned a man by the name of Diggs,” said Morella. “And you, in turn, spoke of Mombi.”
At the uttering of the name of my former caretaker, if you could call Mombi that, I had to grip the sides of the tub.
“You know Mombi?”
“Eulalie,” Morella said. “We’re talking about Eulalie. Who never ordered the murder of the princess. Still, Ozma’s supposed death sent outrage through all of Oz. The Wizard put a bounty on Eulalie’s assassin even though there was hardly a need. People wanted the assassin dead for what he’d been accused of doing anyway. For murdering, like you said, a child.”
I frowned as I absorbed this latest revelation. Before, back at the palace, hadn’t Sergeant Lance—who had later turned out to be Langwidere—mentioned this assassin?
“The Shroud,” Lance, or Langwidere (I still wasn’t certain at what point the princess of Ev had overtaken the poor boy) had called him.
“Unfortunately,” said Morella, “Eulalie had fallen in love with this servant. Someone from my own service. A highly trained guard I had sent to her. A fellow Winkieian.”
Suddenly, I wanted this story to stop. Even though I didn’t know why. Not fully.
A sudden sense of dread welled within me. The same kind that rears its head when you know something horrible yet inevitable is waiting around the next corner.
“Because he worked under the cover of night,” continued Morella, “and wore a mask, no one knew what this assassin looked like. But this anonymity wasn’t enough for Eulalie, and to protect him, she placed him under a powerful spell. A curse. Because only a curse could render him untouchable enough for her tastes. The cost of such magic was high. For them both.”
I shook my head at Morella, wanting to refuse to believe what she would say next before she could end this dark fairy tale.
“Because this curse involved necromancy,” she said, “the price it demanded…was life. A life.”
I swallowed hard, gaze dropping to the stone floor. The subject of this brand of magic had come up before. Everyone knew necromancy was the type of magic that had transformed Rye.
“My sister ran to meet that house,” said Morella.
The house. Meaning Dorothy’s. The one that had fallen from the sky, landed on Eulalie, killing her.
“You said…Rye was her protector.”
Once before, back in the Emerald City Palace, Morella had claimed Rye knew Eulalie, had been together with her, but that he didn’t recall the relationship or his status as her guard because his memories had been “wiped.” But…she’d never said anything about an assassin.
Morella shrugged. “Who do you suppose makes a better protector than an assassin?”
“You’re lying,” I accused, my heart bursting into flames at the implications.
“You wanted to know the truth. And the truth is this. When the last war began, Rye was on our side. For whatever reason, my sister loved him. And even though he obviously did not kill you when you were a child, mark my words that he would have if Eulalie asked him. She wouldn’t have, though. She wasn’t… We weren’t…”
She trailed off, her voice growing tight, her expression wrenched, strained—like even she wasn’t sure what she was trying to say. What she wanted to communicate…
“You admit it then,” I said, trying to fight back the tears that came with the knowledge Rye knew none of this. And how much it would crush him if he ever found out. “That I am her.”
“It doesn’t mean anything. No one will ever believe it. No matter how much power you profess to have.”
“Because I’m not old enough,” I murmured, repeating the one part that still didn’t add up.
“It’s true I can’t account for the missing years yet either,” said Morella. “But it’s also true that magic can do any number of things. Aside from that, there’s no longer any denying that Diggs was behind your abduction. Maybe even Glinda as well. No, you idiot girl. It’s not because of your age. No one will ever believe you are Ozma because no one will ever be granted a chance to even consider the possibility. And I will be the one who sees to that.”
In an instant, Morella unraveled into that black muck I’d encountered in the clock tower. A thick sludge that slapped the stone. Her essence, viscous and sticking, writhed against the floor before sinking between the cracks and draining away, leaving me alone with the knowledge that Morella had likely lied to me just now. But…not about everything.
The last part, though. About her controlling what happened from here out—controlling me. Well, I truly would be a fool not to assume she’d meant that part with every ounce of the shard of the soul her wraith represented.
Which was why I needed to come up with a way to extract her, and soon.
For good.