13. Chapter 13
thirteen
Nick had a large standing mirror—like the one in his room—brought up from a lower-level storage chamber. The guards installed it in the dining hall near the fireplace. And it was there that the mirror remained for three days.
I had approached it several times during this interval. So distracted, so distraught by what I had learned from Nick about his death, though, I hadn’t been able to tap into my powers in any capacity.
Not surprising since I’d been funneling all my energy into putting on a show.
After my liberation from Morella, I should appear relieved. Spiritually, I weighed a thousand pounds less now that Morella had been extracted from me. But the heaviness of what I had learned about Nick and Rye crushed me far more than carrying Morella had.
The only boon I could see in the entire matter was that West hadn’t been present within me to learn the truth. That nugget of black knowledge, that Rye had been the one to end Nick’s mortal life, would have been something she could and would have exploited with her special brand of merciless abandon. She would have used the truth of Nick’s death and his murderer to tear both Nick and Rye—when he awoke—apart. And me, too.
What would have become of Oz then?
Thanks to Nick and Pae, Morella had been sealed away, and so the burden of knowledge was mine alone to bear. Along with this next task…
A task I needed to complete.
Again, I approached the mirror and, as I did, I couldn’t help scanning my expression for any sign of the internal fracture I’d sustained from this newest blow. Because if I was showing that crack in my being, Nick would surely see it.
He’d sniffed out Morella, hadn’t he?
I tried to push the horror of my discovery aside and focus. Because Nick’s death and Rye’s former identity—those things were in the past. I couldn’t do anything about either of those bloody stains. And Rye still needed me. So did Nick. I needed them. As did Oz.
And didn’t we all need Dorothy?
“I can tell it’s bothering you.”
Nick’s voice echoed from the direction of the door. I turned to find him there, his unreadable metal countenance once more in place.
I fidgeted with the cuff of one sleeve, then commanded myself to stop. To not show uncertainty. But did Nick’s words mean he’d already seen through me?
“It’s that obvious?” I asked. My method of trying to gauge what he’d been referring to.
“Your powers continue to evade you,” he observed. “The bracers are doing their job. But, since you’ve been able to tap into your magic regardless, I must wonder if it is the pressure weighing on your shoulders that is throttling them now.”
Good. He had no idea. And I needed it to stay that way.
Besides. Morella was wrong about Rye. He was not who he used to be, who Eulalie had made him. He was no longer The Shroud even if he once had been. Right?
A flash of the milky-eyed Rye from my dream had me closing mine so that I could imagine him as he had been in the ballroom, just before everything went haywire. Despite their cold hue, his eyes had held warmth then. He had meant the promise he’d made to me. But first, I had to make good on the one I’d imparted to him.
“Any word about Cahal?” I turned back to the mirror to study its ornate brass frame.
I’d been hesitant to ask about the lion again. Because Nick had so far kept his promise that he would not hand me over to Langwidere. But…this was war. And I was in the middle of it. And war had consequences, no matter what action those in charge did or did not take.
“I’ve delayed providing an answer to the princess regarding the exchange,” said Nick. “Strangely, Langwidere has yet to press me. My guess is that she’s waiting to see what a counterattack from us—from you—might look like.”
That made sense. Especially since Langwidere did not know about the bracers. She had to be questioning why my powers hadn’t made a bigger appearance at the wedding reception. So, asking for Nick to hand me over—it could just be a test to gauge exactly how much power I did possess.
“That said,” added Nick, “there’s no word on Cahal specifically.”
Which meant he could already be dead.
I drew a deep breath and nodded. Focus. I needed to focus.
“Before,” said Nick, “when you accessed your powers, what did you do?”
I blinked and gritted my teeth. Nick was trying to help. He had to suspect I’d already attempted to go down the same route again and again, and that my efforts had all failed. Of course, he didn’t know of my newest inner battle. This newest…possession.
“I got peaceful,” I murmured, “and I let my mind wander. I daydreamed.”
“I see,” said Nick. “Perhaps then, it is as simple as gaining a clearer image.”
I flicked my eyes his way and Nick clasped his hands behind his back with a gentle clank.
“Dorothy has dark brown hair,” he said. “Nearly black when shadowed, but the hue of rosewood when touched by the sun. She wore it braided often. She’s rarely separated from her little dog who is the color of chimney soot. He has a raspy bark that is endearing until it is intolerable. Dorothy meanwhile has a strange lilt to her voice. An accent, I mean. Just a dusting of one. Her song puts that of the birds to shame. She has large brown eyes and long lashes, a few freckles across her nose, and a smile that kills sorrow.”
I turned my head his way, distracted fully now from my reflection by the one he painted with words.
“Dorothy and Rye fought once,” Nick offered next. “It was after the poppies but before facing West. Shortly after our initial meeting with The Wizard. Rye asked her to sit the final battle out. He argued that she was the most vulnerable in our group. A sound argument.”
“And how did she react?” I asked.
“She showed him such a temper,” Nick said through a laugh. “All of us, really. Because neither Cahal nor I came to her defense. Rye’s temper became stoked in turn and their words toward one another became heated.”
I wasn’t sure why Nick was telling me this story. That Dorothy seemed to have the power to incite Rye’s temper interested me, though. Cahal had talked to Rye about Dorothy too and, according to the lion, had received shouting in return. From Rye, who never shouted. He never had to.
“How did the argument end?” I asked.
“It never did, really,” said Nick. “I suppose you could say Rye lost because Dorothy was the one who delivered the killing blow to West. But from that point forward, something between the two of them, Dorothy and Rye, became…well, not broken, but bent.”
I mulled that over, letting my mind taste this morsel of information that my soul should not have found as sweet as it did. “The argument wasn’t just about the final battle, was it?”
“Rye knew Dorothy would go home after West. If we managed to kill her. We all knew Dorothy would go home. Passage home to Kansas was what Dorothy asked The Wizard for, and it is what The Wizard, in turn, promised her. By that time, though—meaning the time of her argument with Rye, well…”
My throat tightened as he trailed off. “Are you saying he’d fallen in love with her?”
“It would have been easy to do,” replied Nick. “But…though I am excellent at reading others, Rye is never one I can fully interpret. I don’t know if Rye loves her. Neither do I know if it is the weight of unrequited love that bent him…them. Up to that point, there’d always existed something…special between them. An unnamable spark that defies explanation or definition.”
Hadn’t I picked up on as much just through sheer observation? The way Rye avoided talking about Dorothy. Then, there were the topiary statues in the courtyard of the Emerald City Palace. Even their effigies, immortalized in shrubbery, had possessed that spark Nick spoke of.
I swallowed as his words summoned within me a horrible anxiousness. That anxiousness chewed and gnawed and worried at me until, suddenly, it dawned on me why he’d shared any of this with me.
Until now, Nick had been standing back and waiting to see if I would be able to access Dorothy’s world—Kansas—on my own. Without a nudge. Now, though, time was running thin. He’d already squeezed a confession out of me regarding my feelings for Rye. The time had come for him to stoke the embers of my own motives, try to get them to flare into fuller flame.
I wanted to save Rye’s life. That should be enough to stir my powers to the point of overflowing. That should have been more than enough.
Maybe if I hadn’t had a new reason not to want to face Rye, who might also see through me, right down to the secret I held deep inside, my love for him would have been enough. Maybe it still could be after another day or so. Or right now if I could just calm my heart.
Glancing back to my reflection, I found new motivation in my eyes. Nick’s plans again proved fruitful. Because I wanted to know.
What was at the core of Dorothy and Rye’s relationship? Who were they to each other really? By bringing them together, I could find out.
I put my hand to the glass.
“Dorothy Gale,” I said, repeating yet again this action I had performed countless times in the past seventy-two hours.
For a moment, nothing happened. Just as in every instance before. But then, when I began to picture Dorothy as Nick had described her—with her dark hair in braids, freckles across her nose, a small dog at her feet—the glass rippled. The jewels in my cuffs tinted toward green, the color slowly crawling to overtake the red. Then the glass of the mirror thinned, going as translucent, iridescent, and wavery as the skin of a soap bubble.
“Dorothy Gale,” I said again, infusing my voice with more strength, more command.
Within the rippling, watery surface, a picture swam into focus—a gray, cloud-dotted sky, its sun a bright burst of white light. This monochrome scene gave me hope because here, in Oz, night currently blanketed the lands. And when I had been transported from Kentucky, hadn’t I left a stormy midnight for a foggy noon?
“Dorothy Gale,” I called again.
And then the tip of the bottom of a shoe, followed by the rippling hem of a dress, slid into view, right along with a blinking, downward cast face. The face belonged to a girl around my age. One with dark hair wound into a single loose braid that hung off her shoulder, dangling toward me like a short length of rope. Her dark eyes fastened onto me with wonder.
Though I hadn’t wanted her to be beautiful, with those large eyes and rosebud lips, there could be no denying that she was.
“Great day in the morning,” said the girl, blinking fast before a furry black shadow swept between us, its feet—paws—disrupting the whole image. “Toto! Not in the puddles!”
A puddle. That made sense. There’d been no mirrors around Dorothy. But…there had been water.
“Dorothy Gale,” I called again, trying to retain my focus and maintain our connection while waiting for the water that linked us to calm once more.
“Who in the blazes are you?” the girl asked, that tint of the country accent Nick had mentioned painting and rounding her words, lending her a charm I didn’t want her to possess.
“She is a friend,” Nick answered for me.
Dorothy’s eyes burst wide with recognition. She dropped to her knees, her face zooming nearer to mine.
“Nick?”she nearly shrieked at us, scanning the rippling barrier that separated our worlds. “Nick, is that you?”
Nick’s steps clanked as he shifted to stand behind me, within Dorothy’s view. A metal hand fell onto my shoulder. Dorothy pressed a palm to her mouth and tears leaped to those eyes.
“Oh, Nick,” she said. “Thunder, I wasn’t sure I’d ever see you again!”
“Dorothy,” said Nick, a strange catch in voice, “There’s no time for salutations. Rye is gravely ill. He is in desperate need of the healing spring he took you to after the poppies.”
Dorothy’s face crumpled. “Rye? What’s happened to him?”
The crack fracturing my heart ripped a little wider the moment the one in Dorothy’s became apparent. Because of this reaction, didn’t I now have to count her as more friend than rival?
“He needs you,” I told her. “We all need you.”
She gritted her teeth and peered over her shoulder, back toward something or someone I couldn’t see. Then her gaze returned to mine.
“Nick, I can’t leave Aunt Em like I did last time. Without word. It’ll kill her. And there’s… We’re…”
She trailed off, her expression wrenched as she again glanced behind, toward someone or something in the distance.
“He’s going to die,” I pressed, frost crawling through my veins now and, strangely, through the tips of my fingers to paint delicate frozen designs on the glass—and presumably the puddle.
“Gracious,” said Dorothy, recoiling. “You’ve got to be a witch.”
“It’s all right,” Nick assured her. “This is Tippetarius. I promise she is a friend. She saved Rye’s life.”
Had I? That statement wasn’t as true as I wanted it to be. After all, Rye wouldn’t be in the predicament he was in if not for me and my powers.
“But…Rye can’t die,” Dorothy argued.
We didn’t have time for arguments. Rye didn’t have time. Oz didn’t.
“Tell me where the spring is,” I demanded. “I’ll take him there myself.”
“Aw, hell,” growled Dorothy even as she thrust a hand into the puddle, her fingers unexpectedly lacing with mine. “Toto!”
I blinked at finding my hand interlinked with someone else’s—this stranger’s—and I almost missed the sight of the little sooty black dog jumping into Dorothy’s free arm.
But then I started to draw Dorothy toward me as she tipped my way.
Because our worlds were at odd angles to one another, the gravity that, in her world, drew Dorothy down toward me began to tug from below as she merged with this realm, with Oz.
Dorothy tilted Toto toward the floor, and the little dog leapt from her grasp, tiny nails ticking on the stone as he rushed to Nick. Nick hurried to Dorothy, who he gathered away from me and the portal, into his great metal arms even as her arms went to loop his shoulders.
The moment Dorothy fully parted from the mirror, the image in its frame faded, and the glass resettled into solidity. As it did, the gemstones in Glinda’s cuffs washed red again. The magic stopped and left me.
The little dog, Toto, yapping hysterically, jumped at Nick, who only continued to hold Dorothy. She squeezed his metal body in return.
“Nick,” she said, burying her face against his shoulder, murmuring her words into his high collar. “What’s wrong with Oz? There’s something awful. I can feel it.”
“Your intuition does not betray you,” said Nick. “Our friends are in peril. The people are in jeopardy. The peace we brought has been undone.”
“Tell me it’s not too late,” she said.
“You would not be here if it was.”
And just like that, Dorothy Gale had returned to Oz.