Chapter Eleven. Dorothy
ELEVEN
Dorothy
I want to hate the silver slippers.
Mostly because of how badly Lacosta wanted them. I hate coveting what others want. It’s a character flaw. Childhood trauma aside, sometimes I wonder if my resistance to committing to Edward was in part because everyone else wanted Edward.
Handsome, strong, and kind, Edward would make anyone a fine husband. And several of the women in town made it apparent they thought so too.
Rosemary Bishop was one such woman. She competed with me on everything, including Edward.
On more than one occasion, I would show up at the Gilbert farm only to find Rosemary there in her finest dress, hair curled and half tied in a ribbon, her cheeks pink.
She would come bearing gifts—fresh baked pies or sweet tarts.
Edward would always look embarrassed, as if entertaining Rosemary were somehow a betrayal of me.
I knew I should have felt that way.
But I didn’t.
And sometimes that made me feel worse. Sometimes I thought about inviting Rosemary out to coffee so I could take her hand and tell her we didn’t have to be enemies, that it was the world pitting us against each other, making us fight for scraps.
As if marrying a man was our only chance at happiness and a future.
We are so much more than this, Rosemary.
Once it became clear that Edward did not return her favor, she left our hometown and enrolled in the university to study astrophysics.
When I heard the news, the jealousy hit me so hard, I stewed in it for days.
Rosemary had escaped. She’d decided on her future and ran with it.
I sigh and readjust the handle of the picnic basket. I have a lot of ground to cover to make it back home, but I think I have a lot of work to do once I get there too.
As soon as I know Em and Henry are safe, I should walk over to the Gilbert farm and have an honest conversation with Edward about what I want and what I want to do with my life.
Yes, I’ll marry you, Edward. We’ll build a house together, start a family.…
I suddenly feel ill.
That’s not what I want.
But how do I know?
What if it’s just my fear of commitment rearing its ugly head?
Toto barks at me and I come to a stop. “What is it?”
He’s sat back on his hind legs, tail swishing in the grass. I scan my surroundings. I veered off course while lost in thought.
Toto trots to the left.
“This way?”
He yips, confirming.
“Are we headed west then?”
He bounds ahead.
“I’m assuming that’s where the Witch of the West lives, but the Witch of the North pointed this direction for the Yellow Brick Road and the Emerald City. Maybe the city lies between?”
Toto gives two sharp, confident barks.
“Okay. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you knew what you were talking about.”
He barks again.
We continue walking, finding no discernible path in the field. The silver slippers are a dream to walk in, and their comfort helps me avoid the fact that they were just on the feet of a dead woman not that many hours ago. A dead woman I killed.
We cut through a field with large blue flowers and then catch the distinct sound of running water.
Toto and I pause long enough to look at one another and then we’re running.
The river quickly comes into view and we slide down its steep bank, scrambling to the edge. I dip my cupped hand into the current and drink the water down.
“Oh my god,” I say, then drink down another gulp. “This is the freshest, coldest water I’ve ever had. I was so thirsty—”
Toto leaps into the river, then dunks his head beneath the surface.
“Toto! Get back here!”
Cairn terriers are not designed to be great swimmers. I’ve never had to worry about him disappearing into a body of water back in Kansas. It’s just cornfields as far as the eye can see.
“Toto!”
There’s a splash. His head pops up, then dips down again.
When he comes up a second time, he has a fish trapped in his jaws.
He swims over. The fish flaps its tail, slapping him in the face.
He isn’t bothered by it. He climbs out, dragging the fish with him.
He gives his head a quick jerk, disorienting the fish, before tossing it into the air, catching it on the descent, then devouring it in three quick bites, bones and all.
I grimace at the crunching. “Satisfied now?”
His tongue darts out, licking the carnage from his mouth.
“That’s disgusting.”
I swear he’s practically smiling at me.
“You will find something to murder wherever we go, won’t you?”
He sits back on his hind legs, tongue hanging out of his mouth.
Yellow has never been a favorite color, but when it pops up on the landscape, breaking up the never-ending midnight-blue horizon, I want to shout in delight. It feels like we’ve been walking for hours. Maybe we have. I don’t wear a watch to know.
I jog the rest of the way, the picnic basket banging against my thigh.
I come to a stop at the edge of the road and look left, then right.
The road disappears in both directions. It’s not wide enough to accommodate a car or a wagon, barely wide as I am tall. But the bricks are laid evenly in the ground, not a single one out of place.
After spending so many hours surrounded by fields edged in blue, seeing so much yellow almost feels like a hallucination.
I kneel in the grass, set the picnic basket aside, and reach out with tentative fingers.
I don’t know what to expect in this place.
Maybe the road is a mirage and it’ll disappear, shrivel up, just like the body of the Witch of the East.
But when my fingers make contact, nothing happens.
The stone is cool to the touch. It’s yellow, like the witch said it would be, but that’s not quite accurate. The color glitters as if the paint has been mixed with gold.
“Follow the Yellow Brick Road, they said. What could possibly go wrong?”
The blue horizon slowly fades to black and the air grows chillier.
Night must be falling.
How far is this Emerald City?
If I have to spend the night outside in this cold, I might scream. I don’t mind getting dirty on the farm, or doing hours of hard labor, but when it comes to a nighttime routine with a bed and a pillow and a blanket at the very least, I am immutable.
Even when I was young and didn’t entirely understand what I had lost, it was Henry and Em creating a safe place for me to rest my head at night that made me feel … rooted, maybe, or something close to it.
As I got older and started making friends at school, I found I enjoyed their company and liked getting out of the house, but I turned down every invitation to stay the night elsewhere. I couldn’t imagine sleeping anywhere other than my bed.
As Toto and I trudge on, the flower fields turn into cornfields and at least the familiarity of that gives me some semblance of comfort. To drive away the quiet (and hopefully any beasts that might roam in the shadows), I whistle one of Henry’s favorite tunes while we walk.
It’s a sound so ingrained in memory, it’s hard for me not to imagine Henry whistling it from the time of my birth.
Aunt Em said it’s the music Henry was playing the day they met.
It reminds me of the folk music they often feature at the harvest festival at the end of the harvesting season, one of my favorite times of the year.
When I was a girl, I could turn sullen in a flash. If the sun disappeared behind the clouds. If I misplaced my favorite sweater. If I dropped a biscuit in the dirt.
I wasn’t a difficult child, but I was a melancholy one. There was an ever-present feeling of longing that I could never quite quell.
So to cheer me up, Henry would play. He loves the banjo, but he can play just about any string instrument, so some nights it was the guitar, others the ukulele. His singing voice is rich and husky, his music upbeat and joyful.
It makes me immediately miss Henry and Em.
Toto and I keep walking.
The cornfields persist and eventually my mind wanders, lulled into distraction by the unchanging landscape and the repetitive sound of my own tune.
I think of Edward.
I think of being his wife, a mother, a homemaker.
I was planning on telling him yes. Should I say yes?
There is a sinking feeling in my chest.
My stomach hurts so I take a drink of water from the thermos I found in the house.
I keep whistling, trying to turn my mood.
At the horizon, where the dark sky meets the dark line of trees, there is a flash of moonlight until it too is hidden behind the never-ending dark cloud overhead.
I may have to sleep in the cornfields after all.
I’ve just about resigned myself to this idea when I pass a scarecrow staked in a crop row.
Thankfully, the East End is determined to keep the lights on regardless of population. I haven’t spotted a house in hours, but with precise predictability, every twenty feet, a lamppost glows in the dark.
The light casts an eerie glow on the scarecrow, making him look more man than stuffed effigy.
I slow my pace.
The scarecrow’s head is hung forward as if his body isn’t tied tightly enough to the pole.
Henry always tasked me with making scarecrows for the crop field.
He said I was better at it than he was. He would give me several burlap sacks and one of his old flannels.
To keep things interesting, I’d give the scarecrow a different face every year and I’d unveil the design in a sunset ceremony where Henry and Em were the only attendees.
Another pang of sadness hits me and I turn away as stinging wells in my eyes.
I’m going to make it home.
I’m going to find this Wizard and he’ll tell me how to get there—
A groan pulls me to a stop.
I turn back to the scarecrow.
His head lolls and the movement sends a bead of blood spilling from his mouth.
“Oh my god.”
I drop my basket, scramble over the fence, and race through the field, cornstalks whipping at my face. I shove them aside, parting them like a theater curtain.
“Help,” the man whispers, his voice wet and hoarse.
“I’m coming!” I shout.