Chapter Nineteen. Dorothy
NINETEEN
Dorothy
Remy, with their long legs and slight build, moves through the city with ease and urgency. I have to jog to keep up. The Council of the East End follows behind, chattering amongst themselves.
We pass several more shop fronts with glowing windows and intricate displays of handcrafted goods. Colorful signs hang over stoops with names painted on them. WITCH’S TAVERN and THE SHAMBLES and LONELY CAPES.
There is nothing like this in Kansas. This place feels like a storybook.
The road curves to the right like the belly of a snake, and for a brief moment, I lose sight of Remy.
When I come around the bend, the street opens to a pie wedge of a park with a giant bronze statue mounted in the center. It’s taller than the three-story buildings that surround us.
The statue is of a man in a long coat painted a shade of bluish green. The coat is billowing out from his hips as if caught in an eternal breeze. His hair is a little mussed too. His left arm is cocked back and he’s holding a wand not unlike that of the Witch of the East.
Everything about his body language says fight.
The council comes to a stop behind me. Toto squirms in my grip, growling at the statue.
“Who is that?” I ask.
“That is the Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz,” Ana says.
The way she says it, it has the same inflection as myth or god.
I don’t know what a provost is, but I’m guessing the role is important, someone with power.
But Ana acts like the wizard is so far up the hierarchy that she can barely fathom the top.
She cranes her neck and smiles wistfully at the statue. As she does, a cascade of large, thick curls falls from her shoulders to the middle of her back. She closes her eyes and breathes in through her nose.
Unsure of the customs of this land, I close my eyes too and inhale.
There are the scents you’d expect in a city this size: roasting meat, baked goods; but beneath that is something less definable, something sweet and spicy, like cinnamon and cloves and cardamom.
“What is that?” I ask and open my eyes. “That smell?”
I expect Ana to tell me the name of some specialty baked good, but she doesn’t. Instead, she straightens and turns to me. Her honey-brown eyes brighten, reflecting the golden light of the lampposts. “It’s magic.”
This too she says with reverence.
Toto squirms in my arms, but I’m not about to let him go. Not in this bustling city. I scratch him beneath the chin, trying to distract him. “Magic is real here, isn’t it?”
I meant to ask for clarification, just to be extra sure Ana was saying what I thought she was saying, even though she literally said the word magic.
Instead, my words come out a little breathy, trembling with possibility.
“Yes.” She nods, the emerald drop earrings hanging from her ears swinging with the movement.
I shiver and turn back to the wizard’s statue. “I’m supposed to go see him. I’m told he can help me find my way home.”
“Oh? Do you know him?”
“No. Don’t you?”
The rest of the council furtively look at one another.
Ana says, “I don’t know him personally, but I’ve met him. Sort of.”
“What does that mean? You’ve sort of met him?”
Across the park, several people light candles at an altar set up behind the wizard. The flickering flames cast sharp shadows across their faces. Once the flames are lit, they close their eyes, mouths moving in silent prayer.
“Well…” Ana starts. “Every Cardinal Council is granted an audience with the wizard in the Emerald City once a year, on the eve of Remembrance Day, but the wizard is so powerful, it’s impossible to look directly at him.”
“What, really? That’s strange. Isn’t it?”
They all laugh nervously at one another.
“No,” Ana finally says, sober now. “If you look directly at him, your head will ring.”
The council, all seven of them, nod vigorously.
“Or your eyes will burn,” a woman adds.
“I got dizzy,” another says. “Nearly passed out.”
I glance up at the statue again. The wizard’s silhouette stands out against the darkened sky. And even though he’s rendered in bronze at nearly forty feet tall, the features of his face are soft, almost blurred, as if whoever cast the statue also had no idea what the wizard actually looked like.
“How old is he?”
Ana takes a step forward so we are nearly shoulder to shoulder. “It’s hard to say. Like the Cardinal Witches, he is ageless.”
That explains why Lacosta looked barely a day over twenty.
Other than his facial features, the wizard’s statue shows a great amount of detail. Tendons stand out on his hand, giving the indication of tension and movement. Fine lines run over his bent knuckles and his fingernails are expertly carved, like they’ve been manicured and trimmed neatly.
Gazing up at him, this all-powerful man, a swell of excitement rises in my chest.
I know I have one goal: meet the wizard and appeal to him to help me find my way home. But there is no denying the thrill making its way up my spine at the thought of being in the same room as someone with this much authority, this much presence.
I’ve never met a man like him.
Remy clears their throat.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to keep you waiting,” I tell them, leaving the statue behind.
“It’s an impressive effigy,” Remy says. “I don’t fault you for pausing to admire it.”
“Have you ever met the wizard?”
We turn left at the next intersection where several kids chase after a ball that appears to be rolling uphill all by itself.
“No,” Remy tells me. “Everything I’ve heard about him, I’m not sure I’d like to.”
“What do you mean? Is he cruel like the Witch of the East?”
We follow the road as it slopes downward toward another intersection.
“Nothing like that. Nothing so blatant. I think he just … sucks up a lot of air in the room. If that makes sense. He’s supposed to be a man of the people, and yet he doesn’t permit anyone to look at him.”
“Oh. Well, that makes sense, I guess. But not everyone loves attention. Some people are destined for it, despite not wanting it.”
Remy comes to a stop at an alcove where a double-arched doorway is painted gold. “True. But the wizard is not that.”
“How do you know?”
They reach out for the gold door handle. “Just a feeling.”
“That’s fair.”
Remy pulls the door outward, and the distinct chatter of a tavern filters out into the night.
“Oh, is this your inn?”
“It is. Welcome to the Red Wander.”
I step away from the alcove and back into the busy street to get a better look at it.
The inn wraps around the street corner, with the entrance itself on the corner, welcoming people in from the intersection it sits on.
The double front doors are hemmed in by two large windows, where light and shadows play inside. All the trim that surrounds the windows here and on the second and third floors is painted the same gold as the doors.
The rest of the building, constructed of brick, is painted red.
Glimming Hollow seems to love its color, but none of the other owners have committed to something as bold as bright red and gold.
It makes me appreciate Remy even more, even though we’ve just met.
“My aunt is an artist,” I say to Remy. “She’d love your inn.”
“Thank you. I had to fight the council to get approval for the color.”
The council in question, with Ana at the front, has gathered behind us.
“I appreciate color just as much as anyone,” Ana says, “but there are rules. Beyond natural stone and wood, building codes in the Hollow have approved emerald green and aubergine. Not poppy red.”
It’s a little refreshing that even here in this strange land, people are still fighting building codes. Henry wanted to add a second barn at one point in an effort to expand his capacity to process crop, but he was turned down by the county because there was a limit on accessory buildings.
It’s mundane tasks like that that have me doubting a life of domesticity.
I would never have the energy, nor the desire, to fight a council or county commission on exterior paint colors or the number of accessory buildings I’m allowed.
I want to do … more.
Not that I fault Remy or Henry for fighting for what they want, regardless of how big or small the goal.
“Well, it looks beautiful,” I tell Remy and Ana. “I’m glad it was approved.”
“See?” Remy tells Ana. “We should open up the entire rainbow. Emerald green is his color. Not ours.”
“Whose?” I ask.
“The wizard,” Ana answers and steps past me for the inn. “I happen to like emerald green.”
“Do you?” Remy challenges.
“Yes. I do!”
“I didn’t mean to open a can of worms,” I say.
“Emerald green is a good color,” Ana tells me over her shoulder. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
I glance down the street, back toward the wizard’s statue, as the rest of the council makes their way into the inn.
Em once told me green was the color of harmony and luck.
And every spring, I wait for the first bloom of green to tell me warmer months are on their way.
Surely green must portend good things about the wizard?
“I do love green,” I finally say, which causes Ana to clap and Remy to frown.
“Of course you do!” Ana says and then makes her way inside.
The exterior color scheme is carried over to the inside of Remy’s place. The interior walls are painted the same shade of red, while it’s the hardwood floor that’s painted gold, almost giving it the same feel as the Yellow Brick Road.
Art and photographs in gilded frames are hung all around the room, claiming every spare inch of wall. There are portraits of people harvesting corn, and shots of people dancing in the streets of the Hollow, and pictures of people in an antique kitchen kneading dough.
I pause at the latter, feeling a pang of longing and a sharp reminder of home.