Chapter Forty. Tinman
FORTY
Tinman
“You did well,” the witch says.
I almost don’t hear her, not over the girl’s shouting. She’s annoyingly loud. If I could have lopped off her head, I would have.
I turn back to the witch. “I don’t need your praise. I need you to keep your promises. You have the girl. And now I want my brother.”
“Where’s the body?”
“What?”
“The man she was with.”
In order of priority, I would have thought this was extremely low.
“He killed several of Faos’s soldiers. Only Faos and Tark remained. You’ll have to send someone back to retrieve him.”
“Tell me about him.”
“I barely paid attention to him.”
“You’ll come to regret that.”
This she says low and beneath her breath, and it raises the hair on my arms.
She goes to a nearby cabinet and pours herself a shot of ozrum and drinks it down.
In all my dealings with the West, I’ve never seen her quite like this. There is a burning energy of dismay hanging in the air. Like whatever plan she had is slipping through her fingers.
“Get me the slippers,” she finally says, her back still to me.
“The … what?”
“The slippers. On the girl. Get me the silver slippers and you’ll have your brother.”
“Must I do all your dirty work?”
She cuts me with a look.
I don’t need the flickering candlelight to understand the threat. I do like to breathe, after all.
“Fine,” I grumble.
The witch said I just had to get the girl here alive. She didn’t say anything about letting the girl keep her feet.
I’ll chop her legs off if I have to.
I know my way to the dungeon. I’ve descended this curving stairwell a dozen times.
I find one of the monkeys—Balor, third roost, always assigned to the dungeon but wants to be in first roost so he can fight—standing at the bottom of the stairwell.
Some of the rigidity in his shoulders lessens when I come into the light of the sconces. “Oh,” he says, “it’s just you.”
“Just me. The witch wants me to retrieve something from the girl. Can you unlock her cell?”
Balor nods and escorts me down the tunnel. Lucky for me, the girl has been assigned to the cell directly across from Gabriel.
“Gabriel,” I start, but he cuts me off with a look.
“Something is wrong with her,” he mouths to me.
I turn to her cell and take a step, but a splash of water pulls my attention away.
I glance down.
A tiny pool of water has gathered in a depression in the stone floor.
I realize in this moment that never, in all the times I’ve visited the castle, have I ever seen water.
No water to drink, no water to bathe. Gabriel complains about it incessantly.
He hates being dirty. Before being a prisoner, he didn’t last a week in the mountains.
Unlike me. I could live in the woods for months, with not a soul in sight.
Balor unlocks the girl’s cell door and returns to his position at the bottom of the stairs, far out of sight.
I slip inside. The girl is huddled in the corner, her arms wrapped around her drawn-up knees. She’s sobbing and choking on air.
“Hey,” I say.
She’s trembling, barely coherent. If something happens to her, the witch might go back on our deal. I need the girl alive and well.
“Dorothy.”
She sucks in a breath. I place my hand on her arm, skin on skin. There’s a jolt of warmth, an unfamiliar feeling in my gut. I rarely have a reason to touch people unless it’s to provoke violence.
“Dorothy,” I try again.
Her breathing slows, shoulders trembling.
“Keep breathing,” I tell her and she straightens, eyes still closed as she sucks in a breath. Exhales. Inhales another. “Good.”
Her eyes pop open, red and watery.
“Are you okay?” I ask her, even though I’m not sure why I care.
“He’s been here three years.” She nods past me to Gabriel.
“I know.”
“You do?”
I give her a nod. “He’s my little brother.”
Her mouth drops open. I can feel her reading me and it makes my skin crawl.
“That’s why you dragged me here.” She swipes at her face, drying the tears. Her breathing has settled but she’s still trembling despite the heat of the dungeon. “You’re trying to get him out.”
“Damn,” Gabriel mutters. “She’s good.”
“Shut up,” I tell him.
“Maybe you’re not so heartless after all,” she says.
I turn back to her. “This isn’t about me.”
“Isn’t it?”
I stand up and put some distance between us. I don’t want to be near her. I can’t be near her.
“I need those slippers.”
Using the wall for support, the girl slowly stands and crosses her arms. I can hear the rustle of soft fabric, the huff of her breath. “You and everyone else.”
Who else? I almost ask, and then decide I don’t fucking care.
“The witch wants your slippers. If you give her your slippers, maybe we can all go home.”
At the mention of home, she sniffs, licks her lips. She takes a step forward. “Do you think so?”
Is that it then? That’s what she wants? To go home?
I haven’t had a home in a decade. Not since Gabriel and I left. Home no longer felt like a place where we belonged. It was shortly after that our brother cursed us both. And without a heart, the concept of home no longer meant anything at all.
“Yes,” I tell her and when the word makes it past my teeth, I almost believe it.
“All right.” She bends down and removes the left slipper, then the right. “Here.”
She stretches out her arm, the slippers dangling from her fingers.
I hesitate.
Nothing is ever easy.
This shouldn’t be easy either.
I reach out, wrap my hand around them, and—
They disappear.
“What the fuck?” I say.
The firelight catches the shine of the slippers back on her feet.
“What is this?”
“I don’t know.” She lets out a breath. “They do this.”
“What do you mean they do this? They’re fucking slippers.”
“I know what they are!”
“Stop playing games then.”
“I’m not!” She bends down, pulls a slipper off, and throws it at me.
It bounces off my shoulder, hits the stone floor, and literally evaporates.
A second later, it’s back on her foot.
“Do you want us all to be dead?” I whisper. “She’ll kill us!”
“Then why did you bring us here?”
“I had no choice!”
“We always have a choice and—”
“Hey, asshole.”
We both turn. Gabriel is back at the iron bars. “Maybe they have to be given, not taken. Just like your axe.”
“What about your axe?” The girl comes back into the light. “You said something earlier … you asked how I took it.”
I don’t have time for this.
“Tell me,” she demands as if I answer to her.
But Gabriel speaks over me. “The axe is made by magic. It belongs to him. No one can take it without his permission.”
“I did.” She levels her shoulders, voice full of pride.
Gabriel’s eyes dart to me. “Really?”
“Yes,” I grumble.
“That’s … interesting.”
“No, it’s not.” Yes, it is. “Forget about the axe. The slippers, she handed them to me.”
“Yes, but you took them from her,” he says.
“He’s right,” the girl echoes.
“This is the dumbest game I’ve ever played.”
“Why don’t you try asking nicely,” Gabe suggests.
“Fine. Dorothy, will you give them to me, pretty please?”
“No.”
“No. No? I’m going to murder you.” I lunge at her.
“Silas!”
Gabriel never calls me by my birth name. In all the years since we left home, I’ve nearly forgotten it.
Silas is dead.
It’s the Tinman who lives.
I come to a stop.
“I don’t think she’s an ordinary girl.”
I look at Gabriel. “What?”
“If the slippers weren’t already an obvious clue … the water … she made it.”
I glance back at the stone hallway and find that the one pool of water has grown into a river.