Page 62 of There's No Place Like Oz

Talos rolled his eyes. He still wore the mask, and I was a bit sad the Wizard couldn’t save him yet.

“With all your experience, the next witch will be a breeze. She’s theniceone after all.” Crowe added with a mocking cock of his head. “Ready to finish the job, my Devil Princess?”

I flushed at my new nickname that by no means should have struck me as cute or endearing. Yet, from Crowe, I knew it was only a compliment.

The grin that took my face was completely involuntary as I looked at the four men in my room, all here because they were worried about me.

“I’m ready.” I said with confidence.

Unearned ego. It would surely be put to the test as we entered the realm of the fourth and final witch: Eloise, the Witch of the North.

Tobias’ witch.

I could only hope she was less vile than the last.

Chapter 47

My witch. Eloise of the North was supposedly the one who banished me to earth and stole my memory and ability to shift, and I had mixed feelings on the whole thing.

Seeing my punishment through everyone else’s lenses of trauma, it was easy to only see the bad in what the witch had done. I’d lost who I was and a fundamental part of my being, technically. Yet, for me, I just kept thinking if I hadn’t ended up in the human world, trapped in the form of a dog, I might have never met Dorothy at all. I might be alone or running with some pack of Oz’s beast men. I may have never met Leon and experienced the thrill of the hunt, and I wouldn’t have the heart and warmth that calmed her soul.

I might never know what it’s like to love a girl like Dorothy.

So I was grateful for what Eloise had done. If she’d tortured me or abused me, I didn’t remember and didn’t want to. There was no value in recalling those memories now that I was happy and content. All that could come of it was pain and regret.

But… for the sake of breaking everyone else’s curses, I forged on with the team with the intent of putting an end to the last witch, even if I didn’t know if I wanted my own curse reversed. I could only hope that was a choice I would get to make.

The brick road leading north was colored in a purple so dark, it swallowed any light that touched it. The landscape itself wasn’t far off of what I recalled of Kansas. Open plains, big fields, and the occasional rift or rolling hill to break up the monotony of it all. I didn’t mind it, to be honest. Maybe some part of my soul sensed it was familiar.

I walked quietly behind my companions, unable to offer any insights into what to expect. I felt useless. All of the others had known their witch’s intimately, while I couldn’t even remember what my witch looked like. I was a foreign mind in a foreign body in a foreign place here to challenge a foreign enemy. None of them knew any more than I did, beyond having been told the Northern witch was one of the so called “good” witches. Considering Sasha was a “good” witch, and she ate people, I couldn’t understand where the claim had come from, unless the witches had run some sort of PR campaign. That was the kind of strangeness I’d only expect in a place like Oz.

Dorothy fell back to match my step. She looked at me with concern. “Is any of this jogging your memory, Tobias?”

“Not remotely.” I frowned. “If Leon wasn’t convinced I’ve been cursed by a witch, I still don’t know that I would believe it.”

“Well, whatever happens, you’ve got me now. As long as you don’t forget that, I think we’ll be just fine.” A melancholy smile graced her lips, while she interlaced our fingers and swung our hands with her step. I wondered if Dorothy had some of the same worries I did. I was content with my life now, regardless of my past, and I wasn’t interested in how green the grass could have been on the other side.

We were only doing this to get the last magical object and for nothing more. I didn’t want to put any doubts in her head, though. I’d talk to Dorothy about it further once we returned victorious.

Chapter 48

Tobias looked so conflicted. He was the type of person who had his heart so unabashedly displayed on his sleeve, that I would have to be blind or a total narcissist to not notice his discomfort. I understood where it came from after all, since I had a feeling I was thinking something very similar.

If Tobias really was a shifter who had his memory erased, would he be the same person when he got it back? Or would he want to go back to whatever life was stolen from him?

Selfishly, I didn’t want to risk losing him, but as his friend, I would be there for him every step of the way, even if it meant handing him off to another woman, to children—whatever that life entailed. The thought made me sad, and I was trying not to think on it for the greater good.

We shuffled along a nice enough road of the deepest violet, and I distracted myself with the view of the beautiful spring flowers scattered about the fields. It brought me back to when I was a child and used to get so excited about spring. I would wake up every morning with the sun just to see how many new wild flowers had bloomed, and I would spend hours picking the perfect bouquet or tying together the stems to make myself a flower crown. Then, when the late summer months started to turn the grasses brown again, I would sob and sob as the last petals disappeared, and the beauty went into hibernation for the year.

In some ways, I could relate to those flowers. When life was good and full of sunshine, I was vibrant and excited and full of life. I laughed freely and felt the whole world could be mine. But when the winter settled, and the light and warmth was blocked by the darkest clouds, there was often nothing I could do to force a smile. Part of what had enticed me to move to sunny Los Angeles was to escape those sad, sad winters, but little did I know that eternal sunshine casted its own shadows, and some were far darker than any rain cloud or snow storm.

I was doing better now, right? My new heels clacked on the brick, and I stared at the cloudless sky. A breeze swept across the road, catching my hair and my skirt in its gentle flow. Oz was changing who I was, to some extent, but in others, I was simply fitting in. I’d found my place among the dysfunctional and abused, but none of us were truly coming out better at the end of this journey. We were just feeling more heard and less like outcasts.

Maybe thatwasa form of healing. Or maybe it was just a rebrand of our trauma.

I’d come here a sad and broken girl, and I was going to leave a murderer after all. A lonely murderer, considering I couldn’t imagine someone like Crowe or Talos would be coming with me back to Kansas. What value would they find in my old, normal, ordinary, boring life?

Hell, I didn’t even know if I found value in it anymore.

---