Page 4 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

A staid woman at a counter nodded at them. Her unmoving features looked carved in beef aspic. When she slipped off her stool to show Henry to a table, Dorothy saw that she was tiny. Tiny and stout and wrapped round with shiny red silk. She only came up to Dorothy’s lowest rib. To prevent her from saying A Munchkin! Uncle Henry said to Dorothy, with his eyes, No.

They ate a spicy, peculiar meal, very wet, full of moist grit. They wouldn’t know how to describe any of it to Aunt Em when they went back, and they were glad she wasn’t there. She would have swooned with the mystery of it. They liked it, though Uncle Henry chewed with the front of his lips clenched and the sides puckered open for air in case he changed his mind midbite.

“Where are these people from? Why are they here?” asked Dorothy in a whisper, pushing a chopstick into her basket so Toto could have something to gnaw.

“They’re furriners from China, which is across the world,” said Uncle Henry. “They came to build the railroad that we traveled on, and they stayed to open laundries and restaurants.”

“Why didn’t they ever come to Kansas?”

“They must be too smart.”

They both laughed at this, turning red. Dorothy could see that Uncle Henry loved her. It wasn’t his fault she seemed out of her mind.

“Uncle Henry,” said Dorothy before they had finished the grassy tea, “I know you’ve nearly poorhoused yourself to bring me here. I know why you and Aunt Em have done it. You want to show me the world and distract me with reality. It’s a good strategy and a mighty sound ambition. I shall try to repay you for your kindness to me by keeping my mouth shut about Oz.”

“Your sainted Aunt Em chooses to keep mum about it, Dorothy, but she knows you’ve had an experience few can match. However you managed to survive from the time the twister snatched our house away until the time you returned from the wilderness—whatever you scrabbled to find and eat that might have caused this weakness in your head—you nonetheless did manage. No one back home expected we’d ever find your corpse, let alone meet up again with your cheery optimistic self. You’re some pioneer, Dorothy. Every minute of your life is its own real miracle. Don’t deny it by fastening upon the temptation of some tomfoolery.”

She chose her words carefully. “It’s just that it’s all so clear in my mind.”

“A mind is something a young lady from Kansas learns to keep private.”

As they began to pile up their plates, the Munchkin Chinee—that is, the little bowing woman in her silks and satins—scurried to interrupt them, and she brought them each a pastry like a crumpled seedpod. When Uncle Henry and Dorothy looked dubious, she showed them how to crack one open. The fragments tasted like Aunt Em’s biscuits, dry and without savor. Inside, how droll: a scrap of paper in each one.

Marks in a funny squarish language on one side, letters in English on the other.

By the red light of the Chinese lantern leering over their table, Uncle Henry worked to decipher his secret message. His book learning had been scant. “Mid pleasure and palaces though we may roam, Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home,” he read. “John Howard Payne.”

“Pain is right,” said Dorothy. “Meaning no disrespect, Uncle Henry.”

“He has a point, though, Dorothy. Be it ever so humble, and we have the humble part covered good enough, there’s no place like home. Now you read yours.”

“My mind to me a kingdom is, Such present joys therein I find, That it excels all other bliss That Earth affords or grows by kind. Sir Edward Dyer.”

“Dire is right,” said Uncle Henry.

The hobbled, squinch-eyed woman in red saw them through the beaded curtains toward the street, but at the lacquered door she grabbed Dorothy’s sleeve. “For you,” she said and handed Dorothy a tiny bamboo cage. Inside was a cricket. “For ruck. Cricket for ruck.”

Why do I need luck? Dorothy thought she’d spoken to herself but the woman answered as if she’d spoken aloud. (Maybe she had. Maybe she was dotty, a dodo, like the children had called her. Dotty Dorothy. Dorothy Dodo.)

“You on journey going,” said the old woman, though whether this was an observation, a prophecy, or a swift good-bye, Dorothy couldn’t tell.

Distastefully Dorothy fingered the little cage. The locusts of Kansas had made her dubious about crickets. Still, the little twiglet was alive, for it bounced against its straw-colored bars. It didn’t sing. “I don’t believe animals should be in cages,” she said to Uncle Henry.

“People neither,” he answered, almost by rote. His one-note message. “Don’t cage yourself in your fantasticals, girl. Before it’s too late, get your mind out of Oz, or you’ll be sorry.”

“I take your point, Uncle Henry. I’ve taken it for some time now.”

“You’re welcome.” He put his hand on his rib and breathed through the pain for a moment.

They walked down the street in silence, under a magnificently carved and painted gateway that spanned the street. Electrification had come to San Francisco and the gra

nite of the buildings glittered as if crystals of snow were salted into the stone. It seemed a nonsense-day and a half-night at the same time.

Maybe Uncle Henry was right. Maybe there was enough in this world to make her forget Oz. But was that the right motivation for marrying a Kansas farmer, assuming she could land one?

Only, she supposed, if he was the right farmer.

At the hotel she begged Uncle Henry that they ride the lift up to their floor. “Your Auntie Em wouldn’t approve, fretting for our safety,” he replied. “Whether she’s around to notice or not, I never behave as she’d disagree with, in honor of her.”

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