Page 87 of Out of Oz (The Wicked Years 4)

At the Chancel of the Ladyfish, the dwarf snarled at Liir and the Lion. “I don’t believe in Dorothy. Wasn’t that all a ruse? Some tricky business to divert the crowd while the Wizard was being turfed out of the Palace?”

“She was real enough to me,” said Liir.

“And to me,” said the Lion. “Haven’t I got the emotional scars to prove it?”

“Assuming a Dorothy,” ventured Nor, “I doubt she’s back. Her supposed return sounds like just another variation on the theme of the legendary Ozma. ‘Beautiful heroine disappears, but she’ll return in our darkest hour, amen.’ Hah. That sort of bluff only postpones and displaces our need to reform. Listen: nobody ever comes back to save us. We’re on our own.”

“Dorothy wasn’t as beautiful as all that,” said the Lion, “so I doubt she’d be convincing as everyone’s favorite martyr mounting a comeback tour. I bet it isn’t her. Probably some out-of-work male escort doing a send-up. In our modern times nobody can tell the difference anymore.”

“Let’s assume it is Dorothy,” said Liir. “For the sake of conversation. Once upon a time I almost had a crush on her, after all. How did she get back? What’s she doing here? Where is she?”

“What’s said, sir, is that she arrived about a half a year ago,” said Dosey. “Up in the Glikkus. The Scalps jostled up and down. Tremors were felt all over Oz. Some called it an earthquake, others the Great Heave-Ho. A Glikkun village known as High Mercy were flattened, just about to pebbles, they say. And when they’s cleared away the rubble they finds this female character in a squarish conveyance of some sort. Its dented walls are only open iron curlicues, but the frillwork has kept the creature from being crushed until herself could be dug out.”

Rain looked up. “We had our earthquake too. The Clock did. Remember? All them buildings fallen, after the Clock rolled down the hill into the poppy pasture?”

They had remembered. Mr. Boss was looking uneasy.

“Did our Clock cause Dorothy’s earthquake?” asked Rain.

“Don’t speak about what you don’t know,” snapped Mr. Boss.

“We all did that, we’d be mute forever,” Liir said softly, in her defense, and a silence followed until Candle brokered a return to the subject.

“So what happened?” she asked. “Was anyone else hurt?”

“Almost total good luck for them Glikkuns,” warbled the Wren. “The entire village were out larking in some high meadow. It were a holiday, seems, and nobody bothering in the local emerald mine. Which was great good fortune, don’t you know, as those mines collapsed whole and entire. But a cow tied up to a tree came to a sorry end.”

“So what did they do with this Dorothy?” asked Nor. “Where is she now?”

“Since she came to ’em caged in a sort of cell, all imprisoned already, they blamed her for the wreck of their homes. Then the pox and parcel of ’em up and moved into the village next door, which had seen no damage to speak of. They brought her with them. None could say whether she was concussed or whether she’d arrived two worms short of a breakfast, if you catch my drift.” Dosey looked around brightly for an opinion about Dorothy’s capacities. No one spoke.

“Anyroad,” she continued, “they tended to her for months until she recovered somewhat of her memory. Apparently she’d been hauling about some little dog, but it had gone missing. Either got itself crushed in the rubble or took its chance to make a getaway through the bars while Dorothy was trapped inside. By the time herself was sound enough to remember her name, the snows had come. The pass down into Munchkinland is closed until spring—gotta get through snow season and most of mud season before anyone can go cross-country. But ’em Glikkuns has alerted Colwen Grounds, and they mean to send her down there. For legal processing and what-have-you.”

“So Dorothy is back in Oz.” Liir could hardly believe it.

“Word has it that when she finally realized she was in Oz, she said, ‘I suppose that cow was a sacred cow, beloved of the nation and so on,’ and then wasn’t she all over crying like she cain’t warm to the pleasures of travel.”

“If the Glikkuns had aligned with the Gillikinese instead of Munchkinlanders, she’d be on her way to the Emerald City for a high royal celebration,” said the Lion. “A return to old times! Music, parades, the whole foldiddly fuss.”

“Instead, she’ll be sent from High Mercy to Colwen Grounds for repatriation into Munchkinland, is my guess,” surmised Mr. Boss.

“Begging your pardon, but there en’t much of High Mercy left,” said Dosey. “She’s jailed in the town next door. Little Mercy.”

Little Daffy sniffed. “Who cares about that Dorothy anymore? Nothing more than a bother, always dropping in when she’s not invited.”

“I doesn’t pretend to know how any humans think, nor government officials neither,” replied the Wren. “But I’m told they’re going to hold her accountable this time.”

“For arriving on a landslide and squishing a cow?” Little Daffy laughed.

“Hey, cows have feelings too, I’m told,” interrupted the Lion.

“No, no,” said Dosey. “It weren’t no special cow with virtues or such. That Dorothy is going to stand trial for the death of Nessarose Thropp and her sister, Elphaba. That’s why I come all this way to find you. Liir and Lion especially. General Kynot thought you should know.”

“We live in the hamlet of No Mercy,” snapped the dwarf. “What do we care about what happens to her?”

“I don’t get it,” said Liir. “Didn’t the Munchkinlanders consider Nessarose something of a dictator? Sure, she was the one to call for secession! So she’s the mother of Munchkinland. But then they went sour on her because of her tyrannical piety. They’re the ones who called her the Wicked Witch of the East, after all. Now suddenly they’re missing her enough to bring her unlucky assailant to trial?”

“I en’t prepared to comment on the matter,” said Dosey. “I’m just doing the job given me by the General. You can choose to come and defend this Dorothy or not. There. I’ve delivered my message as was asked of me. I’ll be happy to accept nest for the night, and I’ll be off in the morning.”

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