Disclaimer: Though there are things I call my own, Tin Man, the stories of L. Frank Baum, and The Wizard of Oz are not among them.

Across the Desert

"So my mother was feisty when she was young?" DG asked Tutor during their latest magic lesson. Today was mind shielding day, and the past three hours of practice had built a headache strong enough to distort her vision. Opening her eyes after her latest attempt, DG faced a portrait of a beautiful redheaded ancestor who now looked like a wind-swept Chow Chow. Hmm. She felt a distraction was in order, and the focus of today's lesson left open a perfect window to innocently inquire about her still essentially blank past.

"She was a bit high spirited," her annoyed tutor answered dismissively. "Now concentrate DG. For a mind shield to be effective, it must be complete. One crack and an enemy can pry their way in. Try again."

She closed her eyes, concentrated, and managed a chicken-wire net. That might momentarily deter an infant viewer. Opening her eyes, she faced the red tide that was her ancestor, blinked, and saw a half-groomed Pomeranian instead. Distraction, she needed a distraction.

"Aham . . uh . . Dad said she almost blew your arm off once."

A half-grunt, half-growl came from Tutor's general direction. She thought he might be scowling, but it was hard to be certain without facial features to go by. "This is not story time DG; this is your lesson."

"Please Toto." He sighed in defeat. She really did want to know; it wasn't just to preserve what was left of her mind and vision.

Since the events of the eclipse seven months ago, she, her family, and her friends had devoted themselves to healing the O.Z. The queen was sequestered at Finaqua trying to rebuild the government. Az was, well, Az was dealing. She did wonderfully . . . as long as she didn't see or talk to anyone. Somehow the lack of contact with anyone she could possibly apologize to held back the guilt and nightmares, so she stored up strength and showed herself only occasionally to small groups of people and tried to convince them that they weren't looking at the sorceress. She'd only broken down in tears twice last month.

Glitch had gotten his brain back almost immediately, but the long separation, the sudden reconnection, or perhaps the time spent as Glitch had preserved her friend's personality though the glitching now occurred less frequently. She was glad. She liked Glitch and didn't really want to get reacquainted with Ambrose. As it was, she saw her friend very little these days. He was always in his lab in Central City deconstructing the sorceress' machines or inventing some of his own. He'd even let her help build a few. Raw had found them one day covered in grease utterly absorbed in the motor of Glitch's latest EGD, energy generation device, and had teased DG about glitching herself.

That had been the day he left with Kalm on a healing tour of the towns surrounding Central City. Though she knew he'd be coming back, his absence hurt. She had asked him why he needed to go when he'd already almost single-handedly healed the resistance fighters who had been injured in the fight with the witch. "Must go," he had replied, "people must know that healers choose to heal, want to heal, have power to heal. People must know viewers not tools of witch to cause pain. Kalm must know too." He was right of course, but she had still selfishly wished he would stay.

And Cain was being the most heroic of all, damn him. Jeb, thanks to his part in the fight and his popularity with the resistance fighters, had been made commander of the new royal guard. She knew the queen had considered the tin man for the job, but eight years, ugh annuals, in a metal suit had made him a stranger to the resistance. He wasn't unknown to the O.Z. though. Thanks to the wanted posters Zero and his troops had plastered across the country, she and her friends were undisputed heroes to all enemies of the witch. With Az needing solitude and the queen's busy schedule, that left her to tour the O.Z., cast lots of helpful spells, and cement in everyone's mind how great the Gale family was. She did this by hopping from town to town with Ahamo in his balloon (but only in towns where Cain and his group of soldiers had already removed the Longcoat threat). He'd taken charge of the task of re-educating, capturing, or if need be killing the remaining supporters of the witch, and the tin man refused to let her travel anywhere he hadn't already secured.

Continued close contact with her father was awkward. Occasionally Cain and his men would still be in the town DG and Ahamo arrived in, and she tried desperately not to seem clingy during those times. Like Glitch, their meetings occurred rarely, and Cain was one of the few people she felt completely comfortable around, sometimes a little too comfortable. He was her dearest friend and often a refuge from Ahamo.

Ahamo wasn't mean or accusing. However, he was touchy, kind, and loving, and that made it worse. Her mother had left her only the memories essential to finding the emerald, and none of them included her father. Consequently, while she could reconcile Lavender Eyes as her mother without wincing too much at the endearments "my angel" and "my darling", seeing Ahamo as her father was almost impossible, and there was nothing quite so ruinous to their bonding episodes as him reminiscing about a childhood memory she couldn't remember.

At the first town they visited, she and Ahamo had been guests at the mayor's house. They were eating dinner, and he was entertaining his host with one of his daughter's childhood adventures. "I told DG about a game Otherside boys liked to play. Tomboy that she was, she adapted it and decided to try it out. Called it Tin Men and Headcases. She was the tin man and had decided a poor, unsuspecting traveling Eastern Guildsman should be her prey. She chased that poor man all through the gardens, and when she caught him," he stopped here and began to laugh uncontrollably. Everyone else was laughing too. "Oh DG," he managed to say between laughs as he slung an arm around her shoulders, "you better finish. I don't think I can." And then they'd all turned to her. She didn't remember the ending; she didn't even remember the beginning!

Panicking, she had looked up at him, and his smile had dropped a fraction as his laughter died. He'd finished the story, finished it so expertly no one noticed that she hadn't, but her mind was roaring so loudly by that time that she'd missed hearing the ending herself.

Ahamo had continued to be companionable and affectionate since then, but he hadn't asked her to finish another story. He was almost a good enough actor to convince her that he didn't notice when she started calling him by his name before correcting herself. She hurt him. She hurt with every involuntary jerk she couldn't suppress when he hugged her and every blank stare she gave him at the mention of her childhood antics, and she felt miserable about it.

The day after the fiasco at the mayor's house, they'd moved to a new town where Cain and his men were still taking care of a few longcoats. She'd nearly run to the tin man, and she hoped no one noticed how desperate the greeting hug she gave him was. That night she'd told him what had happened. "That's ridiculous DG," he'd said, "you'd have been an awful tin man. Instead of arresting criminals, you'd hug them into reformation." God, she missed Cain. Dealing with Ahamo was easier, almost fun, with her tin man around, but he was so rarely was around.

Therefore, she had resolved to ask Tutor about her past whenever they checked in at Finaqua. He knew her mind well; in fact, he loved to comment on the blankness of it. So while Tutor sucked at anecdotes, he was able to relay them without the accompanying awkwardness, and she'd nudge Ahamo playfully the next day and say, "Remember that time when you tried to teach Az and I to shoot, and Az almost made you the hunting trophy." Tutor's atrocious storytelling was worth it then because Ahamo would smile, and she could almost see him for an instant as her father.

She turned to Tutor; he seemed to be sitting or at least his form was lower to the ground. "So, my mother?"

"She was very adventurous in her youth."

"And this stopped when? After my father came?"

"No."

"And?" she prompted.

"It got worse."

Interesting. "Worse, how?"

Her tutor's form moved slightly closer to the ground as though he was shrugging. "The queen's consort met her immediately upon his arrival, and though he was already quite smitten with her, he decided to go exploring. She . . . decided to become his 'tour guide'."

"Wait," DG interrupted in shock. "My mother, the queen, went traipsing recklessly around the O.Z. with a carnie from the Otherside? Did she even have a protection detail?" Protection detail? Had she really just said that? Obviously she was spending too much time in Cain's company. Well, had been. Damn man and his devotion to restoring the O.Z. It was just so . . . decent and right, and that made feeling angry about his current absence absolutely shameful.

She steered her thoughts back to Toto's response. "No. She was rather confident in her magical abilities, and he was extremely confident about his ability to protect her. After they first disappeared, her personal guard nearly collapsed from worry."

She stared at him open-mouthed. She could believe Ahamo capable of something like that. The man had pretended to be a bounty-hunter in the Realm of the Unwanted and had even kidnapped his own daughter, but not her mother who never set one graceful foot out of place. It was inconceivable. After a moment, she amassed enough coherent thought to ask, "When did she change then?"

Silence.

"Please tell me Tutor."

He waited another moment and sighed. "The queen was pregnant with Azkadellia. Your father was off on a meeting with the guilds, and she snuck away to meet him. Most queens are confined for the majority of their pregnancy, and Queen Lavender Eyes' parents died when she was still young. They'd never been able to tell her the confinement was for her protection. Pregnancy disturbs the magic of Gale women; it weakens or blocks their power periodically. I believe the irregularity is caused by the reproduction and distribution of the power as the baby is growing in the womb." Toto paused a moment, "The queen was caught by a group of the Unwanted and was unable to defend herself. She was captured. Fortunately, Ahamo had befriended some men in that realm, and they told him about what had happened. He snuck into their camp, and he and the queen escaped. After their escape, they had their one and only fight. All of Finaqua heard it. He demanded she stop endangering herself and their child, but his outburst was unnecessary. The queen was already heartsick that she had placed her daughter in harm's way, and she stopped her adventures entirely."

DG ducked her head down. Her mother had already made one sacrifice to protect her daughters, and DG's recklessness had forced her to make another. It seemed foolhardy mistakes ran in the family. Suddenly she wanted desperately to be near her friends. Glitch was in Central City. He was out. Raw was . . . somewhere. Also out. She probably wouldn't see Cain for another month. Life sucked.

She mumbled a quick goodbye to Toto and walked to the door intending to stalk to her room and give her loneliness some alone time; it seemed to work well for Az. If she couldn't relieve her guilt with her friends then she could wallow in it by herself. However, as she entered the hallway she walked straight into Cain.

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