Tin Man stared up at the balloon that towered above him. It swayed and tugged against the basket, which was firmly moored to the earth. The fire in its belly roared and flared against the darkness. If only Scarecrow could see his brainchild. He sighed, his heart aching, and looked around one last time.
A sorry last sight of Oz. The old witch's castle, crumbling after two centuries of disuse. All that lived here now were wild things: bats and owls and dark creatures. But it was the only safe place in all of Oz for him and his friends. What a bitter irony.
"Tin Man, you ready?" Lida called from the basket where she was doing a last second check of their stores. He glanced up, but she was hidden by the side of the basket; she could barely see over it on her tip-toes. She was a young munchkin, still in her garden years. And among the last of her kind.
"Coming Lida. Where's Sing?"
The answering screech told him the winged monkey was waiting for them up among the remains of the rafters, which had been cleared for their ascent. But suddenly the cry grew terrified, desperate.
"Tin Man!" Lida's scream came as he turned, as he saw the witchmonger darting through the ruins. There, another one, higher. Terror for Lida and Sing pulsed through Tin Man's heart.
"Lida, go! Take off!" He started running, but he was too slow, too old. Years of rust and polish eventually left permanent damage. His joints were decaying; some spots of the softer metal were becoming thin and brittle.
"No!" Her cry wavered, muffled by the basket. An arrow struck and bounced off him and he lurched forward from its weight. The witchmonger was on him, its wet hands groping. Suddenly it let out a nasty scream and leapt away and Sing was lifting him up as he made the last lunge for the basket. He tumbled in, his weight shuddering through the structure. They were up, they were out of reach, they were away. A last few arrows pecked into the basket's impenetrable side. But they were free.
Sing collapsed into the bottom of the basket, his wings trembling. Lida leaned against Tin Man's side, as though needing the feel of him to assure her that he was really there.
Finally she caught her voice. "Are you all right?"
"Sure, a little arrow won't hurt me. I'm made of steel, dear."
She let herself laugh a little at his lightheartedness. "Sing?" He looked up from where he lay, and gave a monkey grin of assent.
Then they were relieved. They had made it! Years of secret work, of hard living, of constant vigilance had come to fruition. They could rest, they could rejoice. But only for a moment. The drakks would be out for them as soon as the witchmongers returned empty-handed. And of course there was the matter of steering.
Lida rose to her feet and pulled the map out from its capsule. She lay it out on the table, each of them taking a corner to hold it down. It was a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy Scarecrow had found of the Wizard's map, so many years ago. A map to Kansas.
November 1968
The TV blared from the living room. Ray was half-way listening to the news, and half-way working on his watch. He'd broken it yesterday, at work. She glanced at the screen from where she stood in the kitchen making their Saturday afternoon sandwiches.
She glanced out the window. It was drizzling lightly. Soon it would turn to sleet, and then snow, if the temperature fell a few more degrees. Typical weather for late November.
Her mind drifted with her gaze. She remembered it snowing once a long time ago, barely a memory now. Snowing in a poppy field. Her brain worked its way slowly back to the dream. A childhood dream. The only dream she could remember from being a kid. It still struck her sometimes that it had only been a dream.
She started humming half-consciously. The song was real at least. She remembered her mother singing it to her. That was a very long time ago. It would be nice to have a magic rainbow these days.
"I got it!" Ray shouted abruptly, jumping up from his stool at the table. He tripped and stumbled back, catching the edge of the table and grinning ridiculously.
She laughed. "Don't fall and break it again."
"Oh I won't, I won't!" he assured her. He shuffled to the counter next to her and held out the watch for her to see. It was an attractive piece of jewelry, the insides visible behind the glass front. The once dead hands now turned slowly about its face. 11:11
Someone tapped on the door. "I'll get it!" He pranced away and tripped on the throw rug in the parlor. She stifled a chuckle at his enthusiastic curse, and the perfectly cheerful greeting that followed a moment later. Then she froze at the voice that answered.
It must have been a coincidence, her mind tricking her. Déjà vu. She let out her breath and continued dicing the onion she'd been working on. Ray was talking again, his voice startled. Oddly startled. Like he was trying to hide how shocked he was, but failing because he never had attained a poker face.
"Yeah, she's – come on in – she's in the kitchen. Dor!" he called. She could hear them coming in. "Some visitors for you – "
She had turned around. She had seen him. Her heart found its way into the bottom of her throat. Her legs felt like slush. There was no way –
"Dorothy?"
It was him. She was going mad. She had lost her mind.
"Ray," her voice barely came out. Then she went even more crazy. Because coming into the room behind him were a munchkin and a winged monkey. She felt the counter jab into her back as she fell. Her arms flailed out, barely catching her.
"Dorothy!" Ray was at her side, lifting her up, his voice panicked.
"I'm fine! I'm fine!" She forced herself to steady, to focus. "Tin – Tin Man?"
His face was frozen in a look of shock, worry. "Dorothy, is it really you?"
She nodded. "Is it really you?"
"Yes, I – I – this is Lida, and Sing. We need you. Oz needs you."
"Oz?" Ray's words echoed her thoughts. "What – what is this?"
"Ray, I need you to – um – Can I speak to our guests alone?"
He looked at her, his mouth open, shocked. "What? No! I'm not leaving you like this. With – with – " He trailed off, casting a trepidatious glance at Tin Man.
"It's fine, Dorothy, he can stay and listen," said Tin Man.
"Well then perhaps we should sit down. I think this is to much to process on my feet," she said, her attempt at jest falling flat. Still, she lowered herself to the table. Ray, Lida, and Tin Man settled down next to her.
"What are you doing here?" she asked. I didn't think I'd ever see you again. I thought you were a dream," she laughed breathlessly. "How did you get here? And where's – where are Scarecrow, and Lion?" A look of pain crossed his face. "Oh, no."
"It's been a hundred years since you left, Dorothy. They were just old. I'm made of a bit stronger stuff, I'm afraid."
"A hundred – but I'm only thirty-one! What – I can't even think about that! How did you find me? How did you get here, from Oz?"
"We replicated the Wizard's balloon and made our way here. Scarecrow had found a map of the Wizard's to Kansas. Once we landed – in some field – we asked the closest person and he knew your family, and that you were living in Lawrence."
"But why are you here? What happened?"
"Too much. It's why we've come for you, Dorothy. Glinda's gone bad."
"Glinda? The good witch of the North? But she was – she was at the Emerald City when I left, she was good."
"Yes, yes, I know. I was there, remember? But she's changed. After you left I was given control of the castle of the witch of the West, Scarecrow of the East, and Lion of the wilderlands and faraway mountains. Glinda returned to her realm in the North, but maintained her influence in the Emerald City, which you know is the center of Oz, and so in a way its capital.
"After the Mayor of the city died she took temporary control. But 'temporary' apparently didn't mean much to her. She quickly gained complete rule of the Emerald City and then began pressuring us into joining our realms more firmly with hers. Of course Scarecrow saw what she was up to, and we refused. She then began to use magic, something we did not possess, to take our realms by force."
"And the munchkins? They had their own realm." She glanced at Lida, whose face blanched, from anger or grief she could not tell.
"Glinda enslaved them. Some of them became witchmongers, the rest she had killed or driven to mine in the faraway mountains. A few managed to escape, like Lida."
"Witchmongers?"
"Yes, Glinda's followers. They joined her to keep their lives. Not much of a life though, if you ask me. They're her hunters, her closest minions."
Sing hissed in disgust, rubbing his paws as though to rub away some sticky substance. Dorothy studied him for a moment.
"What if you didn't join the witch?"
Tin Man cringed. "Anyone who refused to serve her directly as a hunter or personal attendant was either killed, or forced into slave labor. Seeing how that was most of Oz, we're a land of peasants now."
"But what about you? How did you escape?"
"Scarecrow found an old map of the Wizard's. Before he went, he figured out how to replicate the Wizard's air balloon. It took him years of experimenting in secret. Then it took me years to build it, hidden in the witch of the West's castle. Sing helped, then Lida found us. Finally we were ready, and we came here." He finished his story, and looked at her, his eyes too alight with hope, with expectation.
She sat back in shock. Oz, the land over the rainbow, destroyed? It was impossible. But what was truly impossible was that Tin Man was here, along with Lida the munckin and Sing the winged monkey, asking her to help them. This was insane! Even if this was really real, she had no way to kill a witch. She had killed the witch of the West by splashing water on her, on accident. Did that even work on good witches? Or did good witches become bad witches when they went bad?
But this was madness! She couldn't go to Oz; it didn't exist! But here it was, sitting in front of her. It was too much to comprehend.
"What are you talking about!" Ray was glancing in desperation between her and Tin Man. Of course, he had no idea. He really did think they were mad. "There are no witches! What's Oz? What is this?"
She sighed. How could she explain Oz to someone who had never known it? A perfect world. Not because it had no troubles, because obviously it did. But because it was magnificent, beyond her strangest dreams. The colors. The colors were unbelievable. Her world was drab – black and white – compared to the colors of Oz.
"Oz is – I don't know. A make-believe place. It's – I went there when I was a girl. I met Tin Man there. And Scarecrow, and Lion, and the munckins, and –
"I know! It sounds crazy! Don't look at me like that. I told you it's not something I can explain. But you have to believe me, Ray. I mean, look – a man made of tin, a flying monkey – it's – they're from Oz."
"This is crazy!" He shook his head, jerked up from the table. "You're not right, Dorothy!" He turned on Tin Man. "I don't know who you are, or what – but you need to leave! Now!"
Dorothy rose too. Sing leapt away, chattering, and Lida withdrew under the table to stay out of any altercations between these big people.
"Ray! He's not leaving! He just got here!"
"Then what? Are you going with him to 'Oz'? It's not real! You can't 'go' there!" He stared at her, his eyes wide with disbelief, shock, concern.
He was right. Even if Oz were real, even if she could get there, what could she do? She was not some mighty witchslayer as Tin Man seemed to think. She was just Dorothy Stratford, a housewife from Lawrence, Kansas.
Tin Man was staring at her, his eyes begging. The room had gone silent. But what about Oz? She had to do something to help save the Land Over the Rainbow. She couldn't abandon Oz. She loved Oz. She loved Tin Man. She couldn't let them down.
She swallowed against the dryness in her throat, and nodded. "Ok. I'll go."
Relief spread across Tin Man's face. "Really?"
"Really." She glanced at Ray. Shocked. He looked shocked. Beyond shocked. Utterly lost. Because he thought she had gone mad. Or maybe he had gone mad. Or maybe this was all some crazy dream. Maybe it was.
"What do I need?" she asked. The thud of footsteps drew her attention and she looked just in time to see Ray slam the bedroom door behind him.
They raced over the frozen field. The balloon lay before them like a shriveled child's toy. They were urgent now. They had purpose. Dorothy still wasn't quite sure what was real, or what she was to do about it, but they were doing something. Tin Man's face was set in grim determination. Lida's legs scrambled beneath her to keep up, the sound of her panting breath chasing behind Dorothy, pushing her forward. Sing swooped ahead and above, like some fell mythical beast. It was all very intense. She almost felt afraid, but not quite.
Sing reached the balloon first to upright the basket. Lida began digging through the fabric to light the flame in the balloon. In a few minutes the fire was roaring hollowly inside its belly. The basket swayed and bobbed against its ties. In the distance the sound of a truck's motor purred.
First Lida, then Tin Man, then Dorothy climbed into the basket. Sing was on the ground jerking up the stakes. Lida was pulling out the map. Tin Man was poking at the fire with his bare hands. Dorothy was watching the truck come closer. It turned off the road into the field and jutted along. It was an old, rusting, muted green. Just like Ray's truck.
"Wait?" Her voice rose, desperate as the man began to tear across the field.
"Wait! Dorothy! Dor! Wait!"
Her heart clutched in her throat, choking her. "Wait, wait, stop!" The basket bounced off the ground, drifted, snagged, leapt again a few yards into the air. Tin Man turned to look, and shouted something to Sing. She couldn't leave him here. It would be the death of her, she swore.
"Ray! Ray! Jump! Come on!" She leaned over, her hips catching her on the edge of the basket, reached out. With a cry he caught her wrists, his watch digging into her skin. His feet kicked, the basket plunged, but it was up now, no going back.
Suddenly there was Sing, and Ray yelped in surprise as his lower half was lifted up by the belt loops in his jeans. He toppled over and crashed in. The basket shuddered. Dorothy landed beneath him in a perfect silver screen missionary position.
He panted, his breath hot and heavy against her cheek, his ribs heaving against hers. She let go of the floor of the basket and gripped the back of his neck and kissed him. He'd come. She wasn't too crazy. She felt giddy with excitement. He would see Oz. He was here. Adrenaline crashed and she laughed breathlessly.
"You came."
He laughed too. "Yeah. I figure if you're crazy I want to be crazy with you."
She laughed again and kissed him again.
They came out from the sun. They just appeared, out of the pale sun, through the mists that shrouded these mountain peaks. The drakks tracked their path down from the empyrean. They drifted down, closer, into Oz. The largest drakk crouched on its mountain peak and growled a command to its partner on the rock next to it. The balloon fell closer. They could very faintly see movement within. Three full-human sized figures. Two more than had gone out. So perhaps this witchslayer wasn't just the Witch's nightmaring.
With the faintest brushing of wings and shifting of rocks beneath their long clawed feet the drakks lifted up. But if they could see the balloon then the balloon could see them. It began to drop quickly, swooping almost as agilely as a sparrow. But the drakks were faster. They flung up through the sky as though they were climbing a mountain, flinging their wings against the air like bats beating themselves against rocks. Hideous and clumsy to watch, but fast. Terrifyingly fast. "They're coming!" Lida's voice rose from control to a frantic pitch. "Faster, faster, Sing!"
Sing screeched angrily, desperately, as he let out more air from the fire. The balloon kept dropping, not fast enough. Ray and Dorothy stared, enrapt, horrified.
"What are they? Are they dragons?" Ray's voice breathed, shaking.
"They're drakks. Glinda's mongers. Her creations. Faster, Sing!" The monkey wailed. "They've been waiting for us since we left. Who knows long it's been. Months, years, they've been waiting."
The drakks shrieked. They were close enough to make out clearly. They were sliming, nasty salamander things with wings and teeth and claws as long as butcher knives. Ray felt a shudder of sheer horror pass through him. It was his first instinct to scream, to run. They exuded terror.
"Get down!" Tin Man shouted and they dropped as the drakks swept close, their claws raking the air over them. Ray began scrabbling with the anchor ropes. "Stop, stop! You're not helping, you don't know what to do!" croaked Tin Man. "Watch Dorothy!"
His heart swelled like a wet sticking rock in his throat. He whirled, she was cowering on the basket floor where she had fallen. He plunged to her side, reaching the floor of the basket just as it bucked beneath them. Her hand groped for a support, his arm.
"Calm down, it's ok, it's ok!" He thought he said it, but he didn't. The drakk's face filled the space above them. With a scream Lida swung at it, a bolt of lightning spouting from her palm and opening a gash on the drakks's face. Dark blue blood poured over them, so hot it burned. Dorothy screamed. In the frantic meshing of his thoughts Ray wondered what he had just seen. What the hell had just happened. It was forgotten and instant later.
The basket suddenly rose up in the air, on top of one of the drakk's necks. It teetered and Dorothy screamed and Sing leapt out of the balloon before he was burned and Tin Man clutched the ropes and Lida hunkered down. Ray was flung against the side of the basket as it lifted up, tilted. He saw the earth wheeling beneath him, leaning closer and closer. His muscles tensed uselessly as he slid out.
"Ray!" He grabbed the anchor Lida reached out, held on for his life. The basket lurched upright again, sending him against the other wall hard. The drakk had fallen back. The sound of air pouring through fabric hissed around him. The balloon plummeted. Dorothy screamed. Again. Lida did too. He couldn't. He couldn't breathe. What an awful, godforsaken, hateful country.
The basket landed. The balloon collapsed on them, buried them, burst into flame. Hot, hot and airless. He reached for Dorothy, reached for some way out, reached for whatever oxygen might remain. Smoke. Burning smoke.
Then the side of the basket tore open and he tumbled out, half pushed and half pulled. He barely crawled away, his eyes closed. In a moment he would fall over some cliff edge. Dorothy. His limbs sprawled but he didn't move. He lay on his back and coughed.
"Ray! Ray! Get up, come on!" Cold metal hands closed around his arms and hauled him to his feet. He sank but Tin Man jerked him back up. He hacked but Tin Man pulled him forward.
"Dor, Dor," he gasped, his eyes burning as they tried to open and look for her.
"Come on, she's fine. Come on. Ray!"
Something screeched, wailed. He tried to cover his ears at the sound but Tin Man was still dragging him forward. He wrenched his eyes open.
There were rocks everywhere, his feet sliding on their chalky surfaces. Dorothy, where was Dorothy? There, stumbling along with Lida. There were more of her, more of the little people, running about and shouting quietly. He craned his neck around. The balloon lay smoldering on the ground. One of the drakks was dead, its neck and belly sliced over and over again. The smaller one, the one Lida had wounded, was limping away through the sky, its wings torn and shuddering.
One of the munchkins turned and shouted at them in an odd grumbling language. Then he disappeared into a hole in the rocks. The others followed; six other little people. All clad in thick gray lumpy rags. Sing crawled in first, then Lida, helping Dorothy. Tin Man shoved Ray from behind and his knees and elbows banged against the tiny hole. He tumbled in.
"Keep going! Keep going!" Tin Man dragged him up again. He was not especially tall, but the hole was meant for people half his stature. He scraped and crawled and bumped along, trying to force back the growing panic that he was buried and trapped and the hole was getting smaller. It was. He was pressed between Tin Man and a rock and Dorothy. His head was forced down by the ceiling. He reached out for Dorothy's hand and she squeezed it like she would never let go, like she was trying to meld into him.
Someone's bare foot kicked him in the face and he moaned a muffled protest. Then tiny hands were grabbing him by whatever they could and Tin Man was shoving him up. He kicked and wiggled through the hole and barely made it through.
The opening inside was small, but big enough for him to sit down in. The munchkins stood in a semi-circle around him. Dorothy huddled by his side. Sing bounced and panted, his eyes wild. Tin Man clattered up.
"What happened?" Ray gasped through gritted teeth. "What happened back there, with those – things – those drakks? Where did they come from? Who – who are these people?"
"Our saviors," Tin Man said. "They pulled us out of the wreck, killed or drove away the drakks."
They all looked at the four munchkins who stared back, adoration in their huge, dark eyes. Under their stare the munchkins seemed nervous and giddy at once, like teenagers who had suddenly found themselves in the presence of an idol. At once their leader, larger and less shy than the others, spoke.
"I am Gillan. This is Jesper and Arrya. We saw the drakks waiting. For two months they waited for you, so we knew that you would come back. The Good Witch could see and she told them to wait. So we waited too. When we saw you come we buried our Master and ran to find you."
Gillan was quivering with excitement. "You are Dorthy, the witch killer. We knew you would come. You would bring the magic shoes to us and bury the Good Witch." He crossed his forehead with a trembling finger. "Bless her glorious spirit."
Ray stared in disbelief. "But what – what happened? How did you kill drakks? What 'magic shoes'? I thought Glinda was evil."
The munchkins cringed and shied, as though the mountain itself might hear. Gillan crossed his forehead. "We killed drakks with these." He raised his pickaxe, a tool that looked nearly as heavy as he was. "Whenever we find them." He glared at Ray. "Good Tin Man we know, and garden children we know and sky apes we know. And we know Dorthy. But we do not know you."
Ray felt like he'd been rather sternly told to shut up, and since Gillan was still holding the pickaxe, decided it would be prudent to comply. Dorothy stammered.
"M-magic shoes? The slippers? The ruby slippers? I don't have the slippers, of course I don't. It was a dream, you can't take things with you from dreams. They're still in Oz. What – what is this, Tin Man? These people – you've been waiting for me? How can you – it's been a hundred years if it ever happened at all! You think – No! We don't know what will happen! We're probably all going to die! You can't believe – " She trailed off at the look on the munchkins' faces. Utter confusion, the first stabbings of panic. Tin Man closed his eyes.
"I should have told you. Oz has made you a legend, a prophecy. That one day the last witch slayer would return and destroy the Evil again."
"Again?" Ray cried, forgetting the pickaxe. "What do you mean again?" He felt desperation rising.
"The last time Dorothy was here she killed the wicked witch of the West. Glinda's arch-rival," Tin Man explained. "We haven't forgotten. How could we not believe?"
"But that was an accident! It was an accident, Tin Man! Scarecrow was on fire and I threw a bucket of water on him and splashed her on accident! I'm not a witch slayer! I'm not a legend! You were there! You know that!"
"But they don't," he said quietly. "They weren't there."
"So you let them believe? How could you? How could you let them put their faith in a lie?"
He looked away. "You have to put your faith in something." His voice trailed off into the silence that settled over them. Slowly Arrya's voice piped tremulously.
"No magic shoes?"
Dorothy scrambled to her knees and out of the hole. Arrya stared, trembled, and burst into tears. Lida rushed to her side. Tin Man didn't move. Ray fell out of the hole after Dorothy.
He could see her shadow against the faint light from the outside, curled like a frightened child against the wall. He could hear her sobbing, the sound muffled in the hole. He slid down to her and wrapped around her. She turned her head into his shoulder, hissing into his shirt.
"We could go back," he murmured. "We could leave."
"How? How, Ray? The balloon is burnt with the map. How on earth would we go back?"
He fell silent, for the first time wondering. His stomach twisted sickeningly. How would they get back? They couldn't stay here forever. This wasn't even a real place! Maybe that was it; maybe this was a nightmare they would wake up from. Unless they died in it first. He wondered if they would die in real life, skewered on drakk's claws in their beds. But there were probably worse things in Oz. Like the witch. The witch. They had to kill the witch. It burned in his mind like a brand. It was the only way they would even survive, much less return home. Maybe they could even make a trade. Let them go home for – for what? Surely this witch wasn't afraid of them. Unless she was like these munchkins and thought Dorothy was some mighty warrior. Then maybe –
It was their best shot. Their only shot. "Dorothy. Dorothy." He shook her. "We can kill the witch."
"What! Are you crazy! Haven't you been listening at all!"
"Well if you killed the last one with a bucket of water, how hard can it be?"
For a moment she was silent, tense. He held his breath. Then she laughed. She looked up at him, her face streaked with tears and twisted up in an almost hysterical giggle. He let out his breath in a laugh.
"What? What is so funny?"
"You tripping with a mop bucket and melting Glinda the Wicked Witch of the North."