Summary: My sleepy brain's take on the last couple of pages, attempting to answer some of the questions that were not completely resolved at the end.
Notes: It has been years since I've seen The Wizard of Oz, and although I know vaguely what happens at the end, I have forgotten most (if not all) of the details. If I am terribly off canon-track, feel free to let me know.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Don't sue.
After recovering Toto from Chistery, Liir had scrambled up the tower after Dorothy and the Witch, and yelled to Dorothy from the other side of the locked door. Liir could barely make out her words, obscured as they were beneath her tears. But ever the brave young man, as Liir had convinced himself he was, he got Dorothy out and fixed her and the Lion something to drink, helped Nanny up from where she'd fallen down the stairs, and looked after the battered and bruised crew that remained in the castle. He put off grieving for Elphaba until a later time, as more pressing issues were at hand in the land of the living, and Dorothy was grieving more than enough for the both of them.
Dorothy was inconsolable. She had killed – accidentally, of course, but that made it no easier to bear – two women in her short time in the land of Oz, and could never be forgiven for the first, as Nessarose's sister was dead now, and had no one to forgive her for the second. There was Liir, but as he had seemed much more concerned with her well-being than that of Witch, Dorothy was not sure he was a suitable candidate to forgive her.
She sat in a chair by the fire, tears streaming down her face, while Liir worked and the Lion fidgeted, eager to move on from what he considered such a dark and depressing place. "The Witch haunts this castle," the Lion muttered when he heard the wind pass. "She's never truly gone."
But Liir shook his head at this. "The Witch didn't believe in souls, or at least that she had one, so she's not haunting anything."
"Just because she didn't believe it doesn't make it untrue."
Liir went about feeding Chistery, not altogether liking the idea of Elphaba haunting them after what had happened before her death, and forgot about the conversation for a while.
On the third day Dorothy stayed in Kiamo Ko, her weeping began to subside and she merely sat, stiff as a statue, thinking silently. She thought of the lives she had taken; the lives the women had once had, and what would happen to them now. Not what would happen to their bodies, because the Wicked Witch of the East's was broken, and the Wicked Witch of the West had no more body to speak of, but to their souls. She suspected the Lion was right, and although the Witch had insisted she was a soulless creature, surely the Witch had been mistaken. "Liir," she called, when he passed by, "come and sit with me."
Liir obliged, as he knew he would, because how could he refuse her. He gave Dorothy an awkward hug, and then decided to get right to the heart of the matter, as in his mind none of this mess had been Dorothy's fault at all. "You mustn't be so hard on yourself," Liir insisted. "You didn't mean to kill either witch, and you couldn't have known about Auntie's aversion to water."
Dorothy's face screwed up, and for a moment Liir worried that she would begin to wail again. Thankfully she just slumped in the chair a little more. "I shouldn't have made her so angry. I didn't mean to, honest, promise! If it wasn't for these horrid shoes she'd still be alive, wouldn't she? I wish I'd never worn them. I wish they'd just come off!" At this, Dorothy tried to rip the sparkling shoes from her feet, but to no avail; they stuck fast as always. Dorothy stomped a few times in frustration. "Why am I cursed so!"
When Liir had no answer for her, even though it was clear she expected no response, Dorothy sighed to herself and stared up at the ceiling of the great fortress that was Kiamo Ko. "Well, I mean no disrespect to the Lion, but even though I agree that the Witch had a soul, I don't think she haunts us here."
Liir was a little taken aback at the abrupt change in subject matter. "You think she haunts somewhere else?"
"I didn't say that. Besides, perhaps 'haunts' is not the right word. I think her soul is still around somewhere, but possibly not in Oz."
"Not in Oz?" Liir repeated. "Then where? Outside in the other states, or do you mean the Other World? Are you Unionist?"
Dorothy blinked at him. "I'm sure I don't know what you mean, for I don't think we have Unionists in Kansas."
Liir himself did not know much about the fabled Other World or the Unionist movement, despite having spent his early childhood with the maunts. He supposed living a sheltered life in Kiamo Ko with his stubbornly atheist Auntie Witch had not done wonders for his spirituality. But Irji had ranted offhand to him about faith enough times that Liir knew the basics, and although Dorothy claimed she didn't, she seemed to grasp the ideas of an Other World and the Unnamed God easily enough.
"We have a kind of Other World back home in Kansas, I think," Dorothy told him. "I mean, we don't really have it, we don't know for sure, but we think it's there. People talk of somewhere beyond the clouds that we go when we die, somewhere better than Earth. In fact, I was wishing to go there just before the tornado carried me here." She sniffed, and Liir handed her a handkerchief. "Do you really think that's a coincidence? Oh, Liir, there must be some connection! I mean, the Wizard got here by balloon, didn't he, and I by tornado? I think there must be some gateway in the air, and beyond Oz is Earth, and beyond Earth is Oz."
Liir, his mind reeling, was still not completely sure what she meant. "But is Oz really all that better than Earth?" he spluttered, bringing the conversation back to a level he could comprehend.
"I'm not sure," she said, blowing her nose in the handkerchief again. "I suppose the irony is that both worlds think there is another, better one out there, when it seems to me that both of them are equally good. Different, of course, but still just as good." She shrugged, suddenly aware that with her tears dried up and her thoughts out in the open she was dreadfully homesick. "Except to me… For I shall return home to Kansas soon, as Auntie Em and Uncle Henry will no doubt be terribly worried, and I should like to return to life with them."
Liir was hurt. He had known, in the back of his mind, that she would leave soon – after all that was what she had come all this way for – but part of him still hoped that she would choose to stay on with him. Those dreams of his were now shattered. Would he be condemned to taking care of Nanny for the next few years until she passed, his only company a decrepit old woman and some flying monkeys?
"Before you do," Liir said, "answer me this. You think the Witch's soul has gone to the Other World – to Earth, to your Kansas – as souls are rumoured to when the bodies hosting them die?"
Dorothy nodded – more affirming herself than his question, Liir suspected – and gave an optimistic smile of the kind she wore before the Witch's death. "You're correct," she answered, "and soon I will be off to the Wizard again, who has promised me a trip home upon the demise of the Witch, and we can find out for sure. And then," she added with even more cheer, "then perhaps I will meet the Witch's soul again, and she can forgive me."
Liir wasn't sure what he believed, but it was nice to see Dorothy hopeful and happy again.
The next morning, because Nanny had fallen into such a deep sleep that Liir could not wake her, he figured he had reason enough to accompany Dorothy back to the Emerald City. If Nanny could not be moved and could not be woken, he had no remaining responsibility to her inside Kiamo Ko, or outside it, especially with Elphaba dead and gone. And Dorothy could surely use a brave young man such as himself on her travels, even with most of Oz bewitched by her innocence, charm, or name as the Gale Forcers were. It was his very duty to go with her.
So in this mindset Liir, Dorothy, Toto, the Lion, and Chistery the flying monkey set off for the Emerald City. They had no Yellow Brick Road to guide them, but Liir knew that if they followed the Vinkus River for long enough it would take them to Restwater lake, and the Emerald City was merely a hop, skip, and a jump away on the other side.
The travelers met the Scarecrow and Tinman along the way, dinted but otherwise fine, and continued on their quests. For Liir had decided that if the others all wanted something from the Wizard, the Wizard could give him what he wanted, too; a father. Even if the trip amounted to nothing, it was worth a shot, it was worth the journey and the chance. Not that traveling with Dorothy was altogether unpleasant, Liir reminded himself of with a smile. Dorothy had let him kiss her again when he'd told her he was planning to leave with her, and he suspected more kisses were in order as they walked and skipped their way through the Vinkus.
As promised, Dorothy and her friends had their audience with the Wizard. But his gifts to the Scarecrow, the Tinman, and the Lion (merely announcing that they already possessed the qualities the sought when they clearly did not) irked Liir so that he stood back and decided not to ask the Wizard for anything, because it would surely not be granted.
The Wizard turned to Dorothy, with Toto under one arm and her ever innocent and hopeful face, and told her to click her heels three times if she wanted to go home. She performed the task, and like she was a magician's assistant, the Wizard held up her hand and announced that they now had the magic required to send Dorothy back to Kansas. Still holding her hand, he stepped into the balloon and pulled Dorothy gently up into the basket after him. "I'm taking her back home!" He declared, and the balloon sprung to life, lifting them both up into the air above the Emerald City.
Dorothy peered over the rim of the basket with a grin, watching the city of green sprawl out before her in ever-decreasing size. Then she could see all of central Oz, with its lakes, and mountains, and there was Kiamo Ko to the West where she'd killed the Witch, and to the North another palace-like structure, grand and majestic. The balloon rose ever higher, and eventually the whole land of Oz was visible, appearing like a child's construction – how miniature it was now! Dorothy spotted the Yellow Brick Road, which had been a helpful guide, and the place where her house had fallen weeks ago which had started this whole catastrophe. Already her guilt and sadness for the death of the witches was abating; as the Wizard said, surely she was the heroine of this tale, of this land, and she had done Oz a great favour by ridding it of the Wicked Witches of the East and West. Shouldn't she be declared the Good Witch of Central Oz for her good deeds?
Before Dorothy vanished completely out of sight, Liir thought he heard her yell goodbye to him, and "I might come back!" although he suspected this was merely a figment of his imagination. Still, he hoped one day she would return, and they could be together again.
Somehow, after some time on the balloon ride Dorothy fell asleep, and was frustrated to find that she could not remember much about the trip back to Earth and Kansas. The balloon had landed on a dirt road near her family's farm, and the Wizard had deposited her sleeping body on the side of the street, and then promptly left again. Neither Dorothy nor the citizens of Oz ever saw him again, at least in the form they were used to. Dorothy suspected that if the Wizard was dead then his soul would have returned to Oz – in some ways, where it belonged.
The Wizard had indeed been successful with his suicide mission, spurned on all the while by the bottle Dorothy had brought back from the castle as proof for him, the bottle reading MIRACLE ELI-. For at that moment, he had realised that Elphaba had indeed been his daughter, and he had ignored her initially and was ultimately responsible for her death. That thought alone was too much to bear, even for the Wizard, who had been planning to return home anyway and finish the job he started before arriving in Oz. Finish it he did, quickly and shortly after dropping Dorothy home, by drowning himself, a death he found particularly suitable as Dorothy told him Elphaba had been killed by water not long before.
Time passes much more quickly in Oz than it does on Earth, and so it was almost as if Dorothy had never left Kansas at all. Uncle Henry found Dorothy snoozing by the road on one of his walks, bundled her up in his arms and took her back to her room in the farmhouse. She awoke in her bed, with her relatives' worried faces clustered around her. My, it was good to be home!
But when she told them about the Munchkinlanders, of Glinda the bubbly Good Witch, of the kindly old Wizard, and of a strange green woman who had threatened her with a burning broom, they only smiled and patted her on the head. "You were dreaming, my sweet," said her Auntie Em. "That was all a dream, that wasn't real." And with this strange degree of normalcy and their amazing adult wisdom, Dorothy was inclined to agree.
Up until later that day, that was. For when Dorothy got up in the evening she almost shrieked when she saw the Ruby Slippers still attached to her feet, practically glowing in the waning light. She stared at them, and stared, and prodded and moved her toes until she was sure they were real. When she had convinced herself, she whispered, "I am the Witch of Central Oz, and one day I shall return." To her delight, the shoes fell easily from her feet, and glittered in the back of her closet. "Wait for me," she breathed, "for I shall not forget about you."
Dorothy did not forget. But she did forget about her conversations with Liir in her days at Kiamo Ko, and did not seek out the Witch's soul. Many would probably think this unfortunate, as Dorothy would no doubt have proved herself right.
For not a few blocks down the road, minutes before Dorothy awoke back in Kansas, a baby was born. The family had been expecting a boy, but the baby was indeed a girl, and was born with a peculiar set of sharp teeth of the like they'd never seen before. Tiny, pointed little razors. When trying to bathe the baby, or clean her with water, they discovered the little piranha knew how to use these teeth very well indeed, and refrained from exposing her to any more water in the future.
Despite the baby's oddness, the mother named her Fae, as surely she was some sort of non-human, mythical gift from God, and would save them all. A travelling saleswoman called Yackle had come along and confirmed this. She shared a prophesy that little Fae would be a great woman, and make far more of a difference than was expected of her.
Two years later, Fae crawled up to her parent's looking glass while they were telling her a bedtime story.
Her mother yawned, read, "And there the wicked old Witch stayed for a good long time," and shut the book with a thump.
"And did she ever come out?" asked her father, playing along.
Fae, pleased with her reflection in the middle, muttered, "Shoes."
Her parents stared. Fae's first word.
"Shoes. Shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes, shoes," she chanted. "My shoes."
And so, it was never completely clear to anyone in the room whether the Witch ever came out, because the ending of the story had been interrupted. But Fae nodded in her own cheerful way, and smiled her toothy grin, and folks had their suspicions.
The Witch was back.