(Hello again. As I will soon be moving, updates may not be as frequent. Sorry to leave you hanging in this chapter, but I finally am starting to unclog the thicket of my imagination and bring out more that I had originally wrote. What you are seeing here is first-draft from my brain, none of the revised stuff you saw before. It's hot off the presses and you're getting to hear the first of it!)
(This chapter is also in two parts. This is something I had from the rough drafts, where several chapters would be in two or more parts. Here you get to see what that could have been like. Enjoy)
Chapter Twenty - Checkmate
Part One - The First Gift
The old woman's saggy skin started to straighten out and smooth out. Her brittle old bones became hard and smaller, and her body shifted between stages of life, at last shrinking to what it had once been. The little Dorothy Gale was back.
Rubbing her sore head, she turned to her companion. She saw the green skinned woman had fallen on her face, the hat still perched dangerously atop her head. In one hand was the bag they found in the Wizard's family house, and in the other hand was the Golden Dagger.
A thought came to Dorothy's head. She knew that this bad-guy, this Ikol, didn't have the Golden Mirror. Ozma still had it, and that meant he couldn't see anywhere and through anything. If they just kept him from getting his hands on the Mirror, they might just...
The sight of that man who tried to kill them, who called himself a servant of the bad guy, lying upon the ground, with his hand on the green woman's boot heel, seemed to awaken some of Dorothy's long dormant common sense.
She slipped the dagger out of the green woman's hand and stowed it away in the huge coat the Earth-man had given her. It was still draped about her shoulders.
Then the green woman started to stir.
And the silly, ignorant Dorothy rose back up in revulsion over this poor creature.
As if governed by some power beyond her own, reflexes, the green woman clamped her green-fingered hand around Damien's wrist.
"Damn you, you little brat!" the Witch's voice spat at Dorothy. "Why did you have to steal my broomstick?"
"What d'ya mean?"
"We've got to take him to the Emerald City!" an urgent Rain's voice said. Her face twitched and she became the Witch again. "And broom's the fastest way. Ha, idiot! What mode of transportation do you have in mind?"
As if in answer, Damien started to wake. He tugged on his wrist, which made the green woman loose balance a little. She returned by striking the man with the bag, which put him under again, plus a blue-black bruise on his forehead.
But something fell out of the bag, something neither of them ever expected to see.
A pair of shoes that were sparkling, even in the un-light in which they sat.
"The slippers!" shouted the Witch, upon seeing the shoes on the ground. With fiendish speed, she reached out to grab the shoe but Dorothy's hand caught it first.
"Give it to me, you wench!" she roared. "They're mine, not yours! It's all I have left of my father, dammit!"
Dorothy noticed that, while the Witch roared "They're mine, not yours!" she was in the voice of the Witch. But she was starting to change over to Rain as she said the rest.
And once again, Dorothy saw blood welling up around her blue eyes.
"Father?" Dorothy asked.
"I meant 'sister.'" The Witch quickly corrected.
"No, you tell me what you meant now." Dorothy insisted. Then, as if they both had a mental agreement, the two lunged for the bag. But Dorothy was faster, or else the other shoe felt its mate close by and was gravitating towards the bearer.
"How did they get here?" Dorothy asked, looking them over. "I thought I lost them in the Deadly Desert."
"Damn if I know." the Witch commented. "Now give them back!"
"Not until you tell me about them," she said, moving them out of reach.
The Witch shrieked in anger.
"You twit! I could kill you where you stand, and you still insist on defying me?"
"You ain't gonna hurt me," Dorothy said, with confidence the like she hadn't ever had around the Witch since ever. "Rainy's inside ya, and she'll keep ya from doin' anything bad. So you tell me about these here r...uh, silver...uh, what are these made of?"
"Glass, if you must know." The Witch replied. Though her voice was less harsh, and sounded like a snubbed teenager, being forced to talk about something that had offended or embarrassed her. "They're Quadling glass beads, embedded onto a regular silver slipper. But they glow red at times, whether by the sun or when they are being used."
"They belonged to your sister?"
"The Wicked Witch of the East? Our father made them for her, an obvious token of his cherishing of her over me. But I'm above such petty things as jealousy or greed. Glinda enchanted the..."
"Glinda? She helped the Wicked Witch of the East?"
The woman shook her head. "It was a gesture of good-will, her attempt to make her become good by giving Ne...the Witch her legs, even though she had no arms."
Dorothy gasped. "She didn't have no arms?"
"Of course she didn't! Aren't you listening?" The girl lowered her head and allowed the Witch to continue.
"Now give them back to me. She willed them to me, and you stole them!"
"Well, I'm mighty sorry for stealin', I didn't mean ta," Dorothy said. "But I can't just give ya back these here shoes just lahke dat."
"You promised!" The Witch shouted.
"Where's Rainy?" Dorothy insisted, backing away and hiding the shoes behind her back.
"Give them back to me!"
"Tell me why she ain't comin' through?"
"She knows nothing of the shoes," the Witch said. "They're not her battle, they're mine! Now give them to me!"
Suddenly, Dorothy dropped the shoes and stuffed her feet into them.
"There!" she said with a smile. "You want the shoes? You take me with ya."
"I can kill you and take them later just as easily!" hissed the Witch.
"I reckon y'won't." Dorothy said confidently. "Plus, there ain't no way anyone can die out..."
Suddenly, the boom echoed throughout the land. Black clouds were gathering from the west. The earth shook as huge black crystals were falling down from the sky and burying themselves into the earth. A large one stood landed a few yards before them.
"You were saying?" the Witch growled.
They saw two black figures fly through the sky overhead. One of them stopped, as if it were turning back, but then dove back after the lead and they were soon lost to the eyes of the two earth-bound women.
The green woman then turned a hateful look at Damien.
"Now come on, murderess," she said to Dorothy. "Let's take this scum back to the Emerald City."
"How we gettin' there?"
"How else? We're walking."
"That'll take fer-ever!" Dorothy protested.
"By Oz, what's happened to you?" the Witch asked. "You were never this head-strong before." She then muttered beneath her breath. "Much easier to intimidate then."
Part Two - Ozma's Last Defense
The General was slowly recovering. He was even more clumsy and limped more than before, but at least he was still alive.
That encounter with the Nameless had left him weakened and feeling older than his age. But there was still something driving him on.
He knew that the hopes and lives of all of Oz and all of Eve rested on his shoulders. A large responsibility, but it was enough to keep him going.
He rose up, and saw that all were silent, with grim expressions. Gone was the gaiety out of all of Ozma's retinue. They looked like they, now, saw the gravity of the situation.
"What's wrong?" he asked. He had so grown to recognize them in their ignorance that seeing them so grim was something that shocked him.
"You need to lead us, General." one of the generals of Ozma's "Royal Army" said fearfully.
"I'm a fighter, not a leader." the General said. "Besides, isn't Ozma your leader?"
"She won't come out of her room." the Scarecrow said.
The General teetered back to a standing position, and then turned to those around his bed-side.
"She must," he said. "A leader is responsible for the lives of his...or her, people."
With a familiar pat-clank, General Kloxolk hobbled off down the hall to the Throne Room. Ozma's retinue followed after him.
Despite protests from the small Ms Jamb, General Kloxolk pushed the doors open and hobbled over to the Throne. Where once the Wizard's Giant Head floated to the terror of those who were "lucky" enough to see him, now sat Ozma Tippetarius.
By the way her mascara was dripping down her face, it looked as though she had been crying. Now it looked as though she were a weak levy, holding back the flood of emotion from flowing again.
"Your Ozness," General Kloxolk said, kneeling clumsily before her. "If I may be so bold, your place is not here in the palace, it is by your peoples' side."
Ozma said nothing, not even a shot-back at the General as she usually did.
"Ozma, I might have been rude to you before in my admonitions." the General admitted. "Forgive me. But you must understand, your people need you. This is their darkest time, but your chance to make it your finest hour!"
Ozma said nothing, remaining rigidly still.
"Will you do nothing? Will you hide in your castle and wait for the end?"
Ozma's eyes were blinking, and she swallowed three times before speaking.
"I am Ozma Tippetarius," she said feebly. "I am the ruler of Oz, sole appointed by divine right of the fairy Lurline. I will not move against them. They will go away in time. I said before that if all the armies of the Nome King, or any other enemy, rose up against me, I would sit on my throne and gracefully await the end, like any girl-ruler should."
There was silence. Without the Love Magnet, her friends now saw Ozma for what she truly was.
"Then you have abandoned us," Kloxolk said, his head bowing. With all his might, he pushed himself into a standing position. "As of this moment," He announced. "The defense of this city falls to me." He then turned his back on Ozma and walked out of the room.
"If you pardon me for saying this," the Wizard said. "I mean, who am I to question the Great Ozma? But when I was ruling, I at least had the Gale Force to protect me. What you're doing is suicide! If you think that because I got my senses back after I tried to kill myself that I'll just play along with your apathy, well, sister, you've got another thing coming for you and that's that!" The Wizard turned coat and walked off after the General.
"I'm sorry, pretty lady," the Shaggy Man said. "But push has come to shove, and you're not gonna do anything about it?" He shook his scraggly beard and left the room.
The small maid-servant, Jellia Jamb, simply shook her head, made a noise like she was sniffling back tears, and then left the room.
The Cowardly Lion gave one look to his companion, the Hungry Tiger, and the two left the room. Ozma's Royal Army hung their heads in shame and left their queen all to her own wiles.
"I'm sorry, Ozma." the Scarecrow said, shaking his straw-filled head. "But my brains are telling me that what you're doing is just..." He rose his gloved hands, only to let them fall to his sides. He hung his burlap-sack head and then, like the others, followed suit in leaving Ozma.
But Lurline's heir did not cry. She did not make any acknowledgment of them leaving. Except that now that she was alone, she quietly removed the mirror that had been hidden in her dress.
The fools, she thought. The ignorant, stupid fools. I still have a chance to save them all, and when I do, they will be on their knees before me, thanking me for saving the day.
(Why is Dorothy acting so head-strong? What will Ikol do next in his sinister plan to destroy Oz? What is Ozma's plan for saving all of Oz? And what about Dan'ai in Quadling? Will she survive? Epic cliff-hangers!)