The Tin Man caught sight of her out of the corner of his eye. Fiddling with the hair ribbon holding a braid in place, her eyes flitted about with every rustling leaf or hooting owl in the forest. All things considered, the girl had been holding out better than he'd expected. Even so, Dorothy's head still snapped his way when he rose to tend the last dying embers of the fire. "Oh, I don't mean to stare. Just frightened is all," she said. "We don't have anything like this in Kansas."
Perhaps he would've been just as scared to be in the dark forest at some point, with its gnarled tree branches reaching out like deformed limbs and whistling winds that sounded unfortunately like tortured screams. Nothing like the Other World, apparently. From what he'd heard of Kansas, it just seemed like a lot of farms. And cornfields. He almost had expected something more than what he could find if he looked out his window back home. And if the terrain wasn't too alien from her home, that meant the difference came in beings like him.
"But you've all been very kind!" she continued. Had his thoughts been that obvious on his face? "It's just the Witch! I can't stop looking over my shoulder like she'll appear out of nowhere. Like she'll fly in on that broom, or appear in that strange smoke magic. In the Emerald City, I even heard that she has an extra eye that's always awake and uses it to spy on her enemies."
He crouched down to sit on the log, getting down to her level. "Hey. I don't sleep much either. If the Witch comes, we'll be ready."
Maybe she really did have a third eye on the back of her head, or talons instead of fingernails, or skin poisonous to the touch. Or maybe she didn't. If all that was true, she'd done one hell of a job at hiding it at Shiz.
Shiz. He didn't truly hate her back then. At first he'd gone along with the ridicule because it was just the thing to do. If so many popular, respected people uniformly agreed she was trouble, well, they might be onto something. Even if they weren't, they might turn on him if he said anything otherwise.
Sure, the green skin was an unusual sight and he'd been quaking in his boots the day she'd hexed the entire class to steal that Lion Cub. But then Galinda had come around on her. Galinda had told him that her spells were an accident and she didn't mean to hurt anybody. If she had deemed the Witch worthy of friendship, surely she couldn't be so terrible, right? Her ten-minute rant on the ending to some book series was one hell of a way to spend a lunch period. The time she compared Dr. Nikidik to a rotten pineapple was actually pretty funny.
Even after the first newspapers came rolling in from the Emerald City telling of her many misdeeds, he foolishly remained somewhat unconvinced. Why would she constantly espouse Animal rights to everyone in the vicinity, and then mutilate them the first chance she got? If all the things written about her were true, why did Glinda even put up with her for so long?
Oh, Glinda. He hated himself for questioning her like this. Was Glinda knowingly sympathizing with evil at one point or was she just optimistically blind as to what the Witch was capable of? It had to be the latter. That was the only option he could stomach. He should've known the Witch's true nature sooner, should've warned her while he still had the chance.
The Witch had successfully gained all of their trust and swiftly betrayed them. His first uneasy instincts were right all along. When Madame Governess dragged him to Colwen Grounds and passed the first restriction laws, he finally realized that. He couldn't even leave the province or see his own family. For someone who claimed to fight for the freedom of the oppressed, she sure was willing to turn a blind eye when her own little sister was involved. The Governess had stripped his people's rights one by one. The Witch had never once tried to stop her. His last night in the Governess' mansion was more of the same. Surely the Witch would've been able to stop the killing spell, right? Why did she bring that awful magical book around in the first place? Why keep him alive as an emotionless, unfeeling monster except to punish him for hurting her sister? The best thing she could've done was to let him die.
He turned his attention back to Dorothy. The girl bit her lip, seeming to fight off tears before they escaped down her face. Still, she remained silent. "I don't know if I can kill the Witch. The Bible says it's a sin to kill. And even if it wasn't, she's so much stronger, and she doesn't care that I can't give her the shoes, and..."
Good riddance. He didn't know of any Bible, but the Witches had caused so much suffering between the two of them that whatever it said didn't matter. Those women had already been allowed to live for far too long.
"The house was an accident," he told Dorothy as he placed a hand on her shoulder. "Listen to me. You don't deserve this."
If nothing else had convinced him that the Witch had to be taken down immediately, the sight of Dorothy's slightly crumpled form would've done it. To hunt down a completely innocent girl for events beyond her control was all the evidence of wickedness he needed.
"We're going to keep you safe. And then we're going to take you back to the Wizard so he can send you home. I promise."
Dorothy managed a weak smile at that.
It wouldn't be easy. Their target was a ridiculously powerful sorceress. The rest of their group were the most incompetent beings he'd ever laid eyes on. The Witch had been thwarting even the Wizard's strongest armies for years. Despite all that, he had to try anyway.
He couldn't save his family, or Glinda, or the province he'd grown up in. He couldn't even save himself. It was too late for that. But it wasn't too late for Dorothy. Maybe, just maybe, he could save her.