The self-proclaimed good witch bends at the waist and puts his hands on his knees, looking at me with a very patronizing sort of expression.
“Listen here, you spoiled brat from another world. You’re not the first wizard to come through here.” He stands back up and crosses his arms over his chest. “Another sorceress already passed this way once and tried to save the land of Oz from its own, wretched self. But that one was not promising. Dorothy, the Small and Meek, is nothing but a loudmouthed goody-goody bitch. You are Oz, the Great and Terrible. Now stand your ass up and head for the city.”
“Wh-what?” I ask, blinking up at him as I try to remember the basic storyline in The Wizard of Oz. If I’m going to hallucinate a story, maybe I should know the ending first? “Dorothy? No, no, fuck all of this shit. I want to go home.” Well, not that I’d ever really call Kansas home, but this place is deranged … And where the fuck is my aunt?!
“Home?” he asks, sighing dramatically. “Well, it’s your funeral, I suppose. Head for the East,” the witch says, gesturing vaguely back in my direction, a long, gold braid hanging down his back. “There’s a great desert, not far from here. None could live to cross it.”
“If none could live to cross it, why the hell would you tell me to go that way?” I snap, shoving up to my feet and leaving the bloodied shoes on the ground behind me.
“It is the same in the South,” one of the Munchkins adds, speaking up for the first time. His English is lilted and strange, with an accent I’ve never heard, but I’m surprised any of them speak my language at all, to be honest. “For I have been there and seen it. The South is the land of the Quadlings.”
“The what?” I ask, but they’re all a’buzz with gossip now.
“I am told,” another Munchkin adds, his wings buzzing behind him like a dragonfly, “that it is the same at the West. And that country, where the Winkies live, is ruled by the Wicked Witch of the West, who would make you his slave if you passed his way.”
Winkies? The fuck is a Winkie?!
“The North is my home,” the ‘good’ (read: sarcasm) witch declares, “and at its edge is the same great desert that surrounds this Land of Oz. I’m afraid, my dear”—the witch adds his own dollop of sarcasm—”you will have to live with us.”
“Eventually, I’ll wake up, and this’ll all be over,” I growl, curling my hands into fists. What would happen if I punched Mr. Pretty Face Good Witch in the face? It is my delusion, after all. “Who cares what you say anyway?”
The witch pulls the white hat off of his head and a small light zips out from underneath, buzzing around him. He swats it away and then balances the pointed tip of his hat on his nose, chanting three words, like a bit of a countdown.
With a puff of smoke, the cap changes into a chalkboard, just like that, and I’m left wide-eyed and shaking with disbelief.
The little ball of glowing light zips up to the chalkboard, and words start to appear with that awful screeching sound of chalk on a chalkboard.
HELP OZORA GET TO THE CITY OF EMERALDS!!!
“Really, though? Really?” he asks as the ball of light buzzes around his head. As I blink at it, it dissolves into a small woman with wings of her own, much like the Munchkins.
A fairy.
It’s a goddamn fairy.
“Why should I help this spoiled, rotten brat?” The fairy zips around the Good Witch’s head as he waves her away and then turns back to look at me, standing in front of my Aunt’s house next to a pair of bloodied shoes with a bleeding dog-man waiting just up the stairs.
“Well, it’s settled then, if Cailín thinks you should go, you really should go. But I am not going.” The fairy flies at his face again, but he ducks her advances easily and shakes the chalkboard, turning it back into the pointed white hat that he uses to scoop her up. The witch sets it back on his golden hair and looks down his nose at me. “Perhaps, if you win in the Ruby Trials, Dorothy will help you.”
“Fine, I’ll bite. Where is this stupid city?” I grind out, just wanting something to happen. Anything but me just standing here like a total asshole.
The witch yawns as the Munchkins begin to scatter into the woods, their wings flashing in the stray shafts of sunlight peeking through the canopy.
“It is exactly in the center of the country, and is ruled by Dorothy, the not-so great wizard I told you of.”
“She’s a good woman then?” I ask, just to clarify. I mean, Dorothy was the hero in the original story, the one who found her way home through like, hope and sweet innocence or some shit. I have neither of those things, but I figure my mind is breaking under all the stress of my shitty life, and maybe this is some sort of metaphor cooked up by my unconscious brain. Find Dorothy, learn life lessons and shit, find my way home. Then I’ll wake up. Maybe I’m in a coma or something, right?
