“First give me the shoes,” said the Witch, “for they’re mine. Then we’ll talk.”
“I can’t, they won’t come off,” said the girl, “I think that Glinda put a spell on them. I’ve been trying to get them off for days. My socks are so sweaty, it’s not to be believed.”
“Give them me!” snarled the Witch. “If you go back to the Wizard with them, you’ll be playing right into his hands!”
“No, look, they’re stuck!” shouted the girl. She kicked at one heel with the other toe. “Look, see, I’m trying, I’m trying, they won’t come off, honest, promise! I tried to give them to the Wizard when he demanded them, but they wouldn’t come off! There’s something the matter with them, they’re too tight or something! Or maybe I’m growing.”
“You have no right to those shoes,” said the Witch. She circled. The girl backed away, stumbling over furniture, knocking over the beehive, and stepping on the queen bee, who had emerged from the fragments.
“Everything I have, every little thing I have, dies when you come across it,” said the Witch. “There’s Liir down below, ready to throw me over for the sake of a single kiss. My beasts are dead, my sister is dead, you strew death in your path, and you’re just a girl! You remind me of Nor! She thought the world was magic, and look what happened to her!”
“What, what happened?” said Dorothy, pitiably playing for time.
r /> “She found out just how magic it was, she was kidnapped, and lives her miserable life as a political prisoner!”
“But so have you kidnapped me, and I asked for none of it, nothing. You must have mercy.”
The Witch came near and grabbed the girl by the wrist. “Why do you want to murder me,” she said. “Can you really believe the Wizard will do as he says? He doesn’t know what truth means, so he does not even know how he lies! And I did not kidnap you, you fool! You came here of your own accord, to murder me!”
“I didn’t come to murder anyone,” said the girl, shrinking back.
“Are you the Adept?” said the Witch suddenly. “Aha! Are you the Third Adept? Is that it? Nessarose, Glinda and you? Did Madame Morrible conscript you for service to the hidden power? You work in collusion: my sister’s shoes, my friend’s charm, and your innocent strength. Admit it, admit you’re the Adept! Admit it!”
“I’m not adept, I’m adopted,” said the girl. “I’m sure not adept at anything, can’t you tell that?”
“You’re my soul come scavenging for me, I can feel it,” said the Witch. “I won’t have it, I won’t have it. I won’t have a soul; with a soul there is everlastingness, and life has tortured me enough.”
The Witch pulled Dorothy back to the corridor, and stuck the end of her broom in a torch fire. Nanny was hobbling up the stairs leaning on Chistery, who had some dishes of pudding on a tray. “I locked the whole lot of them in the kitchen until they stop their roughhousing,” Nanny was muttering. “Such a hubbub, such a racket, such a wild rumpus, Nanny won’t have it, Nanny is too old. They’re all beasts.”
Below, in the dusty recesses of Kiamo Ko, the dog barked once or twice, the Lion roared and pounded against the kitchen door, and Liir shrieked, “Dorothy, we’re coming!” But the Witch turned and shot out her foot, and toppled Nanny over. The old woman rolled and slid, oohing and woohing, down the stairs, Chistery chasing after her in consternation. The kitchen door had burst its hinges, and the Lion and Liir came tumbling out, falling over the big heap of Nanny at the foot of the stairs. “Up, you, up,” shouted the Witch, “I’ll have done with you before you have done with me!”
Dorothy had wrenched herself free and dashed up the corkscrew stairs of the tower ahead of the Witch. There was only one exit, and that was to the parapet. The Witch followed in good speed, needing to finish the deed before the Lion and Liir arrived. She would get the shoes, she would take the Grimmerie, she would abandon Liir and Nor, and disappear into the wilderness. She would burn the book and the shoes, and then she would bury herself.
Dorothy was a dark shape, huddled over, retching on the stones.
“You haven’t answered my question,” said the Witch, poking the torch up high, releasing spectres and ghosts among the shadows of the castellations. “You’ve come hunting me down, and I want to know. Why will you murder me?”
The Witch slammed the door behind her and locked it. All the better.
The girl could only gasp.
“You think they’re not telling stories about you all over Oz? You think I don’t know the Wizard sent you here to bring back proof that I was dead?”
“Oh, that,” said Dorothy, “that is true, but that’s not why I came!”
“You can’t possibly be a competent liar, not with that face!” The Witch held the broom up at an angle. “Tell me the truth, and when you’ve finished, then I’ll kill you, for in times like these, my little one, you must kill before you are killed.”
“I couldn’t kill you,” said the girl, weeping. “I was horror-struck to have killed your sister. How could I kill you too?”
“Very charming,” said the Witch, “very nice, very touching. Then why did you come here?”
“Yes, the Wizard said to murder you,” Dorothy said, “but I never intended to, and that’s not why I came!”
The Witch held the burning broom even higher, closer, to look in the girl’s face.
“When they said . . . when they said that it was your sister, and that we had to come here . . . it was like a prison sentence, and I never wanted to . . . but I thought, well, I would come, and my friends would come with me to help . . . and I would come . . . and I would say . . .”
“Say what,” cried the Witch, on the edge.
