Chapter Text
THE wind screamed, and Dorothy Gale screamed with it. She'd barely made it inside before the whole world tilted sideways. Toto, her little terrier, was crushed against her chest, both of them shaking so violently she couldn't tell where her tremors ended, and his began. The front door slammed shut. Or maybe she'd slammed it. Everything was too fast, too loud, too wrong.
"Auntie Em!" The wind swallowed her voice like it was nothing. "Uncle Henry!"
The house gave a long, low groan, like some great animal in pain. The floor pitched. Dorothy stumbled, hit the wall, dropped to her knees, and crawled toward her bed. It was the only solid thing left in a world gone completely mad. The roar was everywhere. Inside her head, inside her bones. Then the house lurched.
Dorothy's stomach dropped clear through to her toes. Twelve years old, and this was the end of everything. She was going to die in a cyclone right here in Kansas, and all those dreams would die with her. All those wishes she'd made on stars during sticky summer nights, lying in the grass and staring up at that great big sky, wishing she could see what was on the other side of the horizon, wishing the world was bigger than grey fields and grey skies and the same grey days over and over. They'd just blow away with the wind.
Through the storm's howl, a different voice surfaced, kind and distant, as if it were coming from another world. The man by the campfire who'd smiled at her as if she mattered. The man who hadn't minded when Toto gobbled down one of his hot dogs. Professor Marvel.
They don't understand you at home, Professor Marvel had said, his eyes shining above the crystal ball. They don't appreciate you. You want to see other lands, big cities, big mountains, big oceans.
At the time, stumbling across the old man and his caravan after running away, it had felt like magic. Like someone had finally seen her. But then he'd looked into that crystal ball and told her Aunt Em was sick, crying and clutching her heart and dropping down onto her bed. Dorothy had run. Run all the way back home through the gathering storm, desperate to say she was sorry, that she didn't mean it, that she loved her. Now those words twisted in her chest.
"I didn't mean it." She gripped Toto tighter and squeezed her eyes shut. "I just wanted to see her again, I just wanted to go home! "
The window exploded. Glass shards flew through the room. Dorothy screamed and buried her face in the mattress, arms over her head, while Toto barked and barked right next to her, like her brave little dog could scare the cyclone away. The wind howled through the broken window, cold and mean, pulling at her dress, her hair, everything. Something crashed in the kitchen. Dishes, maybe. Maybe the whole stove. Dorothy couldn't make herself look. Tears blurred her vision, and she grabbed Toto with both arms because he was warm and real, and if they were going to die up here, at least she wouldn't be alone.
"I'm sorry!" The words gasped out between sobs. "I'm so, so sorry!"
The spinning got worse. Dorothy's stomach twisted in knots. She pressed her face into that old quilt and tried not to think about how high up they must be, or how far they'd fall when the house remembered it wasn't supposed to be flying. She'd heard about cyclones plenty of times. Everyone in Kansas had. She'd seen that awful green sky and run for the cellar, and Uncle Henry would tell her stories to keep her from being too frightened. But she'd never been inside one before. Never felt how big and mean and alive a storm could be. Now she understood why the grown men went quiet when they talked about the twister of '89, the one that took half of Abilene right off the map. More glass shattered. The good mirror in Aunt Em and Uncle Henry's bedroom, maybe. Dorothy flinched with every crash, certain the next one would be the house coming apart completely, her tumbling through empty air until—
No. Don't think about that.
Time didn't work right anymore. Five minutes or five hours, she couldn't tell. She just held Toto and the quilt and prayed in broken pieces, the Our Father all mixed up with please let me live, and I'll be so good, I promise, and I love you, Aunt Em. The words stopped meaning anything after a while, just noise competing with noise. Then, little by little, the roar began to fade. Not stop, just change. It got quieter. Softer somehow. The spinning slowed. The house still moved, but not the wild way it had before. Almost gentle now. Almost like floating. Houses didn't float, of course. But her stomach gave that same swoop it used to when Uncle Henry picked her up and spun her around, and for just a second, she almost believed it could.
Dorothy kept her face buried in the quilt long after, too scared to move. Her whole body ached from being so tense. Her throat was raw, her face wet with tears.
Toto squirmed and whined.
"Shh." Her voice came out scratchy and small. "It's alright, darling. Just stay still with me."
But Toto wriggled right out of her arms and jumped down, toenails clicking on the wood floor as he trotted toward the broken window.
"Toto, no!" She lunged after him, reaching for his collar and missing. "You'll fall!"
She got to the window and froze in fear. They were still in the air. Dorothy grabbed the windowsill, head spinning, everything going grey at the edges for a moment before she locked her knees and forced herself to keep looking. The house drifted through the sky like it weighed nothing at all, floating over a landscape so bright it hurt to look at. Fields of flowers stretched out below in colors she'd never seen before: purples that shimmered, blues that glowed, reds so vivid they looked painted. Trees with silver and gold leaves swayed in a breeze she couldn't feel. In the distance, hills rolled like green waves, and beyond them, mountains rose with snow-covered peaks that sparkled like diamonds. Beautiful. Impossible.
"This can't be real."
Toto wagged his tail and sniffed at the strange air coming through the broken window like this was the most wonderful adventure he'd ever had.
Dorothy pressed her hand to her mouth. Part of her wanted to look away, to close her eyes and pretend none of this was happening. But another part, the part that used to lie in the grass staring at the stars and dreaming of far-off places, couldn't stop drinking it in. It was terrifying. It was gorgeous. It was everything she'd ever wanted to see and nothing she'd ever imagined.
The house kept drifting, slower now. Gentler. She wanted to go home. Wanted her own grey Kansas dirt and Aunt Em's tired smile and Uncle Henry's rough, kind hands and everything that made sense. But some small, guilty part of her whispered that she'd asked for this, hadn't she? Wished for it on every star. Be careful what you wish for, Aunt Em always said.
The house began to descend. Slowly at first, then faster. Dorothy's stomach lurched. She grabbed Toto, stumbling back from the window and dropping down by her bed. Braced for the crash, for splintering wood and the end of everything. When the house touched down, it barely made a sound. Just a soft thump and a gentle shudder, like setting down Aunt Em's best china teacup.
Dorothy sat on the floor, hugging Toto close, waiting for her heart to slow down.
She heard only silence. That awful roar was gone. The wind had stopped. Everything was still. For the longest time, she didn't dare move. Her ears rang in all that quiet, a hollow hum where the storm had been. She could hear her own breathing, short and quick, and the tiny scrape of Toto's paws on the floorboards. The house smelled like dust and rain and the sharp tang of something broken.
A single piece of glass from the window glinted beside her, catching sunlight. She picked it up without thinking, turning it between her fingers. Beautiful in the strangest way. Clear and fragile and dangerous all at once.
"Toto?" Her voice came out small. "Are we okay?"
Toto licked her face and wriggled in her arms, wanting down. Wanting to explore. Because dogs didn't worry about impossible things.
Dorothy got to her feet on legs that barely wanted to hold her. Everything ached. She smoothed her dress out of habit, fingers snagging on the torn hem, and told herself that was fine. The door was right there. All she had to do was open it. Maybe it was still Kansas on the other side. Maybe they'd blown a few miles and landed in somebody's cornfield, and this would all be a story she'd tell someday. Maybe.
But she'd seen that sky. Those colors. And no cornfield in Kansas ever looked like that. No place in Kansas ever looked like that. No place she'd ever seen or dreamed of, not even on those sticky summer nights when she'd lie in the grass and wish with everything she had to end up somewhere on the other side of the rainbow.
Her hand found the doorknob. Oh. Oh, she had a feeling she was going to get her wish.
"Well, Toto." She tried to sound braver than she felt. "Here we go."
Dorothy opened the door and stepped over the threshold. The colors hit her like a physical thing, so vivid they made Kansas look like it had been drawn in pencil and someone had just now added paint. The sky was blue, the kind of blue that belonged in fairy tale books. The grass glowed green. Flowers grew everywhere in wild tangles that shouldn't work together but somehow did, purples and yellows and reds all mixed up and beautiful. The air smelled sweet, like honey and fresh bread and perfect summer mornings all rolled into one.
And there were people. Small people, dressed like farmers, all standing there staring at her house.
Dorothy took one careful step forward, then another. Toto ran ahead, barking. She opened her mouth to apologize, to ask where she was, to beg for help.
Before she could speak or even introduce herself, one of them, a man with reddish-brown curls peeking from under his hat, pointed at her house and shouted.
"The house! Look under the house!"
They all rushed forward. Dorothy stumbled back, suddenly frightened. But they weren't looking at her. They were looking at something sticking out from beneath the farmhouse.
Feet. Two feet in black pointed shoes with silver buckles.
Dorothy's stomach dropped. "No," she breathed. She'd killed someone. Her house had fallen right on top of someone. "I'm so sorry, oh no, please, I-I didn't mean to, there was a cyclone, and I couldn't control where it went, I didn't know anyone was here!"
But the people weren't angry. They were cheering. Dancing. Singing in a language she'd never heard, tossing handfuls of blue flowers into the air that drifted down like bits of sky. Dorothy caught one in her palm. It smelled sharp and almost too sweet to bear. She let it fall. How could they be celebrating when someone was dead?
"You've killed the Wicked Witch of the East!" one of them cried, tears of joy streaming down his freckled face. "You've freed us!"
"Witch?" The word came out faint.
The wind shifted. A strange hush fell over the crowd, so sudden that Dorothy's ears rang with it. Every last one of those little people turned at once, eyes lifting toward the sky. Something shimmered above them, soft pink at first, then brighter and brighter, like sunlight caught in crystal. The air hummed.
A voice floated down, light and musical.
"Of course you didn't mean to, dear!"
Dorothy looked up. A bubble was drifting toward them, huge and glimmering, catching every color of light like the soap bubbles she used to blow behind the house. It floated lower and lower until she could see her own reflection bending across its surface. The people gasped and stepped back, bowing low. The bubble touched the ground and popped with a sound like wind chimes.
A woman stepped out, and Dorothy forgot how to breathe. She was the most beautiful person Dorothy had ever seen in her whole entire life, more beautiful than anyone she'd imagined even in her best dreams.
Her gown caught the light like it was made of actual stars. Her hair curled in perfect strawberry waves. Her skin was smooth as the inside of a seashell, and the crown on her head blazed so bright Dorothy had to squint just to look at it. She was smiling. A big, lovely painted smile, the kind you saw on the faces of ladies in portrait paintings, beautiful and gracious and somehow just slightly too perfect, like it had been arranged there very carefully and would stay exactly where it was put.
Dorothy's heart leapt into her throat. She glanced at Toto nervously. "Now I know we're not in Kansas."
The woman's eyes found hers across the crowd, warm and bright and completely certain, the way grown-ups always looked when they already knew every answer to every question you hadn't even asked yet. She glided forward, pink skirts swishing softly against the flowers.
"Hello, my dear." Her voice was light and sugary as spun candy. She gave a little wave, dainty and graceful. "I am Glinda, the Good Witch of the North."
Dorothy's eyes went round. "A witch? But witches aren't real. They're just stories." She looked at Glinda, at the sparkly salmon-pink dress and the wand and the shining crown, then around at the little people and all those impossible colors. "And witches are supposed to be old and ugly!"
Glinda's laugh tinkled like bells. "Oh, my dear, only bad witches are ugly."
Dorothy's mouth fell open. She didn't quite know what to do with that.
The Good Witch of the North stepped closer, pink skirts swishing. "Now tell me, are you a good witch, or a bad witch?"
"Me?" Dorothy shook her head fast. "I'm not any kind of witch. I'm just Dorothy. From Kansas."
"Kansas?" Glinda's smile didn't waver, but her wand gave a little flick, impatient. "I'm afraid I don't know where that is, dear. You're in Oz now, the Land of Oz." She tilted her head. "It's usually witches who drop houses on people, you know. The Munchkins called me because a new witch just dropped a house on the Wicked Witch of the East." She gestured with her wand at the house, then at Dorothy, then down at the stockinged feet. "There's the house, here you are, and that's all that's left of her."
Dorothy looked where Glinda pointed. At the feet beneath the house. The striped stockings. The shoes.
Her chest felt tight. "The house just came down. I couldn't stop it."
"Oh, I'm sure you couldn't." Glinda's tone was light and airy. "How very lucky for you, though. And unlucky for her."
The words stung. Dorothy opened her mouth, then closed it again, but Glinda was already moving on.
"You see, the outcome is what matters to these people. The Wicked Witch of the East is gone, and the Munchkins are free. That makes you a hero, whether you planned it or not."
"Oh no, I'm not a hero," Dorothy said quietly. "I just want to go home."
Glinda's forehead wrinkled. "I'm afraid that's quite beyond my power, dear. That sort of magic is well outside what I can do." She said it brightly, with a note of finality. "But the great Wizard of Oz lives in the Emerald City. If anyone can help you, it would be him."
"A Wizard?" Hope flared in Dorothy's chest. "He could send me home? Back to Kansas?"
"Yes, yes, I'm sure he could." Glinda's smile stayed bright, but something hurried crept into her voice, like she'd had this conversation before and was eager to finish it. "Which is why you should start right away. The Emerald City is quite a distance from here. You'll need to follow the Yellow Brick Road."
She pointed with her wand, and Dorothy turned to see a road made of actual yellow bricks, winding off into the distance.
"Just follow that road, and you'll find the Wizard. Now then..." Glinda's gaze drifted back toward the house. "Before I go, there's one more thing."
Dorothy's stomach churned as Glinda walked to the farmhouse, skirts swishing. The Good Witch bent down carefully and pulled the shoes right off the dead woman's feet. The slippers slid off easily, and the feet crumbled away into dust that blew off on the breeze, leaving nothing but a black dress.
"The Wicked Witch of the East's silver shoes!" Glinda drifted closer, holding them out. They caught the light, shimmering and strange. "They're ever so powerful, though what sort of magic they hold, I really couldn't say. They were hers, and now she's gone." A soft, chiming laugh. "So they belong to you, my dear."
As Glinda spoke, the silver shoes vanished from her hands and appeared on Dorothy's feet.
Dorothy looked down at them, gleaming in the sunlight. They felt warm. Alive, almost. "Wait, I don't understand. How long will it take to reach the Emerald City? What if I get lost?"
Glinda's smile didn't waver. "Oh, my dear, you'll manage beautifully. Just follow the Yellow Brick Road and keep your chin up."
"But I don't even know which way to start!"
Glinda gave a gentle laugh, already stepping into another bubble that shimmered into being beside her.
"My dear, that's the easiest part of all. Simply begin." She lifted her wand in a delicate farewell. "You and little Dodo will be quite all right. Goodbye!"
The bubble rose, catching sunlight as it drifted away. Dorothy stood watching her go, feeling small and alone despite the crowd around her. The Munchkins were still singing, still celebrating, but she barely heard them. She looked down at Toto, who looked back up with his tongue hanging out, happy as could be.
"Well, Toto." Her voice shook. "I guess we're not in Kansas anymore."
She turned toward the Yellow Brick Road. Those silver shoes felt strange on her feet, humming with magic she didn't understand. Behind her, the Munchkins cheered. Ahead, the yellow bricks stretched toward a horizon she couldn't see.
Dorothy took a breath. She wasn't a hero. She was just a girl who wanted to go home. But if following this road was the only way back to Aunt Em and Uncle Henry, then she'd walk it. However far it took. She stepped onto the first yellow brick. The shoe pulsed against her foot, warm and alive.
Toto trotted beside her, little legs already moving like he knew where they were going.
The cheers of the Munchkins faded behind them. The road gleamed ahead, winding through fields of flowers toward distant green hills. One foot in front of the other. Follow the yellow bricks and hope the Wizard could send her home.
"Come on, Toto," she said softly. "Let's go find this Wizard."
And far to the west, a shadow turned its face toward her.