Oz Reimagined: New Tales from the Emerald City and Beyond Read online

  The next morning we began the most intensive training we had yet received. Do you know, little sis, how to kill someone with a pocket comb, or a mirror, or even a handkerchief—everyday items that a girl might carry in her purse? Do you know how to pick any lock with a hairpin, or make a bomb out of ordinary household ingredients? Well, I do! Glinda’s guards aren’t just soldiers—they’re spies. We were trained by a roly-poly sergeant who could flip any of us on our backs before you could say “Boo!” I can tell you that we gave each other many bruises! At the end of the day, I would lie in one of the baths, in rose-scented water, to ease my aching muscles.

  When we had been at Glinda’s palace for about a month, we were told that Glinda herself wanted to see us. I thought we would be taken to a throne room of some sort, but instead we were shown into a pleasant parlor. There were sofas and armchairs upholstered in rose chintz, and on the low tables were trays with heart-shaped cookies and chocolate cake. There was also a cut-glass bowl of strawberry punch. As we stood in that room, not quite sure what to do with ourselves, Glinda herself entered. She looked about our age, although I’ve heard that she’s more than a thousand years old. She wore a long rose-colored gown and a gold crown on her head. She was not as beautiful as Ozma—at least, she looked less like a film star and more like a Sunday school teacher, with calm gray eyes. She said, “Girls, please pour yourselves some punch and take some cookies and cake. And then sit down and make yourselves comfortable. I’ve asked you here because I like to get to know my new recruits.”

  I piled cake and cookies on my plate—the training had made me hungry! We all sat—some of us on sofas, some in armchairs, some on the floor. When we were all comfortably seated, Glinda said, “Girls, I’d like to hear your stories.” So we went around the room and all told where we had come from before we came to Oz.

  Oh Dottie! What some of those girls had gone through. I felt ashamed of myself, telling the made-up story of Sally Russell. Some of the girls cried and held each other, and I could see that sometimes tears flowed silently down Glinda’s cheeks, although she remained silent.

  “Thank you girls for sharing your stories,” she said when we had all spoken. “You have gone through pain and loss and grief. I hope that here, at my palace and in Oz, you will find what you have so often missed in the outer world—a sense of sisterhood and of family.” Before we left she embraced each one of us.

  “I feel so much better now,” said Joan when we were back in the barracks, sitting on our bunks. “As though my heart were lighter. Listen to me! Can you believe I just said that?” And you know? It was the first time I had seen her actually smile.

  That night I couldn’t sleep. I lay awake in the darkness, remembering the stories those girls had told; one had shown us cigarette burns up and down her arms.

  The next morning, before the other recruits were awake, I went to the sergeant’s quarters. She was already awake, of course, doing her calisthenics. “I need to talk to Glinda,” I said.

  She looked at me for a moment, keenly, then nodded. “Glinda will be in her study,” she said. “If you’re not sure of the way, ask one of the porters.”

  I did have to ask one of the porters, a girl in a rose-colored dress and ruffled apron, who was mopping the marble staircase. She led me to Glinda’s study and opened the door. Glinda sat at her desk, doing whatever sorceresses do in the mornings. I walked up to her, boldly enough, and said, “I’m not Sally Russell.”

  “Who are you, then?” she asked with a kind look on her face.

  “My name is Eleanor Dale, and I’m a reporter for the San Francisco Ledger. I came here under false pretenses so I could figure out where all the missing girls had gone. Are you going to have me court-martialed?”

  Glinda smiled. “My dear, I knew all this long before you arrived at my palace. I was waiting to see if you would tell me.”

  I stared at her. “How did you know?”

  “I have a book that tells me everything that happens, all over the world. It told me you were coming here as soon as you thought of it yourself. The words appeared on the pages of the book as though written by an invisible pen. I do wish it had an index—it can be most unwieldy to use.”

  “But then why did you let me come into Oz, and come here from the Emerald City?”

  “Because you’re a brave girl, and I thought that we could use you on our side. Anyway, if your letters had fallen into the wrong hands, Ozma could simply have wished them to disappear. But you’re willing to fight for us now, aren’t you, Eleanor? To fight for Oz and everything it represents?”

  I nodded. “Should I go back and join the others in the barracks, then?”

  “No,” said Glinda. “I let you train with my guards until you were ready to tell me the truth, but now that you’ve shown your honesty and loyalty, I have a more important task for you. We need someone to write about the war effort, to create leaflets and pamphlets and articles for the Emerald City Daily and all the smaller newspapers in Munchkin Country and the other countries of Oz. You’ll be syndicated, my dear.”

  Well, you can imagine what I thought of that!

  So here I am, sitting in my office in Ozma’s palace in the Emerald City. Later today I have an interview with Professor H.M. Wogglebug, who developed the Wogglebug strategy, and then I’m reviewing the troops with General Betsy Bobbin and touring a Tik-Tok Man factory. And I’m meeting Scraps the Patchwork Girl for dinner, but that’s just because we’re friends. Oh, and you won’t believe this—I found Mary Lang! She’s in the Munchkin division and is becoming a demolitions expert. She says she’s happy here in Oz and looking forward to contributing to the war effort. She wanted to let the real Sally Russell know that she was all right, and I said the Shaggy Man could post a letter for her.

  I can’t wait to see you and Mamsie again! I have a lovely apartment here in the Emerald City, which I’m sure you will both love. And I will be glad to know that you’re safe in the coming months as Ozma begins her invasion of California. I’m looking forward to covering the siege of San Francisco! Remember, the Gump is perfectly safe, and the Shaggy Man will be with you the whole time. See you soon, darling!

  Your loving sis,

  Nell (Royal War Correspondent of Oz)

  THE BOY DETECTIVE OF OZ: AN OTHERLAND STORY

  BY TAD WILLIAMS

  It was hard to imagine anything was actually wrong here.

  It was the nicest Kansas spring anyone could imagine, the broad prairie sky patched with cottony white clouds. Redbuds cheeky as schoolchildren waved their pink blooms in a momentary breeze, and a huge white oak spread an umbrella of shade over the road and for quite a distance on each side.

  As he crossed a little wooden bridge, Orlando Gardiner saw the birches rustling along the edge of the stream, exchanging secrets with the murmuring water. The stream itself was bright and clear, flowing over large, smooth rocks of many colors and festooned with long tendrils of moss that undulated in the current. Fish swam below him and birds flew above him and it seemed like it would be May in this spot forever.

  But if everything was as nice as it looked, why was he here?

  To: HK [Hideki Kunohara]

  From: OG [Orlando Gardiner, System Ranger!]

  RE: field dispatch, kansas simworld

  i’m sub-vocalizing this while i’m actually onsite investigating, so sorry for any confusion. i know you think the kansas world was hopelessly corrupted from the first, and if it really has gone bad you’ll utterly have my vote to de-rez it, but first impressions are that everything looks pretty good here, so let me finish checking it out before we make any moves. Like you said, I’m “the one who’ll have to deal with the bullshit if it goes wrong,” and that’s what I’m doing.

  He could see the modest roofs and central spire of Emerald in the distance, everything as neat and well kept as a town in a model railroad. The first time he had seen this place, it had looked like something out of a medieval painting of hell: dry, blasted, cratered as if it had been b
ombed, and populated with creatures so wretched and freakish they might have been the suffering damned. But it was the only Oz simulation in the Otherland network, and Orlando had fought hard to keep it running; it was good to see it thriving. Oz had meant a lot to him when he was a kid confined to a sickbed. When he had been alive.

  But that still didn’t answer the main question: If everything was good in Kansas, why had he been summoned?

  Whatever the reason, someone seemed to be waiting for him. She would have sparkled if the sun had been on her, but since the Glass Cat was sitting in the shade grooming, Orlando didn’t see her until he was almost on top of her. She looked up at Orlando but didn’t stop until she had finished licking her glass paw and smoothing down the fur on her glass face. The Glass Cat might be a sim of a cat—and a see-through cat at that—but she was every inch a feline. The only things that kept her from looking like a cheap glass paperweight were her beautiful ruby heart, her emerald eyes, and the pink, pearl-like spheres that were her brains (and also her own favorite attribute).

  “I expected you to show up,” said the Glass Cat. “But not this quickly.”

  “I was in the area.” Which was both true and nonsensical, since there really was no distance for Orlando to travel. He existed only as information on the massive network and could visit any world he wanted whenever he chose. But as far as the Glass Cat and the others were concerned, there was only one world—this one. The sims didn’t even realize they were no longer connected to the Oz part of the simulation, although they remembered it as if they were. “I hear there’s a problem,” he said. “Do you know what it is?”

  She rose, swirling her tail in the air as gracefully as if it had not been solid glass, and sauntered off the path, heading down toward the stream. “Am I supposed to follow you?” he asked.

  She tossed him an emerald glance of reproach. “You’re so very clever, man from Oz. What do you think?”

  Following a snippy, transparent cat, he thought: Just another day in my new and unfailingly weird life. Orlando’s body had died from a wasting disease as he and others had struggled against the Grail Brotherhood, the network’s creators, a cartel of rich monsters and other greedy bastards all looking for eternal life in worlds they made for themselves. But now they were all gone, and this was Orlando’s forever instead.

  “I hope this is important, Cat,” he said as he followed her down the embankment, into the rustle of the birch trees. “I’ve got plenty of other things to do.” And he did. Major glitches had looped Dodge City—the simulated outlaws had been robbing the same simulated train for days—and the gravity had unexpectedly reverted to Earth-normal in one of the flying worlds, leaving bodies all over the ground. He planned to fob at least one of the problems off on Kunohara, who, like most scientists, loved fiddling with that sort of programming problem.

  “There,” the Cat said, stopping so suddenly he nearly tripped over her. “What do you think of that?”

  Orlando was so irritated by her tone that for a moment he didn’t see what she was talking about, but then he noticed a leg and the long, curled toe of a boot lying half-hidden in the tall wheatgrass. “Ho Dzang,” he said softly. “Who is it? Do you know?”

  “I think it’s Omby Amby.”

  “The Soldier with the Green Whiskers? The Royal Army of Oz?”

  “If you mean the Royal Policeman of Kansas, then yes,” the Cat said. “You know we don’t use those titles and such from the Old Country.” She yawned. “I found him this morning.”

  “What were you doing way out here?” Orlando bent down. The top half of the body was still hidden by grasses, but he could see enough of the man’s slender torso and green uniform to be sadly certain the Cat was right.

  “I get around.” She rose and writhed herself in and out of Orlando’s legs. “I travel, you know. I see things. I learn things. I’m curious by nature—isn’t that why you chose me to help you?”

  “I suppose.” As far as he was concerned, she was merely an informant, but of course the Glass Cat would see herself as more important than that. He bent lower to pull back the grasses. “But if you really want to help me, you’d stop bumping m—”

  He never finished his sentence. As he exposed the rest of the green-clad figure, Orlando Gardiner was arrested by the sudden realization that while this might indeed be the body of Omby Amby, Royal Policeman of Kansas, that was all it was; his neck ended in a cut as neat and bloodless as if someone had chopped a potato in half with a surgical knife. His head and famous long whiskers were nowhere to be seen.

  okay, it’s a little worse than I first thought, mr. k—there’s a body. but it’s a minor character, and it might just be an ordinary glitch. My cover story (about being sent by ozma from oz) still holds up though, so give me a little time with this one. i promise I’ll get to the other fenfen soon. Maybe you should check out dodge city in the meantime—i think that one has some major programming screwups, because the bridge there fell down and then put itself back up a few months ago, and the native americans are kind of blue-colored. looks hopeless to me, but you might notice something in the numbers I missed.

  “Most disturbing!” declared Scarecrow. The Mayor of Emerald shifted in his chair, but his legs wouldn’t stay where he left them and kept getting in his way. His friend the Patchwork Girl leaped forward and helped push them into place. “And where is the body of poor Omby Amby now?”

  “Being examined by Professor Wogglebug,” said Orlando. “Well, all of it that we have, since the head’s missing. Amby worked for you, didn’t he?”

  “Of course!” Scarecrow said. “I’m the mayor, aren’t I?” But although he sounded indignant, Scarecrow seemed to lack the spirit to back it up, slumping in his chair like a bag of old washing. His lethargy worried Orlando, reminding him unpleasantly of the bloated, monstrous version of the Scarecrow that had ruled Emerald in the bad old simulation. “And his head’s gone, you say?”

  “Yes. Professor Wogglebug says he’s never seen anything like it.”

  “He would say that,” declared the Patchwork Girl, turning cartwheels around the mayoral office. “He’s got a terrible memory!” She was not the most focused personality in the simworld, but her heart was good, so Orlando did his best to be patient. That was why he had taken the job instead of leaving it to short-tempered Hideki Kunohara—you had to be very, very patient, because the inhabitants were like weird children frozen in the manners of the early twentieth century.

  “Scraps, your foolishness is making my head hurt,” Scarecrow complained. “Please stop revolving like a Catherine wheel. This is serious. Omby Amby is dead! Murdered!”

  “Hah!” shouted the Patchwork Girl. “Now you’re the one who’s being foolish, Scarecrow. Nobody dies here in Kansas, just like nobody dies in Oz! Right, Orlando?”

  The question caught him by surprise. “I’m not sure, Scraps,” he said. “I’ve certainly never heard of anything like this happening since…” He had almost said since the simulation was restarted, which would have only confused his listeners. “Well, since forever, I guess. Was he on some kind of mission for you, Mayor Scarecrow?”

  “Mission?” Scarecrow gave him an odd look. “What would make you ask such a thing?”

  “Well, he’s your police chief. In fact he’s your only policeman. He was found on the road that leads to Forest. I thought you might have sent him to Lion about something.”

  The Scarecrow wrinkled his feed-sack brow and shook his head. “No. Though I did send him to Tinman a few days ago to ask him to stop making such a pounding in his factory at night. The people of Emerald are having trouble sleeping!”

  For the second time in a few moments, Orlando felt a tingle of unease. What was Tinman building, working his machines at such hours? The metal man had been one of the worst parts of the corrupted simulation. But this wasn’t the same Tinman, he reminded himself; the Kansas world had been restarted and returned to its original specs months ago.

  “I suppose I’d better talk
to Tinman,” Orlando said out loud. “Lion, too.”

  “I’ll come along,” the Glass Cat announced. “I like a little excitement, you know.”

  Orlando wanted to check in at the Wogglebug’s Scientific University and Knowledge Emporium, so he and the Cat made their way through the quaint streets of Emerald, a strange hybrid of Oz and an early-twentieth-century Kansas town, full of cheerful people and animals and stolid little houses decorated with all kinds of fantastic trim and paint.

  The Wogglebug was bending over the soldier’s headless body, which had been laid out on a table in his laboratory, but the man-sized bug (although there was never a real insect who looked anything like him) turned to greet them as they entered. Professor Wogglebug was wearing his usual top hat but also a pair of magnifiers that made his eyes seem huge, as well as a lab apron to protect his fancy waistcoat and tails.

  “Goodness!” said the bug. “I can make nothing of it, Orlando! Look, he is completely de-headed. Not be-headed, though, which would have been much messier. The head has come off as neat as a whistle.”

  The Cat leaped onto the table and walked once around the body, sniffing. “Is he really dead?”

  “Hard to say.” The Wogglebug wiped his magnifiers on his coat. “He does not breathe. He does not move. He certainly cannot speak or think. It seems an awkward way to continue living, if by choice.”

  man, how do we figure out something like this if we can’t even figure out whether a sim’s really dead or not? i mean simworld-dead, of course—he’s not really dead since his patterns are still in the system, and we could just restart him.