A selection from "The King of Oz" by Martin Rose

The King of Oz

by Martin Rose

O

h, how she loved the fire.

   Blue into yellow, into orange and red. Her temperature ran cold           like her blood, but the flame gave life, parted her lips and drew her breath in fast, hitching with anticipation. In the burn ward, she continued to play with fire, and in the haze, David Gale flinched and repelled at the sound.

Click, click.

The steady click-click of a hand-held lighter permeated his dreams, his nightmares; he smelled lighter fluid, saw the flame between small, feline fingers, a wide, gray eye watching him beneath her bandages.

He woke up long enough to ask her if he was dying. She laughed and pressed her soft hand on his unburnt arm. The touch reassured, soothed, and awakened ancient memories of his mother with Scarecrow in the field.

He slept without rest or satisfaction, skin like crispy fried chicken, pulled taut over his muscles and organs. He breathed in the steady rhythm that reflected his pain, breathe in, throb, breathe out, throb. He hit the morphine button, a fresh stream of opiates entered his blood, and he fell into dissatisfied sleep once more.

He dreamt of the burning house, trapped with the black-haired woman, his fire fighter uniform ablaze, until only ashes remained.       

By now, David Gale understood he was not human.

They skirted his dreadful secret with gauze and Demerol. His skin pulled apart like Christmas wrapping paper, tendrils of straw visible beneath his skin — snapped strands working their way through his wounds. How long until they found him out, while he lay like a slab of cooked meat on the gurney?

His weeping skin pulsed and throbbed as he pulled back the gauze. He groaned, his naked wound exposed to the cruel air while he fumbled with the IV drip, pulling it from his skin with a hiss, his motions weak and numb with drugs.

He came face to face with the pyro, a swatch of bloody, pus-filled gauze in his fingers.

Fear bloomed; he could not stop her as she leaned over him, pushing his weak fingers away where he had torn the dressing apart. Her hair and skin, burned away, and the twisting scars of flesh peeked from a mire of bandages, covering the eye the doctors could not replace.

“You shouldn’t tear yourself up like that, you —”

She stopped and stared.

You got beneath the skin, didn’t you?

He thought it; in the next moment, he realized he’d spoken.

She reached for the button on the wall, but he summoned the strength to take her hand, snapping it out of the air.

“Don’t call them,” he hissed.

“You’ve got straw in—”

“I know. It’s me. It’s me, don’t you get it?”

She did not.

“It’s a part of me.”

She stared at the open skin, burned and melted like mozzarella on an overdone pizza, with bits of straw poking up through the surface. She extended a hand, and he felt the cool pad of her finger against the inside of him. He shuddered.

She withdrew her finger.

“Keep it secret,” he begged.

He steeled himself for screams, for the doctor and a thousand curious scalpels come to tear him apart; but to his astonishment, the pyromaniac said nothing, but pulled up a stool and sat beside him. She played with her lighter, passing her fingertips through the flames with an expression of ecstasy, her lips parted in her freakish, burned face.

He passed out.

He dreamt; a place he has never seen.

His bare toes sink into an unfamiliar earth, but he feels, deep in his blood and his marrow, that he does know it; that this grass and this sky call and pull and suck at him, want him for their own. A few steps more, and he could be there, he could be in the place his mother dared not let him venture, the place the Scarecrow could not return to.

He takes a step, one following after the other, happy to leave behind him a thousand sorrows, his mother’s tears and the Scarecrow nailed on the cross in the field, with the lopsided smile. Happy to forget the persistent stare of the Scarecrow’s mismatched eyes that found him through rain storms, through warm summer evenings while he played, and window panes as he bent over homework — his presence destroying each moment as it elapsed.

On his right, the cornfield extends into Oz, and a groaning reaches him. Dust swirls around his bare feet as he stops, and turns to confront the scarecrow by the side of the yellow brick road. A quick glance ahead of him reveals an endless line of crucified scarecrows leading into an infinite distance, all the way to Emerald City.

He moves toward it — the world eclipses, coalesces and fades, and the scarecrow calls out to him—

The pyro’s voice.

He turned his head and saw her. She wore a wig, whose loose hair clung to her face, and she looked tired as she leaned over him. She looked younger without the bandages covering her burns and scars; he could see enough unburnt skin to know she had once been beautiful. Her nose remained intact, but her left eye was gone; above that, a rising surface of ropy scar tissue that moved into her scalp.

He didn’t ask her to see where she had brought him; he was back in the house in Kansas.

What had compelled her to bring him to this place? She didn’t know about the harsh violence of this world in the Midwest, the sowing, the reaping, the scarecrow nailed in every field and the worst one yet to come, the straw man of his youth: The Scarecrow.

She reached up and pulled the hair at her cheek, thick and black. It slid from her scalp, and he watched, mute, until her head was naked beneath the weak light of the bare bulb.

“You passed out, and I put my ear against your chest. What I heard was a heart; but not a human heart.”

Her voice trembled.

“Not a human heart. Something more fragile, packed in sawdust and straw. I took your chart, and all the pages, and when I saw your grandmother’s name —”

“Gale . . .”

The word escaped from him in a sigh. He turned away from her, thinking about the straw beneath his skin, harboring a thousand memories he could not voice — the curse of that name, and the Scarecrow. He did not have the words to express a youth endured as a stranger in his own home, a suspicious interloper of Oz blood, with his mother’s eyes, but not her husband’s heart.       

“It’s not a fairy tale. It . . . claims you. Takes you. Destroys you. You call this straw life? How long do you think my lifespan is?” He touched the bandages, where the pain flared beneath his fingers, and he turned away, biting his lower lip.

The pyro flicked the lighter open, and the flame licked upwards. She enjoyed it with her eyes.

“When I was ten, I set a chicken coop on fire. It happened by accident, and I never told anyone about it. I began to look differently at fire, and all it was capable of—and it seemed an itch I could not scratch, I thought about those bright, glowing embers whenever my life was heading in the wrong direction. I was never abused, or beaten, or hurt, I don’t take drugs and I don’t even drink. Some people are doctors, or artists, or scientists—but I love fire.”

Her hand moved over the burnt and coarse surface of her scalp, where the skin was mottled and distressed.

“I have never belonged here,” she spoke with a burst of passion. “I have never belonged in this boring, ordinary world, and I said to myself, what kind of person puts out fires? I imagined you were a soulless sort, an empty-headed fool, set to extinguish everything I set alight.”

With a shaking voice she described her failed suicide attempt by fire, her crushing disappointment to encounter David in the smoke, pulling her through the square of light and back to the life she disavowed.

“If you’re going to save my life, make it worth the effort — take me to Oz; take me to the Witch, or I’ll set the world on fire.”

A selection from "Scarecrow's Sunrise" by Gef Fox

Scarecrow’s Sunrise

by Gef Fox

T

he sackcloth of a long night’s sky turned to a bruised crimson of a
coming dawn. Mazy, a Munchkin farmer, looked through the window
of his workshop and frowned with fatigue and fear. The Good Witch of the North would return when the sun fully rose, and Mazy had yet to finish the scarecrow she had requested he fashion for her. She had been very clear in her request: Have the scarecrow ready by morning. When I return, you will be rewarded for your efforts.

A headless effigy stuffed with straw lay atop his workbench, as he stood with his back to it. All four boneless, lifeless limbs stretched out from the body, as if racked in a Munchkin’s answer to a torture chamber. The construction of the body had been easy enough. She even provided the clothes to be used. Mazy was skilled in making strawmen, as many watched over his vast cornfields through Munchkinland. This, however, was the first time he had ever made one for someone else. This time for the Witch of the North, no less.

The Good Witch, he reminded himself as he peered through his window.

Before turning back to his task, he noticed the Good Witch’s Tick-Tock Man standing guard at the end of the cartroad to his farm. The mechanical servant had been a stoic guard since the previous evening when Mazy began his work on the scarecrow. A watchful eye afforded by the Witch to be sure no one disturbed him. Mazy couldn’t fathom why it was necessary for a guard to be placed on his property for such a menial task, but that was before he had witnessed the result of his latest creation. He needed to finish the scarecrow and he was running out of time.

“What manner of witchcraft have I tangled myself into?” he whispered.

He stared at his work. Next to the body, above the neck, sat a burlap sack stuffed with straw and bran, as if severed from the body by an axeman. It rested on it’s side, detached from the body, adorned in a singed cap. A single painted eye stared in Mazy’s direction. When it blinked, the old corn farmer winced.

“Be calm, you old coot,” he said.”’Tis nothing but a scarecrow.”

But it wasn’t just a scarecrow. Not this time. The burlap sack which was to be the head was the third Mazy had used through the night. The heads were always the finishing touch—start from the bottom and work your way up, he always told himself. Now, his hands tremored at the thought of going near the thing. The abomination, he thought.

It was well into the night when he started on the first would-be head. He painted a meager grin—a curved line to show a smile was all it was—on the stuffed sack. No sooner had he lifted his narrow paintbrush from the fabric, however, when the grin erupted into animation.

“I can’t see! I’m blind!” it cried out.

Mazy’s heart leaped in his throat and he had visions of an early grave. He snatched the screaming sack by it’s scruff and hurled it into the fire of his stove. He watched it vanish in a fury of flames and sparks. It took ten minutes for his pulse to come back down to something less than a hummingbird’s heartbeat.

Calmed, and sure the apparition of a talking burlap sack was due only to a case of nerves from working for the Good Witch, Mazy started again with a second sack to fashion. Serving the Good Witch of the North was a more intimidating experience than he’d first suspected.

When he started on the second would-be head, he stuffed it with straw and bran by the fistful, as if stuffing a turkey with onions and breadcrumbs. Once he had the general shape of the head he wanted, he reached for his paintbrush again and set about painting a mouth. Nothing fancy this time—if the previous curve of black ink could be called fancy. With a deliberate slash of his brush, he drew a simple straight line. It was less a mouth than a mark to show where a mouth should go. Mazy watched it for a moment, then carried on when he was satisfied there would be no strange movement.

He dabbed the brush into a jar of black paint, ready to start on the nose next.

“What just happened? I felt burning! Am I burning?”

Mazy’s body shuddered and he fell from his perch on the stool. The brush flew from his fingers and struck the wall across the bench. A streak of wet black paint tattooed the wall. He snatched the panic stricken sack with his own panic stricken hands, his heart sending waves of terror through his limbs even more so than before, and hurled the sack into the waiting flames of the fire. It’s screams were silenced by the rush of flames that engulfed it whole.

He looked back at the scarecrow’s puffy, clumsy, and still headless frame, wondering if it too would spring to life. It didn’t move.

“Oh, this is some foul witchcraft,” he said. He wiped his brow while his body trembled.

An ember in the stove cracked like a gunshot, and Mazy let out a yelp akin to a scalded dog and fled into the chilly night air outside his workshop. His goose-fleshed skin became awash in pale blue moonlight. A million and one stars winked knowingly above him. Minute by minute, his breath steadied, as did his heart.

“Ozma, preserve me,” he prayed aloud.

At the mouth of the cartroad, movement. Mazy’s heart bounced in his chest once more, as a shadowy form approached. The Tick-Tock Man came into view with a lurching march. It stopped only inches from the old Munchkin farmer. Mazy took a step back. The Tick-Tock Man looked downward slightly to meet the farmer’s face.

“Is it complete?” it asked with a voice made of mechanical hums, whirs, and clunks. Nothing close to a living voice, but unmistakable. And nothing like the unholy sounds that had come from the scarecrow’s two would-be heads.

“No. No, it ain’t. And it ain’t gonna be,” Mazy answered with a faltering defiance.

“You made an agreement,” the Tick-Tock Man said. It’s gear-ridden face stared blankly.

“Aye, I agreed to make a scarecrow. But, I didn’t agree to have the buggerin’ thing come to life. That Witch of yours has cast a horrible spell on my work, and I’ll have none of it.”

A puff of steam flitted from the side of the Tick-Tock Man’s head.

“You made an agreement.”

“Wizard’s whiskers! I heard you the first time.”

“You must complete your task. War is coming.”

“What? W-war? What in Oz are you on about?”

Another puff of steam came out of the mechanical servant’s head.

“After sunrise. A child soldier will come. The child will kill the Wicked Witch of the East. This child will lead an army that will conquer both East and West.”

Mazy’s jaw gaped. He looked eastward through the waning darkness, in the direction of the Wicked Witch’s castle. It was beyond his sight, hidden behind the rolling hills of Munchkinland, but he saw the first hints of sunrise. And clouds coming with it. A red sky, and growing redder.

The Tick-Tock Man turned it’s head and looked in the same direction.

“The child soldier will come on a cloud. The cloud will be her weapon.”

“Great Glinda. Her? The child soldier is a girl?” A new chill swept Mazy’s spine.

“Yes. It has been prophesied by the Great Wizard.”

A feeling of enormity washed over Mazy, one which dwarfed his initial shock at seeing the scarecrow’s heads come to life.

“That still doesn’t tell me why my scarecrow wants to live,” he said.

“It is not your scarecrow. It is a charm of the Good Witch of the North. To guard the child soldier.” The Tick-Tock Man lumbered past Mazy to the doorway of the workshop and pointed to the workbench and the unfinished strawman.

“Do you see the clothes it wears?” it asked.

“Aye, I see,” Mazy answered, and peered through the shadows. He kept a healthy distance from the door, though.

“It is the uniform of a fallen soldier. A great soldier of Oz who died at the hands of the Wicked Witch of the West, in the battle for the Emerald City many years ago. The Good Witch of the North blessed the remains of the uniform. It now carries the spirit of the soldier.”

Mazy stared into his workshop with wonder. “It surely didn’t sound like a soldier when I painted it’s mouth.”

“It will learn. It will take two days for the soldier’s instincts to return. That’s when it will meet with the child soldier to help lead her army.”

Mazy might have run away at that point if his legs were steady enough or youthful enough. Given his state, all he could do was stand in awe.

“This is too much for an old farmhand like me,” he said.

“You made an agreement,” the Tick-Tock Man said once more. “The scarecrow must be ready by morning. The Wizard of Oz has prophesied it. The Good Witch of the North has blessed it. And you, Mazy of Munchkinland, you will build it.”

He watched in stunned silence as the Tick-Tock Man returned to his post at the mouth of the cartroad. Mazy’s mouth failed him in his desire to protest. Defeated, he walked back into his workshop and fashioned the third burlap sack, which was to be the scarecrow’s head. It was this third head with a single painted eye that watched him now.

It was madness. This abomination. An Oz soldier brought back from beyond death to fight once more. And in the form of a strawman, no less. Now, with the sun slowly rising and the clouds to the east more red than ever, Mazy looked at his work and wondered how he could build such a thing. It was madness.

Then a thought struck him, as the scarecrow’s painted-on eye watched him with unwavering attention. Twice now, he’d torched the living head of the scarecrow, and now the third head lived in silence watching him. The second head had the memories of the first—it had felt the fire not once, but twice. Impossible, but undeniable. This third head, which Mazy had intentionally left mouthless for now—he couldn’t bare to hear it’s panic-stricken voice again—would surely carry the memories again. And the single eye saw it was he who had burned him.

“You’re almost finished, old timer. One way or the other,” Mazy muttered to himself. “Finish what you started and be done with it.”

Either the scarecrow soldier would do him in once finished, or the Good Witch of the North would fail to live up to her name if he defied her request when she returned. Paint a happy face, he thought. Paint a face that couldn’t kill.

He picked up his paintbrush off the floor and wiped it clean. With another dab of black paint, he drew a second egg-shaped circle and splotched a pudgy dot in the center. He drew back and watched, as did the scarecrow’s first eye when it blinked into life. The wet paint that was now a pupil lolled around the borders of the newly drawn eye until it aligned with the first. With one more synchronized blink, they both looked up at Mazy with a wide and relentless stare.

The air in the room became dizzying for a second and Mazy had to steady himself with a hand against the workbench.

“You’re almost finished,” he said.

He dabbed the brush in the paint again and drew an upside-down “V” for a nose, with two small dots as nostrils. He watched it wiggle with life and prayed it couldn’t smell his fear. His hand betrayed him as it refused to hold steady when he dips the brush into the black of the pain one more time. The scarecrow’s eyes watched him the entire time, steady and accusing from under the tattered cap the Good Witch had provided. A piece of a dead soldier’s uniform.

Mazy brought the brush back to the scarecrow’s disembodied head and drew, a final time, a simple straight line that would be it’s mouth. He dropped the paintbrush into a jar of water and distanced himself from his workbench. He watched and waited. He stood his ground several feet from the scarecrow and would have gone back even further if not for the heat of the stove permeating against his backside.

The line he drew was squiggled due to his frayed nerves. It twitched. Even from several feet away, there was no mistaking it. Then, it burst into life with a thunderous, “Ooowww!”

The cry of pain sent Mazy scuttling to the floor for cover, sure he was about to reap what he had sewed.

“That really hurt,” it said. Still detached from the rest of it’s body, the head remained face-up on the bench, looking towards the cobwebbed rafters.

Mazy tentatively rose from his spot on the floor, confused relieved he hadn’t been killed.

“What hurt?” he asked through a hoarse whisper.

“That...burning. What happened then? All I remember is my first words, and then something grabbed me and put me in a hot place. I was covered in...burning.”

The head fidgeted a moment then rolled to it’s side, so it was facing Mazy and the outline of the stove behind him.

“That? I wouldn’t know about that,” Mazy said, dusting himself off. “It must have been someone with a match.”

A selection from "The Fuddles of Oz" by Mari Ness

The Fuddles of Oz

by Mari  Ness

T

he Fuddles scattered themselves as the man approached. Not merely scattered the way regular people might scatter, or even       the way the magical people of Oz, who live, after all, in the finest fairyland of the world, might scatter at the approach of danger, even though for most people in Oz danger was so little known that they had quite forgotten the word.

But the Fuddles were different. They were made of many little pieces of wood, all wonderfully and differently shaped, like a jigsaw puzzle, except more round than most jigsaws. When they saw people, it was their habit to scatter themselves into all of their many pieces, from a few hundred to several thousand, depending upon the person, and then rest patiently in the street, waiting for the viewers to come and patiently piece them together. It had become commonplace for the various Gilikins and Munchkins who lived nearby to come and amuse themselves for awhile putting the tricky pieces together, but after awhile, they came less and less, for even the most avid jigsaw puzzle lover becomes tired of putting the same people back together over and over again.

This was terrible for the Fuddles, who were forced to scatter themselves whenever even just one person came nearby. If that one person had no interest in puzzles, they might find themselves lying scattered for weeks. It became more and more difficult to keep up with cleaning their houses and repairing their pretty fences and doing their knitting. And, the longer they stayed on the ground, dry or wet, the more their little wooden pieces became slightly warped and moldy. For people in Oz may live forever, but that does not mean that they are not subject to things like water and damp, if it continues long enough. And yet they did not want to stop people coming by altogether, for it was only when people came by that they could learn about events elsewhere in Oz, and get the pretty yarns and paints they needed to keep their village beautiful.

So the Fuddles got together, or as many of them that were together, and decided to Advertise.

Advertising is a rare thing in Oz, and the Fuddles were not sure how to do so, but after some time, they made a sign, and asked a Munchkin farmer to place it upon the road. And the Munchkin farmer agreed to do so, of course, because such is the way of Oz.

And sure enough, a few curious travelers stopped by. Among them was a stout Winkie called Tidikins.

The Fuddles scattered when Tidikins approached, and he stepped forward, eager to solve their puzzles and piece them together. But no matter how hard he tried, he could not - he could not put even two pieces of a blue leg together. When evening fell he walked to a nearby village and complained about his hard day.

“Ha ha,” laughed the villagers. For in Oz, it is perfectly acceptable for even the most kindly of souls to laugh at each other, for in so doing not only do the bellies of the overfed Ozites get much needed exercise, but also, the humiliation of being laughed at prevents anyone from becoming too proud, which is the quickest route to injury in Oz. And although no one can die in Oz, injury is still very very painful. “Those Fuddles are so easy that even a two year old may put them together!”

“Our two year olds are much brighter than the average two year olds in the countries outside Oz, I believe,” replied Tidikins, angry at the insult. “For in those countries, two year olds may only be two for one year, but here, the two year olds remain two forever, and thus are able to gain more knowledge and skill than might be expected from them.”

“That is as maybe,” said the villagers, not all that coherently, “but still, it should be easy to put the Fuddles together, even for someone of very low intelligence.”

Determined to prove himself of high intelligence, Tidikins returned to Fuddlecumjig, where the Fuddles lived, and tried again. And again. And again. The other villagers laughed and laughed. For an entire month Tidikins tried, but was unable to put two pieces together. And in his anger he decided to do a Very Wicked Thing, although he himself thought that he was only doing this to protect other inhabitants of Oz.

It is true, as the Royal Historian of Oz has said, that the reason most people are bad is because they do not try to be good. And others are bad out of sheer indifference or forgetfulness. But some are bad because they do not think things through.

For Tidikins was not a bad man, but his inability to put the pieces of Fuddles together, and the way everyone had laughed at him, had so fuddled his brain that he decided that the best thing to do was to hide the entire village of Fuddlecumjig behind a large wall and stick up notices of Danger! Danger! The notices, he knew, would not keep everyone out, since some of the inhabitants of Oz had a tendency to ignore signs saying “Danger” or deciding that they must go past these signs anyway. But this behavior was mostly confined to inhabitants of the Emerald City, and since they had already visited Fuddlecumjig, Tidikins thought that they might not return. (And in this he was quite right.)

Once the wall and the signs were built, Tidikins went off, some say to the Quadling Country, and some say to the Winkie country, and some say to the Emerald City, where he became a pedicurist of some note. For in Oz, nearly everyone must walk, and so nearly everyone has corns, and they were all very glad to have a pedicurist in their midst, especially one who could paint toenails such lovely shades of green.

Meanwhile, the Fuddles stayed scattered in their village, unable to piece themselves together, and unable to see that they were trapped behind a wall without a door, completely hiding their village from anyone who might walk by and see them, lying in helpless pieces everywhere in the village.

The pieces did not worry very much at first. None of them could see the signs posted on the wall:

Do not ENTER on pain of ETERNAL BEFUDDLEMENT

A selection from "One Wicked Day" by Frank Dutkiewicz

One Wicked Day

by Frank Dutkiewicz

C

aw!

“Good morning Mary Ann,” the Wicked Witch of the East said to

the crow sitting on her windowsill. “What are the servants up to this morning?”

“Caw! Caw!”

“Is that so?” She stepped up to the ledge and looked out at her lands from the top spire of her mansion. Laborers were bent over cultivating the crops in the fields. Workers dug and set bricks into the road that connected it to the YBR in the distance. Far off she could see a black cloud from the miners dismantling a mountain to get to the coal within. The sight of the peasants of Oz toiling for her own gains made her smile. “There always has to be at least one slacker, right Mary Ann?”

“Caw!”

The witch slipped on her silver slippers.

“Breakfast does sound like a good idea.”

She closed her eyes and clicked her heels together.

“There’s no place like the kitchen. There’s no place like the kitchen.”

Her sudden appearance caused the cook to scream, once again.

I will never get tired of that.

The gardener, who was seated at the table, spat the orange segment out of his mouth and fell backwards in the chair, landing hard on the stone floor. He quickly rose to his feet, bent on one knee and bowed his head in submission.

The witch stepped up to him and pointed an index finger toward the ceiling inches from his face. An invisible force latched onto his chin and lifted him to his feet. The gardener’s wide eyes stared down at the witch. The tips of his toes balanced on the stone floor. An unmistakable, delightful look of terror spread across his face.

“What makes you think you can help yourself to my pantry?”

“I’m sorry,” he replied through clenched teeth. “It will not happen again.”

“You did not answer my question.” She withdrew her hand.

The gardener dropped to his heels and stumbled back, rubbing his chin. “Most of the fruit rots before it is touched, your Witchiness.”

“I like my fruit rotten. It taste best when fur grows on it.”

“I know you do Ma’am, but I have such a large family and I do not make enough to feed us all. Most of your fruit is used as fertilizer. I did not think you would miss one.”

She was about to say more when the gardener started to sob.

“You have so much and I am so hungry. I will never do it again.”

She paused for a second and began to stroke his tear streaming cheek.

“You poor thing. I had no idea you were so famished.”

The witch’s uncharacteristic soft tone got the gardener to stop. He looked at her with uncertainty in his face. She grabbed the largest orange in the fruit bowl and balanced it on the tip of her thick, long index-fingernail. The orange levitated an inch above the sharpened tip and spun slowly.

“I can’t bear to see you go hungry.” She waved her free hand over the orange. The gardener blinked when it vanished. The witch showed him her bare palm, closed her hand then opened it quickly in his face.

The gardener grunted. Fear flared on his face. Through the open gap of his mouth the orange skin of the fruit shown brightly behind his teeth. The witch grinned seeing the realization hit him. The ripe fruit, too big to bite down on, was now wedged in his mouth.

“You can have that one,” she said and cackled in his face. Streams of spit bathe the stricken man.

The witch spun to face the cook. The pretty, young lady gasped and held her breath, her eyes darting from the gardener and back to the witch.

“I want breakfast,” the witch snarled. “The usual.”

The cook swallowed. She glanced at the gardener who fell to the floor and could be heard struggling to dislodge the orange.

“Eggs and ham, ma’am?”

“Yes. Burn the ham and make sure the eggs are green.” The witch started to turn then stopped, keeping one eye on the cook. “You did see to making the eggs green, didn’t you?”

The thrashing gardener’s kicking feet knocked over a chair. The witch kept her eye locked onto the cook’s, daring her to look away.

“Yes, ma’am,” the paled faced woman replied. “They have been sitting in the sun for the last three days, but it wasn’t easy.”

Mary Ann fluttered in and landed on the kitchen table. The cook pointed a trembling finger at the crow.

“Mary Ann has been trying to steal them.”

The witch set her hands on her hips and glared at the crow. “Mary-Ann.”

“Caw!”

“O-Kay.” The witch walked over to where the rotting eggs were and grabbed one. “But this is the only one.” She shouted toward the cook. “I will be back in twenty minutes. I expect a warm plate of food on this table!”

The witch watched the cook swallow a large lump.

“Yes, ma’am,” she managed to say.

The witch then crouched down and locked eyes with the gardener. The man was clawing at the lodged orange. With each labored breath orange pulp came out of his nostrils. His color was changing from a bright red into a dark blue.

“I will expect that you will be finished with your breakfast by then.” Then smiling brightly she added, “Or shall I say, I expect your breakfast should be finished with you by then?”

She cackled then spun away, stepping into the middle of the kitchen while calling to her pet.

“Mary Ann! Home.”

The crow launched itself off the table and flew through the open window. The witch closed her eyes and clicked her heels together.

“There’s no place like my bedroom. There’s no place like my bedroom.”

She reappeared in the isolated room set inside the top spire of her mansion. The tower rose a hundred feet above the base of the building and set on a hill overlooking a wide valley. Three windows were spaced evenly apart giving her a clear view in all directions. No stairs led to the room. Only creatures that could fly, or someone that had the lone pair of slippers that could magically transport the wearer to anywhere they wished to go, could reach it.

“It’s about time you showed up.”

She turned toward the voice. The Wicked Witch of the West grimaced from inside the crystal ball that sat on a three-legged table position between two windows. Over her left shoulder on a pillar perched a flying monkey. The sounds of her Winkie soldiers marching and chanting boomed in background.

The Wicked Witch of the East took two steps toward the ball and crossed her arms. Her sister would only contact her for one of two reasons, when she needed something or to gloat. Figuring out which could take up to a half an hour at times.

“What is it this time, dear sister?”

The Wicked Witch of the West stuck out her lower lip, as if the question hurt.

“Can’t I check on how my little sister is doing? It has been so long after all.”

A squad of Winkie soldiers marched into the room, stomping and chanting in their monotoned, but loudly timed, style.

“OH-DEE-OH. OH-OOOOH-OH. OH-DEE-OH. OH-OOOOH-OH.”

The western witch turned around and shouted.

“Shut up a minute! Can’t you see that I’m on the ball?”

Mary Ann glided through an open window and landed on her master’s shoulder. The western witch scowled at the crow when she saw her.

“I would have bet that feather-brain would have been stew by now.”

“Caw! Caw!”

The west witch stabbed a finger at the bird from the other side of the crystal ball.

“You mind your own beak, you busy-bodied buzzard.”

“Maybe she should,” said the eastern witch. She set the rotten egg on a plate for her pet then reached for a cup of old tea sitting on a davenport nearby. She held the cup up with her left hand and flicked her right index finger. A flame flickered from the appendage. The eastern witch began to warm her tea and scrunched her eyebrows at her sister. “But she is correct. You need something from me. Spit it out because time is something I am short of at this moment and you are wasting it with your pitiful pleasantries.”

The west witch scrunched her nose.

“For once, you pain-in-the-ass, I have something to offer you. I see that your Munchkin project is making strides but they could use some extra encouragement. I could lend you a few Winkie’s to keep them in line and a flying monkey or two to transport that candy.”

The east witch arched an eyebrow.

“A nice offer but I have the shrimps under control.”

“Are you sure?” her sister purred. “I know how hard you worked to change their adorable nature. It would be a pity for them to regress and go on one of their ding-dong rampages.”

The east witch blew out her finger and took a sip before answering.

“I’m not worried about that. I drilled it into their tiny brains that the rest of Oz was getting ready to wipe them off the map for ding-donging the countryside. I banned the use of that archaic-Munchkin language and adjusted their diet to compensate. As far as the monkeys go, I’ll pass. Those fur balls will eat most of the stuff they don’t drop and I have the transportation problem solved. That isolated village is now connected to the Yellow Brick Road. Civilization has reached Munchkin land.”

The west witch barred her teeth and growled.

“What the hell happened to you? You used to be evil with a capital E. Now you provide jobs, build houses, and encourage commerce. We’re supposed to be the Wicked Witches. You know, conquer the land, subjugate people, and stamp out good, that kind of thing. Instead of helping me drive the Good Witch of the South into the sea and laying siege to Emerald City you’re trading with them both. What kind of ally are you anyway?”

“Officially, I am neutral in your war with Glinda, as is Emerald City. I only sell food to our good second cousin; at a higher price than I do to you, mind you. The wizard’s people I have a closer relationship with, they have deeper pockets after all. Trading with them both is my way of spreading my brand of wicked, evil older sister. As our darling mother used to say, curse her soul, ‘the ends will justify the means’.”

“I think you missed her point, little sister. I believe she would be appalled on how merciful you have become to your subjects.”

“Perhaps.” She took another sip then continued. “But I think she would be surprised on how well my tactics have worked. Let’s compare our results.