D: L&L - Part 40 | Dot: This is not a Dream

I don’t know what’s more surreal: sipping scalding mushroom broth from a cracked teacup while a stitched-up ex-emperor of Oz stares into the middle distance like a ghost, or sharing a crumbling stone hearth with a leather-jacketed monkey with a taste for raw venison. I gulp down the soup, feeling the burn and starting to feel human again. I’m warm, fed, my clothes are dry and have me wrapped up. My face is even freshly scrubbed, but my hair is a disaster, and I wonder if I should cut it down to nothing like I did on the last deployment. Either way, I feel like a Marine again.

The Marines prepared me for a lot—ambushes, interrogations, dehydration, the slow unraveling of reality under fire—but this?

Not so much.

There was no briefing on enchanted metallic soldiers, Equi -- centaurs, undead Munchkins, or what to do when your grandmother’s bedtime stories turn out to be a half-buried war record. And there sure as hell wasn’t a slide deck for “former companions with mysterious vendettas against bubble-riding witches.”

But adaptation is part of the job. You roll with it. And right now, what mattered was getting to the Emerald City.

The Ruby Slippers were my ticket home—assuming the Scarecrow’s story held any weight. Assuming Glinda still had them. Assuming any of this wasn’t a fever dream brought on by drowning and head trauma. But it wasn’t a dream. I’d pinched myself enough times that my left forearm was bruised, and I’d shook my head enough times to make me just a little dizzy every successive time. All of it -- how was it possible? And yet that was the refrain to this song that I kept singing. None of this could be real, and yet here I was.

I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I had at least one advantage. I knew what had happened. And maybe I didn’t for sure know what would work here in this world -- Toto sure as fuck had, I knew that if grandma’s stories were true -- and it looked like they were -- those Ruby Slippers were the only way out of this place. I had to get them.

I sat back against the pile of broken furniture and stone in the middle of the room, my back padded by my Alice pack, and I felt my lids still heavy. Not drugged -- I didn’t feel weird, although just then, thinking of it, I wondered if I should be a little anxious that I’d gone to sleep around my two trustworthy-seeming companions, having just met them and all. They’d been cool and careful, not gotten too close, seemed absorbed in their own problems, and I hadn’t gotten any weird vibes. My Spidey Sense hadn’t tingled, but I knew that with Great Power came Great Responsibility. And maybe eating all that venison, then passing out had been a little foolish. I was clearly still tired -- I hadn’t read a Spiderman comic in an age, and here I was quoting Stan Lee.

I yawned, nestled into my pack and closed my eyes -- just a few more minutes, huh, Sarge? Everything was cool, and if it wasn’t, I always slept light as a feather. I always had. If I was fast asleep, Toto would be barking before anyone knew it. But what I needed now was to stop watching the walking straw pile pace. If he really was just a coward and a drunk, he seemed entirely too wound up, and his jitters were giving me my own jitters.

The Scarecrow had an angle, but I couldn’t see it. He was quieter this morning, standing at a shattered window, his coat fluttering slightly in the breeze. I couldn’t tell if he was watching the horizon or just remembering it. I didn’t ask. It wasn’t even light out yet. Did he even sleep? Could he? With those eyes? It wasn’t like they were totally little dots of coal or whatever. Sometimes they seemed like real eyes, sometimes like buttons -- it came and went, and I wasn’t sure what that was other than magic.

Ultimately I decided it didn’t matter. Something else did. And I muttered mostly to myself, “I need a shower before I snap and shoot something.”

Turlo snorted. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

I didn’t respond. I didn’t even look for him because I knew he was perched up on the steps, where he’d been all night. What I did do was get up. I needed to get up and moving, stretch out, check Alice and Toto if we were going to heading out with the sun, but more than anything, cleanish clothes or not, I needed a cleanish body.

My boots creaked as I stood, every muscle sore from the night on the floor. “There a bathhouse nearby, or do I have to go full creek rat?”

Scarecrow’s voice floated back without turning: “Across the scrub, there’s an old waystation. It used to serve travelers from the Yellow Brick Rail when there was more trade between the Emerald City and Bright Lettins. It had rooms. Water. Might even have some linens left, if the crows haven’t nested in them.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Any staff?”

He finally turned, one brow lifting. “You saw the fog and what it did.”

I nodded. I didn’t want to speak to the concierge.

The Dog and Pony Inn was exactly what I expected from a crumbling outpost halfway between nowhere and zombie-infested farmland: busted shutters, peeling signs, and the faint smell of vinegar and mold. It still had a roof. Plumbing of a kind. And rooms with doors I could barricade. What it also had were bodies. 

The yard in front of the place was unkempt, a sure sign that no one had been this way for a while. And strewn across that old lawn were a dozen or so small corpses, skin purple and blistered, swaddled in brightly colored pantaloons and vibrant dresses. What Grandma Dot had said about the Munchkins and how they looked was true, but she’d known them when they were alive and healthy, and now everything was different.

Turlo rummaged behind the reception desk like he was born to it. “You ever stay anywhere not haunted?” I asked as I stepped through the lobby, eyeing the dusty chandelier and the stack of rotting pamphlets that said things like "WELCOME TO SUNNY MUNCHKINLAND!"

“Found keys,” he said, tossing me one. “Hope you like beds built for children.”

“Hope you like sleeping outside,” I muttered.

Upstairs, the room was functional. As was the door lock. Sturdy was the word that came to mind. And the room? Unoccupied for some time. Dust-coated. Claustrophobic. Like a studio apartment for a toddler, but still three thousand dollars a month in New York City. The bathroom had running water—green-tinged, sure, but cold. I wasn’t going to pretend I understood how the plumbing worked in Oz -- magic? The water was running, and I hadn’t seen any electricity -- was that even a thing in Oz? But after a quick strip-and-wring of my clothes, I stood under that frigid spray and let it freeze the fatigue out of my bones.

It wasn’t until I sat down, soaked and naked on a stool under the flow, that I let myself breathe. Actually breathe. The water cascaded down onto my head, and I ran my hands over my body for warmth, trying to keep down the shivering. Cold or not, soap or not, deodorant or not, I was gonna sit here until I felt cleanish.

I thought of Grandma. Of her voice reciting the names like scripture: the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion. The Yellow Brick Road. The Emerald City. The Wicked Witch of the West.

I thought of Glinda. Sweet Glinda. The Good Witch of the North, wasn’t she? The woman who descended out of the sky and reminded Grandma Dot that all she had to do was click her heels three times to get home. And she’d sent them to kill the Wicked Witch. She and the Wizard, knowing full well all she had to do was click and recite and “There’s no place like home.”

I thought of the slippers. I thought of the Scarecrow. No matter what the Scarecrow said—no matter what his reasons were—I knew this: I needed the slippers. He was a pal to the strange little girl from Kansas before, but he knew the story now. What was his angle? And how was I being used?

I shook it off, stared at myself in the broken mirror when I stood up. I was older than grandma was when she came here. I’d seen combat, death and destruction up close and personal. And I had a Toto that wasn’t an annoying little dog, useless in a fight. I needed those slippers, and I understood the Scarecrow did, too. That made us allies for now. But if he got in my way…

When I returned to the lobby—damp, cleaner, in the least-wet version of my gear—the Scarecrow was looking through cabinets and Turlo was reading something, wings tucked in tight behind him. “I found a map,” he muttered, flipping it open and spreading it out on the main counter where it looked like someone might check in for the night.

“Nice,” I said, and looked around. “I need to get a lay of the land, and I need to know where my house is -- or at least try to guess where it is.” There was no way to know if I’d need to go back there for anything, but it would be good to know how to get there.

“The Yellow Brick Rail is on this map,” he said, his big black mitt pointing at the line slicing straight through Munchkinland and then up. It ended in some city north of Emerald City called Shiz. “Fastest way to Emerald City. You take the YBR. I fly and keep a look out for trouble, and then we’re in the city, you grab the slippers, and you’re home free.”

“Hmmm.” I saw where his fingers were pointing, and just stood there with a thoughtful look on my face as I tried to nail down landmarks. Bright Lettins was there, and I’d fallen into the river…there. And the Scarecrow’s Tower was right there, and the Dog and Pony. And that meant I’d been heading northwest the whole time -- if Oz did directions like Kansas did. Still, the sun had been on my right when we trekked over to the inn during the sunrise. And so that was that.

Except for one thing.

“The fog.”

“Yeah?” said the monkey, a quizzical look on his face, even though I wasn’t sure how I knew that.

“It’s the fastest way to Glinda, but Glinda knows you’re here.” It was the first time the Scarecrow had spoken since I’d come down. “She’ll have eyes on the line.”

“Then we’ll wave,” I snapped. “Unless you’ve got a shortcut I didn’t see on the map.”

He didn’t. Or he didn’t share it. Either way, his silence was confirmation.

I stood straighter. “How do we know when the YBR is coming?” I looked for a clock, a schedule on the wall, anything that might tell us. We’d seen the tracks outside. The railroad did pass right by here. But when?

“Turlo?”

The monkey nodded. “I’ll be back. Be ready.”