Ruler of Beasts (Dorothy Must Die, #0.6)(24)
I didn’t need to believe. I knew. I just sometimes wished I didn’t.
I thought of Jeannie and Ezekiel and Bertha, all of them in their pen beside themselves in excitement for the same slop they’d had yesterday and would have again tomorrow. The slop I’d have to refill into the bucket and haul back out to them.
“It must be nice not to know any better,” I said to Miss Millicent.
In the end, a chicken is a good thing to hold in your lap for a few minutes. It’s a good thing to pretend to talk to when there’s no one else around. But in the end, if you want the honest-to-goodness truth, it’s possible that a chicken doesn’t make the greatest friend.
Setting Miss Millicent aside, I dusted myself off and headed back toward the farmhouse to clean myself up, change my dress, and get myself ready for my big party. Bertha and Jeannie and Ezekiel would have to wait until tomorrow for their slop.
It wasn’t like me to let them go hungry. At least, it wasn’t like the old me.
But the old me was getting older by the second. It had been two years since the tornado. Two years since I’d gone away. Since I had met Glinda the Good Witch, and the Lion, the Tin Woodman, and the Scarecrow. Since I had traveled the Road of Yellow Brick and defeated the Wicked Witch of the West. In Oz, I had been a hero. I could have stayed. But I hadn’t. Aunt Em and Uncle Henry were in Kansas. Home was in Kansas. It had been my decision and mine alone.
Well, I had made my choice, and like any good Kansas girl, I would live with it. I would pick up my chin, put on a smile, and be on my way.
The animals could just go hungry for now. It was my birthday, after all.
TWO
“Happy Swoot Sixtoon,” the cake said, the letters spelled out in smudged icing. I beamed up at my aunt Em with my brightest smile.
“It’s beautiful,” I said. I’d already changed into my party dress—which wasn’t that much different from the dress I’d just gotten all dirty in the field—and had cleaned myself up as best as I could, scrubbing the dirt from my hands and the blood from my knee until you could hardly tell I’d fallen.
Uncle Henry hovered off to the side, looking as proud and hopeful as if he’d baked it himself. He’d certainly helped, gathering the ingredients from around the farm: coaxing the eggs from Miss Millicent (who never seemed in the mood to lay any), milking the cow, and making sure Aunt Em had everything she needed.
“Sometimes I wonder if I didn’t marry a master chef!” Henry said, putting his arm around her waist.
Even Toto was excited. He was hopping around on the floor yipping at us eagerly.
“You really like it?” Aunt Em asked, a note of doubt in her voice. “I know the writing isn’t perfect, but penmanship has never been my strong suit.”
“It’s wonderful!” I exclaimed, pushing down the tiny feeling of disappointment that was bubbling in my chest. A little white lie never hurt anyone, and I didn’t doubt the cake would be delicious. Aunt Em’s food might not usually come out looking fancy, but it always tastes better than anything else.
Oh, I know that it’s how a cake tastes that matters. I know there’s no point in concerning yourself with what it looks like on the outside when you’ll be eating it in just a few minutes.
But as it sat lopsided on the table with its brown icing and the words “Happy Sweet Sixteen” written out so the e’s looked more like blobby o’s, I found myself wishing for something more.
I just couldn’t let Aunt Em know that. I couldn’t let her have even the smallest hint that anything was wrong. So I wrapped her up in a hug to let her know that it didn’t matter: that even if the cake wasn’t perfect, it was good enough for me. But then something else occurred to me.
“Are you sure it’s big enough?” I asked. “A lot of people are coming.” I had invited everyone from school, not that that was so many people, and everyone from all the neighboring farms, plus the store owners at every shop I’d been to on my last trip into town. I’d invited my best friend, Mitzi Blair, and even awful Suzanna Hellman and her best friend, Marian Stiles, not to mention a reporter from the Carrier who had taken a special interest in my life since the tornado. Plus, Suzanna would be dragging her horrible little sister, Jill, along.
Aunt Em glanced down nervously. “There was going to be another layer, dear, but we were running low on eggs . . . ,” she said, trailing off, her weathered face suddenly rosy with embarrassment.
Uncle Henry came quickly to the rescue. “I just won’t have a second helping,” he said, rubbing his belly, which is not small. “It wouldn’t hurt me to skip a first helping, come to think of it.”
My aunt swatted his arm and chuckled, her worry momentarily gone. All those years of hard Kansas life had taken their toll on her, but when she was around my uncle, her eyes still lit up; when he made a joke, she still laughed a laugh that sounded like it belonged to a girl my age. “You’d eat the whole thing if I let you!” He swiped a bit of frosting with his finger and grinned.
Seeing them together like that, happy and playful and still as much in love as they’d ever been, I felt a swell of affection for them, followed immediately by sadness. I knew that, once upon a time, they had been as young as I was. Aunt Em had wanted to travel the world; Uncle Henry had wanted to set off to California and strike gold. They just hadn’t had the chance to do any of those things.