Yellow Brick War (Dorothy Must Die, #3)(49)

Gert, Glamora, and Mombi had drifted off—to find private chambers of their own, probably. But as tired as I was, I didn’t want to go to sleep. Instead, I walked out into what had once been the Tin Woodman’s gardens.

The gardens were probably well-kept when he lived here, but they’d long since become overgrown and gone to seed. Still, as broken down as they were, most of the worst of the fighting had been far enough away from the palace that they weren’t any worse for wear than they already had been—save for some trampled patches and a scattered spot of blood here and there.

But elsewhere, flowers bloomed in the moonlight: huge, nodding blossoms that reminded me a little of dahlias, sighing on the wind and releasing little puffs of perfume into the cool air. A swarm of big-winged butterflies drifted past, flapping velvety-soft wings and singing a tiny, almost inaudible lullaby. A big yellow moon hung in the sky, so low that I thought I could touch it if I climbed up high enough. Like the moon at home, this one had a face; only Oz’s moon was a gently smiling woman who reminded me a little bit of Gert.

I wasn’t sure how long I had been standing there when I realized Nox was next to me.

“You should go to sleep,” he said. “Tomorrow will be . . .” He didn’t need to say it. We both knew. But sleep was the last thing I could think about. Suddenly, he grabbed my hand. I startled at the warmth of his touch. The feeling of his skin against mine.

“Look,” he breathed. “Night-blooming tirium.”

“What’s that?”

He held a finger to his lips and beckoned me to follow him, tiptoeing toward a tall plant the size of a sunflower. “Be totally quiet,” he said into my ear, his voice sending a thrill through me. “If you frighten it, it won’t bloom.” He settled down on his haunches to wait and I squatted next to him.

He was watching the tall plant as intently as a cat guarding a mouse hole. The seconds stretched into minutes. I fidgeted. He put one hand on my knee to caution me and left it there. All my senses felt totally alive. His sandalwood smell. The heat of his body. The movement of his breath. He smiled, but he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the plant.

A single pale tendril was unfurling from the top of the stalk, as slow and elegant as a ballet dancer pirouetting across a stage. Another delicate frond followed, and then another, waving gently in the night breeze. The tendrils sent out shoots of their own, like a silken spiderweb weaving itself in front of our eyes. Slowly, the strands knitted themselves together into a huge, white flower, sparkling with moonlight and moving back and forth almost as though it had a will of its own. I realized I was holding my breath and let it out in a long, slow exhale. The tirium flower was beautiful and impossibly fragile—a reminder that no matter how comfortable I got here Oz would always be an alien land, governed by rules I didn’t fully understand.

The tirium blossom turned toward me and then exploded silently into a starburst of tiny white lights, like fireflies, that swirled around us and drifted away across the grass. Where they caught on leaves or branches they hung glowing until the soft white light finally faded away. The flower was so gorgeous—and so fragile. Like everything good in this crazy world. Like hope. Like whatever had started between me and Nox that we weren’t allowed to finish. I felt my eyes filling with tears, and Nox reached up to brush them away.

“I forgot Dorothy didn’t destroy everything beautiful in Oz,” I said.

“She didn’t destroy you.”

“Not for lack of trying,” I said, and then realized the implication of what he was saying and blushed. I was grateful for the darkness that hid my flaming cheeks.

“My mom would have loved to see something like this. I wish I could’ve said good-bye to her, at least,” I said quietly.

“You’re not going to die,” he said fiercely. “Not tomorrow anyway.”

“I hope not. But I meant when we came back to Oz. I want to go home somehow. But let’s face it, I’ll probably never see her again. I just wish there was some way I could have told her I love her.”

“You can see her,” Nox said. He pointed to a puddle of water at the base of the tirium plant, closing his eyes. I remembered the scrying spell Gert had used to show me an image of my mom back in the caverns of the Wicked. I bent down for a closer look as power flowed from Nox’s hands into the clear water. At first, all I could see was grass and leaves. But then the surface of the water shimmered and grew opaque, and I was looking into the living room of my mom’s new apartment. She was sitting on the couch, her eyes red as though she’d been crying. Jake was sitting on one side with his arms around her. And on the other—

“Dustin and Madison?” I breathed in surprise. Dustin was saying something while Madison nodded, bouncing Dustin Jr. on her knee. And over them all loomed Assistant Principal Strachan.

There was something in my mom’s lap, I realized. Something they were all looking at. A leatherbound book with charred edges. “Dorothy’s journal!” I exclaimed. “My mom must have gone through my room after the tornado and found it. But if they realize what it is—”

“They might figure out Oz is real,” Nox breathed.

“They couldn’t,” I argued. “You don’t understand how hard it is for people from my world to believe in this stuff without seeing it with their own eyes. If they realize what the journal is, they’ll probably just think it proves that Dorothy was a real person—who was totally bonkers.” A strange feeling crept down my spine—warm, heavy, and itchy, like a drop of molten metal rolling along my vertebrae.