No Place Like Oz: A Dorothy Must Die Prequel Novella(15)

Up ahead, a forest loomed. It was deep and black, thick with vines. It stretched on and on endlessly in either direction.

The screaming was coming from somewhere deep in the forest, a deep guttural wail that shook me to my core.

It was a scream, but it was also something like a song, too. It was like all the pain and sorrow in the world was being dredged up from the bottom of the earth and was twisting itself into a horrible, tortured melody.

We all stopped walking. Even Toto, who was usually brave in the face of any danger, crouched in a ball at my feet, quivering with fear.

“I don’t like the sound of that, Dorothy,” Uncle Henry said with a grave expression.

“No,” Aunt Em agreed. Her face turned pale. “I don’t like it one bit.”

I had to give them credit for putting it so mildly. Sometimes people you think you know well can still surprise you. They were being brave. Or, at least, they were trying.

I wasn’t sure if I was capable of the same. Everything in my body was telling me to give up and run away. Back to the cornfield, to the Munchkin village, to the little old farmhouse by the riverbank in the woods. Back to Kansas, even.

But when I turned around, I saw that single path we had been following now forked out behind us in five unfamiliar directions. Some force wanted us to pick one of those paths in the hope it would lead us back to where we had come from.

I had a feeling none of them would. In my experience, when a dark force you don’t understand wants you to do something that badly, it’s best to do exactly the opposite.

I looked into the distance. The road plunged straight ahead like a golden knife through the heart of the forest. However horrible that screaming, the only choice was straight ahead.

“Come on,” I said.

My aunt and uncle and my dog all looked at me like I had lost my mind. But when I took a step forward to show them it was possible, I saw that my shoes were burning red in the dusky, spooky, evening light, their comforting glow pulsing against the washed-out yellow bricks in time with my heartbeat, and I knew it was the right thing.

“Come on,” I repeated, firmer this time. I took another step. Then Toto took one, too, still shaking, and then Aunt Em did the same. Uncle Henry grabbed her by the elbow and followed. If she was going, he was going, too. You could always count on him for that much.

So we moved slowly toward the woods, together, and as we got closer that moaning yowl shattered and reshaped itself into something else: a scratchy, violent squall so loud that my whole skull vibrated from the force of it.

Aunt Em and Uncle Henry doubled over as it hit them, both screaming and covering their ears in pain.

As unpleasant as it was, though, I wanted to hear it. The only way to understand it was to listen.

It was the sound of ravens screeching and rivers running dry, the sound of milk curdling into blood and children being torn from their mothers’ arms.

It was the sound of death. The sound of evil.

I took one more step forward anyway, feeling as if I was being propelled by a force outside myself, and that was when I saw their faces.

Each tree had one, and each face was worse than the last, each formed out of thick, silvery-black bark, gnarled and distorted into tortured grimaces and angry, curled scowls and gape-mouthed expressions of terror.

That’s when I understood: the sound wasn’t coming from inside the woods. It was coming from the woods themselves. The trees were screaming.

And I recognized them. Sort of.

“They’re not supposed to be here,” I said under my breath. I don’t think anyone heard me over the noise.

On my first trip to Oz, after the Wizard had gone home, the Scarecrow, the Lion, the Tin Woodman, and I had all made our way to Quadling Country to see Glinda the Good in the hopes that she would have the key to sending me home. Along the way, we’d had no choice but to travel through the Forest of the Fighting Trees.

That forest had been a lot like this one. The trees there had been mean and cruel, with ugly, hollowed-out faces and branches that bent and twined around you, tossing you to the ground when you tried to pass underneath them.

But they hadn’t screamed like this.

Were the two forests related? And if so, how? This one hadn’t been here the last time I’d walked this road. Where had it come from?

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except getting through it. I forged ahead with Toto at my side and my aunt and uncle only a few steps behind.

The screaming became louder and louder until it hardly seemed like sound at all anymore, and more like a hopelessness so strong I could almost feel it as an aching pain, lodged somewhere in the back of my gut.

It was so loud I wanted to tear my hair from my skull, to scratch at my face until it bled.

And then it was over. Just like that, everything went silent. Deadly silent.

I looked to Aunt Em and Uncle Henry, and they looked back at me, just as shaken and surprised as I was. None of us said anything for fear of upsetting the quiet.

Then we all looked up together, and saw the trees towering over us. We had made it to the edge of the wood.

They were tall and thin, hardly wider around than Aunt Em, and were almost entirely bare of leaves. Their cruel, twisted faces took up almost the entire lengths of their trunks, and their knotty, spindly branches spidered out into sharp claws.

Two trees, taller and older-looking than the rest, stood on either side of the brick road at the spot where it disappeared into the dark tangle of woods. Their faces were frozen into gargoyle masks of torment and despair.