No Place Like Oz: A Dorothy Must Die Prequel Novella(46)

Now, as Glinda kissed me and hugged me and stroked my hair, I wondered if I finally knew what it was like to have a mother.

“Darling,” she said kindly. “I’m so sorry about what’s happened to them. But it just couldn’t be helped. And, you know what?”

“What?” I asked, as she let me go and I stepped back. She took my arms, held them at my sides, and looked lovingly into my eyes.

“You’ll have a new family now. A family who loves you more than you can imagine.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Why, me of course, you silly goose! And the Scarecrow, and the Lion, and the Tin Woodman, and, oh, just about everyone in Oz, I imagine. You’re to be their new princess, you know, and you’re sure to be the most beloved girl in the land, before long. If you’re not already!”

“I’m to be princess?” I asked.

“Who else would be?” Glinda asked. “Her?” She pointed to Ozma, who was kneeling in the grass sniffing curiously at a patch of buttercups. “Well, they’ll still call her princess, I guess. All that fairy magic makes it unavoidable. La-di-dah! But as you can see, she won’t be good for much from now on. When we get back to the palace, I’ll see to it that she issues a decree making you Deputy Princess and Protector of the Crown. Won’t be too difficult. We’ll set her up with some dolls and toys and let her run wild in her own quarters while you sit on the throne and do all the important princessing work. With my help and guidance, of course. They’ll forget all about her soon enough; the people of Oz have short memories, bless their hearts. And they absolutely adore a new monarch. Oh, the coronation we’ll throw for you!”

I looked over at Ozma, and Glinda, and then over at the farmhouse. I wasn’t sure about any of this. Aunt Em’s feet were pointing away from each other in odd angles. She was wearing the same ordinary leather boots she’d worn on the farm—for all the fancy new shoes she’d been offered here, she’d refused to give them up.

Glinda saw the doubt in my eyes. She frowned sympathetically. “You poor thing. You always were such a sentimental sparrow.”

She waved her hand at the house. “Poof!” she said, and as soon as the word escaped her lips, my old home—along with my aunt and uncle—disappeared in a shower of pink bubbles, like there had never been anything there at all.

I felt a weight lifting from my shoulders. I felt my sobs easing.

“There, doesn’t that feel better?”

“It does,” I said. As soon as the reminders were gone, everything that had happened in the past couple of weeks felt very far away.

“It doesn’t matter where you came from,” Glinda said. “I came from someplace, too, you know. Someplace not that different from Kansas. I’ll tell you the story someday, if you can possibly stand the boredom!”

“I’d like that,” I said softly.

Glinda smiled back at me. “Good. Very good. Now, why don’t we leave all this useless sadness behind and go back to the palace? We need to pick you out a nice crown.” She put her arm around me. “Doesn’t that sound like a good idea?”

It did. It really did.

Glinda turned to Ozma. “You too, darling,” she said, and the princess scampered toward us, almost tripping over her own feet. “You two can be like wonderful sisters!”

Ozma nodded eagerly and took my hand.

Glinda winked knowingly. “Well, maybe more like distant cousins,” she said to me in a stage whisper. She put her arm around my shoulder, and we began the walk back to the Emerald City.

“Now,” Glinda said, “you must tell me all about your adventures. I was able to watch some of them while you were having them, but I have to say it all came in a bit garbled. Like listening to a radio with a broken antenna.”

I looked back over my shoulder. The house was gone. My aunt and uncle were gone. Ozma was flapping her arms as she skipped aimlessly through the fields.

She wouldn’t be much company. But Toto was racing behind us. And I had Glinda and all my friends in the palace. I had my kingdom.

My shoes sent a happy wave of magic shooting up through my body, and, on impulse, I grabbed a fistful of it and tossed it into the blue sky, where it burst into a pink and gold firework.

“That’s my girl!” Glinda exclaimed proudly. “Oh, I can’t wait to show you what you can really do with it. You were born to be a sorceress, you know.”


It was too good to be true. It was almost like Kansas was just a dream and I was waking up to a wonderful new morning where everything was bright and sunny and full of life.

They say you can’t go home again. Well, I’m proof that’s not true. Home isn’t just where you’re born—it’s where you belong. I found my home and I let it go. But I came back. Now I was home for good, and I would never, ever make the mistake of leaving again. The past was gone forever. There was no place like here.





Excerpt from Dorothy Must Die





I first discovered I was trash three days before my ninth birthday—one year after my father lost his job and moved to Secaucus to live with a woman named Crystal and four years before my mother had the car accident, started taking pills, and began exclusively wearing bedroom slippers instead of normal shoes.