Dorothy Must Die: The Other Side of the Rainbow Collection: No Place Like Oz, Dorothy Must Die, The Witch Must Burn, The Wizard Returns, The Wicked Will Rise by Danielle Paige

Author:Danielle Paige [Paige, Danielle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-03-31T07:00:00+00:00

TEN

It was the dead of night, and Ozma and I were making our way through the jungle. Yet again, I was reminded of the dream I’d had that wasn’t quite a dream. The feeling of déjà vu was so visceral, tingling in my pores, setting the hairs on my arms on end. I ignored it and pushed ahead, following Ozma, and tried not to let it get to me.

I was holding a tiny orb of flame in my palm, just bright enough to light our way. But still, the woods around us were black, and we were moving more quickly than I thought possible. Ozma walked ahead of me with a strange purpose, not seeming to even need my light to see by. She didn’t hesitate with a single step, but she didn’t seem to be following any particular path either; she was weaving and zigzagging through the thick clusters of trees, sometimes doubling back on herself, sometimes groping oddly at the air as if feeling for something. In her flowing white dress, with her luminous ivory skin flickering in the glow of my flame, she looked like a teenaged ghost.

I just hoped she knew what she was doing, because I thought there was a distinct possibility that she was leading me in a circle.

With every step we took, I second-guessed myself. Was I doing the right thing? It didn’t feel like it. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt so alone. I wished I had Star. I wished I had Indigo, or Ollie, or anyone. I wished I had Nox.

Ozma didn’t count. Tomorrow I would try to summon Pete back—at least he would be someone to talk to—but for now, I just wanted to get out of the woods, find a place to rest, and take stock of things in the daylight.

So I walked, letting Ozma lead the way. My hand was clenched hard around my knife, which had appeared in my hand without even being summoned, the way it always did when I sensed danger or felt out of my element. The knife was beginning to feel so much like a part of me—like an extension of my body—that it was easy to forget Nox was the one who had given it to me, had spent hours carving the bird-shaped hilt himself not just because he wanted me to be able to protect myself, but because he wanted me to have something that he had made; something that was just mine.

I felt a pang of loneliness at the thought, but instead of getting sad, I tried to take that feeling and use it, to shape the pointless emotion into something more like determination. It felt almost like working with magic—the way you could take it and mold it into something different from what it had started as. Into something you could actually use.

The thing about Nox was that I didn’t even know him that well. I really didn’t.

We had kissed, what—twice? Three times? And most of the time that we hadn’t been kissing, it wasn’t even obvious that we were friends.

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