Oz Reimagined: New Tales from the Emerald City and Beyond (39 page)

“Dorothy,” I will say, “help us.”

Help us.

BY ORSON SCOTT CARD

A
four-room school in Aberdeen, Dakota Territory, September 1889

The teacher introduced six-year-old Frank Joslyn Baum as one of the new first-graders. “Young Frank’s father is Mr. L. Frank Baum, editor of our town’s newspaper. Does anyone know the name of the newspaper?”

One hand went up—that of a nine-year-old girl. Frank noticed that the bands of fabric around the bottom of her dress were darker, the colors deeper. The dress must always have been too big for the girl, but over the years during which she wore it, the hem had been let down three times, exposing fabric less faded by the sun. Frank liked to notice things like that and figure out what they meant.

The teacher seemed reluctant to call on the girl. “Why don’t you tell us the name of your father’s paper?” the teacher asked him.

“
She
knows,” said Frank, pointing at the girl, who was now sitting with both hands tucked under her bottom.

“Do you think she does?” asked the teacher with an air of condescension. “Dotty, what were you raising your hand to say?”

Dotty looked straight at Frank. “Your father’s store went bust,” she said. “He owned Baum’s Bazaar.”

Frank blushed. It was shameful that the store went out of business; no one spoke of it.

“I fail to see what that has to do with the name of the newspaper,” said the teacher. Then, in a voice loud enough for all to hear, she said to Frank, “Now you know why I rarely choose to call on Dotty.”

“It was a
wonderful
store,” said Dotty. “Your father gave Auntie Bess credit, and it got us through the winter.”

“That is enough, Dotty,” said the teacher.

Auntie Bess. Frank knew Bess Krassner was one of the customers whose failure to pay had led to the bankruptcy. Frank didn’t miss much. Mrs. Krassner was a stern woman who frightened most children with her cold glare, but Frank was not afraid of her. He could look right at her even when she glared.

“The newspaper is the
Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer
,” said Dotty, “and Mr. Baum writes the column ‘Our Landlady.’”

Then Dotty sat down.

Frank read his father’s column every week, every word. He should not be in first grade, but the teacher would not hear of advancing him. “Children learn raggedly unless they have guidance,” she had said. “Whatever he thinks he has learned on his own will almost certainly have to be taught to him again, but now in its proper order.”

When Mother told this to Father, he laughed. “I’m sure our poor boy has his letters all inside out. She’ll set him straight.”

At first Frank wanted to tell his father that he did not have
any
letters inside out, but then he realized that Father was joking. Father always made everything either funny or very dramatic. Father was an actor at heart. He used to
own a theater but it burned down. Father had written plays. Mother often said that a man like that had no business running a store. Frank heard everything. He remembered everything.

After school, instead of walking straight home, he went up to the older girl, Dotty. “Why do you care about my father?”

“I don’t,” said Dotty. “And I don’t care about you.”

“Why did you say that about him giving credit? Your aunt never paid him back.”

“She will,” said Dotty. “She is a woman of integrity.” She turned her back on him and started walking along the dusty road, the opposite direction from Frank’s way home. He followed behind her.

“It’s too late to pay him now,” said Frank. “The store’s already out of business.”

“It is never too late to pay a debt,” said Dotty.

“It’s too late for it to do any good,” said Frank.

She turned to face him. “Do you want me to poke you in the nose?”

“Why did you tell about your family needing credit to get through the winter?”

“One must never be ashamed of poverty, my Auntie Bess says. One must only be ashamed of wealth that one does not share with those in need. Your father shared. Auntie Bess says that makes him a good man, even if he does hate Indians.”

“Everybody hates Indians,” said Frank. “They scalp people and they’re savages.”

“It’s also good for children to have minds of their own, and not to echo the opinions of adults.”

“Your aunt says.”

“I am wise enough to pay close attention to my aunt.”

“So you echo her opinions,” said Frank.

Dotty glared at him, but it was not as icy a glare as Bess Krassner’s. “I have independently reached the conclusion that my aunt is right.”

“About everything?” asked Frank.

“So far,” said Dotty.

“Why are you bothering to talk to a six-year-old?” asked Frank. “The other fourth-graders don’t talk to us younger children.”

“One must be especially kind to the little and stupid,” said Dotty, “or they will not get wiser along with bigger.”

“Auntie Bess again?” asked Frank.

“No,” said Dotty. “It was one of my own. Here’s why I’m talking to you. First, your father is a good man, so I owe courtesy to his son. Second, you can already read and write as well as a fourth-grader, but you don’t make a show of it. Third, you followed me and won’t shut up.”

She stepped out of the lane and into the brown scruffy grass beside it.

“Where are you going?” asked Frank.

“I’m following the road,” said Dotty. She continued walking farther into the grass, heading for a cornfield.

“No you’re not,” said Frank. “It goes that way.”

“
That
road goes that way,” said Dotty. “Feel free to follow
that
road, if you want.”

“What road are you following, then?”

“I always follow the yellow road,” said Dotty. She walked on resolutely.

Frank followed her. “Where is it?”

“I admit that even I can hardly see it here,” said Dotty. “There’s only a brick or two visible, and then only when the light is right. But by now I know this part of the road by heart.”

“What bricks?”

“The light isn’t right,” said Dotty. “But there’s one right there, in the morning, on a clear day.”

Frank looked where she was pointing. “I don’t see anything.”

“Because you are not sufficiently observant.”

“I’m
very
observant,” said Frank hotly. “Father says so.”

“And yet you are not observant enough.” Dotty broke into a run.

“Dotty!” Frank called. “I can’t run as fast as you.”

“I’m counting on that,” she called back.

He ran as fast as he could and caught up with her by the scarecrow in the middle of the field, its pants and a shirt and a hat stuck on a pole, with straw stuffed in the clothes. Crows sat on its shoulders. It was clearly not very effective. Dotty was conversing with it.

“If he can follow me, then he can come,” Dotty said.

The scarecrow said nothing, but Dotty answered him as if he had spoken. “See? Here he is. Nobody else has been able to follow me this far.”

Again, silence from the scarecrow.

“Of course he can’t hear you,” said Dotty. “He hasn’t yet been noticed by the Emperor.”

Silence.

“I have so, or I could never have found you and talked to you in the first place. So I’m going on, and as long as he can follow me, I’m taking him with me.”

Again she seemed to listen, until she grew quite impatient and held out a hand toward Frank. “Hold my hand,” she said. “I’m taking you with me no matter what he says.”

“Taking me where?”

“To see the Emperor of the Air,” she said.

“Where does he live?”

“In. The. Air,” she said.

“We’re on the ground,” Frank pointed out. But he made his legs trot along fast enough to keep up with her, despite her long-legged strides farther through the corn. “Are there more yellow bricks now?”

“Yes, there are,” said Dotty, “and I don’t mind that you can’t see them. Everybody knows I’m crazy, which is why they call me ‘dotty’ even though my name is Theodora.”

“I’ll call you Theodora if you want,” said Frank.

“Just keep up,” she said. “You’re doing very well so far, but we have a long way to go before dark. I brought an oilcan, you see.” She reached into her lunch bag and held it up.

This made no sense to Frank, but it was an adventure, and she was a big kid who admired Father, and he was sure that eventually the small oilcan she brandished would make some kind of sense.

“Be careful now,” she said. “We’re coming into the trees. And don’t let go of my hand. I don’t want to lose you halfway between.”

There were no trees at all. Not any.

“Stop looking with the fronts of your eyes,” said Dotty—no, Theodora. “Stop looking at what everybody sees. This is a magical land if you’re willing to see it.”

“Says Auntie Bess?”

“She can’t see anything,” said Theodora. “Or I should say, she refuses to come and refuses to hear me talk about the Empire of the Air, so there’s no chance that she’ll ever see it. But here you are.”

“It’s a cornfield,” said Frank.

“But you’re still with me,” said Theodora. “You can still see me. And I’m well inside the Empire.” She stamped her foot. “Yellow bricks all over now.”

Frank looked at the ground, trying to see anything but dry dirt between the rows of corn.

“Don’t try so hard,” said Theodora. “Squinting doesn’t work. When your eyes are pointing
here
, then the bricks start being visible
there
. And when you look there, you can see them here. At least that’s how it is at first.”

Frank tried to do as she said, but it seemed to require looking at two things at once.

“Look at my hand,” she said.

He looked at the hand that was holding his.

“Now keep staring at my hand, but notice the fact that my other hand is moving over here. No, don’t look at my left hand, keep looking at my right, but then
notice
my left.”

Oh, was that all she meant? That was easy enough, to think about something he wasn’t looking at.

There was a glint of yellow on the ground. He looked at it, and there was nothing there.

“You saw it for a moment, didn’t you?” said Theodora.

“I don’t know,” said Frank.

“That’s good,” said Theodora. “You didn’t deny what you saw, you just admitted that you weren’t sure. That’s important, not to deny it just because you know it
shouldn’t
be there. The more you deny it, the less it’s there—to you. Because people can’t see what they refuse to see.”

Frank was looking at the hand that was holding his. And now it was definite. That glint of yellow. Not gold-yellow.
Yellow
yellow. “Like a goldfinch,” he said aloud.

“I told the old scarecrow you’d be able to see it.”

“This is very strange.”

“No,” said Theodora. “It’s the Empire of the Air. It’s just as much a part of the natural universe as anything else. It’s not strange, it’s
wondrous
.”

“It’s wondrous strange,” murmured Frank.

But now he could see shadowy tree trunks on either side. Not if he looked at them; but as long as he kept his eyes forward, he could see that they were moving through a stand of woods—though he could still see the corn on either side, as well.

“How can I be in two places at once?” asked Frank.

“You’re in only one place,” said Theodora. “It’s the two
places
that are in the same place. Because they
are
the same place. Welcome to the Empire of the Air.”

Frank blinked. And each time he blinked, the trees were a little more solid, the corn a little more shadowy. So by the time they came to the abandoned carnival, he felt as if he were emerging from a dense stand of trees, and the cornfields were now nothing but a vague shadowy movement in the breeze.

Theodora led him among the tattered tents, which now held out neither rain nor light. There was not a soul in sight, though here and there a crow landed or rose from the ground as if patrolling the area.

“I never knew this was here,” said Frank.

“It’s in the Empire of the Air, not in Aberdeen,” said Theodora.

“But it’s old and faded and tattered and…gone,” said Frank.

“Things get old here, too. People stop coming, the carnival goes out of business, and it gets like this.”

“I bet it was wonderful when it was new,” said Frank.

“It was a carnival,” said Theodora. “Only the acrobats didn’t need wires or nets or swings, and the lions had no cages, and all the tricks the magicians did were real.”

“Why would people stop coming?”

“How do you know they’ve stopped?” asked Theodora. “We’re here.”

“But you said…”

He didn’t finish, because they came to the mechanical man—or rather, half-man. From the waist up, he was a man of metal, but the bottom half of him either was, or was inside, a flamboyantly-painted box that was now faded, more gray than anything else.

“I know he has something to say to me,” said Theodora. “But he just whimpers. His mouth is all rusted up.”

“Is he real all the way down?” asked Frank.