Oz Reimagined: New Tales from the Emerald City and Beyond (47 page)

“I’m back!” she cried as she dug the leather parcel of dragon scales from her bag. She presented them to Mr. Bucklebelt, who accepted them with reverence, his eyes alight.

“They’re perfect!” he declared as he examined them. “Let me have the shoes so that I may sew them on.”

Nyla hesitated—of course she did—and it hurt her heart to have to take off the shoes and hand them over, knowing that she might not get them back. But they really did belong to the cobbler. He had only lent them to her, after all.

Even so, the cobbler gave her a strange look as she handed them over.

“You’d give them back to me?” he asked. “Freely?”

“I guess so,” she said, and then sniffed away her tears.

The cobbler held the shoes for a long moment and Nyla was totally unable to understand what emotions flitted back and forth in his eyes.

“There aren’t many people who would give away anything magical.”

“But the shoes don’t belong to me.”

“Some might say that they belong to whoever has them,” said the cobbler. “But…that is another matter. You’ve given them to me freely and I accept them freely. And yet I don’t know that I can recall a single time in all my years when something of a magical nature was given away with such innocence and trust.” He shook his head. “Perhaps I
don’t know as much about the Winged Monkey people as I thought.”

Nyla did not blush because Monkeys cannot blush, but she lowered her eyes.

In truth the cobbler’s words were as much a mystery to her as the dragon’s words had been. They seemed to refer to behavior that was so different from the way her people acted.

“I’m only a little girl,” she said, because she didn’t know what else to say.

The cobbler nodded, but it was more to himself than to her. He set to work on the shoes and Nyla watched him, sitting once more on the ball of yarn. It took more than two hours for him to sew the new scales in place, and as he did so, Nyla saw that the old scales around them suddenly flashed with a new luster. Even the worn sole and heel no longer looked as battered and weathered as before. The cobbler only stopped working once. His eye strayed to the silvery leather in which the scales had been wrapped. He frowned, picked it up, rubbed it between his fingers, sniffed it, stretched it between his hands, then grunted as his bushy eyebrows rose high on his head.

“Did the dragon give you this as well?”

“He used it to wrap the scales,” said Nyla. “I suppose he gave it to me. He didn’t say he wanted it back.”

“Did he not,” mused the cobbler distantly, “did he not…” Then the cobbler straightened, fished in his pocket for a coin, and handed it to Nyla. “This will take a while longer. Go and get us some fresh strawberries for a snack.”

She was off in a wink—realizing that she was very hungry, not having eaten in hours—but she discovered that the strawberry stand was on the far side of the market and there was a long, long line. She fretted as she waited, and danced
in agitation because a very fat lady in front of her wanted to examine every single strawberry before making her selection. Two Winged Monkey boys her own age flew past the stand and then soared high onto a jeweled parapet, where they sat making jokes about her wings and calling them down to her.

Nyla bought the strawberries and trudged back to the cobbler’s stall, feeling very low and dejected. And when she returned, she saw that the dragon-scale shoes were completely done.

But they had changed in more than appearance.

“Oh no!” she cried, dropping the strawberries and covering her face. When she could bear to look she saw that apart from the silvery shine that gleamed from every single polished scale, the shoes themselves had grown. They were now slender and graceful and perfectly suited for the foot of a grown woman. A human woman.

Mr. Bucklebelt smiled sadly at her. “Oh, poor little one, I was afraid this would happen. With the magic restored, the shoes have grown to suit the foot for which they were made.”

“The dragon warned me that this might happen,” said Nyla, “but…oooh! I hoped it wouldn’t. Now I’ll never go traveling faster than the wind. I’ll never run from one end of Oz to the other, and I’ll never see all the wonderful things there are to see. I’ll always be a little Monkey girl without wings and all I’ll see is what’s down here on the ground.”

Yet, even in the depths of her despair, Nyla did not whine and did not shout about the unfairness of it all. She despaired, but she accepted these things. After all, the dragon-scale traveling shoes were not made for her feet.

“I’m sorry, little one,” said the cobbler, and she could see from his face that he truly was sorry. “Magic is a funny thing and we can’t always predict what will happen.”

“But what will happen to the shoes?”

“They will wait for the right feet,” he said. “They’ve waited this long, they can wait longer. That’s the way of shoes…they are used to waiting for the right feet.”

Nyla nodded. She started to turn away, but stopped. “Thank you for letting me wear them for a little bit. I’ll never forget your kindness and trust. And…I got to meet a real dragon!”

“Ah,” said the cobbler, “indeed you did, and that dragon must have liked you very, very much.”

“Why? Oh…because he gave me the scales so you could repair the shoes.”

“Not just that.” Mr. Bucklebelt reached under the counter for something. “That dragon gave you more than his trust. He gave you a very great gift.”

“A…gift?” The cobbler removed the item from under the counter. It was the silvery leather in which the scales had been wrapped.

“Do you know what this is?”

“Just a piece of leather. You can keep it if you want. I have no need for it.”

The cobbler laughed. A soft, warm laugh.

“Are you so sure?”

He held the material up and Nyla gasped to see that the cobbler had worked on it. The leather had been snipped and sewn and stitched into a pattern that looked like…

“Wings?” she asked in wonder.

“Wings indeed,” said the cobbler. “And magical wings at that, for the gift that the dragon gave you were pieces of his own wings. I don’t know how this leather came to be detached from his wings, or why he would give it up, but as you see there is more than enough here to make a very pretty set of wings.”

The wings were sewn onto a harness that was small enough to fit her. He had her take off her vest, and the cobbler snipped a slit in the back of it. After he’d helped her buckle on the wings, he pulled the silvery leather through the slit so that the wings lay draped over her own tiny, useless wings. Then he gently tucked each of her wings into pouches he’d sewn into the leather.

Then Bucklebelt stood back and pursed his lips for a moment before he nodded approval.

“They’re very pretty. Thank you very much,” said Nyla, though her voice was still a little sad. “Now at least people will be able to admire my wings, even if they are only leather and thread.”

The cobbler arched one furry eyebrow. “Do you think so little of dragon magic, my girl?”

“W—what do you mean?” stammered Nyla.

“At the very least try flapping your wings.”

“No! The leather is too heavy and it will break my little wings.”

“Will it indeed? And am I a villain who would make something that would injure a little Monkey girl for my own sport? Is that what you think?” His words were sharp, but there was a twinkle in his eye.

“But…but…”

“
Try
!” urged the cobbler.

Nyla took a breath and braced herself against the pain she knew she would feel. She’d made cardboard wings before and tied them to her own wings but she could barely lift them. And once she had made wings of cloth and sticks, but when she tried to fly, the extra weight hurt her back. She cried all that afternoon.

But she did not want to be rude or appear weak.

So Nyla gritted her teeth and flexed her wings.

And something incredible happened—the silver dragon wings expanded out as high and wide as the greatest wings on the biggest eagle in the forest.

The cobbler clapped his hands in delight.

“It doesn’t hurt at all!” cried Nyla.

“Flap then,” said the cobbler. “See if they’ll flap.”

She tried, still bracing against the moment when her little wings would collapse from the strain.

There was a huge
crack,
but it was not of the bones in her wings. It was the powerful flap of her dragon-leather wings.

She flexed again and there was an even louder crack.

And another and another.

When Nyla looked at the cobbler for an explanation, she was shocked to see that he was not there.

He was many feet below her, looking up, pointing and dancing with joy.

The wings cracked and cracked and cracked, and up and up and up Nyla went, soaring above the cobbler’s stall, up above the market square, up beyond the tallest spires in the Emerald City. Her laugh was high and clear and it bounced off of the lofty towers of the Wizard’s castle.

The gift of the dragon and the skill of the cobbler brought forth the magic that lay sleeping in the leather. Wings that had broken off of the old dragon now lived again, and to Nyla it felt like they were a part of her.

She swooped and soared and fluttered and dove and rose up to meet the golden sun. She flew past the two Monkey boys by the strawberry stand and laughed at the goggle-eyed expressions they gave her. Then she swooped back and dared them to follow her.

They goggled a moment longer, then they laughed and threw themselves into the wind. The three of them swirled
and chased each other and flew away toward the forest. But as fast as the two Monkey boys flew, the little Monkey girl flew so very much faster.

-7-

The cobbler dabbed at a happy tear in his eye.

Then a shadow fell across his counter and he turned to see a tall figure standing there. It was a woman wearing a green cloak trimmed in black, and the cowl of the cloak hid her face. A battered umbrella was hooked over one thin arm.

“That was a kindly thing,” said the woman. “You changed that child’s life.”

The cobbler’s smile melted away and he hastily adjusted his apron and stood very straight.

“She…she certainly changed mine, my lady,” he said.

The woman leaned forward slightly and placed her hands on the counter. The motion caused her cowl to slip so that her face was partly revealed. She was old and wrinkled, and she wore an eye-patch that shimmered as if covered with oil. Three gray-black pigtails hung within the shadows of the cowl.

“And has that child changed
my
life?”

The cobbler licked his lips nervously, but he bobbed his head.

“Yes, my lady.”

He turned and opened the chest and removed the dragon-scale shoes. The sight of them, restored and whole, shining with living silver, made the old woman gasp.

“At last…after all these years…”

The cobbler looked right and left to make sure no one was watching, then he raised the shoes and offered them to her, head bowed in fear and respect.

The woman hesitated for just a moment, her fingers seeming to claw the air above the delicate shoes. Then she snatched them from him. She kicked off her own shoes and put the silver shoes on. Her robes seemed to ripple as if the shoes gave off waves of energy. The strawberries Nyla had bought suddenly withered and turned rotten.

From far above the sound of innocent laughter floated down. The old woman raised her head to listen. “All this time I thought the Winged Monkeys were nothing more than curious freaks.” Her eyes took on a calculating look. “Apparently they’re useful after all.”

Before the cobbler could ask the woman what she meant, the crone tapped the shoes together once, twice, and a third time and took a single step away.

And was gone.

The cobbler wiped sweat from his face.

Gone, he knew, but not from Oz.

He stood there for a long time, trembling and frightened, considering what it was he had done. And for whom. She had been his princess long ago and might one day be his queen. His allegiance was owed to her.

But he looked up into the sky and saw the little Monkey girl with her beautiful silver wings swooping and dancing on the wind. In the end, he wondered, what would be the most powerful magic here in Oz? The dark arts of the witch who once more had her silver shoes, or the goodness of a child?

“Fly, little one,” he murmured. “Fly and fly and fly.”

He sat on his stool and spent all of the rest of the day watching the sky.

M
any thanks to the following:

Inspiration: L. Frank Baum. (Of course.)

Publisher: David Pomerico, for acquiring and editing the book; Karen Upson and Jill Taplin, the production managers; Katy Ball, Justin Golenbock, and Patrick Magee in marketing, publicity, and author relations, and to the rest of the team at 47North.

Art/Design: Galen Dara for providing not only amazing cover art but also individual illustrations for each of the stories, and to the team at Inkd for adding in all the most excellent design elements that took the artwork from being mere images and transformed them into
books
. (And for making the interior look so good too!)

Copyediting and Proofreading: Lisa Kaitz, Carissa Blue-stone, and Miranda Ottewell, for Catching all the errors
we
didn’t Catch, and for helping us sort through L. Frank Baum’s Maddening use of Random capitalization.

Agent: Joe Monti, for being awesome and supportive, and for finding a home for this project. To any writers reading this: you’d be lucky to have Joe in your corner.

People Who Helped Us Wrangle Authors and Contracts: Deborah Beale, Kathleen Bellamy, Kristine Card, Elizabeth Harding, Emily Prabhaker, and William Reiss.

Mentors: John thanks Gordon Van Gelder, for teaching him the ways of editing, and Ellen Datlow for revealing the mysteries of anthologizing. Doug thanks Jeanne Cavelos, who gave him the editorial foundation that made everything that followed possible, Shawna McCarthy, who gave him his first chance to practice the editorial craft with professional writers and for adding to his knowledge over the years, and Warren Lapine, for helping advance his career with his unwavering faith through thick and thin. We couldn’t have done this without your tutelage.