Day: Glinda and the Wild Interlude (1100 Hours)_Days of Blood and Roses: A Magical Girl Thriller

> And it will always happen that he who is not your friend will invite you to neutrality, while he who is your friend will call on you to declare yourself openly in arms.

> —Niccolò Machiavelli (trans. Ninian Hill Thomson),

> The Prince,

> Chapter XXI: “How a Prince Should Bear Himself So As to Acquire Reputation”

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It was now 9:40 a.m.

It’s a truth fearfully acknowledged that the dead don’t always stay dead, nor do they stay in one place for long. In fact, sometimes they travel and find themselves in parts unknown like Alice falling down a rabbit hole into Wonderland or passing through a looking-glass into Looking-Glass World or Dorothy finding herself and her dog and her house in the land of the Munchkins after a twister carried them out of Kansas. And such proved true for the Nico Cairns that had accompanied Kendra Tellerman in last night’s dream dive, as well, up to the moment Kendra got stabbed in Katherine’s ballroom during her tussle with a mind-controlled Akami the Red Queen, at which Nico had felt the same wound percolating through her stomach and staining her shirt crimson. And like the aforementioned Alice, Nico found herself falling down a rabbit hole of dreams, dissipating from Mara’s arms in the middle of Katherine’s ballroom . . .

So here Nico stayed for hours in utter oblivion, repeating the same brutal moments like a broken record, dulling her senses with the sad monotony of anguish and horror.

But before she knew it, Nico opened her eyes and stirred to the sound of someone speaking Chinese, and when her vision sharpened into focus, she saw a wizened old man with a long beard in the Hanfu robes of a philosopher sitting beside her. They were in an alley in daylight, and Nico could hear the ebb and flow of waves lapping against a shoreline, and for some reason she could understand what this old man was saying.

“I can hear you,” Nico said.

“Good!”

“Who are you?” Nico said.

“I’m not too sure,” he said. “I know I dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering here and there and enjoying myself to the fullest without knowing that I was Chuang Chou,” he said, and then he began to stir in his sitting position, opening his eyes and looking up at Nico, then smiled at her perplexity. “When I awoke and came to myself, though, I again knew myself to be Chuang Chou,” and he picked himself up and shook his long garments of dust and commenced his salutation with a bow. “Now I do not know whether I am a man dreaming that I was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming that I am a man. Between me and the butterfly there must be a difference.”

“What difference is that?” Nico said.

Chuang Chou just smiled at her and said, “The difference is in one’s perceptions, and that very difference is just a false dichotomy of one’s perceptions imposed by the limits of one’s imagination.”

Nico blinked, dumbfounded, and said, “I don’t understand.”

“Then may I demonstrate such a transformation,” he said, “that you may better understand?”

“Okay, sure,” she said.

“Good!” Chuang Chou said. “For example, this is an instance of transformation.” And he transformed into a fidgety man wearing an old tuxedo and the mask of a grinning Cheshire Cat as if he had just returned from a masquerade ball.

“Who are you?” Nico said.

“The name’s Ronald Hamilton, a.k.a. Edward Foster, Chuang Chou, Cheshire Cat, the Crow—”

“Do you know who Kendra Tellerman is?” Nico asked.

“Not really, no,” he said.

Nico pouted, knowing that she wasn’t getting anywhere with direct questions, so she decided to be abstract and action-based in her inquiry and said, “Did you see anyone resembling a girl in your dreams?”

“Oh, you’ve got to be more specific than that,” he said, grinning like he knew all about many girls in many of his dreams. “For instance, I’m dreaming of you.”

“Let me think about it,” and Nico paused for a spell, thinking of how she should phrase her question between Kendra’s name and complete abstraction, then: “In your previous dream in this place, if you’ve dreamed of this place before, did you see a girl in a tight-fitting mandarin dress with short dark hair tied behind her neck? Did you see her going somewhere in these parts, by any chance?”

“Hmmmm . . . Now that you put it that way,” he said, “I haven’t dreamed of a girl of that description around these parts, because I don’t recognize these parts. I do remember my previous dream, though it’s a bit fuzzy. Before I was Chuang Chou dreaming I was a butterfly, I was a sleeping Oyster by the beach dreaming I was a Crow. I was flying over a city looking for someone to tell me who I was, and during that flight, I happened to spy two women floating over a hotel. One of the women looked exactly like you down to your clothes and overall appearance—”

“Wait, are you talking about Mara?”

“—and one that looked like the Virgin Mary,” he continued. “But truth be told, there was another girl I saw that looked like you atop the roof of that hotel, and she went off with a man in a blooded white suit.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Nico said, trying to comprehend the incomprehensible information he was spouting. “You actually saw Mara with Rancaster?”

At the mention of the man’s name, Ronald Hamilton took the mask of a grinning Cheshire Cat off of his face and said, “Yes, Nico Cairns.”

“How did you know my—”

“I saw Mara Cairns going with that man,” he said. “I don’t know where they went, but I know your double was screaming Mara’s name when she encountered the Virgin Mary.”

“What double are you talking about?” Nico said.

“I’m talking about you, darling,” Ronald said. “Your soul has been split into two separate entities, because you made two girls promise to save your sister before your saved their friend. Don’t you remember what you did?”

And Nico did, remembering the tears on their faces, their looks of mutual pain at the loss of their friend (Colbie) and their supplication for her help. In the end, Nico just nodded her head, resisting the urge to cry, because she had unwittingly led one of them (Kendra) to her demise in Katherine’s ballroom last night.

Yet the man named Ronald Hamilton said, “Nothing is hopeless, as long as you keep trying your best. God works in mysterious ways, so that one’s setbacks often becomes the start of further success down the line. We all have our parts to play, even the dead ones like you and me.”

“You’re dead, too?” Nico said.

“Yes, but we’re not forgotten,” Ronald said. “You and several others, including your own mother, are playing their own parts in this matter, as well.”

“Seriously?”

He nodded his head with a smile and said, “I’ve become something of an errand boy lately, leading many girls like you on their way. And you yourself will meet with four others shortly.”

“W-what do you mean?” Nico said.

“Be patient. You’ll see soon enough,” Ronald said. “When you meet them, bring them back here and take them to the end of this alleyway, where there’s a false wall that way,” and he walked over and passed his arm through the dead-end wall behind her. “Do you see now? It’s a false wall.”

Nico understood with a nod.

“Good! Now give me your hand,” Ronald said, walking up to her and reaching out his hand for Nico to grab.

She grabbed a hold and got hoisted to her feet, then said, “Where will I meet them?”

“That way,” Ronald said, pointing towards the sound of waves as he started dissipating bodily from view. Right now, you’re in a harbor town overlooking the sea. If you go towards the water, you’ll reach a boardwalk on the edge of the harbor. When you get there, you’ll see a pier over the water. Wait there on the boardwalk but don’t approach, till you see for yourself that your visitors are four females.

“Do you know who they are?” Nico said.

You’re quite the inquisitor, aren’t you? he said. I haven’t the slightest idea who they are, because I haven’t met them myself. Oh, and before I forget, he added as his voice now echoed in Nico’s head. Consider yourself lucky to wake up at all, because you and your double are really lucky.

“And why’s that?”

Colbie Amame woke both of you up earlier this morning in the manner of a prince walking up Sleeping Beauty, he said, though it took you quite a bit of time to awaken. Now get going, girl. Time’s a-ticking, and I’ve gotta wake up soon.

Nico touched her lips and noticed the warmth of Colbie’s kiss lingering there, the same kiss that woke up Nico’s double in the underground vault of Cooley’s mansion this morning. Then she found herself wondering what Mara would say if she knew about it without knowing that Mara had already known about it from Nico’s double when they both shared a not-so-clandestine kiss in the underground vault of Cooley’s mansion hours earlier.

Shaking her head of such thoughts, Nico followed the sound of the waves ebbing and flowing against the water margin of the harbor, walking down the empty streets and narrow stairways towards the shore, where the waters of the harbor lapped against the boardwalk lining it.

There she spied the pier reaching across the water, so Nico made her way down its creaking deck boards. On the way, she thought she saw four figures standing there but wasn’t sure. The pier stretched so far out into the sea that the figures appeared as specks from Nico’s vantage point, so she found a bench and sat and waited for a better look.

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It was now 9:47 a.m.

In another part of the Phantom Realms, a mirror appeared at the end of a pier overlooking a vast lake of a certain harbor town. And through that mirror walked a train of two older women and two younger women holding each other’s hands: Leslie coming in first, Connie second, Madison third, and Celia bringing up the rear before the mirror dissipated behind them. With everyone viewing their surroundings, Celia found herself staring at the wine-dark expanse of the lake yawning before her, then turned and saw the boardwalk connecting to the pier and running along the water margin of the lake in the distance.

Connie Davis whistled and said, “It’s a beautiful place. I’ll make sure to mark this spot in my dream diver’s map when we get back. Have any of you been here before?”

“Not me,” Madison added.

“Not me, either,” Celia said.

Connie turned to Leslie, saying, “What about you?”

Yet Leslie was still looking around.

“Leslie?” Connie said.

Without answering or even acknowledging their presence, Leslie just walked down the pier as if in a trance, so Connie and Celia and Madison followed her. All the while, Celia wondered if Leslie knew something about this place, like whether or not it had anything to do with Colbie or Auna, or whether or not it had anything to do with what happened last night or . . .

“Were you here last night?” Celia heard Connie say.

“Yeah,” Leslie said without turning her head, still keeping her gaze fixed on something Celia couldn’t see herself. “It was during last night’s dream dives.”

So Connie continued her questions, saying, “Was that before or after your dream dive with Colbie?”

“Before,” Leslie said and halted her steps on the pier, so Celia and Madison and Connie stopped in their tracks. “I was on this pier last night, right here in this very spot, where I met two girls that looked like Auna Wenger. At first, they attacked me, thinking that I meant to harm Auna in some way because I was an outsider, yet I managed to convince them otherwise. But then I heard two booming sounds in the sky . . .”

Now Leslie paused, biting on her lower lip in her reflections and seeing something that Celia could only guess. Yet Celia had an inkling of what that was as she fisted her hands to stop them from trembling at the damnable memory, at the horrible moment when she gave into Rancaster’s hold over her and heard Auna’s gun going off at a helpless Auna Wenger, feeling the recoil and seeing Auna’s shirt turning crimson on the steps of Katherine’s mansion during last night’s dream dive . . .

“Like thunderclaps?” Connie said.

“Or gunshots?” Celia found herself adding.

Then Celia received an elbow to her ribs from Madison, who shook her head at her before saying, “Or fireworks?”

“I think you’re right, Celia,” Leslie said, turning around and facing Celia, catching her gaze and making Celia look at her. “They were definitely gunshots.”

“Are you sure they were gunshots?” Madison said.

“There was no mistaking what I heard, trust me,” Leslie said, then looked at Celia. “Honey, when you pulled the trigger that time, did you actually see Auna fire on Rancaster?”

Her words jogged her memory, and Auna Wenger seemed not quite as helpless as she had seemed before, manifesting her gun and firing up at Rancaster atop the stairs at the same time Celia had fired on Auna. “Yeah,” she said, “and that’s when I saw Auna change into Alice at the time.”

Then Leslie continued down the pier towards the boardwalk, so Connie and Madison and Celia followed after her, their footfalls creaking against the wooden planking. But as they got closer to the water margin of the harbor, they all spied a girl standing on the board, wind-milling her arms to get their attention, so they footed it down the pier.

When they reached the boardwalk, Celia sighted Nico Cairns and shouted, “Nico, is that you?”

“It’s me!” Nico shouted back.

So Celia threw her seal on the deck boards in mid-stride—

Before teleporting herself and her companions over to Nico’s location, making them almost trip themselves up in the transition from running to halting. Celia then went up to Nico and glomped her in a tight embrace, planting hungry kisses on her lips, till Nico pushed her away at arm’s length.

“Geez, you’re thirstier than Mara!” Nico said.

“Sorry, sorry!” Celia said, then stole a glance at her three other companions with smirks on their faces. “Okay, okay, I’m interested in girls, too! Lay off!”

“It’s okay,” Leslie said.

“You’re completely fine,” Connie said.

Then Madison added, “I’ll lend you Kathy’s strap-on later.”

“Ewww, I’m not into that!” Celia said.

Which cracked Madison up.

“Maddie, please stop,” Leslie said.

“Okay, okay!” Madison said, throwing up her hands.

Then Celia turned, but Nico had left her side, so she said, “Damn it, you scared her away, you freak!”

But before Madison said anything, Nico yelled for them to follow her into the harbor town, saying, “Over here!”

Celia and Madison and Connie and Leslie all looked over at Nico at the edge of the boardwalk several yards away, waving her hand, and so the group of four followed without saying a word. When they caught up to Nico, Nico asked them what they were talking about to get Celia so riled up, but Celia just said that she didn’t wanna know. But when Nico guessed that it had something to do with Katherine’s naughty room in her mansion, Celia and Madison both grimaced, and Connie and Leslie admonished them not to bring up Katherine’s weird fetishes ever again.

Then followed a long spell of chatting, in which Nico filled them in on her adventure with Kendra and surprised all four visitors, especially Celia who remembered Colbie mentioning a second Nico during their crazy interview session this morning. What’s more, Nico told them about her recent run-in with a weird guy that went under several names, but when Leslie asked if he was Rancaster, Nico said it wasn’t. It was a guy named Ronald Hamilton, who also went under the names of Edward Foster, Chuang Chou, Cheshire Cat, and the Crow, who also showed her the way to get out of this place through one of the many alleyways around here. But after following Nico up the stairways and through several alleyways past even more buildings before doubling back a few times, Celia thought she was lost.

“Do you know where we’re going?” Celia said.

“It’s gotta be down one of these alleys,” Nico said.

“Did Ronald give you a map?” Leslie said.

“No, he didn’t,” Nico said, doubling back yet again through a thoroughfare before spotting the alley she was looking for: “Ah, there it is!”

Nico sprinted down another side street and entered an alleyway between a bistro and café, so the other for followed after her past several closed doors. When they reached the dead end, Celia was about to say that they were lost, but then Nico put her arm through the wall and said, “See it?”

“A false wall?” Connie said.

“Yep,” Nico said, then smiled. “Come on in.”

“Wait, don’t go yet!” Leslie said, grabbing Nico’s hand before she disappeared through the wall.

“Why?” Nico said.

“We all need to hold hands before we enter,” Leslie said, linking her other hand with Connie’s hand, who linked her other hand with Madison’s, who then linked her other hand with Celia’s. “First rule of dream diving: don’t go through any unknown portal without holding hands with everyone else present, so we won’t get separated. Got it?”

Nico grimaced, then said, “Got it.”

Thus, with everyone holding hands, they passed through the holographic wall: Nico coming in first, Leslie second, Connie third, Madison fourth, and Celia bringing up the rear, heading into God-knows-where.

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It was now 9:59 a.m.

When Katherine finished her description of Princess Ozma playing the clandestine lover with Kendra Tellerman as Sleeping Beauty and the lucky prince with Auna Wenger as another Sleeping Beauty, she found herself blushing at the prospect of such a gorgeous young girl doing such grown-up things. As such, she received stares from Roy and Randal, both men smirking and asking her if they should leave her to her thoughts for a bit.

“Minds out of the gutter! It’s not like that,” she said, then got up from the recliner and went back to her hand mirror lying in the center of the room.

Crouching over and placing her hand on the mirror again, she closed her eyes and saw Leslie and Connie and Madison and Celia following Nico Cairns past the door of a quaint storefront out into a large square, part of which was flooded with water. And there in the square was Princess Ozma leading a hodgepodge group if ever there was one: three young girls around the same age as Princess Ozma, several young women in late-19th century uniforms carrying lever-action rifles, a tall and lanky soldier wearing a long handlebar mustache on his face and carrying a long-ass rifle, a look-alike of Lewis Carroll amongst a bevy of other women, and even a trio of blue musketeers that looked like Lt. Shaefer and Officer Curvan and Roy Dolan . . .

“No fucking way!” Katherine said.

“What is it?” Roy and Randal said at once.

“Roy, I see you and the guys dressed as musketeers,” Katherine said. “Was that your idea for the op?”

“Yeah, it was,” Roy said.

“I thought so, Mr. Musketeer,” Katherine said, smiling at Roy’s pinking face. She already knew Roy had an interest in the Dumas novels and had a collection of various Three Musketeers film adaptations in his house, though she never thought he would take it to that level.

As Randal gave Roy a ‘Dude, really?’-look, to which Roy shook his head to leave his interests alone, Katherine focused on the other women. Out of the bevy of women, Katherine also recognized Amelia Hearn and Ramona Tellerman and even Lucy Cairns from yesterday’s news program, then Cooley and Blaze, then Auna and the Red and White Queens, and then the Red and White Queens and Lucy Cairns staring at Nico Cairns. Nico had caught sight of her mother and the others in the square with the White Queen running up and glomping her and Lucy Cairns looking at her daughter as if she was wigging out, maybe even mistaking Nico for Mara Cairns, but after the Queens led the two together and Nico ran up to her mother, mother and daughter seemed to clear up the misunderstanding before meeting with the others in Ozma’s hodgepodge group . . . . as the vision morphed into that of Colbie walking with the other Nico Cairns in some underground place . . . till it all faded from her mind and from her hand mirror. So Katherine fisted her trembling hand and found herself breathing hard at what she had just seen . . .

“Holy shit, Colbie’s right,” she said.

“Right about what?” Roy said.

“I’m seeing two Nicos,” she said.

Both men stared at her, mouths agape.

“How the hell is that possible?” Randal said.

“I don’t know, but there are two Nicos,” Katherine said and looked over at the sleeping Colbie on the left sofa and then at the sleeping Kendra on the right sofa, wondering what was going on with both of them.

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It was now 10:05 a.m.

Lt. Frank Shaefer of the Phantom Office had just hung up his smartphone after listening to Lt. Anne Granger (a.k.a., General Jinjur) tell him to prepare his company for deployment in 1100 hours, so he relayed the information to the 97 remaining men in his company, Cory and Benson among them from Lt. Granger’s devastated company, all of them dressed as blue musketeers for this op. He then stared at Officer Todd Curvan’s blank face, still staring with vacant eyes at nothing in particular after hearing the news of their case officer Inspector Larking getting wounded in action in their last phone call with Lt. Granger just twenty minutes beforehand.

So Lt. Shaefer walked over to Todd and patted his shoulder for moral support and said, “Are you okay?”

“I’ll manage, sir,” Todd said.

Lt. Shaefer nodded and then faced the rest of his company in the nondescript warehouse, glancing at the stony faces of his companions and saying, “I know you’ve all signed up for this, but I also know you’re scared. Inspector Larking and the rest of Lt. Granger’s company have already got some skin in this mess, but we’ve got a job to do.”

“He’s right, you know,” Officer Todd Curvan added. “It’s a pity Steve couldn’t join us, but we’ve got this.”

When the stony faces of the company perked up at his show of better morale, Lt. Shaefer added, “Prepare the seals over the door and man your positions. When the time comes, it’ll be go-time, boys. So pray to your God or gods, pray for your families, pray for your kids, or pray for yourselves: however you do it, do it to get yourselves ready.”

And with that, the company took up their bolt-action rifles and split up into two troops, one led by Lt. Shaefer and one led by Officer Curvan. Lt. Shaefer had his troop group up in two lines of twenty-something men each behind the entry point that was the entrance door, while Officer Curvan had his troop split up into two lines of twenty something men each and had them group up along the wall on both side of the door, both troops ready to infiltrate according to plan. Once the formation was complete, Lt. Shaefer ordered everyone to take a knee to rest themselves for the operation.

After that, Officer Curvan had the four seal specialists (Cory and Benson from Lt. Granger’s company and Rick and Norman from Lt. Shaefer’s company) do their thing, so they fished out a roll of tape and strips of ribbon and paper talismans from their side pockets. Benson and Norman placed a pair of paper talismans on the door, while Cory and Rick taped three stripes of ribbon across the door, taping them on either side of the door jamb. With that done, Norman snapped his fingers and activated one of the talismans on the door, making it glow a bright blue, before the four seal specialists all lined up behind each of the four lines of men took a knee themselves, taking up their bolt-action rifles with itchy trigger fingers.

Then Lt. Sheafer crept up to the glowing door and took out a shaving kit from his side pocket, fishing out the shaving mirror and placing it beneath the door, where he felt the whoosh of air-conditioned turbulence against his fingers. Angling the mirror just enough for him to see into the interior of a hallway lined with doors, he saw a few of Alice’s red musketeers patrolling the hallway on guard duty.

That’s when he knew that they were just behind one of the designated entry points in the Dragon Volant, their target zone. With this in mind, Lt. Shaefer looked over his shoulder at his men and raised a finger to his mouth.

All of his men nodded in acknowledgement, and many of them gripped on the stock of their guns all the more. In the silent hush of the present moment was the hectic hell of infiltrating an enemy stronghold looming over their heads.

For what felt like the umpteenth time, Lt. Shaefer of the Phantom Office checked his watch: it was now 10:15 a.m. and counting down the moments to 1100 hours. He had never considered himself much of a religious man, but the moments before an infiltration were heavy ones, so he made the sign of the cross and said a silent prayer in his mind for himself and his men (and his family if things went sideways).

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It was now 10:16 a.m.

A hush fell over the grand court of the Quadling Palace after Glinda the Good Witch of the South had just ended her conversation with General Jinjur and dissipated her hand mirror, looking at the startled faces of her maids of honor against a vast colonnade open to a bucolic vista of fields and groves, only the tinkling of fountains here and there within the colonnaded room cutting through the silence. All one hundred of her maids had paused their embroideries and their singing, looking askance at the enthroned ruddy-headed Glinda in a white gown and a tall crown atop her head. Even Glinda’s guards, all young women in red uniforms and white knee-length skirts and high boots and swords sheathed at their sides, shared the same astonished expressions on their faces, including the taciturn redhead that was Captain Bell standing by Glinda’s throne and looking pensive.

So Glinda bade Captain Bell to follow her through the Azure Reception Room into her drawing room as she headed straight for the Great Book of Records atop a big marble table there, where she flipped the giant leaves to the most recent page. After skimming through the one-line entries of events around the world, she saw a whole paragraph and read it under her breath:

> “‘Rancaster had captured the Princesses Ozma and Betsy and Trot of Oz, but Princesses Dorothy of Oz and Lewis Carroll of Wonderland had rescued them. In addition, the Blood Rose Witch and the Chrysanthemum Witch and their allies had subdued Rancaster, and Nico the Knight-Errant was about to deal the finishing blow when her sister, Mara the Black Knight, interfered before going with Rancaster. Many people have already become involved, and many more will join the fight with much bloodshed as a result.’”

Glinda bit her lower lip at the thought of including ‘many more’ allies into the fray, as General Jinjur had bidden her to do over her hand mirror. Not since a century ago when Princess Ozma and Ozma’s magic picture and even Glinda’s Great Book of Records and magic tools had all disappeared had Glinda been as furious as she was now, for what Rancaster had done to all four Princesses of Oz under her watch made it doubly personal. She gritted her teeth and glared at the damning paragraph, seething to the point that her ruddy hair began to float, as she headed for the double doors of her Magic Room and pulled them open.

Without looking back at her head attendant, Glinda said, “I’ll be in my Room of Magic and Sorcery for a bit. In the meantime, prepare the battalion for deployment to the battlefield in twelve hundred hours and let General Jinjur know.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Captain Bell said, saluting her commander-in-chief and then marching out of the drawing room and ordering the guards in the grand court to round up the rest of their number in the training grounds for immediate roll call.

Meanwhile, Glinda passed the threshold and locked herself inside, then headed for one of the many cupboards lining the walls of the room and flung open its doors and peered at the contents of several grimoires in their shelves. She picked out a thick grimoire of various kinds of magic seals and circles and signets and checked the table of contents after turning over the front cover. She then flipped to the page she wanted and reviewed how to create the flying messengers for a few minutes, then shut the tome and replaced it in its place on the shelf and closed the doors.

Then she went to another cupboard and flung open its doors, revealing more lore tomes detailing the folklores and histories of different cultures around the world, which she had collected during her travels before coming to settle to her current abode in the Quadling Palace. She ran her finger across the row of spines and pulled out a handful of them and reviewed the table of contents of each, then got out a dozen sheets of paper and a quill and a bottle of enchanted ink and compiled a list of names from these pages, crossing out names and circling others. Then she thought of her Great Book of Records atop a big marble table in the drawing room, letting her mind rifle through its contents concerning the names she had circled on her list. Now armed with the requisite knowledge to persuade her readers to join her cause, she wrote out letters to those very names, including the Tin Woodman of the Winkie country, and signed and folded and sealed them with wax and stamped them with her signet ring. After that, she stacked the letters on the floor and pulled out her wand from the bodice of her gown and zapped them, making each letter glow a red light.

“Wake up, all of you,” she said, “and go to your recipients! Now, up! Up!”

And the letters all shifted and danced and began to transform into glowing red cardinals, twittering and squeaking.

“Go now, all of you!” she said.

Then all the red cardinals took off in a flock and scattered through the walls of her Room of Magic and Sorcery, going their separate ways towards the world outside of Oz. Due to Glinda’s international appeal across the annals of history and lore, several imaginative children and superstitious adults in different lands would bear witness to these red cardinals and spread rumors, yet she had expected just a few of the more than half a dozen recipients to answer her call to arms. Little was she to know how wrong her assumption was in less than half an hour’s time.

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It was now 10:27 a.m.

The dream about Nico Cairns in that strange harbor town had faded by the time Ronald Hamilton woke up to a hubbub of voices in his private suite inside the Royal Palace of Oz. He took the covers off of himself and found himself in his boxers, so he dressed himself into his two-piece dinner jacket and pants and shoes that the maids had cleaned and ironed and left for him as he was asleep in his room. After getting dressed, he got out of his room and found the maids and butlers and chefs and gardeners and even the guests all heading in one direction.

“What’s going on?” Ronald said.

A young chap in a belted jacket and knickerbockers and a safari hat paused for a moment, saying, “Haven’t you heard?”

“Heard what, little chap?” Ronald said.

“The four Princesses of Oz, sir,” the boy said. “They’ve all gone missing this morning! This is the second time that’s happened in one day, you know.”

“Missing?” Ronald said.

“Yeah,” the young chap said.

“What’s your name, little chap?” he said.

“Button-Bright,” said the young chap, probably no older than ten or eleven years old, who followed the crowd again.

So Ronald followed close behind past several walls of mirrored glass and down two sets of stairs towards the second floor of the Palace, where many others were present in the hallway leading into the double doors of a private suite. Once he and Button-Bright entered the suite, Ronald saw more staff members and several guests and residents he did not recognize, till he spotted the mechanical Clockwork Man and the Shaggy Man with his shaggy beard and clothes and Captain Bill with his one wooden leg and the Cowardly Lion and the Hungry Tiger all in the sitting room. And on the back wall, he saw a large black landscape picture framed against it, where the head maid Jellia Jamb stood before it holding a hand mirror and trying to explain to everyone that she had just talked with General Jinjur.

“Did she say where the four Princesses went?” Captain Bill said. “Because it’s definitely not like Trot to go off on an adventure without notifying me first!”

“That’s right,” an old woman in a prairie dress and bonnet said. “Our Dorothy hasn’t notified me or my husband!”

“My dear,” her old husband in overalls and a prairie hat said, “Dorothy’s been lost before on an even worse occasion, but she’d returned returned safe and sound, so there’s no—”

“Oh, shut it, Henry,” she said, then to Jellia Jamb: “Just show us where they are through the magic picture. Maybe it’s back in working order again.”

“I’m not sure it is,” Jellia Jamb said.

“When was the last time you checked it?” she said.

“Thirty minutes ago,” Jellia Jamb said, “but there’s been no—”

“Then check it again,” the old woman said. “Otherwise, I’ll die of nerves and God knows what else!”

“Okay, okay, okay!” a harried Jellia Jamb said, then to the magic picture: “Dear Magic Picture, I wish to see Princesses Ozma and Dorothy and Betsy and Trot.”

And at once, the inky blackness faded from view and manifested a real-time motion picture of a bedroom suite with two beds and several people clustered around both beds. And there in the picture, Ronald saw the four Princesses (Ozma and Dorothy and Betsy and Trot) by one of the beds talking it up with General Jinjur and three other women, one of which he recognized as the Blood Rose Witch, Amelia Hearn.

“There they are!” the old woman said.

Yet no sooner had the image appeared when the magic picture blacked out again to the collective gasps from everyone in the room bearing witness to such an occurrence.

“Do you see what I mean?” Jellia Jamb said. “It’s been acting like this for an hour now.”

At this, Ronald stepped past Button-Bright and made his way through the crowd, saying, “Is it always like that?”

“No, it’s not,” Jellia Jamb said.

Then everyone in the room started throwing Ronald glances and whispering to each other about whether or not he was the cause of such witchery, but Jellia Jamb yelled above everyone else, saying, “Pipe down, everyone!” Then to Ronald: “You came over here the other day.”

“I did,” Ronald said.

“Are you a wizard?” she said.

“Of sorts, yes,” he said. “Why do you ask?”

So Jellia Jamb said, “None of us have received word of the Princesses’ departure from the Royal Palace, so I thought they must have gotten lost somehow. It’s happened once before with her Highness, Princess Ozma, and with all four Princesses gone and the magic picture out of working order, I was going to send a message to the Tin Woodman of the Winkie Country and the Scarecrow to help us find their Highnesses, but General Jinjur contacted me and told me they’re playing hide and seek.”

“Maybe they’re on vacation,” he said. “I mean, everybody needs a vacation every now and then.”

“True,” she said, “but the picture’s never acted like this before, and that has us worried. Since you’re a wizard, Mr. Hamilton, can you find out the cause?”

“I’ll try,” Ronald said, coming forward and placing his hand over the moving picture, then jerking his hand away as if it was burning hot.

“What is it?” Jellia Jamb said.

“It’s been tampered with,” Ronald said and reached into his inner vest pocket, pulling out a glass hip flask and undoing the lid, then pressed his hand over it against the picture. Then he closed his eyes and imagined that he was an Oyster sleeping by the sea shore dreaming that he was a Crow drinking in gargantuan gulps from a dark pond. And little by little, the inky blackness in the picture began to fade and collect into the glass hip flask he was holding. When the Crow drank the whole pond dry, he heard gasps and opened his eyes and beheld the picture in its normal state of ever-shifting images of several locations.

Then cheers rang out from the staff and guests around him, and Jellia Jamb came near him and kissed his cheek, saying, “You really are a wizard.”

“Of sorts,” Ronald said, pinking a bit.

“And I thought you were a charlatan,” Jellia Jamb said. “Please forgive me, Mr. Hamilton.”

“Already done, lass,” he said as he received several handshakes and thank yous and slaps on the back from everyone around him. “I’m just doing what I can.”

Then Jellia Jamb said, “Dear Magic Picture, I wish to see Princesses Ozma and Dorothy and Betsy and Trot.”

And at once, the shifting images faded from view and showed another moving scene of the four Princesses of Oz leaving the double doors of the Bangsian hotel, accompanied by General Jinjur and a squad of armed young women in Gillikin uniforms and Wantowin Battles and Lewis Carroll and a handful of blue musketeers that resembled Inspector Dolan and Lt. Frank Shaefer and Officer Todd Curvan. And going with these battle-ready types was a bevy of women, two of which he recognized as Amelia Hearn and Auna Wenger . . .

“Where are they going?” Captain Bill said.

“I’ve no idea,” Jellia Jamb said.

Then all heads turned to Ronald, who raised his hands and said, “Hey, don’t look at me. I’m just as stumped as you are,” and so, along with the others gathered in Princess Ozma’s private suite, Ronald looked at the happenings in the reflection, wondering what was going on.

----------------------------------------

It was now 10:29 a.m.

Unlike most of W. W. Denslow and John R. Neill’s illustrations in L. Frank Baum’s Oz books, the Tin Woodman looked less like a walking oil can and more like a walking suit of armor with a metallic human-shaped head and face and a metal oil-funnel hat atop his noggin. After receiving his heart from the Wizard, the Tin Woodman’s face became more human-like and expressive to the point where his depiction in the technicolor adaptation of The Wizard of Oz was closer to reality than fiction. But in all other aspects, Baum’s characterization of the Tin Woodman of these pages was more-or-less accurate insofar as he was able to describe him in his books.

Anyway, after receiving his guests in the anteroom, the Tin Woodman had his stableman lead his guests’ horses, a white old horse named Gunpowder and a black horse named Goblin, towards a nearby pasture for them to graze. The Tin Woodman then greeted the Scarecrow and Jack Pumpkinhead and acquainted himself with Jack’s cousin the Headless Horseman in the antechamber and invited his friends into the courtyard of his Tin Palace to play a game of quoits. Then the Tin Woodman had another attendant bring out a board and chalk and a pair of spikes and a dozen metal quoits for him and his friends to use in their game. And so, while the attendant held the board and chalk and Jack Pumpkinhead had the quoits ringed along his forearm, the Tin Woodman had the Scarecrow and the Headless Horseman position the spikes about eighteen feet apart on the lawn. Then the Tin Woodman took his trusty ax and smacked the back of the ax head over the heads of both spikes, driving one and then the other into the ground.

With that done, the Tin Woodman put his ax down and said, “All right, boys! Who’s up first?”

The Headless Horseman reattached his pumpkin head over his shoulders and said, “I’ll be first!”

So Jack Pumpkinhead handed out four metal quoits to the four men, saying, “How’s your quoits game, Nick?”

“I haven’t played it in awhile,” the Tin Woodman said. “I’m a little rusty with my accuracy.”

“Don’t worry, Nick,” the Scarecrow said. “You’ll get better at it with practice.”

The other three men played rock-paper-scissors to determine the order they would go in and paired up behind both spikes on opposite sides, the Headless Horseman with Jack Pumpkinhead and the Tin Woodman with the Scarecrow. With the attendant keeping score, the Headless Horseman pitched his quoit towards the opposite spike, but it landed just short of it in the grass. Jack Punkinhead was up next and pitched his quoit towards the opposite spike but overshot it by several feet.

“Ah, I missed it!” Jack Pumpkinhead said.

“It’s all in the swing of your arm, my boy,” the Headless Horseman said, clapping his opponent on the back.

“But my arms are spindly,” he said.

Then it was the Tin Woodman’s turn, who pitched his quoit towards the opposite spike and managed to hit it, where it leaned against the spike on the grass.

“Ha ha, one point!” the Tin Woodman said.

Yet when the Scarecrow pitched his quoit, he got it to land on the spike and said, “Got a ringer! Three points!”

“Looks like you’ve had lots of practice,” the Tin Woodman said. “I wish I had more time in my own schedule.”

“Then make more time,” his friend said.

“Oh, I will, I will,” the Tin Woodman said.

While the attendant kept score, the four men were about to go for another round of tosses—

When a pair of red cardinals fluttered over their heads, twittering and squeaking and circling above the group in the courtyard of the Tin Palace. The quartet looked up as the birds continued circling overhead and then split up, one heading for the Tin Woodman and the other heading for the Headless Horseman, both birds fluttering about their heads.

The Tin Woodman raised his arm with his hand open, so that the bird landed in the nest of his palm, and said, “A cardinal, eh? Why are you here, little one?”

The bird twittered.

And although the Tin Woodman knew not the language of birds, his heart beating within his metallic form became receptive to its words. “A message, you say?” he said.

The bird twittered again

“From who?” he said.

The bird twittered yet again.

And the Tin Woodman dropped his quoits onto the grass, staring at the red cardinal.

“What did he say?” the Scarecrow said.

“He said he comes with a message from Lady Glinda,” the Tin Woodman said. “Are you a letter of hers, little one?”

The bird twittered again, and the words of Glinda’s message filtered through his metal noggin, telling him to come to the Quadling Palace with all due haste and to bring only willing companions with him. The avian message added that Lady Glinda had been keeping track of the progress of a burgeoning conflict going on in a faraway fairyland, and that a man named Rancaster had captured Princesses Ozma and Betsy and Trot. She said that Princess Dorothy had managed to rescue the three Princesses with the help of other allies on the battlefield, but the danger yet remains with further complications that Lady Glinda cannot mention through this message. As such, Lady Glinda had sent for the aid of other allies who could help in the conflict and hopes that Emperor Nicholas III of the House of Chopper can join into the fray and stop the madness, adding that she and her army are to depart for said conflict by noon.

When the bird dissipated from his hand, snapping him out of his reveries, the Tin Woodman told his attendant to go fetch his Lord High Chancellor. While the attendant hightailed it back into the Tin Palace to fetch the Lord High Chancellor, the Tin Woodman called out to his friends, saying, “We need to get to the Quadling Palace, pronto!”

“Is there an emergency?” the Scarecrow said.

“A big one, yes,” the Headless Horseman said. “I received the same message from her Ladyship.”

All four men left the quoits and spikes of their game in the courtyard and headed inside the Tin Palace, where they met the Lord High Chancellor. The Tin Woodman talked with his Lord High Chancellor, instructing him to run his kingdom while he was gone. Then the Tin Woodman led the way into the anteroom towards the palace entrance, calling for the stableman to bring out the pair of horses.

When the stableman brought out the guests’ horses, the white Gunpowder and the black Goblin, the Scarecrow mounted Gunpowder and hoisted the Tin Woodman up into the saddle behind him, while the Headless Horseman mounted Goblin and hoisted Jack Pumpkinhead into the saddle behind him. And like Templar Knights, they sped out of the City of the Winkies up the hill overlooking the city towards Glinda’s Palace, due southwest, leaving a rising cloud of dust trailing behind them. . . .

----------------------------------------

It was now 10:31 a.m.

In a ghost town somewhere inside a no-name saloon, haunted by the ghosts of the Old West, sat a group of nine poker players at a table in a back corner of the saloon furthest away from the swinging café doors. Amidst the hubbub of voices and the clacking of billiard balls and the clapping of beer bottles on the bar top and the playing of James Scott’s “Ophelia Rag” on the piano, these nine poker players were composed of eight men and one woman. The men were composed of some the greatest gunfighters of the Old West: Doc Holliday and the three Earp brothers (Virgil and Wyatt and Morgan), the Whitehouse Gunfighters (Bat Masterson and Pat Garrett and Ben Daniels), and Wild Bill Hickok himself of dead-man’s-hand fame. Yet amongst these mustachioed men was a brunette woman, drinking yet another swig of tequila and clapping it on the table and revealing her hand: a pair of fours and a pair of twos.

The men had also revealed their hands: Doc Holliday had a pair of eights; Virgil Earp had a three of a kind composed of sevens; Wyatt Earp had a full house of two nines and three sixes; Morgan Earp lucked out with a four of kind composed of Queens; Bat Masterson had a flush of diamonds suit; Pat Garrett had a pair of nines; Ben Daniels had a three of a kind composed of kings; but Wild Bill Hickok grimaced with a pair of eights and a pair of aces and cursed up a storm and threw them down.

“Damn it all!” Wild Bill Hickok said. “I sure as tarnation am sick of getting this damn hand!”

“We’re all dead, Bill,” Pat Garrett said.

“And at least you got two pairs,” Doc Holliday added.

“And your two pairs beat out my two pairs,” Calamity Jane added and took another swig at her glass of tequila.

So Wild Bill slid her glass over to his side of the poker table and said, “And you need to lay off on the booze before you soil yourself.”

Calamity Jane reached for her glass.

But Wild Bill Hickok, like a temperate father figure, slapped her hand away and said, “After the next hand.”

“Fine,” she said as Doc Holliday collected everyone’s cards on the table and shuffled the deck, cut it, shuffled it again, cut it again, shuffled one more time, and dealt out the cards around the table with expert dealer hands.

Let it be known, though, that the Calamity Jane of these pages was nothing like the one from The Legend of Calamity Jane, in which she looked like a cosplaying red-headed goth chick with a personality as wooden as Clint Eastwood’s the Man with No Name. The Calamity Jane of these pages was an alcoholic, whose friend and mentor Wild Bill Hickok told her once again to lay off on the booze as she was reaching across his side of the poker table for her half-empty glass of tequila, her third one during the game and her sixth one this morning.

The brunette Calamity Janet paused for just a moment, then snatched up her glass and said, “I’ll lay off of it after I finish this last one,” and she downed the rest of the tequila and clapped the empty glass on the table.

“Cross your Heart?”

“Yep,” Calamity Jane said.

“And hope to sleep with the fishes?” Wild Bill added, peeking at his hand before looking back at Jane again.

The three Earp brothers and Doc Holliday and Bat Masterson and Pat Garrett and Ben Daniels began sniggering, commenting on Wild Bill’s recent hobby of reading Shakespeare’s Sonnets to Calamity Jane before going to bed (in separate rooms).

Calamity Jane, for her part, glowered at the other men and then stared at her partner seated next to her at the poker table and said, “I’m already dead, Gramps, and so are you!”

“It’s just a figure of speech,” he said. “And please stop calling me Gramps. I’m not that old.”

“And you ain’t Shakespeare, either,” Jane said. “And stop pestering me, why don't ya?”

More sniggers from the other poker players.

“And this ain’t comedy hour, either,” she said. “I’m serious about this!”

The players raised one of their hands up in a placating manner, while holding their cards in their other hands. Only then did Calamity Jane cool it and turn her attention to her cards, so they continued the poker game. And one by one they discarded their cards near the center of the table, and Doc Holliday dealt out their new cards.

Calamity Jane, who had discarded three of her cards, rearranged her new assortment in numerical order and smiled, then looked over at Virgil and Wyatt and Morgan and said, “I’m winning this next round.”

The Earp brothers traded glances with each other and Doc Holliday, and Wyatt said, “How do you know?”

“Gut feeling,” Jane said.

“Don’t jinx me, Jane,” Wild Bill said.

“You’re the one jinxing yourself, not me!” she said.

Then they revealed their hands on the table: Doc Holliday had a three of a kind composed of tens; Virgil Earp had an incomplete royal flush that was missing a ten of spades; Wyatt Earp had an incomplete flush composed of clubs with two of his cards being a different suit; Morgan Earp had a pair of twos; Bat Masterson had a pair of sevens and a pair of kings; Pat Garrett had a low straight from ace to five; Ben Daniels had a three of a kind composed of threes; and Wild Bill Hickok had an incomplete flush composed of hearts with one of his cards being a diamond suit. But when Calamity Jane revealed her hand with a high straight from six to ten, the men cursed and leaned back in their chairs, calling Jane a jinx.

“I ain’t a jinx!” she said.

“Yes, you are,” Virgil Earp said. “Hell, I’d have gotten a royal flush if it wasn’t for you!”

“And I would’ve had a flush,” Wyatt added, “if you hadn’t had two clubs in your hand!”

“And your straight beats out mine,” Pat Garrett added.

“Jane, you really are a jinx,” Wild Bill Hickok said. “Just one more heart, and I’d have gotten a flush, but you’re the one who has it!”

“That means I won, right?” Jane said.

The men groaned around the table as if they were older boys charged with taking care of a bratty problem child with a penchant for carousing.

“Right?” she repeated.

“All right, you won,” Doc Holliday said.

“Calamity Jane strikes again,” Wild Bill added.

Jane shoved Wild Bill Hickok’s shoulder, saying, “Shut it! I’m just getting started.”

But before Jane got ‘started,’ and as Doc Holliday was collecting the cards around the table and shuffling them, three glowing red cardinals flew in over the swinging café doors towards their corner of the saloon. Several heads turned upon catching sight of the birds now fluttering over the poker players, their twittering and squeaking making Jane and the others look up at their new visitors. The three birds then landed on their table: one in front of Doc Holliday and the Earp brothers, another in front of Bat Masterson and Pat Garrett and Ben Daniels, and a third in front of Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane.

Then the birds began twittering up a storm as if they were talking to them, but this only made the poker players stare at them and shrug their shoulders.

So Jane said, “We don’t understand.”

The cardinal twittered.

“We’re not birds,” she said.

The three cardinals gathered in the center of the table, twittering amongst themselves, then headed back to their respective groups and turned into three folded letters bearing the stamp of a red wax seal on them.

While Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson and Will Bill Hickok cracked the seals and unfolded the letters and perused their contents along with their fellows, Calamity Jane leaned over in her chair next to Wild Bill’s and said, “Who’s it from?”

“It’s from Lady Glinda,” Wild Bill said.

The name of ‘Lady Glinda’ sounded familiar, but she couldn’t place her name. Jane kept thinking about it, though, till she remembered reading L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from a library she sometimes visited in Las Vegas.

“What’s it say?” she said.

“Something about a war happening somewhere,” Wild Bill said as he reread the contents of the letter. “I reckon it’s pretty heavy by the way Lady Glinda worded it.”

Jane looked over at Wyatt Earp and his brothers and Doc Holliday reading the contents of the letter addressed to them, then looked over at Bat Masterson and Pat Garrett and Ben Daniels all reading their letter.

“Where’s my letter then?” she said.

“Maybe she didn’t give you one,” Wild Bill said.

“Is my name included in yours?”

“Nope,” Wild Bill said.

But Jane didn’t believe him and snatched the letter from his hands (“Hey!”) and read over its contents:

> Dear James Butler Hickok (a.k.a., Wild Bill Hickok),

> I have been keeping tabs on the goings-on of the Limehouse quarter of the Phantom Realms, where I have a stake in seeing its outcome in a conflict brewing there. I have already raised and sent forces there for the operation beforehand, but then a man named Rancaster had the Princesses Ozma and Betsy and Trot captured there. Thank God, Princess Dorothy managed to thwart him! The Princesses are safe now, and with the help of several allies, it’s looking better, but their help is not enough.

> It’s too complicated to say everything that needs to be said in this letter, so I’ll keep this short and tidy: My Quadling army and I will head out for the Limehouse quarter in 1200 hours, and I’m in need of more allies like yourself. If you decide to help, then please come to my Quadling Palace in the Quadling Country of Oz, and please bring whoever you see fit along with you.

> This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

> Sincerely yours,

> Lady Glinda,

> The Good Witch of the South

> P.S.: Once you’re finished reading this, the cardinal will lead you to a Magic Door into my Palace. And remember to bring allies with you. See you then!

> —Lady G.

The letter trembled in Jane’s hand at the mention of a conflict, for it brought back memories of her time as a scout with Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer’s 7th Cavalry Regiment in the Arizona Campaign against Apache raiders and the Wyoming Campaign against the Sioux and the Northern Arapaho and the Northern Cheyenne. During the Wyoming Campaign, in particular, she became “Calamity Jane, the heroine of the [P]lains” after she carried a wounded Captain Egan on her horse back to the Fort in Goose Creek, Wyoming, while under fire from Lakota Sioux and Cheyenne warriors armed with surplus Civil War rifles. Only after the Wyoming Campaign did she find out that Lt. Col. Custer (under General Sheridan’s orders) had attacked a peaceful Cheyanne settlement years earlier that resulted in over 200 Cheyanne men and women and children massacred and about 50 women and children captured, known as the so-called Battle of Washita River. That’s why they were ambushed in Goose Creek, Wyoming, and that knowledge soured Jane’s relationship with Lt. Col. Custer and his 7th Cavalry Regiment during her remaining years as their leading scout.

Jane’s last foray with Lt. Col. Custer and his Cavalry ended after swimming across the Platte River at Fort Fetterman, Wyoming, and riding 90 miles to deliver a dispatch to Custer on their way to Bighorn River before she was sent back to the hospital at Fort Fetterman in an ambulance carriage after suffering from hypothermia. Upon her release from the hospital, she found out about Custer’s death at the Battle of Little Bighorn and was honorably discharged. After that, Jane met up with Wild Bill Hickok in Fort Laramie, Wyoming, and traveled with him to Deadwood, South Dakota, continuing her adventures as a pony express mail carrier and later as the first recognized female law-enforcement officer in U.S. history. Thinking back on everything, Calamity Jane had done many things in her life and more in her afterlife, yet her hand still shook at the prospect of another war and another stab at glory . . .

Till Wild Bill’s voice broke through her reveries, saying, “Jane, can you hear me?”

Jane blinked and found a red cardinal perched in her palm, twittering up at her with its beady eyes. The cardinal then flapped its wings and flew in circles over her head, twittering and squeaking some more.

“Jane,” Wild Bill said, “I know Lady Glinda didn’t mention you, but I’m willing to take you with us. Are you in?”

Jane looked up at Wild Bill, then turned in their seat and saw the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday and Bat Masterson and Ben Daniels and Pat Garrett gathered around the café doors of the saloon and talking in hushed tones. After that, Ben Daniels had a cardinal perch on his finger and dictated a letter to it, addressing and informing his Rough Rider colleague Col. Roosevelt that they’re going to recruit as many gunslingers as they can to create a provisional battalion, the Gunslinger Battalion, under Ben Daniels’ command. With that, the cardinal fluttered from Ben Daniels’ finger and flew off from the saloon, heading God-knows-where. For Pat Garrett’s part, though, he exited the saloon ahead of everyone else, following after the second cardinal and mounting his steed, and Jane heard his horse galloping away.

“Are you coming?” Wild Bill said.

“Just don’t bring Custer along,” she said.

“Don’t worry, we won’t,” Wild Bill said before getting up and heading out, Calamity Jane following after him.

“Where’d Pat go?”

“Towards Texas,” Bat Masterson said. “He said he’s going there to contact his Texas Ranger friends and hopefully bring as many volunteers as he can.”

“He also said,” Wyatt Earp added, “that if he succeeds at convincing them to join us, he’ll become their Captain and proclaim them the Texas Ranger Battalion.”

“You’re kidding,” Jane said.

“I’ve heard crazier things from him,” Wild Bill said. “Hell, Pat once said that if he ever gets another chance at politics, he’d run for the senator seat of New Mexico again. Don’t know how he’ll do that, though, because the last I’ve heard, dead people can’t run for office.”

Trying to make sense of all that hullabaloo, Jane followed the men out beneath the glaring sun and placed her foot on the stirrup beside her horse, boosting herself up and mounting the saddle. Once they all mounted their steeds, the remaining cardinal flew off down the Main Street of the ghost town towards the end of the drag, where Jane saw an anomalous double-door entrance standing there. And before the double doors stood a pair of young women in red military uniforms and white knee-length skirts and high boots and swords sheathed at their sides, who both waved as the cardinal fluttered above their heads.

At first, Jane headed off with Wild Bill but noticed that she and he were the only ones riding towards the double doors, so they wheeled their horses around. Jane saw the others staying put and said, “Ain’t you all coming?”

“We’ll catch up later,” Wyatt Earp said. “This Rancaster or Dracula or whoever he is, he’s a real son of a bitch. He killed a kid and then pretended he’s him and played up a ruse to throw us off his ass.”

“What happened?” Jane said.

“Pat, Wyatt, and I investigated a case involving that Rancaster guy when we were still alive,” Bat Masterson added, “but it ended before we could prove the real Rancaster was dead. You never forget stuff like that.”

“In other words,” Wyatt Earp added, “we’ve got a score to settle with that son of a bitch.”

“My Rough Rider friends are already fighting,” Ben Daniels added. “We’ll recruit as many gunfighters and lawmen as we can, so expect a lot more of us when you see us again. You two tell Lady Glinda about us, you hear?”

Calamity Jane and Wild Bill both traded glances, and Wild Bill said, “We will.”

“You can count on it!” Jane added.

“Good,” Ben Daniels said. “Now get going. We’ll meet up with you later.”

With that, the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday and Bat Masterson and Ben Daniels waved them off as the pair headed towards the double doors at the end of the street, where the pair of girl soldiers opened the doors. And all at once, light shimmered from the inside, and the fluttering cardinal twittered before disappearing into the light of the doorway.

“Who is this Lady Glinda person?” Jane said.

“Don’t know,” Wild Bill said.

“Think we can trust her?”

“Only one way to find out,” he said as the pair ambled their horses towards the doorway and greeted the girl soldiers with a nod of their heads and passed the threshold. . . .

----------------------------------------

It was now 10:34 a.m.

Ronald Hamilton watched the goings-on reflected in Ozma’s moving picture in Ozma’s private suite, in which Princess Ozma and the other Princesses of Oz and their hodgepodge troop of General Jinjur and a squad of female Gillikin soldiers and Wantowin Battles and Lewis Carroll and a handful of blue musketeers and the anomalous bevy of women headed down many thoroughfares and turned various corners, till they reached a certain square in the center of the Coventry Gardens neighborhood (the so-called ‘Secret Garden’ in Ozma’s encrypted letter). Then he watched the group march into the flooded northwest corner of the square, where he saw Amelia Hearn prick her finger and let a drop of blood mix into the water, then waited for a time. Whatever or whoever they were waiting for, Ronald hadn’t a clue, till he saw a group of five individuals entering the square through a storefront next to the flooded section of the wall.

Of this group of newcomers, Ronald spied Nico Cairns that he’d met in his dream less than an hour ago, and just as he had told Nico then, there were four women accompanying her. Two of these women looked like sisters [Celia and Madison] that bore a resemblance to Amelia Hearn, making him think they were her nieces or even her daughters, though they seemed too young to share such a close relation. On the other hand, the other two with Nico were older in their 30s and 40s, respectively [Connie and Leslie], both still gorgeous for their ages, yet they didn’t seem to share any other relation.

But then he saw several interactions he couldn’t have foreseen. First, the two would-be nieces [Celia and Madison] ran up to Amelia and glomped her, and Amelia responded in kind, bussing their foreheads and saying something to them, though Ozma’s magic picture produced no sound. Second, these would-be nieces [Celia and Madison] interacted with the other members of the anomalous bevy of women, two of which shared a family resemblance with them [Cooley and Blaze], and of these two pairs, one of each shared a striking resemblance like that of twins [Madison and Blaze]. Third, the two older women [Connie and Leslie] also interacted with the bevy of women, two of which seemed to have been friends with them in their youth [Ramona and Bridget], though one member [Lucy] seemed to be an outsider just standing amidst the group of interacting women, holding her hands over her mouth at the sight of an equally affected Nico Cairns. Fourth, two others from the bevy of women [Akami the Red Queen and Shiromi White Queen] were also staring at Nico with the one in a white dress [Shiromi] running up to Nico and glomping her. After that, they [Akami and Shiromi] guided the stricken pair [Lucy and Nico] together, which led to the fifth and most dramatic development of this sequence. In it, Ronald bore witness to a crying Nico running up to what he assumed was her now-crying mother [Lucy], both embracing one another as if they hadn’t seen each other for a long time, which brought a tear to his eyes that he wiped away—

Which wasn’t lost on the other spectators in the suite with him. In fact, Jellia Jamb said, “Oh my! Do you have any idea who these other women are?”

“Not all of them,” Ronald said. “Only a few of them,” and he was about to explain his involvement with Nico Cairns and Auna Wenger and their involvement in this whole affair, insofar as he could make educated guesses—

When he heard Princess Ozma’s voice in his head, saying, I know you’re looking at my Magic Picture, Mr. Hamilton.

“What the . . . ?” Ronald said.

Just talk to me in your head, Ozma said, then waved at Ronald Hamilton in the magic picture, causing yet another ruckus of questions aimed at Ronald at what Ozma was doing in the picture. Tell the others that we’re on an important diplomatic expedition that requires tact and discretion. Thus, I want you to tell them that we need to keep the doings of this venture a secret, so as not to raise undue worries amongst the populace of the land of Oz. Can you do that, Mr. Hamilton?

I’ll try, your Highness, he said in his mind.

That’s all I ask, Princess Ozma said. Oh, and one more thing.

What is it? he said.

Tell Jellia Jamb and the others that the four Princesses of Oz are with me right now, Ozma said. They’ll be staying with me for the duration of this trip. Got that?

Yes, your Highness, he said.

Good, Ozma said, then talked with Amelia Hearn and the other bevy of women [Lucy and Nico, Akami and Shiromi and Auna, Cooley and Blaze, Celia and Madison, and Leslie and Ramona and Connie and Bridget] for a time. After that, Ozma said to Ronald again, Also, tell them that these other women are all Good Witches that have gathered for this occasion.

All right, I’ll do that, he said.

Then that’s it for now, Ozma said, then talked with the other Princesses of Oz and General Jinjur for a bit, then talked some more with Celia and Auna and Nico. And after they all nodded their heads in agreement to Ozma's plan that Ronald could only guess at, Ozma deferred to Amelia, who pricked her finger again and let another drop of blood fall and mix into the water under their feet. After a pause, Amelia said an incantation that made the water glow and show a house gleaming upside down in the rippling reflection of the flooded square and, a moment later, took the entire group from the scene in the magic picture.

This sparked an immediate reaction, in which Captain Bill and Jellia Jamb and Aunt Em and Uncle Henry and Button-Bright and the rest in the suite harangued Ronald with questions that amounted to one meaning: ‘Where did they go?’

“Now, now, calm down!” Ronald said, as they all crowded in on him, especially the maid Jellia Jamb, who had the flaps of his jacket fisted in her hands and demanded to know where they were. “Look, I understand your concerns, but there’s no need to worry yourselves.”

“And why’s that?” Jellia Jamb said.

“Because all of those other women you saw are Good Witches,” he said, “and they’re on a diplomatic mission that requires a lot of tact and discretion from all of you here.”

“And what about their Highnesses?” Jellia Jamb said, acting as the spokesperson for everyone else in the room.

“They’ll be staying together for the whole trip,” Ronald said, hoping against hope that they’ll buy into all the bullshit he’s been spouting without choking on anything suspicious. “As such, General Jinjur and Wantowin Battles and Lewis Carroll and the others are accompanying them for their protection, so there’s no need to worry, okay?”

Everyone in Ozma’s suite stared at him.

“Does your silence mean a ‘Yes’ or a ‘No?’” he said.

“If that’s the way it is,” Jellia Jamb said, “then I guess we’ll just have to trust in Princess Ozma, for she tends to know what she’s doing in matters like that. But,” she added with an emphasis that sent a child down Ronald’s spine, “if we find out that you’re lying, you’re in big trouble.”

“I understand, ma’am,” Ronald said.

“If you understand, sir,” Jellia Jamb said, “then go back to your room for now.”

Ronald raised an eyebrow at her suggestion but said nothing. He just bowed to his audience, wondering if they were getting suspicious of his withholding the truth from him, and walked through the crowd parting before him out of the door with Jellia Jamb accompanying him past several walls of mirrored glass and up two sets of stairs towards the fourth floor of the Palace, where his designated suite was. After getting chaperoned into his room, he heard Jellia Jamb shut and lock the door behind him like a political prisoner in the Bastille.

“So that’s how you’re playing it, eh?” Ronald said. “Too bad I have an ace up my sleeve,” and he reached into his dress coat and pulled out a small vial and placed it to his forehead, thinking of the other Nico he had seen with the Virgin Mary floating over the roof the Belgrave, manifesting her current location underground in his mind. Then he raised the vial above his head and shattered it on the floor before his feet.

Now, as footfalls came running towards his suite with Jellia Jamb ordering the guards to apprehend him on sight, a swirling kaleidoscope of ever-shifting images manifested before him. When the door opened, revealing and winded Jellia Jamb and two guards, Ronald just smiled and waved and said, “Looks like I’ve worn out my welcome, don’t you think?”

Jellia Jamb and the guards yelled for him to stop.

Yet Ronald took a running leap into the portal, which took him to his next destination . . .

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It was now 2:36 a.m.

In the furthest reaches of the Phantom Realms, where a floating world of Feudal Japan takes prominence over other fabled lands of old, a venerable shinden-zukuri mansion was rife with boisterous merry-making and fireworks streaking through the night sky and exploding into colorful starbursts. Although it was still December and thus too early to celebrate one of their most famous victories at the battle of Uchide no Hama, Captain Tomoe Gozen and her fellow captains had spent the better part of an afternoon asking Lord Kiso no Yoshinaka to hold the festivities a month early to coincide with his birthday. After much persuading from the five captains, Tomoe Gozen in particular, he gave way to their whims, which resulted in the overturning of the mansion to get things ready for an impromptu celebration, which then devolved into gluttony and drinking and exaggerated tales of valor against their old Taira foes, mixed with too much one-upmanship and swearing and testosterone.

Meanwhile, amidst this sea of male carousing stood a pair of young women in red military uniforms and white knee-length skirts and high boots and swords sheathed at their sides observing them from the porch of the main building like tourists. And away from the hijinks and fireworks in the courtyard against a backdrop of the main building fronting it, a gorgeous couple in Heian-era armor were loitering alone by the low bridge overlooking the pond that fronted the courtyard. Glancing at the jocular chaos in the courtyard, Tomoe Gozen saw her fellow captains breaking up drunken duels between the more lightweight retainers and stopping the others from pestering their foreign guests.

“Tell me the truth, my Lady,” Lord Kiso no Yoshinaka said. “Did you put the other captains up to it?”

“What do you mean, my Lord?” Tomoe said, smiling.

“Oh, it’s just a fancy I’ve caught in my brain,” Lord Yoshinaka said. “You must have put them up to it with old war stories, then got them drunk, and then got them pining to celebrate one of our major victories with the retainers a month earlier than usual. Hence, I suspect all of this was to get yourself alone with me on this bridge. Am I getting somewhere?”

Tomoe chucked and said, “Pray, tell me, my Lord: What gave you that impression?”

“Even when the captains were at arm’s length from me,” he said, “I could smell saké on their breath. It takes a lot to get them loosened up, too, so how much is the damage?”

“For those four captains alone, it’s a dozen jugs,” she said. “Add another dozen for the rest of the partygoers, and it’s two dozen big jugs of saké for one occasion.”

Lord Yoshinaka grimaced at the wasting of such finely aged saké from his prized collection, yet keeping his composure, he said, “What’s the real reason for this?”

“I received an urgent message from Glinda Gozen ten hours ago,” Tomoe said, manifesting a red cardinal in her hand that twittered and flapped its wings, fluttering up and perching itself atop the right spaulder above her shoulder.

“The Good Witch of the South?” Lord Yoshinaka said, then looked across the pond towards the main building where Glinda’s girl soldiers were.

“You’ve heard of her?”

“A little from our Christian brethren,” he said. “What does her message say?”

“It says that she’s preparing to enter a foreign war in two hours’ time,” Tomoe said. “So she’s urged me to participate with a thousand of our able-bodied retainers, and I’ve shared the details with the other captains beforehand, so they had time to prepare. We’ve all been recruiting volunteers throughout the party, but you will be the one to brief them.”

Lord Yoshinaka let out a sigh, saying, “You’ve been leaving me out of the loop lately.”

“You’re busy enough as it is, my Lord,” Tomoe said. “You’ve already got your hands full helping Regent Hōjō Tokimune talk things out with Kublai Khan over the trade deal, and I heard it’s going well.”

“I’m a warrior, not a diplomat,” he said.

“Diplomacy is a martial art,” Tomoe said, “for words are swords of a different kind.”

“Sage words,” Lord Yoshinaka said.

“No, it’s just common sense,” she said, “and you’ve got more of that than most men.”

Then he laughed for a bit, then said, “By the way, who’s the cause of the war in Glinda Gozen’s message?”

“A complete madman,” Tomoe said and filed him in on Aaron Rancaster’s many offenses, including but not limited to the kidnapping of three of the four Princesses of Oz, including Princess Ozma herself, but Princess Dorothy and other allies have returned them to safety. In addition, she added that General Jinjur and her troops, along with Roosevelt’s Rough Riders and others, are preparing for a major offensive into enemy territory, but all of that comes at the heels of everyone involved being on the same page. “So we have to be quick on our feet,” she added, “lest we lose the element of surprise.”

“I see,” Lord Yoshinaka said, then stood up straight from the railing of the bridge overlooking the water. “In that case, let’s get you ready for it, shall we?”

“Will do, my Lord.”

Then they walked, hand in hand, across the bridge and down the path and across another bridge connecting to the courtyard, where all the retainers in attendance acknowledged the couple with toasts and smiles and salutes. The cardinal fluttered from Tomoe’s spaulder and flew over the courtyard towards Glinda’s girl soldiers at the main house. . . .

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It was now 6:39 p.m.

In another part of the Phantom Realms that resembled Deene Park, Northamptonshire, James Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan, was dining on a Sunday roast in the dining room of his manor house with his old commander FitzRoy Somerset, 1st Baron Raglan. The former was seventy years old at the time of his death, now seated at the head of a long table, and the latter was sixty-six, seated at his right-hand side.

At first, the two men were enemies over the famous debacle at the battle of Balaclava, immortalized in Lord Afraid Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” Yet on finding out that Captain Louis Nolan had bungled Lord Ralgan’s order for Lord Cardigan to cut off the Russians from retreating with their naval guns near the Causeway Heights, resulting in Lord Cardigan’s legendary charge of his Light Brigade against an imposing Russian artillery position, both men visited the captain’s ghost at his grave and slapped him across both cheeks. Now, though, all three men had become close friends, though Captain Nolan was attending to something else within the manor.

Now Lord Cardigan was listening to Lord Ralgan’s whacked-out adventure about his missing right arm, which led him to a certain ’uncouth fellow’ (Lord Ralgan’s words) who helped him recover and reattach his arm to his body. This caused Lord Cardigan to almost choke down his broccoli, till he managed to swallow and then burst out laughing in hysterics.

“It’s no laughing matter!” Lord Ralgan said, now able to eat a Sunday roast using a knife and fork at the same time to dig into his beef cutlets.

“When was this encounter?”

“It was January 31st, 1873,” Lord Ralgan said.

“Why so precise a date, old man?” Lord Cardigan asked.

“Because it was the moment I found my arm and my wedding ring still on the ring finger, see?” his friend said, showing him the ring that his wife had given him on their wedding day.

“Ah, now I see,” Lord Cardigan said before forking another mouthful of his own beef cutlet into his mouth and chewing in thought. “By the way,” he added, “who was that man you encountered?”

Lord Ralgan ate another of his cutlets and said, “I’m not sure. I only met him once in Ireland that day. I think he said his name was Vlad-something or other. Anyway, after he helped reattach my arm for me, he asked me for the whereabouts of the horror writer, Sheridan Le Lanu. He said he admired his novels and wanted to meet him and talk about them. I haven’t met Le Fanu personally, me being dead and all, but I had heard that he lived in Dublin at the time and told him so. Then he thanked me, and we parted ways, and I haven’t heard from him since.”

“Queer fellow, isn’t he?” Lord Cardigan said.

“Very queer,” Lord Ralgan said. “He’s about the strangest personage I’ve ever met, living or dead.”

“Interesting,” Lord Cardigan said, then took another bite of his cutlet and chewed it over the connection between this Vlad personage and this Le Fanu author.

“What are you thinking, old boy?” his friend said.

“It can’t be a coincidence,” Lord Cardigan said. “It just so happened that Sheridan Le Fanu died of a heart attack a month later on February 7th.”

Lord Cardigan put his fork down, staring back at him, and said, “What are you saying? A week’s time doesn’t necessarily mean a direct cause and effect.”

“But there have been rumors amongst the peasantry in Dublin,” Lord Cardigan said, “that the cause of his heart attack was due to fright.”

“Interested in ghost stories, eh?”

“I’ve picked up an interest in spooky stories since my passing,” Lord Cardigan said.

“Care for a recommendation?” Lord Ralgan said, picking up his fork again and stabbing a Brussels sprout and eating it and swallowing with relish.

“Sure, go ahead,” Lord Cardigan said.

Yet just before Lord Ralgan mentioned a book or author, a red cardinal flew through the ceiling and fluttered above their heads a few turns, making both men look up.

“What the deuce?” Lord Cardigan said.

When the cardinal fluttered onto the table, peering up at Lord Cardigan and twittering, Lord Ralgan said, “That bird would make a nice supper for later.”

Then the bird hopped towards Lord Cardigan, who said, “Not all birds were meant for eating, old man.”

Then the bird fluttered and perched itself on Lord Cardigan’s finger, then twittered and transformed into a folded piece of parchment with the stamp of Glinda’s red wax seal on it. He cracked the seal and unfolded the letter and read through its contents, then whistled and grimaced.

“What is it?” Lord Ralgan said.

“If this is true,” he said, “then the contents of this letter trumps even your lost-arm adventure.”

“Really?” his companion said. “What does it say?”

Lord Cardigan was about to speak when running footfalls resounded from the other side of the door in a corner of the dining room, turning their heads in that direction. Then the door opened, and a winded Captain Nolan came in, accompanied by a pair for girl soldiers in red military uniforms and white knee-length skirts and high boots and swords sheathed at their sides, making both lords stand up from the table and the cardinal to abandon its perch atop Lord Cardigan’s finger and flutter through the air.

Captain Nolan saluted and said, “Pardon the intrusion, my Lords, but there’s a pair of emissaries here from Lady Glinda, the Good Witch of the South!”

The pair of young women, no older than teenagers, both blocked their boots together and saluted, and one said, “Have you read Lady Glinda’s message, my Lord Cardigan?”

“I have,” Lord Cardigan said, returning her salute. “How much time do I have to mobilize my Light Brigade?”

“Over an hour’s time to prepare,” she said, “but make it snappy, because Lady Glinda and Captain Bell will be moving out in 1200 hours, Pacific Standard Time.”

“That’s less than two hours!” Lord Ralgan said, now stomping towards the door. “I’ll arrange the order to muster up your men. Get yourself ready, old boy!”

“Yes, sir!” Lord Cardigan said, saluting his friend as he went out, and followed the cardinal and the girl soldiers and Captain Nolan and Lord Ralgan out of the dining room. . . .

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It was now 10:40 a.m.

Back at the Bangsian, while the Earp brothers and Doc Holliday and Bat Masterson and Ben Daniels were all riding from cemetery to cemetery and recruiting the ghosts of fallen gunslingers in the Old West, and while Pat Garrett was off to his old Texas Ranger stomping grounds in Tascosa, Texas, Col. Roosevelt was talking with Lt. Hamilton during their one-hour watch with six others in their squad on the roof. Needless to say, the subject was on Rancaster, whom they all had seen on the roof of the Belgrave using a daughter of another family just to get back the one he used to have, which disagreed with Col. Roosevelt’s sense of moral character—

Which wasn’t lost on Lt. Scott Hamilton either, whose own son had been duped and manipulated into participating in Rancaster’s schemes. So he said, “I know what you mean, sir.”

“My God, the nerve of that man,” Col. Roosevelt said, shaking his head and squeezing his hands into knuckle-white fists over the balustrade of the roof.

“Is something the matter, sir?” he said, wondering what could get under Col. Roosevelt’s skin.

Then the colonel breathed in and out, saying under his breath, “You’ll think I’m crazy, but I think I’ve seen that Rancaster fellow before during my childhood travels.”

“You’re kidding me,” he said.

“Trust me, I’m not,” Col. Roosevelt said.

Wanting to find out more about it, Lt. Scott Hamilton said, “How did that happen, if I may ask?”

“I was eleven at the time,” Col. Roosevelt said. “My siblings and I were staying at a countryside hotel in Chamonix, France, during a year-long tour abroad in Europe with my parents. We were there during December of 1869 and into early January of 1870. I explored the hotel with my siblings and encountered several maids, who all liked us but were especially fond of me. I was a sickly boy back then, so I was especially doted on, which made my younger brother and my two sisters jealous.

“Anyway,” he continued, “in the days leading up to Christmas, my siblings and I just happened to overhear the maids talking about a previous tenant in hushed and conspiratorial tones, while we were passing by their living quarters on our way to our hotel room that night. Of course, we stuck around and eavesdropped on them like the naughty children we were and got caught afterwards. Yet after we begged them not to tell our parents about us, the maids said they would allow us to listen to their conversation so long as we promised to keep their talk to ourselves, and we did. The subject of their discussion centered on a young girl from Austria, rumored to be a former countess living in exile.”

“I see,” Lt. Hamilton said without seeing where the colonel was going with this. “Did they mention her name?”

“I’m not certain of her full name,” Col. Roosevelt said, “but I think her last name was Karnstein, Countess Karnstein. The maids who described her all said that she had a persecuted appearance. They described her as pale in complexion, graceful of body and slender, but had an incredibly strong vise-like grasp, because she offered to help three of them carry a heavy laundry basket for them without so much as breaking a sweat. Moreover, they said she was a troubled sleeper, because whenever she did sleep, she was prone to nightmares that would wake her up screaming at night, waking up other tenants as well. They also said she only stayed for two weeks before going somewhere else in a hurry, maybe to Paris, but this was just guesswork on their part. When we asked when she left, they said she left on the same day my family and I arrived, leaving in the morning while we arrived with our parents that afternoon.

“Afterward, while my sisters were fast asleep on Christmas Eve, my brother Elliott and I were still up telling each other ghost stories when we both heard creaking floorboards outside our room. So we both snuck out of bed and crept to the door, listening to the footfalls all the while, then nudged the door open and entered the hallway. The time, as I remember it, was nigh the witching hour, but we still heard the footfalls going away from us, so we treated it like a hunting game and tracked the footfalls down the hallway and up the stairs, but on reaching the next floor, we heard the footfalls cease at once. And there in the middle of the hallway by one of the closed doors stood a man in a drab black suit and top hat, who spotted us the moment we entered the hallway. We stopped in our tracks at the look of his eyes blazing red, but he didn’t say a word. He just put his finger to his mouth, and we understood and just watched him knock on a door before disappearing completely out of sight. My brother and I dashed back down the stairs before we heard the door open and snuck into our room and shut the door fast, but neither of us slept that night.”

Moments passed in utter silence.

Then Lt. Scott Hamilton said, “Pardon my asking, but could he have been a different person?”

“No,” Col. Roosevelt said. “The man my brother and I saw had a different appearance, but his presence was the same as the fellow we saw atop the Belgrave. That man I saw when I was a child must have been looking for Countess Karnstein, but she was one step ahead of him.” Then he let out a sigh and added, “God, I hope she escaped him.”

That last remark left the lieutenant in thought as he rolled the details of the 1890 Dracula case through his head, which inspired Stoker’s novel. The observations of Jonathan and Mina Harker and Dr. Seward and Lord Godalming all followed one line of inquiry: if Dracula was turning young women just to lure someone into his fold, who was he aiming for? The colonel’s observation seemed to answer it.

“What’s on your mind, lieutenant?”

“I’m of the same opinion, sir,” Lt. Hamilton said.

Then there flew a red cardinal over their heads before swooping in and perching itself on Col. Roosevelt’s finger (“Why, hello there,” he said), which then turned into Ben Daniels’ letter. He unfolded it and read the contents to himself, then smiled and said, “Bully! Bully!”

“What is it?” Lt. Hamilton said.

“Good old Benny’s entering this fight!”

Lt. Hamilton said, “He’s bringing in more Rough Riders?”

“Gunslingers, to be exact,” he said. “Benny and his pals are mustering up a Gunslinger Battalion, and the postscript says that Pat’s bringing in his Texas Ranger buddies! Oh, fortune’s on our side in this one, I’m telling you!”

Then the letter transformed back into a cardinal, and it flew off from Col. Roosevelt’s finger.

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It was now 10:41 a.m.

While one Nico traveled with Ozma’s group looking for Kendra Tellerman, the other Nico traveled with Colbie through a vast underground cavern using Colbie’s glowing handkerchief to see where they were going, listening to her guide paraphrase “Alice and the Mad Tryst” for half an hour. Now Nico listened to Colbie’s ghost stories as they followed the silvery thread attached to the corner of the handkerchief, halting every ten minutes to check their bearings in the map on it. Yet through it all, Colbie’s echoing voice lulled Nico into her own thoughts. So she found herself replaying her adventure with Celia and Madison and Katherine and Mara last night, then her subsequent adventure with Cooley and Blaze and Shiromi and Akami and Auna and Auna’s mom and even Nico’s own mom and the rest throughout the early morning hours, yet she couldn’t stop herself from lingering on her confrontation with Mara on the Belgrave’s roof with Rancaster—

Which made Colbie say, “What’s wrong?”

“It’s just a lot of things on my mind,” Nico said.

Colbie paused for a spell, as if rolling something through her head, and said, “I’ve heard what happened to you from Celia and her sisters. Must’ve been hell.”

“Trust me, ’Hell’ is an understatement,” Nico said, “but thank you. It means a lot.”

“You’re welcome,” Colbie said.

Yet when her ghost stories didn’t resume, Nico couldn’t shake the feeling that her companion was walking on eggshells in her presence, as if Colbie owed her a debt too big for her to admit. Nico thought back to the moment when she had Colbie’s friends promise her to save Mara before she saved Colbie with her last living essence before disappearing. It was the apotheosis of hypocrisy to let things remain like that, so Nico cleared the air and said, “What about you?”

“Wanna hear more ghost stories?” Colbie said.

“No, it’s not that,” Nico said. “I mean, what’s on your mind?”

“Oh, nothing,” she said.

“It can’t just be that,” Nico said.

“Geez, why are you prying so much?” Colbie said.

“Because I can pick up nonverbal cues,” Nico said. “I’m much better at it than Mara, and I can read her like I can read you. So tell me: What’s on your mind?”

Colbie halted and said, “If you’re still hung up on Mara getting taken away from you, then I’m sorry.”

“It’s not that,” Nico said.

“Geez, what do you want me to tell you?”

“Tell me what’s really on your mind,” Nico said, “and I’ll tell you why I saved you.”

At once, Colbie stood there staring at her like a deer in the headlights of an on-coming car, gaping at her for several moments before smiling and saying, “Damn, you weren’t kidding. Then why did you save me that time? When you made my friends promise you to find Mara, what did you tell them?”

Nico gulped down her qualms, for now was Nico’s turn to confess her transgressions and assuage herself of the heavy weight hanging on her heart. So she said, “I told them that what I saw you three do for my sister on that night was more than I could’ve ever done, especially what you did, Colbie. I never could have confronted my sister like that, not after what I’ve done to her.”

“Wait, what?” Colbie said.

“I wish I was as strong and brave as you and your friends,” Nico said, “but I’m not like that. I never was like that. For my whole life, I just acted like I was strong, taking the lead for Mara whenever she was uncertain of something, trying to be like a big sister even when we were twins.”

“What are you trying to say?” Colbie said.

So Nico resigned herself to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, saying, “You’re not gonna hate me when I tell you, will you?”

Colbie said, “I won’t hate you.”

Yet Nico did the same thing she did with Celia and Kendra on that fateful night of their first encounter, saying, “Promise me you won’t, because this is the last thing I can do for my own flesh and blood.”

“I promise I won’t hate you.”

“The truth is,” Nico said, tears now trailing down her cheeks, “I’m a sick fuck. Mara deserves way better than me: she deserves you. I shouldn’t have comforted her the way I did, not when our parents were fighting, not when we were hurting. The truth is,” she added, “I took advantage of her. I made her do all these perverted things. Maybe that’s why Rancaster has her now. It’s because I fucked her up so bad that he had to swoop in and take her away from me!”

And before she knew it, she found herself enveloped in Colbie’s embrace as Nico cried into her shirt and kept saying, “I’m so fucked up! I don’t deserve her! . . .”

And for the next few minutes, Nico went on putting herself down in a torrent of self-loathing, losing herself to the bitter sting of her own words cutting her up in little slices of death and guilt, each slice getting deeper and deeper. And she kept at it, too, heaping more blame on herself for corrupting her sister, till her words grew intelligible through her tears and her cries for mercy. Yet through it all, mercy came with Colbie’s words telling her that it’s okay, that everyone makes mistakes, that nobody’s perfect, not even Colbie herself when she told Nico of her own transgressions as another sinner struggling under a similar yoke.

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It was now 12:43 p.m.

Somewhere over the Texas Panhandle on the outskirts of a ghost town named Tascosa flew a red cardinal through the sky, and right behind it rode the ghost of a former captain of the Texas Rangers, leaving a cloud of dust in his wake. Of all the captains of that storied law-enforcement agency, Pat Garrett’s stint lasted about a year before his Texas Rangers disbanded and he left for Roswell, New Mexico. It was said that he left in frustration, because he refused to kill a band of cattle rustlers on sight instead of arresting them, which was true, but there was another reason: rumor has it that he had a mysterious encounter before the end of his stint. Nobody except Pat Garrett and some of his Texas Ranger buddies knew the particulars of this encounter, and dead men tell no tales. Only rumors surfaced from the descendants of the remaining Texas Rangers, so the content of this meeting ran rife with superstitions amongst the more imaginative constituents in nearby counties such as Potter County and Deaf Smith County and Randall County.

Anyway, one rumor said that Pat Garrett was in the middle of patrolling his part of the county with a few of his posse with him when he met a Tall Man at a crossroads at midnight. Again the contents of this encounter amounted to hearsay: the Tall Man had predicted that if Pat Garrett stayed with the Texas Rangers for another year, he’d get killed a year later in a gunfight. That gunfight would turn out to be the Tascosa Gunfight at the Jenkins Saloon in 1886, fought between Pat’s Texas Ranger friends and a group of cattle rustlers. Yet the Tall Man also added that if he decided to leave the town after his stint with the Texas Rangers, Pat Garrett would encounter his own end at the hands of someone else that would shoot him in the back.

“Who?” Pat Garrett said.

The Tall Man smiled and said, “I can’t tell you, because God won’t allow it. Just know that should you choose the latter option and die later in life, after your death, you and your friends will receive a herald asking you to join a conflict in a different realm. Should you choose to participate, you must bring in friends that you trust and fight alongside them, for you will do great deeds in that conflict.”

“When will all this happen?” he said.

“You’ll know after your time comes to an end,” the Tall Man said and disappeared from view.

Yet Pat Garrett, still full of a bravado back amongst his men, had discounted the Tall Man’s message back then. It wasn’t until six years later in 1891 when Pat Garrett had second thoughts about what his weird companion had said, for he and Bat Masterson were heading a joint investigation into the disappearance of Quincey Morris’s missing body after his empty casket arrived in Texas from Galatz, Romania. Despite their efforts chasing down leads for three years, they couldn’t locate the man’s missing body and couldn’t close the case for another four years.

But in the summer of 1897 in the unincorporated town of Rancaster, Nevada, Tobias Rancaster, the 5th Baronet Rancaster, had asked Pat Garrett and Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp to head another joint investigation into the death of his father Ezra Rancaster, the 4th Baronet Rancaster, in connection with another joint investigation into the disappearance of Tobias’s missing 5-year-old son, Aaron Rancaster, headed by Leon Larking and the Pinkerton agent Scott Hamilton. Long story short, Pat Garrett and Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp eventually found Quincey Morris’s decomposed body by the old train tracks of the Helgon Station at the depot, and Leon Larking and Scott Hamilton found the mutilated remains of what they thought was Aaron Rancaster’s body buried near the crossing of Woodley Avenue on the other side of the train tracks of the Helgon Station, but the inexplicable appearance of an unscathed 5-year-old Aaron Rancaster mystified all of the investigators involved, and Tobias Rancaster forced a closure of the case and dismissed Pat Garrett and Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp and Leon Larking and Scott Hamilton.

After that, Pat Garrett and Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp continued their investigation as private investigators with the help of Leon Larking and Scott Hamilton, and their combined efforts managed to reopen the case in 1902 when they interviewed Beatrice Liddell. But when Beatrice Liddell was found dead the next morning, the Liddell family petitioned Tobias Rancaster to ban Pat Garrett and Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp from the county. Soon afterwards, Scott Hamilton continued another strand of the investigation in England, and Bat Masterson and Wyatt Earp continued their investigation in their own time, but Pat Garrett’s appointment as a collector of customs in El Paso prevented him from contributing anything else to the case. From there, Pat’s life spiraled into an ignominious end at the hands of Jesse Wayne Brazel, who claimed to have killed him in self defense over a dispute on the price of a number of goats being sold at Pat Garrett’s ranch at the time.

So ended Pat’s time among the living, but he never forgot his meeting with the Tall Man all those years ago, especially after he and Bat Masterson and Ben Daniels and the others at the saloon received their avian heralds. When all three cardinals transformed into Glinda’s letters asking them to join the fight, Pat Garret knew what to do and discussed his plans with the others and listened to their plans by the café doors before heading out and mounting his horse and riding off. Now he was closing in on his destination and sighted the cardinal flying in a circle over a big oak tree ahead of him on the outskirts of Tascosa, where it swooped down and perched itself on the shoulder of a Tall Man standing in the shade.

Pat halted his horse, but it was jittery and stamped its feet at the Tall Man’s presence, so Pat Garret pulled on the reins to calm it down. He looked over at the Tall Man standing there and dismounted from the saddle and pulled on the reins to guide his steed on foot, approaching his lugubrious visitor that resembled the Slender Man with its black suit and tie and its long limbs but had an evil-looking grin.

“You were right, friend,” Pat said.

The Tall Man said, “Took you long enough.”

“I’m not as quick as the Devil, you know,” he said.

“There’s no need to be hasty,” the Tall Man said and pointed up ahead towards the gates of the dilapidated Boot Hill Cemetery, its many headstones casting shadows on the hallowed ground. “I’ve informed them of your arrival.”

“Thanks,” Pat said and guided his horse up to the gate and tied the reins around the post.

He looked back at the Tall Man standing there in the shade of the tree, wondering who he was, then entered the hallowed grounds of his comrades in arms. Before him stood the headstones of his former colleagues, and one by one, they manifested before him wearing dark vests and duster jackets and derby and miller hats. All of them had single-action revolvers holstered below their belts, and some even had lever-action rifles resting on their forearms. Of the ones holding lever-action rifles, Pat recognized three rough-looking guys on sight, Ed King and Frank Valley and Fred Chilton, who were part of his posse that accompanied him on his nighttime patrols during his Texas Ranger stint. Yet the tall and wizened old man with a white mustache and a receding hairline beneath his miller hat caught his interest, so Pat said, “Who are you, old-timer?”

“Don’t recognize me anymore, do you, Pat?” this old man said, doffing his hat to him. “I’m John Gottlieb Lang, the first guy you hired to join your posse.”

“Johnny, is that really you?” Pat said.

“He’s the lucky bastard that survived the Big Fight at Old Jenkin’s bar in ’86,” Ed King said. “The rest of us got gunned down by those System bastards.”

“And that yellow-bellied Catfish Kid played dead and escaped the fight and got away with it for years,” John said, “till I caught up with him in the Philippines and court-martialed his sorry ass. You should’ve seen him just before they hung him. He was crying so much, you wouldn’t have thought he was a cold-blooded killer, let alone a deserter. Makes me think he enlisted for the Oregon Volunteers just to escape the law.”

Pat Garrett chuckled, saying, “Damn, I wish I had you around to nab that Brazel bastard before he killed me. Where the hell were you at that time?”

“Running a saloon in Oregon,” John said.

“And chasing some skirts, I’m sure,” Ed King added, which caused the rest of the Texas Rangers within earshot to laugh like a bunch of drunkards.

“All right, settle down, fellas,” Pat Garrett said as the words of Glinda’s letter now entered his head. “Lady Glinda, the Good Witch of the South, has sent a letter not too long ago addressed to me and Mr. Daniels and Mr. Masterson. I won’t mince words. There’s a war going on in the Limehouse quarter of the Phantom Realms, so Lady Glinda wants us to gather at her Quadling Palace at 1200 hours to head for battle. I’m not pressing for your participation if you’re not willing, but for those of you who are willing, let’s gather as many of our Texas Ranger brethren as we can muster. What do you say to that, fellas?”

Everyone in the cemetery started murmuring amongst themselves, and then Ed King said, “We’re going with you.”

“Good answer!” Pat said. “Otherwise, I would have had Old Johnny here shoot you all dead for cowardice!”

The gathered Texas Rangers all laughed, their numbers around that of a company of soldiers.

“By the way,” Pat added, “how many are you?”

“Besides you and us four here, there’s about 200 of us, sir,” Ed King said. “Do you think that’s enough to join the big fight at the Limehouse quarter?”

Pat shook his head, saying, “No, that’s nowhere near enough. We need to muster up about 1,000 Texas Rangers for a battalion, so here’s what we’ll do. I’ll take these 200 here with me to Lady Glinda’s Palace, while Eddie and Frankie and Freddie and Johnny all muster up 200 Texas Rangers for each of you. Once you’ve got your men, report to me through your cardinal on that feller’s shoulder,” and he pointed at the Tall Man still standing under that old oak tree by the edge of the cemetery, on whose shoulder twittered a red cardinal.

Then that cardinal fluttered up from the Tall Man’s shoulder and flew overhead, splitting up into five cardinals and swooping down over Pat and his posse, landing atop the shoulders of Pat Garret and Ed King and Frank Valley and Fred Chilton and John Gottlieb Lang, respectively.

With that, Pat added, “I’ll be going now,” and he hailed the 200 Texas Rangers to get on their horses and follow him.

But as Pat and the others were making it towards their steeds that had been grazing on the dead tumbleweeds and old prairie grass just outside the enclosure of the cemetery, Ed King added, “But how do we report back to you?”

“Follow your cardinal like I followed mine all the way here to meet you,” Pat said, heading to his horse at the gate and untying its reins from the post and mounting his steed, while everyone else headed towards theirs and mounted them.

Once they were settled on their horses, the four cardinals fluttered from the shoulders of the four-man posse and flew off in two directions, two going south and two going southeast. As such, Ed King and Frank Valley went south for Lubbock and Weslaco, respectively, and Fred Chilton and John Gottlieb Lang went southeast for Houston and Garland, respectively, all of them trailing after their avian guides, while Pat and the 200 Texas Rangers saw them off.

Meanwhile, Pat’s own cardinal had flown from his shoulder and made its way past the oak tree, where the Tall Man was now nowhere in sight. And there just hard by the path he had taken to get here appeared an anomalous double-door entrance standing there. And before the double doors stood a pair of young women in red military uniforms and white knee-length skirts and high boots and swords sheathed at their sides, who both waved as the cardinal fluttered above their heads.

With that, Pat hailed the group of 200 with a flourish of his hat in his hand, then put it back on his head and headed down the path towards the double doors. So the company of men followed after him, all of them kicking up clouds of dust in their wake, as the girl soldiers opened the doors for them. Then all at once, light shimmered from the inside, and the fluttering cardinal twittered and disappeared in the light of the doorway.

“Is Lady Glinda inside, ma’am?” Pat said.

“Yes, sir,” one girl said.

“Head on in, sir,” the other one added.

So Pat nodded his hat to both girls as he and the others ambled their horses across the threshold. . . .

----------------------------------------

It was now 7:44 p.m.

In the Gascony region of the Phantom Realms resembling the Ancien Régime-era France of King Louis XIV’s early reign, several blue musketeers in broad-brimmed hats and blue tabards and tall riding boots with long rapiers and holstered flintlock pistols hanging from their baldrics were discussing the latest news over their dinners at the Papillon Rouge. The entire inn buzzed with collective voices discussing the recent skirmish at the Limehouse quarter of the Realms, for news of the skirmish atop the Belgrave and the Bangsian had traveled the world like ripples in a pond. And sitting at a table in the corner, four particular musketeers were engaged on the topic at hand, one listening and reading the front page of The Royal Gazetteer, and his friends explaining their reasons for their latest adventure into another foreign conflict.

As such, after eating the last potato and carrot chunks of his pot-au-feu and chasing it down with a glass of cyrano, Captain d'Artagnan finished reading the newspaper article and just stared at his four friends at his table, messieurs Athos and Porthos and Aramis, his mouth agape.

“Well?” Monsieur Aramis said.

“Out of the question!” Monsieur d’Artagnan said.

“Oh, come on!” Aramis said. “The possibilities are endless, man! Endless, I say!”

Yet d’Artagnan put his fingers over his eyes, massaging away an on-coming headache, for he knew his friends’ weaknesses like the back of his hand. In fact, he resisted the urge to backhand their faces for their coming up with another hair-brained misadventure, because he knew that Athos was in it for the booze and womanizing, Porthos was in it for the food and womanizing, and Aramis was in it for the schemes and womanizing.

“It’s not what you’re thinking, d’Artgagnan,” Monsieur Aramis said with a smile. “Of course, we’d like to meet those four Princesses of Oz, but that’s not our reason.”

“Then what’s the reason?”

Athos put his hand on Aramis’ shoulder and said, “I’ll take over from here, thank you.” Then to d’Artagnan, he added, “Did you receive our message three hours ago?”

“What message?” he said.

“Guess not,” Monsieur Athos said.

“What message are you talking about?” d’Artagnan said.

“You really don’t know?” Monsieur Porthos added. “Did you really not receive our message?”

“I didn’t receive it,” d’Artgagnan said. “That’s why I’m asking about it. What’s this about, messieurs?”

Now d’Artagnan’s companions traded glances with each other, and Monsieur Athos said, “Three hours ago, we’ve received a distress message from two of our own, messieurs Frank Shaefer and Todd Curvan, about a bunch of red musketeers pursuing them with gunfire. Their third member took two mademoiselles with him to another location, while messieurs Shaefer and Curvan headed their attackers off in a different direction.”

“Cardinal Richelieu’s red musketeers are at it again?”

“Not this time,” Porthos said.

“Then who are they?” d’Artagnan said.

“That’s the thing, though,” Aramis said. “They said they were red musketeer girls.”

“You’re kidding,” he said.

“Not kidding, d’artagnan,” Athos said. “What’s more, they were led by a girl named Alice, whoever she is.”

“Alice?” d’Artagnan said, his mind rolling the two novels from Lewis Carroll through his head. “From the books?”

“Indeed,” Athos said, “and we relayed their message straight to you, personally.”

“But I didn’t get it,” he said.

“Are you sure you’re not jerking our chain?”

“I would never do that, Athos,” d’Artagnan said. “You all know me long enough: I would never play tricks like that, especially when it concerns danger to any of our own.”

His companions were silent.

“Tell me what’s going on,” he said.

Monsieur Athos grimaced, squeezing his fist and saying, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but we must have relayed our message to an imposter that’s been impersonating you.”

“You couldn’t tell the difference?”

“Of course, we couldn’t!” Athos said. “Whoever that man was, he was using some kind of glamor to fool us, and it’s like the Devil himself was doing it.”

“Oh my God!” Monsieur d’Artgagnan said.

“Only when we spotted you entering this inn did we suspect that something was up,” Aramis added.

Monsieur d’Artgagnan was about to say something—

When a red cardinal came fluttering over the heads of the other musketeers in the inn, turning heads and attracting several gazes up at the ceiling, where it circled over the table of the four musters discussing an imposter. It then landed onto d’Artagnan’s shoulder, twittering and cooing, then fluttered over and perched itself atop his index finger, twitter and cooing. And without warning, the bird turned into a letter addressed to messieurs d’Artagnan and Athos and Porthos and Aramis.

So d’Artagnan broke the seal and unfolded the letter and read through the contents of Lady Glinda’s message. It recounted the rumors amongst his musketeers and what he already read in The Royal Gazetteer but added a few things that caught his attention: one, that Lady Glinda was preparing to enter the conflict; two, that she was expecting others as well as d’Artagnan to heed her call to action and join the fight; and three, that a man named Rancaster was behind all this. But of all the details in the letter, the postscript was the clincher:

> P.S.: Also, I must warn you, Monsieur d’Artagnan: Rancaster has been impersonating you, once at Chess Cathedral during a queen’s battle between between Auna Wenger and Alice Liddell and again when messieurs Athos and Porthos and Aramis relayed a message from messieurs Shaefer and Curvan to Rancaster, thinking thinking he was you. Be cautious with Rancaster. He’s not a man to be underestimated. Once you’re finished reading this, the cardinal will lead you to a Magic Door into my Palace. And remember to bring allies with you. See you then!

> —Lady G.

He put down the letter and stared at his friends, then gritted his teeth and stood up from the table.

“What is it, d’Artagnan?” Athos said, standing up along with Porthos and Aramis.

“My God, such a coincidence,” d’Artagnan said under his breath, then to his friends: “That imposter you all mistook for me three hours ago is that infamous Rancaster we’ve been reading about in the paper.”

“Are you serious?” Aramis said.

“That fucking Rancaster participated in a skirmish using my identity!” d’Artagnan yelled, making all the other musketeers pause at his words. “Now it’s become personal.”

“So we’re going then?” Athos said.

“Oh, you bet your ass we’re going,” he said, then to the rest: “And that means all of us. Everybody here, this is an order from your captain: call every musketeer that you know and have them assemble here on the double.”

Everybody else in the inn stood up at d’Artagnan’s words and saluted, saying, “Will do, Captain!”

And they all headed out, leaving two female patrons in uniform still sitting at the bar and now looking up from their glasses of apple cider at the last four musketeers still in the room. These two young women (both teenagers) wore red military uniforms and white knee-length skirts and high boots and swords sheathed at their sides, catching d’Artagnan’s attention when he spotted them still at the bar.

As such, the two young women finished their drinks and stood up from their bar stools and walked over.

“Who are you, mademoiselles?” Monsieur d’Artagnan said.

Both women saluted, and one said, “We’re from Lady Glinda’s army on a visit.”

Then Aramis whispered into d’Artagnan’s ear, saying, “Ask them about the red musketeer girls.”

Yet the women seemed to already know, for one of them said, “The red musketeer girls are still active in the fight, but their leader Alice Liddell is out of the picture, for Auna Wenger has returned to her senses.”

“Do you know where they are?”

“Yes, sir,” she said. “Auna Wenger is with their Highnesses, the four Princesses of Oz, on a mission of their own. I don’t know exactly where Auna Wenger is right now, but I rest assured that she is in good hands.”

Then the other girl soldier added, “When all of you musketeers are ready, meet us in the square outside. We’ll send you straight to Lady Glinda’s Palace with the help of your cardinal,” and then Glinda’s letter changed back to a red cardinal in d’Artagnan’s hand and fluttered onto the table. “We’ll be waiting, messieurs.”

But then Athos and Porthos and Aramis all smiled like gentlemen, and Aramis said, “Why wait outside, mademoiselles, when you could wait here for the time being?”

“We’ve got good food,” Porthos said.

“And we’ve got good drinks,” Athos added.

“And we’ve got some time before the rest come over,” added d’Artagnan, joining in on the fray of the moment, refusing to have his friends outdo him. “Food and drink will be on us. What do you say, mademoiselles?”

All four musketeers were older men, ranging from around fifty to sixty years old, yet they each wore their blue tabards with a fair amount of musculature, and in spite of the travails over their long careers as the king’s Musketeers, they all have aged well enough for people to think they were at least ten years younger than their age, making them delicious eye-candy for those women with a taste for older men—

Which had an effect on Glinda’s two girl soldiers, both of them blushing at them.

“O-okay, sure,” one girl said.

“Treat us well then,” the other girl added.

----------------------------------------

It was now 7:45 p.m.

In a part of the Phantom Realms resembling the provincial Rome of the early Renaissance during the War of the League of Cognac, in which the patrons of The Cognoscenti inn spent their dinner time chatting it up with friends over pizzas and risotto and polenta and bread, word of Rancaster’s doings had also reached here these rustic parts. Here a pandemonium of voices filled the evening amongst the patrons, most of them composed of off-duty Papal Guardsmen and part-time militiamen of the local condottieri, all dressed in doublets and pluderhosen. The sky had turned cloudy as the evening drew on, and waxen candles on the chandeliers flickered to rumors of war in the Phantom Realms.

Two such patrons, Captain Kaspar Röist of the Papal Swiss Guard and Captain Renzo da Ceri of the Roman militia, sat at one of the table booths talking about the news. Captain Röist still had on his Papal Guard uniform as he had just gotten off duty in the late afternoon, so he hadn’t had much time to prepare for a dinner date with his comrade Captain da Ceri, currently on paid leave after a fortnight drilling his spectral militiamen at the Vatican. The two men had been talking about the on-going troubles at the Limehouse quarter of the Phantom Realms, dining on risotto and polenta and pasta and washing it down with watered-down ale.

Now eating apple fritters, Captain Röist listened to his friend expostulate on the importance of where you place your forces in the restricted battlefield of two rooftops, using the details of today’s so-called Battle of the Two Towers atop the Belgrave and Bangsian hotels (as the front page article of La Fantasmagoria had dubbed it). To this, based on the scant details of the battle included in the article, Kaspar observed that Rancaster didn’t have the high ground in the form of air support, which must have decided the outcome of the skirmish.

Renzo finished off the last bit of apple fritter as he took in Kaspar’s reasoning and said, “Well, if you put it that way, then yes, the cards were stacked against him on the rooftop, but that was only due to collaboration of several different elements going down the way they did: General Jinjur’s distractions and Princess Ozma’s quick thinking really saved them that time, but this Rancaster’s tricky.”

So Renzo down his ale in one gulp and said, “I know what you mean. Men like him always tend to have a backup plan,” and then Renzo stayed silent for one long spell.

Kaspar said, “What is it?”

“That Rancaster fellow,” Renzo said. “The more I think about it, the more I can’t get that man off of my mind since this new war broke out in the Limehouse quarter.”

“Is that so?” Kaspar said, wiping the corner of his clean-shaven mouth with a table napkin after finishing off his own fritter, to which Renzo nodded. “What about him?”

“Just that he’s an interesting guy,” Renzo said.

Kaspar tried to read the steely look in his comrade’s eyes, but failing to read much into it, he said, “Besides kidnapping three princesses and causing mayhem, what about this guy has caught your interest?”

“This was after our time, so I’ve only heard of what I’m about to say,” Renzo said, leaning back against the cushioning of the booth. “I’ve been hearing rumors of this Rancaster fellow for the past few months now, because Signora Lima Hearn has been trotting across Europe and researching an ancestor of hers connected to him. Since you’re from the Swiss Guard, have you heard anything about her or her ancestor?”

“Not so much the signora, no,” Kaspar said, “but I’ve heard some snatches of a certain countess from Styria, Austria, from the few guardsmen that still remember guarding someone like her in collaboration with the Vatican and the Bundesheer from Turin, Italy, to Switzerland. I forgot her full name from the Papal Swiss Guards who were there before Pope Pius IX disbanded them after the 1848 Italian Revolutions.”

“What about her title?” Renzo said.

Kaspar mulled over his words, trying to find what was on the tip of his tongue to say, then said, “I think it was Karnstein. . . . Yeah, Countess Karnstein.”

“How long did she stay there? Do you know?”

“Twenty years,” Kaspar said, “give or take a few months.”

“That long?” Renzo said, then whistled when Kaspar nodded. “This Rancaster person must have been obsessed with her to keep chasing after her for so long.”

“How do you know it’s him,” Kaspar said, “and not someone impersonating him?”

“I can’t really say,” he said.

“So it’s just a feeling then?” Kaspar said.

Renzo nodded, saying, “Just a feeling, that’s all.” Then he leaned over the table and put a finger to his lips, signaling for Kaspar to be quiet, and whispered, “There are two foreign-looking girls in uniform eavesdropping on us in the booth behind you, so don’t turn your head, okay?”

Kaspar nodded, then whispered, “Who are they?”

“Teenagers, military recruitment age,” Renzo said. “They’re wearing red late-19th century uniforms, but I don’t recognize any of the insignia on them. I don’t think they’re from here, but they look somewhat like this,” and he slid the newspaper of La Fantasmagoria’s front page across the table and pointed at someone in the large image caption.

Above the title, “War in the Limehouse Quarter,” Kaspar noticed in the close-up caption the figure of General Jinjur standing before the balustrade of the roof atop the Bangsian, singled out in front of the eclectic hodgepodge of Roosevelt and his Rough Riders and Wantowin Battles and Lewis Carroll gathered on the roof with her arm raised up and her hand clutching a handkerchief blowing in the breeze.

“The woman in the picture?”

“Yeah,” Renzo said. “Her uniform looks very similar to the ones worn by the two snoops sitting behind you.”

“Are they spies?” Kaspar said.

“Not sure,” he said.

“What do we do?” Kaspar said.

But before Renzo could speak, a red cardinal came fluttering over the heads of the other patrons in the inn before fluttering over to their table and perching itself atop Renzo’s finger. The bird twittered and looked up at Renzo, then looked back over at Kaspar, then turned into a folded piece of parchment in his hand, so he broke the seal and unfolded it and read its contents with furrowed brows and forehead.

Wondering about the contents, Kaspar said, “Now that’s something I don’t see every day! Who’s it from?”

When he finished reading, Renzo said, “It’s addressed to both of us from Signora Glinda, the Good Witch of the South. And believe it or not, Signora Glinda was a friend of this Countess Karnstein you’ve been talking about.”

“Give it here,” Kaspar said, and when his friend gave it over, he read through its contents that were indeed addressed to himself and his friend.

In the letter, after repeating the particulars of the events in La Fantasmagoria, Signora Glinda added she was preparing to enter the conflict in 1200 hours, Pacific Standard Time, and was expecting both gentlemen and however many volunteers they could muster to present themselves at her Palace before then. And there in the postscript was Signora Glinda referring to Countess Karnstein as Signora Carmilla, whom she had the privilege to befriend in Vevey, Switzerland, at the Trois Couronnes inn during the last year of the countess’s stay before parting ways and going south across the Swiss Alps through the Simplon pass into Northern Italy in the summer, while the countess went west to Chamonix, France, in the fall. Then Glinda mentioned that once he finished reading this letter, the cardinal will lead them all back through a Magic Door into her Palace, and reminded both addresses to bring as many volunteers as they can.

Afterward the letter transformed into a cardinal on his finger, twittering and then fluttering over to the booth behind Captain Kaspar Röist, making him turn his head at the two eavesdroppers getting up and presenting themselves before their table, making heads turn their way.

They were dressed in red military uniforms and white knee-length skirts and high boots and swords sheathed at their sides. Both girls saluted and introduced themselves as an attaché of Signora Glinda’s battalion, and one of them added, “We’re to take you to Lady Glinda’s Palace once you’re ready.”

Kaspar traded a glance with Renzo, who shrugged his shoulders, so Kaspar said, “Is this compulsory?”

“Voluntary,” she said.

“What if we’re undecided?” Renzo added.

Then the other girl soldier said, “Whether you decide to join or not is up to you. We’re here to inform Lady Glinda of your answer, whether it’s a yes or a no.”

After a moment’s pause, Renzo said, “Let God decide whether we should go or not.”

So Kaspar nodded, producing a gold Italian doppia from the pocket of his pluderhosen, and said to them, “Heads, we go; tails, we don’t,” and he flipped the coin, spinning through the air and bouncing atop the table and spinning itself out onto its side. Once the coin had settled, it showed heads.

“Looks like God wants us in this war,” Renzo said, standing up from the table and drinking the last of his ale and sliding the coin next to the glass.

“A tip for the waitress?” Kaspar said.

Renzo nodded, saying, “It’ll take me quite a while to get my militiamen all gathered, so you go ahead of me.”

“Will do!” Kaspar said, standing up and saying, “All Swiss Guards, you are to assemble outside of this inn! We’ll be going out in ten minutes, so hop to it!”

The Swiss Guards, both on and off duty, all said, “Yes, sir,” and moved out the inn along with Captain Röist, accompanying one of Glinda’s girl soldiers out through the doors along with a red cardinal flying out with them. All the while, Captain da Ceri’s booming voice could be heard inside ordering his Roman militiamen to go out and gather their compatriots, even if a few of their members were doing the naughty-naughty with the girls upstairs and in their own houses—

Which made the girl soldier accompanying Captain Röist gape, saying, “I say, are they married?”

“Whether they’re married or not,” Captain Röist said, “makes not a whit of difference to me, but I do apologize for the coarse language of my friend, ma’am.”

A flood of Kaspar’s fellow Papal Guardsmen assembled in the square outside of The Cognoscenti, while other Guardsmen and Renzo’s militiamen headed down both sides of the road to other inns in the area to cajole their comrades in arms to come and assemble for roll call.

“Thank you,” the girl soldier said, smiling, then pointed to a pair of double doors standing by the edge of the road beyond the square, around which the cardinal flew in circles. “That’s where you’re going once you’re all assembled.”

“It’ll take a while for my friend,” Kaspar said. “His militia’s the size of a brigade.”

“You can come in first,” she said. “My partner’s with your friend, so he can come in later.”

----------------------------------------

It was now 10:48 a.m.

Colbie spilled the beans on her own example, recounting this morning’s tenuous voyage across similar waters when she and Katherine did similar things to each other with Colbie coaxing Katherine into doing it with her instead of doing it with Leslie. At the time, she wanted to assuage Katherine’s frustration over not getting it on with Leslie, so that her father wouldn’t get angry if he ever found out about it. Yet if Colbie had been honest with herself, she’d know that her father would’ve been angry at Katherine for doing it with his wife or his daughter: it wouldn’t have made a difference when the consequences were the same. Still, she told Nico, her maiden voyage over such waters came to an end when Leslie found out and started crying, making it worse for Colbie when she was expecting her to chew her out, for tears often cut deeper than the harshest rebukes.

After saying so much, Colbie caught Nico staring at the glow of her handkerchief in her hand illuminating the darkness of the cavern around them. “Your circumstances are different,” she said, “but I know where you’re coming from. I’m no better than you. I probably wouldn’t have fared any better if I’d have been in your shoes, so don’t beat yourself up, okay?”

Nico nodded her head.

Then Colbie gave her the handkerchief, and Nico wiped her eyes and blew her nose, then gave it back to her. But after seeing the tear-salted mucus fade away from the enchanted handkerchief, she noticed a third twinkling star near their position on the map and showed it to Nico.

“Look,” Colbie said. “Someone else is here.”

Nico got a closer look, then grimaced and said, “God, I hope it’s not Rancaster.”

And both girls looked down the cavern ahead of them, where the glowing outline of a figure—maybe that of a man—stood holding the silvery thread gleaming in the darkness.

Instantly both girl manifested their armaments in their hands, Colbie with her dagger and Nico with her broadsword, both girls at the ready for a fight—

Till the figure raised his hands, dropping the thread and saying at once, “Hey now, I was just a piano player. Don’t shoot me. I didn’t mean to scare you two.”

“What?” Colbie said.

“Who the hell are you?” Nico said.

“I’m already acquainted with both of you,” the man said. “I’m Detective Specialist Ronald Hamilton of the Phantom Office, otherwise known as Edward Foster, Chuang Chou, Cheshire Cat, the Crow. Do these names ring any bells?”

Both girls dissipated their weapons and traded glances with each other, and then Nico said, “You’re that old Chinese philosopher I saw in the woods.”

“Yep, that was me,” he said.

“You almost got beheaded by Rancaster,” Colbie said.

“And I’m eternally grateful for your assistance,” he added and bowed to Colbie. “The way you threw that fucker on his ass like that was nothing short of amazing.”

“Gee, thanks,” she said.

“You can put your hands down,” Nico added.

Ronald Hamilton did so but then said, “Those were quite the confessions back there.”

“You were spying on us?” Colbie said.

“I wouldn’t say ‘spying,’” he said. “Just enjoying the show.”

“Dear God!” Colbie said.

“How much did you hear?” Nico added.

“Everything from your bedroom exploits with your sister,” he said to Nico, “to your own bedroom exploration with that other girl in place of your mother,” he said to Colbie, making both girls cuss out f-bombs like they were going out of style. “Don’t worry, ladies. I can keep secrets.”

“You better not tell anyone!” Colbie said.

“Or we’re shoving our blades up your ass!” Nico added.

“No need to worry about that,” he said, raising up his hands again in a placating gesture. “I don’t need anything of that sort up my ass, thank you very much.”

And again Colbie traded a glance with Nico.

Then Nico said, “It’s fine. You can put your hands down.”

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It was now 10:55 a.m.

Glinda the Good Witch of the South peaked out from behind a column of the open colonnade and saw the assembling army gathering just outside of her Palace. It was quite a sight to behold, even for the ruler of the Quadlings. Thinking that only a few of her summonses would be answered, she had not anticipated the results, till the attachés of her girl soldiers came in and informed her of their participation as they all started pouring in through the double-door portals.

In fact, for the last twenty-odd minutes, hundreds of volunteers from different corners of the world’s many histories and folklores had been entering through various double-door portals and assembling just outside of Glinda’s Quadling Palace, grouping up into columns of armed forces. Starting from left to right was Captain Bell and her Quadling Battalion of 1,000 girl soldiers, then Tomoe Gozen and her Samurai Brigade of 1,000 mounted samurai, then Lord Cardigan and his Light Brigade of 870 mounted cavalrymen, then Pat Garrett and his Texas Ranger Brigade of 200 men and counting as his posse of Ed King and Frank Valley and Fred Chilton and John Gottlieb Lang were still coming through the double-door portals and assembling their companies of 200 men into a column, then Captain d’Artagnan and his Musketeer Battalion of 1,000 mounted blue musketeers still assembling into their column, and then Captain Kaspar Röist and his 189 Papal Swiss Guards assembling into their little column. Yet Virgil and Wyatt and Morgan Earp and Doc Holiday and Ben Daniels and Bat Masterson have yet to arrive, all of them still recruiting spectral gunslingers from all over the Old West, and Captain Renzo da Ceri was still gathering his Roman militiamen from across the Italian countryside into the square of The Cognoscenti.

And all the while, Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane were on their steads saying howdy to the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman atop Gunpowder and the Headless Horseman and Jack Pumpkinhead atop Goblin, as well as meeting with Captain Bell and Lord Cardigan and Tomoe Gozen and Captain d’Artagnan and his friends Athos and Porthos and Aramis and Pat Garrett’s Texas Ranger friends and Captain Röist. Captain Röist, for his part, informed his allies of his friend Captain Renzo’s arrival with his militiamen, so Wild Bill informed the captain of the Earp brothers and Doc Holiday and Ben Daniels and Bat Masterson bringing in hundreds of gunslingers through the double-door portals.

“But say,” Athos said to Wild Bill Hickok, “why did you only bring Mademoiselle Jane with you?”

“Are you kidding?” Wild Bill said. “There’s a reason why we call her Calamity Jane.”

“Oh?” Athos said. “Why’s that?”

“Because the amount of trouble she can cause,” Wild Bill said, “is equal to a thousand of you musketeers combined.”

Which earned him a stiff jab to the ribs from Jane, glaring hellfire at him, which caused the other allies around them to laugh like hyenas, which also made Athos nod his head, saying, “Oh, so she’s one of those women, eh?”

“And what do you know about ‘those’ women?” Jane said.

“Trust me, mademoiselle,” Athos said. “I’ve been married to one femme fatale once, and it didn’t end well, both for me and for her who shall remain unnamed.”

Wild Bill grimaced, looking at a glaring Calamity Jane and then saying, “Damn, I can’t imagine being married to someone like that. Just being partners with Jane is enough, let alone sharing the same bed, dear God!”

So Jane hooked her arm over Wild Bill’s neck, bending him over and taking off his hat and giving him a noogie and saying, “You wish, old man! You ain’t getting a peak at my bodacious body, you peeping Tom! No way, no how!”

There was more laughter from the allies, while Tomoe Gozen and Captain Bell gaped at Jane’s brazenness, so both captains grabbed Jane’s shoulders and had her release Wild Bill. As Wild Bill put on his hat amongst his sniggering compadres, Captain Bell said to Jane, “That’ll give him a bald spot, you know.”

“He already has one,” Jane said. “I’m just cleaning it up a bit for him, that’s all.”

More sniggers from Wild Bill’s compadres.

“Well, at least you have good intentions,” Tomoe Gozen added.

“Yeah, intentions matter,” Captain Bell added.

“Isn’t that right, Bill?” Jane said.

“All right, all right, I get it!” Wild Bill said, raising up his hands amidst more sniggers from his comrades. “I apologize for my crass sense of humor!”

“That’s all we ask,” Jane said, smiling.

“It’s okay, old feller,” Wyatt Earp. “Happens to all of us.”

So Captain d’Artagnan said, “Can’t live with them—”

“—can’t live without them,” Athos added.

“Just gotta be more kind to ‘em,” added Pat Garrett.

“And seek God’s forgiveness in the afterlife,” added Captain Röist, “like good Christians.”

And another round of laughter burst from the impromptu gathering of captains and a lord, yet Tomoe Gozen added, “But what if you’re not born a Christian?”

So Captain Röist grimaced, saying, “Got me there.”

And another round of laughter rippled through the gathering.

Then Captain Bell peered over at the colonnaded façade of the Quadling Palace, catching Lady Glinda off guard.

“What’s wrong?” Jane said, peering over there as well.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” Captain Bell said. “Just thought somebody was spying on me or something.”

Well, in point of fact, Captain Bell was right. Lady Glinda had been watching the goings-on from within the colonnaded room of her Palace, now hiding behind her column like a spy in her rare otaku moments before peeking out and observing the taciturn Captain Bell interacting with her peers, wishing she could be there with her captain’s guard down. To this, even Glinda’s one hundred maids of honor giggled at her antics as they continued their embroideries.

So Lady Glinda looked back at her maids of honor, blushing like a schoolgirl, and put her finger to her lips and said, “Don’t let Captain Bell know about this, okay?”

More of her maids giggled.

“Okayyy?” Glinda said like a schoolgirl.

And her maids all replied with conspiratorial nods of their heads and smiles on their faces.

For all of Glinda’s beauty and maturity in front of guests and especially in front of Captain Bell, she had her quirks, one of which was an unrequited girl-crush on Captain Bell. The other quirk was seeing handsome young women in uniform, especially Captain Bell in uniform, for Lady Glinda was a military otaku of the senshi kind: that is, badass chicks with guns. In fact, she was an avid closet reader of manga like Strike Witches, Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka, High School Fleet, Upotte!!, Gunslinger Girl, and Lycoris Recoil, which she kept hidden in a secret bookshelf that only she knew of in her library.

And so, for the next several minutes, Lady Glinda indulged in her only vice of spying on her favorite captain, imagining all kinds of hentai situations between herself and Captain Bell that got her all hot and heady and breathing hard.

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つづく

Day: Glinda and the Wild Interlude (1100 Hours)

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