Back at the gates to the Emerald City, Guardian Dude unlocked our glasses and put them back in the box (without even spraying them down like they do with shoes at the bowling alley—mine were crusted with four days worth of sweat, and I can’t even IMAGINE what the Lion’s smelled like).

“Okay,” I said. “Which road do we take for the Wicked Witch of the West?”

“There is no road,” he said. “No one ever wishes to go that way.”

Of course there wasn’t. “So how do we get to her?”

“That will be easy,” he said cheerfully. “She has but one eye, and it is as powerful as a telescope, and can see everywhere. When she knows you are in the country of the Winkies she will find you, and make you all her slaves.”

“Perhaps not,” the Scarecrow said. “For we mean to destroy her.”

“Maybe,” I corrected him. “We mean to destroy her maybe.”

“Oh, that is different,” the Guardian said. “No one has ever destroyed her before, so I naturally thought she would make slaves of you, as she has of the rest. But take care, for she is wicked and fierce, and may not allow you to destroy her. Keep to the west, where the sun sets, and you cannot fail to find her.” I usually have a pretty good ear for disdain, but I genuinely couldn’t tell if he was fucking with us or not. So I just thanked him and we headed due west, straight into an unplowed field.

The “green” bow Concierge Girl had tied around Toto’s neck now looked white as the driven snow, which amazed my three companions to no end. I spent the better part of the morning trying to explain the concept of tinted sunglasses to them, but finally gave up.

As we trudged on through the afternoon, the ground became rougher and hillier. Also, there seemed to be zero trees west of the Emerald City, and I’m pretty sure it was at least twenty degrees hotter in that direction. I was exhausted well before sunset. The truth was, I hadn’t slept much the night before, and even though I was so close to getting home I could practically taste it, I wasn’t particularly looking forward to this next part.

I decided that we’d call it a day, and the Lion enthusiastically agreed, falling to his belly on the spot. I lay down and curled up against his already-snoring, stinky hide. After four nights in the softest bed ever, I figured going back to sleeping in the wild might take a little…

I was out like a light before I could even finish the thought. Alas, it was barely sundown when I was jarred awake by the sound of the Scarecrow’s scream.

“WOOOOOOLVES!”

I scrambled to my feet in a half-blind panic, but slipped on the rough grass and fell. In the light of the setting sun, the Woodsman was attempting to calm his friend.

“This is my fight,” he said. “Get behind me and I will meet them as they come.”

From somewhere out of my line of vision, a low, rough voice growled. “The witch says that none of you are fit to work,” it said. “So we may tear you into small pieces.”

The Tin Woodsman seized his axe just as the wolf lunged toward him, and swung his arm in a wide arc, chopping the animal’s head clean from its body. As soon as he could raise his arm again, a second wolf attacked, and also fell under the sharp edge of the Woodsman’s weapon. There were forty wolves, and forty times the axe fell, until they all lay dead in a heap before him.

The Woodsman dropped his axe and fell to his knees.

“It was a good fight, friend,” the Scarecrow said. The Woodsman turned his head and I saw that his face was a mask of grief, tears streaking down his cheeks. There was no secret, sadistic pleasure hiding behind that expression.

These were the lengths he would go to protect me.

I rushed to his side to wipe his face with my hoodie before he rusted, but he flinched at my touch. “Go back to sleep, my child,” he said. “The Wicked Witch won’t have expected her attack to fail. We’ll be safe until morning.”

“I, uh…” He clearly needed some time to himself. “I’ll just go relax over there. Away from the… pile.”

“I’ll come with you, to stand watch,” the Scarecrow said.

The Woodsman nodded. “And I shall bury the bodies.”

I went back to the Lion—who of course had slept soundly through the entire ordeal—but, needless to say, lay awake restlessly for most of the night. When dawn came at last, there was nothing to do but make a little breakfast of the meat pies I had squirrelled away in my basket and continue our journey.

We had barely walked an hour when a small, black cloud approached from the west. As it came closer, I could see that it was in fact a flock of crows, rushing straight toward us.

“This is my battle,” the Scarecrow said, “so lie down beside me and cover your eyes, and you will not be harmed.”

We did as he said—even the Lion, although I felt like he was big enough that he could probably hold his own against a handful of birds—and the Scarecrow stood up tall and stretched out his arms. The crows scattered, not daring to come near. Because, you know, they were crows, and scaring them was pretty much the Scarecrow’s whole deal.

Alas, the crows had a king, who was apparently brighter and braver than the rest. “It is only a stuffed man,” he cawed. “I will peck his eyes out.”

The King Crow flew at the Scarecrow, who caught it by the head and snapped its neck with one swift motion.

Holy shit, that was badass. I mean, not as badass as decapitating wolves, but still. Another crow flew at him, and the Scarecrow twisted its neck also. There were forty crows, and forty times the Scarecrow twisted a neck, until at last all were lying dead beside him.

Maybe I really was getting desensitized to violence, or maybe crows just didn’t warrant as much sympathy as big, hundred-pound mammals, but I wasn’t nearly as shaken up as I had been the previous night. The Scarecrow, for his part, also seemed like he was pretty much okay with it. We left the pile of birds where it was and continued on.

The Witch had presumably been watching closely with her freaky telescope eye, because before long we heard a soft buzzing coming from the west.

“Bees!” I looked around at my companions. “Okay, which one of you guys is an expert at killing bees?”

“Not I,” the Lion said. “I am allergic to bees! Or at the very least, quite afraid of them.”

“Take out my straw and scatter it over Dorothy and Toto and the Lion,” the Scarecrow said to the Woodsman, “so the bees cannot sting them.”

“Okay, that can’t possibly work,” I said. “The Lion is way bigger than you are—how much stuffing is even in there? Also, I’m pretty sure bees can sting through straw.”

The Woodsman was already grabbing fistfuls of straw from the Scarecrow’s torso, however, and before long he had somehow managed to cover us completely. Evidently the land of Oz operated mostly on cartoon physics. He tucked the Scarecrow’s head into my straw-covered arm to hold.

“See?” the Scarecrow said. I could feel his face wiggling as he spoke. “It’s a foolproof plan.”

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh.

Sure enough, when bees arrived they found no one but the Woodsman to sting, so they flew at him and broke off all their stingers against his shiny metal ass without hurting him the slightest bit. And they were the kind of bees that couldn’t live without their stingers, too, because they all fell to the ground, dead. When I poked my head out of the straw they lay scattered thick about the Woodsman in tiny little heaps.

We stuffed the Scarecrow back up until he was as good as ever, and started upon our journey once more. This time we walked uninterrupted for several hours, until we spotted a dozen men and women with long, pointed spears marching toward us.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

The Winkies, I presumed? They just looked like regular men and women. In fact, as they got closer, they all appeared pretty scruffy and underfed. I guess their favorite color was yellow, because they were dressed in it from head to toe, although their clothes were tattered and torn.

The Cowardly Lion bounded toward them. Oh, crap. Please don’t kill the Winkies, please don’t kill the Winkies. Then I realized I could say it out loud.

“Lion! DO NOT kill the Winkies!”

He stopped in his tracks and let out a mighty roar. The poor Winkies were so frightened that they turned and ran as fast as they could, disappearing into the hills.

“Is it just me,” I said, “or are these attacks getting lamer and lamer as they go?”

As if to answer my question, the sky darkened to the west, and we heard a low rumbling in the air.

“More crows?” the Tin Woodsman asked. As the dark patch of sky came closer, there was a rushing of wings, and a great chattering and laughing.

Oh, shit. Flying. Fucking. Monkeys.

Each one was nearly as big as me, and their massive, greasy black wings blotted out the sun. The flying monkeys were terrifying. Two of them swooped out of the sky and snatched up the Scarecrow, pulling all of the straw out of his clothes and head with their long fingers. They made his clothes into a small bundle and threw it into the top branches of a tree.

I’m not terribly proud of it, but I screamed.

Other monkeys threw lengths of rope around the Lion and wound the coils around his body, head, and legs until he was unable to bite or scratch or struggle in any way. Then they lifted him up and flew away with him to the west.

Three more monkeys seized the Tin Woodsman and flew him high into the sky. I watched as they carried him toward a patch of rough terrain off toward the horizon, and dropped him to fall helplessly to the jagged rocks far below.

“Nooooooooooooooo!”

The biggest, ugliest flying monkey of them all flew toward me, his long, hairy arms stretched out and his face grinning terribly. At the last moment, however, he veered away.

“We dare not harm this girl,” he said to others. “For she is protected by the Power of Good, and that is greater than the Power of Evil. All we can do is to carry her to the castle of the Wicked Witch and leave her there.”

So, carefully and gently, they lifted me in their grimy paws and carried me for miles through the air to the witch’s castle, where they plopped me right down on the front doorstep.

The Wicked Witch of the West didn’t look anything like she did in the movie. She was small and decrepit, sported an eye patch, and wore her hair in big, rough braids. Instead of a pointy hat, she had a goofy golden cap studded with diamonds and rubies. She wore a big, heavy wool coat, and a black skirt decorated with flowers, frogs, and moons.

“We have obeyed you as far as we were able,” the biggest monkey said. “The Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow are destroyed, and the Lion is tied up in your yard. The little girl we dare not harm, nor the dog she carries in her arms. Your power over our band is now ended, and you will never see us again.”

Then all the winged monkeys, laughing and chattering away, flew off and disappeared into the sky.

Destroyed. It couldn’t be true. I’d already seen the scarecrow emptied out and restuffed again, none the worse for wear. And the Woodsman… he’s tough, I assured myself. I’d find him and hammer out his dents myself, and he’d be just as good as new. Right?

Right?

The Witch glared at me, then glared at my silver shoes even harder, and actually gasped. “Come with me,” she said. “And see that you mind everything I tell you. For if you do not I will make an end of you, as I did of the Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow.”

Fuck you, I thought. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck yoooooooouuuuuu.

She led me through her castle—which was actually quite posh on the inside—until we got to the kitchen, where she told me to sweep the floor and keep the fire fed until it came time for dinner. The first thing I did—believe me—was check the sink, but there was no faucet, and it was dry. Evidently they carted the water in from somewhere else.

The Witch stormed off, leaving me alone. But I sure as hell wasn’t going to hang around and do her janitorial work. I backtracked to the castle gates, only to find two sad-looking Winkie guards with spears blocking my exit. They may or may not have been two of the same ones we’d encountered in the fields earlier that day—it was hard to tell under all those tattered yellow clothes.

“Out of my way,” I said forcefully. “See this mark on my head? Good Witch Kiss. If you even touch me, that shit will mess you up.”

I had no idea if any of that was true or not. But the first guard just lowered his spear. “The Wicked Witch commands that we stop you from leaving, even if doing so will surely strike us dead. We must obey the Wicked Witch.”

“Bullshit!” I said. “I saw you guys turn and run when the Lion roared at you. Just run away!”

The guard shook his head. “That was blind terror, and our bodies fled of their own volition, quite beyond our control.” Now I could see that he was trying to hold back tears. “This is more of an… existential dread. If I try to stop you, and you strike me down, the next Winkie will be struck down after me. And the next one after him.”

The other guard—the next Winkie, apparently—just stared at me and shook his head in fear. Jesus Christ. Okay, maybe I’d go see if the castle had a back door. My plan was to get free, go revive the Scarecrow and the Woodsman, then come back, rescue the Lion, and figure out what to do about the Witch. I lurked through the corridors as quietly as I could—fucking Toto would occasionally bark at a Winkie patrol, but they mostly pretended not to see us and hurried along their way.

I eventually found an unguarded doorway into what appeared to be a courtyard. The Witch was there, waving a bunch of leather straps or something in front of a sturdy iron gate.

“If I cannot harness you,” she said, “I can starve you. You shall have nothing to eat until you do as I wish!”

From the other side of the gate, the Cowardly Lion growled. “If you come in this yard, I swear that I will eat you.”

The witch howled and turned away from him. “You!” she said when she spotted me sneaking up behind her. “Done with the sweeping, are you?” She glanced down at my shoes and grimaced. Then, suddenly, her face lit up.

“Well, you’re filthy. Time for your bath! Go and get washed up, and then you shall have your dinner.”

“My bath? Like, in a tub? Of water?”

“Yes, yes!” the Witch said. “The bath is on the top floor, just atop the stairs. You can’t miss it!” She hurried back into the castle, giggling to herself along the way.

I ran to the gate, but it led only to a closed area, where the Lion lay, quietly weeping. The gate was chained tight with a massive iron padlock. “Hold on,” I said.

He looked up. “Dorothy?”

“Yeah! Or, you know, whatever.”

He leapt toward the gate. “I was certain she had killed you!”

“It’s good to see you, too. I have to go real quick, but I’ll be back! I’ll have you free in no time.”

I was pretty sure the Witch’s plan was to steal my shoes while I was taking a bath, but if there was water in that tub… Well, a lot of things in this book were different than they were in the movie, but a lot of things were the same. And I knew exactly what happened when Dorothy dumped water on the Wicked Witch in the movie version.

I found the bathroom at the top of the stairs, and, sure enough, there were two big buckets of water next to the tub, one steaming hot and the other cold. I rushed across the floor toward them—and tripped over something, stumbling to the floor.

One of my silver shoes went skittering across the tile, and the Wicked Witch leapt from her hiding place behind a curtain, snatched it up, and put it in her own gnarled foot.

An iron bar, made invisible by some kind of spell, appeared on the floor. The witch cackled with glee. “Now half the shoes’ charm is mine, and you cannot use it against me!”

That was her big, scary magic plan? An invisible tripping hazard? “Give me back my shoe,” I said.

“I will not,” she retorted. “For it is now my shoe, and not yours.”

Now I was pissed. “Give me back my shoe, and set the Lion free, and let us both leave this place to go find our friends.”

“Fool,” she said. “I told you, your friends are dead.”

“They’re not!”

Her one eye opened wide, and wiggled around a bit. “I can see them myself! The Scarecrow’s straw is scattered to the winds, and the Tin Woodman lays at the bottom of a ravine, smashed beyond repair. The spells that once animated them have been broken! They’re dead, dead, dead! And once that charm on your forehead has faded, you’ll join them, and your little dog, t—”

I dumped the bucket of hot water right on top of her head.

She gave a screech, and then instantly began to shrink and fall away.

“See what you have done!” she screamed. “Didn’t you know water would be the end of me?”

“Of course I fucking knew.”

She shrieked again, and I dumped the second bucket over her until she had melted away completely. This wasn’t some special effect with a trap door, either—there was melted witch everywhere. I fetched my shoe, wiped the witch goo out of it, and made my way back to the courtyard to free the Lion.

“The Wicked Witch has met her end,” I told him when I got there. “Also, I might be a mind-controlled KGB assassin.”