Ruler of Beasts Read online

  “I know a lot more than you do, child,” Glinda hissed.

  “I’m not a child!” Ozma yelled. “I’m the last of the line of Lurline and the rightful ruler of Oz!”

  “Oh, Lurline,” Glinda simpered mockingly. “Nobody even cares about that old story. Next you’re going to try and sell me on some bogus hooey about tapping into the Deep Magic of Oz in order to be a better queen. Face it, honey: you like that throne, but that doesn’t mean you’re qualified for it. If you’d listened to me from the beginning, none of this would have happened. You’d still be in power, and I’d be right behind you.”

  “I am still in power,” Ozma said. “And I’m enjoying it a lot more without you breathing down my neck.” She whipped a fireball at Glinda so quickly that the witch didn’t have time to get out of the way. It hit her solidly in the chest, and she shrieked in rage as her dress began to blacken and burn. Glinda slapped at her chest with one hand, pink spreading outward again to replace the blackened burned sections.

  “Don’t you dare ruin my dress!” Glinda screamed, hurtling toward Ozma with her fingers outstretched. The Lion saw his chance. He turned around and bolted for the door—and slammed into an invisible wall.

  “Not so fast, dear Lion,” Glinda said from directly behind him. “I think I know where my necklace is.” An invisible hand gripped his tail, dragging him backward. He tried to sink his claws in the stone floor, but Glinda’s magic pulled him toward the center of the room.

  “Leave him out of this,” Ozma growled. “You’ve done enough damage to my friends.”

  “Oh, but the Lion was my friend first. Isn’t that true, Lion?”

  The Lion looked miserably toward Ozma as Glinda reached for his neck. But Ozma’s eyes were closed, and she was mumbling to herself. This was it, then. She’d lost the rest of what little strength she’d had left after defeating the Nome King. Glinda was going to win, and there was no use resisting her. Would Glinda banish Ozma from the throne, or continue trying to rule through her? “It’s time for a new queen in town,” Glinda snarled, answering his unspoken question. He felt the necklace loosen itself from around his neck and float upward as he watched it helplessly. At least his part in this was almost over.

  “Encomiendum absolum!” Ozma cried, opening her eyes wide and flinging her arms out. An explosion of green light rocked the throne room. Tiles crumbled from the walls, narrowly missing the three figures that stood frozen in the shock wave from Ozma’s spell. Glinda’s jaw hung open, one hand still outstretched toward the Wizard’s ruby necklace. “Verteum clausus!” A green portal opened next to her, revealing a desolate, barren landscape on the other side.

  “No!” Glinda screamed as a huge green hand reached out from Ozma’s portal and wrapped its fingers around her. “You can’t do this!”

  “Oh, but I can,” Ozma said, her wings unfurling and her entire body outlined in a haze of green light. “It’s a last resort, but you’re the one who pushed me to it.” Glinda kicked and struggled, but Ozma’s spell dragged her slowly, inexorably, toward the portal. At the very last second, Glinda lunged through the air, snatching the ruby necklace where it drifted in the air.

  “You just wait, little queen,” she hissed. “I’m going to use this necklace to make a very special present for a very special person. You’ll regret the day you did this to me, mark my words.”

  “Whatever you say, Glinda,” Ozma said tiredly. The green hand heaved Glinda through the portal and the doorway snapped shut on her furious screams. Ozma collapsed to the floor as the entire throne room shuddered.

  “We have to get out of here!” the Lion exclaimed as more tiles crashed to the ground. Freed from the grip of Glinda’s spell, he raced over to Ozma. The queen weakly dragged herself onto his back, and he bounded out of the throne room just as the rest of the ceiling fell in.

  “Your Majesty!” cried Jellia, hurrying toward them at the head of a small army of servants. “Are you all right? What do you need?”

  “I need you to put me to bed,” Ozma said distinctly. “And then I need you to let me sleep for the next forty thousand years.” She tumbled from the Lion’s back, unconscious, and landed on the floor with a thud.

  FOURTEEN

  Ozma didn’t sleep for forty thousand years, but she did sleep for several days. Long enough for the Lion to sleep off his own exhaustion—after a restorative trip to the kitchens, first—wake up again, and then eat his way through an impressive quantity of the palace’s stores. Finally, Jellia told him the queen was awake and receiving visitors. The Lion bounded joyfully up to her chambers, barreling through her open door and pouncing on the bed, where Ozma lay propped up against a raft of silk pillows. She laughed and scratched him behind the ears as he licked her face with his rough pink tongue.

  “Oof, Lion—you really ought to brush your teeth.”

  “Sorry,” the Lion apologized, backing away and settling down at the foot of her bed. “How are you feeling?”

  “Like a wrung-out washcloth,” the queen admitted. Her skin was pale, and there were dark hollows under her green eyes. But she was smiling, and she managed to look almost perky despite her evident exhaustion.

  “You look well,” the Lion said, not entirely truthfully.

  “I’ll be better soon,” she agreed. “Battling the Nome King and Glinda in one day was a lot. I’m powerful, but I’m not a superhero.”

  The Lion sobered instantly at the thought of Glinda. “I owe you an apology,” he said, hanging his head. “I should have told you from the very beginning that Glinda sent me here.”

  “Yes, you should have,” Ozma said sternly, her face severe. “Who knows how much of that disaster we could have avoided if you’d been honest with me from the moment you arrived in the Emerald City.” Her face softened a little. “But I know you didn’t mean any harm, and Glinda can be—well, let’s say I know how persuasive she is, and how convincing. I’m sure you had no idea you might be betraying me.”

  In fact, the Lion had suspected he was doing something furtive—he just hadn’t cared until he’d realized how much he liked Ozma. But her cheerful willingness to see the best in everyone was working in his favor, and he wasn’t going to argue.

  “Where is Glinda now?”

  “Banished,” Ozma said succinctly. “She’ll have a heck of a time getting out of the prison world I put her in. I suppose she’ll figure out a way eventually—nothing in Oz stays the same forever, as you know—but I’ll have plenty of time to figure out what I’m going to do about her when she frees herself.” Ozma sighed. “I don’t like fighting with people,” she said a little sadly. “I just wish Oz could stay calm and peaceful and everyone could get along.”

  “She got the Wizard’s necklace,” the Lion said.

  Ozma shrugged. “It won’t do her any good in there. It’s a powerful weapon, but there’s no one for her to fight.”

  “She said she was going to make a present for someone.” He didn’t say anything about Dorothy. He just couldn’t.

  Ozma shook her head. “I have no idea what she meant by that. She’s trapped, and it’ll take a lot more than a fancy ruby necklace to get her out of there.”

  The Lion nodded, but he wasn’t convinced. Neither, he was sure, was Ozma. She was too canny to dismiss Glinda’s threat so easily. More likely she didn’t trust him to the extent that she once had—or at least she wasn’t going to trust him with any serious information. He’d already proven that Glinda could control him. Ozma wouldn’t let him fail her twice. But the green eyes that gazed up at him were as guileless as ever, and she quickly changed the subject. “Did you get enough to eat while I was resting?”

  “Oh yes,” the Lion replied, eager for a safer subject. He’d had enough of politics. Let Ozma worry about Glinda’s sinister plans—he suddenly remembered that he had a forest of his own to rule. “I suppose I should return to the Forest of the Beasts,” he said, hoping Ozma would protest. She didn’t.

  “I think that’s a good idea.”

/>   “I don’t want to overstay my welcome.”

  “No,” Ozma agreed, batting her eyelashes at him to soften the harshness of her reply. His heart sank a little. Thanks to Glinda, his cushy stay at the palace was over. It had been good while it lasted.

  Ozma gave him a kiss on the forehead, and he allowed himself one last, wistful glance around her chambers. He could have stayed here like a prince if he’d played his cards better. But at least he was returning to being a king.

  “You said once that we were the same. Both of us figuring out how to rule,” he offered. It wasn’t a plea. But he was still holding out for a reprieve.

  “I thought so, too, at first. But we are more different than we are the same. You are not Wicked, dear Lion. But sometimes you put what you want over what is good for Oz. I don’t know how much you care about good over bad, Lion. I think that you just like the thrill. You love the fight more than you love what you are fighting for. Be careful, there.”

  Her words stung more than Glinda’s spell had. He blinked hard at Ozma. “How should I get back to the Kingdom of the Beasts?” he asked, hoping Ozma would offer a magical ride back to his home. She looked surprised.

  “The same way you got here, I would imagine. Thank you again for coming to visit me, and for all your help. I’m afraid I must rest now. Please do come see me again someday.”

  He was dismissed. He slunk back into the corridor, his ears burning. It was true that he hadn’t been entirely honest with Ozma, but he’d still risked his life to help her battle the Nome King. He’d saved her in the caverns—not only that, he’d saved Oz. He was the one who’d found the necklace and carried it to safety, and he was the one who’d faced the worst of Glinda’s wrath. He could have been killed at any point. And what did he get in repayment? A summary dismissal, without even the offer of a last meal with Ozma before he left the Emerald City? The queen had a lot of nerve sending him away like a bad kitty who’d peed on her best quilt. Was it his imagination, or did even the servants give him pitying glances as he slunk past them down the hall?

  Resentment burned within him—resentment and something else. It was almost as though seeing Glinda had somehow reactivated the spell she’d put on him. He could feel those same fiery sparks crawling through his coat—only this time they were invigorating. Glinda had power, Glinda had a plan, and Glinda had trusted him with an important mission, too. Ozma had treated the witch the same way she’d just treated him—throwing her out like a houseguest who’d stayed past her welcome. Maybe he and Glinda had more in common than he thought. Maybe that was why Glinda had chosen him. Not just because of his courage. Because she saw something in him that Ozma didn’t. That Ozma couldn’t. She saw how powerful he could be if the right person believed in him.

  He didn’t bother stopping in the chambers Ozma had given him while he’d stayed in the palace. He didn’t say good-bye to anyone else, or acknowledge any of the servants’ greetings as he passed them. He kept his head down on the way out of the palace, seething as his ire grew.

  The street outside was as bustling as it had been the day he’d arrived at the Emerald Palace what seemed like months ago, though really it had only been a few weeks. He raised his nose to sniff at the city air, full of the scents of spices and cooking and exotic wares.

  He thought of Ozma’s words. She was wrong about him. Wasn’t she? I don’t know how much you care about good over bad, Lion. I think that you just like the thrill. The words pierced his pride. But that did not mean that there wasn’t some truth in them. She had forgiven him, but she would not let him in again. She was not, after everything, his friend. Not like Scare or Tin or Dorothy. They were his friends. They were the ones he would do anything for.

  Had Glinda been right after all? Was Ozma too temperamental and unstable to rule? Ozma had said Glinda would find a way to escape her prison someday. Maybe it would be soon. He’d find his way back to the Emerald Palace somehow, and next time he wouldn’t be sent home quite so easily.

  The Lion felt like fighting again. He felt like gobbling up the world. He set his paws on the Road of Yellow Brick and turned his face toward the Kingdom of the Beasts. For now, he’d wait in the forest. But the wind was shifting. This time, when Glinda returned, he’d be ready for her.

  EXCERPT FROM NO PLACE LIKE OZ

  SEE HOW DOROTHY’S RISE TO POWER BEGAN:

  ONE

  They say you can’t go home again. I’m not entirely sure who said that, but it’s something they say. I know it because my aunt Em has it embroidered on a throw pillow in the sitting room.

  You can’t go home again. Well, even if they put it on a pillow, whoever said it was wrong. I’m proof alone that it’s not true.

  Because, you see, I left home. And I came back. Lickety-split, knock your heels together, and there you are. Oh, it wasn’t quite so simple, of course, but look at me now: I’m still here, same as before, and it’s just as if I was never gone in the first place.

  So every time I see that little pillow on Aunt Em’s good sofa, with its pretty pink piping around the edges and colorful bouquets of daisies and wildflowers stitched alongside those cheerful words (but are they even cheerful? I sometimes wonder), I’m halfway tempted to laugh. When I consider everything that’s happened! A certain sort of person might say that it’s ironic.

  Not that I’m that sort of person. This is Kansas, and we Kansans don’t put much truck in anything as foolish as irony.

  Things we do put truck in:

  Hard work.

  Practicality.

  Gumption.

  Crop yields and healthy livestock and mild winters. Things you can touch and feel and see with your own two eyes. Things that do you at least two licks of good.

  Because this is the prairie, and the prairie is no place for daydreaming. All that matters out here is what gets you through the winter. A Kansas winter will grind a dreamer right up and feed it to the pigs.

  As my uncle Henry always says: You can’t trade a boatload of wishes for a bucket of slop. (Maybe I should embroider that on a pillow for Aunt Em, too. I wonder if it would make her laugh.)

  I don’t know about wishes, but a bucket of slop was exactly what I had in my hand on the afternoon of my sixteenth birthday, a day in September with a chill already in the air, as I made my way across the field, away from the shed and the farmhouse toward the pigpen.

  It was feeding time, and the pigs knew it. Even from fifty feet away, I could already hear them—Jeannie and Ezekiel and Bertha—squealing and snorting in anticipation of their next meal.

  “Well, really!” I said to myself. “Who in the world could get so excited about a bit of slop!?”

  As I said it, my old friend Miss Millicent poked her little red face out from a gap of wire in the chicken coop and squawked in greeting. “And hello to you, too, Miss Millicent,” I said cheerily. “Don’t you worry. You’ll be getting your own food soon enough.”

  But Miss Millicent was looking for companionship, not food, and she squeezed herself out of her coop and began to follow on my heels as I kept on my way. I had been ignoring her lately, and the old red hen was starting to be cross about it, a feeling she expressed today by squawking loudly and shadowing my every step, fluttering her wings and fussing underfoot.

  She meant well enough, surely, but when I felt her hard beak nipping at my ankle, I finally snapped at her. “Miss Millie! You get out of here. I have chores to do! We’ll have a nice, long heart-to-heart later, I promise.”

  The chicken clucked reproachfully and darted ahead, stopping in her tracks just in the spot where I was about to set my foot down. It was like she wanted me to know that I couldn’t get away from her that easily—that I was going to pay her some mind whether I liked it or not.

  Sometimes that chicken could be impossible. And without even really meaning to, I kicked at her. “Shoo!”

  Miss Millie jumped aside just before my foot connected, and I felt myself lose
my balance as I missed her, stumbling backward with a yelp and landing on my rear end in the grass.

  I looked down at myself in horror and saw my dress covered in pig slop. My knee was scraped, I had dirt all over my hands, and my slop bucket was upturned at my side.

  “Millie!” I screeched. “See what you’ve done? You’ve ruined everything!” I swatted at her again, this time even more angrily than when I’d kicked her, but she just stepped nimbly aside and stood there, looking at me like she just didn’t know what to do with me anymore.

  “Oh dear,” I said, sighing. “I didn’t mean to yell at you. Come here, you silly hen.”

  Millie bobbled her head up and down like she was considering the proposition before she hopped right into my lap, where she burrowed in and clucked softly as I ruffled her feathers. This was all she had wanted in the first place. To be my friend.

  It used to be that it was all I wanted, too. It used to be that Miss Millicent and even Jeannie the pig were some of my favorite people in the world. Back then, I didn’t care a bit that a pig and a chicken hardly qualified as people at all.

  They were there for me when I was sad, or when something was funny, or when I just needed company, and that was what mattered. Even though Millie couldn’t talk, it always felt like she understood everything I said. Sometimes it even almost seemed like she was talking to me, giving me her sensible, no-nonsense advice in a raspy cackle. “Don’t you worry, dearie,” she’d say. “There’s no problem in this whole world that can’t be fixed with a little spit and elbow grease.”

  But lately, things hadn’t been quite the same between me and my chicken. Lately, I had found myself becoming more impatient with her infuriating cackling, with the way she was always pecking and worrying after me.