Green Over Yellow Bricks

“Keep running! Don’t look back!”

Clutching the fur of her small dog closer to her rapidly beating heart, the young girl looks over her shoulder to spot her companion in dark robes trailing behind her, trying not to stumble and fall.

“I said don’t look back!”

“Where are we going?! Why can’t we take your broom?!” The little girl wailed.

“The broom is gone! I had to set it on fire so they couldn’t follow us with it!”

“They’re FLYING MONKEYS! They’re already following us! Wouldn’t the broom be faster?!”

Her companion doesn’t answer and it only adds to the panic set in her heart from all of this running. She can hear a hoard of flapping wings behind them and tries to force her aching legs to go faster. Her breaths were growing shorter with every sprint, and slowly her dog was growing heavier in her sore arms, her basket left behind long ago in the chase. Her green-skinned companion begged her to drop the dog as well, but she refused. 

Dorothy Gale came all this way and she wasn’t about to abandon Toto now.

She blinks away a tear only to realize that she wasn’t crying. It was rain, a drop having gone past her eyelash. A terrible scream from behind Dorothy made her stumble on her ruby slippers. Turning around, she noticed the Wicked Witch was clutching her left arm, groaning in pain. Dorothy’s eyes meet with a pair of cold beads from underneath the brim of the Witch’s hat before the old hag snarled. 

“Dorothy, you must go. You have to run.”

“But what about you?!”

“Soon I will be nothing but a puddle if I continue to run and the rain gets worse. You have to continue without me!”

Dorothy didn’t give herself time to reflect on the Witch’s words and instead dragged the older woman by her good arm into the woods for better cover. She wished she didn’t have to stray off the yellow-brick road, but she’s already lost the rest of her friends to Oz, and she couldn’t bear to lose another.

Running through the woods, she tried to remember the path she took before they had met the Cowardly Lion, but the gnarly branches appeared to have grown longer in the short span of time that she had been away. The path looked darker down the way and it felt like she had already got turned around in this wild thicket of dark, looming trees. She can hear the rain now as it got heavier, but hopefully, the forest canopy is enough shelter for the Witch until they can find something more suitable for her condition. Dorothy tried not to think about it, but her short breaths from running made her feel as though she was shrinking smaller in the trees, with little room to grow or breathe fresh air. Slowly suffocating with the weight of Toto clutched tightly to her chest, Dorothy felt as though this wonderful world of a dream was now a full-fledged nightmare.

Her hope dwindled until she thought she saw a windowpane hiding behind a large tree. Her heartbeat stuttered in her exhaustion and her excitement. Continuing to drag the tired witch, Dorothy ignores her dress when it snags and tears through clutching branches. She drags the both of them further into the thicket of trees and the young girl could nearly cry in relief when she noticed that the windowpane came with a tiny cottage. It was in total ruin, with no smoke coming from the chimney. The windowpanes Dorothy saw were shattered and the door was missing. The roof looked about ready to cave in, but it was a better option than letting the rain consume her only friend.

“Come on! We’re almost there!” She encouraged the older, wheezing woman. 

They both drag their feet into the open doorway and it’s only when they do does Dorothy let go of the Witch’s arm. They make it inside just in time as the rain finally forces its way through the tree canopy. The rain pounds rapidly against the weak rooftop of the cottage, and when peering outside, Dorothy could no longer see any visible trees with how heavy the storm was coming down. They take several moments to breathe, but even then Dorothy doesn’t dare let go of Toto, afraid he’d runoff. She couldn’t imagine they’d be here long, despite the sound of wings sounding fainter than before.

“Did we lose them?”

“No,” the Witch gruffly answers, “We only slowed them down by hiding in the trees. The monkeys might not be able to get to us, but Oz’s soldiers will be here soon enough.”

Every bit of hope deflates from Dorothy’s shoulders. Her aching legs want to collapse into the floor and her eyes feel wet with tears. The Witch looks up from catching her breath and sees the child in this predicament. Sighing through wheezing breaths, the Witch reaches out to the girl with her bad arm, and that’s when Dorothy finally sees it.

The Witch’s arm appeared to be melting, the sleeve of her black dress having been burned through to get to the flesh. Although it looked like it had slowed to a stop, leaving burned, green skin to mold like melted candle wax, it looked awfully painful. Dorothy had the urge to step away in horror but forced herself to stay put even as the Witch reached her hand up to brush away the young girl’s tears.

Dorothy flinched when she heard the sizzle of the Witch’s skin when it made contact with her salty tears. The Witch whimpers, but other than that she tries to hold in her screams, continuing her task to wipe the child’s tears away while in pain, “Don’t… don’t be afraid, dearie. You’ll make it through this.”

“How?” She sobbed.

“Your slippers. You… you had the power to go home all along.”

Dorothy tries taking a breath to compose herself, “Wh-What?”

“Glinda didn’t tell you because she wanted you to walk into Oz’s trap. She never wanted you to go home.” The Witch snarls at the mention of the bubble-loving witch.

“So then… why were you trying to take them from me??” The child whimpered.

The brim of her hat ducks down to hide away her beady eyes in shame, “I thought you were one of her henchmen. I thought Glinda ordered you to kill my sister and take her ruby slippers for your own. I didn’t realize she was only using an innocent girl like you to be her pawn. I’m sorry…”

The dread still pounded in Dorothy’s heart while she finally regained control of her breathing. The tears had now dried and the Witch had moved her now burned hand to tuck away a strand of the girl’s hair from her face. Dorothy rolls her lips while trying to find her voice again, “How… how can we use them to get home?”

The Witch’s face falls even faster without a drop of rain to burn her, “Dorothy… I can’t go with you to Kansas. The slippers can only transport the wearer. And your mutt here doesn’t count as a person. So he can go with you.”

Dorothy takes a moment for the news to sink in before her vision began to blur again, a cry erupting from her throat, “No… no!”

“I was never going to make it, dear. I wish I could…”

“I can’t leave you!”

“You must if you and Toto want to live,” the Witch sternly grabs both of Dorothy’s shoulders, shaking them slightly, “I’m as good as dead anyway. Soon this roof will collapse and the rain will take me. Or Oz’s soldiers will be here soon and kill me. Either way, I’m dead. But you don’t have to be. Take your slippers and click the heels three times while wishing yourself home. Now go. They are coming, but I will buy you some time.”

Dorothy isn’t able to respond or refuse with how hard she was crying, her throat hurt when trying to catch her breath. The Witch slowly loosened her grip on the young girl, reaching up to pinch her pale, pointed chin. Dorothy looks up through her cries at the touch and tries not to think about how Auntie Em used to do that to her.

Oh, how she missed Auntie Em, and it pained Dorothy to see the Witch figure this out just by looking directly into her eyes, just like seeing through her magic orb. 

The Wicked Witch smiles sadly, gently speaking, “Go home now, my pretty… and your little dog, too.”

Slowly, the warmth of the Witch’s hands drift away from Dorothy, her skin cold where the Witch had left her. Dorothy watched as the Witch turned her back to her, straightening her posture as she faced the doorway. Her black witch heels clicked against the cobblestone floor as she reaches the opening. Dorothy’s heart drops when she hears shouting coming from outside, beyond the rain, her sobs mix with Toto’s whimpers.

The Witch looks over her shoulder at the young girl and sighs, “Close your eyes, Dorothy, and wish yourself home. You don’t want to see this.”

The older wicked woman turns back around and waits. It took a few moments, but as the shouting gets closer, so did the soft chant of a child’s voice behind her.

“There’s… there’s no place like home…”

Dorothy’s voice drifts away like a distant memory when the Witch steps out of the cottage and into the rain. She bites her tongue against the terrible agony that runs through her body, from the top of her head down to her shoulders, then slowly further down as the rain soaks and burns through. She still had enough control of her trembling arm to reach up and take off her pointy hat but was unable to keep it clutched in her failing grip as it drifts down to the yellow bricks beneath her. She looks down curiously even though the rain has already melted through her skull, watching the brick’s colors begin to disappear beneath splashes of green and sizzling black. 

How Dorothy Gale managed to find the yellow-brick road through that thick forest in the midst of her panic, the Witch will never know, but it brought a wicked laugh to erupt from her melting throat. It may have sounded wicked to those Emerald City guards and flying monkeys as they rounded the corner, but for once… the Witch was laughing out of happiness… proud of that young girl from Kansas who managed to melt her heart without a single drop of rain.

By the time the soldiers and monkeys reached her, there was nothing left but a black robe, a black hat, a puddle of green splashed over the yellow-brick road, and the echo of her laugh bouncing around the tree canopy and the rain that breaks through it.