I didn’t know how long it would last. I only had one shot.

And I didn’t really even think about what I was doing. I just knew I had to do something. So I reached out in fury and desperation. I summoned every ounce of magic I could find, and I grabbed it. That’s really what it felt like. It felt like I was reaching out with giant hands and pulling the house from Ozma’s magical clutches. It was easy.

I just plucked it up and I threw it at her—sent the house hurtling for the princess like I was tossing a handful of chicken feed onto the ground for Miss Millicent.

Ozma saw it coming a second too late. Just before it was about to hit her, the column of light that held her suspended dissipated, and her body returned to her. She screamed, her black hair swirling around her as her wings flapped furiously. Acting on instinct, she flung her arms out in front of her to protect herself. A glowing green shield materialized in front of her.

Like I say, it happened fast. Too fast for me to react.

The house crashed into Ozma’s force field. But it didn’t shatter. Instead, the farmhouse ricocheted off of it with a thunderous crash and went sailing gracefully through the air, straight toward where my aunt and uncle were standing, frozen in place.

“Dorothy!” Aunt Em screamed, seeing it coming toward her.

“Do som—” Uncle Henry shouted.

Toto let out a howl, and I put my hand up, summoning another spell to stop it, but even as I did I knew I was a second too slow.

When the dust settled, the house had come crashing to the earth, still in one piece, and all that was visible of my poor aunt Em were her two feet sticking out from under our old front porch.

Nineteen

Silence.

Terrible, awful, horrible silence.

It was only broken by the sound of my voice cracking. “Aunt Em!” I screamed. “Uncle Henry!”

There was no response. I knew there wouldn’t be.

I fell to the ground in front of the house, sobs racking my body.

What have I done? She was dead. Uncle Henry was dead. Tears rolled down my face. My throat closed up. It hurt so much. They were my only family. They had loved me, despite everything.

I choked on my tears. Why had I ever brought them here? I should have left them in Kansas, where they would have been safe. And happy. They hadn’t asked to come. All they’d wanted was to go home and I wouldn’t let them.

No. It wasn’t my fault. It was hers. She had done this to them.

I shook with rage as I saw Ozma, back on the ground, crawling to her feet from where she’d made her own crash-landing.

The clouds thickened, growing darker above me. My shoes hugged my feet like a vise, glowing like they were made of red lightning. Ozma stared up at me in shock.

“You did this,” I shrieked. “You killed them!”

I walked toward her, the rage burning me alive. It felt good to hate her this much. Natural.

Small forks of lightning flickered off the shoes as they throbbed with a magical pulse. But the heels weren’t alive. I was. The pulse was my heartbeat. Their magic was part of me now.

A scream ripped out of me as another magical surge punched through my body. I felt like I was about to explode into flames as I walked steadily toward Ozma, screaming louder and with more anguish than the Screaming Trees in the Forest of Fear.

She staggered backward as I rushed at her. Her face contorted in fear. “No, Dorothy! Please! Don’t let it control you! Don’t give in to it!”

“Too late for that, Princess,” I screamed. As I said it, I felt all of Oz screaming along with me.

“Please, calm down. You’ve no idea what you’re doing. You can still save yourself. Think about this.”

With a roar louder than the Lion’s I unleashed every last bit of magic that had been building unstoppably inside me since I got to Oz.

It was wondrous.

It surged through my body, flowing like a thousand rivers cascading violently and crashing on the shore.

It drained from the land and the sky, up through me and right at her.

She screamed as I hit her with pure energy, streams of purple and green and red lightning shocking and sparking as it struck the ground around us over and over and over again.

She didn’t fight back. Maybe she couldn’t—maybe she’d used up everything she had summoning my house. Or maybe she didn’t want to. Maybe she was too scared. I didn’t know and I didn’t care. I just wanted her dead. I wanted it to hurt.

But she didn’t die. When I’d used up everything I thought I had, I was sure that I’d see her lying on the ground in a mangled, bloody heap. But Ozma rose to her feet. Easily, steadily, as if it was nothing.

She was more powerful than I’d realized. She had changed. I hadn’t hurt her a bit. I might have even made her stronger.

Ozma’s entire body turned the color of midnight and shadows. It looked alive—like there was black smoke churning just beneath her skin. Her eyes were hollow, golden caverns; her scepter was a lightning bolt that stretched into the thick clouds overhead.

“You have no idea what I am,” she screamed with a hundred voices. “I am the blood of Lurline and the daughter of the Ancient Flower. I am the first and the last and the in-between. I am Oz.”

She slammed her scepter into the earth, and a swarm of black moths came bursting forth out of it. They flew for me, knocking me backward, clinging to my skin, trying to suck the life out of me.

But the shoes protected me. Without me even trying, they wrapped me with red light, and the moths burned away as if I was a candle whose flame they’d been drawn to in the dark.