Free Dorothy Must Die Novella #2 by Danielle Paige

this monster was the same lovable buffoon who’d once—briefly—governed Oz before Ozma took her rightful place on the throne. His fingers dug into my flesh as he strapped me to a smaller, more compact version of the platform Glinda had harnessed me to before and fastened a metal collar around my neck. Metal pieces curved upward from the collar and ended in rods that he inserted in my eardrums. I couldn’t move my head without impaling myself, and so I gave up struggling and held myself as still as possible. His eerie, dead eyes didn’t even register me as he worked. He tightened the straps that crossed my chest and stepped away from me. “It’s ready,” he said to Glinda, and she smiled.
    â€œLet’s begin, Jellia,” she said sweetly. “Try not to let me down this time, my dear.”
    I braced myself but there was no preparing for the agony that followed. Excruciating waves tore through me, each one worse than the last; the metal pieces in my ears were like red-hot pokers driving into my brain. Glinda and the Scarecrow watched dispassionately as I sobbed in despair.
    â€œShe’s too weak,” I heard the Scarecrow say as my vision began to go dark. “I told you, it’s not going to work.”
    â€œThen both of you are terrible disappointments,” Glinda said coldly. “But I’m done wasting my time here. If she survives, the Munchkins can take her back to Dorothy. I have no more use for her.”
    The pain overwhelmed me, and then I didn’t feel anything at all.

FOURTEEN
    When I opened my eyes again the darkness around me was so thick there was no difference from when I’d had them closed. I was lying on my back on something hard. When I shifted cautiously, the pain shooting through my body was so awful that I gasped aloud.
    â€œAh, she’s awake,” said a gentle voice nearby, and the darkness was suffused with a cool white glow that gradually brightened until I could make out what surrounded me.
    I was lying next to a clear pool in the middle of a huge cavern whose ceiling was lost somewhere in the darkness overhead. The cavern’s purplish stone floor was polished smooth, as though by generations of feet, and its walls glowed with a gentle, phosphorescent light that eased the darkness around me and illuminated the person who had spoken.
    I turned my head with difficulty to study her. She was the oldest person I’d ever seen; her body was round and shapeless beneath her sack-like white dress, and her face was so seamed with lines and wrinkles that it was hard to make out her features. Her hair stuck up in a silvery halo that wafted gently in the cool air like an undersea plant. “Don’t try to move,” she said. “You’ve been through quite a lot, my dear.” The wrinkles around her mouth wriggled and shifted, and I realized she was smiling at me.
    â€œWhat—who are you? Where am I?” I croaked, wincing as a whole new set of aches flared up in my body. In the cave’s light, I could see what a mess I was. My dress was torn and bloody where the Scarecrow’s harness had dug into my skin. My bare arms and legs were purpled with bruises and streaked with more blood. And every part of me hurt, from my scalp to the tips of my toes.
    â€œYou can call me Gert. Grandma Gert, if you like. But who I am and where you are can wait until you’ve healed. You’re dying, Jellia.”
    â€œDying?” I struggled to sit up and cried out as my broken body refused.
    â€œLie still.” Gert’s voice was gentle but firm. “What you’ve been through would have killed anyone without your power. Glinda’s machine—”
    â€œYou know about my power?” I wheezed.
    â€œI said lie still, Jellia.” She scooped me up in her soft arms, so lightly that I barely felt the movement. It didn’t seem possible that someone so soft could be so strong. She waded into the