“It does make more sense for you to be a merchant. Maybe a business deal gone wrong?”
Rook shrugs. “Perhaps.”
The city grows closer and the closer we get to it, the clearer it becomes, and I realize it’s surrounded by a wall at least twenty feet high.
That seems… odd.
I can just make out the silhouettes of several guards at the entrance, swords strapped to their hips.
They haven’t noticed us yet.
“Is this normal for Oz?” I ask Rook. “To wall off a city and put guards around it?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Should we…”
“Hello there!” Rook calls.
“What are you doing?”
“Making friends,” he answers.
“They have weapons.”
“And I have charm.” He flashes me his smile. “And you have a…dog.”
The guards come to attention, four of them in total.
“Who goes there?” one shouts.
Rook and I shuffle into the light cast by iron torches set into the city’s wall. “Hello.” I readjust my weight, trying to keep Rook upright. “I’m Dorothy and this is—”
“Dorothy?” the woman on the left says.
The man next to her whispers in her ear.
The tallest man, the one on the right, turns to the others and says, “The great sorceress Aakin told us about!”
“Aakin is here?” I ask.
The fourth guard, a woman with a braid of curly hair, says, “You have liberated us from the cruel and unforgiving Witch of the East, O Great Sorceress!”
Rook turns to me. “You didn’t tell me you were a sorceress.”
“I’m not.”
“All hail Dorothy, the great sorceress!” the guards say in unison and then fall swiftly to their knees, hands flat on the ground. “Thank you for freeing us!”
Rook regards me with new interest, his bright green eyes glinting. “Stubborn. Confident. And yet humble? You’re clearly someone of great importance.”
“I’m not, I swear it.”
Toto barks at the guards.
The guards, realizing he’s there, scurry to their feet and draw their swords, screeching like they’ve seen a ghost.
I slip out from beneath Rook and scoop Toto into my arms. “He’s harmless. He’s just a dog!”
