Shadows of the Emerald City by Jw Schnarr

casting a sickly glow into the night.
    To Nick, it would never be a road, but a graveyard.
    He thought of the Woodkin bodies beneath it and a hollow place in his chest filled with something akin to heat. He gripped his axe tightly, looked to the girl from Kansas and scowled at her.
    He wondered what it would be like to murder the girl and not feel those old stirrings of guilt and remorse from within. He knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that his heart was gone now; the thought of killing the girl neither bothered nor elated him. He simply saw it as a task to be accomplished.
    Still, he peered out to the Yellow Brick Road and wondered if the ghosts of the Woodkin people knew he was here. With the thought of feeling those phantom eyes on him, he wondered if fear was linked to the heart.
    And he wondered if ghosts would even bother haunting him if they knew he was without it.
    As it turned out, the witch had been right. The following day, their group grew by one. The lion had pounced out of the woods at them, terrifying the girl, her dog and the wobbling scarecrow. But Nick had planted his feet, gripped his axe and was ready to strike. When he realized how harmless the lion was—he was, in fact, as terrified of the girl as she was of it—Nick eased up.
    And even though Nick did not attack the gentle beast, he knew right away that the end was near. He was pretty sure that Emerald City was still at least three days away and there was no way he could continue to act merry in the presence of these idiots. He remembered the magician in the back of the carriage so many years ago, speaking to him about purpose. Well now that he finally had a purpose—a real purpose—he was bursting to fulfill it.
    As he walked quietly behind the small group of odd travelers, he thought of the witch and what she was asking of him. Basically, she was asking for his services…for him to carry out her dirty work. Hadn’t he been subject to similar treatment many years ago? Hadn’t that same treatment caused him to be junked, to be stored away forgotten while Oz took pleasure in the horrors and hells he had endured for the sake of that damned road? What was the point in submitting to servitude again when he knew where it would eventually lead? Was this newfound evil purpose worth it?
    Sure, the witch had made her promises to him, but he knew full well the breaking capacity of promises. When he had been a man, his wife had broken them. When he had been a productive Tin Woodsman, the Emerald City workers had broken them. Why would the witch be any different?
    As they walked through the low hanging branches of the forest, Nick glanced into the trees. He knew that something was moving around out there; the longer he stared, the more certain he became that the forms in the shadows of foliage were the witch’s winged monkeys.
    Fine, he thought. You watch all you want, witch.
    Yet, as he observed the shapes in the tops of the trees, he became more and more aware that the posture to their forms was somehow off. The shapes up there were not the bodies of the witch’s minions…they were more rounded, more agile somehow.
    A sound from the ground broke his attention. He looked down and saw one of the yellow bricks of the road protruding up, pushed from its underside. To his left, another brick did the same thing. He studied this one as it popped into the air and clattered to the ground. When the brick was free, revealing the ground below, four small fingers tipped with brown cracked nails tore through the soil.
    “ What is that?” he asked. He readied his axe, prepared to lop off the fingers.
    “ What is it, Tin Man?” Dorothy asked him. She was looking to him and then to the ground, back and forth, perplexed.
    “ There! Do you not see it?”
    The girl shrugged. Even her dog seemed to be confused. Similarly, the Scarecrow and the Lion stared at him as if he had lost his mind. Nick looked to the ground and the fingers were still there, reaching and pulling.