Zosozo in Oz Read online

  I crossed my arms, hugging myself. “And the giants, they’re using them like cattle. Milking them for their blood and enslaving them for the rest of the year.” Shaggy Man pursed his lips, but didn’t reply. “This has got to stop. Both the dealing to the humans and the oppression of the giants. Ozma wouldn’t approve.”

  “I agree that she wouldn’t find this a favorable circumstance, but we are hardly empowered by her to take any drastic action at this time. We were tasked with gathering information about the Earther conditions, that is all.” Shaggy Man leaned back, a small smile on his lips. He knew I wouldn’t just stand by and watch this happen, but he was right. I couldn’t make decisions like this on behalf of the monarch, damn the man. I’d have to take evidence back to Ozma and wait for her to make a decision about what to do about this city and its distasteful practices.

  “If I may, Ms. Gop had some more information we might find immediately relevant.” Mrow sat and looked expectantly at the giantess.

  “Small lion right, next batch of Zos ready tomorrow. People take day after, when you leave. Be strong for whole next year, Ozma not able to do anything then. I too big to sneak out, ruin batch. Small lion too small. You just right, can sneak out, fix this.” Ms. Gop folded her hands in her lap and waited, expectant.

  I bit my lip, looking first at Mrow who was still lashing his tail about the whole thing, to Ms. Gop patiently waiting for me to come to a decision, and finally Shaggy Man who smiled and cocked his head, evidently waiting to see what I would do.

  I kept eye contact with him, trying to judge whether he thought I was crazy or not. “If I were to try to dump the Zos tonight, I would need backup. And information. Where the facility is, what kind of guards, what kind of access, what needs to happen.”

  Shaggy Man sat up, on the edge of his seat, cracked his knuckles, and nodded. “I’ve got your back, your Highness, have no fear of that. I’ve been itching to take on these Herkuan bullies for decades. We’ll need the cat to see our way clear in the night, and I believe Ms. Gop can provide the information we require.”

  Mrow let out a yowl of agreement and Ms. Gop cleared the tabletop and used a greasy turkey leg to sketch out a fatty map on the table. “Will also need distraction, to get out of palace. I distract. Now, here is factory, on west side of town. I know Bleeding Room, but not know much other parts. But can enter here, through drainage. They not expecting small person, they think only giants would want to ruin Zos. To ruin, just dump on floor. Not fully rendered, not fully effective, only last a few hours until all contaminant, all blood, gone.”

  “Well, if we’re going to do this, it might as well be now, before I chicken out. Just let me get out of this frilly nonsense and into something that isn’t going to be as noticeable. Same with you Shaggy Man, I’m sure you’ve got something that will blend.”

  “Sure enough, Princess. I wouldn’t want to fowl our plan by wearing too bright a plumage.”

  I rolled my eyes and laughed, shooing him out of the room to get ready. “You’ve been hanging around Professor Wogglebug too much, Shaggy Man. Be back here in twenty minutes. That should give the palace enough time to fall asleep and then no one will be any the wiser until they wake tomorrow.”

  Chapter 3

  Mrow and I met Shaggy Man in the hallway exactly twenty minutes later, after I had found the forest green pants and jacket Clack-tick had packed. Shaggy Man was covered head to toe in cinder-gray shag; he looked like a walking carpet and I had to struggle not to giggle. We made our way towards the front door of the palace, but paused at a cross-hallway for Shaggy Man and Mrow to secret themselves behind a fern.

  I took a couple of rapid, deep breaths—intentionally hyperventilating—worked up a tearful expression, bounced a couple times, then ran into the front hallway, sobbing and panting. The two Herkuan guards on duty lowered their weapons before recognizing me and rushing forward to help.

  “The giant, oh God help me, she got loose in my room, and attacked me! Please, you have to help!” Ms. Gop let out a roar at precisely the right moment and there was a crash as the side wall of our room was smashed open, as the doorway was entirely too narrow to allow her access. The giantess was headed for the roof where her secondary job was to warn the Gump of our plans, so he could fly to the factory to meet us once we’d completed our task.

  The guards, bless their conscientious hearts, didn’t bother to stop and ask any questions. They just bolted towards the disturbance, as we hoped most other guards on the grounds would do as well. Shaggy Man and Mrow joined me as soon as the guards had run past and we made our way out the door.

  There were no other guards in sight, so we hurried down the street, trying to blend in. I should say, I tried—there was no try for the Shaggy Man. His gray shag and natural tendency towards walking in shadows made him completely disappear. I contented myself with trying to look like any other young Ozite woman hurrying home through the disturbed night and prayed anyone we met on the streets would be distracted by the rather loud noises now coming from the palace.

  I had been so focused on our destination, and the possibility of guards, that I completely missed the person sitting with their legs extended across the sidewalk until I tripped over him. Shaggy Man caught me before I fell, but the person I’d tripped over hadn’t responded at all. I looked closer, wondering if he was dead, and was confronted by a skeletal creature. He was nothing but skin and bones, but still alive. His body had been eaten away by the Zos. If we hadn’t been in Oz, the poor creature would have died ages ago. It took a long time for his eyes to focus on me and away from whatever blissful image they had been immersed in.

  I knelt down beside him and whispered, “I’m so sorry, are you alright?”

  “Time...for Zos?” The skeleton held out its hand, grasping for a bottle that wasn’t there.

  I could feel the tears welling up behind my eyes, but I couldn’t take the time to mourn for my countryman right now. If I succeeded tonight, he would heal over time, and I would see to it that Ozma sent a regiment of soldiers down with plenty of food and healers to see to the victims of the Zos. I caught his grasping hand and held it tight, bitter anger at what this Earther had become coursing through me.

  Shaggy Man pulled me away, with a murmured reminder that Ms. Gop couldn’t keep the guards busy forever, since they were still much stronger than her due to the Zos. I took a deep breath and left the poor Earther to his rapture on the sidewalk.

  It wasn’t much longer until we found ourselves along the western wall of the city, counting drainage pipes to find the one Ms. Gop had told us about. Mrow slipped in first, and his soft mew a moment later indicated it was all clear inside.

  I crawled in first, with Shaggy Man close behind, and I tried desperately not to think about what was damp and squishy beneath my hands and knees. It was only about twenty yards before the pipe sloped slightly upwards and ended at a grate that led to the floor of the Bleeding Room in the Zosozo processing plant. We each took out a handkerchief to tie around our faces to protect us from stray Zos fumes before Shaggy Man gently pushed up the grate, lifting it to the side as quietly as possible.

  I lifted Mrow up first and it took another few nerve-racking moments before we heard his all clear mew. Shaggy Man gave me a boost out of the hole and then I offered him my hand to help him up in turn. After he was above ground, I tried in vain to remove some of the muck from myself while I checked out the space. The room was full of giant-sized operating tables, with large bore tubes and pumps at each table. The stench of blood and fear was still strong, months after the last draining. Mrow was sitting next to the door into the next room, his nose and tail twitching madly. He then sneezed violently

  “What’s wrong with you?” I whispered, tying a third handkerchief around his nose as best I could.

  His voice was muffled, both by the handkerchief and what sounded like a bad cold. “This whole place reeks of magic. It makes my nose hurt.”

  “Well, we don’t plan to be here long. Try not
to sneeze too much and draw attention to us.” I stood and went to stand behind Shaggy Man, who was carefully opening the door, a crack at a time. A yellow glow came from the room beyond, flickering and intermittent. Once the door was wide enough, Shaggy Man stuck his head inside and craned around, looking to see if anyone was there. Once he was sure the room was clear, he stepped inside with me close on his heels and Mrow weaving between our legs.

  The massive room was full of what looked like distillation systems, of various volumes and almost all empty, starting with a massive setup on the far left of the warehouse and steadily decreasing in size until the one right in front of us held maybe two gallons of a glowing yellow serum, with small swirls of red floating through it.

  It was hypnotizing to watch it churn and flash—the patterns of light and color caught and held my attention like nothing else I’d ever seen before. There was a hiss and a sharp spike of pain in my calf and, startled, I looked down to see Mrow latched onto my leg. He only let go when he had my attention, to say, “Back away, slowly.” I blinked, realizing that I was only a few inches away from the still. Any closer and I would have been in serious danger of knocking the whole contraption over and inhaling the lot of it. Shaggy Man was just as close as I was, so I reached up and pinched his earlobe, to draw him away from the still.

  I shook my head, and blinked my eyes hard a couple times to try to rid myself of the afterimage of the Zos while Shaggy Man sat abruptly on the floor, rubbing at his face. “Well, I guess we know for sure this is the Zos. The question is, how do we pour this out without setting off alarms or getting caught in it?”

  “You don’t.” The mirthful voice of the Czarover swept the last of the Zos fog from my head and I whipped around, dropping into a defensive stance automatically, not that it would have helped. The Czarover had a retinue of guards with him, all with spears leveled at Shaggy Man and me. I’d have lumped Mrow in with us, but he’d disappeared again. I wish I knew how he did that, it would have been dead useful at the moment.

  I bobbed a curtsy as best I could while in pants and with my hands carefully in the air to indicate I was weaponless. It would only take one twitchy Zos-soaked guard to pin me to the wall like some recalcitrant butterfly. “Your grace, we only wished to see the Zos in production in order to settle a bet between the Shaggy Man and myself.”

  “Which is why you come masked and in dark clothes, covered in offal, and in the dead of night.” The gaunt man looked ready to burst into laughter, as though at the antics of children. “Well, if you’re that anxious to experience Zos, perhaps we should just give you a taste, hmm?” He held out his hand, and a guard went to a table beside the last still and filled an ornate perfume bottle from the tap before carefully wiping it and handing it to the Czarover. “This is hardly at full power, and will only last a few hours, but that will be long enough to keep you out of the way until this round of Zosozo is matured. Then we can dose you at full strength and you’ll just be one more poor pathetic Earther who succumbed to the lure of Zos. By the time the full dose wears off, it will be too late.”

  “Too late for what?” I asked, desperate to keep the Czarover talking and hope Mrow had gone off to get help. But the man just laughed.

  “You’ll not catch me soliloquizing, my dear. No indeed.” The Czarover gestured to the guards, who came to stand, one on each side of Shaggy Man and me, their grips on our arms like iron. I struggled, but it was at most a token effort since their strength made their hands like iron bars, impossible to break out of. The Czarover went first to Shaggy Man and yanked down the handkerchief, whereupon Shaggy Man spit square into his face. The Czarover recoiled, but then took the handkerchief from Shaggy Man’s neck, wiped his face down, then shoved the handkerchief hard into my companion’s mouth. I could hear Shaggy Man choke on the handkerchief, but before he could work it back out, the Czarover sprayed him full in the face with the Zos.

  The fine golden-red mist settled around Shaggy Man’s head like a hood, and he struggled not to breathe, to try to wait for it to dissipate. But the mist hung in the air until his lungs overrode him and he inhaled. The entirety of the cloud of Zos disappeared into him in one swift rush. Shaggy Man’s eyes fluttered closed and he sagged into the arms of his captor, entirely limp.

  “Stupid Earthers. Can’t hold their Zos.” The Czarover spit contemptuously on Shaggy Man’s body before he turned to me. I renewed my struggle against my captors, the pain of it bringing tears to my eyes and I wanted to scream, but that meant I’d have had to open my mouth, and I knew the Czarover would have taken the opportunity to spray me right then. Not that it bought me more than a couple more seconds of consciousness. The Czarover yanked my handkerchief off, tearing it in the process and took my chin in one hand.

  “Such a waste,” he sighed, then sprayed me full in the face.

  I tried. I battled with my lungs and my brain, trying to not inhale, and my vision started to turn black at the edges before I had to give in and breathe, my lungs aching.

  And in rushed the sunlight.

  That’s what it felt like, what I can remember of it. A mist, like the first real breath of summer, smelling of fresh rain and green things warm in the sun. I heard my parents calling out to me, holding a kitten, a little gray smudge, and joy bubbled up, happy and hard, as I ran to them, my chubby little limbs churning as fast as five-year-old me could run.

  It seemed like I ran forever, caught in the happiest of my memories, until other sounds filtered through the sound of the wind in my parents’ crops:

  “You should just kill her, have a giant grind her into paste and throw that to the Deadly Desert. Let her dry and turn to dust and drift away in the winds to the outer countries bit by bit.” I recognized, though couldn’t place, the bitter voice. It was harsher than the last time I heard it, worn out like a smoker’s voice.

  My parents started to fade from in front of me, though the sounds of Mrow as a kitten, calling out with little mews, lingered.

  “If she disappears here, that will just direct Ozma’s attention to us, and if she turns all her tools of eavesdropping on us, we’re sunk. If her pretty pet ends up a Zos-head, there’s not much she can blame us for. Much better to make sad eyes and shrug, and say we’re not sure how she got it, but there are Earthers with no scruples stealing Zos left and right. Besides, it will keep her out of the way long enough to ship the money and Zos north to the Skeezers.” That voice was the Czarover, of that I was sure.

  The golden comfort of the dream was fading quickly now, and I could feel Mrow’s rough tongue on my face.

  “Fine, but don’t say I didn’t warn you when you’re sitting there cut in half. She’s a resourceful bitch.” I finally placed the voice and my eyes flew open. The rest of the Zos fog shredded and left my mind, only to soak into my very bones. Elphred. The green-skinned man who had tried to destroy Earth by using the travel storms to rip the very physics of our world to shreds. The witch I thought I had killed when he was guillotined by his own plan.

  I was strapped down on one of the giant metal operating tables in the Bleeding Room. Shaggy Man was beside me, no longer out cold, but obviously of no use judging by the dopey grin on his face. His eyes tracked something I couldn’t see, and a small sigh sounded a lot like “Dorothy...” but I couldn’t be sure. Mrow was standing at my head, frantically washing my face, trying to get me to wake up. I scrunched up my face and blew at him, trying to signal that he’d accomplished his goal without alerting the Czarover and Elphred, who had moved down the room but were still talking. The cat stopped washing me and went to Shaggy Man, but I could tell he wouldn’t do any good there. I wasn’t sure if the older man had gotten a stronger dose, or whether it had just hit him harder, but he was long gone.

  I flexed against the chains holding me to the table and felt them creak. I took stock: arms chained, ankles chained, chain across my throat...all of which seemed ridiculously brittle. These were hardly chains appropriate for restraining giants. I giggled, feeling a bit of that Zos j
oy burbling back up and I swallowed, hard, trying to focus. The roof! We had to get to the roof and the Gump, it should be waiting for us there. And the Zos, we had to get rid of the Zos.

  I hissed at Mrow to get his attention and he abandoned trying to wake up Shaggy Man and came back to me. “How many people are in this room and how many are in the distillery?”

  He hunched down next to my ear and whispered. “Just the Czarover and Elphred, I don’t think they wanted the guards to overhear them. One guard on the outside door, none left in the distillery.”

  “Well, wasn’t that rather silly of them.” The giggles kept burbling up in my chest and I let just a few of them escape, to try to cut the pressure, then I clamped my lips closed. “Mrow, you’re such a cute kitten.”

  Mrow rolled his eyes and responded, “And you are such a drugged Earther.”

  “A drugged Earther with a Plan.” I retorted. And I did have a plan, a glorious, golden, plan that the Zosozo made seem simple and beautiful. “All you have to do is get to the roof. Off you go, there’s a good kitty.”

  Mrow snorted, but leapt silently from the table and disappeared into the gloom. I took a couple of deep breaths, stretching the chains to their tightest, let the Zos wash up over me, then just...sat up. The chains on my neck and arms shattered, and with a twitch, my legs were free as well. I reached over and snapped the chains keeping Shaggy Man down and stood, slinging him over my shoulder. I laughed at the ease of it: it felt like picking up an empty satchel, nothing more. A small part of me, the part not glowing gold with Zos, whispered that I shouldn’t be able to do that, but I told it to hush; it could examine the impossibility of our situation after I had finished getting us out of it.