Then she was scampering back toward the road, effortlessly weaving through the thorns and branches like they weren’t even there.

I paused for a moment. Glinda and Dorothy the bad guys? It was all so upside down—and yet, something about what Indigo was saying seemed right. I didn’t want to believe her, but I knew all too well that you can’t always get what you want. So I followed.

By the time I made it back to the road I was a scratched-up mess, my shirt torn and my arms crisscrossed with tiny cuts. Indigo was waiting for me, looking typically sour.

“Don’t get too excited,” she grumbled, but I could tell that somewhere underneath all that, she was happy I was joining her. “You can come with me as far as the city and then you’re on your own. And you do what I say, got it? You’ve already proven you have no survival instincts.”

“Deal,” I said.

I craned my neck back up at the so-called good witch, who was still floating eerily in the sky. How could I come all the way to Oz and pass up a chance to meet the one and only sorceress herself? It was like going to Disney World and not getting your picture taken with Cinderella.

I don’t think I have to tell you that my mom never took me to Disney World.

I was still wavering when Star hissed at me angrily. I knew what she was trying to tell me. With a twinge of regret, I chased after Indigo.

Sometimes you just have to trust your pet rat’s instincts.

“Now, can you tell me what was going on back there?” I asked when we were back on our way.

“She’s magic mining,” Indigo explained, with the tone of someone explaining why the sky is blue to a toddler for the five hundredth time.

I half understood. Maybe. “Magic mining? But she’s a witch. Doesn’t she already have magic?”

Indigo gave a loud, angry snort. “It’s never enough. Never enough for her, and sure as hell never enough for Dorothy. They’re digging holes from here to the capital and sucking it right up out of the land. Why do you think all of Munchkin Country’s such a dump? Oz needs magic to survive. Without it, it just dries up.”

“So magic is like—in the ground?”

I thought of the dark, gaping pit that had swallowed my trailer. Was that one of Glinda’s excavation sites? If so, Greenpeace would have a few bones to pick with the Witch of the South if they ever made it to Oz.

“Yup.” Indigo nodded. “Well, it’s everywhere, but it starts in the ground and seeps out from there. Dig it all up and take it for your royal self, though? No more magic. The end; unhappily ever after.”

I’d never thought of myself as someone who was slow on the uptake, but this was all very confusing.

“Okay,” I said eventually. “Back up. You keep talking about Dorothy like she’s still here. But she went back to Kansas. That’s, like, the whole point of the story. There’s no place like home and all that.”

Really, it was the one part of The Wizard of Oz that I’d never liked. Girl gets whisked away to fairyland and all she can think about is going home? Sure, she missed her auntie Em. But you’d think her aunt would be happy for her to have gotten out of Kansas. Personally, I’d always thought Dorothy should have knocked her heels together and wished for something better than a trip back to Nowheresville.

“You only heard half the story. She did go home,” Indigo said. “Turns out home wasn’t so great after all. So Glinda brought her back here. Or, at least, most people think it was Glinda who brought her back. That’s like, how the legend goes. One way or another, when Dorothy got here, that’s when the problems all started.”

“What do you mean?”

Indigo shrugged and waved her hand over the landscape. “See for yourself. She was okay at first—I guess—but then they gave her a crown and made her a princess. And somewhere along the way she got a taste for magic. Pretty soon nothing was enough for her. The more she got, the more she wanted.”

“So the magic made her go off the deep end and start digging pits? Why is Glinda even helping her?”

“Think of it this way,” Indigo said. “You’ve got your Witch of the East. Dorothy crushes her with a house. The Witch of the West—Dorothy melts her with a bucket of water. Glinda’s the Witch of the South. Notice that she’s the one who’s still standing? Glinda knows what’s good for her. She knows that the worst thing you can do around here is get in Dorothy’s way.”

“What about North?” I asked.

Indigo gave me a puzzled look.

“East, West, South,” I said. “What about the Witch of the North?” I asked.

Indigo just looked away. “You ask too many questions,” she said.

The world had been changing color while we’d talked. The closer we got to the Emerald City and away from Glinda and her machine, the more the chilly blue glow of the sky melted into something sunnier and pleasant. The grass grew greener and thicker on the ground, too, and every now and then I noticed a few crocuses poking their heads out of the earth.

I wasn’t positive, but as I listened carefully I was pretty sure I even heard some birds singing a tentative song. On the other hand, maybe it was just the residual sound of the drill ringing in my ears.

“Why do the Munchkins cooperate?” I asked. “If it’s ruining their home, it seems like they wouldn’t go along with it.”

Indigo leveled me with a cool stare.

“How about you stop asking about things you’ll never understand,” she said. “We’re going to get you to the Emerald City and you’re going to find some nice witch who will know how to send you right back to Kansas where you and your pink hair belong.”