Indigo sighed in disgust and rose to her feet just as the girl was starting her speech all over again. It was like someone had set her on repeat. “Dearest people of Munchkin Country!” the girl cried again.

“It gets me every time,” Indigo muttered. “Just ignore her,” she said, noticing my confused expression. “Come on.”

“It’s not real,” Ollie explained, standing, too. “Just a recording. You come across them every now and then, to keep us in line. I bet it means we’re getting closer to the Emerald City, though.”

“Who is she?” I asked. “That’s not Dorothy. Is it?”

“It’s Ozma. Oz’s true ruler,” Indigo said. “She’s still technically in charge, but no one’s seen the real Ozma outside the palace in ages. It’s always just these illusion things. Look.”

She wound her arm up like a pitcher and went to slap the girl. Her hand passed easily through the princess’s head.

“See? Fake. The real Ozma doesn’t care about us anymore.”

“I am pleased to announce this auspicious day for all the people of Oz!” Ozma kept babbling.

Ollie looked away from the hologram like it hurt him to stare at her even a second longer, and then Indigo stepped right through her and we all just kept on walking. Ozma’s canned speech faded slowly away into the distance.

“We waited a long time for a ruler like her.” Ollie sighed. “She was supposed to be in charge all along—she’s descended from the fairy who gave Oz its magic. But she was just a baby when the Wizard came here, and he didn’t want her getting in his way. So he sent her off somewhere. Then, when he left, he made the Scarecrow the king. That didn’t go well.”

“The Scarecrow was evil, too? Like Dorothy?” I asked. I was having a hard time keeping track of all this, but something about it seemed important.

“No,” he said, and then chuckled ruefully to himself. “Not then at least. He just wasn’t a very good king.”

“He wanted to sit around the palace thinking all day,” Indigo cut in. “If you ask me, brains aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Anyway, everything went to hell, until Ozma came back.”

“Where was she that whole time?”

“No one knows,” Ollie said. “She would never talk about it. But she has fairy blood, which meant she had a right to the crown. It’s deep magic—since she was finally of age, no one could do anything to take it away from her.”

“Dorothy did,” I pointed out.

“Not exactly,” Ollie said.

“Ozma was in charge for a long time,” Indigo said. “Things were good with her. The best. The sun rose and set on time. There was magic everywhere. . . .”

“The monkeys flew wherever they wanted while Ozma reigned,” Ollie interjected.

“It was what Oz was supposed to be all along,” Indigo said. “The funny part is that when Dorothy came back, everyone was happy at first. She was a hero, you know. And nothing changed for a while, except that she moved into the palace. She and Ozma became friends. They did everything together. No one even minded when Ozma made her a princess, too. It seemed like she deserved it.”

“And then?”

“Then came the Happiness Decree. After that, we stopped seeing so much of Ozma. It was, like, all Dorothy all the time. Ozma was just . . . gone.”

“You think Dorothy did something to her.”

Indigo nodded. “I don’t know what,” she said. “But Ozma would never let this happen to Oz. She must have been tricked . . . or . . .”

“Or she’s dead,” Ollie said.

“No!” Indigo nearly shouted. “She can’t be dead. Dorothy’s not powerful enough. No one’s powerful enough. Once Ozma had the crown, nothing could take it away from her. It’s fairy magic—that’s the strongest there is. Nothing can break it. Nothing can kill her.”

Ollie didn’t look so sure. “What if the magic’s gone?” he asked. Indigo didn’t answer him.

The whole time they’d been giving me a primer on Oz’s history—which I still wasn’t sure I understood—we’d been walking, and now we had come to a wide, stagnant river. The water was mossy and still and rotten-smelling, and had a toxic green tint to it. At the muddy bank, a tangle of thick black vines twisted like snakes.

Luckily, we didn’t have to swim through that muck: as it neared the water, the yellow bricks began to ascend, stretching up and out into the air in a meandering path. There was nothing supporting them—no cables or columns or beams—and the whole road swayed and fluttered back and forth like a ribbon in the wind.

I gulped. “Are we supposed to cross that?” I asked. Heights weren’t exactly my favorite thing.

But the height was the least of our problems.

“Monkeys,” Ollie breathed, pointing at the tiny silhouettes that swooped and dove against the newsprint-gray of an endless cloud that hovered just above the road. “They’re patrolling the bridge.”

I laughed nervously. “Time to turn back, I guess.” But I knew we couldn’t. Where would we go? We had seen what there was to see back there. The only direction was straight ahead.

Indigo looked up at the monkeys in thought. “I think we can make it past them,” she said. “I know a spell that might work.”

“Wait,” I said. “You can do magic? You didn’t tell me that.”