“What are you doing? I was the one who took the apple. I was the one who freed the monkey.” The words tumbled out wildly. Whatever the thing was that they were pointing at Indigo, it looked like it was going to hurt.

He grumbled to himself, as if he didn’t owe me any explanation. “Save your confession for Dorothy, outlander. Loyalty is very important in Oz. The Munchkin must be punished for her cravenness.”

“She just told you she’s been loyal to Dorothy.”

“Perhaps. But she was not loyal to you. Either way, she is guilty of the crime.”

“What are you talking about? You can’t have it both ways—either she’s guilty of being disloyal to Dorothy or she’s guilty of being disloyal to me.”

“Indeed.” The Tin Woodman’s metal face somehow managed to look smug. “Now. For her punishment.”

The gunlike nozzle extended from the Tin Soldier’s lips. It twisted and pivoted, adjusting itself as he put Indigo in his sights. She was heaving and shaking on her knees.

“Run,” I said again. “Run!” I cried, willing her to get up. She didn’t listen. She didn’t even open her eyes.

The Tin Soldier fired and the device made a popping sound.

A tiny sigh of desperate relief escaped my lips when I saw what came shooting out of his mouth: a stream of iridescent bubbles. That was it? I wanted to laugh as the innocent-looking bubbles floated toward Indigo, zipping forward in a happy little stream. They began to swarm her like bees on honey.

But instead of popping when they touched her, they clung to her clothes and skin. She swatted at them frantically but it was no use. They didn’t budge. My eyes widened in horror as the bubbles began to melt into her flesh.

I made a move forward to help her—to do anything—but before I could get to her, Sword-Arm’s blade snapped out at me. She pressed it tight against my jugular.

“I’m sorry!” I told Indigo. “I’m sorry.”

She looked at me then. “No. You were right. Please help us,” she said. “You’re from the Other Place. You’re like her. You can do something.”

A calm look came across her face—too calm. Like, good-bye calm. Then the bubbles covered her face, too.

As they merged with her body, her tattoos separated from her skin and slipped off her, the ink puddling in a shiny, mercurial mass. Indigo was melting.

She was barely recognizable now. She was just a big lump of sticky, pinkish flesh, her arms and legs only barely discernible as limbs, her features only little misshapen blots where her face should have been.

“Make it stop,” I begged, still crying. “Please. I didn’t mean to—I didn’t know. She shouldn’t pay for what I did. Please.”

“I hate to burst your bubble,” the Tin Woodman said with a sly grin, “but ignorance is no excuse. You can tell the whole story to Dorothy. The princess is . . . curious about you.”

Pop!

All I could see of what had been Indigo was a red splatter of bone and blood where she had knelt just a few seconds ago. I felt myself gagging, but nothing came up. I leaned over, hands on my knees, trying to get a breath.

She had painstakingly written the history of the world on her body so that it would live on. And the Tin Woodman and his goons had just erased her with the push of a button.

“It’s very messy, but we find it’s a deterrent,” the Tin Woodman said.

This place was insane. He was insane. I thought they’d given him a heart—how had he become this?

“Now as for you,” I heard him saying. It sounded like he was talking to me from the end of a long tunnel. “The princess is very interested to meet the girl who dropped out of the sky.

“Take her,” he told his men. I didn’t resist as they grabbed me. I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t say anything.

Everything went black. I became a shadow, like them.

We were standing in the middle of the road and then we weren’t. The world blurred before me for a second in a swirl of colors. I blinked hard, trying to keep from getting dizzy, and when I opened my eyes again, I was standing on a glossy marble floor.

I looked up. The Tin Woodman and his metallic backup band were standing beside me. We must have traveled by magic.

The room we were in was the biggest I’d ever been in. It was bigger than my high school auditorium that doubled as a gym, and, where there should have been a ceiling, an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of rainbows formed a majestic dome, casting a shower of vivid colors down upon the pair of gold-and-emerald thrones that sat majestically on a raised dais.

On every wall, stained-glass windows seemed to tell a story. I knew most of it already: it was the story of Dorothy.

There was Dorothy’s house in the cyclone. Dorothy walking down the road of yellow bricks, arm in arm with her famous friends. Dorothy facing off with the Wicked Witch of the West. They all went on like that. The last panel showed Dorothy kneeling, as a girl I recognized as Ozma placed a crown on her head.

But where was the one that explained what happened after that?

“Don’t speak until spoken to,” the Tin Woodman was saying brusquely, and I realized that he was talking to me. “And don’t look Her Highness directly in the eye.”

I felt nauseous. He had just killed my friend, and now he was giving me an etiquette lesson.

I had never seen anyone die before. I’d thought it would leave me scared, but now all I wanted to do was fight. More than anything I wished to put my fist through the Tin Woodman’s face. Or worse.