Dorothy and Nox were gone. The sun filtered down through a green canopy of leaves. Birds sang in the branches, and the trees around me dripped frothy masses of green moss. The air was as warm as bathwater. The road beneath my feet looked like the perfect version of the Road of Yellow Brick; it was smooth and seamless, made out of some translucent material that caught and held the sunlight that made it down through the trees to the forest floor. “Welcome, Amy,” someone said behind me. Startled, I turned around. “Ozma?” I asked in surprise. But I quickly realized the creature in front of me, though she looked almost exactly like the fairy queen, was someone else. Her face was Ozma’s, youthful and pretty. Her bearing was Ozma’s, too, in her clear moments: regal and serene and confident. A pair of golden wings fluttered from her back. But her eyes were a stranger’s. Unlike Ozma’s green eyes, hers were the same pale gold as the road and far, far more ancient than her face suggested.
