Picture prompt:
"The Beckoning of Oz"
“It’s just a crow,” she whispered to herself. “It’s just a bird—“
“Crawk!” the massive black shape careened toward her head again.
Ruth yelped and brought the edges of her coat up to protect her face. She could feel the claws scrabbling at her ponytail, the scratchy wings batting her head. It kept croaking until she staggered a few blind steps forward. Only then did the beating stop, just like it had before.
Ruth peeked out from her collar. The crow hovered some distance in front of her. It cocked its head back and forth, rasping at her.
A fog was beginning to gather, and the crow progressed further and further into the shadows.
Everything about this felt so wrong.
Ruth promptly turned heel. “Nope!” she announced. “I’m not—YIKES!”
A black shadow unfolded right in front of her as a second crow blocked her path! It darted for her head, but Ruth turned and broke into a run. She took the path right in front of her, heedless of direction beyond “away from the crows”... and yet they still managed to keep pace with her, slapping her with their wings if she dared turn aside or stop.
“Go away!” she whimpered as she ran. “Get away from me!”
Her feet slid out from under her, and Ruth landed hard on her elbows, nearly smacking her face on the brick path.
The YELLOW brick path.
Since when did forest trails in the Beech Mountain wilderness have yellow bricks for paving?
The wind whipped harder, and Ruth heard the low rumble of thunder. She stared at the crows overhead.
“Okay, you know what?” she yelled at the looming pests, “I am not doing this! The yellow brick road in the middle of nowhere... crows?” She folded her arms. “I’m not some country orphan living with her aunt and uncle in rural Kansas. I’m outta here!”
Ruth braced herself for the beating, but the crows didn’t move. She turned her back on them, and took two hesitant steps forward, right to the edge of this random yellow pavement.
Just when she lifted her foot for the third step, something rugged at her ankle, and Ruth put her foot down to steady herself. The wind had picked up, pushing against her like an invisible wall. Ruth could only stare in horror as the wind seemed to push her feet back up the path!
“No!” she blurted, “No! No! NO!”
It was too late. Every step she took against the wind only shifted her balance so it pushed her back five more. And now the crows had returned, flapping along with the wind, preventing her from wrestling herself away from it. Ruth whirled around to face the same direction as the wind—and immediately regretted it.
The fog has coalesced into a swirling grey-green column, and she was getting closer to it. The cloud swelled so big it swallowed her view of the entire path. Ruth screamed as she threw her arms in front of her face—
And immediately, the wind died. Ruth’s ears rang, and her skin tingled at the sudden absence of pressure. She dropped her arms.
She still stood on the yellow bricks, but these ones looked brighter, newer.
On her left was a field of sunflowers. To her right, the path curved off over a meadow full of giant toadstools and into the distance. Ruth turned around.
“Hello!”
“AUGH!”
“Crawk!”
Ruth stumbled backward to get away from the tall, lanky stranger. His blue eyes crackled with energy, and his shaggy dark hair and sharp features definitely gave the appearance of a crow, if the black tunic and trousers he wore were not any sort of giveaway. An actual crow settled on his shoulder, glaring at Ruth.
“Wh-what—who... Where—Y-you...” she spluttered. Her hands shook as she lifted a finger to point at him. "You did this! What did you do to me?"
The stranger grinned at her. "Don't be angry! I only wanted to find you so I could bring you back and fix things."
"Back?" Ruth squinted at the sky, down the road in both directions, and especially at those funny-looking tree-sized mushrooms. "What do you mean, back? I don't belong here!"
The lanky stranger snorted. "Of course you do, Dorothy! Now, you don't know me, but I'm Quinn, and this,” he brought a slender hand around to allow the crow to step onto it, “is Manny--and Oz needs your help again!"
Ruth stopped wandering in circles wondering when the cloud was going to return and restore everything to normal. She revolved slowly to face Quinn.
"What did you call me?" she spat.
Quinn shied away from her, and Manny squawked as he landed on the lanky man's other shoulder, to hide from the smoldering glare on the girl's face.
"You..." He stammered, "You're Dorothy, aren't you? That's how I found you, because you're..." He trailed off as Ruth shook her head.
"You've got the wrong girl, Slim," said Ruth. "I'm Ruth from Raleigh--I don't even know anybody named Dorothy."
His calm self-assurance wilted, and Ruth saw actual terror unfolding over his face. "N-no!" He whimpered. "That's not--I didn't... But then how could I--Oooohh!!" He wailed and covered his face with his arms. "This is bad," he wailed. "This is very very bad! I did a bad thing!"
Manny warbled and wriggled his way into Quinn's lap to console him. Ruth stood awkwardly in the middle of the road, watching the young man break down.
"Hey, um..." She ventured after a few minutes, "So... if you're looking for Dorothy, do you think you could, like, bring me back, then? I mean, I really don't see how I could be of any use to you, since I'm not, you know, her--"
"Don't you get it?" In the space of a blink, Quinn stood nose-to-nose with her, his blue eyes crackling. He huffed heavily as the anxiety built. "I can't get back to your world! That was my one chance, and I blew it! I was supposed to find one person and one person only in that world--and you were the only person I could find!"
Ruth blinked, scooting back from his frantic stare. "I... What?" she gasped. "But that's--"
"Impossible, I know!" Quinn threw his arms up, sending Manny flapping into the sky with an angry croak. "I tried, I really did, but--out of everybody in that whole world, only one person actually stepped onto the yellow brick road, so I thought if anybody was destined to find me and return to Oz, it would be--" He gestured dramatically toward her, and plopped down in the grass beside the road again.
Ruth, meanwhile, felt the awful weight of the situation: she was stranded in a place that should never have existed, a world she knew nothing about, with a skinny goth lunatic and his pet as her guides--and all this was the outcome of a last-ditch effort to find someone who could supposedly save this world from certain doom?
Her knees buckled, and she joined Quinn on the grass. A gnawing pain built in the pit of her stomach, and she pulled her knees close as it wound tighter and tighter, crushing her body and escalating until it was hard to breathe and she wished she could just curl into herself and disappear--
Ruth gave a gurgling, sharp gasp as tears poured from her eyes.
"Hey." Quinn's voice reached her through the funk. She felt his hand stroking the back of her head. "Don't--don't cry... Please don't cry... this isn't your fault--"
"Not my fault?" Ruth picked her head up and stared at the slim-faced young man. She couldn't help the way her face contorted as she ugly-cried. "I'm not crying because it's my fault--I'm crying because there's nothing I can do to undo all the things I did!" Oh cripes, this place was rubbing off on her--I sound as crazy as any of them! "I have to get back, Quinn! I just want to go home!"
The black-clad man let out a long sigh. "I know--but you're here now, so we just have to make the best of it till--"
Ruth let out a bitter laugh, through her hysterical tears. "Make the best of it? Ha! Till what, might I ask?" she snapped, swiping the tears savagely from her face. "Till something ends up killing me? Till I get so old that nobody back in my world remembers me?"
Quinn scowled at her. "I was going to say till we can find somebody who knows how to re-open the portal to send you back. But," he shrugged, "you're welcome to find some way of killing yourself off or dying of old age without making any sort of effort, if those are your only options."
Ruth sniffed, her frustration and anxiety subsiding somewhat. "Really?" she asked softly. "You think we could find someone? And you'd help me?"
Quinn plopped Manny on his shoulder and stood up. He held out a hand to Ruth. "Of course I'll help," he said, pulling her onto her feet. "After all," he winked. "I'm the only friend you've got just now." He gestured toward the yellow brick road. "Shall we?"
Ruth followed the lanky scarecrow of a man down the blazing path, toward an uncertain destiny.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
For more "Flashes of Inspiration", check out the Flash Fiction tab at the top of this page!
No comments:
Post a Comment