Our thoughts and prayers go out for Judith Rochelle (Desiree Holt), one of our RomanticSynonymous authors and a very enthusiastic member of this little group. Judith's husband has passed away, and we'd like to just interrupt our sage to extend a hand of friendship and togetherness, to let her know we are here for her and are thinking of her.
Judith, from the RomanticSynonymous team, our heartfelt sympathies and love.
Take care,
Jude
Pic from ~ journeytocouture.com ~
Kallyn flew faster, yet saw nothing ahead of her, except the driving sheets of rain. There had to be a better way of escaping if she was being pursued by an enemy or even a horde of enemies. Taking a chance she angled upwards, determined to wing above the clouds. That is, if the clouds of Oz acted like normal clouds. She’d created a normal storm, but who knew?
Suddenly, the memory of being dressed as a green dragon, with a shimmery fabric belly and her own wings, for a Halloween party burst into her thoughts. She’d been ten years old and she’d spent the two weeks beforehand dancing around, hyper with anticipation.
The party at her girlfriend’s home had been all she could imagine, so much fun she’d hated to leave. Now came the strange part. Kallyn had believed it was her friend’s dad who’d taken her hand to lead her toward the door. Yet, when she’d looked up, finally...
Odric. The man had been Odric. He’d told her something. Kallyn struggled to remember as she plunged inside the charcoal-colored cloud bank. It felt like wading through extra heavy mist and she no longer had any sense of direction. Still, she flapped furiously, maintaining her momentum.
“Where are you?” Odric had asked her, his expression kindness itself.
“This is Rachel’s home,” she’d announced proudly. “Who are you?”
“I’m a friend. We’ll know each other much better later.” Odric had crouched down, eye level with her, his gaze jovial.
“Later?” Kallyn could still hear her child’s demanding tone.
“Later.” Odric nodded. “There’s something you need to remember.”
“Like for a test?” Kallyn recalled being utterly intrigued by the sparkly facets of Odric’s eyes.
“It’s much more important than a test, Kallyn.”
“Hey, how do you know my name?”
“I’m magical. And you’re magical.”
Feeling important suddenly, Kallyn had puffed up. “What do you want me to remember?”
“Remember being a dragon. Remember the bad witch Dorothy destroyed with water in the Wizard of Oz. Remember whatever you do, do not stop the storm. Keep flying. Keep flying toward the moon. When you see it, say ‘Rachel’.
“It’s made of cheese, blue cheese,” Kallyn had hurled the words, then giggled at herself. “No, it’s not. I know. But, it should be.”
Thunder boomed around her, shuddering her dragon body. Cackling shrieks of thunder. It was Aunt Cecily searching for her, attempting to spin her evil sorcery and capture Kallyn. Or, did she only want possession of the red diamonds?
Kallyn struggled onward, the drenching dark gray mass sapping her energy to the point she couldn’t manage any sorcery to alter herself or zap herself anywhere else. With each beat her wings grew heavier. What now?
Frantically, she gazed around until she saw it, a pale glistening outline in the shape of a crescent. Hope soared inside her. Odric, dear Odric, had he rescued her, even from way back then? Using every ounce of strength she flew toward the wavering crescent. Larger and larger, brighter and brighter the shape became. The Moon, it had to be the moon.
“Rachel,” she uttered in dragonese.
Kallyn’s eyes opened, even though she hadn’t known they were closed. No longer in her dragon body, she stood on a barren brown-gray surface. Was she actually on the moon?
She hauled in a breath. Okay, so far, no trouble breathing. Her curiosity wilder than a march hare, she jumped to test out the gravity. Okay, she was sort of floaty before she landed, but there was definitely a strong pull downward.
Slowly, Kallyn rotated around, looking at the spongy-appearing ground. She froze in mid-turn. What the hell? Crystalline dome buildings, three of them sat on the horizon. A black triangular craft rose above them, then shot straight toward her.
“That’s all YOU know,” Kallyn muttered. “Stay there in the rain, auntie, and I hope you’re getting wet feet and swine flu.”
Flapping her wide dragon wings, Kallyn rose through the wind and rain, circling, listening. True, her present form wasn’t one to send her lovers into waves of passionate desire, but she rather thought none of them were in Oz.
Choices: she could head for the Emerald City and see who was there and probably terrify the citizens, or she could look for creatures similar to herself. If there were any, they might help her.
Closing her eyes and letting the wind carry her, she pictured her own dragon form in her mind. Wings. Hmm, there was a variety of strange birds and a few fairy-like creatures, and oh yes, those horrid monkeys. And then crack!
She saw dragon shapes. They stared into her mind, eyes wide with surprise, a row of startled faces.
“Lead me to you,” she thought to them.
“Yes, please, we are terribly bored,” they said, and sent out their thoughts. Kallyn followed until she reached the side of a high mountain. There was an opening to a wide cave. Cautiously, she peered in.
The row of dragons stared back at her.
“Excuse me,” she said, “can you give me directions out of Oz?”
“Why would we do that? We love company. Come talk to us.”
“I am in a bit of a hurry. Perhaps you could fly with me and show me the way and we could visit on the trip.”
“If we could do that,” they scoffed, “we wouldn’t need company. Mother tied us up by our tails to keep us here until she returns. She’s off talking to some horrid old witch who is stuck in the mud.”
Aunt Cecily? And she was stuck? So that’s why she couldn’t leave. “Is there a way out of this rain?”
In unison they said, “Never rains on the Deadly Desert, we’re told.”
“And where is that?”
They giggled. A row of giggling young dragons was a very weird sight.
One said, “That’s what surrounds Oz.”
“Really? And why is it called Deadly?”
“Poisonous fumes rise from it.”
“If I flew high enough, would I be above the fumes?” Kallyn asked.
“Of course, silly, but why would you want to do that?” More giggling and then they said, “If you cross the Deadly Desert you end up in that dumb gray country and who’d want to go there?”
“What dumb gray country?”
“Don’t you know anything?” they shouted. “Even Dorothy never goes back there.”
Kallyn tapped her claws against the side of the cave entrance and thought back through everything she’d heard or read about Oz. “Do you mean Kansas? But which direction?”
They sighed in unison. “Go far enough in any direction at all and you’ll end up in Kansas.”
“Thanks,” Kallyn said, and pulled her head free of the cave entrance and flapped her huge leathery wings and headed back into the storm.
From behind her she heard the dragons screaming, “Watch out! Danger approaching! Faster, fly faster!”
Illustration by John R. Neill, from Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz by L. Frank Baum, 1908
- Phoebe Matthews
Pic from ~ http://jewelryimpressions.com/ ~
“Time for some real action.” Kallyn didn’t bother shouting her words. Instead, she opened the bag and looked inside, hoping she still had possession of the red diamonds.
They appeared real, winking in the light. As she opened the bag wider, trying to make a determination, the red diamonds glistened with tiny rainbows. “You know we’re in the land of Oz, don’t you?”
The diamonds emitted a hum and glowed more brilliantly. Swiftly, Kallyn secured the bag.
“Stand back,” she warned the Munchkin. “Unless you like dragons...”
“No, don’t!”
The terrified tenor of his voice had Kallyn whipping her gaze toward Mr. Munchkin, who waved his hands dramatically, as if he attempted to keep his world from blowing to smithereens.
“Why not?” Kallyn demanded, already feeling the sensation of her tail.
“Be anything else but a dragon. The last time –“
“The last time what?” Kallyn glanced skyward, then heard the shrieking cackles of Aunt Cecily. “And what do you suggest I do about that gigundis formation of flying monkeys?”
“Run?”
His meek voice annoyed Kallyn no end. “Why aren’t you running?”
Taking his own advice, Mr. Munchkin spun around, clapped a hand on his floppy hat and dashed off on his bow legs.
“Whatever,” Kallyn muttered. Closing her eyes, she concentrated on creating the storm of the century above The Wicked Witch of Everywhere and her army of winged monkeys.
Splats of rain caused her eyes to blink open. Quickly, a pounding rain soaked her and Kallyn attempted to see if Aunt Cecily had melted. No such luck, that she could observe. However, the rising storm winds halted the monkey squadron in mid-flight.
Growing in ferocity, the rain and the winds battered them, tossing their dark bodies to and fro in a weird comedic frenzy that had Kallyn wishing she trained a movie camera on the scene.
“Are you melting?” she shouted and felt the words ripped from her lips by the wind gusts that blasted around her. With a wave of her hand, she quieted the storm to a steady rain.
“No, you fool.”
Kallyn whirled at the sound of Aunt Cecily’s voice. She stood, tented in a huge clear plastic poncho, bedraggled and obviously in a weakened state, but definitely not melted.
“What a disappointment,” Kallyn mocked.
“Disappointment.” Aunt Cecily threw her head back and guffawed. The sluicing rain made her form appear distorted as she continued sending peals of laughter toward the dense blanket of clouds.
Deciding it was time to leave before she became ensnared in whatever evil machinations Aunt Cecily concocted, Kallyn sprouted a pair of weather-hardy wings. Leaping upward, she flapped strongly against the pelting raindrops.
“You fool,” Aunt Cecily shouted in her fiercest witch voice, “you closed the only portal out of here. Forever!”
“Hee hee, haw haw, hah!”
The Munchkin shrieked, “Duck!” and the last Kallyn saw of him was the soles of his blue shoes as he dove out of sight into a tangle of flowering shrubs that edged the Yellow Brick Road.
She also saw the wide black shadow cut between herself and the sun. Following the Munchin’s advice, Kallyn flung herself full length to the ground, and just in time. A cackling form dashed above her, its wand barely missing her, and a flutter of black skirt and cape brushed her hair.
“I’ll get you, my pretty!” the witch shrieked as she soared into the air.
Okay, enough is enough, Kallyn decided, and jumping to her feet, she shook her fist at the departing witch. “I’m not Dorothy, stupid!”
“And I’m not Dorothy’s witch,” the witch shrieked back. The black figure flew a wide circle high in the brilliant sky above Kallyn, then shot off.
Oops. Kallyn knew that voice way too well. “It’s my Aunt Cecily and she’s a witch, all right. Come on out, Munchkin.”
The little man crawled back out of the bushes and brushed dust off his knees. “Why is she chasing you?”
“I have some red diamonds she wants to steal.”
“Diamonds? If that’s all she wants, we could possibly get some from the Gnome King. He has more jewels than all the rest of the world put together.”
“Gnome King? Really? I’ve never heard of him.”
“Oh, you’re one of those,” the Munchkin sighed. “I suppose you only read the first book. Or worse yet, only saw the movie.”
“There’s more?”
“The history of Oz goes on for another forty books.”
“Oh dear.” Kallyn decided not to ask him any more about Oz, because she had a feeling he’d tell her the whole story and that would take years. Instead, she asked, “This Gnome King, is he a hunk, by any chance? Tall, handsome and romantic?”
The little Munchkin laughed until he cried and then he collapsed and rolled around on the road.
Kallyn stamped her foot at him. “What’s so funny?”
Between gasps and sobs, he sputtered, “You, dear! Tall, handsome and romantic? If that’s what a hunk is, I am sorry to have to tell you, we have every other sort of male in this kingdom, but nothing that fits that description.”
“In that case, what I need right now is directions on how to leave.”
Far in the sky, the cackling echoed and grew louder and louder as the black swirl of shadow shot toward them. Aunt Cecily, wicked witch of Everywhere, shrieked, “I’ve got you now, my pretty!”
Illustration from the book Gnome King in Oz.
- Phoebe
I’m in Oz now? Kallyn shook her head. This dream could not be any stranger. Would it never end?
She continued to slowly fall and gradually landed on her feet, the yellow brick road beneath her feet.
Having no better plan, Kallyn followed the path as it twisted and turned. She had loved The Wizard of Oz and had watched it thousands of times as a child growing up. Whenever she had a question about life, she used to imagine being able to ask the all-knowing Oz what to do. And now she could!
She hurried along and repressed the urge to skip and kick her heels. After a sharp turn to the right, Kallyn heard a soft noise behind her. She turned around but no one was there. She walked on, slower this time. There it was again, a soft footstep. Kallyn left the brick road, jumping into a large berry bush.
Just then, a munchkins walked by. When he got to the location where Kallyn had left the road, he stopped and glanced all around, scratching his head. “I know I saw her here,” he mumbled. “Oh well. I guess I’ll keep this pouch to myself. I wonder what’s inside it.”
“No!” Kallyn cried, stumbling from the bush. She fell down at the munchkin’s feet. “Can I have my pouch back?”
The munchkin eyed her critically. “I guess so.” He handed her back the pouch.
“Thank you,” Kallyn said, tying it around her neck. The pouch felt heavier than before. She smiled at the short man and continued on her way.
To her surprise, the munchkin followed her. “Why are you following the yellow brick road?” he asked.
“To get to the Wizard of course,” she said, unable to keep the confusion from her voice.
“But the Wizard is dead.” He shook his head. “You don’t want to follow the brick road. It leads to evil now.”
“Evil?” Kallyn groaned. Even in her bizarre dreams, she still couldn't avoid some form of evil it seemed.
“Oh yes.” He nodded emphatically. “A great evil named…”
Darkness as Kallyn had never known enveloped her. She’d stopped flailing, her instinctive reaction giving way to utter shock. The echo of her screams vanished like whispers lost to a strong wind. Around her all sound ceased. Eerily, there was only the sensation of falling.
When her mind kicked into gear, Kallyn searched herself for the red diamonds and at the same time, she focused on shifting herself into a dragon or any animal that could fly.
Try as she might she couldn’t transform herself even though she clutched something that felt like the red diamonds.
Strangely, as she continued her rapid descent, even her body seemed to be disappearing bit by bit, as if particles of herself streamed away, leaving her with less and less flesh.
Where in all Creation was she? She could still think, still comprehend her this-is-beyond-hell situation.
Kallyn squeezed what she believed could be the bag of red diamonds and wished with all her heart and being that she knew what to do... that Odric would... or could find her.
Was this the end?
Not that there seemed to be an end to this blasted Stephen King-like abyss.
Maybe she was turning into a ghost. No body left, just a spirit to roam around the world with. She could haunt Aunt Cecily and drive her to the nearest insane asylum for evil sorceresses. She could practice and become like the ghost in the movie, Ghost... use her energy-plasma powers to defeat all of her enemies.
Suddenly, a colossal blast of air slowed her descent. Kallyn felt the sensations of her body return. To her astonishment her fall gradually became a mere drifting downward... but to where? An inky blackness still surrounded her.
Sounds... tiny fractions of sound came from somewhere below her. Singing, someone was singing like Judy Garland... louder and louder... yes, there it was, the words, sweet and clear... “somewhere over the rainbow...”
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