First for October- BF prompt "Instep"
"You know, Dorothy, you had the means to return Home with you all the time."
Dorothy blinked. "Pardon?" she said.
"Yes, yes! Right there on your feet!" Glinda pointed, beaming.
Dorothy looked down. The red shoes glittered like pomegranate kernels. Her insteps throbbed in them. "The shoes?" She looked up at the smiling woman. Her brow furrowed. "The shoes will take me Home?"
"Yes!" Glinda chirped. Her eyes sparked with the same light as the shoes. "All you need to do is click your heels together three times and say, 'There's no place like Home.'"
"Oh . . ." Dorothy looked at the shoes again. All this time. Such a great distance. So much. They would take her Home. She frowned.
"But . . . You knew this all along? Why didn't you tell me?" Dorothy's eyes glistened, and her tiny, pointed chin trembled.
"Well," Glinda looked at the ground. "You see, I- we- thought you might be the one to help us with our . . . problems. You had dispensed with the Wicked Witch of the East so easily, you see." She looked up, her smile gone. "If you had figured it out, no one would have stopped you leaving."
"I was so scared, and far from home, and you kept me here 'cause you couldn't figure out your own problems?" Tears began to trace down Dorothy's cheeks.
"Actually, you precipitated the need for action, by killing the Wicked Witch of the East. By removing her sister and rival, you positioned the Wicked Witch of the West to seize power; had you not also removed her, we would have suffered under her draconian regime for years to come," Scarecrow pontificated. "You righted the balance."
"I'm just a kid! I could have died!" Dorothy's voice hitched; the tears were rivering down her face now.
"Dorothy," Lion purred, barely above a sigh, "kids ain't inhib- inhib- ."
"Inhibited?" Scarecrow provided.
"Yeah, that. Thanks." He placed his paw on her shoulder, and wiped her tears with the tuft of his tail, soft as milkweed down. "We was paralyzed with fear. You were brave's could be."
"You used me!" Dorothy swatted Lion away, unmindful of the tears and snot mingling on her face. "You're all magic! And grown-ups! You didn't need me to fix your stupid problem! You were just scared, and lazy. I threw a bucket of water on her, is all, but I could have died! Kids aren't supposed to die! The grown-ups are suposed to protect them! So why did I have to save you?
She looked at each of them in turn; none of them looked back, except for Tinman, who's head was rusted in place from weeping. Lion shuffled his paws in the grass. Glinda's wings fluttered fitfully. Finally, she spoke.
"Well, you didn't die; you saved all of OZ," she beamed at Dorothy again. "Now, all you have to do is click your heels together three-"
"No!" Dorothy's shout was like a whipcrack; Glinda flinched from it. " I don't want your stinkin' help! I'll get home on my own."
She removed the shoes and flung them, one at a time, at the witch. The left one hit Glinda in the temple, the gilt buckle on the instep drawing a trickle of blood. She wiped her nose on the sleeve of her dress.
"What if you get lost?" Tinman creaked out, his jaw barely moving.
"Then I'll be no worse off than I am now." Dorothy looked at each of them again, and spun on her heel, stalking off away from the city. No one moved; they all just watched her until she had disappeared over the curve of the plain.
No one in Oz ever saw or heard from her again.
~*~
I've been thinking about child heroes in books off and on for years; how the children are transported to magical lands, solve the problems, end the war, and get sent home to bed. I know these stories are written for children, and part of their attractiveness is the fact that these children have agency in these magical lands; something that real children covet greedily. Nevertheless, these children pay an adult price for that agency; the cost is the reason real children do not have it. Well, one of the reasons. A major one.
I've also always wondered why Dorothy didn't get angry when she was told that she could have gone home at any time. Maybe I'm misremembering the book; perhaps the magical ability of the shoes was only activated once Dorothy had fulfilled her charge. I don't think so, though. I think she was the Stranger in a strange land, the ersatz savior who just happened along, and the powers-that-were in OZ took advantage of her.
I've been working on this story for years; I know it has a very specious relationship with the prompt, but oh well. It was quite a struggle, the themes seemed way too big for the scene at times, but it's done.
So, whaddya think?