Dorothy in the Land of Poppies
A short story first published in Mirrormaze (2020)
Overcome with pleasant fatigue, Dorothy resolved to rest a moment on the poppy-laden ground. But as she nestled among the crimson flowers, she found no ground beneath them, only an endless night sky. She pushed her face through the petals and stared into that black abyss. And then, to her amazement, she found the darkness staring back at her.
What she had taken for stars she now recognized as reflections on a pair of dark eyes and a wet pug nose. What might have been a pink crescent moon was nothing more than the familiar protruding tongue of her little dog Toto. But oh, how large he had grown!
“Is that really you, Toto?” Dorothy exclaimed. “You’ve grown so that I almost didn’t recognize you!” The celestial canine face resolved itself into a more manageable form that, while still quite large, no longer defied reason.
“I’ve become a wolf,” Toto replied. “Though truly, I always suspected I was a wolf on the inside.”
Dorothy had never before heard Toto speak, not even a single word. Yet this was unquestionably the voice of her oldest and dearest friend. And despite his transformation, this new Toto felt perfectly natural, as if he’d always been an enormous talking wolf.
“What’s become of . . .” Dorothy began, trying to recall exactly who was missing from their party. “Was it always just the two of us?”
“I think that’s right,” answered the beast. “I know that I exist, at least the part of me that does the knowing . . . And you seem to exist as well—though it could be that you’re actually just a bit more of me—but as for the rest of this . . .” He raised a forepaw and lowered his head in something approximating a shrug. Then without finishing the thought, he turned to leave the meadow.
Taking this gesture as it was intended, Dorothy climbed onto Toto’s woolly back, gripped the fur behind his ears, and held on tight.
Together they raced over hill and dale, through the Whispering Woods, and across the Deadly Desert. And then before Dorothy knew quite how it had happened, they were inside a long, white hallway with stacks of wire cages along both walls. The air was thick with the scent of disinfectant, which only partly masked the musky odor of animal waste. Most of the cages held field mice, but there were also a few rats and rabbits, and the pitiful mewling of a kitten could be heard some ways off.
Toto followed the sound without a word until they were face to face with the little creature. The door of its cage was wide open, but the tiny orange tabby cowered in one corner, its head buried in its paws, refusing even to look at its visitors. Here too was something familiar.
“Is that you, Lion?” asked Dorothy.
“Lion?” echoed the kitten. “I don’t believe I’ve ever been a lion, not really. But yes, it’s me, such as I am.” He looked up at Dorothy and seemed to grow a little large for his cage. He resumed speaking, now with a faint but undeniable hint of regality: “We’re all stuck here, and I’m afraid it’s my fault somehow. I tried to run, but . . . Oh, this awful smell! Can we go somewhere else please? Find a bit of fresh air?”
Dorothy scooped up the Cowardly Kitten and placed him in front of her on Toto’s back, to which he clung with tiny kitten claws. Now they were ready to continue their journey. Without turning back, there was really only one direction they could go. And so they forged ahead through the cluttered, fetid hallway, marching on.
All at once, the hall came to an abrupt end, and it seemed the group could go no further. The bare wall before them was completely white and featureless.
“Oh no, this won’t do at all,” cried Dorothy.
“We’ll have to turn back,” whined the Cowardly Kitten. “I never much cared for mice, even at my full stature. And now . . . Why, I’d be helpless as a kitten if one should chance to escape its cage!”
Toto stood stock still, staring at the wall ahead of them and sniffing with his powerful lupine snout. “Paper,” he said at last. And then before Dorothy could ask what he’d meant by this remark, Toto leapt directly at the wall as if he meant to jump right through it.
And miraculously, that is exactly what happened.
As Toto’s immense paws hit the paper wall, it ripped away to reveal a large, scientific-looking room on the other side. The trio flew through the air and landed heavily on a polished metal floor. Obviously unprepared for this slick surface, Toto faltered and slid across the room. The Cowardly Kitten was able to dig in his claws and hang onto Toto’s back, but Dorothy tumbled to the ground and rolled into a tangle of cords and wires.
Just then, a high-pitched alarm went off, and Dorothy found herself inside what seemed to be a sort of coffin made out of glass or crystal. Though she had to admit it was surprisingly comfortable, she had no intention of remaining inside the ghastly thing a moment longer. She pressed on the inside of its transparent lid, but it wouldn’t budge. Coming faster now, her breath began to fog the glass.
“Come on now, it won’t do any good to panic," she chided herself. “What would Uncle Henry do?” She tried to imagine the kindly old face of her dear uncle, lined with decades of hard-earned wisdom, but all she got was vague gray shadows. It was as if she’d never really known the man, only seen a gray-cast photograph. As she tried to focus her mental image of Uncle Henry and bring some color into the picture, his face resolved into the Scarecrow, looking vapid and foolish as ever.
“Oh, Aunt Em!” she cried out. “I need you!” But again, all she could recall was a vague sense of the woman: her deep gray eyes, her silver hair pulled back into a bun, her skin the color of . . . well, of metal. It wasn’t the sweet face of her Aunt Em at all but that of the Tin Woodman, cold and without emotion. He looked on expressionless as Dorothy burst into tears and began pounding her fists against the glass.
Just as she was beginning to lose all hope, the lid of her coffin released a hiss of air and proceeded to open completely on its own.
Dorothy sat up and looked around. She was in the same scientific-looking room as before, but Toto and the Cowardly Kitten were nowhere to be seen. To her left and to her right were scores of glass coffins identical to her own. She had a feeling she wasn’t in Oz anymore.
From across the room, a woman in a white jacket and trousers came running toward her, apologizing indistinctly for the unpleasant noise the alarm was making. “Looks like a monitor got unplugged here somehow.” She stooped down to wrestle with a tangle of cords and wires. At last the noise stopped, to the woman’s obvious relief. “Now,” she began hesitantly, “you must be wondering what you’re doing here. Am I right?”
Dorothy could think of no response to appropriately convey her bewilderment, so she asked simply, “Have I died?”
“Have you— No, nothing like that!” the woman answered with a smile. “Listen . . . I’m Theodora Lake. And you are?”
“Dorothy Gale.”
“Right,” replied Theodora. “Kansas. Have you been to Oz yet?”
Dorothy was astonished. “I’ve just come from there! But how did you—”
“So you know then, how it’s possible to be in one place and then fall asleep, and when you wake up . . . you’re somewhere else. Do you follow?”
Dorothy nodded, mostly to be polite.
Theodora continued, “We’re on a generation ship bound for Rigil Kent. It’s going to be quite a long time before we get there, you know, so the passengers need something to do while they wait. So you dream, basically. But it’s under control . . . so you don’t have any nightmares or— We call it the DIVE: Dream-Integrated Virtual Environment. See? Kind of a pun. Is any of this making sense?”
Dorothy shook her head.
“Well . . . It’s not really so important that you understand everything just yet. You woke up early, and I need to send you back—like the sooner the better.” Theodora set to drumming her fingers along the inside of her wrist, and as she did so, her eyes darted back and forth like mad. “Okay, this should do it. Back to chapter nine . . .” Her gaze returned to Dorothy and, seeing the tears in her eyes, Theodora softened her expression.
“All right now, no need to fret,” said the uncanny woman. “It’s just— The real world is— Well, now that you know it’s all a dream, you’ll have to be very careful not to treat it as unimportant. Just because a thing’s not real, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter. Do you follow?”
“I suppose . . . I understand,” conceded Dorothy. “So really . . . there’s no such place as Oz or Kansas . . . but where else am I going to go?”
“Well put,” replied Theodora after a moment’s consideration. “That’s a decent attitude to have, and true enough. Just try not to lose perspective when I send you back. The DIVE is . . . It’s as much a test as it is a training program. And if you fail, then we can’t use you, except as— Well anyway, don’t fail.” She forced a toothy smile, but it did little to mask the pained look in her eyes.
“No . . .” Dorothy muttered, unsure of where she was headed with this sudden urge to resist. “No, I don’t want to go back. I can stay here with you. I can— I’m sure there’s something I can do!”
Theodora shook her head with a short, sad laugh. “Honestly, you don’t want to be like me. You get to see the Promised Land, kid. I’m just—” She gestured feebly around the room, down the row of glass coffins. This was her life—day in, day out—with no promise of a better life in another world.
“I don’t care!” Dorothy shouted in return. “I don’t want to sleep. I want to live! I can’t just pretend like I don’t know. I have to . . .” She trailed off, feeling suddenly sleepy as Theodora resumed drumming her fingers on the inside of her wrist.
Dorothy lay back once more in her glass coffin, resigned to a life of make-believe. It wouldn’t be so bad. In fact, there was some comfort in knowing that whatever happened to her in life, however bad things got, somewhere she was safe and clean and cozy, and Theodora Lake was watching over her.
Just before the transparent lid moved itself back into place, Theodora leaned in to say one last thing: “Good luck, Dorothy. If anybody gives you trouble . . . just toss a bucket of water on them. You’ll be fine.”
The coffin filled with a familiar medicinal scent—poppies?—and Dorothy drifted off to sleep once more.