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Chapter 2

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I was still dizzy after we got sucked into the pit and jumped back into Oz. I smiled when I first climbed out of the pit. No blue grass, no purple trees, and definitely no change in the lighting. Oz looked normal. Beautiful, even.

"So... how do we get to your home? Will you zap me there or do we have to take an Oz bus or something?"

He looked at me with confusion when I said 'bus'. Okay, so they don't have buses here? Fine, I can live with that. Not that I'm going to be living here for long.

"No, we would normally have to walk or go by a carriage, but now we can just hop through a teledoor. I assume you do not know what a teledoor is since it is a magical means of transport. I always have one in handy," Fredrick said, pulling out a folded piece of paper. It was a dull peppermint green and with that paper texture, it looked anything but a door. He casually unfolded the length of it to reveal a pretty life-sized cutout of a door.

He placed it on the trunk of a tree for support. Suddenly it straightened out and sprouted a knob! Fredrick twisted the knob and pulled open the teledoor revealing the cozy interior of a home. 

"Welcome to my abode!" he said with a flourish. "After you, Miss Chadwick."

Before he'd even completed his sentence, I had got in and was admiring my surroundings. The fox stepped in and closed the door behind him. Then he took it off the wall it was leaning on and it turned back into paper, letting him tell it up and put it in his pocket. The house looked old-fashioned, set somewhere in the 19th century- Or was it 20th? I didn't know. But it was quite charming. It was the warm and welcoming sort. Well, at least what seemed to be its parlor was charming.

"Take a seat, Ms. Chadwick," he offered when I remained standing for several seconds. I plopped myself into the soft cushiony chair, looking expectantly at the fox, urging him to spill the tea.

"Tea?" he asked. I blinked once. Twice. Did he just read my mind? I was about to correct him on what I had meant when he asked again, "Ms. Chadwick, do you feel fine? I asked if you'd like some tea to talk over things."

Alright, so he hadn't read my mind. "I-I sure, tea would be lovely." I don't where that came from, but it did. What on earth was I doing here agreeing politely to have tea at an unknown fox's residence? Oh right, I was dragged into this mess by a frickin' tornado and Mr. Fredrick could get me back home. 

I smiled a fake one at him, tilting my head in a calculative manner. You better start talking mister, or I'll have your head for making me wait so long.

The fox rang a tiny bell attached to the corner of the wall. I jumped when a decorated china tray, carrying teaware, floated over to us and sat itself down on the table. "This magical tea set was gifted by none other than the Wizard of Oz himself," Fredrick found the need to boast when my eyes fell in it. "Including the self-pouring tea kettle, the self-stirring spoons, the-"

"-self-explanatory tea set. I understand, Mr. Fredrick." I finished, leaving him looking a tad bit embarrassed. Never thought I'd ever see a fox looking embarrassed. But then again, in the land I was in, nothing was impossible.

"I-uh, right. There is this girl of thirteen who came to Oz with her dog Toto. Dorothy Gale, the original one, came here and landed her house on the Wicked Witch of the East, who lived in the Munchkin Country and killed her. Then she traveled to the Kingdom of the Winkies and killed the Wicked Witch of the West. She also found solutions to her companions' problems by giving Scarecrow his wit, Tinman his heart, and Lion his courage. And the Wizard sent Dorothy back home."

"Wait, so, how did the Wizard give them all of the things? Did he give them the abilities or physical things to compensate?"

"He bestowed them their wishes with magic, of course. But it was very powerful magic. One cannot simply magic up courage or wit or feelings out of thin air. But how he sent Dorothy home was ordinary magic. Since then, we don't know how, but a new Dorothy Gale looking exactly the same has been coming here whenever we have a major crisis and she solves it and we get her back home. She comes once in a decade. So when you landed here, you looked exactly like Dorothy and we had been waiting for almost a decade now. But when you say that you're not Dorothy Gale, this complicates matters further. One cannot come in from a different world to Oz regularly, they can only come once in a decade, you see."

"Oh, so Dorothy Gale is your only hope of helping with whatever crisis you have now." I suddenly felt bad for everyone in Oz even though I hadn't met them. They had been waiting ten years for a savior and instead, I had come in. And I was kind of a nuisance to them, now that I saw it this way.

"We'll have to do something now. I'll try to reach the witch, find up some other sources of magic, do something..." He muttered on, shaking his head at his teacup.

"What if I became Dorothy Gale?" I proposed hesitantly. "And Biscuit can be Toto."

"What would that help, we need a Dorothy to fix-"

"Was Dorothy Gale magical? Did she wield magic or weapons?"

Fredrick frowned. "No, she was an ordinary thirteen-year-old with no magic."

"Then if she was non-magic and I'm non-magic, I can do what Dorothy can do. I can help you solve your crisis pretending to be Dorothy and you can get me home."

A foxy grin began to lift the corners of his lips. "This-this is a crazy idea, but it might just work."
"Alright then. Let's get straight to it. What's the crisis?"

Fredrick chuckled nervously, his left paw scratching at the back of his head. "Well... the Good Witch's castle is quite impossible to track without a magical map and that magical map is with the Wizard of Oz."

"So then we need to find the Good Witch again?"

"Not exactly. What do you mean by 'again'?"

"Before I ended up in the OutLands, I met her and she was the one who called me Dorothy first and gave me these silver heels." I twisted them for the fox to see.

Fredrick scoffed, laying his full-sleeved, otherwise furry, arms on either side of his armchair. "Now that is impossible. Whoever you saw must've been a con. If it was Glinda the Good Witch, we wouldn't have been having this conversation now. You'd be back in your home."

"Now that you mention it... Yes, she might've been a con," I agreed reluctantly. She did send me to the OutLands instead of home... "Well then, it seems simple enough. Get the map, find Glinda. Crisis solved and I'm back home. Mission accomplished."

"It's not," he corrected. "The map is in the Emerald Castle, the Wizard of Oz's palace, and we can't get there."

"Why not?"

"I don't know if he has or if it's an accident, or if it's an evil plan by someone else or-"

"-get to the point!" I snapped.

"Er-yes- we can't enter the Emerald Castle because it is enchanted and sealed off making it inaccessible to anyone and everyone outside of it."

"But you're the chief advisor of the Wizard of Oz. Can't you use magic or don't you have a spare key or something to get in?"

"N-no." He shook his head.

"Well, that's pretty useless of you." The fox's eyes almost popped out in outrage, his long mouth opening to argue something back. But I beat him to it, "We can break in then."

Fredrick opened and closed his mouth like a goldfish. "We can't do that, it is an enchanted, impenetrable layer that surrounds the whole castle. You can't just break into it like a petty thief."

"Then what can you do?"

"We use magic. But I'm not powerful enough to do it. We need Glinda the Good Witch. But as I told you earlier, the map is locked up in Emerald Castle."

"Then what do you suggest I do now?"

He shrugged aimlessly. "I suggest you go forward with your disguise plan and we try to get the people's help to find a powerful magic source. There is an object we can use to break the enchantment on the Castle, maybe we could use that."

"That seems like a good plan. Let's head out and get a wig and disguise for me!" I said, dusting my attire lightly as I got up.

"No!" Fred's loud denial surprised me. I raised my eyebrows. Why? 

"I can't be seen with you. I mean, I can't be seen anywhere yet. The people blame the Emerald Ministry, which I'm a part of, for casting the enchantment even though we didn't do it. We don't even know how it got there in the first place. So they see fit to blame us. But I'll get my name cleared with your help. And send you back home once it's done, of course," he added hastily.

"Fine, do you have another plan on how to get the things? I assume you do since you'd need groceries from day to day," I stated, crossing my arms against my chest.

He nodded slowly. "Yes, I do have a helper."

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So... was the previous cover better or the current one is? Hoping you guys like this more :)

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Chapter Word Count: 1638

Total Word Count: 3737

Milestone (8000 words): Not Reached.