The Inventor of Oz

2: Way Up High

I fell flat on my face in the snow that wasn't as tall as the stuff I had just been in. I looked around after a moment. There was a building in front of me, but it definitely wasn't my dorm. The hush of freshly fallen snow felt like a weight of silence in the air.

But something was off as if my very sense of reality had changed. I wasn't sure it hadn't

"I'm not in Washington anymore, am I?"

I saw a little face peek out of a window on the ground floor, then disappear again towards the direction of the door, which stood majestically directly in front of me.

The entire building was a work of art, tall grand pillars of white with large brick walls and windows every few feet. I could only imagine the amount of natural light they had in there.

"You've killed her!" A shrill voice squealed with joy. She had a very prominent British accent.

I looked back to a girl in the doorway, there was coal on her grubby face, in her tight brunette curls and her neck. Had she stuck her head up the chimney? Her clothes were also very odd, with an assortment of buckles of every shape, size, and kind strapped prominently to her boots, her pants, and her shirt. Goggles were strapped across her head and there were spots around her eyes where the coal hadn't touched.

"I've done what?" I followed her gaze to a spot behind me.

There, some sort of animatronic sat, quite assuredly frozen.

"You've killed her!" The girl again rejoiced, racing down the front steps of the building to make sure it was real, "You've killed the Infamous Inventor of the East! Finally, we can be free!"

I turned as she ran past me to get a closer look, poking and prodding at the machine.

Its figure was indeed female, but I couldn't find many other specifically human traits about her. She had four arms with odd-looking eyes and a furnace in the middle of her chest which appeared to have gone cold. She had metal hair permanently up in a tight bun at the crown of her head. Her mouth seemed to be the steam vent for the furnace.

"Wait, what do you mean?"

"All her joints are frozen, the metal's too cracked to be repaired! You've killed her!"

Before I could ask another question she was shouting back at the house, "Amy! Sarah! Look! She's killed the Inventor of the East!"

Two more girls emerged from the house, one with red hair far more vibrant than the redheads I had seen, the other looked as if she were of African descent. The girls were wearing similarly awkward clothes, goggles again adored their foreheads with tunics, pants, and boots. Although these two didn't have so much affinity for buckles, instead they had it for laces. Everything they wore down to the front of their pants had laces.

I didn't dare call the girl with dark skin African-American when she opened her mouth and another posh accent came out, "What's this?" She said.

"She's dead, Sarah, she's dead!"

"Willow, are you sure?"

"I believe so," Willow said, suddenly doubting herself.

The one with firey hair came up and examined the machine. Poking and prodding as Willow had.

"She's near impossible to fix. But if we dispose of it before the Inventor of the West comes to collect her we could be rid of her forever." I think her name was Amy.

Amy turned her eyes to me, "And who are you?"

"I'm Theo. Theodora Bridges. Who are you?"

"Why are you dressed so funny?" Willow asked.