“I really should have tried this sooner,” he murmured, and then darkness took him.

TWO

“Wake up,” said an insistent voice in his ear. “It’s time.” He had no interest in doing so. He’d been having the most lovely dream, floating in a warm honey-scented bath while colorful balloons sailed by overhead and a beautiful talking lion sang lullabies in a voice that rivaled the great blues singers of his homeland. But the voice would not let him sink back into glorious oblivion. “I mean it,” it said, more firmly this time. “Wake up.”

He opened his eyes and found himself staring into a pair of uncanny emerald ones. Emerald. There was something about the color that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. His own eyes refused to focus properly, and he only wanted to go back to sleep, but the person in front of him was now tugging fiercely at his shoulder. “We have to get you out of here,” Emerald Eyes said. “You’re high as a kite.”

“Balloon,” he mumbled, allowing himself to be dragged along as the young man hoisted one arm over his shoulder and towed him through—where was he? His vision was improving a little; there was more color all around him, red and green, and overhead a lot of blue. A sky, he remembered. The thing overhead was a sky. He protested feebly as he was pulled away from the last of the huge red flowers, and dumped, unceremoniously, onto a grassy hillock. Emerald Eyes smacked him briskly on the cheeks, but when this did nothing to wake him up, heaved a sigh of disgust and let him go. “Nighty night,” he murmured, and drifted off into sleep again.

The next time he woke up, it was early in the morning, and the pleasant fuzziness had faded to a dull buzz. He was in a cornflower-blue field, under a bright blue sky. He sat up and looked around. A patch of fat pink flowers next to him was singing a cheerful high-pitched ditty. Two huge yellow-and-black butterflies fluttered lazily through the air, arguing halfheartedly about who was better-looking. Emerald Eyes was stretched out with his back against a nearby tree, watching him. “Good,” he said. “You’re awake. The poppies should be wearing off now that you’re out of the field. Do you know where you are?” Emerald Eyes cocked his head. “Do you know who you are?”

He considered the questions. There was the dream about the lion—but before that, everything was a hazy blur. He had a vague sense that flowers did not ordinarily sing and butterflies were not meant to talk, but that was it. “Not really,” he admitted.

Emerald Eyes looked at him for a long time. “You’re the Wizard,” he said finally. “Not that you were ever very good at being one. But we can’t call you that on the journey we’re about to take. You really don’t remember, do you?”

Wizard? He didn’t know anything about being a wizard. Something stirred in his memory. A card table—he’d sat at a card table and done sleight-of-hand tricks, and passed a battered top hat. A shabby one-room apartment that smelled of cabbages. His face in the mirror, sallow and pale, with dark circles under the eyes. A young face, but hardened and cynical. A brown suit with fraying cuffs, worn shiny at the elbows, and underneath it a stained white shirt with a collar that had long since lost its crispness. He shook his head violently, and the images dissipated into wisps of smoke. “I played tricks,” he said uncertainly.

Emerald Eyes laughed, and there was something in the sound that was almost bitter. Or cruel. “That you certainly did,” he said. “For the time being, let’s call you . . .” He trailed off, thinking, and then smiled. “Let’s call you Hex,” he said with a grin. “And you can call me Pete, though you used to know me as something else.”

“I did?” the Wizard asked. No. He wasn’t a wizard. This strange boy had just told him as much. Hex. His name was Hex now. He studied Pete closely, and something flickered at the back of his mind. A baby? A monkey? But then the flicker died down, and whatever he’d been about to remember was gone.

“You did,” Pete said, “but that was a long time ago. Do you have any idea how long you’ve been down for the count in that poppy field? Twenty-five years, my friend, give or take a few. You should be an old man by now. But as you know—or used to know anyway—time doesn’t move the same way in Oz that it does in your world. And time definitely doesn’t move the same way in the poppy field.” Pete sighed. “Kind of jealous, actually. A quarter century blissed-out nap sounds pretty good right about now. You wouldn’t believe how much work it took to get out of the palace—the only reason I could get away at all was because Dorothy is so wrapped up in whatever she’s up to with Glinda. Anyway, I’ve been sent to help you get home.”

“Sent? By who?” Hex thought more about what Pete had just said. The name Dorothy had set off a tiny alarm in his brain, though he wasn’t sure why. “Where is home, if it isn’t here?”

“The Other Place,” Pete said impatiently. “You were trying to get there when your balloon crashed. That’s where you’re from, and that’s where you belong. But you can’t cross the boundary between here and there until your memory returns. The fairies are the only people in Oz who can help you, which is why I’m taking you to them. But they won’t help you without getting something in exchange—and they’ll test you to make sure you’re worthy of their assistance.”

“Test?” Hex asked nervously. “What kind of test?”