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The Witch trembled on the lip of an updraft. She had brought the broom higher than ever before; she was in a state of exhilaration and panic. Should she pursue Dorothy, should she snatch those shoes away—and what were her real motives? Was it to keep them out of the hands of the Wizard, just as Glinda had wanted them out of the hands of power-hungry Munchkinlanders? Or was it to snatch back some small shred of Frex’s attention, whether she had ever deserved it or not?

Beneath the broom, clouds began to gauze the view of rock-freckled hills and patchwork meadows of melon and corn. The thin twists of vapor looked like the marks of erasure made by a schoolchild’s rubber, streaking whitely along a watercolor sketch of a landscape. What if she should just keep on, urging the broom higher, yanking it up? Would it splinter as it beat itself against the heavens?

She could give up these efforts. She could forsake Nor. She could release Liir. She could abandon Nanny. She could surrender Dorothy. She could give up the shoes.

But a wind came up, a shoulder of hard air leaning onto her left side. She could not force the broom against it. She was driven sideways, and down, until the Yellow Brick Road once again etched a golden thread between forests and fields. There was a storm on the horizon, slotting bars of brownish rain between lavender-gray clouds and gray-green fields. She hadn’t much time.

Then she thought she caught sight of them below, and dove down to see. Were they stopping to rest beneath a black willow tree? If so, she could finish things up now.