Shadows of the Emerald City by Jw Schnarr

and flaps, slowly rising on one of the bitter currents gusting from the inland sea. When she finally draws up level with me, I smile. In my hopes for her, I’ve bitten clean through the thin skin of my lip, and ichor trickles down my chin, wending toward the tattered open neck of my rotted black lace gown.
    Flapping, hovering, she dips her tiny monkey paw into what my blood has become. She holds it to my mouth, as though I must kiss my own hurt better, and when I croon, “What a pretty girl, a clever girl,” she wraps her stick arms around my neck and sighs her tiny monkey sigh into my ear.
     
     
    My sister’s murderer has been sighted in the poppy fields on the other side of that Green Monstrosity that Oz calls home.
    I know those poppy fields well. In his younger days, Oz would meet me there on lazy, sunlit afternoons. He had a fascination for the flowers, a weakness, a longing for their sharp juice and numbing powers. Poppy juice turned out to be more addictive for him, in the end, even than his love for me. We always love most that which has the greatest power to destroy us.
    I was beautiful then, and young. We both were: me, and that strange bright-eyed boy from somewhere over the boundless oceans of desert. We would lie under the large drooping heads of flowers at the edge of the field. A game, he called it: to see how long we could resist sleep, lying on our backs side by side with our long hair mingling, and our breaths. We’d laugh as we drifted in and out of consciousness, our minds floating, daring each other to see how long we could last before the poppies claimed us both too completely for one to drag the other to safety. It was always he who succumbed first. I’d watch the tinted shadows of poppy-reflected light play across his sleeping features, and I’d trace his lips with my finger. I’ve always been stronger than I looked, and when he became well and truly senseless from poppy fumes, I’d lift him gently and carry him well past the flowers’ influence. I’d lie down beside him and wait for him to wake, and when he did, he would always kiss me.
    Don’t ever leave me , my beautiful young Oz would say in a poppy-drowse murmur; or I’ll send people to find you, and tell them to kill you .
    Even now a smile brushes across my lips at the memory of him. My smiles are rare these days, most of them spent on my dear pretty monkeys. Especially the babies, with their delicate skulls and unformed features and mewling cries. I always did love the babies.
    A slight scratching comes at my door and Madrigaard’s sharp little fingers stab into my neck at the sound. I stroke her with one hand.
    “ Come,” I say.
    Baarg opens the door and enters, tray balanced in one hand, the other dragging the floor like a cane or a third leg as he hobbles into the room. His ancient ruined wings lie in tatters more ragged than my gown. If he didn’t hold my special favor, the other winged monkeys, warriors all, would have killed him long ago. Resources are scarce around here: food and space and love. Monkeys are not quite as jealous as other people, but they come close.
    Baarg slides his dented silver tray onto a nearby table and sidles under my free hand where it dangles off the arm of my chair. I absently pat his wisp-covered skull, feeling without intending to the fragility of the bone beneath my fingers. I’m keenly aware that I could crush his brain between my fingers if I chose to. As he sighs and leans into my touch, I wonder if the same awareness runs through his monkey mind as well. We always love most that which has the greatest power to destroy us.
    I give Baarg a last stroke and turn my attention to the silver tray. He has, as always, collected everything just so, arranged it with inhuman precision on the tray in the same order: the candle, the strap, the spoon, the needle. A small dribble of wax rolls down the side of the taper, and when I touch it with my finger it burns, though not enough. I move my hand into