D: L&L - Part 27 | Narrator: Tin of a Different Color

The empty streets of the Emerald City echoed with the muffled jangle of the passing carriage. Normally brightly lit and festively-adorned, the ethereal conveyance swept along abandoned boulevards like a ghost in the night, its flanks trimmed in black rag, lights doused, flags stowed. The wheels had been heavily greased to reduce the whine of their turn, and the hooves of the horses were fixed with pads to mute their normal din on the cobblestones. Even the Horse of a Different Color had been drugged, and for the duration of the evening, it would be little more than a midnight blue silhouette.

Turnbuckle sat atop the carriage in the place of honor, as he would say. He sat next to the driver, an almost identical little metal man, and was only distinguishable from his twin by his top hat and the slim, silver sash that identified him as the Aide En Primo to the Magnificent Glinda, Empress of Oz, May the Unnamed God Smile Upon Her. He would have smiled had he not been terrified by his horrifying luck.

It had been days now since his predecessor, Turnbuckle, had been crushed into little more than a broken toaster and swept away to the smelting forge for “reconditioning”. In that time, he would have seen himself rattle his tinny joints to pieces if it was possible to do so. Glinda had been in a very rare mood, and he had imagined her fist magically closing around him more than once. Would it hurt? Would he feel every spring snap, every joint pop? Would the clockwork pieces in his chest actually break or would the lethal magic simply squeeze out the empty spaces between and crush the metal together into a lifeless hulk?

When he geared up in the morning, attending to the call of his terrible Mistress, he couldn’t help but catch a glimpse of himself in the monstrous looking glass that dominated the inner wall of Glinda’s sleeping chamber – glimpse and shudder. Often he would find her standing before that mirror, naked from head to toe, her fingers roaming across her unblemished body, drawing back her hair and examining her profile, playing with the flaxen tuft of fur that sprung up from between her long legs. It would be moments before she would take notice of him, lost as she was in her own reflection, and it was then, in those seconds, he would see himself and his brothers as one, Turnbuckle, succumbing to that invisible force, reduced to nothing more than slag.

He had heard the talk. They all had. In the lower chambers, down deep in the royal fortress where the human staff feared the dark and the damp, feared what nightmares might be waiting for them , the little metal men gathered. They stood shoulder to shoulder in the sprawling space, filling every square inch, whispering lest through some magic their words might be heard by the Empress who lay in her grand bed in the towers high above. A single word uttered too loudly, they thought, would bring her wrath down upon them, and one by one the little tinny skeletons would pop like so much corn.

“The bleeders lie to us. The bleeders cheat us. The bleeders have no respect for us, nor any remorse. The bleeders hate and use us. The bleeders have to go.”

The words rattled around the room, tiny tinny low tones no louder than a murmur, a hundred, a thousand voices wanting to speak out. But with a single spell, they could be reduced to nothing more than an order of tent poles, spears or belt buckles, and so the murmuring tide receded and the little metal men clanked back up the sullen steps to their places of duty.

The carriage stopped abruptly and Turnbuckle snapped back to the moment at hand, grasping the seat to keep from being thrown forward under the horses great flanks. He glared his best at the driver but knew it was not his fault. He must learn to control those thoughts. He must learn to stay attentive and stay patient for the time to come, for a new leader to emerge and propel them forward to their destiny.

A moment later, Turnbuckle dropped down and unclasped the carriage door, easing it silently open. A shadow moved in the darkened compartment, and he turned quickly to accommodate it. Dropping to his knees, he steadied himself on all fours as he felt the weight of his Mistress’s shoe full on his back. For a moment a thought flashed across his mind, and he wondered at the idea of shifting and letting her slip, but the moment passed quickly, fear gripping him at his foolish pride and impatience, just as her foot touched the ground. And out of the corner of his eye, he caught the dazzling sparkle of blood red, the Ruby Slippers, and watched her walk silently away.