D:L&L - Part 6 | Tin Man: Home is Where the Heart Is

Because I can never stop.

Made of metal, made of tin there is no time when I can ever stop. So I chop. I chop wood I chop the wood to fill the room to light the fire for my lover. I chop the wood to keep the fire for her boiling, her burning, her mistress fire for cooking, for cleaning hot broil, for warmth.

She is not your lover.

I chop the wood to raise the roof to raise her eyes to mine, for smile. Her mistress’s hands rain down blows on my lover’s face, her arms, her hair. My lover stares down the lane, waiting for a time my time her time that never came.

She is not your lover.

She did not love him. My love my all my Nimma, she did not love him with a heart of stone.

In my castle are many mansions. In my kingdom come there are many realms the wealth the reign of tin, of steel. An iron fist, she said. Her hand on mine warm on tin, on steel. An iron fist, she smiles.

Her smile in his face, a stitched up smile slashing returns. His hands my hands on her cheek, the rise of her breath on my neck. Part of his heart I know is mine.

They stitched him from me. That witch that witch she stitched him cobbled him made him built him filled his veins with my boiling blood. His hands my hands in hair her dress her fire stoked with his hands my hands she smiles flashing metal in the sun.

She screamed in the blood in my blood in the dirt. Mistress’s eyes flashing in shadow, my blood splashed red on white, bone sparking in light through leafy shadowed glade. Along the way she clung she wailed she sung our song of grief, of love, while blood my blood pulsed into her hair.

They said they never found my heart.

I found my heart. It beats against the breast of my lover. It beats inside the heart of another, it pumps it fills it brims with a love that is mine, inside the tomb of another my heart shrieks and thuds in rebellion.

I found my heart. Made of velvet made of straw in silence it waits. It watches. It listens to ringing tin, to singing metal, and because I cannot stop I chop. I chop and I chop and I chop to wait to fill the days to find a way to stop the screaming, to seal the silence, to
to
to
to

She is not your lover.


“Nick.”

I would have jerked awake, as they say, but I’ve been so long still I cannot even nudge.

“Nick.”

Nothing I can do.

“Oh, for UG’s sake….” Swishing as Jumbly moves across the floor toward me. I have no idea how long I’ve been sitting here. A week? A month? Even my eyes have sealed shut.

The squeaking of the old oil can (where is my new one? I supply these Munchkins with what I need, plenty of it, and it’s never around it’s never around) is an elixir: Jumbly starts with my eyes, rubbing oil into my tin lids. He oils the hinges of my jaw next, my mouth, smoothing oil and working my jaw gently in his tiny hands.

I try to smile. “There you are.”

Jumbly raises one caterpillar eyebrow and licks his lips. “Yessir, here I am. I have not left, sir.” He looks around, his eyes bright amber as a cat’s in the gloom. “You, on the other hand…. Where have you been?”

“Just oil me.”

Later, hours maybe, or minutes, or a week, when each hinge and joint and gear has been oiled and I am able to walk around the room I go to the window.

“Sir.” Behind me, Jumbly scatters through the room. “Nick.”

My palace is in ruins. My shining palace of steel, built and sealed to my specifications (years ago how many years? Nimma’s tears glittered on her face, jewel droplets on the tips of her lashes), is brown and crumbling. The metal sidewalks connecting pavilions and towers are dull. The entire south wing, a pretty paradise just for her, for when she returns to me, has caved in, weakened by rain and time, succumbing to a dead tree that, perhaps during a storm, fell and finished the slow inky decay.

I put my hand against the windowsill, metal clicking against metal. Echoing through my hollow head.

“What if I hadn’t found you?” I realize Jumbly has been chattering, his voice mouse-pitched and irritated. “Sitting in here long enough, you’d have been nothing more than a galvanized metal blob you would.”

“What if I didn’t want to be found?” I turn, and Jumbly has something in his hands, those tiny rat-like Munchkin hands. “Put it down.”

He holds it up, scrabbles over to the window.

I take a step. “Put it down, Jumbly.”

“That’s her, innit?” He turns that wide, smooth face to me, yellow eyes. “That’s her, that’s - ”

“I said put it down.” Metal crashes against glass shatters. My hand, her face, glittering glass and tears at Jumbly’s feet.

His eyes don’t leave my face. “Nimma,” he offers. A prayer. A sacrifice. He stoops and nimbly plucks the slick paper from its nest of glass, studies it. “Who is the gentleman, Sir? It’s you, innit? Nick, that’s you.”

“Why are you here?”

He looks up, studies my face. “I’d know it anywhere. Your face, Nick, it’s nearly the same. I’d almost forgot.”

“You cannot forget what you never knew. Why are you here?”

Jumbly takes the photograph and tucks it between the pages of a book on a table, pats the cover of the book. “Something’s happened.”

“Obviously.” I wave creaking fingers toward the window. “My damn palace is crumbling around me. Made of the best steel and tin, my ass.”

Jumbly titters, covering his mouth with two fingers. His broad amber mustache juts out on either side of his tiny pink mouth. “It is, sir, it is.”

“Very funny. What has happened. Is it a specific event or will I rust again waiting for your stories?”

Jumbly’s face drops, and the fingers slip into his mouth. A childhood habit, a Munchkin trait. “You’ve changed. Does your brain rust, too? I can’t say I like it.”
I stare at him.

“She’s back,” Jumbly says.

I stare at him.

“A house. From the sky, a house fell and a woman came out of it.”

I lean against the wall. “That story,” I say, “has been told.”

“These are just the reports, sir. Dispatch this morning: a house fell, woman came out. They say it’s not the same woman, but no one is sure.”

“It’s been too long,” I say. “Hasn’t it?”

“Munchkins can’t tell time, sir.”

“It can’t possibly be her.” I push off the wall. “Can it?”

Jumbly puddles to the floor. “Can’t say, sir. Snickity says it’s not. But then again Snickity is rather disagreeable. Tell him the sky’s green and he’ll say it ain’t. Tell him a potato’s a potato and he’ll swear it’s a horse. Can’t say with Snickity. Tell him a horse is a potato and he’ll – ”

“All right, yes, I get it. What else is said?”

Jumbly eyes me. “Sure have changed, you have.” He heaves a great sigh, and I am imaging his lungs, the size of my fists, filling with air, fueling blood, pumping through veins tender and threadlike, the expansion and thrumming hum of human life, of blood, of air and blood and bone.

He’s watching me. “Yes, go on.”

“Others tell of a woman resembling the first, but with some sort of… I don’t know,” Jumbly spreads his flower hands, “weapon? Black, some say, others say not black. Snickity says - ”

“Let’s leave Snickity out of it.”

“I’d prefer it that way, but you know how Snickity is. Tell him it’s black and he’ll swear it’s a rudagitten.”

“A what?”

“Rudagitten.” Jumbly’s eyes widen into sunshine on lakewater. “Lovely vegetable from the heart of the Quadling Country. Can’t find it hardly anymore, but Snickity says…” seeing my look, Jumbly lets that thought fade.

“Weapon.”

“Yes! Weapon.” Jumbly leans close. “Some say she calls it Toto.”

Now we’re getting somewhere.

My limbs cease creaking after a few miles.

“What happened to our carriage?” I complain.

“You’re made of metal and tin,” Jumbly points out. “You won’t tire.”

“What if it rains? What happened to the grass?” The landscape we’d been walking through since early morning is nothing more than scratches of ink on pulp paper. The sun, though surely it has risen, is nowhere in sight. The Vinkus is still in shadow.

“Much has happened,” Jumbly mutters, bending to scratch at his ankles. He plucks a small white flower from the roadside, presses it into my cold palm. “Much I cannot explain, even to you. I wouldn’t know where to start.”

We walk for a while, looking at the nothing that stretches and bends against the sky.

“Did you bring it?” Jumbly asks.

I stop. “You should rest.”

“I’m fine. Did you bring it.”

“Look, there – a fallen log.” I walk over to it. The grass around the log is scorched, brittle black silent. “Didn’t there… used to be a house here?”

“It’s better if you don’t study on it. Let’s go on. If we hurry we’ll be at Snickity’s by lunch. I think today it’s monkey wings.”

I sit on the log. “But you hate monkey wings, Jumbly.”

He holds out a flower hand. “Come.”

I know if I stand and follow him, if I go with him to Snickity’s, this day will be real, my awakening for a reason; this sky, the velvet of an old bruise, healing above us and I will have to know. I hold on to the log.

Jumbly cocks his head. “Did you bring it.”

I shake mine, and my neck joints sigh.

“We should go back and get it.” He glances back toward my fortress, now a slim curve of shine against the nothing that bends to the edge of the world.
“Why are we going to Snickity’s when you hate monkey wings?”

Jumbly turns back to me. “He must have other things on the menu.”

I rest my elbows on my knees, grinding gears and crunch of pressured metal. “I don’t even know where it is.”

“I do. I kept it safe. I haven’t tried monkey wings in a while.”

I shake my head again.

“Snickity has the answers. Snickity can tell you.”

If I could cry. If I could cry if I could cry I would have done it for you. I would have cried myself dry to rust to dust and crumble, a pile of rusted shaved metal, opened myself up and let the rain take me wash me seal myself in to keep it all out.

“It didn’t work,” I say to Jumbly, who is far away and flowered hands.

“I know. Come. It’s time.”

“Why is she here? Is it really her? How much time?”

“Snickity knows. Come now. We’ll go back, get it, then go on. We’ll be there in time for supper. No monkey wings for supper, I’m sure of it.”

I don’t move. The sun slips, simmers the sky and Jumbly is back, pressing it into my hand. I sob nothing all of nothing but I did. For you, I did.

“Put it in,” Jumbly whispers. “You’ll need it.”

I run a steel finger over the bloody velvet, tattered once but now sewn, stitched, made into a semblance of whole.

“You did this,” I say. “You mended it.”

“You’ll need it.” Tiny flower hands push my shoulder back, reaching to open my chest cavity. He gives a surprised grunt. “You’ve sealed it. Locked it.”

“I had to.” I squeeze my heart in my hand. “I’ll do it. Let’s just go.”

We walk until stars blinked on. Snickity’s pavilion is open in the dry summer air, filled with Munchkins wearing red bands around their upper arms, red ribbons tied around kindling. So tiny, the Munchkins. They are everywhere, but where are the Vinkus? I stop Jumbly and look at his arm. I hadn’t noticed.

“Why is that?” I ask, pointing to the red band.

He won’t look at me. “Snickity knows. Snickity will tell you.”

“But what will he tell me?

Jumbly’s eyes lift, finds his star, plucks and places it on his tongue. He closes his eyes. “Sweet, like candy.”

“I don’t want to do this, Jumbly. Please, let’s go back. We’ll clean up the fortress, find the carriage.”

“There is something else we need to find.”

“I can’t. I’ve been on this journey, Jumbly. It can’t be her.”

He opens his eyes and looks at me, yellow cat eyes in the sudden cloak of dark.

“It’s not Dorothy, Nick. It’s not Nimma. Nimma is dead.”

“Don’t.”

“Long dead.”

“Please.”

“Put it back in, Nick.”

“I can’t.” The heart, at the sound of my breaking voice, begins to beat in my hand.

“She’s not Dorothy.”

“Good.” I look at him, my Jumbly, my old friend. My little flower friend. “That’s good.”

He smiles, pats me on the back. He’s always been amused by the rolling thunder of touching, patting me.

“No, Nick. It’s not good. She’s worse. Much, much worse.”

I blink. I’ll need oil for this.

“But,” he nods toward Snickity’s tavern pavilion, “at least this one has a Toto, too.”

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D:L&L - Part 7 | Narrator: Treasure Seekers

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D:L&L - Part 5 | Lion: In Like A Lion