[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.24.2″ _module_preset=”default” background_color=”rgba(255,255,255,0.7)” width=”80%” max_width=”1200px” module_alignment=”center” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.24.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.24.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_image src=”http:\/\/societyforritualarts.com\/website_02846d40\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/RW-header-3.png” title_text=”RW-header” _builder_version=”4.24.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.24.0″ _module_preset=”default” width=”95%” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.24.0″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.24.1″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.24.1″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.24.1″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_image src=”http:\/\/societyforritualarts.com\/website_02846d40\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/image1.jpg” title_text=”image1″ _builder_version=”4.24.1″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_image][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.24.1″ _module_preset=”default” width=”85%” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.24.1″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.24.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]It had begun\u2014she would later think\u2014with a flash of curiosity. (Which was in turn prompted by a feeling of dissatisfaction.) An idea that Kansas might not be all there was.<\/p>\n
For the first Dorothy, the farmland outside the window blurred. Then she experienced the briefest impression of something else \u2026<\/p>\n
\u2026 such light! \u2026<\/p>\n
In another moment, the farmland returned. So did Kansas, stark and clear: a place which, in comparison, would come to seem to her\u2014suddenly and ever after\u2014as very, very gray.<\/p>\n
Had she blinked?<\/p>\n
#<\/p>\n
But roads grow, like dreams do.<\/p>\n
At first, the longing makes them grow.<\/p>\n
#<\/p>\n
\u201cJust down the way,\u201d said the munchkins to the second Dorothy.<\/p>\n
It was. After a few minutes\u2019 stroll, all very pleasant\u2014weren\u2019t the bricks very lovely? so golden?\u2014there was the Wizard, waiting for her. Within an hour, basket and balloon had been drawn to the launching platform, fresh helium had been pumped into the canvas, and she was in the air, sailing home.<\/p>\n
#<\/p>\n
And grow.<\/p>\n
#<\/p>\n
The third Dorothy killed a witch and found, sequentially, three friends. Then she met the Wizard, killed another<\/i> witch, and met the Wizard again. Then she clicked her heels together.<\/p>\n
It made a good story.<\/p>\n
#<\/p>\n
But roads grow, like cancers do.<\/p>\n
The growing makes them grow.<\/p>\n
#<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy are you crying?\u201d asked the Scarecrow.<\/p>\n
\u201cToto is dead,\u201d said the fourth Dorothy.<\/p>\n
With the Scarecrow\u2019s help, she buried her dog close to the Scarecrow\u2019s pole. Toto had always been small. Rheumatism had made him smaller. The six years that had preceded that day\u2014half his life\u2014had also been very hard, as they had journeyed together westwards.<\/p>\n
\u201cWill you let me come with you?\u201d asked the Scarecrow.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWill you marry me?\u201d asked the Scarecrow. This was some years after the burial; during that time, they had walked together every day: west, west, west.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Later that day, she found another pole for him. It was a nice pole, better in every respect than the pole that he had had before. Even the nails were nicer.<\/p>\n
But he never admitted that it was nicer.<\/p>\n
Five years later, she found a man who she wished<\/i> would love her, who she wished<\/i> would ask her.<\/p>\n
But he only wanted oil.<\/p>\n
So she left him behind her, almost immobile. One hand extended, he rusted in the rain.<\/p>\n
She continued west.<\/p>\n
A decade on, as she began to experience the press of time: If not now, when?<\/p>\n
Then she met the Lion.<\/p>\n
Was it love?<\/p>\n
Their first child was born along the road. The second was born inside the City of Oz, two years after they began the paperwork that would be required to secure permission to leave. The third was born inside of her ancestral farmhouse, a building that, for years\u2014ever since her aunt\u2019s and uncle\u2019s deaths\u2014had lain unoccupied, but which now belonged to them: to her and to her husband.<\/p>\n
To a lion who had learned to be brave by marrying her.<\/p>\n
For themselves and for their mixed family (\u201cAnimal!\u201d the Kansans would say of her husband; \u201cMonsters!\u201d the Kansans would say of their children; \u201cBestial fornicator!\u201d the Kansans would say of her), still more bravery would be required.<\/p>\n
They would be brave together.<\/p>\n
#<\/p>\n
The way that a pinprick of infinite mass, compressed to an infinite density, behaves once its surroundings have been altered \u2026<\/p>\n
#<\/p>\n
The fifth Dorothy died and her daughter died and her daughter also died.<\/p>\n
Their family was nomadic. Every week, every year, every decade, they pressed ever towards the setting sun. A legend and a promise drew them on.<\/p>\n
And it was there, wasn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n
The Emerald City?<\/p>\n
One woman, who was one-half lion, one-quarter tinman, and one-eighth scarecrow, discovered that it was.<\/p>\n
Her<\/i> daughter, who was one-half wizard, went one step farther. She mounted a balloon, which, since so much time had passed, was no longer a balloon. It was, rather, a sleek, metallic vessel that carried her across the Rainbow in the inverse sense: starting with violet, then indigo, then blue \u2026<\/p>\n
She dismounted in the middle of cornfields (which, since so much time had passed, were not really cornfields anymore). In this country, the fact that she did not look exactly human was no longer especially conspicuous.<\/p>\n
The coordinates were right.<\/p>\n
Was it home?<\/p>\n
She marked the occasion with a great shout in her grandfather\u2019s voice: a quarter of a lion\u2019s roar. Her heart\u2014which was only seven-eighths of a heart, for her great-grandfather had contributed none at all\u2014beat hard. It beat with a whisper of a straw; it beat, in equal measure, with her great-great-grandmother\u2019s flesh.<\/p>\n
But what can so small a part of a heart really remember?<\/p>\n
What can it feel?<\/p>\n
#<\/p>\n
\u2026 once it has been given infinite space in which to expand.<\/p>\n
#<\/p>\n
What world might sustain so long a road on its surface? Only a world of immense mass.<\/p>\n
And\u2014therefore\u2014immense gravitation.<\/p>\n
With her falling house, the sixth Dorothy hit the Wicked Witch of the East very, very, very hard. So hard that\u2014far from merely annihilating this witch\u2014she crushed her, powdered her, atomized her.<\/p>\n
Afterwards, the girl could not get up.<\/p>\n
(This inability was not solely the result of her own injuries; she simply wasn\u2019t\u2014and never had been\u2014strong enough.)<\/p>\n
The native munchkins, whose bones were composed of formidable latticeworks, stronger than diamonds, positioned the red shoes on her bedbound feet.<\/p>\n
\u201cStay with us,\u201d they begged her.<\/p>\n
And the sixth Dorothy did, for always.<\/p>\n
But not because she wanted to.<\/p>\n
#<\/p>\n
To explode.<\/p>\n
#<\/p>\n
As languages changed, as empires fell, as suns and their subordinate planets shifted allegiances, it would not be the name of the seventh Dorothy that would be remembered.<\/p>\n
What would be recorded would be the essence of her journey: an intergalactic epic. A heroic pilgrimage across a vast distance, along a twisting path of glittering yellow. In her multigenerational ship, she pursued this path indefatigably: she and then all of her daughters, a matriarchy spanning star systems and thousands of centuries.<\/p>\n
Did she get there in the end?<\/p>\n
\u201cEventually,\u201d certain storytellers would say.<\/p>\n
\u201cNever,\u201d said others.<\/p>\n
But it became a poignant story, either way it was told.<\/p>\n
A story must necessarily be poignant when it is so: when it contains so much persistence, so much longing.<\/p>\n
So much space.<\/p>\n
#<\/p>\n
Ever longer, with longing.<\/p>\n
(With expanding, with exploding.)<\/p>\n
Longer, longer, longer.<\/p>\n
#<\/p>\n
From our perspective, the final Dorothy does not seem to be moving at all. At the lip of the tornado, she remains suspended \u2026<\/p>\n
\u2026 at the first stage of falling \u2026<\/p>\n
\u2026 going\u2014though she does not know it yet\u2014 \u2026<\/p>\n
\u2026 towards the witch \u2026<\/p>\n
\u2026 going \u2026<\/p>\n
Beyond her, all the universe is wearing away: every life that is presently being lived, and every star that one of these living beings ever observes, and every star that such a star will ever give birth to, out to the millionth star generation.<\/p>\n
As all of this happens, this Dorothy is thinking. She is feeling, slow, slow, slow. She is frightened. But she also knows, from her own slow perspective, that she wants<\/i> to go. Now that the fields are behind her\u2014now that Kansas is\u2014she senses that, somewhere ahead, the gray will be alleviated. Ahead of her, there will be color \u2026<\/p>\n
\u2026 magic \u2026<\/p>\n
And yet we know (even as she does not)\u2014for physics tells us this, as much as our hearts do\u2014that eventually, inexorably, this journey will bring her to the center of Oz, that densest of all kingdoms.<\/p>\n
Her story\u2014this story\u2014is just beginning.<\/p>\n
Watch.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
END<\/p>\n
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Rachel Rodman\u2019s work has appeared in Kaleidotrope, Dreams and Nightmares, Star*Line, and many other publications. She is also the author of two collections: Art is Fleeting<\/em> (Shanti Arts Press) and Exotic Meats + Inedible Objects<\/em> (Madness Heart Press).<\/p>\n [\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row column_structure=”1_3,1_3,1_3″ _builder_version=”4.24.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”1_3″ _builder_version=”4.24.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_button button_url=”@ET-DC@eyJkeW5hbWljIjp0cnVlLCJjb250ZW50IjoicG9zdF9saW5rX3VybF9wYWdlIiwic2V0dGluZ3MiOnsicG9zdF9pZCI6IjEwMiJ9fQ==@” button_text=”You are Red” _builder_version=”4.24.2″ _dynamic_attributes=”button_url” _module_preset=”default” animation_style=”zoom” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_button][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_3″ _builder_version=”4.24.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_button button_url=”@ET-DC@eyJkeW5hbWljIjp0cnVlLCJjb250ZW50IjoicG9zdF9saW5rX3VybF9wYWdlIiwic2V0dGluZ3MiOnsicG9zdF9pZCI6IjE3MSJ9fQ==@” button_text=”Table of Contents” button_alignment=”center” _builder_version=”4.24.2″ _dynamic_attributes=”button_url” _module_preset=”default” animation_style=”zoom” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_button][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=”1_3″ _builder_version=”4.24.2″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_button button_url=”@ET-DC@eyJkeW5hbWljIjp0cnVlLCJjb250ZW50IjoicG9zdF9saW5rX3VybF9wYWdlIiwic2V0dGluZ3MiOnsicG9zdF9pZCI6IjQxIn19@” button_text=”Gem Against Flesh” button_alignment=”right” _builder_version=”4.24.2″ _dynamic_attributes=”button_url” _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_button][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Yellow Brick Roooooaaaad \u2026 by Rachel Rodman Art by Shelly Kay \u00a0It had begun\u2014she would later think\u2014with a flash of curiosity. (Which was in turn prompted by a feeling of dissatisfaction.) An idea that Kansas might not be all there was. For the first Dorothy, the farmland outside the window blurred. Then she experienced […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":17,"parent":0,"menu_order":8,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"iawp_total_views":11,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-86","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\n