novella-length works to read Part 2 and skip the rest.

Title:  The Wizard, the Witch and the Whirlwind

Part 1:  Gone With the Wind

Based on The Wizard of Oz  (1939)

WIP:  Parts 5-9 to be published in Spiced Peaches XXXVI

Author:  Shoshana

Summary:   Spock and McCoy pay a visit to Jim Kirk at his childhood home in Riverside, Iowa.  But the trio doesn’t remain there.    

Pairings:  S/Mc    K/Antonia   Dorothy/original character(s)  

Rating:  PG-13    

Warnings:  mild profanity; h/c; sexual innuendo; brief reference to an incomplete assault on a minor (Part 3); kinky (nonexplicit) sexplay (Part 2)       

Word count:   5000 (Part 1)  

Disclaimer:   Brief dialogue quoted/adapted from The Wizard of Oz, screenplay by Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, Edgar Allan Woolf, based on the children’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum.   I do not own The Wizard of Oz or The Wonderful Wizard of Oz or its sequels.   Nor do I own Star Trek.  Not a molecule, atom, quark or vibrating string of it.

Author’s note:  Novella length.  Though a Spock/McCoy marital relationship is an important element of the story, the fic is primarily a trio friendship story.  For the purposes of this work, Jim does not disappear/die in 2293 aboard the Enterprise-B.  Thank you to Stef for the beta.  Errors are my own.

Spock eased the flitter onto the landing pad.  Leonard stared at the gumball-and-lollipop colors of the house in front of them. 

“This is where Jim grew up?”  Leonard said.  “Looking at it hurts my eyes.”  Predominating was bright lime green, the color of the siding.  The roof was a slightly darker emerald, the front door and shutters yellow-green, the railing of the front porch and of the widow’s walk capping the house chartreuse.  The cupola of the widow’s walk was a relatively subdued hunter’s green.  The front porch and the sidewalk leading to it were constructed of yellow bricks.

“Jim informed us that the exterior and interior colors of his nephew’s house were bright.”  Peter Kirk and his wife had purchased the house twelve years earlier from Jim, who had inherited it upon his mother’s death.  The couple were raising their daughters Dori and Gaila there.  “Glenda grew up on Japori II, where dwellings typically have vivid hues.”

“Vivid?  Garish, you mean.  Thank God I never married a Japorian.  Having to look at pointed ears and funny eyebrows all the time is bad enough.”  Leonard shook his head.  “Peter’s eyesight must have been permanently damaged by that light therapy I gave him years ago.”

“It is probable.  My own was permanently compromised by that same treatment, as evidenced by my later agreeing to look at your cantankerous face every morning when I wake.”  

Leonard snorted.  “So you’ve never gotten over the trauma of opening your eyes to the sight of me bending over you that day?”

“I have not.  Nor,” Spock said, with a rare smile, “would I wish to.”  He held out two fingers to his husband. 

They were still exchanging the gesture of affection when Leonard said, “There’s Jim!”

Jim came over to the flitter to greet them and help with luggage.  With Peter’s permission he had invited his two friends to spend five days at his childhood home in Riverside, Iowa, where he was dog- and house-sitting.  Not having seen Jim since their retirement from Starfleet four months earlier, Leonard and Spock had readily agreed. 

“Ninety degrees isn’t normal here in early November,” Jim said as they went up the yellow steps.  Standing guard at either side of the door were a scarecrow and a green-faced straw witch holding a broom, stragglers from the Halloween just past.  “They’re calling for thunderstorms in a few days.  That should break the heat wave.” 

On the other side of the screen door a very large dark gray brindle dog was barking in excitement.  The dog’s shaggy eyebrows, mustache and beard gave him a jaunty appearance. 

“Oswald, quiet!” Jim said.  “Sit!”  The dog promptly obeyed both commands.  “The girls’ dog.  Oz is great with everyone, except the cat.  I doubt you see much of Munchkin.”

“You’re a big fellow,” Leonard said, stroking the Bouvier des Flandres’ head. 

Jim said, “It’s those little yappy dogs you have to watch out for.” He had often expressed his preference for large dogs to his friends.

He showed Spock and Leonard to their room, which was painted scarlet and featured a bedspread printed with poppies.  “The attic guest room.  A double bed, and plenty of privacy.  And easy access to the widow’s walk.  As a kid, that was my favorite part of the house.”

“Closer to the stars?” Leonard asked.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Jim said.  His wistful tone prompted Spock and Leonard to exchange sidelong glances.  Was Jim being nostalgic for his childhood, or for life among the stars?  Leonard and Spock had feared retirement from Fleet would prove hard on their friend.

That evening Spock and Jim played chess – in the basement den, at the insistence of Leonard, who claimed the room’s purple-and-gold color scheme hurt his eyes less than the yellow, orange and red of the living room.

Leonard and Spock told Jim about their recent trips to Vulcan to see Spock’s parents, to Alpha Centauri to see Joanna’s family, and to the Manzar colony, where Saavik, who had left Starfleet, was doing research with her Vulcan husband.

“I miss Saavik,” Jim said.  “I haven’t seen her in five years.  How is she?”

Leonard watched as Jim moved a rook.  “Spock, you want to tell him?”

“Saavik is very well,” Spock said.  “She is expecting a child in April.  She sends her regards.” 

“Give her my congratulations,” Jim said, smiling broadly.  They spoke more of Saavik, then Jim asked, “What will you be doing next?  Besides becoming grandfathers again.”

Spock said, “We plan to do research together, on the quantum processes underlying telepathy.  Such phenomena have been hypothesized, but their existence has been only tentatively established.”

“Working together, even after your so-called retirement.  I have to admit, marriage has agreed with you two a lot better than I thought it would.”

Spock raised an eyebrow.  Leonard was scowling.  

“To be honest, I didn’t think it would last, when you got together seven years ago.”

Leonard’s voice rang out, indignant, “Jim, you never told us that!”

“I wasn’t going to tell you that while I was working with you.”  Jim leaned back on the sofa.  “Love, by itself, isn’t enough to make a relationship work.  I know that, better than most people.  I didn’t think you’d both learn to compromise.”  He smiled.  “Believe me, I’m glad I’ve been proven wrong.”

Leonard said, “I just wish Spock would be a little more willing to compromise these days.”

Making no response, Spock moved a knight.   

Jim leaned toward the board.  “Dare I ask?”    

“Leonard wants to pursue our research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  I wish for us to accept the offer we have received from the Vulcan Science Academy, where research in quantum neurophysics is more advanced.”

“Skevunek is head of neurophysics at the Vulcan Science Academy.  I don’t like him.  Neither do you.  You just think Boston gets too much snow.” 

“It is illogical to turn down the better offer on the basis of an emotional reaction.  You do not wish to live on Vulcan.”

“I’ve told you, I’m perfectly willing to live on Vulcan.  Well, maybe not perfectly, but willing.  I’m not willing to have that micromanaging martinet as my boss.  Better funding doesn’t mean squat if we’re not given a free hand.  All the neurophysics advances made there came before Skevunek took over four years ago.”  Leonard turned to Jim.  “What do you think?”

“I don’t think I’m qualified to judge,” Jim said, diplomatically. 

“In other words, you don’t want to get mixed up in our domestic squabble,” Leonard said. 

“That’s right.”  Jim waved a conciliatory hand.  “You gentlemen will have to work out your conflicting career paths on your own.”

“So what are your plans?” Leonard asked.

Jim shrugged.  “Haven’t decided.  Sulu suggested I write a book.  Chekov suggested a speaking tour.”

“Are you interested in doing either?” Spock asked.    

“Probably not.  Not now, anyway.”

“Good,” Leonard said.  “Don’t do it.  I’d be worried about what you’d say about us.”  He continued, but not in the manner of one changing the subject, “Have you contacted Antonia?”

There was a long pause as Jim studied the board.  “Actually, I heard from her, a few weeks after Khitomer.”  His voice was oddly flat, and Leonard guessed what he was going to say next before the words were out of his mouth.  “She got married this summer.”

“Oh,” came Leonard’s embarrassed response. “Sorry.  You hadn’t said anything.”

“It was over years ago between us.”  Jim moved his queen.  

To fill the awkward silence which followed, Leonard said, “You mentioned Peter went to Kansas City,” Leonard said.  “Business trip?”

“Pleasure.  I think I’ve mentioned he and Glenda are serious amateur magicians.  Some big magicians’ convention is being held there this week.  They took the girls because Glenda has family in K.C.  They left yesterday.”

“Looks like they had time to celebrate Halloween before they left.”

Sitting in the far corner of the room was a coat rack holding four Halloween costumes.  Two were children’s costumes – one a lion costume, the other a Red Riding Hood outfit.  Also hanging from the coat rack were an armored knight’s costume and a full-skirted, glittery pink dress Leonard initially had thought was a princess’s ball gown, until he saw the star-tipped wand lying under the knight’s battle axe and the bag holding red shoes and tights.

“Riverside holds a big Halloween party for all ages every year,” Jim said.  “I attended for years as a kid.  Peter and Glenda urged me to come along, but I declined.  Didn’t have a costume.”

Leonard almost said, “You should have brought your uniform,” but thought better of it.  He had already put his foot in his mouth once this evening.

Jim was taken by surprise when Spock, after making two more moves, had him in check.  He declined to play another game, and the friends said goodnight. 

It was two in the morning, and Leonard couldn’t sleep.   He shook Spock awake. 

“Spock, let’s sneak up to the widow’s walk.  I like having sex under the stars occasionally.”

Leonard relished making love outside in fresh air, a predilection not shared by his husband.  Leonard was convinced Spock’s indifference to having sex in natural surroundings was rooted in the forbidding nature of the Vulcan desert.  Spock claimed it was based on logic:  the most inviting and benign natural setting was invariably less comfortable than a bed.  Spock speculated that Leonard’s enthusiasm for having sex outdoors was a reaction to having spent so much of his life in the artificial confines of a starship.  Fresh air was a rarity during space travel, and libido was known to be enhanced by novelty.  Leonard adamantly rejected that theory, saying he had always found being outside a turn-on.  

“Leonard, the last time we engaged in sexual activity under the stars, you were stung by a Hagabateelian nightwing scorpion.  You were unable to perform surgery for five days.”

“There aren’t any Hagabateelian nightwing scorpions in Iowa.”

“There could be mosquitos.”  The heat wave, Spock knew, would have encouraged late season hatching.  

“Why should you care?  They turn their proboscises up at green blood.”

“The bed would be more comfortable.  Carrying pillows or blankets up and down the ladder will be awkward.”

“We can do it standing.  C’mon, you know how fresh air turns me on.”  Before Spock could voice another argument, Leonard drawled, “It’s hot outside.  Hotter than in the house.  You like hot.”  In the dim light of the room Spock saw Leonard smile suggestively.  “And, darlin’, I promise to make you a helluva lot hotter.”

Up on the widow’s walk half an hour later Leonard asked, “Aren’t you glad I suggested this?”  He scratched his leg.   

“You fulfilled your promise more than satisfactorily.”

Leonard looked out toward the East River and the regional park on the far bank.  The water shimmered in the light of the full moon.  “Nice view from here.  No houses in sight.  Almost could be the view from the watchtower of a castle.”  Scratching his right arm, he added, “We were right.  Jim’s at a loss with this retirement business.”

“Agreed.”

“He wasn’t as nonchalant as he pretended to be about Antonia’s marriage.”  Leonard slapped his neck. 

“The move Jim made with his queen after you mentioned Antonia lost him the game.  Until that point, we were headed for a draw.”

Leonard was rubbing his bare back against a post.  “Hey, Spock, could you scratch my back?  The mosquitos got me pretty bad.”

“Let us go inside first, so that you do not get bitten further.”

As soon as they returned to the bedroom, Leonard injected himself with an antipruritic drug.  During the fifteen minutes before it took effect, he grumbled about his foolishness in having insisted on going outside to make love.

Spock said little as he accommodatingly scratched the seven welts on Leonard’s back before the itching subsided.  He was glad he had not pressed the point that mosquitos like human blood.

For Spock, while not sharing Leonard’s appreciation of natural surroundings during lovemaking, was appreciative indeed of the effect natural surroundings had on his mate.

The next day, Jim showed them Riverside.  “Not that there’s much to show.”  The town’s population was twelve hundred.  They stopped in at the bar at the corner of Kirk and Main Streets.  

“Yes, they renamed the street after me years ago,” Jim acknowledged, sheepish.  He had never told his friends. 

“Not much bigger than Buchanan, where I grew up.”  Leonard sipped his mint julep.  Their drinks were on the house.  “We’re country boys, all three of us.”

“My family’s estate lies in close proximity to ShiKahr,” Spock said.  “I traveled to metropolitan areas on Earth during my youth, both to visit my mother’s family and on trips with my father.  I had visited five other planetary systems before I entered Starfleet Academy.  I would not characterize my upbringing as rural.”

“Arcturus doesn’t count,” Leonard said.  “You were four months old.  Anybody left in Riverside from your days here, Jim?”

“Not many friends my own age.  We were all eager to leave the place, for the big city or off-planet.  Me and Sam included.”  Jim drained his beer.  “Too boring around here.”

Left unmentioned was what Jim experienced when he did go off-planet at age twelve:  a famine and a massacre.  Or that Sam and most his family were dead within a year and a half of leaving Earth for Deneva.

“I never left Earth’s system until I entered Star Fleet,” Leonard said, musingly.  “I did visit the Mars and Lunar colonies a couple of times.  We didn’t even go into Atlanta much.”  He looked at his drink with distaste.  “No one born north of the Mason-Dixon line ever makes these things right.  I’m ready to leave when you two are.”

Entering the kitchen the next morning after his meditation, Spock asked Jim, “Leonard is not with you?”

“Haven’t seen him all morning.  I knew one of you got up early, because coffee was made, and the dog was outside.  I figured whichever one of you had gotten up had gone back upstairs.”

“I have been meditating for the past hour.  I haven’t seen him since I rose.”

They did not find Leonard in the house, or on the two acres of Peter’s property.  Thunder was rumbling in the distance.  Jim said, uneasily, “The weather reports say severe thunderstorms are on their way.  A supercell system.”  That meant severe hail or even tornadoes were possible.

Spock pulled out his communicator as they entered the house.   

“Leonard, where are you?”

“English River Regional Park.  I went for a walk, crossed that old truss bridge Jim told us about.”  The Kirk property stretched to the north bank of the English River, with the park lying on the river’s south side.  The bridge, which was suitable for foot traffic only, sat upriver half a kilometer west.  “Oz followed me, but he disappeared.  I’ve been looking for him in the woods for the past forty minutes.”  Leonard’s voice was strained with anxiety.  “I didn’t want to come back saying I had lost Peter’s dog.”

“Leonard, Oswald is back here at the house.”  Hearing his name, the dog’s ears perked up. 

A string of profanities came through the communicator, some directed at the dog, others at Leonard’s own stupidity.  The Bouvier, thinking he was being scolded, lay down, whining.        

Jim leaned toward the communicator.  “Bones, how far are you from the bridge?”

“Five minutes at most.  I was already on my way back, it’s spitting rain and the wind has really picked up.” 

“Get back here as fast as you can,” Jim said.  “A nasty storm front is moving in.”

“Coming in?  It just arrived.”  Leonard was shouting now, trying to speak over the din of heavy rain.  “Rain is coming down in sheets.”  Jim and Spock heard the sudden drumming of wind-driven rain battering the house, and from the communicator, more profanities.

“I’m almost at the bridge.  When I –”  Leonard’s words were cut short by the sound of an explosion, the concussive boom of lightning hitting at close distance.  Two and a half seconds later, the house shook as the thunderclap reached it from half a mile away.

Spock spoke urgently into his communicator.  “Leonard, are you all right?”

“I – I’m fine.”  The doctor’s voice was shaky.  “Other than having my eardrums practically ruptured just now, and almost being zapped into a charred piece of soggy human toast.  The bridge just took a direct hit from the lightning.  It’s blasted out.  I’m stranded on the far side of the river.”

Jim and Spock looked at each other with alarm.  Spock said, “You’re certain you cannot cross the bridge?”

“No way.  The lightning tore a big hole right through the middle.   Smoke’s still coming from it.  I’ve never been that close to lightning before, my entire body tingled from the charge.  If I had been on that bridge . . . .”  Leonard’s voice tailed off.  “I’ve moved away from the water.   Maybe I should just hunker down during the storm?”  More thunder rumbled, further away this time.

Spock said, “This is a supercell system.”

“Shit, that could mean tornadoes.”  Leonard had spent his youth and young adulthood in the Old South.  He was familiar with the conditions which spawned the violent storms. 

Jim was looking at his communicator.  “A tornado warning was just issued for the southern part of this county.”  Riverside was in the north.  “I’m calling Emergency Services to get you transported out of there.”

Jim proceeded to have an argument with the operator.  In times of natural disaster, use of governmental transporters was reserved for emergency personnel and victims of the natural disaster.  Leonard was not injured or in immediate danger.  The local authorities would not transport him out. 

“Don’t you understand, my friend could end up the victim of a natural disaster if he’s not transported out . . . The next bridge is six kilometers away, and he’s not young any more . . . Yes, he has a communicator . . . No, he doesn’t have dementia! . . . Your hovercraft are grounded due to weather and you’re telling me to take a flitter?  . . . Let me speak with your supervisor . . . Sir, do you know who you’re speaking to?  This is Captain James T. Kirk, and the person who is stranded is Dr. Leonard McCoy . . . .”  Jim slammed shut his communicator.  “The incompetent jackass said, ‘Yes, and you’re Santa Claus, and your friend is the Easter bunny.’”

“There’s proof for you that the bureaucratic mentality is alive and well.”  Leonard’s voice was full of wry amusement.  “But Jim, did you have to make me sound like some old geezer?  I’m only five and a half years older than you.”  Aging was a sore point these days with Leonard, who at one time had enjoyed kidding Jim about his relative youth.  Although still utilized for lack of an alternative, the Fabrini cure for xenopolycythemia had recently been recognized to have the delayed side effect of moderately accelerated aging.  Now, when they were both in their sixties and the age gap should have seemed minimal, Leonard was feeling it all the more acutely. 

“Maybe they’d have taken you,” Jim said, “if I had lied and said you had dementia.”

“I’m taking my flitter,” Spock announced, turning to leave the room.    

Jim grabbed his arm.  “No, you’re not!  The weather conditions are ripe for microbursts, you know that as well as I do.”  The intense, localized downdrafts, with winds of up to 270 kilometers per hours, remained the nemesis of pilots.  Sophisticated warning systems could not protect a flitter flying at low altitude.

Over the communicator, Leonard was raging.  “Do you want to be a goddamn Vulcan jelly pancake?”

Spock said, “I will not leave Leonard out there.”  Jim recognized the anxiety hidden under Spock’s matter-of-fact demeanor.   “In addition to the possibility of tornadoes, there could be flash floods, hail or additional lightning strikes.”

“Spock, there’s nowhere to land out there, the brush goes almost to the bank.  Peter has a canoe in the shed.  We’ll take that across to go get Bones.  It’ll be chancy, but it’s safer than being in the air right now.”

Jim instructed Leonard to go back downstream.  “Look for a pair of broken trees, lying near a very tall oak.  They’re directly across from Peter’s property.”   

Leonard said, “I’ll see you in a few minutes.  And Jim, thanks for knocking some sense into my husband’s thick Vulcan skull.”

In the shed, Jim found life jackets.  He began putting one on, as did Spock.  “Ever handle a canoe, Spock?”

“Not since survival training at the Academy.”

“Meaning you’ve been in a canoe for maybe a total of six hours.  You won’t be needing a life jacket, in that case.  At least – I hope not.”

Spock continued strapping on his jacket. 

“We’ll need one for Bones, though.  I’ll take the canoe across by myself.” 

“Jim, don’t you –”   

“I said no.  Paddling a canoe is trickier than it looks.  Paddling in tandem correctly is even trickier.”  Jim secured the last buckle of his life jacket.  “When the river’s running fast and high is not the time to learn.  Trust me.”

Spock noted the brightness of Jim’s eyes, the crispness in his voice.  His friend was facing an emergency and was in command again. 

Reluctantly, Spock acceded, bowing to Jim’s good judgment and the logic of the situation – Kirk was an experienced white water rafter – rather than out of long habit of submission to his friend’s command.    

Rain quickly soaked their clothes, and wind buffeted them as they carried the canoe to the riverbank, almost knocking them off their feet.  They heard the river before they saw it, its roar overpowering the pounding rain.  Clouded with sediment, the English River was the color of the gray sky above. 

Leonard was waiting for them on the far bank.  Jim gestured downriver.  He would be crossing the turgid, twenty-five meter wide river diagonally. 

Spock paused before pushing off the canoe.  “Jim – be careful.” 

Jim looked back over his shoulder.  “I’ll bring Bones back.”  Jim smiled.  “Though as cranky as he is, I’m not sure why you keep him.”

Acknowledging the joke with a small smile of his own, Spock pushed the canoe into the rushing water.  Jim expertly maneuvered the boat through the heavy current.  Spock and Leonard had to run along opposite banks to stay even with him. 

Jim landed safely.  With Leonard’s weight in the canoe, the return trip was more difficult, and this time the craft drifted an even greater distance downriver.  Running along the bank, Spock could do nothing but look on as his husband and his best friend rode out the surging water, once almost capsizing.

“Let me catch my breath,” Jim said when they had reached shore, roughly four hundred meters downriver from Peter Kirk’s property.  “Then help me pull the canoe up behind those trees.  We won’t bother taking it back to the shed.  We can come back for it later.”  Whipped by the wind, brush and the lower branches of trees lashed at the three men.   The rain had tapered off to a light drizzle.   

As they hurried back to the house, Jim said, “That was fun.”

“Fun?  We could have been electrocuted.  Or drowned.  The canoe damn near capsized.”

“I told you in Yosemite – I won’t be dying while either of you are around.”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t die while you’re around!” Leonard said, with logic worthy of a Vulcan.  “But thanks for the lift, Jim.”

Briefly, cherry-sized hail pummeled them.  The three men hastily used their life jackets to cover their heads from the stinging pellets. 

Gusty wind continued to buffet them, making walking difficult. 

“You needed that life jacket after all, Spock,” Jim said, after the hail had stopped.

“A little hail wouldn’t ever hurt that thick Vulcan skull,” Leonard said.

A siren began to wail.  Their heads jerked up like animals sensing a predator.  Though Spock had never heard the sound before, he knew what it portended.  They were three hundred meters from Peter’s house. 

Tense, they scanned the sky.   

Spock saw it first.  “Behind us.  Across the river.” 

Looming beyond the tree line of East River Regional Park hung a bank of ominous charcoal colored clouds streaked with purulent yellow and green.  Lightning flashed, illuminating debris swirling at the edges of the murky wall.  With clinical detachment, Spock analyzed the sight:  they were viewing a rain-wrapped tornado, a deadly vortex obscured by cloud and precipitation.

From the cauldron of a mesocyclone, the kilometers-wide rotation of air within a supercell thunderstorm, a wall cloud had formed, a rotating mass of clouds spilling toward the ground from the base of the storm.  Within that seething brew, a monster had spawned.  An invisible monster, for in this case the area of descending air which is the precursor to a tornado had caught the precipitation from the accompanying thunderstorm.

Obscured as they were, rain-wrapped tornadoes were very difficult to see – and consequently extremely dangerous.  Spock, who had never witnessed a tornado previously, experienced a momentary disappointment that the classic funnel was not visible.  On Vulcan the smaller rotating columns of air known in Standard as dust devils were commonplace.  Called grazhiv-tchef, or dust vortices, they originated during fair weather from updrafts of surface winds. 

Tornadoes, on the other hand, were all but unknown, and generally weak when they did occur, because Vulcan’s atmosphere lacked the moisture necessary to generate the powerful thunderstorms from which tornadoes were born.

“I hope that’s just branches, not whole trees, being thrown around.”  Leonard’s voice was tight with fear.

“Can’t see the funnel,” Jim said.  “Which way is the thing moving?” 

Leonard said, “Hell if I’m waiting around to find out.”

They dropped the cumbersome life jackets and began to run.   

Spock led the group.  Physiologically half the age of the other two men, he could have outdistanced them with ease.  Hearing a cry from behind him – he was not certain whether it was from Leonard or Jim – he turned to see Leonard sprawled on the wet grass thirty meters from the house.  Jim was helping him to his knees.  Spock slowed, and saw a wind-blown metal bucket slam Leonard on the temple.  The doctor fell limp to the ground.  Spock wheeled and sprinted to the pair. 

Jim shouted into the wind.  “A bucket knocked him out!”

“Jim, get the door!  I’ll carry him!”  As he scooped up Leonard,

Spock felt his ears pop, a sign of falling atmospheric pressure.  The grass and trees and scudding sky seemed eerily aglow.  Low to the ground, a frightened bluebird streaked by, a flash of chestnut, white and royal blue, the cheery brightness of its plumage out of place in the ominous, unnatural light.   

Spock glanced back at the river.  The wall cloud was visibly closer.  With a frisson of fear immediately quelled, he could now see that the swirling debris included not just branches, but entire trunks of uprooted trees.  The monster was plowing a path through the woodlands of the park, consuming all in its path.   

Carrying Leonard, Spock reached the house.  Jim had opened the door, which was now jammed wide open, caught in the wind.  The scarecrow went tumbling off the porch.  The green straw witch was gone.  Above the howling wind and the banging door and the racket of debris beating the house and Oswald’s nervous bark and the wail of the siren, Jim was shouting, “The basement!  The downstairs bathroom!”  The dog, sensing the men’s excitement and fear, followed as they rushed down the steps. 

Jim snatched from the sofa a purple pillow and a lavender throw blanket.  Calling Oswald to follow him, he entered the bathroom, where Spock was cradling Leonard. 

Jim said, “He’s still out.”

“Yes.  His pulse and breathing are steady.  No external bleeding.  His pupils aren’t dilated.”  Spock and Jim hurriedly but gently laid Leonard out on the floor, placing a pillow under his head.  Spock did not take his gaze off Leonard’s face, pale against the dark pillow.

Jim said, “Too bad there isn’t time to go upstairs and get his medical kit.”  Jim placed the blanket over his unconscious friend.  “Spock . . . Sorry this happened.”  Jim was well aware of Spock’s concern about Leonard’s increasing fragility.

“It isn’t your fault.  Leonard knew better than to go walking that far when a storm was coming.  I will call Emergency Services.”

Spock pulled out his communicator.  Still looking at Leonard, he said, “This is an emergency.  Please lock on to these coordinates, and beam out three adults and one large dog.  We are sheltering in the basement of 1939 Garland Lane in Riverside.  An estimated

EF4 tornado is headed directly toward us, moving . . . .”

The howling of the wind and the banging outside intensified.  They could hear also a rumble, a roar like a waterfall.  Absentmindedly, Jim petted the whining dog beside him. 

“. . . due north from East River Regional Park.  Repeat, we are in imminent danger, please transport immediately from these co-ordinates three adults and a dog.  One of the adults is a sixty-six-year-old male unconscious from a head injury.” 

“Sir, who is reporting this emergency?”  The voice was disagreeably familiar.  

Spock looked up.  Jim was mouthing “incompetent jackass.”

All innocence, Spock said, “My name is . . . Oswald Bouvier.” 

Jim’s face lit with silent laughter. 

“Mr. Bouvier, we have your coordinates.  The transport of your group has been authorized.  You will be transported out momentarily.” 

Jim leaned close to Spock’s ear, hoping he could hear over the din around them.   “Good move, not identifying yourself by your real name.  I like that, calling yourself Oz –” 

In a chaos of blackness and roaring sound and falling debris, the monster from the sky descended upon them.