Title:  The Wizard, the Witch and the Whirlwind

Part 2:  We’re Not in Iowa Anymore

Based on The Wizard of Oz  (1939)

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.     

Warnings: mild profanity, kinky (nonexplicit) sexplay

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

Rating:  PG-13    

Word count:  3600 (Part 2)

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:  L. Frank Baum used “tin woodman” in his novel, not “tin woodsman.”  Thank you to Stef for the beta.  Errors are my own.  

“Oh, Toto!  I know we’re supposed to follow the yellow brick road, but the journey is so long and lonely!  I wish we were back in Kansas!”

Twelve meters away from Spock a girl stood.  She was from Kansas; a human, then.  Presumably she was addressing the small, rough-coated terrier at her feet. 

Spock felt a tentative relief.  For the past thirty-six minutes and eight seconds he had been hanging from a pole in a cornfield, unable to extricate himself from the ropes binding his wrists and neck.  Despite his new and perplexing form, he was able to move and speak, but his calls for help had gone unheeded.  This girl was the first sentient being he had seen.

Seen, not felt.  Though he and Leonard needed to be in physical contact to experience full verbal telepathy, their empathic bond crossed all distance.  Through the link he sensed his mate’s confusion, near panic, frustration and loneliness, amplifications of the same emotions Spock had had to quell when he had discovered himself hanging in a cornfield.  To the best of his ability, Spock had sent a message of love and comfort to his bondmate, and had sensed in response the tumult of Leonard’s emotions subside, albeit slightly.  It seemed probable Leonard was in a similar situation to himself, perhaps nearby.  Leonard McCoy was a steel-nerved surgeon, as well as – dutifully, if not always enthusiastically – a deep space explorer and a military man.  He did not panic easily. Spock yearned to find his mate in his extremity.    

How his consciousness could exist, with intellectual faculties, telepathic abilities and primary sensory perceptions intact, when he no longer possessed a nervous system, Vulcan or otherwise, was as great a mystery to Spock as how he had arrived in this place, so very Earthlike yet almost glowing with unnaturally vivid colors. Or the mystery of how he had come to be made of . . . straw.  

His last memory before finding himself in these unusual circumstances was throwing himself over Leonard to protect him from debris falling into the bathroom.  Spock decided he must have suffered a blow to the head when the tornado hit and that he was now experiencing an elaborate hallucination. 

The hallucination would be less conducive to anxiety, not to mention boredom, if he could regain his mobility.

“Young lady, would you be willing to help me down from this pole?”

The girl startled at his voice, her dark beribboned pigtails whipping around her face.  Dressed in a white blouse and a knee-length red and white gingham jumper, she appeared to be in her early teens.  Incongruous with her otherwise simple rustic attire were the glittery red pumps adorning her feet.

“Who said that?” the girl asked, apprehensively.

“I did.  Over here!  Could you help me down?”

The girl approached, wide-eyed.  “I never met a talking scarecrow before.  We don’t have any in Kansas.”

“Nor do talking scarecrows exist in California, where I reside, or in Iowa, which is where I was immediately prior to finding myself here.  Until approximately half an hour ago, when I was somehow transported to this place, I was a man.”  Spock’s statements, while technically true, did not reveal the full truth about himself.  The styling of the girl’s clothing suggested she was not from the twenty-third century.

“You poor thing!  I thought I was in a pickle, having been carried here to Oz by a cyclone.  But at least I’m still myself!”

“In a pickle:  ah yes, in a predicament.  You are correct, I am experiencing a significant quandary.  I would appreciate if you could remedy part of it, by getting me down from this pole.”

“I’d be happy to.”  The girl fumbled with the knotted cord securing Spock to the pole.  A ball of the same heavy twine lay at the foot of the post.  “I’m glad to have found someone else from the U.S.A.  

here in Oz.”

He was correct, then, about the girl not being from his own time.  The United States of America had not existed as a discrete political entity since 2150. 

The girl said, “I hope you don’t mind me saying, you would be an unusual scarecrow even if you couldn’t talk.”  She paused for a moment from untying his wrists to gaze at his face.  “The straw you’re made of is tinged with green, and I never saw a scarecrow before with ears, especially pointed ones.  Your eyebrows are shaped funny, too.”

“I am not offended.”

Spock fell to the ground in a limp heap when the girl untied his neck.  Her Cairn terrier nosed him, tail wagging.  Spock rose, swaying on unfamiliar, jointless legs.  He bent down to pick up some straw which had fallen from his green overalls, and stuffed it back into his chest.

Dorothy said, “Does it hurt, to lose your straw like that?”

“No.  I believe I have lost the ability to feel pain.  A crow was pecking at me earlier, and while I was aware of the sensation, it was not painful.”

“We haven’t been properly introduced.  My name is Dorothy Gale.”  The girl dipped in a curtsey.

“My name is Spock.”  He was silent, then remembered human etiquette called for an expression of gratitude.  “Thank you for your assistance, Miss Gale.”

“Spock?  That’s your last name, you mean?  So you’re Mr. Spock?”

“Yes, it functions as my surname.  But you may call me Spock.”

The girl nodded.  “Everyone calls Rufus Tanner the wheelwright by his last name because he hates his first name.  You can call me Dorothy, by the way.”

His careful questioning revealed that Dorothy had been born in 1902 and was fourteen years old.  An orphan, she lived on an isolated farm in Kansas with a childless aunt and uncle.  A tornado, or cyclone as the girl inaccurately termed the storm, had hit her uncle’s farm, and unable to reach the storm cellar in time after chasing down her frightened dog, she had taken cover in the house, which had – Dorothy claimed – been lifted up by the storm. 

The farmhouse had landed in Munchkin City, a municipality within a greater land (dimension? universe? reality? plane?) called Oz.  The short-statured townspeople called Munchkins had celebrated Dorothy as a heroine, the farmhouse having killed their enemy, the Wicked Witch of the East, when it landed.  When the equally evil Wicked Witch of the West had tried to claim her dead sister’s ruby slippers, a beautiful good witch named Glinda had magically transferred the ruby slippers to Dorothy’s feet, explaining that the shoes had great power.  Aware that Dorothy wished to return to Kansas, Glinda had instructed her to follow the yellow brick road to Emerald City, where resided a great and powerful wizard.

Marveling at the detailed fantasy he was experiencing, Spock wondered about the neurological malfunction causing it.  Vulcans did not dream, but they could hallucinate.  He recognized within the hallucination numerous elements – images, names – obviously lifted from his recent experiences at Jim’s childhood home, but transformed by his subconscious into novel patterns.  The most disconcerting novelty was, of course, his own transmogrified body, patterned on the scarecrow standing guard on Peter Kirk’s front porch.  Even the brightly colored bricks of the road beneath his feet had their parallel in the gold-toned pavers of the Kirks’ porch.   “Fascinating,” he murmured.

“Oz is a fascinating place,” Dorothy said, “but I still want to get home to Kansas.” 

Spock said, “In your journey, have you met or heard of anyone named Dr. Leonard McCoy?  Or a James T. Kirk, also called Jim?  They are friends of mine.  I was with them immediately before finding myself here.  Like you, we were caught in a tornado.  I think they may be in Oz as well.”

Dorothy shook her head.  “Since leaving Munchkinland, you’re the first person I’ve met.  I think you count as a person, even though you’re a scarecrow, since you can talk.”

Spock wished everyone in the twenty-third century were so broad-minded.

“Maybe,” Dorothy continued, “your friends are further up the yellow brick road?  And even if they’re not, perhaps the Wizard of Oz could tell you where they are, or how you can get home to Iowa or California.  Why don’t you come with me?”

The girl’s suggestions were sensible – logical, even, within the constraints of the massive illogic of the situation.  Spock said, “I will accompany you.  My priority, however, must be finding my friends.”   

“I understand.  If Toto were lost, I would be looking for him.”

Where was his husband, Spock wondered, and their best friend?

Had they all been successfully transported out of Peter Kirk’s basement?  The high winds of a tornado were incapable of disrupting a transporter.  Lightning, however, especially the variant known as positive lightning, was a different matter.  

Constituting less than five percent of all strikes, and originating in a storm cloud’s upper reaches where a net positive charge resides, positive lightning could generate as much as three hundred thousand amperes and one billion volts, far more than generated by more common negative lightning, as well as temperatures exceeding thirty thousand Celsius, higher than the surface of Earth’s sun.  Positive lightning could travel as far as sixteen kilometers from its cloud of origin before striking earth.

A disrupted transporter beam could either have left them in place, or killed them outright.  He was not dead, nor (he knew) was Leonard.  But Jim?  If they had not been transported, Spock hoped that Jim – the real-world Jim – was not incapacitated, and could provide assistance to him and Leonard.

Spock recalled the ion storm on the Halkan homeworld, which had hurtled four of his colleagues, Jim and Leonard among them, to an alternate universe while being transported.  Had something similar happened here?  On the remote possibility that this bizarre reality was not illusory, Spock decided to bring with him the large ball of twine lying at the foot of the pole.  He stuffed it inside his overalls.  It might, he thought, prove useful.    

As they walked, Dorothy chatted about her life in Kansas.  It was an austere life, full of difficulty, deprivation and physical labor.  Her parents had died young; her aunt and uncle had lost two small children to diphtheria, another to measles.  Her uncle’s farm lacked both electricity and interior plumbing.  Dorothy had left school at the age of twelve.  The girl’s love for her uncle and aunt, and theirs for her, was evident, however.

She asked Spock about his own background.  He told her what she could understand, not unlike what he and Jim had once told Edith Keeler:  he was, he said, a scientist, very recently retired from the Fleet.        

“I never met a scientist before!” Dorothy said, impressed.  “Since you’re retired now, you don’t have to worry about being sent to fight in the Great War.  Do you think we’ll enter it?  Our farmhand Al says it’s the war to end war.” 

“I believe the United States will enter the war eventually.  Unfortunately, I do not believe it will be the war to end war.  I do harbor hope, however, that one day there will be no more war on Earth.”

“Simon Head says war won’t end until class warfare is over.  According to him, that’s the only war worth fighting.”  The girl leaned down to pat Toto.  “Simon’s one of our other hands.  He says the workers’ revolution is going to begin in Russia soon, unless the Tsar allows a constitution there, like we have in the United States.”

Choosing his words carefully, Spock said, “He is correct that a revolution is possible in Russia in the near future.”  The Russian Revolution would break out in 1917, assuming Dorothy came from his timeline. 

Spock reminded himself the girl originated in his mind – not in his timeline. 

“Al Lyons says he’d like to fight in a war,” Dorothy said, mournfully.  “And see the ocean.  He wants to join the Navy.  I hope he doesn’t.”

Spock commented, “Lyons was the maiden name of my great-great-grandmother on the direct maternal line.”   He had met Beatrice Odelle Lyons Tomaszewski Nguyen Wolford only once, at a family reunion on Earth.  Unlike the subtly rejecting members of Sarek’s extended family, most of his mother’s relatives had readily accepted him, but Beatrice had shocked all present with her open ridicule of her “mongrel” great-great-grandson.  Five years old, Spock had been confused rather than stung by the stranger’s venom.  For him, the mortifying aspect of the experience had been his mother’s uncharacteristic rage.  He had been relieved his father was not present to witness her shameful behavior.       

Dorothy said, “Do you think you could be related to Al?”

“Lyons is a common surname.  The probability is extremely small.”  Zero, to be precise, thought Spock, since the girl was a delusion.  “Or if we are, it would likely be many, many generations back.”

Or could she possibly be real? 

“If you go back far enough, we’re all descended from Adam and Eve,” Dorothy said.  “Simon is the only person I know who doesn’t believe in them.  And maybe you?  He says all the scientists these days believe in evolution.  Si hides his books by Charles Darwin from Uncle Henry, along with ones by someone named Karl Marx.  Uncle Henry’s got no truck with evolution.”

“‘Got no truck’?”

“Oh, Uncle Henry won’t listen to a word of it.  Calls it devil’s talk.  Auntie Em, too.  She says it’s more likely monkeys could grow wings than they could turn into people.”  She looked again at the straw face.  “You look a little like the devil, actually, with those eyebrows and pointy ears.  But I can tell you’re not evil, even if you do have pointed ears.”

The comment about him resembling the devil reminded Spock of Leonard.  The anxious touch of his bondmate’s mind lingered at the edge of his consciousness, a source of both comfort and unease.

Spock had been observing the environment carefully, searching for anything unusual, for the slightest sign of Leonard, or of Jim. 

Noticing something glinting silver-bright in the field to their left, he halted.  A patch of sunflowers around the object obscured his view of it.

He said, “I wish to investigate an object in the field.  It appears to be metallic.”  Dorothy and Toto followed after him.   

To Spock’s surprise, the sunflowers parted as he and Dorothy approached the patch, opening a path for them.  “Fascinating,” he said.  Aside from his own body and the exceptional clarity of color and light, this was the first anomalous phenomenon he had personally observed in Oz.  Dorothy was more nonchalant.  She had already witnessed many wonders in Oz.

Standing motionless among a profusion of sunflowers was a tin man, axe upraised.  Black-and-yellow disks bent away as Dorothy and Spock approached the figure.  Spock recognized, below the funnel-like hat atop the woodman’s head, the broad planes and arched eyebrows of his husband’s face.   

Unintelligible vowel sounds, part groan, part rusty creak, came from the unmoving mouth.  Tears welled from the now blue-gray eyes which looked beseechingly at Spock.  A trail left by older tears shone on the stannic cheeks, testimony to a long ordeal.  Leonard McCoy did not easily cry. 

Spock calmly told Dorothy, “This is Dr. Leonard McCoy, one of the friends I have been looking for.” 

He laid a hand upon the unyielding shoulder.  A string of agitated questions tumbled into Spock’s mind.  //A scarecrow?!  Where are we?  Where’s Jim?  What the hell’s happened?  How did you find me?//

//I am here, ashayam.   I will help you.  You should know, the girl is from the early part of the twentieth century.//

//You mean we’ve time-traveled again?//

Spock continued to keep his own distress under tight control. “He’s rusted,” he told Dorothy.  “He needs some type of lubricant.”  Where could they find lubricant to release the locked joints?  In their present forms, Leonard might be too heavy for him to carry. 

He did have rope.  Perhaps he and Dorothy could drag Leonard.  He had no idea how far Emerald City, or even the nearest house, might be.  He and Dorothy had passed no buildings while traveling the yellow brick road.  

They heard a metallic clinking, followed by Toto barking. 

Dorothy said, “I’ll go see what Toto is up to.  You stay with your friend.  No wonder he’s upset, being frozen like that.”  The girl disappeared into the sunflower patch, the flowers opening a path for her, then closing behind her.       

//Spock, darlin’, you’re a sight for sore eyes.  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you’re a scarecrow, considering I’m a tin woodman.  Where’s Jim?//

//I have not yet found him.//

//You have to go find him.  Leave me.//

Once before, in a very different place, they had had this same argument.  Spock had not left Leonard then, and they had not been mated, as they were now. 

//You are my husband, Lenkam.//  For Spock, there was nothing more to be said.  For the moment, Spock chose not to address the possibility that what he and Leonard were experiencing might be illusory.  In Leonard’s current agitated state, the theory would be unlikely to be of comfort.  

Dorothy returned, beaming.  She carried a small metal can with a handle and an extended, narrowed spout.  “Look what Toto found!  He was swatting this can of oil.  He knocked it over, but I think it’s still full.” 

“Oil his mouth and jaw first,” Spock said.  

Dorothy complied with Spock’s request.  Leonard opened and closed his mouth, testing.  “Thank you, young lady.  Leonard McCoy, very pleased to meet you.  Please oil my legs next, please, so we can get away from this jungle of overgrown daisies. “

“You’re very welcome,” Dorothy said, kneeling down to apply oil to Leonard’s toes.  His feet and ankles had numerous seams needing lubrication.  “I’m Dorothy Gale.  I helped Spock get down off his pole in a cornfield.”

Leonard said, “If you helped Spock, I’m much obliged to you twice over.”  His eyes met Spock’s.  “Cornfield or no, I’m guessing we’re not in Iowa anymore.”

Spock said, “This place is called Oz.  Dorothy is not a native, however.  She is from Kansas.”

“I was brought here by a twister, like the two of you.”

“Well, that’s interesting.  Spock, I don’t know how you found me, hidden by all these sunflowers, but thank goodness you did.”

“I noticed the sun flashing off your head,” Spock said.

The girl was taking her time, oiling Leonard’s knees.  Leonard could not look down, but Spock noticed her reddening face.

“It was awful, being alone like that, unable to move a muscle or call for help.  Not that I have muscles anymore.  I hope that can has enough oil to grease up all my joints.  I’m rusted all over.”

Toto’s faint barking could be heard in the distance.    

“Oh, dear.”  Straightening, Dorothy stopped applying the oil.  “Toto’s run off.”  Her statement was at odds with her relieved demeanor.  “Probably chasing a rabbit or chipmunk.  Back home, he’s always killing varmints.  Better mouser and ratter than any cat, Uncle Henry says,” she added, with pride.  She pushed the oil can into Spock’s hands.  “Here, you can finish oiling up Leonard, while I go find Toto.”

Calling for her dog, Dorothy plunged into the yielding wall of sunflowers.  

Leonard said, “Poor kid.  I think she was afraid to touch my crotch.  Not that I’ve got anything down there.”

“I agree with your assessment.”

“About Dorothy?  Or my new anatomy?”

“Both.”

Spock applied oil to where Leonard’s left leg joined his torso.  Leonard moaned.  “Oh, God.”

Alarmed, Spock asked, “Are you in pain?”

“No, it feels great.  Like sex . . . only better.”

“You did not react this way when Dorothy applied oil.”

“It didn’t feel like this when she did it.  Must be because it’s my groin, good thing she stopped where she did.  Lube me up on the other side down there.”

“Oohh, it’s like an orgasm,” Leonard said, panting.  “The pleasure centers of my brain are exploding.  I’m being flooded with oxytocin.”

“Leonard, you no longer have a brain.  You lack neurons to either release or receive neurotransmitters.” 

“I know that.  It’s just a metaphor, you brainless bale of Vulcan hay.”  Leonard took two stiff, awkward steps.  “I need to be able to move my whole body, to walk right.  That oil feels terrific on my crotch, but you’ve got to oil the rest of me,” he said, reluctantly.

Spock lubricated Leonard’s right elbow.

Leonard moaned with pleasure.  “It’s the same way, there.  Try my shoulder.”

Spock complied with the panted request.

“Oh, yeah . . . now the other one . . . and all around my neck.  Oh, God, my whole damn body has become one huge erogenous zone.”

“This is highly illogical.”

“You’re a scarecrow and I’m a tin man, standing around talking in a patch of magic flowers, and you’re talking about logic?  Hey, give me that oil can a moment.”

Leonard applied oil to himself without results.  “Nope.  Feels like when Dorothy was doing it.  Just a feeling of wetness.”

They no longer heard Dorothy calling for Toto.    

Spock said, “You’re fully lubricated, and mobile.  Dorothy will be returning.  We should stop.”

“One more squirt, Spock.  Please.  And touch me while you’re squirting me.  The feeling ought to transfer.”  Leonard moaned in pleasure.  “Oh, that’s good, so good.”

Spock panted, “You are . . . correct . . . Lenkam.”

“Always glad to share the fun, baby.”

The pair exited the sunflower patch.  Spock had ceased applying oil just in time, for Dorothy returned shortly with Toto.  Additional explanations of their situation were made to Leonard.  Four travelers now walked the yellow brick road – one hoping to find the Wizard of Oz, one hoping to find another field mouse, and two hoping to find Jim Kirk.