All She Had

By Rida Shahariyar

When we first found Dorothy, she was small. Lost, broken, and crying in a place where the wind never stopped screaming. She wasn’t like us—made of rust or straw. She bled when she scraped her knee. She shivered in the rain. She feared the dark.

But she smiled at us. I liked that about her. We all did.

Back then, I didn’t know what a heart really meant. I just knew I didn’t have one. I was hollow. Just gears and clinks and cold. I couldn’t cry, even when I wanted to. I couldn’t feel the way she did.

The Scarecrow, he was always talking, always wondering, always trying to figure things out. But he knew, deep down, that all his cleverness was pretend. He had hay inside his head. Nothing more.

So when we heard her talk about Kansas—how she missed it, how she dreamed of it—we both sat quiet. We knew dreams. We had those too. Dreams of wanting. Of needing.

“She has it,” the Scarecrow whispered one night. “Both of them.” I didn’t ask what he meant. I already knew.

We kept walking with her for weeks. Pretending. Laughing. Helping her through the woods. But every night, we got quieter. Hungrier. Her stories got sadder. Her voice started to tremble.

She knew.

Not all of it, not then. But enough.

One night, she tried to run. Said she saw something in the woods. Said the crows were watching her with eyes like knives. The Scarecrow told her they always do. He didn’t smile when he said it.

When we reached the clearing, the one with the old stone well and the rusted pump beside it, she sat down to rest. She looked tired. Her hands trembled when she touched Toto’s fur.

He wasn’t moving.

“I don’t think he’s breathing,” she said. The Scarecrow and I didn’t answer.

She looked at me with those wide, human eyes. “I think I want to go home now.”

I nodded.

I raised my axe.

It didn’t take much. She was small. Soft. She screamed, but not for long. The forest swallowed her voice whole.

The Scarecrow held her still. His hay-stuffed arms were stronger than they looked. Strong enough to snap her wrist like a twig. Strong enough to keep her from kicking.

He cut open her head first. Carefully. He wanted to see it. The thing he’d never had. It was warm, wet, and soft. When he held it, he cried for the first time. Or maybe it was just the blood dripping down his cheeks. Either way, he laughed.

“She had one,” he whispered. “A real one.” Then it was my turn.

I cracked her chest open. And there it was.

Red. Alive.

I reached in. My metal fingers trembled as I pulled it free. And for the first time, I felt it.

Warmth. Beating. Mine.

I looked at the Scarecrow. He was already pushing her brain into his empty skull. He swayed on his feet, like he wasn’t used to balance. His stitched lips curled into a crooked grin.

“She was carrying everything we needed,” he said.

I nodded. We both stared at her body for a long time. No one ever said Oz was fair.

But sometimes, it gives you exactly what you’re missing. All you have to do is take it.

By Rida Shahariyar