The Tin Woodsman suggested that we have the Flying Monkeys carry us over the wall, but I shot him a dirty look, so he started chopping up branches to make a ladder. Were the trees he cut them from sentient trees? Did it even matter at this point? EVERYTHING in this fucking place moved and talked and had feelings. I mean, what was the Lion killing for his dinner every night? What were my meat pies made out of?

  Aaaaaaaaaaaagh.

  “Rest your brains and do not worry about the wall,” the Woodsman said. “When we have climbed over it, we shall know what is on the other side.”

  I assumed that the other side would just be a featureless void, or possibly a starry expanse with Twilight Zone clocks and shit floating around in it. Oz wasn’t some fever dream. The whole hit-your-head-and-imagine-a-fantastic-adventure thing was a stupid television trope. And I hadn’t passed out in some shitty mall store during an earthquake. There never was a mall store. I was now convinced that the real me was locked up in an institution somewhere, drooling onto a padded floor.

  The real me was out of her goddamned mind.

  When the Woodsman’s ladder was finished, it looked in all honesty like a rickety piece of crap. He assured me that it was sturdy, though. There was nothing left to do but climb it.

  So we did. And what wound up being on the other side of the big, porcelain wall was a whole porcelain town, with houses and buildings that barely reached past my knees. And little porcelain princes and princesses and shepherds and milkmaids and livestock and what have you. There was a terrifying porcelain clown.

  Huh. They were all walking around and having conversations and stuff, because of course they were. None of them seemed to notice the assorted flesh, tin and straw giants who had appeared at the top of their wall, except for a porcelain dog with an oversized head, who made a tiny bark and then ran away.

  The ladder was too heavy to pull up after us, so we tossed the Scarecrow down first and used him to break our fall. Even so, landing on the porcelain floor made the pain in my foot flare up again. If Oz was just a product of my insanity, recognizing it didn’t seem to make anything hurt less.

  We continued south, and the first thing we came across was a porcelain milkmaid milking a porcelain cow. It reminded of an actual porcelain horse that my Mom kept over the fireplace at home. Some old person from work had given it to her (old people always had whole shelves full of porcelain crap). Anyway, my Mom insisted that she only liked the horse ironically.

  When the cow looked up and saw us, it suddenly gave a moo and kicked over the stool, the pail, and even the milkmaid herself. They all fell on the ground with a clatter.

  “See what you have done!” the milkmaid cried. She sounded more angry than afraid. “My cow has broken her leg, and I must take her to the mender’s shop and have it glued on again. What do you mean by coming here and frightening my cow?”

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  Sure enough, one of the cow’s legs had broken clean off. “Um, sorry,” I said.

  She was too pissed off to even answer. She picked up the leg and led her cow away, the poor animal limping on three legs. She kept glancing over her shoulder and giving us the stink eye as she walked.

  “We must be very careful here,” said the Woodsman, “or we may hurt these pretty little people so they will never get over it.”

  A bit farther on, we came across a porcelain princess in a fancy dress. As soon as she spotted us, she bolted.

  “Don’t chase me! Don’t chase me!” she screamed.

  “Relax! We’re not going to chase you!”

  She finally stopped once she decided she was a safe distance away. “You see, if I run I may fall down and break myself.”

  “So don’t run,” I said. “And isn’t there some kind of mender person? Can’t you just go get fixed up?”

  “Oh, yes,” the princess said. “But one is never so pretty after being mended, you know.”

  Fair enough.

  “See, there is Mr. Joker, one of our clowns,” she continued. “He is always trying to stand upon his head. He has broken himself so often that he is mended in a hundred places, and doesn’t look at all pretty.”

  The clown was the fucking worst. He was cracked all over, sure, but he also pranced around with big, exaggerated mime gestures, and kept trying to talk to us in rhyme.

  “Don’t mind Mr. Joker,” the princess said. “He is considerably cracked in his head, and that makes him foolish.”

  I didn’t actually care that much if the clown was an asshole. I just wanted to know if any of this was real. I got down on my knees to inspect the pint-sized princess up close. She certainly looked real. I stopped short of touching her, though. “What do you think? Do you want to come back to Calabasas with me and live above a fireplace with a porcelain horse?”

  “That would make me very unhappy,” she said. “You see, here in our country we live contentedly, and can talk and move around as we please. But whenever any of us are taken away our joints at once stiffen, and we can only stand straight and look pretty. Of course that is all that is expected of us when we are on mantels and cabinets and drawing-room tables, but our lives are much pleasanter here in our own country.”

  Again with the sentient-mannequin-trapped-forever schtick—it was like a theme in this thing. Did that actually lend credence to the coma theory? Like, I was the paralyzed one, and my mind was trapped? I might have been overthinking it. We kept walking cautiously over porcelain farmland, and after an hour or so, came to another wall.

  Was that it? Okay, that had to be me going crazy, right? Who would put that scene in a book? Nothing happened in it. What would the point even be? “Don’t be mean to old people, because… their knick-knacks are alive?” Or DO be mean to them, because they’re fucking monsters who lure sentient porcelain creatures to their doom?

  The second wall wasn’t as high as the first, and we were able to get over it by climbing on the Lion’s back. Once we were on top of it, the Lion gathered his legs under him to jump over, but accidentally swiped a little porcelain church with his tail and smashed it to pieces.

  Still, we had managed to get through the whole, fragile town and only broke one church and a cow leg, which I thought was pretty good. Also, I still seemed to be, like, a person, and my friends were still with me, which was comforting. So I hadn’t completely descended into madness and despair yet.

  That had to be a good sign.