was tall and shambling. A scarecrow on a Sunday. Would they have yellow sunflower faces? They would have sunflower faces. She looked but couldn't find them.
'Hello?' she called again, chuckling kindly, so they could hear she meant no harm. Then she thought: Were the sunflowers laughing? And then she heard deep voices.
It was a chant.
Wichita was an Indian name, it was the name of the tribe of Indians the white adults had pushed aside, marched into the desert so that they died. But some of them escaped. They had stayed in Kansas, to live secretly under the cornfields. They had finally, finally come out to dance.
She saw them, under the sunflowers. They were tiny brown men no taller than her knees. They were naked except for the feathers of birds and they were slightly wizened, like children that never grew up, or adults who had decided to stay children. They danced in a circle, chanting. They were Indians who had won. They were the Indians of Oz.
The gophers were standing in a ring to watch. There was a slight change to the sound.
And suddenly she heard a dog bark, far away.
All the sunflowers began to bob and bend in a gathering wind. There was a low animal whine from all around her. The wind plucked at her adult clothes and there seemed to be smoke. It trailed across the ground, between the flowers, over her shoes. Smoke from Indian fires? The air was full of dust and smelled suddenly of soil. The chant went on: Toto, Toto.
Suddenly, all the sunflowers broke free. They rose up, leapt into the air, and spun away as Dorothy had spun.
The sunflowers spun smiling all around her, like the scythes of her hands. There was a blast of wind and dust. Dorothy's dress was whipped about her legs. It spun around her like a sheep caught in barbed wire. The dust was flowing now like a wide thick river. She was standing in the middle of it. Dust blew up into her eyes, stinging, she had to look away.
The dust was making her weep. The Indians kept chanting. She let her eyes water, to clear them, and when she opened them again, the whole of the field had risen up into the air, spiraling sunflowers, a plowed line of dirt drawn up into the air like soda through a straw. Still blinking, Dorothy looked up and saw it.
A twister. A twister.
And Dorothy froze. She went stock-still.
The twister loomed over her as huge as a man, spinning, turning, trawling its vast single foot lazily across the fields.
Dorothy thought she was calm. I made it, she thought. It came out of me. I spun and spun and I made it, as twisted as I am. And now it's coming for me. There is no place to hide. I ran away, and there was no escape. I ran into the fields, the one place you are not supposed to go in a cyclone, and I can't go home. You need to have a burrow in the earth. And that was what I wanted. Somewhere to live hidden. And now I'm going to die. I'm going to die.
It seemed to her suddenly to be the way out, to let the wind blow her away, like dust, to somewhere else.
She watched the twister as it came, passive as she had been before Uncle Henry. She waited as if for a lover. She was unable to move.
Then suddenly there was a bright, fierce little bark, a sound like shattering mirrors. Dorothy looked down, and there was Toto, bouncing with rage, turning around and around in the dust.
Toto, she tried to say, but the wind pulled the breath out of her lungs.
He was full of life and anger. You don't want to die! he seemed to say. Run!
Dorothy broke free. She screamed and covered her eyes. With a thrill of self-love, she began to run.
Toto ran with her, yipping, on tiny terrier legs, circling her ankles. She ran blindly, arm across her tender eyes.
In a twister, you set the horses free, free to run. Some know to run away from the twister. Some run into it, and no one knows why. Some want the twister, betrayed by something inside them.
Toto shepherded her. He drove her away from it, toward the hills, out of the valley. She ran with long hungry strides over the broken earth toward shelter, the Aikens' house. She ran listening for the howl of wind in a peach orchard. The twister turned and changed shape, the blast sucking one way and then exploding in another.
