“So, how exactly does this potion work?” Kurt asked.

Mother Goose — sober and surprisingly bright-eyed — explained, “Well, Holly told me that all we need to do is place a single drop on the page of a book, and it will open up a portal into the setting of the story.  Have you chosen a book yet, Chris?”

“Yeah.  The Wonderful Wizard of Oz begins in Kansas, which is the closest setting to my home, so I think that's the one.”

“Okay.  We'll all have a little adventure in your world, collect the Fairy Godfather, and then use the potion on A Treasury of Fairy Tales to come back here.”

“Kurt and I would like to have a bit of an extended honeymoon,” Blaine said.  “Is there enough of the potion for us to use on the other books, too?” 

“Sure.  We can bring the other books along, and you can pop from one to another for as long as you like.  Luckily, I've got an extra copy of A Treasury of Fairy Tales, so the Fairy Godfather and I can return here while you go off on your honeymoon trip and come back whenever you're ready.”

“Thanks!”

“How soon can we leave?” Chris asked.

“I'm ready when you are,” Mother Goose replied, gathering up The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, Peter Pan, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The Once and Future King, and both copies of A Treasury of Fairy Tales, and placing them in her satchel.

“Froggy and Red agreed to take care of the horses for us while we're away, so we can leave any time,” Kurt said.

“Well, then let's get this show on the road,” Chris urged.

He placed The Wonderful Wizard of Oz on the floor, opened it to the first chapter, and looked expectantly at Mother Goose.  With a rather dramatic flourish, she let a drop of the potion fall onto the exposed page.  

A bright beam of light shot from the book all the way up to the giant's ceiling.  Chris took a deep breath and stepped into the light.  Kurt, Blaine, and Mother Goose followed him. 

At first, all Chris saw was a vast white space, empty except for the four travelers. Soon, though, thousands and thousands of black words began swirling around them.  The words gradually coalesced to form a vaguely familiar landscape.  Chris, Kurt, Blaine, and Mother Goose found themselves standing in a drab beige field, under a dull gray sky. 

Blaine turned in a slow circle.  “Wow!  This wheat field goes on forever.  The Little Red Hen would love it here.”

Kurt's eyes were lit up with delight.  He wrapped his arms around Blaine from behind, pulling his husband against his chest and rocking gently from side to side.  “After all of the places we've traveled together, we're in another dimension.  Best honeymoon ever.”

The snarky side of Chris was amused that two daring outlaws from the fairytale world, who'd seen and done more than anyone here could possibly dream of, were now ooohing and ahhhing over a simple Kansas wheat field.  His romantic side, though, wanted to do its own ooohing and ahhhing over how perfect they were together.  And his practical side told him to stop staring at the newlyweds and instead focus on figuring out exactly how far they were from the nearest airport. 

Whipping out his phone, Chris was disappointed — but not surprised, given that he hadn't been able to charge it in weeks — to find that the battery was dead.  “Come on,” he said to the others.  “There's a house in the distance.  Let's go see if they'll let me make a phone call.”

As they approached the house, a young girl wearing pigtails and an old-fashioned dress came running out to greet them.  In her arms was a scruffy little dog, who barked at the sight of them.

“Hush, Toto,” said the girl.  “We don't want to scare our visitors.”

Hearing the name of the dog, Chris turned to Mother Goose and whispered, “You said that the potion would take us to the setting of any book.  You didn't mention anything about the plot or the characters.”

“Hey, I was just repeating what the Elf Empress told me.  I don't know any more about what's happening here than you do.” 

A man and a woman appeared on the porch behind the little girl.  “Dorothy, come inside,” the woman called urgently.  “There's a storm brewing.”

“But Auntie Em, look — we have visitors!  Can they stay for lunch?” 

The man and woman looked at each other and came to some sort of unspoken agreement.  “All right, you'd better come inside.  I'm Em, this is Henry, and this is our niece, Dorothy.”

Chris stepped forward and held out his hand.  “I'm Chris, and these are my friends, Kurt, Blaine, and April.”  (He figured it wouldn't do to refer to Mother Goose by her nickname here.)

The new acquaintances shook hands all ‘round before going into the little house.  It was a single room, as dim and colorless inside as everything had seemed outside.  Chris felt as if he was looking at an old, sepia-toned photograph.

Mother Goose walked over to a window at the back of the house and peered outside.  “What's that?” she asked.

Chris joined her.  “Uh oh.  I think there's a tornado heading this way.”

Henry rushed to the window to confirm.  “Yep, there's a twister coming.  Quick, everyone get down in the storm cellar!”

He pulled open a heavy trapdoor, and ushered Em and Dorothy ahead of him down into a dark space below the house.  A moment later, Dorothy popped back out.

“Toto!” she cried.

The little dog was hiding under the bed.  Chris pulled him out and handed him to Dorothy.  He was about to follow them down into the storm cellar when he realized that the back door of the house was open, and Kurt, Blaine, and Mother Goose were nowhere in sight.

Rushing out onto the back porch, Chris found the other three staring in fascination at the funnel cloud that was drawing ever closer.  “What are you doing?!?” he yelled above the noise of the rushing wind.  “That thing will kill you!  We've got to get down into the storm cellar!”

Chris shoved the others through the door and had just made it inside himself when the tornado struck the house and lifted it clean off of its foundation.  Looking in horror through the still open trapdoor, he could see, not the storm cellar, but the ground, fifty feet below.  Then a hundred feet below.  Then a thousand.  Until, eventually, he could see nothing at all.

“Wow!” Blaine said.  “Are the storms in your world always this dramatic?”

Chris groaned.  “No.  But I guess once we saw Dorothy and Toto I should have been expecting this.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the beginning of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is set in my world.  But that's not its only setting.”   

Before Chris could explain further, the house landed with a crash.  Chris looked out the window at the colorful land around them.  

“Uh oh.  I don't think we're in Kansas anymore…”