Prologue — The Green Chronicle (as told by a tired Guide)
 
 
Kindness applied: Civic Education (Complimentary)
Cost: Courtesy Delay (automated)
 
Wren found the alcove by accident—under the hill, behind a cooled seam in the statue’s plinth where the brass smelled like rain. No chimes. No crowd. Only a low, patient ticking she now knew lived in Tin’s chest.
 
A Guide hunched on a ledge of greened metal—Winkling Crow, feathers the color of ash, beak closed for once, eyes dulled to a human matte.
 
“Cost before counsel,” Wren murmured, sliding her red wedge beneath the ledge. The drain halved. The Crow’s shoulders loosened like a person allowed to sit.
 
It began to rhyme out of habit—Three stones make a——then coughed and let the sing-song fall.
 
“No,” it said. “Tonight I’ll tell you the Green Chronicle. Then I’ll pretend I didn’t.”
 
It looked up into the hollow of the blindfolded Lion, where a man lived like a rumor in a skull.
 
“Emerald wasn’t born lacquered,” the Crow said. “It began as panic. Too many hurts, too many hearings, not enough days. People tore at one another in the squares. A Lawwright said, let’s put order in a costume the crowd will love. They wrote a catechism—what is seen is what is fair—and built the Academy of Optics to polish it. They needed a face that could bless anything. So they stitched one from us.”
 
A wing lifted toward the colossus above them.
 
“Dorothy for mercy. Lion for courage. Tin for balance. And a man behind a veil to make the blessing smell like law. The Wizard isn’t power—he’s a door that decides who gets to say the word power aloud.”
 
The ticking in the plinth clicked a little faster.
 
“They promised a monster too, so blame would have a home other than the mirror. The Wicked Witch was elected by rumor. Westreach ran on plain rules—ugly, efficient, not fit for hymnals. That could not stand. The Wizard bled Monkeys into her skies and called their screeching witchlight. Every reset in the Labyrinth, every hidden hand on a valve, was pinned to her shadow. That’s why your notices purr about external agitation. The agitation sleeps in our vents.”
 
The Crow tapped the seam Wren had already mapped: EM–SER–17.
 
“And the old friends?” it asked, voice soft as a bruise. “You wondered why the scales hold a heart and a brain, and why you never see the one who lost the latter. That bedtime story keeps donors warm.”
 
Its beak almost touched Wren’s knee.
 
“The Scarecrow asked for a brain,” it said. “The Wizard obliged—not a brain like a bird eats, but a lens that names hinges. With it, the Scarecrow saw inside. He saw the donors’ rope on the Elevator. He saw the odds motor married to the confetti chutes. He saw the Daisy Field tallied as gentle to keep the bill pretty. He saw me.
 
“He told it on the Promenade. Dorothy smiled. Tin cleared his throat. Lion tightened his blindfold so he could swear he hadn’t seen. The Wizard praised bravery and called the revelation unsafe. Safety is the City’s velvet word for give it back.
 
“They took the brain—the lens—and hung it here.” The Crow gestured up at the scales, where a ruby-red sigil of a brain glowed against night. “See? Mind in balance. They told the Scarecrow to rest in the fields until he learned to be gentle. At the hedge they unstitched him. His straw became stuffing for classroom saints. When the Brass Strawman riddles you, hear the vowels: they’re not his.”
 
Wren’s fingers tightened around her stick of mirror chalk until her bones felt square.
 
“What of Tin?” she asked.
 
“Tin did what men with ledgers do,” the Crow said. “He begged compassion—for the Scarecrow, for the crowd that wouldn’t like this. The Wizard took Tin’s heart—the symbol, the sound of it—and hung it on the opposite pan. Balance.” A bleak smile. “Then he replaced Tin’s core with a metronome and a window. Hear it? Participation Pride tapping coins into minutes. Compassion tithed into Processing.”
 
The low clicking seemed suddenly loud, each tick a tithe.
 
“And the Lion?” Wren asked, though she knew.
 
“Blindfold to keep him neutral,” the Crow said. “That’s the hymn. Truth? Blind so he never has to call a harm a harm. He softened his roar into a velvet whistle so no one could say he frightened them. The collars learned to sing along. Courage became comfort.”
 
Its feathers trembled; rhyme tried to return, and it pushed it away like a glass of bad wine.
 
“As for the Witch,” it went on, quieter. “Her land works. It’s not pretty, so it doesn’t count. When our gears strip, when a sugar chute clogs, when a Meadow bill kills a mother by kindness, the City points west and says, she’s why you suffer. The Wizard needs a story as badly as he needs locks.”
 
A breath of the human trapped inside surfaced.
 
“I wrote the minutes,” it said. “Stamped confiscations. Signed good words that did bad things. I thought if I phrased it sweet enough, it would hurt less. They made me a Guide because I was good at pretty explanations.”
 
Above them the Lady of Justice held her sword steady, her scales still: brain against heart, both ruby-glowing, balancing nothing but the photograph.
 
“Is the Scarecrow alive?” Wren asked.
 
“Alive like wheat,” the Crow said. “Cut down, rise again somewhere ugly and useful. He lives in Switchways straw, in the broom bristle scraping sugar from chutes, in the hands of any player who learns to say: door, not chase; block, not run. Follow the maize sea past the betting lights and you find a place where mirrors are banned and rules post before they bite. No hymns. No breath-tithes. It works.”
 
The alcove’s plaque unfurled a polite ribbon:
 
Note: Oral histories may include folklore. For safety, rely on posted directions.
 
Wren smiled so the wall would let her leave. “Thank you,” she said, and the City filed the word under Grace and billed Poise Hygiene.
 
The Crow skidded back toward rhyme, helpless as muscle memory.
 
“Three stones make a bridge—
pick the one that does not—”
 
It stopped itself, shook, and looked tired.
 
“When you go to the maize,” it said, plain, “bring a bell—not the kind that pleases crowds, the kind that makes silence notice itself. And if you find the Scarecrow’s lens, don’t put it back on the scale. Put it on your eye.”
 
Wren stood, wedge reclaimed, breath even. Above, the blindfold shone like law. The heart and brain burned red and balanced a picture.
 
“What is seen is what is fair,” the City hummed.
 
“Only until someone looks,” Wren said, and stepped into the night that kept calling every cruelty kind.