Dorothy just wanted something that she could believe in,
A gray dustbowl girl in a life she was better off leavin’.
She made her escape, went from gray into green,
And she could have got clear, and she could have got clean,
But she chose to be good and go back to the gray Kansas sky
Where color’s a fable and freedom’s a fairy tale lie.
Alice got lost, and I guess that we really can’t blame her;
They say she got tangled and tied in the lies that became her.
They say she went mad, and she never complained,
For there’s peace of a kind in a life unconstrained.
She gives Cheshire kisses, she’s easy with white rabbit smiles,
And she’ll never be free, but she’s won herself safe for a while.
Susan and Lucy were queens, and they ruled well and proudly.
They honored their land and their lord, rang the bells long and loudly.
They never once asked to return to their lives
To be children and chattel and mothers and wives,
But the land cast them out in a lesson that only one learned;
And one queen said ‘I am not a toy’, and she never returned.
Mandy’s a pirate, and Mia weaves silk shrouds for faeries,
And Deborah will pour you red wine pressed from sweet poisoned berries.
Kate poses riddles and Mary plays tricks,
While Kaia builds towers from brambles and sticks,
And the rules that we live by are simple and clear:
Be wicked and lovely and don’t live in fear
Dorothy, Alice and Wendy and Jane,
Susan and Lucy, we’re calling your names,
All the Lost Girls who came out of the rain
And chose to go back on the shelf.
Tinker Bell says, and I find I agree
You have to break rules if you want to break free.
So do as you like
—
we’re determined to be
Wicked girls saving ourselves.
For we will be wicked and we will be fair
And they’ll call us such names, and we really won’t care,
So go, tell your Wendys, your Susans, your Janes,
There’s a place they can go if they’re tired of chains,
And our roads may be golden, or broken, or lost,
But we’ll walk on them willingly, knowing the cost
—
We won’t take our place on the shelves.
It’s better to fly and it’s better to die
Say the wicked girls saving ourselves.
(Seanan McGuire)
