Shadows of the Emerald City

by J. W. Schnarr

  “You were doing just fine,” Gob assured her.

  “Do you really think so?” Nemi asked. “I’ve never sworn before.”

  “Perhaps you should save the next batch for when old Yoop shows his face over the side again.”

  Just then the giant reappeared, fork in one hand and cleaver in the other. Nemi Omsbi didn’t hesitate at all.

  “You goose-shit snorting, pond-scum gargling erb buggerer! Whimsey-brained Growlywog slut-slave! Self-fornicating, Kalidah baiting—yeagh!—” Mr. Yoop poked Nemi in her left eye with the fork. It popped like a half-poached egg and her head sank under the broth. The giant grinned and said,

  “The maiden’s bum was juicy sweet! Let’s see how you are to eat.” His fork jutted down at Gob’s torso, clear across the cauldron from his head. “A tiny bite of you I’ll try, and then I’ll eat her other thigh.” He speared Gob’s penis and nicked it off with the tip of the cleaver. Quick as that he was grinding it with he molars like a tough piece of gristle.

  “Oh, the Queen won’t be pleased with that.”

  As Mr. Yoop speared Nemi’s other thigh her head resurfaced, missing an eye and most of the surrounding cheek.

  “. . . son-of-a-wogglebug. Put that back, you circus geek!”

  The giant withdrew.

  “Watch out!” Gob warned her, without stopping to wonder just how a half-cooked floating head would go about doing that. It began raining pieces of the other Munchkin. He was a bulky cusser; the huge pot was growing full.

  “Too much time you take to stew,” the giant said as he lifted the lid back into position. “I’ll add some wood to boil you.” He placed the lid firmly over the cauldron with a clang. Gob could barely hear him moving about, but he definitely felt it when the giant built up the fire.

  “Shit,” he said aloud, “we really are doomed.”

  “I wish I could hear what they are saying,” Princess Dorothy said.

  “The situation is clearly worse than I’d hoped,” Ozma replied. “Mr. Yoop has already seized several of my subjects and is cooking them.”

  Dorothy twirled a blonde ringlet for a moment, thinking.

  “Send for the Nome King’s Belt, Ozma! You can use it to turn old Yoop into a stone and we can send someone round to fish those Munchkins out of the soup.”

  The Fairy Queen sighed.

  “No, Dorothy. We can not just solve the problem from here with magic. If we did that, the people would soon come to rely on us to protect them always. They might grow so confident in us as to fail to take responsibility for their own safety. Why, if they did that the Munchkins would still be going about their business instead of sensibly huddling in their cellars in fear, waiting rescue. It’s not enough to protect the people of my realm,” the Girl Queen explained. “We must be seen to protect them. I’ll send a party to deal with Mr. Yoop.”

  “Ugh!” Dorothy had just watched Mr. Yoop eat Nemi Omsbi’s butt. “Too late for that girl’s ass. Let me go, Ozma. Please. If I wear my magic belt, Mr. Yoop won’t be able to harm me. Let me deal with him.”

  The fairy smiled at her oldest, dearest friend.

  “No, sweet one. Mr. Yoop is a crafty old cannibal, and if you go there is a chance, however small, that the wicked giant could get you out of your belt. If that happened, you might end up in his pot, and he might end up on my throne.”

  “He wouldn’t fit,” the farm girl replied.

  “Perhaps not,” Ozma agreed. “We won’t chance it, though. I’ll send a party of people he can’t eat to deal with him. Who among my not-meat subjects is at court?”

  “Hmmm, lets see.” Dorothy pulled a scroll from the pocket of her smock. She’d been Ozma’s intelligence secretary for decades now. “Scraps and Scarecrow are still at the corn palace, and haven’t been back for months. Haven’t left his crib for months, that anybody’s noticed. Jack Pumpkinhead should be back soon, he always comes in between planting and harvest, but he’s not here yet. I don’t think he’d be right for the job anyway.” Ozma nodded her head in agreement. “Nick Chopper’s just come from the Winkie Country, and he brought the Tin Soldier with him. They’ve both had quite a polishing. The Glass Cat is around somewhere, of course … and the Sawhorse is in his stable, naturally.”

  “Yes, that’s enough.” Ozma tapped her perfect lips thoughtfully. “Nick Chopper knows that forest, he cut wood in it for years before he was tin. He can go, and the Soldier as well. The Glass Cat too, of course. She can scout, there’s no where in Oz she hasn’t been. They’d best take the sawhorse and the red wagon.” She looked at Dorothy, who was trying not to pout. “See to that, sweetling, while I get the wizard to prepare something for Mr. Yoop.”

  “Of course, Ozma dear.” Dorothy gave the magic picture another glance. “Ung! The Munchkin Queen won’t care for that!”

  Just when Gob Ghab didn’t think things could get any worse his crown came loose from Bosky Boq’s head, which floated to the surface.

  “… stinking result of a gang of Winkies and a Gillikin crone. Dung pated, oversized—””

  “Who are you? The King asked.

  “Huh?” the other head started. “I’m Bosky Boq, champion wrestler of Oz. Who the hell are you two?”

  “I’m Nemi Omsbi; my father has a farm south of Munchkin City. The other is our King, Gob Ghab the First.” Gob was amazed at the amount of sarcasm the girl could get out of half a face.

  “That explains the crown,” Boq said. “Hey, are those yours? Nice tits.”

  “Yes, they’re mine. They’ve been stewing in here so long they’ve swollen up.”

  “It’s as hot as a nome’s smelter in here.” Boq declared.

  “Tell me about it,” Nemi managed to say, just as the rest of her cheek sloughed off. “I was going to ask, since we don’t have much else to do, could you teach me to swear like that?”

  “Sure.”

  “Now, Miss Omsbi,” Gob said. “What would your father say to your learning to swear?”

  “Nothing compared to what he’ll say when he finds out what you let happen to me!” the farm girl replied. “You’re the King! You’re supposed to protect the Munchkin people. What were you doing while that giant ate my ass?”

  “Floating in the pot.” Gob replied.

  “The giant ate your ass?” asked Boq.

  “Yes.”

  “Can’t fault his taste.” The wrestler’s head was bobbing alongside Nemi’s chest. He suckered up to it like a leech and bit off a bit. “Or yours.”

  ‘Stop that!” Nemi cried.

  “Why should the giant get it all?” Boq asked.

  Nemi let out a long, detailed string of invective detailed the wrestler’s ancestry, eating habits and sexual proclivities, going both forward and backward through several generations.

  “. . . to wallow in the puked-up remains of your own feces while fornicated with your mother’s children!”

  “See,” Boq said, “there’s nothing too it.”

  The lid rose off the pot and Mr. Yoop grinned down at them.

  “Now my soup’s smelling sweet. I think that it is time to eat.” The giant stood over the pot, fork in one hand and a huge ladle in the other. Nemi and the wrestler began to swear but the giant just grinned and ladled Nemi’s head into his mouth. She screamed as he slowly slurped the remaining flesh from her face.

  Bosky Boq fell silent as the giant crunched her skull in his jaws. If Gob had still been attached to his stomach he would have vomited. “Mmmm.” Said the giant as he thrust his fork at the wrestler’s head. Boq let out a spray of broth to dodge and the giant ended up spearing a larger chunk.

  “Hey, that’s my chest!” exclaimed the King. Mr. Yoop just grinned as he bit off a large chunk. He slurped as he ate, and pieces dropped out of his mouth and off his beard to fall back into the cauldron and onto their faces. He missed Bosky with the fork again but caught him up in the ladle.

  Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch

  Gob Ghab was alone in the pot. Oh, bits and pieces of the
others remained. Nemi’s chest, Bosky Boq’s ridiculously muscular thighs and buttocks, the King’s own rather spindly knees and calves. The pot was two-thirds empty before Mr. Yoop had eaten his fill.

  “I think I’ll cook you down to stock. The others have all filled me up.”

  “Hey,” Gob called. “That didn’t rhyme!”

  The giant shrugged and spat one of Nemi Omsbi’s teeth into his eye. The lid clattered down, and the Munchkin King boiled alone in the dark.

  “Slow down!” The Glass Cat shouted. “Its just ahead here, beyond the bend.”

  The cat hated traveling in Ozma’s wagon, especially when the Sawhorse was in a hurry. There were no limits to the wooden beast’s speed, but the wagon could only go so fast and remain upright. Every time she was forced to travel in it she was sure she’d be dashed against the road as if shot from a cannon and shatter into a thousand pieces of glass. In fact she was certain the Sawhorse disliked her, and would like nothing better than to smear her pretty pink brains all over the road’s yellow bricks.

  Gold-shod hooves slowed from a blur to a rickety trot just as they came to the curve, and the Glass cat had managed to survive another insane journey. Both tin-men had secured a wrist to the wagon’s rail with a silk rope but the only thing that frightened the Glass cat more than being thrown from the wagon was being thrown down on the road with it tied to her, and so she was secured to the seat-cushion only by her sharp glass claws. She was happy to get off.

  “This way,” she started off into the woods almost before the Tin Soldier had cut the rope holding him and the Woodsman to the wagon.

  “Wait for us,” the Woodsman said.

  “Ozma said to hurry,” the cat replied.

  “Yes, we know.” This from the soldier. “We’re coming.”

  The two tin men clacked off into the woods right at her heels.

  They made good time under the trees, what with the two tin men’s tireless sword and axe making quick work of the brush. With all the waking and clattering of metal limbs, the Glass cat didn’t see how Mr. Yoop could miss their coming, but when they found the enormous hickory tree with the huge iron pot cooking under it, the giant was no where around.

  “He must have gone off,” said the soldier, “to hunt more victims.”

  “Those poor people,” the woodsman cried.

  “Now, don’t start.” The Glass cat admonished as she climbed on top of the giant’s table. “Go see who’s left in the pot.”

  It took both tin-men to lift off the lid. King Gob Ghab’s head sat miserably on top of his dented crown amid a sea of boiling gravy and body parts.

  “Who is it?” the head inquired.

  “Don’t worry,” the Tin woodsman said. “Ozma sent us.”

  “Yes,” the Glass cat added from the table. “We’re from the government, and we’re here to help you.”

  The Tin Soldier looked over the rim of the pot.

  “Where’s Mr. Yoop?”

  “Not in here,” King Ghab replied.

  “We’ll have to wait until he returns,” the Tin Woodsman said. “Let’s hide.”

  “What about me?” Gob asked. “Get me out first, don’t leave me!”

  “You’re already pretty well cooked,” observed the soldier. “We don’t want to alert the giant by disturbing anything.”

  “At least fish out my head,” pleaded the King. “So it isn’t devoured like poor Nemi Omsbi’s and that wrestler fellow’s”

  ‘No time,” the Glass cat declared. “I think I hear the giant now.”

  The Tin Woodsman stepped behind the hickory tree while the Tin Soldier eased back into a holly bush across the camp from it. The Glass Cat used her strong, sharp claws to scamper up the tree and out onto a branch high overhead. For all the noise the tin men made walking when they stood still they were very quiet indeed, which was to the good as not a minute later Mr. Yoop came out of the forest with a familiar wizened figure wrapped in his grip.

  Unc Nunkie, beloved of Ojo the Lucky and a favorite at Ozma’s court, had been quietly tending his farm on the other side of Munchkin City when the giant had snatched him up. He still had his old hoe in his hands, its handle tangled in his long grey beard inside the giant’s hand. Seeing this the Tin Woodsman sprang forward, his axe a blur in his right hand, and shouted,

  “Unhand that farmer, you wicked, gluttonous giant!”

  Mr. Yoop shifted Unc Nunkie to his left hand and said,

  “You, I remember from my cage! You’ll be the next to feel my rage!” He reached for the Woodsman, who promptly brought his axe around and severed the giant’s little finger. Mr. Yoop snatched his hand back, launched a kick that caught the Woodsman’s arm, sending both it and his axe off into the trees. Poor Nick Chopper sat down in surprise, staring at where his arm should be.

  Mr. Yoop wasn’t given time to gloat. The Tin Soldier stepped out of the bushes behind him and ran his saber as high as he could reach into the giant’s backside. He was just short of reaching the giant’s buttocks and instead sliced through his trousers to impale a more delicate area.

  “Ahroo!” Bellowed the giant, who dropped Unc Nunkie and bent to clasp both hands on his jewels. This brought his head directly beneath the Glass cat, which landed on his face just as the tears began to fill his eyes.

  “Aarrgh!” The giant lashed out with heels and hands, knocking the Tin Soldier back into the holly bush while tearing The Glass Cat, along with most of his eye lid, off his face. Lucky for he cat, glass can be quite slippery when covered in blood and she managed to wiggle out of his wounded hand before the giant dashed her into the tree. She landed lightly and quickly dashed from the clearing.

  The Tin Woodsman made good use of their distraction, removing his tin hat and picking up the object he’d carried there. A golden egg, entrusted to him by Ozma and the little wizard. Somewhat awkwardly he tossed it at the giant, and it shattered on his belt buckle.

  “No!” shouted the giant, all thought of rhyme dashed from his head as he rapidly began to shrink. He managed to straighten up some and began to run when Unc Nunkie thrust the hoe between his feet. He tripped and sprawled out on the ground. Writhing in pain and terror, he began to change shape as well as size. His limbs retracted and he sprouted scales. In less time than it takes to tell he was a snake, not much longer than a tall man’s leg.

  He tried to slither into the forest, but the Glass cat had known what Ozma had prepared for him and expected this. She’d come ‘round the camp as she ran, and bounded into the clearing to pounced the snake, pinning it to the ground with her hard, sharp claws. The snake coiled around her and tried to bite, but her glass body was much less vulnerable to snakes than giants, and she kept him pinned until the Tin Soldier came over to take him in hand.

  The Yoop-snake bit the soldier as well, with little more effect than to mar the fine polishing of his arm he bit him over and over until, in despair of his fine finish, the soldier shoved the snake’s own tail into its mouth. This didn’t deter the former giant one bit. He chomped down on his own tail, worried at it a moment, and bit down again a little farther along. Within a minute he’d downed half his own body, which was no longer a mass of coils but now a single loop. The loop got smaller and smaller until it was balanced in the soldier’s hand, and then it disappeared entirely.

  The Tin Soldier stared at his empty palm. So did the Tin Woodsman. The Glass cat stared up at the back of his outstretched hand and, after a moment asked,

  “What happened?”

  “He swallowed himself whole,” said the soldier.

  “I don’t think that was part of Ozma’s plan,” said the woodsman.

  “Someone, please, let me out!” Gob Ghab cried faintly from the cauldron.

  “You two empty that,” the Glass Cat indicated the huge metal pot with an ear. “While I go find your missing arm.”

  The two tin men shouldered the cauldron over, knocking the lid off and spilling its contents all over the grass. Gob Ghab gasped with the sudden relief, th
e cool verge seemed like heaven after his time in the pot. At Nick Chopper’s suggestion Unc Nunkie began sorting out the various pieces.

  “Looks like we won’t be needing the tinsmith,” the old farmer said, “There’s a whole person here, or parts enough for one anyways.”

  The Glass Cat emerged from the trees with the woodsman’s arm, still clutching his axe, in her mouth. She dropped it at the woodsman’s feet.

  “That’s good,” she said. “Dorothy packed some flesh glue under the wagon’s seat. She thought it might be useful.”

  “We still have to visit the tinsmith,” The woodsman said. “I’ll need him to fix my arm. I haven’t seen him in years, you know.”

  “Let’s fix King Ghab up first,” the cat said.

  King Gob Ghab was worried. Being king of the Munchkins wasn’t a very hard job, usually, but it did require being able to command a certain respect from one’s subjects. Gob Ghab suspected he no longer had that respect. In fact he suspected he was a laughingstock. Nick Chopper and the others from Emerald City had done what they could for him. He supposed it was better than ending up in a giant’s belly. It was just that there’d been so little left to choose from when he was rescued.

  His head now sat on Nemi Omsbi’s full and finely formed chest. None of his own arms had survived, only one from each of the others. The wrestlers left arm and the goose-girl’s right. He had them both, but unfortunately the wrestler had been right-handed, the girl left-handed. Now both his arms were so uncoordinated he could barely dress. He couldn’t manage tableware beyond a spoon, and so the Queen alone dined with important Munchkin citizens. She didn’t seem displeased with that.

  The queen was less happy with the rest of him. The only other original Gob-parts had been his lower legs and feet. His upper legs, belly and thighs all came from Bosky Boq. Along with his package. That was the one part the queen did like, which vexed Gob all the more because he’d thought she liked his original equipment so, and she didn’t seem to miss it at all.