by Ryk E. Spoor
Ryk E. Spoor
Polychrome
A Romantic Fantasy
Iris Mirabilis Press
This is a work of fiction. None of the characters and events portrayed in this novel are intended to represent actual persons living or dead.
Copyright © 2015 by Ryk E. Spoor
All rights reserved
Published by Iris Mirabilis Press
Cover art by Bob Eggleton
Acknowledgements:
For his help in both setting up the Kickstarter and bringing Polychrome to actual publication, a huge thank-you to Lawrence Watt-Evans;
For providing an awesome cover, a big cheer to Bob Eggleton!
For lovely interior illustrations, applause for Morineko-Zion!
For her laser-guided editing, thanks to Barb Caffrey!
And for encouraging me until I had the guts to do this, my beta-readers!
Dedication:
This book is dedicated to two people:
First, to L. Frank Baum, whose vision of the far-distant lands of Faerie became the single largest written influence in my life from the time I was about six until I was in junior high, and whose images and characters remain some of the most beloved of all in my heart.
And second, to Kathleen Moffre-Spoor, who had to put up with the competition from a phantom rainbow-dancing girl for months… and whose marriage to me gave me the understanding of what a romance really is.
Foreword:
The written universe of Oz is immense, complex, often contradictory, and known well only to a few, now. This was not always the case; in its heyday, the Oz books were the equivalent of Harry Potter — constant bestsellers, translated into fifty languages around the globe, eagerly awaited by legions of young — and not-so-young — fans. But today, most people who know of Oz at all know it from the classic MGM movie starring Judy Garland.
Polychrome is based, not on the movie universe (which is, in fact, still in copyright) but on the fourteen original Oz novels written by L. Frank Baum, and mostly illustrated by John R. Neill. Those who are curious about the original stories, and wish to see what Baum wrote — and what I have worked from — can find the original fourteen novels for free on Gutenberg (www.gutenberg.org) .
The major difference between the movie and the book is simple: in the movie, Oz is a dream, a psychological tool for Dorothy to deal with her frustration surrounding her Kansas life.
In the book, it is all entirely real. Dorothy Gale really is whisked away to the fairyland of Oz, endures hardship and the very real threat of injury or death, and gathers a group of staunch friends who help her win through despite all odds, and in the end she confronts adversaries head-on with determination, stubborn will, and — perhaps her most powerful weapon — kindness. In short, she grows up, despite being a very young girl at the time, and returns home to Kansas to rejoin her bereaved aunt and uncle as more than a dependent — she becomes their support and friend, though still young and innocent.
Dorothy returns to Oz multiple times, having many adventures and meeting even more strange and wonderful people, before eventually settling there forever with her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry. Other mortals, too, become adventurers in the fairylands surrounding Oz and eventually visit that central fairyland itself: Betsy Bobbin and her mule Hank, Trot and Cap’n Bill, the eternal lost boy Button-Bright, and more, as well as natives of Oz and the other surrounding lands such as Ojo the Lucky, Prince Inga of Pingaree, the jolly King Rinkitink, and more sinister figures such as the Nome King (and yes, “Nome” is the correct spelling in Baum’s works)… and, of course, the Daughter of the Rainbow itself, the beautiful and ever-cheerful Polychrome.
In Polychrome I have attempted to write a story of Oz as Baum depicted it… adjusted for the fact that Baum was both human, and writing for children, not adults, and thus some things had to be understood, or re-interpreted, in view of what an adult would have seen and known. I don’t think it is necessary to have read the Oz novels before reading Polychrome — several of my beta readers were not readers of Oz — but if you have been an “Ozite” in your heart, I hope Polychrome will help you enter that realm once more, if in a slightly older fashion.
Come then, and visit Oz anew… or for the first time.
Ryk E. Spoor
September, 2014
Polychrome Glory
Prologue 1.
The grey Dove, slightly larger than the others, sat silent on the branch, a branch tinged with the color of twilight shadows and pre-dawn sky. Despite the mildness of the day, the perfect time of near-awakening of the world, it did not join with its brethren in the cooing, mournful yet soft and comforting sounds that such birds usually made.
The other doves paid him no heed. They had long since learned that he was not at all like they, and while he took some small comfort in their presence, he spoke little and sang not at all. They cooed and chirruped softly, filling the air with sleepy morning sound.
The large Dove abruptly sat up higher. There was movement there, through the deserted Gillikin forests where few ever came, carrying with it a flash of green brilliance rarely seen in these purple-tinged lands.
For the first time in…years? Decades? He had long lost track of time, but it had been long, long indeed; but now the Dove gave vent to a laugh, a rippling chortle, as the moving creature came full into view.
And it was well worth a laugh or two; shambling through the undergrowth with a rolling gait, sometimes on two splay-footed feet, sometimes making use of knuckles at the end of long arms, was a brilliantly green monkey or ape, covered with soft silky emerald hair, with a face as comical as a circus clown.
But the glint in the dark green eyes was far from amused, especially as the other doves took up the laugh and sent it rustling through the forest, a chorus of mirth. “Oh, now, do I look so amusing, little doves?” The voice was soft, gentle, unexpectedly feminine.
“Coo! Coo! You do, do!” they chorused.
“Then I wonder if you find this amusing, as well,” the Monkey said gently. With surprising speed and viciousness, it began whipping stones and branches from the forest floor up at them. These were not small objects of rebuke, either, but large, well-aimed missiles, meant to knock their targets from their perches, to maim or worse.
Two doves were smashed from the branches with screeches of astonishment and pain; the others took flight in terror and consternation, unable to comprehend the violence so rarely seen in Oz.
The large grey Dove, having read those dark eyes in the moment before, had merely moved to the other side of the trunk. He now peered back around, to find the Monkey already regarding him speculatively.
“Now you’re a strange one, Dove,” the Monkey said. “Not only do you not fly from me, you seem familiar with violence, so that it frightens you not at all.”
Seeing no missile forthcoming, the large Dove hopped back onto his accustomed branch and studied the green Monkey curiously. Finally, he said, “Had I been born a dove, it would be otherwise.”
“Oh-HO!” cried the other, and did a short, capering dance. “So you are one transformed as I!”
“Transformed?” The Dove could not quite keep the sound of envy from his voice. “At least your shape leaves you hands, Monkey, hands and a shape which can live something of a civilized life. What of me, bereft of all but speech that was formerly mine?”
The Monkey’s smile was humorless, an unsettling and half-mad expression which made the Dove almost decide to flee. “Oh, how very reasonable that sounds, little Dove-who-is-not, yet how little it shows you understand. Those who did this to me knew well what they did. As a Dove, you have no way to attempt anything you did as a Man — for a Man you were, I think? Yes, of course, you were. Yet as a Monkey I have hands, yet not the delicate and sure ha
nds I had once, hands that could weave and sew, and make gestures of supreme power and control. They taunt me, misshapen and useless things, fit only for feeding me… or,” its eyes glinted with sadistic humor again, “throwing missiles at those who mock me.”
The Dove shrugged its wings. “With hands such as those I could manage, at the least, to end this transformation and return myself to human form. Nor do I particularly worry about mocking others, as it is one of the few amusements remaining to me.”
“Indeed? Yet you hid from my little barrage. I think you speak loudly but not so honestly, little Dove.”
For answer, the Dove darted down and grasped the Monkey’s tail in its beak and gave an effort, lunging upward. The Monkey gave a howl of pain and astonishment as it was hurled upwards into the trees by a strength vastly greater than any Dove should possess. “I speak as I wish and act as I wish, within these pathetic limits, Monkey. Now your amusement begins to pall, and I wish you would leave me to myself.”
But the Monkey’s expression had faded from pain and anger to intense interest. “Such strength…even an ordinary human being could not have done that. Who were you, Dove? Who were you, that even in this form you have such power, and who was it that managed to transform you to this harmless-seeming guise?”
“You would know? Very well, I will tell you, for all of this has made it come clear for me again, after years of trying, trying to forget. Once I was a man dwelling in the land of the Herkus, a humble and ordinary cobbler, a shoemaker by trade. But that was a trade I despised, for my forefathers had all been mighty wizards, and that should have been my trade as well. Instead my father, accursed be his name, went wandering away, leaving me behind with no instructions, no knowledge, and nothing to my name but our house. I was forced to find a trade that was both needed and which I could do, and in shoemaking I found it — something requiring attention, and focus, a delicacy of touch, yet strength as well. But I hated it, for I should have been great and respected.
“But finally fortune smiled upon me — or so I thought — and I found a hidden cache of magical instruments and recipes within my own home. I quickly mastered these, and discovered many other secrets known to no others; I thus gave up my old profession and withdrew to a mighty and solid Wicker Castle which I constructed through magic alone. I then discovered that the great and wise Ozma,” and never had words been uttered in so venomous and sarcastic a tone as the Dove spoke the last four, “had decreed all magic save that of herself and her two lackeys, Glinda the Good and the Wizard of Oz, was forbidden. As I recognized that one day they would come against me unless I stopped my practice of magic — and as I had no intention of doing that at all — I resolved to prevent them from acting against me by striking at them first.
“I arranged to steal all of the objects of magical power they owned, and their notes and recipes, so that they would be effectively powerless. Ozma’s power comes from being a fairy princess, and of course cannot be removed, but she cannot use her power for injuring others, and I judged that she could be of no threat to me if I could neutralize the others. By bad fortune she happened to discover me as I was removing all of her mystical treasures, and I was forced to kidnap her. After she began to drive me to distraction with her insistence that I surrender and be punished, I transformed her to a form both silent and distant.”
The Dove looked bitter and pensive for a moment. “But all my cleverness was for nothing. Two expeditions, through coincidence and luck — and, I will admit, perseverance and a certain cunning — eventually tracked me down. The Wizard, though bereft of much of his power, was still educated in magic and helped them through my defenses to the Castle.
“But still I would have defeated them, for I trapped them in my throne room; but there remained to them one magical device which — having been acquired only recently, as we of Oz tell time — I had known nothing of. That was the Magic Belt of the King of the Nomes, captured by the mortal girl Dorothy Gale; she had somehow acquired some small control over its vast powers and used it to first undo my enchantment, and then to transform me to the shape you see before you.” He glared at the Monkey defiantly.
The Monkey gave vent to a surprisingly lilting laugh. “Oh, my dear Dove, how very entertaining a story! I have heard something of it before, in the rumors of tales that echo back to us from the Mortal world. Yet I had heard you reformed and repented of your evil.”
It gave a screech more appropriate to a diving hawk than a Dove. “Repented? Of being deprived of my birthright and desiring only to ensure I could live as my ancestors had? All I regret is that I had not the knowledge to turn that thrice-accursed Dorothy Gale to stone and all her friends with her, ere she came to my door!”
“Oh, my dear, dear Dove, you cannot imagine how lovely those words are to hear. For know that I, too, am a victim of the mighty Ozma and her so-called justice.
“Once I was a simple housewife — a homemaker with no concerns or interests outside of my little valley. As I was also a Yookoohoo –” the Monkey smiled again as the Dove gave a start of surprise, “—I had no need of anything outside my valley. I kept to myself and invited no visitors.
“So when visitors did intrude on my valley — on my property — I felt it was not at all wrong for me to use them to assist me, since they had intruded upon my privacy without permission or warning.”
“Oh! Oh!” the Dove cried triumphantly. “I, too, have heard rumors of you in the same way, but it seems perhaps those were more clearly translated. You were once the Giantess, Mrs. Yoop, who captured two of the heroes of the realm, the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, as well as a mortal boy and one of the Fairies, and when they escaped was herself transformed — into a shape, it was said, that can never be shed.”
“You speak near enough the truth, Dove.” The Monkey studied him intently. “Yet no enchantment is truly unbreakable, and I know of ways it might be done. I cannot work the magic of a Yookoohoo in this form, for I have never taught myself the trick of working that magic in a form not that of a Giant or a Man. But other forms of magic I might, if only I had access to the tools thereof.”
The Dove was silent for long moments. Finally it shifted uneasily on the branch. “And if you had such access…?”
“Then,” the Monkey said softly, “I would be very grateful and willing to assist the one who could give me such access, and thus a form able to work that magic that is mine by right.”
The Dove shook his head. “Many are those who have tried this, including myself — the opposition of Ozma and her champions. They fail. They always fail.”
The Monkey chittered in frustration. “Yes. And Glinda… she would read of it in her Book.”
The Dove suddenly looked up. “Not true. Not true. So long as neither of us wore the form of a man or woman. The Book of Records sees only the actions of men and women, or Fairies and such that are very much like men and women. Of beasts it records not a word.”
The Monkey narrowed its gaze. “But as soon as we regained our forms…”
“Yes.” The Dove paused.
After a moment, the Monkey said, and its voice was soft, insistent, urgent, “But…if we made plans before we changed back…”
“We would have to repeat my original plan,” the Dove said slowly. “But this time we would have to prevent any from undoing what we have done.” He was tempted, but at the same time reluctant. I have spent so very long making myself accept what I have become. Dare I hope? Dare I act again?
“Could it be done?” The Monkey’s voice reminded him that this had once been a woman. A giantess, but a woman nonetheless.
“Oh, yes.” His voice grew stronger as things became clearer, as acid-strong hope burned away the acceptance of years. “Oh, certainly. They looted my castle, of course, but I was no more a fool than my ancestors. Copies I made of instruments and recipes, hid them in secret areas of my castle. They left the castle itself…and with your help, I could retrieve them. And then…”
“And then,” the Monk
ey said, so quietly it was like the whisper of his own thoughts, “and then we could regain all we have lost…and more.”
Prologue 2.
The door to the throne room was flung open. Framed in that huge portal was a delicate figure of a girl, fair hair wild and tangled in an unwonted manner, cap askew, gossamer garments actually rent, torn, grimy and smeared with red-brown stains that spoke of a grimmer origin.
The Rainbow Lord shot to his feet and started forward. “Polychrome!”
His eldest daughter walked — not danced, walked, with a heavy foot so unlike the tread that normally could leap from a blade of grass and leave the dew on it barely marred. “Father…Iris Mirabilis, my lord…I have returned…from the mission…on which you sent me.” She clasped a bundle to her with one arm, gripped it to her like death.
He caught the exhausted girl as she staggered; fairy princess or not, she had clearly reached her limits. His heart was filled with dread, and he truly knew fear; he had hoped the thefts, so like others in the past, had been something easily dealt with…but now…
“Forget the formalities, daughter mine. Are you injured? Be these stains of your blood?” The thought filled him with both rage and horror. None had dared truly injure one of his children for time out of mind — not that many even had the power to attempt it.