by Unknown
Dorothy closed her eyes and pictured the stony forms, covered to the elbows in sand, leaning forward in their desperation. As she shook her head, the tea whistle blew, and the Wizard got up to fetch the cups.
“Well, the world is not what it used to be,” she said.
“Here or there?” he asked, pouring the hot water.
She looked around at the rug, the tablecloth, his smoking jacket—all threadbare. There was a crack in the glass fixture of the gas lamp. The books and knickknacks on the shelves hadn’t been dusted in an age. “I guess both,” she said. “More there than here, though.”
“I had my spies,” said the Wizard, dipping the tea ball as if he was fishing for snappers. A delicious fruit smell pervaded his parlor.
She reached for the gun but caught herself at the last second and directed her hand to her face, where she scratched a nonexistent itch. “How much do you know?” she asked.
He set her tea down in front of her and then his at his place. He took a seat and smoothed the front of the smoking jacket over his gut. “From your earliest days after you last left Oz. The year you were twelve and began working in the leather trimming factory, your hunger, your poverty, your innocence. No parents to guide you or look after you.” He scowled, and she almost believed he meant it.
Dorothy nodded. “I suffered for my decision to go back. Fourteen-hour shifts, a bowl of gruel, the heat, the constant grinding noise and darkness, the groping hands of filthy men. All that while carrying in my head a knowledge of the gleaming Land of Oz. Every fall was made harsher, every disgrace more obvious for having traveled the road of yellow brick.”
“Why did you leave?” he asked. “You could have stayed here and never even grown old. Been eleven forever.”
“I thought you said it didn’t work that way anymore.”
“Yes, because you left. Ozma was hitching the reins of that enchantment to the magic of your youth and energy. You were powering, like a generator, the immortality of Oz. You can’t understand what a profound effect it had on the merry old Land.”
“I had no idea,” said Dorothy.
“For everything that happened to you in Kansas City, something happened here in Oz.” He paused and took a sip of tea. “Not all of it good.”
“Such as?”
“Back when you were working at the shoe store, a job you loathed if my spies were correct, you met a young man who also worked in the store. On your lunch hours you would go down to the store’s basement, into a small alcove behind the oil burner, and in total darkness you would kiss. Every time you kissed, one of the Citizens of China Plate Land here in Oz shattered, and when first his hand found a way into your undergarments, scores of children abruptly died in Quadling Country.”
She tried to stand, but as she rose, he reached out and gently touched her shoulder. She sat back into the chair.
“When your wealthy husband cheated on you, that, my dear, was calamitous. Your shame inspired that fiery ball of a Head out there, that roiling cloud of snarling electricity, to break from its moorings and fly out over the Land, Citizens and cattle disintegrating in its maw. It took all the humbug in Oz to get it back under my control. But even that time held no candle to your quiet later years. Secretary at a shoe factory. Fifteen long years of monotony, and oh how that dimmed the colors of Oz and made its magic stupid.”
She pulled the gun.
The Wizard took a sip of tea and laughed.
“Where are the Munchkins?” she said.
“Those ungrateful troglodytes deserted me.”
“Did they flee to Gillikin Country?”
“I’ll tell you where they are. They’re out in the Deadly Desert, no doubt turned to leather stone, seized as if crawling, hands outstretched, fingers frozen only inches from those of the fossils from Kansas and Nebraska. Why did you leave?”
Her gun hand trembled. “I didn’t want to be eleven forever. I spent four years here as an eleven-year-old living on my own. The last I was truly happy was when Aunt Em and Uncle Henry came to stay for a while. Do you remember how I showed them around? Before they left to return to Kansas, Aunt Em drew me aside one day and whispered in my ear, ‘You’ve got to get out.’ That was all she said. It made me wonder what twelve would be like.”
“What’s the gun for, if I might ask?”
“I’m going to shoot you.”
“I see,” he said. He winced and turned away from the barrel. “Now that you’ve used me up, before you do what you will, I beg you to tell me what happened in the last years. My spies deserted me along with the others some time ago.”
“That secretary job went on and on, and then one day, Mr. Steers, my boss, called me into his office. Sitting there in front of his desk was a young blond woman, very pretty. I hated her instantly. Her smile was like the Nome King’s. Mr. Steers motioned for me to take the chair next to this woman, and he introduced us. Her name was Edna. She would be his second secretary. I would be in competition with her for two months, and whichever one of us did better would get the job I’d already had for years.
“I worked so diligently—late nights, early mornings. She came late every day, and then he would call her into his office for, as he always said loud enough for the rest of the office staff to hear, ‘dictation.’ Once I put my ear to the door when they were in there and heard her grunting and him calling out to the Lord. I could already see the outcome of the competition. Of course I was laid off. The day I left, Steers called me into his office. Edna was sitting close to him, preparing to take dictation. He reached into his pocket and threw two crumpled twenty-dollar bills on his desk. ‘Nice knowing you,’ he said. I scooped up the money and left. With it, I bought this gun.
“Two nights later, I followed them to the local theater and sat three rows back from them in the dark, watching The Lost Weekend, starring Ray Milland and Jane Wyman. When the movie was over, I let them leave first. I kept my face in my box of popcorn, and they never noticed me. I eventually followed. As they strolled down the street to where Steers had parked, I picked up my step and passed them, walking fast. I had my hair up under a hat, and I was dressed in clothes I’d never have worn to the office. Once I got a few feet in front of them, I turned, lifted the pistol, and pulled the trigger. The bullet went right into his left eye. He screamed, and I put one in his throat. Blood burbled out and he dropped.
“Edna took off running in her high heels. I caught her by her long blond hair and jerked her head back. She made a sound like the pigs did under the slaughter knife on Aunt Em and Uncle Henry’s farm. I shot her twice in the ass to take the fight out of her, and then I gave her two in the back of the head. She was on the ground but still twitching when I took to the alleys. I made it back to my place just in time. As I slipped the silver shoes on and stored the pistol in my briefcase, the police cars pulled up in front of my building. The cops were running up the stairs when I called out for Oz, and I was gone by the time they burst through the door.”
“Harrowing,” he said.
“Believe me, I enjoyed it.”
“Tsk-tsk,” said the Wizard. “Did you never know happiness back in the world? Not even for a few minutes? You were married for a full decade. What about love?”
“My husband was wealthy from wheat futures. We had everything, but everything in Kansas was like a box of broken toys compared to Oz, where one of my best friends was a fellow with a pumpkin for a head, and all our adventures ended brilliantly.”
“Did you love your husband?”
Dorothy cocked the trigger and brought her other hand up to steady her aim. “How could we be in love? I was daydreaming about Oz, and he was daydreaming about money. When the bottom fell out of the wheat market, when the country was turned to dust by his greed and his dreams rotted in a matter of days, he grew so angry. He took his rage out on me. When Toto came to my defense, barking and maneuvering to get between us, he beat the poor dog to death with his cane. Not long after, he leaped to his death from the widow’s walk atop th
e mansion.”
“Leaped?” said the Wizard and cocked an eyebrow.
“He was a runtish man with a bad leg,” said Dorothy. “A good shove was all it took. His lawyers threatened to implicate me, and for their silence I forfeited whatever was left after the market crashed.”
“And how is this all my fault?”
“Because you’re the secret humbug behind it.”
“Preposterous,” he said and stood up.
Dorothy pulled the trigger twice, but there were no blasts from the gun. No bullets emerged, just two small black moths, which fluttered from the barrel and lazily wove their way toward the ceiling. She dropped the pistol on the table and stared as if in shock. “Oz is hell, isn’t it?” she screamed.
The Wizard laughed so hard his stomach shook and his cheeks grew red. As his glee subsided, he clapped his hands and whistled.
Dorothy, trembling, turned in her chair to see a half dozen Winged Monkeys gallop into the room through the curtained entrance. They snarled and spit and barely stood at bay, awaiting the Wizard’s command.
“Fly her out to the middle of the Deadly Desert and drop her,” he commanded.
She leaped from the chair, but they were already on her, their hairy knuckled fingers clamping her arms and legs. Their brutal faces in hers. The stink of them swirled with the action of their wings and made her weak.
“Here’s one adventure that won’t end brilliantly,” he said to her. “Fly!” he commanded.
The pack of growling creatures swept her toward the exit. Dorothy whimpered, and as she fainted, she heard the Wizard say, “There’s no place like home.”
THE COBBLER OF OZ
BY JONATHAN MABERRY
-1-
“I need a pair of traveling shoes.”
When the cobbler heard the voice, he peered up over the tops of his half-glasses, but there was no one there. The counter that separated him from the rest of the town square was littered with all the tools of his trade—hammers and scissors, awls and stout needles, glue and grommets. However, beyond the edge of the counter there was nothing.
Well, that was not precisely the case, because beyond the empty space that was beyond the counter were a thousand chattering, noisy, moving, bustling, shopping, buying, selling, yelling, laughing people. They were there in all the colors of the rainbow; green was the most common color here in the Emerald City, but the other colors were well represented, too. There were Winkies in a dozen shades of yellow; Munchkins in two dozen shades of blue; Quadlings in scarlets and crimsons and tomato reds; and Gillikins in twilight purples and plum purples and the purple of ripe eggplants.
But there was no one who seemed to own the tiny voice that had spoken.
The cobbler set down the boot he was repairing for a Palace guard.
“Hello?” he asked.
“Sir,” said the voice of the invisible person, “I need a pair of traveling shoes, if you please.”
“I do indeed please,” said the cobbler, “or I would if I could see your feet or indeed any part of you. Though, admittedly, your feet are necessary to any further discussion on the matter of shoes, traveling or otherwise.”
“But I’m right here,” said the voice. “Can’t you see me at all?”
The cobbler stood up and leaned over, first looking right and then looking left and finally looking down, and there stood a figure.
It was a figure even in the cobbler’s mind, because he could not call the figure a man or a woman because that would never be correct. Nor could he call it a boy or a girl, because neither of those labels would hang correctly on the person who stood there wringing its tiny hands.
“I thought you were an invisible little girl,” said the cobbler.
“No, sir,” said the figure. “Neither invisible nor a girl. Though I am little, and to my own people I am a girl, for I am not yet fully grown.”
“I see that you are quite little, my dear. But why stand down there, where no one but a giraffe can look over and see you? Why not fly up here onto the counter? There’s plenty of space,” he said, pushing some of his tools aside.
The little figure looked sad—or at least the cobbler supposed that she looked sad, because he had very little experience reading the expressions of persons of her kind. She turned around so that he could see her back. Then she raised her arms to her sides, and with a soft grunt of effort, expanded the pair of miniature wings.
The wings were lovely to see. Gold and tan in color, with nicely formed primary feathers, as well as all the requisite secondary and tertiary feathers, and quite attractive emarginations.
However, upon seeing the feathers, the cobbler felt his mouth turn into a small round O, and he even spoke that aloud. “Oh,” he said, faintly and with an equal mix of surprise, and consternation and pity.
The wings slumped, and the little figure turned.
“I know,” she said sadly. “They look perfect, but they’re so small that they wouldn’t lift a pigeon, let alone a Monkey.”
“Ah,” said the cobbler. It was not a great change in his response, but it conveyed a different emotion—sympathy. A Winged Monkey whose wings were so small she could never ever fly.
The little Monkey fluttered her wings so they beat with the blurred speed of a hummingbird, but there was no corresponding change in the elevation of the owner. All that the cobbler could see was a bit of a flutter in the brocade vest the Monkey-child wore, stirred by a faint breeze from those stunted wings.
Once more the wings sagged back in defeat, and the little figure seemed to deflate with them. She hung her head for a moment, shaking it sadly.
“My sisters and my brothers all have normal wings, even my littlest brother, who is only two. Momma has to tie a tether to him to keep him from flying out of the nursery window. And Dadda has great wings. Big ones, with a pattern like a hunting falcon. He can fly way above the tops of the tallest trees in the forest and then soar down among the trunks, swooping past our windows. Sometimes he flies past and without even a flutter or a pause, he’ll toss walnuts and coconuts in through the window, and they land on our beds as if placed there by a slow and careful hand.” She sighed and shook her head. “My wings are almost the same size now as they were after I was born. They grew a little and then stopped, but I never stopped growing, and I’m still growing. Soon I’ll be full-grown, and I’ll still have wings that can barely lift a small bird.”
Then she drew in a breath and looked up at the cobbler, who still leaned forward over the counter.
“And now you see why I need a pair of traveling shoes.”
-2-
The cobbler stepped out from behind his market stall and addressed the little Winged Monkey. He extended a large and callused hand.
“My name is Bucklebelt,” he said.
The Winged Monkey curtseyed. “I’m Nyla of the Green Forest Clan. It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Bucklebelt.”
“And a pleasure to make yours, Miss Nyla.” He tilted his head toward his counter. “As it is rather difficult to hold a conversation with you with my counter in the way, and entirely impossible to measure you for shoes, traveling or otherwise, may I assist you by lifting you onto the counter?”
Nyla sighed again and cast a sad glance around the bustling square. “I suppose everyone who is likely to laugh at a nearly wingless Winged Monkey has already had their fill of snortles and chuckles, I don’t see how being lifted onto a counter can cause me any greater embarrassment.”
He winked at her. “If anyone so much as sniggers, I will tonk them all a good one on their noggins in the hopes that it helps them remember their manners. This is the Emerald City after all, and the Wizard requires that everyone has manners.” Now he sighed. “But of course we both know that for some folks, manners come and go like the phases of the moon.”
She nodded, knowing full well that this was true. Some of the other Winged Monkeys her age laughed and made jokes about what they called her “butterfly” wings, but they never did
that when the adults were around.
With her permission Bucklebelt lifted Miss Nyla onto the counter. He did it gently and made sure not to set her down on anything sharp. Then he went back around to his side of the counter and climbed onto a stool, for in truth even though he was a grown man, the cobbler was not a large man. Only parts of him were large—his nose was a red bulb, his eyes were as big as the largest blueberries in the southern groves, and his eyebrows stood up like giant caterpillars.
For her part Nyla was graceful and small, with dark brown fur, a soft gray muzzle, and big brown eyes that were the exact color of polished oak. She wore a vest stitched with every color from the Land of Oz, along with a leather satchel that was hung slantwise across her body. The leather was dyed red and green and delicately stitched with a pattern of ripe bananas under lustrous green leaves.
The cobbler noticed the bag and nodded his approval. “That’s good work,” he said. “And if it’s not the work of Salander the Leathermaker then I’m a Munchkin.”
“It is!” she cried, delighted at his recognition. The bag was Nyla’s prized possession. “My grandmomma bought this for me when I started school. You wouldn’t believe how many things I can keep in here.”
“Oh yes I would,” he said with a knowing smile. “Salander is the genius of our age when it comes to leather goods. There’s a saying that if it’s a Salander bag, then you can put six things in a bag made for five.”
“Or even seven or eight,” she said.
He nodded. “Your grandmomma must be shrewd and wise. That bag will never wear out, and you’ll never lose anything you put in it. There’s no better place to keep your hopes and dreams.”