Oz Reimagined: New Tales from the Emerald City and Beyond (9 page)

I took the address and looked it up on a map. It was in an older, rundown part of the city. The trolley took a while to get there, and it was already dark when I arrived. But that allowed me to sneak around to the back of the house and look in through the windows. Only one room was lit, and in it was a man, rather old and stooped, sitting at a table and writing something in a book.

Well, he didn’t seem terribly frightening! And I knew what to do next. Just a few blocks from the house, close to the trolley stop where I had gotten off, was a diner. I asked the waitress if she had any rubber bands and then went into the bathroom and washed all the makeup off my face. I put my hair in two pigtails. When I came out, she looked at me curiously.

“I went to a party with my boyfriend,” I told her. “He’s in college—he doesn’t know I’m just in high school. But someone took my school uniform. I don’t know what to do. If I go home like this, my mom is going to kill me.”

“I used to do that,” she told me sympathetically. “Here, why don’t you take my sweater? And I’ve got some shoes you can borrow. You can tell her that someone accidentally took your uniform at gym, and you had to borrow clothes from another girl.”

“I could just kiss you!” I told her. Then I traded my hat and jacket and pumps for her sweater and a pair of
rubber-soled shoes. I looked at least five years younger. It’s a good thing I carry a leather postman’s bag instead of a silly little purse! In the dark I thought it would look enough like a school bag.

When I knocked on the door, the old man answered it and said, “Yes, my dear? What is it?”

“Mary Lang sent me,” I said, looking fearfully around as though afraid someone might have followed me. “She said you could help!”

“Oh goodness, come in, come in quickly,” he said. “Along that hallway to the back, where we can’t be seen.”

Well, I was alone in the dark house with him, but I wasn’t afraid. He looked so old, and not particularly strong. And you know I’ve taken jiu-jitsu.

I followed the hallway and found myself in a room at the back of the house. When he turned on the light, I saw that the curtains were drawn. There was a bed along one wall, a dresser, and a table with two chairs. Really, it was a perfectly ordinary room.

“You must be hungry,” he said. “What would you like to eat? Ask for anything—anything at all.” Laughing at him a little—surely this funny old man couldn’t produce anything I asked for—I said I would like a pork chop with mashed potatoes and peas. And then—you won’t believe this, Dottie, but it’s true—he pulled out a wand from inside his jacket, waved it over the table, and there it all was! With a glass of lemonade to drink. Of course I knew who he was immediately.

“You’re Oz, the Great and Terrible,” I said.

“Oh, I don’t go by that name anymore,” he said, smiling modestly. “I just go by Oscar, or Mr. Diggs if you prefer. To make up for the terrible deception I practiced on the Ozites, I spend my life helping Ozma in her great work.”

“And what work is that?” I asked.

“Why, helping girls like you and Mary,” he said. “By royal decree, any girl who asks for refuge in Oz is granted it. What did you say your name was again, my dear?”

I hadn’t said. “Sally Russell,” I told him. “Mary gave me your address so I could send her a letter. She didn’t know I would need it myself! But my uncle—he lives with us, and he’s such a frightening man! He—”

“You don’t need to tell me, my dear,” said the Wizard. “It’s a story I’ve heard many times, from girls very much like you. But there is a place and a purpose for you in Oz. Finish your dinner, and sleep here tonight—there is a nightgown under your pillow—and tomorrow we shall go to Oz!”

“How will we get there?” I asked him. “Aren’t there terrible dangers in the way?”

“Oh, we have our methods,” he said. “Don’t you worry. Just get some sleep. We have a long journey tomorrow.”

Well, Dottie, you can imagine what was going on in my mind! This was undeniably the Wizard: he had made a dinner appear before my eyes, and a very good dinner too! And he was taking girls who had run away from their families to Oz. That’s where all the girls were going. What a story this would make! It would be on the front page, to be sure. Imagine if I could go to Oz and interview Mary Lang!

I ate a bit of everything he had given me and then waited half an hour to see if it contained a sedative, but I felt perfectly fine, so I finished my dinner. Now I am sitting at the table, writing this letter to you. As soon as I finish it, I’m going to sneak out through the window and post it in a letter box I saw down the street. Then I’ll get some sleep. I don’t know what tomorrow will bring, but this is quite the adventure, isn’t it?

Don’t worry about me, my dear. But I do want you and Mamsie to know where I’ve gone. Just in case something does happen to me (but it won’t). Love you, little sis! I’ll write to you again when I can.

Your own,

Nell

Dearest Dottie,

I don’t know when or even whether this letter will reach you. Once I finish writing it, I’m going to give it to a woman I met at the Great Market in the Emerald City. She’s a traveling merchant who brings rugs to sell in Oz from beyond the Deadly Desert, crossing the sands on one of the ships that sail across it, blown by the wind. There is no way to get to Oz except across that desert, and anyone who touches the sands turns into sand himself! Of course there is no other way to leave Oz either…

Yes, I’m in Oz, in a camp outside the Emerald City. As I sit in my tent, writing you this letter, I can hear the other girls outside, talking and laughing. Girls from all over the country! In this tent there are six of us: two from California, one from Kentucky, one from Oklahoma, and two sisters who ran away together from Massachusetts. The others are outside right now, probably roasting marshmallows, which grow on the marshmallow bushes down by a swampy area close to the city walls. The fields outside the walls are gay with tents and banners: red and yellow and purple and blue, the colors of the four countries of Oz. All of us girls have been assigned to a particular division; the six of us are in the Quadling division, so our tent and uniforms are red, which I think goes quite
well with my hair! But I can’t explain where I am without telling you the whole story, from the last time I wrote.

After climbing out of the Wizard’s window and mailing you my last letter, then climbing back in again undetected, I had a good night’s sleep. The next morning, the Wizard woke me and conjured a breakfast of toast with butter and marmalade, and eggs sunny-side up, with a mug of coffee. I have to admit that it was delicious. But his car! It was a Model A that looked as though it had come through the War. Wouldn’t you think a wizard could conjure a better car than that? I asked him, but he said he didn’t know that kind of magic. We drove down toward San Jose and then east past Fresno. Slowly the verdure faded from the landscape to be replaced by the dun-colored hills of eastern California. (Isn’t that a good line? Frances—one of the girls from Massachusetts—used the word
verdure
earlier, when we were talking about the gardens in the Emerald City, and I liked it so much that I wanted to use it myself.) At some point I must have fallen asleep; it was so dull, driving through the desert. The car jounced along, making it hard to talk, and the Wizard was not a particularly good driver—every time I asked him a question, he turned to look at me, and I was afraid he would swerve off the road.

We stopped under a sign that read “Welcome to Nevada” and had a picnic lunch: ham sandwiches, apples, and more lemonade. It’s quite useful having a wizard along when you’re traveling! Although I wish he could have conjured up an electric fan. At that point I was too awake to sleep. I kept staring at the miles and miles of sand and scrub, wondering how in the world we were supposed to get to Oz. Maybe the Wizard, although undoubtedly a genuine wizard, at least as far as ham sandwiches were concerned, was also a crazy old man who drove girls into the desert and murdered
them, leaving their bodies to rot on the desert sands. When I looked over at him, I couldn’t bring myself to be scared of him. But maybe that was part of his plan—to seem so harmless? Well, if he was a murderer, he wouldn’t find me easy to kill! I went through my jiu-jitsu moves in my head.

Just as the sun was starting to set, we came to a town in the middle of the desert. Well,
town
is too fancy a word for it—it was just a gas station, the first we had seen for hours, and a general store with a “Closed” sign in the window, and some houses that looked as though they might collapse at any moment. Next to the gas station was a motor lodge, and that, at any rate, was still open; there was a “Rooms to Let” sign out front and a car in the parking lot in considerably better shape than ours. We pulled into the parking lot and got out of the car. I was so sore from sitting and jouncing! The rooms were arranged in a semicircle around the parking lot, and one of the doors opened. Out came a girl, about my age, who waved at us.

She was dressed all in green: a green blouse with hearts embroidered on it and green trousers over which she wore thigh-high green leather boots. Around her waist she wore a gun belt with silver pistols in the holsters. She had short green hair that stood up in spikes all over her head.

“Jellia Jamb!” said the Wizard. “It’s so good to see you. I’ve brought a last-minute addition to our party.”

“I have two more in the room,” said Jellia. “And the Shaggy Man telephoned to say that he will be here tonight with another three. We’ll leave in the morning and meet Nick Chopper at the second rendezvous point.”

“My friend Nick is a fierce fighter, although no man has a kinder heart,” said the Wizard, turning to me. “We’ll need his help getting through the Nome Kingdom.”

I nodded, not quite knowing what to say. It was like walking into a fairy tale or a film studio—you know how often
Mamsie would tell us about the famous people of Oz, before it was cut off from the world. The Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion and Scraps, the Patchwork Girl… And here I was going to meet them! Until that moment I had not truly believed that we were going to Oz. But now I knew we were.

In the room at the motor lodge, I met the other two girls. Joan was also from California. She had run away from home to be a film star and had ended up living on the streets of Los Angeles. Ingrid was from a farm in Oklahoma, and she would not talk about why she wanted to run away. She spoke with an accent—I think her family was Swedish or something like that. I told them about being Sally Russell from San Francisco and about my friend Mary Lamb. We sat on the beds and talked a little, but mostly listened as the Wizard and Jellia leaned over a map on the table and made their plans. Jellia said that the Nomes had been especially troublesome lately, which was why Nick Chopper was joining us; once we made it past the Nome Kingdom, we would be fine. “The last time the Growleywogs and Scoodlers bothered us, we had the Hungry Tiger with us, and we showed them what for!” said Jellia. “I don’t think they’ll be bothering us again soon.” Once we reached the third rendezvous point on the border of the Deadly Desert, we would be transported to Oz.

“How will that happen?” I asked.

“Don’t you worry,” said Jellia. “All that will be taken care of.”

Because we were all hungry, the Wizard conjured up some ice cream, the flavors we liked best—I asked for strawberry and chocolate. I was amused to see that Jellia asked for pistachio. Just as we were finishing, we heard a knock on the door. It was the Shaggy Man.

He was exactly the way I had expected: shaggy everywhere, all his clothes in rags, although they weren’t really. If you looked carefully, you could see that the cloth had been carefully cut to appear ragged. And his hair and beard were separated into a number of small shags, all tied with ribbons. His clothes were so colorful that he looked like a rainbow. He had brought three more girls: Lula Mae from Kentucky, who immediately started talking to Ingrid about milking cows, and Frances and Enid, two sisters who had run away from a fancy boarding school in Massachusetts. At first I didn’t have a lot of sympathy for them, but during our journey, they earned my respect. None of us could build a fire as fast as they could, or put up a tent so it wouldn’t blow over during the night.

“Well, Jellia, my dear, and Wizard, my good friend, I’ll take the first watch,” said the Shaggy Man. As I fell asleep in the bed I was sharing with Joan and Ingrid, I saw him standing in front of the motor lodge, holding what looked like a machine gun out of a gangster film.

The next day we drove across the desert in a caravan, Jellia’s car in the rear because it was the most heavily armed. By evening we had reached the second rendezvous point, where Nick Chopper was waiting for us.

I saw him as soon as I stepped out of the Wizard’s car: a man made all of metal, gleaming in the light of the setting sun. He was armed with an axe, and although he had a jolly enough smile on his metal face, I would not have liked to make him angry! Next to him stood a boy about my age. He looked as though he had been training for one of the strongman contests at the state fair: his biceps bulged out of his shirtsleeves and blond hair flopped over his eyes. Behind them was a van armored all over with metal plates.