“Will you look at that,” said Joan, who was standing next to me. She was staring at the boy with the muscles. I was more impressed with the Tin Woodman.
“This is my friend Nick,” said the Wizard. The metal man made us an awkward bow.
“I’ve brought Button-Bright,” he said. “The last caravan we sent through the Nome Kingdom was attacked. They’ve gotten bolder since Ruggedo III ascended the throne. They don’t dare attack Oz itself, not while Ozma has the Magic Belt. But they want to annoy and harass us as much as they can.”
“Is that Button-Bright?” I asked, pointing to Mr. Muscles.
“How-dee-do,” he said. “They call me Button-Bright because I’m as bright as a button.”
“Oh, do they?” I wondered what kind of button they—whoever they were—had in mind. He sounded as thick as his thighs.
“Did you bring ammunition?” asked Jellia, ignoring Button-Bright. I guess she didn’t have much use for him either.
Nick Chopper opened the back of the van. It was filled with stacks of cardboard flats—filled with eggs. “As many as we could bring,” he said. “And I brought a secret weapon.”
Out of the back of the van stepped…a chicken, with yellow feathers and a red comb. “This is Belinda,” he said. “She’s one of the granddaughters of Billina herself. She generously agreed to accompany us.”
“Oh, it’s so good to see you again, Belinda,” said Jellia. She knelt and embraced the chicken.
“Well, you don’t need to squeeze me quite so hard,” said Belinda. “I’m not a stuffed chicken, you know!”
“It’s a great pleasure to see you again, my dear,” said the Wizard. “I haven’t seen you since you were quite a young chick and used to hide in my pockets!”
“Well, doesn’t that beat all,” said Joan, low enough so only I could hear her. “A talking chicken.”
“What, they didn’t teach you about Oz in school?” I said. “All the animals talk there.”
“I dropped out after sixth grade. We never got to talking animals.”
We would all be grateful for those eggs and the talking chicken before long. The third rendezvous point was beyond the Nome Kingdom, in the Land of Ev. That night, we slept in the tents for the first time. You wouldn’t believe how the Shaggy Man snored! I could hear him all the way across the camp.
The next morning we crossed the border.
The Nome Kingdom was rocky, and the road was in bad repair. It ran between steep cliffs, and several times boulders came crashing down, hitting and sometimes denting one or another of the cars. Now I knew why they all looked so battered!
“They’re watching us,” said the Wizard grimly. “Waiting to attack.”
Ingrid, who was riding in the back next to me, reached over and held my hand.
The attack came on the third day. We had stopped to rest and eat our lunch in a gully. Suddenly, down the rocky faces of the cliffs came the Nomes—so many of them that the cliffs looked as though they were covered with large black spiders. That’s what the Nomes look like, with their spindly arms and legs and their round, fat bodies. Ingrid and Lula Mae screamed and held on to each other. Nick took up his axe and the Wizard raised his wand. Button-Bright and the Shaggy Man both aimed their guns. Jellia threw open the back of the van and said, “Girls, to me! Form a circle and throw eggs, as many as you can!”
Well, I would have thought that the farm girls, at least, would have been too scared to fight. But all of us followed Jellia’s orders. I don’t like to remember what happened next. Do you know what happens to Nomes when they are hit by eggs, Dottie? They
explode
. There we stood in a circle, lobbing egg after egg until our arms were aching, while all around us Nomes were bursting as though they were balloons filled with horrible green goo. Imagine the smell of smashed eggs, of Nome goop, of our own sweat! It was horrible, but we worked together as a team. Meanwhile, the Tin Woodman was chopping their limbs off left and right, the Wizard was turning as many of them as he could into pebbles, and Button-Bright and the Shaggy Man were shooting into the mass coming at us. Bullets don’t hurt the Nomes. But the Shaggy Man and Button-Bright did slow them down so we could pelt them with our eggs.
We were so tired, and the Nomes just kept on coming! I could see one standing up on a rock with a hideous crown on his head. He seemed to be directing the others, and didn’t he look triumphant to see us girls getting too tired to aim well?
“They’ve got me!” shouted Nick Chopper. Sure enough, the Nomes had managed to wrench away his axe and were now trying to pull him limb from limb.
“It’s time!” shouted Jellia. From the rear of the van flew Belinda, straight at the Nome with the crown on his head. He uttered a high-pitched shriek when he saw her coming and tried to crouch down, but she made straight for his head and beat him with her wings.
“My eyes, my eyes!” he screamed. “Retreat! Retreat, all of you worthless fools!”
Suddenly the Nomes began to scurry back into the rocks, and in another minute, we were the only ones in the
gully. We all looked bruised and battered, especially the Tin Woodman, whose left arm was nearly wrenched off.
“Well, at least it’s the left one,” he said. “I’m a much better fighter with my right.”
“I don’t think rotten old Ruggedo will be attacking us again soon,” said Belinda.
“Why, what did you do?” asked Jellia, smoothing her ruffled feathers and lifting her back into the van.
“Pecked out one of his eyes.” She sounded satisfied with herself.
After that attack word must have gotten around, because we were not attacked again. It took several more days to cross the Nome Kingdom, but finally we reached the border of Ev. There the landscape changed: the rocky cliffs gave way to green meadows and pleasant gardens. As we passed each farmhouse, families came out to ask us about our journey through the Nome Kingdom and praise us—especially Belinda—for our bravery.
At the end of that day, we reached the third rendezvous point: a farmhouse on the border of the Deadly Desert, where yet more girls were waiting for us. They had arrived several days ago, some of them with Aunt Em, Ojo the Lucky, and the Scarecrow, who had come through Noland, and some with Polychrome, Johnny Dooit, and the Cowardly Lion. “They had an even more dangerous journey than we did,” said the Wizard. “Not even Ruggedo is as dangerous as Queen Zixi. She is a sorceress almost as powerful as Glinda, and although she is hundreds of years old, she has learned to maintain her youth by eating the hearts of young women. You can imagine how much she would like to capture any of our girls!”
After dinner I went out and looked at the place where the green meadow ended and the Deadly Desert began.
“Hello, my dear,” said the Wizard. I had not heard him come up behind me.
“What now?” I asked, looking at the endless expanse of sand that would turn you to sand yourself as soon as you stepped on it.
“Don’t you worry about that. Now that we’re all here, Ozma can wish us over the desert sands with her Magic Belt. She can only make one wish a day, but tomorrow after breakfast, we will gather in the farmyard, and you will see the Emerald City for the first time!”
The next morning, after a breakfast of pancakes with maple syrup, we gathered together in the farmyard. Some of the girls looked scared, and some held each other’s hands or put their arms around one another’s waists. At nine o’clock exactly, the Wizard made a particular sign—and the next thing I saw was a great palace, all of white stone with turrets and parapets and whatever else palaces have, including great archways flanked by stone lions with emerald eyes. It was the most magnificent thing I had ever seen—even more magnificent than San Francisco! Standing on a balcony above us were five girls. The tallest one, who had long black hair and looked like a film star, said “Welcome to Oz. I am Ozma, and these are Dorothy, Betsy Bobbin, Jinjur, and Trot.”
And then she told us.
Have you been wondering, Dottie, while you’ve been reading this letter, why all these girls are being taken to Oz? Well, I wondered that too—wondered as I lay in my tent, listening to the Shaggy Man snore at night. Wondered as we traveled day after day through the Nome Kingdom. Why all these girls?
Ozma told us.
Standing up on that balcony, she told us about how she had been taken as a baby to the witch Mombi, and how
Mombi had turned her into a boy, and made her work, and beat her. “I never want another girl to be beaten the way I was,” she said. “So any girl who wants to come to Oz is welcome. She will find refuge here with me. But we have to save all the other girls, don’t you see? That’s why I invite any girl to join my army. It will be an army of liberation, sent from Oz to conquer all the lands around and then the rest of the United States of America. But we’re not just going to conquer and rule the country, girls. We’re going to transform it too, so it becomes like Oz.” She held out her arms to us, and I don’t think Mary Pickford could have looked more appealing. For a moment even I wanted to sign up right away, to save all those girls—even if it meant conquering the United States. Of course I did sign up—I mean, Sally Russell signed up. We all did.
Are you laughing, Dottie? At the thought of an army of girls—all those runaway girls—fighting our military, with their guns and tanks? Well, you can stop laughing now. After Ozma’s speech, which was short (she probably gives it every day, as more and more girls arrive), Dorothy showed us the camp. That’s General Dorothy—she, Betsy Bobbin, Jinjur, and Trot are the generals of Ozma’s army. Each of them leads a division of the army that is associated with one of the countries of Oz. Joan, Ingrid, Lula Mae, Frances, Enid, and I were put in the Quadling division. We were given our uniforms, and then Dorothy, our General, talked to us about what we would be doing now that we were soldiers.
We stood on a hill, looking down at the camp, which was covered with tents as far as the eye could see—red and yellow and purple and blue.
“Time works differently here than it does in the outer world,” said Dorothy. “We’ve been gathering soldiers for ever so long. If a girl doesn’t want to join Ozma’s army, she
doesn’t have to—but almost everyone joins. Who wouldn’t want to fight for Ozma and Oz? Anyway, the girls who come here know what it’s like out there. I remember what it was like in Kansas—never enough to eat and people passing through who had no place to call home. They were just trying to get to California, where they thought things would be better. Well, here in Oz, if you don’t have enough to eat, you find a lunch pail tree!”
“But there are wicked people even in Oz,” said Enid.
“Yes, what about old Mombi?” asked Lula Mae.
“Of course,” said Dorothy. “But Glinda finds out about them, and they’re punished.”
“And do you really think a bunch of girls can conquer the American army and air force?” asked Frances dubiously.
“Oh, but we don’t just have a bunch of girls,” said Dorothy. “We also have the Jack Pumpkinheads, and the Wogglebugs, and the Tik-Tok Men. Come on, I’ll show you.” And she showed us, all right.
The Jack Pumpkinheads are grown in fields in Gillikin Country, where Ozma created the original Jack when she was a boy. At least, their pumpkin-heads are. Their bodies are made of wood, and when they are put together, they are sprinkled with the Powder of Life. “It’s mixed up in large vats in Gillikin Country,” said Dorothy. “We can sprinkle it on anything we like, of course. But the Jack Pumpkinheads are good soldiers. They can’t be killed, and they just keep on going unless you chop them up into small pieces. If they lose a limb, they can replace it with any old piece of wood.”
The Wogglebugs come from hatcheries in Winkie Country. “They reproduce so quickly that we have lots more than we need,” said Dorothy. “When they’re born, they’re just the size of a pea, but if we need them to fight, we highly magnify them. They’re pretty scary, aren’t they?”
I have to admit, if I had an army of Wogglebugs coming at me, I’d turn around and run! They look sort of like cockroaches, but when they’re highly magnified and standing on their hind legs, they’re the size of a man.
“The Tik-Tok Men are made in a factory in Munchkin Country,” said Dorothy. “They’re just about indestructible, and the machine guns are built right in.”
You’ve never seen anything like the Tik-Tok Men, Dottie! When I saw them, I realized that they would plow our soldiers down and keep on marching. For the first time, I was scared. What if I never escaped from Oz? But there’s no time to be despondent when you’re an intrepid girl reporter, is there? Instead I tried to estimate the size of the Oz forces.
“But the girls are the most important part,” said Dorothy. “Girls are a lot fiercer than most people suppose. All these girls—they’ve come to Oz because of how they were treated out there. I ought to know—I was like them until Uncle Henry and Aunt Em took me in. They can fight—we’ve been training them. And they can direct the Jack Pumpkinheads and Wogglebugs and Tik-Tok Men, who haven’t much brains of their own.”
I remembered how we had all fought the Nomes together. Maybe Dorothy was right. Maybe girls don’t fight in the world out there because they’ve never been taught how. As we walked through the camp, between the colorful tents and banners, I saw girls everywhere: some of them were practicing a kind of jiu-jitsu, some of them were loading and unloading their guns, some of them were listening to lectures on how to blow up trains. They looked busy and serious but also festive in their colored uniforms, as though they had gathered for some sort of outing. I began to see that Ozma’s army was nothing to laugh at.
“Ozma doesn’t want to kill anyone,” said Dorothy. “She doesn’t even like to swat flies! She says they are as much her subjects as any creature in Oz. She’d be much happier if everyone just surrendered. That’s why she’s sending the army of Oz first. But things have to change, don’t you see? If the army doesn’t work, she’ll use the Magic Belt. She can wish whole countries dead, if she wants to.”
“Will that work outside Oz?” asked Ingrid. She sounded shocked at the thought of such destruction.
“Of course,” said Dorothy. “Magic is like electricity. It works the same everywhere.”
So you see, Dottie, I’ve got to get my story out! Don’t you tell anyone any of this, because I don’t want to be scooped. I’m going to stay here long enough to figure out the size of Ozma’s army, and then I’m going to cross the Deadly Desert—I don’t know how yet, but if a rug merchant can get across, so can I. And then I’m going to break the largest story that the
Ledger
has ever seen!