Shadows of the Emerald City (45 page)

Both sisters froze as the old Dickery Trail transformed into the Yellow Brick Road.

The Wicked Witch of the West frowned pointedly.

“
And I want a lovely land called the land of the Munchkins where I will rule. Can you imagine? I will make those slobbering goblins into something cute and friendly. They’ll have round hats with bells and polished boots,” she laughed in sheer wickedness.

The Wicked Witch of the West eyed the new Eastern Witch suspiciously.

“
Have you gone mad? These are all lovely things! We hold a secured title of Wicked for a reason, sister.”

“
Yes yes,” The Wicked Witch of the East agreed, her eyes alight. “But what do children like?”

Hesitating, the Wicked Witch of the West answered.

“
Children like shiny objects.”

“
And candy?” The Wicked Witch of the East urged with her hands for her sister to continue.

“
Definitely candy,” she agreed with her Eastern sister. “They also like bright and sunny skies and brilliant colors.”

At the mention of bright skies, the Wicked Witch of the East squeezed her eyes shut and clicked her heels, her face scrunching up, causing all the wrinkles to roll forward. The sun shot out from behind the clouds causing both sisters to duck and hide their eyes beneath their hands. The Wicked Witch of the East wasn’t finished however.

“
Do they like Yellow Brick roads? Stately trees with bright colored birds? Sparkling brooks and green banks?”

“
Yes, yes, yes!” The Wicked Witch of the West agreed wholeheartedly.

“
Then won’t they like to come here?
To the Land of Oz? Where everything is bright and sunny and they can eat gingerbread houses or dance along a yellow brick road? Once they’re here, there’s no going back.”

“
No going back,” the Wicked Witch of the West repeated, smiling slowly, her half rotted teeth revealing themselves at last. “
All ours
.”

“
Good to eat, all shapes and sizes and they’ll walk right into our trap.”

“
I knew you’d be the perfect Wicked Witch.”

The Wicked Witch of the East enthusiastically agreed with high pitched squeals of laughter that rippled through the land like a hurricane. Tilting forward on her floating broomstick she tipped her toes together preparing to click her heels.

“
Wait!” The Wicked Witch of the West cried.

The Wicked Witch of the East paused, her eyes trailing up to her new sister in frustration.

“
Do you see what I see?” The Wicked Witch of the West was pointing North West and if the Wicked Witch of the East concentrated hard enough she was certain she made out a giant floating bubble.

“
A floating balloon, how clever…”

The End.

by Mari Ness

The Fuddles scattered themselves as the man approached. Not merely scattered the way regular people might scatter, or even the way the magical people of Oz, who live, after all, in the finest fairyland of the world, might scatter at the approach of danger, even though for most people in Oz danger was so little known that they had quite forgotten the word.

But the Fuddles were different. They were made of many little pieces of wood, all wonderfully and differently shaped, like a jigsaw puzzle, except more round than most jigsaws. When they saw people, it was their habit to scatter themselves into all of their many pieces, from a few hundred to several thousand, depending upon the person, and then rest patiently in the street, waiting for the viewers to come and patiently piece them together. It had become commonplace for the various Gilikins and Munchkins who lived nearby to come and amuse themselves for awhile putting the tricky pieces together, but after awhile, they came less and less, for even the most avid jigsaw puzzle lover becomes tired of putting the same people back together over and over again.

This was terrible for the Fuddles, who were forced to scatter themselves whenever even just one person came nearby. If that one person had no interest in puzzles, they might find themselves lying scattered for weeks. It became more and more difficult to keep up with cleaning their houses and repairing their pretty fences and doing their knitting. And, the longer they stayed on the ground, dry or wet, the more their little wooden pieces became slightly warped and moldy. For people in Oz may live forever, but that does not mean that they are not subject to things like water and damp, if it continues long enough. And yet they did not want to stop people coming by altogether, for it was only when people came by that they could learn about events elsewhere in Oz, and get the pretty yarns and paints they needed to keep their village beautiful.

So the Fuddles got together, or as many of them that were together, and decided to
Advertise
.

Advertising is a rare thing in Oz, and the Fuddles were not sure how to do so, but after some time, they made a sign, and asked a Munchkin farmer to place it upon the road. And the Munchkin farmer agreed to do so, of course, because such is the way of Oz.

And sure enough, a few curious travelers stopped by. Among them was a stout Winkie called Tidikins.

The Fuddles scattered when Tidikins approached, and he stepped forward, eager to solve their puzzles and piece them together. But no matter how hard he tried, he could not - he could not put even two pieces of a blue leg together. When evening fell he walked to a nearby village and complained about his hard day.

“
Ha ha,” laughed the villagers. For in Oz, it is perfectly acceptable for even the most kindly of souls to laugh at each other, for in so doing not only do the bellies of the overfed Ozites get much needed exercise, but also, the humiliation of being laughed at prevents anyone from becoming too proud, which is the quickest route to injury in Oz. And although no one can die in Oz, injury is still very very painful. “Those Fuddles are so easy that even a two year old may put them together!”

“
Our two year olds are much brighter than the average two year olds in the countries outside Oz, I believe,” replied Tidikins, angry at the insult. “For in those countries, two year olds may only be two for one year, but here, the two year olds remain two forever, and thus are able to gain more knowledge and skill than might be expected from them.”

“
That is as maybe,” said the villagers, not all that coherently, “but still, it should be easy to put the Fuddles together, even for someone of very low intelligence.”

Determined to prove himself of high intelligence, Tidikins returned to Fuddlecumjig, where the Fuddles lived, and tried again. And again. And again. The other villagers laughed and laughed. For an entire month Tidikins tried, but was unable to put two pieces together. And in his anger he decided to do a Very Wicked Thing, although he himself thought that he was only doing this to protect other inhabitants of Oz.

It is true, as the Royal Historian of Oz has said, that the reason most people are bad is because they do not try to be good. And others are bad out of sheer indifference or forgetfulness. But some are bad because they do not think things through.

For Tidikins was not a bad man, but his inability to put the pieces of Fuddles together, and the way everyone had laughed at him, had so fuddled his brain that he decided that the best thing to do was to hide the entire village of Fuddlecumjig behind a large wall and stick up notices of Danger! Danger! The notices, he knew, would not keep everyone out, since some of the inhabitants of Oz had a tendency to ignore signs saying “Danger” or deciding that they must go past these signs anyway. But this behavior was mostly confined to inhabitants of the Emerald City, and since they had already visited Fuddlecumjig, Tidikins thought that they might not return. (And in this he was quite right.)

Once the wall and the signs were built, Tidikins went off, some say to the Quadling Country, and some say to the Winkie country, and some say to the Emerald City, where he became a pedicurist of some note. For in Oz, nearly everyone must walk, and so nearly everyone has corns, and they were all very glad to have a pedicurist in their midst, especially one who could paint toenails such lovely shades of green.

Meanwhile, the Fuddles stayed scattered in their village, unable to piece themselves together, and unable to see that they were trapped behind a wall without a door, completely hiding their village from anyone who might walk by and see them, lying in helpless pieces everywhere in the village.

The pieces did not worry very much at first. None of them could see the signs posted on the wall:

Do not ENTER on pain of ETERNAL BEFUDDLEMENT

Even if they had, they might not have worried, for they knew as well as anybody that in Oz, many of the inhabitants - especially the inhabitants of the Emerald City - ignored such warnings all the time. Plus, they had their own Advertisement on the Yellow Brick Road. They did not know that Tidikins had pulled this sign down, to keep others from being Fuddled.

But after a few weeks passed, they began to worry. No one had come, and they could not move, not even a bit of an inch, unless some kind soul might pass by and put some of their pieces together. And as the weeks passed, the pieces of Fuddles began to realize that this less and less likely.

After a week and a half, it rained. It may seem odd that a fairyland would ever be troubled by rain, but even in a fairyland, plants and trees need water, and Oz’s fabled crops of buttered popcorn and bread and butter and snow cones and buckwheat pancakes could not grow without rain. And so the magical rulers of Oz had decreed that rain should fall.

Rain had not overly troubled the Fuddles before. Since the Fuddles only scattered themselves when they saw other people, and since other people never visited Fuddlecumjig in the rain, they simply moved inside like ordinary people would, and waited for the rain to end. But now, they couldn’t. The rain fell on them and made them very wet and cold. They could not shiver, but they could feel the cold. And the rain, they knew, would not be good for their wood.

But they did not despair. They still had the wind, and the wind might - might - lift their pieces just enough so that with a twist or two they might maneuver themselves closer to their other pieces, might be able to snap together a piece or two, or three - although three was perhaps too much to hope for. Enough to make half a mouth, possibly. Enough to scream for help.

But although the winds of Oz are gentle and playful, none of them seemed to want to move the pieces.

It rained again, and again. The pieces began to sink, just a little, into the mud, and their colors began to fade, just a little, from the rain and the sun

Still, they told themselves, it was not so bad, even when winter came, and the pieces shivered in the snow. For Ozma, after some discussions with Glinda and the Wizard of Oz, had decided that it would be a pity to deprive the children of Oz from the fun of playing in the snow, and thus allowed winter to enter Oz each year, if only for a few weeks - just enough for everyone to enjoy a good sleigh ride and snow sculpture building contest and hot chocolate, but leaving before anyone got tired of shoveling snow. The snow began to warp and damage the wooden pieces a bit, but they did not worry too much, deciding that they could always repaint themselves once they were put together, and perhaps ask Glinda the Sorceress to replace particularly warped pieces. And surely someone would come, after winter had made everyone feel irritated and grumpy from being housebound.

But spring came, and the flowers of Oz sprang up, and no one came to Fuddlecumjig, or its wall.

The pieces were just about to settle into general apathy when a bird appeared.

A bird, the pieces thought. A talking bird of Oz. For, since Oz is a fairy country, most of the animals of Oz could talk, and the pieces hoped that the bird might see them scattered behind the wall, and tell other people about their sad plight. In this way, they hoped, they might be rescued. The pieces that contained part of their mouths opened and closed, although they made no sound. They tried to wink their partial eyes.

The bird opened its beak, and swooped down. If the pieces of Mrs. Chippie could have screamed, they would have, as the bird swallowed a piece of her neck and a piece of her hand and a piece of Mrs. Cotton’s hand. The pieces tried to huddle together for comfort in the stomach of the bird, but a bird’s stomach is constantly churning, and the acid in its stomach soon began to dissolve the pieces. And then, although they were made of a magic wood that had never felt pain before, the remaining pieces of Mrs. Chippie and Mrs. Cotton felt that strange and hideous sensation, and knew without knowing how they knew that those pieces had been permanently destroyed.

The bird flew away, and the pieces of Fuddlecumjig stopped hoping for more birds.

But. A kangaroo had lived nearby, they remembered. A kangaroo wanting mittens. But more weeks passed, and the kangaroo never came, and soon they gave up hope of that.

The pieces thought of other times. Of the time when Mr. Butterclip had been pieced together with Mrs. Carrottop’s legs, giving him strange ideas about both Mr. and Mrs. Carrottop that were not appropriate for a fairyland. Of the time when Mrs. Chippie had been given Mr. Butterclip’s head, and subsequently learned about all of those inappropriate feelings for Mr. and Mrs. Carrottop, and her immediate plans for certain types of parties that were also possibly inappropriate for a fairyland, but sounded like great fun and a nice change from the eternal cycle of scattering and mixing and being puzzled together. They thought of the time when little Fi Fyghter had almost set a match to some of their pieces, which, being made of wood, could burn, even if they were magical, and the fear that had filled the scattered town at the thought. And how this threat had come again and again, for like everyone in Oz, little Fi could not grow old, and therefore could not learn the danger of fire to the Fuddles, until his parents had finally left. For the Gilikin country, the Fuddles had heard, and they could not help but hope, even in their fairy and contented state, that the entire family had been eaten up by Kalidahs on the way.