The Cowardly Lion took forever to wake up. When he finally did, though, he was overjoyed to discover that he had survived the flowers. After hearing about the mice and cart, his mood turned philosophical.
“I have always thought myself very big and terrible,” he said. “Yet such little things as flowers came near to killing me, and such small animals as mice have saved my life. How strange it all is! But, comrades, what shall we do now?”
Something about his phrasing bugged me. Comrades? Was it possible that the entire point of this Oz business was to indoctrinate me in something?
We set out again upriver toward the road, and found it quite soon. On this side of the river, the yellow bricks were so well maintained they damn near shone, and it made for easy traveling. By then, though, my mind was going a mile a minute.
If this was all some kind of brainwashing trip, what were they even trying to reprogram my brain into? The first thing I’d done here was crush an old lady to death beneath my house, and everybody had seemed super excited about it. Then I met some folks, and we had to straight-up kill these big bear/tiger creatures, purely in self-defense, of course. Then the one guy who was LITERALLY crafted to appeal to my very specific (and, yeah, maybe kind of weird) taste in men, who cried his jaw shut when he ACCIDENTALLY STEPPED ON A BUG, just casually chops the head off a cat. For the greater good.
Holy shit, was I being desensitized to violence? Was I going to wind up a mind-controlled KGB assassin at the end of this? (Was the KGB even still a thing? Regardless, you know Vladimir Putin has people in charge of assassination and mind control, and I imagine there’s a fair amount of overlap between the two departments.)
I had already decided that if Oz was just a crazy-advanced computer simulation, or some kind of drug-assisted guided meditation, or just my own screwed-up brain dealing with a serious head wound, the only thing to be done was to follow the rules, treat the whole thing as if I had actually been whisked away to an honest-to-God magical kingdom, and just hope for the best. But this new angle raised the specter of an altogether more sinister possibility.
The truth was, the closer we got to the Emerald City, the more reservations I was starting to have about murdering a second witch, and with malice aforethought this time. I mean, if it came down to my life or dumping a bucket of water on some asshole, sure. But I had the uneasy feeling that it wouldn’t wind up going down quite like it did in the film.
As we walked on, farmhouses started popping up alongside the road, a lot like the ones back in Munchkinland, but bigger, and green instead of blue. A woman came to her porch to watch us pass, all dressed in green, of course. She took one look at the Lion and ran back inside.
“These people do not seem to be as friendly as the Munchkins,” the Scarecrow said. “I’m afraid we shall be unable to find a place to pass the night.”
Ugh. “Well, I’m getting pretty tired of nuts and fruit,” I said. Also, poor Toto refused to even touch the stuff, so as far as I knew he hadn’t eaten anything since the meat pies, unless he had managed to nab himself a talking field mouse or something.
“Fuck it.” If this was the kind of place where you could just walk up to someone’s front door and ask them for dinner and a warm bed, it was at least worth a shot. I stopped at the next farmhouse and knocked.
A woman opened it just far enough to look out. “What do you want, child, and why is that great Lion with you?”
“The Lion’s our friend, and trust me, he’s more afraid of you than you are of him.”
The Lion, for his part, looked mortified.
“So if that’s the only thing keeping you from inviting us in, stop being Lion racist and get on with it.”
“Well,” the woman said after thinking it over, “if that is the case you may come in, and I will give you some supper and a place to sleep.”
To be honest, I couldn’t believe that it actually worked. But she brought us in and introduced us to her husband and two kids, and started setting the table while they just stared at us. We made some small talk, and I mentioned that we were headed toward the Emerald City to see the Wizard.
“Oh, indeed!” exclaimed the man. His leg was in a cast, and he was lying on a couch in the corner. “Are you sure that Oz will see you?”
“Pretty sure.”
“Well, it is said that he never lets anyone come into his presence. I have been to the Emerald City many times, and it is a beautiful and wonderful place, but I have never been permitted to see the Great Oz, nor do I know of any living person who has seen him.”
This was the part where the townsfolk go on and on about how intimidating the wizard was, to make sure we’d be suitably dumbfounded when he turned out to be some dude behind a curtain or whatever.
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“He sits day after day in the great throne room of his palace,” the man said, starting to get himself all worked up. “And even those who wait upon him do not see him face to face! You see, Oz is a Great Wizard, and can take on any form he wishes. So that some say he looks like a bird, and some say he looks like an elephant, and some say he looks like a cat. To others he appears as a beautiful fairy, or a brownie, or in any other form that pleases him. But who the real Oz is, when he is in his own form, no living person can tell.”
“Weird,” I said. “Still, I’ll take my chances.”
“Why do you wish to see the terrible Oz?” he asked.
“I want him to give me some brains,” the Scarecrow said eagerly.
“Oh, Oz could do that easily enough,” declared the man. “He has more brains than he needs.”
“And I want him to give me a heart,” said the Woodsman.
“That will not trouble him,” continued the man, “for Oz has a large collection of hearts, of all sizes and shapes.”
Ew. “And I want him to give me courage,” said the Cowardly Lion. “Or Klonopin.”
“I know not of this Klonopin of which you speak,” the man said. “But Oz keeps a great pot of courage in his throne room, which he has covered with a golden plate, to keep it from running over. He will be glad to give you some.”
All of this sounded like utter bullshit to me.
“But what do YOU want?” the man continued.
“Uh, to get back to Kansas, I think,” I said. It had been a long day, and I had forgotten if I was supposed to play along with the whole Dorothy scenario, or if I could just tell people I wanted to go to the mall in Calabasas.
“Not you,” the man said. “HIM!” He pointed at Toto.
Toto just wagged his tail.
We were finally called to dinner, THANK GOD. It wound up being scrambled eggs and a genuinely delicious porridge thing, with a plate of white bread. I devoured about three helpings, and Toto ate a fair amount as well. The Lion had some porridge, although he pissed and moaned about it because he said oats were food for horses and not lions. The Woodsman and Scarecrow didn’t need to eat at all, but they were perfectly happy to keep chatting with Leg Cast Guy about all his absurd wizard conspiracy theories.
Afterwards the woman showed me to a spare room, and a bed that, after however many days on the road, felt like the softest and most heavenly bed I had ever slept on in my entire life. Toto curled up beside me, the Scarecrow and Woodsman went and stood quietly in their respective corners, and the Lion stood guard by the door. In close quarters, you could really smell him, too.
I had what was by far the most comfortable night of sleep that I’d had since I’d gotten there. I mean, it could be that I still had a touch of the opium in my system, but still. In the morning we thanked our hosts graciously and were on our way. I felt slightly guilty about taking advantage of their politeness and pretty much forcing our way in there, but it had been a rough day, and my mind had wandered into some pretty dark places.
I was feeling better. I mean, still on guard against KGB brainwashing and whatever, but I was well rested, well fed, and ready to get on to the Wizard, on to the Witch, and finally get the goddamn hell out of Oz.
We started on our way as soon as the sun was up, and spotted a green glow on the horizon.
“Emerald City, here we come.”
It got brighter and brighter as we approached, but apparently the city was MUCH farther away than it looked, because it was late afternoon before we finally reached the massive wall that surrounded it. It was crazy high, looked super thick, and was green as all fuck, just as promised.
I pushed the button next to the enormous, emerald-studded, sparkly green gate. I half-expected the guy from the movie to poke his head out of a trapdoor and give us a bunch of shit about not being allowed in, but instead the massive doors just opened.
We walked inside, and found ourselves in a big, high-arched room with even more emeralds stuck all over the walls. The interior decorators in this part of Oz were not subtle. A little Munchkin-sized guy standing next to a big green box addressed us formally.
“What do you wish in the Emerald City?”
I told him we were there to see the Wizard, and he was so surprised at my answer that he sat down to think it over.
“It has been many years since anyone asked me to see Oz,” he said, shaking his head. “He is powerful and terrible, and if you come on an idle or foolish errand to bother the wise reflections of the Great Wizard, he might be angry and destroy you all in an instant.”
Sure, he might. Granted, the movie I knew had already proven to be different from the original Wizard of Oz book in a lot of important ways, but I was fairly sure that the whole bit where Oz turned out to be a regular dude just trying to scare everyone was going to hold true.
The Scarecrow, however, was taking the gatekeeper’s comments much more seriously than I was. “But it is not a foolish errand, nor an idle one,” he said. “It is important. And we have been told that Oz is a good wizard.”
“So he is,” said the man, “and he rules the Emerald City wisely and well. But to those who are not honest, or who approach him from curiosity, he is most terrible, and few have ever dared ask to see his face. I am the Guardian of the Gates, and since you demand to see the Great Oz I must take you to his palace. But first you must put on the spectacles.”
“Wait, what?” I said. “Why?”
“Because if you did not wear spectacles, the brightness and glory of the Emerald City would blind you. Even those who live in the City must wear spectacles night and day. They are all locked on, for Oz so ordered it when the City was first built, and I have the only key that will unlock them.”
Once again, that sounded like a load of crap to me. But if we needed to put on sunglasses to get the plot moving, I was okay with it. The gatekeeper opened the big green box, and it was filled with green sunglasses of all shapes and sizes. He found a pair that would fit each of us—even Toto—and set the glasses carefully on our faces, locking them in the back with a miniature key that he wore on a chain around his neck. I wasn’t thrilled about having something permanently affixed to my face, but if Gate Guy really was telling the truth, it was probably for the best. I knew myself well enough to know that if given the option, I wouldn’t be able to resist a peek.
Once we were all bespectacled, the Guardian of the Gates put on his own glasses and was ready to show us to the palace. Taking a big golden key from a peg on the wall, he opened another gate, and we all followed him through the portal into the streets of the Emerald City.