The neighborhood surrounding the Witch’s castle was bleak as shit. The sun rises in the east, though, so we kept it in front of us (and directly in our eyes, hooray), and plodded forward. Until about noon, when the sun had risen to its peak, and we had no idea where the hell we were going. We marched on as best we could—the Tin Woodsman had made this trip like two days before, but he was no help with directions at all—only to discover when the sun began sinking again that we had been traveling mostly south, and slightly back west, for at least an hour and a half. Ugh. We corrected course, but I wasn’t sure if we should try to point a tiny bit northward to make up for lost time. The whole thing was a giant clusterfuck.
The next day was cloudy, and as much as we tried, we couldn’t pinpoint the sun anywhere.
“Fuck it,” I said. “We’ll just walk, and if we don’t find the Emerald City, at least we’ll eventually run into something.”
But the day passed away, and we didn’t run into shit. “We have surely lost our way,” the Scarecrow said mournfully. “And unless we find it again in time to reach the Emerald City, I shall never get my brains.”
“Nor I my heart…” the Woodsman started.
“Jesus, can we not list all the things we’re asking the Wizard for? Just this once?”
There was a brief pause. “I haven’t the courage to keep tramping forever,” the Cowardly Lion whispered, “without getting anywhere at all.”
I plopped down onto the dirt and groaned. Toto sat beside me, and when a butterfly fluttered past his little head, he didn’t have the energy to frolic around and chase it, even though that was pretty much his whole deal. Even though the day was overcast, it was somehow still blisteringly hot, so I tried in vain to fan myself with the Witch’s gaudy-ass hat.
“If anybody has any ideas,” I said. “I’m all ears.”
“Perhaps we could call upon the mice,” the Woodsman said.
“What mice?”
“The field mice, who helped us rescue the Lion from the poppy field. Their Queen said we could call upon them any time, and they would be happy to aid us.”
“Okay,” I said. “Sure. How do we call the field mice?”
“With this whistle the queen gave me.” He pulled out a little whistle on a chain, and blew it, making an almost inaudible sound.
“When did she give you a whistle?” I decided that it didn’t matter. Within minutes, we heard the pattering of tiny feet, and mice came running up from every direction. Apparently one of them was the Queen herself, although I still couldn’t really tell them apart.
“What can I do for my friends?” she asked in her squeaky mouse voice.
“We need directions,” I said. “We’re trying to get back to the Emerald City.”
“Certainly,” answered the Queen, “but it is a great way off, and you have had it at your backs all this time.” Which, of course, begged the question of how the mice were able to get to us so quickly. Had they been following us?
But then the Queen noticed the Witch’s hat. “Why don’t you use the charm of the Cap, and call the Winged Monkeys to you? They will carry you to the City of Oz in less than an hour.”
“Wait, what?”
“The spell is written inside the golden cap,” she said. “But if you are going to call the Winged Monkeys we must run away, for they are full of mischief and think it great fun to plague us.”
The whole business reminded me of some stupid computer game. I didn’t play them much (because, like I said, stupid), but Madeline liked them, so I occasionally got stuck watching her play. And I couldn’t escape the feeling that the mouse whistle was the cheat function, where you got a hint when you couldn’t figure out what to do next.
Was I overthinking the whole thing? Sure, desensitizing you to wanton violence and forcing you into situations where you had to murder was probably how the KGB brainwashed assassins. But it also described most video games, as far as I could tell. If all this was just some super-advanced virtual reality game (again, possibly enhanced with hallucinogens?), I’d be—
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Well, I wasn’t sure if I’d be relieved or pissed. But the idea did make me want to finally be done with it as soon as possible.
The Scarecrow and Woodsman were exchanging frightened glances and shaking their heads. “No Winged Monkeys,” the Woodsman pleaded.
“Oh, do not worry,” the Mouse Queen said. “They must obey the wearer of the Cap, and will not harm you. Goodbye!”
She scampered out of sight, with all the mice hurrying after her. I looked inside the Golden Cap, and sure enough, instructions were stitched in there, with some gibberish to speak and a small amount of hopping.
“Ep-pe, pep-pe, kak-ke,” I said, standing on my left foot. I felt like an asshole.
“I don’t know what that means,” the Scarecrow said.
I ignored him, and continued the spell, shifting to my right foot. “Hil-lo, hol-lo, hel-lo.”
“Hello!” The Woodsman waved back at me.
I hopped back onto both feet “Ziz-zy, zuz-zy, zik!” That was the end of it, and I immediately heard flapping wings, and the Flying Monkeys’ trademark chattering. Moments later, the sky was riddled with them.
The Monkey King came in for a landing, and bowed at my feet, “What is your command?”
“Take us to the Emerald City,” I said. “Carefully. And don’t kill any of us this time.”
“As you wish,” he said. If he was at all bitter about being ordered around by a girl in a stupid hat, he certainly didn’t show it. Another big monkey flew in, and the two of them picked me up gently and carried me into the sky. Others swooped down and lifted the Scarecrow, Woodsman and Lion. A smallish one picked up Toto, and damn near got himself bitten for his trouble.
Even by air, the trip wasn’t short. Eventually I got bored with majestic vistas, and turned to the Monkey King.
“So what’s the whole deal with the goofy hat?”
“That is a long story,” he said. “But as we have a long journey before us, I will pass the time by telling you about it, if you wish.”
Ugh. “Sure, why not.”
“Once,” he began, “we were a free people, living happily in the great forest, flying from tree to tree, eating nuts and fruit, and doing just as we pleased without calling anybody master.”
The Monkey King wasn’t kidding when he said that his story was long. But the gist of it was that there was a beautiful princess/powerful sorceress named Gayelette who everybody loved, but who couldn’t find anyone to love in return because all the men were stupid and ugly, and she was probably a lesbian.
“At last, however,” the Monkey King continued, “she found a boy who was handsome and manly and wise beyond his years. Gayelette made up her mind that when he grew to be a man she would make him her husband.”
Ew. She took the kid back to her castle and basically raised him, and when he was eventually far enough past puberty, got ready to marry him. Awesome.
“My grandfather was at that time the King of the Winged Monkeys which lived in the forest near Gayelette’s palace,” the Monkey King said. “And the old fellow loved a joke better than a good dinner.” So he picked up the Prince, or whatever he was, and dumped him in the river, which I guess seemed hilarious at the time. The Prince actually thought it was funny too, and was super chill about it, but Gayelette lost her shit, because the water ruined his fancy clothes.
At first I thought Gayelette sounded pretty cool, but clearly she was the worst. I remembered the Wicked Witch—powerful women in these old stories were always the worst. Imagine that. Anyway, Gayelette sentenced every single Flying Monkey to be tied up, dumped in the river and drowned. But the Prince talked her out of it, so instead they all agreed to grant three wishes to whoever owned the gold hat (it had been a wedding present or something) for all eternity.
Three wishes? “Hey, can you fly me all the way out of Oz, and back to my home in Calabasas?”
“That cannot be done,” he said. “We belong to this country alone, and cannot leave it. There has never been a Winged Monkey in Calabasas yet, and I suppose there never will be, for they don’t belong there.” Well, it was worth a shot.
He finished his story. “The Prince was the first owner of the Golden Cap, and after he was married he ordered us always to fly far away and keep where the Princess could never again set eyes on a Winged Monkey. Which we were glad to do, for we were all afraid of her.”
Fair enough. “This was all we ever had to do until the Golden Cap fell into the hands of the Wicked Witch of the West,” he continued. “She made us enslave the Winkies, and afterward drive Oz himself out of the Land of the West. Now the Golden Cap is yours, and three times you have the right to lay your wishes upon us.”
And with that, we had arrived at the Emerald City. The Monkeys set us down carefully at the gates, the King bowed low, and they flew away. I decided that, if things went as planned and we were close to the end of this thing, I’d do that thing where I used my last wish to free the Monkeys from having to grant any more wishes.
“That was a good ride,” the Scarecrow said.
“Yes, and a quick way out of our troubles,” the Lion agreed. “How lucky it was you brought away that wonderful cap!”
I mean, we were almost done, right? In the movie, this was the part where the Wizard gave us half-assed diplomas and watches and stuff, and then fucked off in a balloon while Glinda came and told me the secret shoe password, and I got the hell back to Kansas. If this was a video game, though, it really felt like I’d have to use the Golden Cap two more times. Which meant there could be a whole bunch of stuff left to do that wasn’t in the film.
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck.