Free Oz Reimagined: New Tales from the Emerald City and Beyond by Unknown

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 quitewell 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 murderedthem, 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