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

fairy tale or a film studio—you know how oftenMamsie would tell us about the famous people of Oz, before it was cut off from the world. The Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion and Scraps, the Patchwork Girl… And here I was going to meet them! Until that moment I had not truly believed that we were going to Oz. But now I knew we were.
    In the room at the motor lodge, I met the other two girls. Joan was also from California. She had run away from home to be a film star and had ended up living on the streets of Los Angeles. Ingrid was from a farm in Oklahoma, and she would not talk about why she wanted to run away. She spoke with an accent—I think her family was Swedish or something like that. I told them about being Sally Russell from San Francisco and about my friend Mary Lamb. We sat on the beds and talked a little, but mostly listened as the Wizard and Jellia leaned over a map on the table and made their plans. Jellia said that the Nomes had been especially troublesome lately, which was why Nick Chopper was joining us; once we made it past the Nome Kingdom, we would be fine. “The last time the Growleywogs and Scoodlers bothered us, we had the Hungry Tiger with us, and we showed them what for!” said Jellia. “I don’t think they’ll be bothering us again soon.” Once we reached the third rendezvous point on the border of the Deadly Desert, we would be transported to Oz.
    “How will that happen?” I asked.
    “Don’t you worry,” said Jellia. “All that will be taken care of.”
    Because we were all hungry, the Wizard conjured up some ice cream, the flavors we liked best—I asked for strawberry and chocolate. I was amused to see that Jellia asked for pistachio. Just as we were finishing, we heard a knock on the door. It was the Shaggy Man.
    He was exactly the way I had expected: shaggy everywhere, all his clothes in rags, although they weren’t really. If you looked carefully, you could see that the cloth had been carefully cut to appear ragged. And his hair and beard were separated into a number of small shags, all tied with ribbons. His clothes were so colorful that he looked like a rainbow. He had brought three more girls: Lula Mae from Kentucky, who immediately started talking to Ingrid about milking cows, and Frances and Enid, two sisters who had run away from a fancy boarding school in Massachusetts. At first I didn’t have a lot of sympathy for them, but during our journey, they earned my respect. None of us could build a fire as fast as they could, or put up a tent so it wouldn’t blow over during the night.
    “Well, Jellia, my dear, and Wizard, my good friend, I’ll take the first watch,” said the Shaggy Man. As I fell asleep in the bed I was sharing with Joan and Ingrid, I saw him standing in front of the motor lodge, holding what looked like a machine gun out of a gangster film.
    The next day we drove across the desert in a caravan, Jellia’s car in the rear because it was the most heavily armed. By evening we had reached the second rendezvous point, where Nick Chopper was waiting for us.
    I saw him as soon as I stepped out of the Wizard’s car: a man made all of metal, gleaming in the light of the setting sun. He was armed with an axe, and although he had a jolly enough smile on his metal face, I would not have liked to make him angry! Next to him stood a boy about my age. He looked as though he had been training for one of the strongman contests at the state fair: his biceps bulged out of his shirtsleeves and blond hair flopped over his eyes. Behind them was a van armored all over with metal plates.
    “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