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Manson-meets-Fred Astaire smile and replied, "Yes, of course." More honing.
        I cleared my throat. "Excuse me, Nick," I said, I don't know what I was thinking of, maybe I'd gotten too much oxygen; I was temporarily insane. "Nick, why don't you do something like you did in the movie? You know, like when you guys snuck into the witch's castle?"
        He actually stopped honing, turned towards me. I couldn't tell if his look meant "I'm interested, go on," or he was marveling at the incomprehensible hogwash I was spouting, waiting for the perfect moment to split me in half. Ralph was behind him, waving his arms, pantomiming, trying to make me shut up. But I was on a roll, and I guess I just didn't give a shit right then.
        "Movie?"
        "Yeah, you know. Don't you? The Wizard of Oz? Anyway, you dressed up like the Winkies in the witches' army uniforms, and got inside the castle to save Dorothy."
        He was looking, then, inside of himself at something impossibly remote, impossibly long ago. "It didn't happen quite that way," he said, looking down at his metal feet. Then he got up. "But what a good idea. Hmm. Disguises."
        Then he stomped off back up the hill, spouting orders to make camp for the night, leaving Ralph and me perched on our rocks with our jaws hanging open, each for a different reason.
        I slept a little bit last night, but mostly sat around the fre with Kimbod and another guy, Zem. Zem was a Quadling, who tended toward the classic Quadling features, according to "So You're Going to Oz": straight coarse white hair, pale, almost vampire-white skin, covered with dark brown to black freckles, wide faces, almost like somebody wearing a stocking over his head. It took me a while to resist the urge to put my hands up, or give him my wallet.
        Zem the Quadling was really quiet all night, let Kimbod and me do all the talking, occasionally grunting at something we'd say. This seemed a little strange to me, as he'd talked my ear off the night before at dinner; I'd actually wanted him to shut up and let me enjoy a few minutes peace, but hadn't said anything.
        Also, while Kimbod and I talked, Zem would disappear into the woods every once in a while. I didn't think anything of it at the time, fguring maybe something wasn't agreeing with him and had the trots, and that it also accounted for why he wasn't speaking. I found out the real reason later.
        Kimbod told me about the land of Ev for a while, all about his family, about all the different wacky royalty they have; I guess he was homesick. I told him about my trip east, and how we have truckstops and Walmarts and titty bars out in our deserts, how ours don't directly kill you if you step on 'em, like the Deadly one.
        He hunched his cadaverous frame in toward the crackling blaze. "I haven't been back for awhile," he said. "It's getting harder and harder to fnd a quick sandboat or a zeppelin these days."
        "Yeah," I replied dreamily, half hypnotized by the brilliant glow of a dry branches's combustion, like I knew all about that problem, "I know what you mean."
        The conversation fagged after that, and I eventually climbed into my sleeping bag, gazing up at the moon through the crisscrossed skeletal tree limbs. I started to freak out then, a little bit, thinking stuff like the branches were dried-up witch-claws bending down to grab me. Then I noticed an owl up there, high up on top of one of the witch's thumbs. It had a half-chewed mouse in one of its talons—I guessed carnivores had a special dispensation when in came to the cannibalism thing—or maybe they only ate stupid mice? I fled the question away for another Ralph conversation.
        "Whoooo?" it called quietly.
        I wasn't sure if it was asking a question or was just being an owl, but I fgured—why not?
        "Gene Speilman" I said.
        As it few off, I wondered if I'd just now subscribed to some weird Oz version of a