A Barnstormer in Oz

Ot kept up her irritating stream of chatter all the way until she sighted the tips of the towers of the Emerald City. Ot became silent after that. Not because of awe or excitement from the sighting. Hank told her that he would wring her neck if she did not shut up for a while.

The capital, the "city" built by the Wizard Oz, was on a river. Baum had neglected to mention this, though that might not have been his fault. Dorothy may have failed to tell him of it. However, there had once been a flourishing village here because it was by the river and its location on the crossing of four roads made it a natural trade center. Oz had torn down the houses and placed on the site his monument to himself.

As the Emerald City neared, its details became more evident. It was beautiful and exotic, a circular wall enclosing many small houses, and, in the center, the huge palace. The fifty-foot-high wall around the city was of great greenish stone blocks. On its wide top were many slender watchtowers of red stone, each topped by a pole from which whipped the flag of Ozland. The flag had been designed by The Wizard himself; the present ruler, the Scarecrow, had left it unchanged. The country originally had been named Mizhland (Midland) but had been renamed after the famous Wizard.

Hank, having plenty of fuel left, circled the city twice and then buzzed it twice. There were enormous emeralds set in the outer exterior of the wall, jewels which Glinda said were undoubtedly the relic artifacts of the Long-Gones.

There were four enormous gates in the wall, not, as Baum had said, only one small one. A single gate could never have handled the traffic of a city of 30,000 and the thousands of traders and tourists.

The houses of the residents were of varicolored stone and, like the Quadlings', rectangular. (Only the Munchkins had round houses.) The streets were of green brick, and there were many trees, parks, and fountains. The palace, which covered at least six acres, was of greenish stone in which were set more emeralds than were in the entire city-protecting wall. Hank gri

In front of the palace was a bronze statue of a man sitting on a chair; it was twice as big as that of Lincoln at the entrance to the Lincoln Memorial Building in Washington. It was of the Wizard, dressed in a tall plug hat, a cigar sticking straight out of his lips, and in the evening clothes of a gentleman of the late 19th century. The face was, by coincidence, much, like the illustration of the Wizard by Neill. But it also reminded Hank of Disraeli.

Having gotten a bird's view of the fabulous city of Oz, Hank directed Je

It looked as if the entire city and its visitors had assembled to greet him. Stakes had been driven into the earth to mark a long wide landing strip, and ropes had been tied to co

Hank brought the plane around to head against the wind and began his landing approach.

He turned off the ignition and climbed out of the plane. Ot flew into the front cockpit, said something to the hawks there, and Windwaldriiz winged off with her message for Glinda. The babel was deafening with the cries and chatter of people, animals, and birds. Hank waited for the greeting committee. At its front was the ruler, the Scarecrow.

He—it, rather—was a walking question mark for Hank.

According to Hank's mother, Baum had narrated truthfully, in essence, anyway, her meeting with the thing. She had come across the Scarecrow stuck up on a pole by a cornfield. The crows, however, paid it no attention; they were eating the corn not a foot away from it. The Scarecrow had spoken to Dorothy and had gotten her to free him from the pole. And his story of being conscious while the farmer painted eyes, nose, lips, and ears on his face was true. Dorothy, eight years old, tough, yet with the naivete and acceptance of marvels of a child, had not questioned him much. Nor had she wondered how a scarecrow could be alive and speak through painted lips and see with painted eyes. Even his statement that he could see better with the left eye, because the fa

There were perhaps a million scarecrows in this land. Every farmer had one. Why was only one in a million able to talk and walk? Why were all the rest just inanimate objects?

Moreover, what Baum, Dorothy, and most of Baum's readers had overlooked was that scarecrows might frighten away crows on Earth, but here the crows were sentient. They would know instantly that the mock-man was a dummy. So, why did the Munchkin farmers make them?

The truth was that every farmer had one, and he had placed it to attract corn-eating birds, not to drive them away.

It was against the law to kill animals and birds, except in special circumstances, but these needed food, and so every farmer allotted a certain amount of his crops to the predators to keep them from the rest. To mark the privilege section, the farmer erected a scarecrow. It was an ancient custom that had become law. The animals and birds, being sentient, usually ate only in the fenced-off area known as the "sacrifice garden" or the "grace field."

The Gillikins, Hank had been told, did not use scarecrows. They set up wooden images called fuglskarya (bird-scare).

Somebody was responsible for the singularity of the Scarecrow. What these people called "witchcraft" had to be involved. If it wasn't, Hank would eat his helmet unboiled and without salt and pepper.

He might be overly suspicious, but he wondered if Glinda's invisible hand had been and was pushing events in the directions she wished.

For instance, it was not true that Helwedo, the Witch of the North, the Gillikin ruler, had been waiting for Dorothy when she came out of the farmhouse. If she had been, she would not have been able to talk with the little girl. Dorothy did not know the language. But three weeks later, when Dorothy could carry on a simple conversation, she was visited by the witch. After telling her something about the land and the silver shoes of the dead and dried-away Witch of the East, she had taken off her white conical hat. While balancing it on her nose—quite a feat—she had said, "One, two, three." A shimmering enclosed the hat, and when that was gone within a second, it seemed to have changed into a slateboard. In big white chalkmarks was written on it: LET DOROTHY GO TO THE CITY OF EMERALDS.

That was what Dorothy was told that the message was. She could not read it.

Who had written those words? Glinda?

If so, why?

And how had she done it? She was many hundreds of miles away. Did she have not only telepathic powers enabling her to communicate with the North Witch but also telergic powers?

Had Glinda somehow animated and made sentient the Scarecrow so that the little Earth girl might have a protector and advisor?

"Am I being paranoiac?" Hank muttered. "I don't think so. I'm just being logical or trying to be, anyway. However, I don't really have enough information to construct any probable and logical hypotheses. And that is what's driving me crazy. Making me anxious and frustrated, anyway."