Ozma of Oz

The wind blew hard and joggled the water of the ocean, sending ripples across its surface. Then the wind pushed the edges of the ripples until they became waves, and shoved the waves around until they became billows. The billows rolled dreadfully high: higher even than the tops of houses. Some of them, indeed, rolled as high as the tops of tall trees, and seemed like mountains, and the gulfs between the great billows were like deep valleys.

All this mad dashing and splashing of the waters of the big ocean, which the mischievous wind caused without any good reason whatever, resulted in a terrible storm, and a storm on the ocean is liable to cut many queer pranks and do a lot of damage.

At the time the wind began to blow, a ship was sailing far out upon the waters. When the waves began to tumble and toss and to grow bigger and bigger the ship rolled up and down, and tipped sidewise⁠—first one way and then the other⁠—and was jostled around so roughly that even the sailor-men had to hold fast to the ropes and railings to keep themselves from being swept away by the wind or pitched headlong into the sea.

And the clouds were so thick in the sky that the sunlight couldn’t get through them; so that the day grew dark as night, which added to the terrors of the storm.

“Why, I’ve just laid an egg, that’s all,” replied a small, but sharp and distinct voice, and looking around her the little girl discovered a yellow hen squatting in the opposite corner of the coop.

“Dear me!” she exclaimed, in surprise; “have you been here all night, too?”

“Of course,” answered the hen, fluttering her wings and yawning. “When the coop blew away from the ship I clung fast to this corner, with claws and beak, for I knew if I fell into the water I’d surely be drowned. Indeed, I nearly drowned, as it was, with all that water washing over me. I never was so wet before in my life!”

“Yes,” agreed Dorothy, “it was pretty wet, for a time, I know. But do you feel comfor’ble now?”

“Not very. The sun has helped to dry my feathers, as it has your dress, and I feel better since I laid my morning egg. But what’s to become of us, I should like to know, afloat on this big pond?”

“I’d like to know that, too,” said Dorothy. “But, tell me; how does it happen that you are able to talk? I thought hens could only cluck and cackle.”

“Why, as for that,” answered the yellow hen thoughtfully, “I’ve clucked and cackled all my life, and never spoken a word before this morning, that I can remember. But when you asked a question, a minute ago, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to answer you. So I spoke, and I seem to keep on speaking, just as you and other human beings do.

They were part way across the sands when Billina suddenly cried, in a voice of terror:

“What’s that?”

Dorothy turned quickly around, and saw coming out of a path that led from between the trees the most peculiar person her eyes had ever beheld.

It had the form of a man, except that it walked, or rather rolled, upon all fours, and its legs were the same length as its arms, giving them the appearance of the four legs of a beast. Yet it was no beast that Dorothy had discovered, for the person was clothed most gorgeously in embroidered garments of many colors, and wore a straw hat perched jauntily upon the side of its head. But it differed from human beings in this respect, that instead of hands and feet there grew at the end of its arms and legs round wheels, and by means of these wheels it rolled very swiftly over the level ground. Afterward Dorothy found that these odd wheels were of the same hard substance that our fingernails and toenails are composed of, and she also learned that creatures of this strange race were born in this queer fashion. But when our little girl first caught sight of the first individual of a race that was destined to cause her a lot of trouble, she had an idea that the brilliantly-clothed personage was on roller-skates, which were attached to his hands as well as to his feet.

“Run!” screamed the yellow hen, fluttering away in great fright. “It’s a Wheeler!”

“A Wheeler?” exclaimed Dorothy. “What can that be?”

“Don’t you remember the warning in the sand: ‘Beware the Wheelers’? Run, I tell you⁠—run!”

So Dorothy ran, and the Wheeler gave a sharp, wild cry and came after her in full chase.

So Dorothy searched in the pocket of her dress and found the golden key. And when she had put it into the hole of the rock, and turned it, a sudden sharp snap was heard; then, with a solemn creak that made the shivers run down the child’s back, the face of the rock fell outward, like a door on hinges, and revealed a small dark chamber just inside.

“Good gracious!” cried Dorothy, shrinking back as far as the narrow path would let her.

For, standing within the narrow chamber of rock, was the form of a man⁠—or, at least, it seemed like a man, in the dim light. He was only about as tall as Dorothy herself, and his body was round as a ball and made out of burnished copper. Also his head and limbs were copper, and these were jointed or hinged to his body in a peculiar way, with metal caps over the joints, like the armor worn by knights in days of old. He stood perfectly still, and where the light struck upon his form it glittered as if made of pure gold.

“Don’t be frightened,” called Billina, from her perch. “It isn’t alive.”

“I see it isn’t,” replied the girl, drawing a long breath.

“It is only made out of copper, like the old kettle in the barnyard at home,” continued the hen, turning her head first to one side and then to the other, so that both her little round eyes could examine the object.

Now I must explain to you that the Princess Langwidere had thirty heads⁠—as many as there are days in the month. But of course she could only wear one of them at a time, because she had but one neck. These heads were kept in what she called her “cabinet,” which was a beautiful dressing-room that lay just between Langwidere’s sleeping-chamber and the mirrored sitting-room. Each head was in a separate cupboard lined with velvet. The cupboards ran all around the sides of the dressing-room, and had elaborately carved doors with gold numbers on the outside and jewelled-framed mirrors on the inside of them.

When the Princess got out of her crystal bed in the morning she went to her cabinet, opened one of the velvet-lined cupboards, and took the head it contained from its golden shelf. Then, by the aid of the mirror inside the open door, she put on the head⁠—as neat and straight as could be⁠—and afterward called her maids to robe her for the day. She always wore a simple white costume, that suited all the heads. For, being able to change her face whenever she liked, the Princess had no interest in wearing a variety of gowns, as have other ladies who are compelled to wear the same face constantly.