An Introduction to Oz Before Dorothy

by Tarl Telford

  I looked down and saw that the stinging was coming through the holes in my shoes and at my ankles, where my pants did not cover. I had no socks today, because my only pairs of stockings--both pairs--were in the laundry basket back at home.

  There were only two choices--I could run back to the safety of the cave, or I could run through the field of stinging plants and take my chances out there. Then they stung me again. Before I could make a decision, my feet were already running down the hill. I burst out of that patch of angry plants and rubbed my ankles and feet. They were all red and swollen where I had been stung. Then my fingers and hands started to itch from where I touched my stung skin. How did that work? I had to know.

  I crept carefully back toward the patch of stinging plants. I reached out with my finger to poke one of the plant stems. It stung me. So the hairs on the plant stems were the stingers. This was my first experience with stinging nettles. I was certainly not going to walk through those again.

  That left me with only one way to go. I glanced back up at the cave. The forest extended upward beyond the cave mouth. The steep slope verified my guess that it must be a mountain that I was standing on. But this was like no mountain near home.

  I found some thick moss on a fallen tree, and I wiped my irritated ankles with it. The coolness helped a little bit. Then I pulled my old shoes back on and I headed down toward the valley.

  Every bit of this place made me feel like I was the first one to ever see it. No one else was here, except me, and I loved the stillness. The wind coming from the valley smelled like hot sand. I knew that smell from the glassmaker's shop. He melted sand there to make into cups and windows. The hot, almost salty smell on the breeze was a strange contrast to the cool green forest. It spoke to me of endless winds and bare rock, of shifting sands and mysterious voices in the star-filled nights. It spoke of things that I had no words for, but I saw them in my mind.

  I turned my face into the breeze and followed the traces of warm air like floating footprints across the meadow. Unfamiliar bird songs filled the air, trilling like sticks on a picket fence, and whistling like willow branches in a whip fight. Far above my head, even above the tops of the trees, silent wings circled on the high winds. Though I cupped my hands over my eyes to shade them from the sun, I could not tell how large those birds were. Once, when a shadow passed over me, as the bird passed between me and the sun, I ducked out of instinct, because I thought something was jumping on top of me.

  When I reached the top of the hill I saw two things that took my breath away: one was the edge of the world, where the land just dropped off and stretched out into sand as far as I could see; and the other was a marvelously strange beast.

  The strange thing had a huge, round body with long, thin arms and legs, and a long tail and neck, too. There were small wings on its back, but there was no way that they could lift a body that big. Its head was round, with long whiskers hanging down from of each side of its face, like branches on a weeping willow tree. There were big, rabbit-like teeth, glinting in the sunlight. Big lizards should have sharp fangs, not rabbit teeth. Large green eyes swiveled around, watching for any movement in the tall grass.

  I was only about thirty feet away from the creature when it looked up and saw me. I thought that I was a goner, but it just blinked at me and reached out its long neck to chomp on a purple shrub. When it moved on to the next clump of shrubbery, my wonder doubled again. At the end of its arms and legs were wheels! It didn't walk, it rolled, skating through the tall grass.

  "They are called Jabberwheelers." A girl's voice said from behind me.

  I turned around to see the third thing in less than a minute that took my breath away. Silhouetted against the bright sky was the most amazing girl I had ever seen.

  CB1: Chapter 6 - Dragon Cave

  Her name was Jo-Lynn Secrets, and this was her valley. Or rather, it was until I arrived. Then it became our valley. No one else knew about it, and it would always stay that way.

  Her care-free attitude, and the way she sounded bossy reminded me of the bullies, but it was a little bit different when she said it. She didn't let anyone take charge over her, and she made it very clear that she was the one giving orders. I didn't get punched at all, but I definitely felt pushed around. Then she smiled at me, and everything was okay again.

  She was from beyond the mountains of the west, from a city called Brincedell, in a land called Serraeus. I had never heard of that place, but apparently it was awful. She was a princess, destined to become the queen of that great land, but the crown had been taken from her by another princess--an evil one, and she had to run for her life. She had been guided by the Faeries, and by destiny, to come to this place, and so here she was.

  We walked through the large valley and over the hills. There was another valley beyond. And beyond that was the edge of the world. It was even bigger and edgier in this place.

  In this edge valley, there were more Jabberwheelers. At first I thought they were dragons, but dragons eat meat, not purple shrubs. So they couldn't be dragons. I mentioned this to Jo-Lynn, and she shook her head at me very disapprovingly. "There are no such things as dragons anymore. Those are just old stories. The dragons live down in hell, deep underground."

  She said hell. That was a swear word at home. It thrilled me with a secret pleasure that she could say something forbidden like that so easily.

  I heard a menace in her tone that didn't sit well with me. I cleared my throat and said bravely. "Sometimes stories can be real." I hunched my shoulders, certain she would punch me for disagreeing with her. "They have to be based on something."

  She didn't punch with her fist, but her retort still hurt. "Stories are for little children."

  We sat in silence for a while. I didn't really want Jo-Lynn to make fun of me, so we watched the closest Jabberwheeler finish foraging, and then it wheeled away to join its herd. Jo-Lynn said that a herd or group of Jabberwheelers was called a jerabeem. One of the young bull Jabberwheelers only had one horn. The other was broken off, probably in a big fight.

  The large creatures wheeled across the broad prairie, silhouetted against the edge of the world like a paper cutout on a box stage. The smaller Jabberwheelers tucked their heads and rolled, tumbling almost as fast as the adults could wheel. I laughed out loud as the little ones swung their necks like great clubs at each other, hammering in the chest and legs.

  "They're play-fighting. It's how they decide who is more in charge--who is dominant." Jo-Lynn said.

  "How do you know all these things?" I asked.

  "Nobody taught me. I just watch. See, that one with the spot over its eye? I call him Moosipher. He is a trouble-maker. He's going to trip up that other one by throwing his head into Lambert's wheels as he runs. Watch."

  Just as she said, the two juveniles started wheeling faster and faster, and then Moosipher threw his spotted head down against Lambert's leg, and Lambert tumbled headfirst, and then tucked and rolled to a stop. Moosipher wheeled away. I could see that he was laughing--at least the Jabberwheeler version of laughing, which involved shaking the head back and forth and opening its mouth wide. Jo-Lynn was laughing, too. She hit me on the arm, saying that it was funny. She wanted me to laugh, too.

  Only I didn't feel like laughing, because I knew exactly how Lambert felt.

  We followed the jerabeem of Jabberwheelers down across the prairie and toward a place that Jo-Lynn called Dragon Mountain. Even though we knew that there were no such things as dragons, we could pretend that the mountain was where the dragons lived. On the prairie, the grass soon turned to bare rock and the Jabberwheelers moved more quickly with their wheels rolling faster. Then the entire jerabeem wheeled into a cave and disappeared.

  Jo-Lynn said that was where the dragons went. I wanted to go down and follow them. I had never seen a dragon before. The closest I had seen now was a Jabberwheeler, but that only whetted my curiosity to see a real dragon, if there really were such a thing.

  Behind me, I heard a gutt
ural roar from the deep grass. I felt the vibrations in my heart, and then my heart pounded right up through my chest and into my ears. I tried to get away, but my feet scrambled two ways at once underneath me. Then they got tangled in Jo-Lynn's feet. Both of us--me and Jo-Lynn--fell to the ground in a panic. I scrambled desperately into a shaking mound of purple shrubs.

  A panicked whirring sounded as the last Jabberwheeler, Lambert, slipped and fell on the stone nearby. His legs crouched and sprang up, leaping him over the top of me and the purple shrubs. Everything seemed to freeze in that instant as the four-thousand pound beast hung in the air above me. Then his wheels skittered back on the stone, and he scrambled into the cave after his jerabeem.

  I looked at Jo-Lynn. Her face was as pale as I felt. We both laughed in shock and relief as we rose up to our feet. "That was amazing." I said.

  "I know. It went right over the top of us." Jo-Lynn laughed.

  "I didn't think that they could growl."

  Then the guttural growl sounded again from the tall grass nearby. Yellow eyes glittered out at us. "They can't." Jo-Lynn whispered. I saw on her face that she was terrified, too.

  Then the Speckled Lion leaped out at us.

  * * * * *

  I had never felt my feet run so fast before. Even when I ran from bullies, I knew that they would only hurt me and then leave me alone. With this new threat, my feet knew better than my brain, and I ran for my life. Purple flowers streamed off of me as I raced away from the growling horror.

  My brain wasn't thinking about anything other than escaping. I had plenty of experience running from bullies, and this was just the same, all over again. The cave looked like a place to hide. The darkness would be safe. And why not? I had done it before. That's what got me to this place. I raced into the shadows, and I reached for Jo-Lynn's hand, but she wasn't there.

  Another roar split the air outside the cave as the Speckled Lion stopped his pursuit. I ran deeper into the shadows, my tattered shoes flapping along the smooth path, until the cave rounded a corner and everything grew dark. My heart pounded so loud that I couldn't even hear my lungs gasping in air. I stopped and leaned backwards on a cool stone wall to try to catch my breath.

  Jo-Lynn wasn't with me. I didn't know where she had gone. I only knew that she wasn't in the cave with me. And with that Speckled Lion outside, I wasn't going to take a chance of getting eaten, at least not yet.

  My fingers fished around in my pocket, and I found what I was looking for--the lighted stone my father gave me. Now that I was inside the Dragon Cave, I could see a real-live dragon for myself. I believed the old stories, even if Jo-Lynn didn't.

  The cave was dark, but this time would be different than the Oogaboo cave. This time, I would lead with the light.

  My footsteps echoed in the silent darkness. The Jabberwheelers were gone. Lucky for me the path was smooth. I felt the air turn warmer as the tunnel sloped downward. What made it warmer? Curiosity drove me forward. I had to know what was just around the next bend in the tunnel. The slope grew steeper. My bare feet slid forward in my ragged shoes. Without lacing to stop my toes from moving forward, my feet slipped out from underneath me. I landed on sand on the edge of the smooth path. That didn't help. The sand just made me slide quicker.

  I skidded downwards on the sloped floor for several terrifying seconds. My hand was wrapped tightly around the light-stone. Flashes of brilliance peeked out as I rolled and slid down the impossible slope. It was as exhilarating as it was terrifying. I probably would have screamed if it wasn't so fun.

  Then the floor curved upward slightly and then leveled out. My momentum on the smooth stone whipped me up the curved incline and into the air. I felt weightless for a moment as my arms and legs windmilled around me, grasping for something solid in the dark. Then I felt gravity grab me again and I scrambled my feet wildly. They caught a half-step before I hit the floor. It was almost graceful, except for the part that completely wasn't.

  There was a big white rock in front of me. The light squeezing out from my hand showed that much. I stood slowly and stretched out my legs and my arms. Bruises, but nothing felt broken. Since it was just me down here, and nobody had seen my graceless fall, my pride was even still intact.

  My toes wiggled out of my shoes to feel the rock. It didn't feel like stone. My fingers uncurled from around the light. The white rock wasn't a rock at all. My feet pushed me backwards in shock. It was a giant goat skull.

  Dark breathing sounded from the shadows. I turned the light-stone every which way to find the source of the unseen terror. I felt it everywhere the light turned, but I could not see it.

  "A child. A child has come." A strange voice hissed.

  "Who are you?" I cried. "I can't see you."

  "Nor will you in the light. Join us in the darkness, that we may know you better."

  Creeping fingers of dread walked up my spine and prickled my neck. I wanted to freeze and hide in the darkness, like I did from the bullies, but these things were now waiting for me in the dark.

  The only thing I could do was to hold the light higher. As I did, I saw a red, scaly head slip backwards.

  "You are not the child we were expecting." The sinuous red dragon hissed. "Your eyes are much too young."

  They were dragons. Dragons were real. Jo-Lynn was wrong. I was right, but I was right in the middle of a dragon cave with only a lighted stone between me and them. A flicker of courage lighted in me, like a light-stone in my heart. I wasn't going to let the dragons win. I would play their game of questions and learn all that I could as I scooted back up the cave.

  "What does that mean? My eyes are ten years old, just like the rest of me." I said. I wasn't going to tolerate being made fun of by something, even something scary, that wouldn't even show its face. "Who am I supposed to be?" I snapped back. "I can only be who I am."

  "Indeed." Another dragon hissed. "Yet how often are you who you are? Your young eyes hide the truth, even from yourself."

  I wasn't hiding anything, not really. There were things that other people didn't know, but that didn't mean that I was hiding it...only that I wasn't sharing.

  "That's a big skull. What is it, a goat?"

  "The last meal in the world of air." The red dragon hissed.

  "How long ago was that?" I asked, finding my footing and moving backwards.

  "A time, and a time, and another. What is time to you, child of men? Your eyes have not seen sunsets of worlds. You know nothing."

  "I know the light. And I know that when I go outside, you can't follow me."

  "So say you." The dragon chuckled.

  Then I saw it. All around me was a gate carved into the stone. I stepped through it without any problem, but the dragons could not come further. I watched them as they slid forward to the edge of my light.

  "You can't pass the gate."

  "We are the guardians of this gate. Only dragons may enter here."

  "Are the Jabberwheelers dragons?" I asked.

  "We tolerate the half-bloods because they bring with them the smell of air, unlike you. You bring no smell, only flowers. We are not permitted upward in the Land of Oz."

  "Why not?" I asked. My curiosity was tinged with innocence, but I had a sneaking suspicion that these dragons were not to be welcomed anywhere.

  "What use are treasures to one who does not even value his own name? What use is freedom and air to one who hides in the shadows? What use is an entire land to one who lives in a corner? Our corners, our shadows, our names--forgotten by all who breathe. Such was the price for passing through the gate. Such was the fate of those conquered in the war. We wait and watch, emerging only from lighted portals on the other side of the world, where such treasures are scarce, and hunting is not plentiful. The chosen land was barred from us by those crowns."

  The red dragon's glittering eyes stared through my heart. It felt as if they could see my heart rising up into my throat, and I backed up a step. "I need to go back."

  "Yesssss. Go back, child. Go b
ack to the world of air and remember what things dwell in shadows. Remember that the words you speak in hate drop from your lips and are heard by all who dwell without light. We know your voice, and we know the words you speak in angry stillness. Should you enter our dominion again, bring the smell of anger. We would be glad of your everlasting company."

  Somehow my fingers found the proper grips to climb, even while one hand was clutched around my light-stone. There was nothing I wanted more than to be gone from this place. I didn't belong down here with the dragons. I belonged up in the sunlight--in the world of air, as they had called it.

  Further up the cave, well beyond the angry-looking runes, I paused for a brief moment to capture my breath again. I had run into the darkness uncontrollably, trying to keep up with my feet. Now, with the darkness at my back, I dared not glance backwards even the slightest bit, for fear that I would see the glittering red eyes sliding through the shadows toward me.

  Up ahead, the light from the cave entrance brightened the dark tunnel bend. I could see the shadows of the rocks. In the light, my heart took greater courage.

  They were wrong, I thought. All of them were wrong. Dragons were not the amazing creatures of legend that I had been taught. They were tricky, sinister, and mean.

  Huffing breath sounded far behind me. I knew that dragons could breathe fire. I did not want to be toasted--not this close to a sure knowledge of dragons. I ran toward the light.

  CB1:Chapter 7 - Speckled Lion

  After the darkness in the Dragon Cave, the distant sunlight spilling through the cave entrance was as welcome as a warm smile. If the Speckled Lion was still outside, I would have to take my chances. My heart beat a little bit faster, but facing a hungry lion was better than going back into the darkness with the dragons who could see all of my secrets.