L. Frank Baum - Oz 28 Page 6

  Kachewka, who sat opposite, was fizzing all over with anxiety lest someone should speak of Loxo and his dreadful determination to carry off the King’s child, but Sizzeroo and his courtiers were so curious about Speedy and his dinosaur, and the strange tales

  he told them of life in America that they never mentioned the giant episode at all. And after the main courses, when Speedy ran out to see that Terrybubble was all right, the chief counselor lost no time in forbidding all talk of the giant in the presence of their American visitor. He especially impressed on the little Princess herself the necessity for silence in this grave matter.

  “What would this boy think if he knew we had stupidly run into a giant?” he whispered earnestly. “And if he tells the story when he reaches Oz, it will cause us all manner of trouble and embarrassment!”

  Waddy backed up the old counselor in his arguments and by the time Speedy returned to finish his dessert each member of the King’s household was sworn to secrecy about Loxo. Moreover, Meander had been sent down into the village to warn and instruct the rest of the Umbrellians. Only Sizzeroo knew the real reason for Kachewka’s orders and the kindly King felt so distressed and unhappy he could not touch his frosted cakes and coffee and kept looking so solemnly and so sadly at his youthful visitor that Speedy himself grew uneasy and was glad when the Princess begged him to come along with her to the castle library.

  “Library?” scoffed Waddy, clapping the little boy

  good-naturedly on the back. “He does not want to read books, my girl, he wants to live them. Take him into the valley and let him choose his umbrella and be sure you pick a ripe one, Princess. It is against the law to be without an umbrella on this island,” finished the Wizard, with a broad wink, “and we can’t have you breaking the law, you know.” “How about Terrybubble, does he have to have an umbrella, too?” Speedy looked rather anxious. “I don’t see how we’ll ever find one big enough for

  him!”

  “Oh, he’ll do well enough without one,” sniffed Pansy, who was delicately lapping up a saucer of cream on the arm of the King’s chair,

  “Your dinosaur did soar and soar Until he reached our island shore, What needs he an umbrella for?”

  “To keep him afloat if he should tumble off the island, little dunce,” reproved Waddy, shaking a fat forefinger at the Watch Cat. “Besides, he did not fly here, he exploded.”

  “What he did once he can do again,” insisted Pansy, switching her braided tail provokingly.

  “Ah, don’t mind her,” chuckled the Wizard, resting his arm affectionately on Speedy’s shoulder. “I’ll make that old Whiffenpoof an umbrella in no time.”

  “Better keep your mind, or the remnants of your mind, on that problem beginning with a G,” advised the Watch Cat meaningly.

  “PANSY!” roared Kachewka in such a terrible voice that Sizzeroo seized his pet and made a dignified but hasty departure from the royal dining hall.

  “Can you really make Terrybubble an umbrella that will hold him up in the air?” marvelled Speedy, looking thoughtfully after the retreating back of the

  King.

  “Why not?” Throwing out his chest and it must be confessed, also his stomach, the jolly Wizard waddled importantly toward the winding stair that leads to his private tower.

  “Say, let’s watch him,” proposed Speedy eagerly.

  “I’ve never seen a real wizard at work.”

  “We’d better pick your umbrella first,” suggested Gureeda practically. “Then I’ll show you my books. Wait! There’s one I want to bring with me.”

  “You’re not going to read are you?” Speedy could hardly conceal his disappointment. “I thought you were going to show me the island.”

  “Well, can’t I read while you look?” demanded the

  Princess rather anxiously, for she really wanted to please this odd visitor from America.

  “Oh, I suppose so, but” Before Speedy could explain his objections Gureeda had whisked out of sight. When she joined him and Terrybubble a moment later in the throne room, she had a huge volume under one arm and a bright parasol swinging from the other. The King and his Court had dispersed for their afternoon naps, and only a few guards stood gaping up at the dinosaur. Terrybubble would have liked nothing better than to stay where he was, admiring the jewelled ceiling above his head and the splendid glittering furnishings of the castle. But when Speedy, taking Gureeda’s book, started with the little Princess for the door, the prehistoric skeleton pulled himself reluctantly to his claws and rattled resignedly after them.

  “Does this monster go everywhere you go?” asked Gureeda, glancing nervously up over her shoulder.

  “Certainly,” answered Terrybubble. “I am his pet and chum and just now taking the place of a wire-haired terrier.”

  “What?” giggled the Princess, wrinkling up her nose. Speedy felt inclined to laugh himself, but Terrybubble looked so serious and happy about everything that he merely nodded instead.

  “If he likes to follow me about, why shouldn’t he?” asked the little boy carelessly. “Which way do we go to pick this umbrella your wizard says I must

  carry?”

  “That way.” Poised like a brilliant butterfly on the top step of the royal terrace, the Princess waved her parasol to the right. In the valley below, Speedy could just make out a cluster of Waddy’s famous umbrella trees. After a long curious gaze, he feasted his eyes on the huge shaft that supported the umbrella spreading over the whole island, wishing he could first stop and investigate its strange steering apparatus. But Gureeda had already started, so Speedy followed the Princess down the many marble steps to the village and through the village to the umbrella groves beyond.

  And after Speedy came Terrybubble, treading with great care through the narrow streets, peering down chimneys and in the top story windows of houses that were tall enough. When they reached the umbrella grove, Terrybubble established himself comfortably in the only open space and blinked thoughtfully up at the blue and white blossoms and long tubular fruit of these singular trees. “What color do you think you would like?” inquired

  Gureeda, who was in a hurry to have the matter over so she could return to her book. “Er-well-blue I guess,” decided Speedy, glancing down at his dark Norfolk suit. “How do you know when they’re ripe?” “The ripe ones open and the green ones don’t,” stated the Princess and climbing briskly up a white ladder set against the largest tree, she snapped off a serviceable blue umbrella. Stripping off the shiny leaf-like case, she opened it up, surveyed it critically, and apparently quite satisfied, handed it down to her companion. Then with her parasol swinging lightly from one wrist, Gureeda skipped down the ladder and dropped on the ground beside Terrybubble. That is as much beside so high and mighty a monster as a small girl could possibly be, and opened her book and began to read.

  Speedy was too busy examining his new possession to mind. He could not help thinking how interesting this magic umbrella would be to Uncle Billy, for the tip was a short gleaming sword and the umbrella itself, although of the thinnest and finest texture, seemed positively indestructible, protecting one not only from sun and rain but from bullets, arrows or missiles of any description. Each section had a roomy

  pocket that buttoned and the edges were fitted with curved silver hooks for carrying baskets, packages or even clothing. The handle opened out into a tidy seat, and Speedy, sticking the sharp point into the ground, sat down with great interest and satisfac-fion. Besides all of these uses, it had, according to a neatly printed tag, guaranteed parashoot qualities, dependable enough to keep the holder in the air indefinitely or until rescued.

  “Gee whiskers, this certainly will come in handy,” exclaimed the little boy with enthusiasm. “Why it’s a shield, a weapon, a carryall, a seat and a flying machine. Look, Terrybubble, did you ever see anything like this before?”

  “Never!” answered the dinosaur, darting his long bony neck down toward Speedy. “Is it to chew, throw or jump on?”

  “T
o carry,” Speedy told him, swinging it jauntily over one shouder. “See, it keeps off the sun and rain and if I fall off the island it would carry me safely down to the ground.”

  “Without me?” whistled Terrybubble, rolling his luminous eyes reproachfully.

  “Waddy’s making you an umbrella,” smiled Gureeda, looking up from her book, “and then you’ll be a real Umbrellian!”

  “Oh no. Thank you, no!” The dinosaur shook his head ponderously. “I’m this boy’s pet and chum and that is about all I can manage for the present.”

  “If you’re a pet you ought to have a collar.” Gureeda twinkled her blue eyes mischievously at Terrybubble. “Let’s make him a collar of daisies,” proposed the little Princess, tossing aside her book and jumping up gaily. So, with many giggles and much merriment, Speedy and Gureeda picked an armful of daisies and wove an enormous chain for the dinosaur. Terrybubble was greatly flattered by this attention and lifted Gureeda up in his claw, so she could slip the huge wreath around his neck. “There, now you look as if you really belonged to somebody,” sighed the Princess, as the gaunt monster set her gently on the ground, “but oh, Terrybubble, you’re so dreadfully unfurnished! Don’t you

  feel hollow?”

  “Not a bit.” Terrybubble grinned and clicked his teeth cheerfully. “You see, I’m just full of bright, fresh air and you have no idea how invigorating I find it. Not nearly so troublesome as the old tubes, valves, wind bags and piping I carried around for four hundred years.”

  “I was just reading all about you in this book,”

  confided the Princess, picking up the volume she had flung aside when she was working on the daisy chain.

  “Now, that’s where you are foolish.” Opening the handle of his umbrella again, Speedy seated himself argumentatively. “Why should you read about dinosaurs out of a book when you can learn all about them from the one beside you?”

  “Not quite all,” murmured Gureeda, looking speculatively up at Terrybubble and at the same time fingering the pages of her book lovingly. “The bones of the ones in here are all covered, and it says—”

  “What difference does that make!” Speedy waved his arms impatiently. “They’re only pictures, but Terrybubble’s real and he can tell you real things that happened to him hundreds and thousands of years ago. Tell her about that mogerith,” he urged, anxious to prove his point.

  “Well, that would be the last day of my former life,” sighed Terrybubble, flashing his bright eyes down at the Princess. “All morning I had been rolling in the fern beds in the Valley of Virtula, where I lived with my mogodosanthic and elegopanthic mama.”

  “Whatever that means,” murmured Gureeda, taking a quick peek into her book. 138

  “It means she was modest and elegant,” explained Speedy learnedly. To his surprise, Terrybubble nodded, for his translation had been a mere guess.

  “And, oh my dear self!” mused the monster, rattling his claws reminiscently. “How sweet were the frugament trees, how the sun shone through the palms and golyosnorkus vines! How dythrambic I felt after my roll in the ferns! In fact, I was dythrambing all over the rocks when it happened.”

  “Dythrambing?” Gureeda wrinkled up her brows and took another furtive peep into her natural history book.

  “Yes, this way!” Impetuously, and before Speedy could stop him, the prehistoric monster had sprung thirty feet into the air, come down with astonishing buoyancy, bounded to the left, vaulted wildly to the right and spun around on the tip of his tail like an enormous mechanical top. His bones during this procedure rattled like a dozen machine guns and the umbrella blossoms loosened by his gigantic whirls and gestures fell in perfect showers on his two listeners. Speedy had tumbled off his umbrella seat at the first leap, and Gureeda, almost buried under a heap of blossoms, peered fearfully up at the gyrating monster.

  “There, what did I tell you!” exulted Speedy, pushing aside a mass of petals and feeling around for his umbrella. “Isn’t this better than reading about dinosaurs?”

  Gureeda, swimming out from a perfect sea of flowers, looked doubtful, but before she could express herself, Terrybubble stopped dythrambing as suddenly as he had begun.

  “Yes, it was like that,” he told them hoarsely. “One moment I was alive, happy and free, next moment I was in the paralyzing grip of an old Mogger, his teeth pressed deeper and deeper into my throat. Everything grew dark. I felt myself falling, falling. There came a tremendous thud and that was all.”

  “He probably did for you all right,” sympathized Speedy, ‘but why didn’t you fight back?”

  “It is plain you never have seen a mogerith,” sighed Terrybubble, waving his claws in sorrowful circles.

  “What did it look like?” asked Gureeda, shaking the umbrella blossoms from her lap and gazing up at the dinosaur with wide-eyed interest.

  “Like this.” With a sudden pounce Terrybubble picked up a lizard that had been sunning itself on a flat rock and held it out in his bony claw.

  “Like this, but a thousand times larger, with teeth

  as sharp and long as the swords hanging on the walls of your father’s castle.”

  “There’s a picture of one here and it’s called a dreadful carnivorous monster or terrible lizard. It was a Megolosauros. Why, that must have been a Inegolosaurus,” squealed Gureeda, flapping open her book in great excitement. “See if it isn’t.” Curling his long neck down till he was looking over the little girl’s shoulder, the dinosaur squinted earnestly down at the terrifying picture on the page.

  “That’s it! That’s it!” he assured her in a hollow voice. “Only we called them moggers and mogeriths in my time and you can have no notion of their size and ferocity from a tiny picture like that.”

  “Still, it gives us an idea,” muttered Speedy, taking the book from the Princess and hurriedly reading the description on the opposite page. “Gee whiskers, this is tremendous! Say, I’d like to have been alive in those days, wouldn’t you, Gureeda? Mind if I call you Reedy? It’s shorter and well-jollier!”

  “And goes better with Speedy,” smiled the King’s daughter, leaning cozily back against the umbrella tree. “But look, here comes Pansy. Wonder what she wants so far from the palace?”

  “Pansy?” mumbled Terrybubble, lifting his eyes

  mournfully from the picture of his old enemy in the open book on the little girl’s lap. “Who’s Pansy?”

  “Oh, didn’t you meet Pansy in the parade this morning?” asked Gureeda softly. “Why Pansy is my

  father’s Watch Cat.”

  “Cat!Cat!” Terrybubble dropped the lizard with a little thump and snapped up his head in a series of agitated jerks. “That little black creature with the tied up tail and ears?” “They are kind of tidy, now that you mention it,” agreed the Princess brightly. “Yes, that’s our Watch

  Cat. Why?”

  “Why?” whistled Terrybubble, flashing his great eyes on and off like traffic lights. “Because I chase cats!” And with a bound twice as high as his first dythrambic leap, the dinosaur dashed out of the umbrella grove in hot pursuit of the astounded, outraged and already fleeing pet of His Majesty, King Sizzeroo.

  CHAPTER 9

  Terrybubble chases a Cat

  OH—HH

  !”shrilled the little Princess, snatching up her parasol and dashing

  wildly after Terrybubble. “My father will never forgive us if anything happens to Pansy. Come back here you great big, bad, bony good-for-nothing.” At this point Gureeda’s foot slipped into a gopher hole and threw her flat upon her stomach. Too stunned to continue, she lay where she was, fairly panting with indignation and rage.

  “Nothing will happen to her,” promised Speedy, jerking the little Princess quickly to her feet. “But why are you stopping? Come on, come on!” Paying no attention to the little girl’s breathless remonstrances, he tore madly after the charging dinosaur, trying to convince himself that everything really would be all right. “It’s that confounded wire-haired terrier talk,” he
thought gloomily. “Why ever did I mention the little pest! If he smashes this Watch Cat, we’ll both be flung off the island.”

  Reminded by this dire possibility of his magic umbrella, Speedy took a firmer grip on its ivory-hooked handle with one hand and dragged Gureeda frantically along with the other. As both of them were ready to sink down with exhaustion, an agonized shriek came from the small wood into which the dinosaur had just disappeared. Speedy’s heart almost stopped and

  Gureeda began to sob hysterically.

  But their anxiety for Pansy’s safety was quite needless. All Terrybubble wished to do was to catch the elusive black creature, and Pansy’s scream, as his claw closed firmly about her middle, was from pure fright and nothing else. Holding the King’s pet proudly aloft and giving no heed to her squalls and scratches, Terrybubble ambled leisurely back toward his companions.

  “Well, here’s your cat, and a fine chase she gave me.” Calmly and without haste, Terrybubble lowered Pansy to Speedy’s shoulder. “And now,” the dinosaur raised his voice triumphantly, “now I’ve done almost everything a wire-haired terrier can do and I hope you’re satisfied.”

  Speedy was too relieved to say a word, but Pansy, dusty and footsore from her fearful fligh - Pansy was fairly crackling with rage and displeasure.