Ozma's Story

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The violet smoke cleared, the gauzy pink curtains stirred. Beyond, shadows in bright sunlight, comrades of my travels, waiting: Crowe, Mann, Jack. I heard the anxious whinney of old Sawhorse who I had ridden so far, so long, only to have the old woman point her knobby finger at me and say we'd had the princess within reach all along.

"I," I had cried. "I'm no ... I'm not..."

A glow of light intensifying, The Good Witch descended, her voice, as ever, almost singing:

"You are not a girl just now," I'd heard, and her elegant, pale fingers gently touched my forehead. "You were enchanted, you see. Now it is time ... "

Brighter and brighter light first, then violet smoke, a dizzying spin into dark, or sleep or maybe something we can never really know. Friends' anxious hands, half felt, laying me in in the bower that had suddenly appeared. Waiting. Waiting

And now, the curtains brushed aside the curtains, letting the sunlight in. Now, time to rise. To dare to emerge.

My friends lifted their eyes and gazed. Was it a minute? an hour? I cannot say.

I searched for what to say:

"I hope none of you will care less for me than you did before. I'm just the same Tip, you know; only -- only -- "

"Only you're different!" said the Pumpkinhead; and it was the wisest thing he had ever said.

In the story, Mr. Baum then has us return to our struggle with the usurper Queen straight away, for as the princess, I had things to do, an Emerald City to reclaim and we were already more than 100 pages into the book. The adventure of the thing was always something he understood more easily through battle and quest, Deadly Deserts, castles on a crag. Men!

But perhaps you will see there was adventure, a different outward form perhaps, but adventure and quest and even battle, nevertheless, before we got around to that.

Or, perhaps you say: So, so -- well, girly, yes -- so unlike the Tip we knew to think the challenge of a decorous walk, the battle with the swirl of ankle-catching cloth, the quest (continuing as it did) for Ozma, might be adventure.

Quest, indeed. For all the while, as The Good Witch drilled me in the ankles-together sit, the lowered gaze, the sway, there remained Tip. Invisible, perhaps. But remembering running wild across the wheat-fields, almost the same gold as Oz's richest meadows. The quest for Ozma might now involve a lesson in a stuffy drawing room (petticoats, gowns, this for the morning, this for night) that would be suddenly disrupted by a flash of memory: calling to claim a fly ball, dropping from a sunlit sky like this into my glove. The murmur of ladies-in-waiting: No princess, we don't do it that way, hearing with my inner ear: Tip, laughing in that raucous way boys do, splashing along the coulee creek, as he lunges to catch a frog and misses.

The world knew Ozma, though Ozma didn't know herself. Tip, though, was nowhere to be found. Except, sometimes, I could.

I plodded on. Some days were better, some not so good. A certain fluidity of motion, a naturalness of grace eluded me, essential though it was. It wasn't my dream to be the person I'd become, the change had come, in my view, as something quite external to me.

Yet, I did not really resist either; troubling as that was to me in certain quiet moments. Mr. Baum says that I agreed, and though I don't remember it that way, I did understand my obligation. The Wonderful Wizard had spirited me away after my birth, and used the magic The Good Witch abhorred to transform me into the boy I thought I was. Crowe had ruled as regent, while the people of Oz searched for their missing princess -- Mr. Baum was quite unfair about Crowe's intelligence. But the long years of waiting emboldened another to seize the throne. Crowe's friend Mann, tin-eared and emotional -- so full of heart -- convinced him Oz yearned for its princess. And there I was.

"It is going very slowly," I overheard The Good Witch sigh to Crowe one day. I was slinking back to her castle, after I'd escaped the lessons of the day.

"A matter of accepting?" asked Crowe. "It's always hard. I know myself, well, what they'd always said was hard to take: Man of Straw. Brainless."

The Witch's silver laughter.

"Alright, alright," Crowe laughing now, as well. "Perhaps it's not the same at all. Though; maybe it is. We've told Tip ... "

"Ozma," The Good Witch interrupted. "Princess Ozma. How can she ever learn if you won't cooperate."

"Yes," said Crowe. "We've said: you are the same ... Tip ... who we've always known, but different, too. We've said: You have, because of who you were born to be, a responsibility; we've said: you must learn this, and that and this. All chores, and only chores."

"Ah," sighed The Witch. "I see."

"Just as Mann might say: if there only was a heart," said Crowe.

"And so?"

"And so, the next lesson is joy. The next lesson is love."

****

I know, I know. They seem manipulative to you, these friends of mine. But remember, we are talking about a country's fate here, about a throne. As the saying goes: I don't think we're in Kansas anymore.

You likely enough know the mechanics they eventually decided upon: essentially, the Season, the Coming-out Ball. Traditionally, the showcase for the marriage market, though it isn't quite the same for princesses since marriage for them a different matter altogether, a fact that was a great relief to the Tip inside.

It wasn't quite the thing in Oz, but still, there were enough eager mothers, enough blooming maidens, for The Good Witch to cobble up an approximation. From my point of view, it was like been thrown into a pool of sugary warmth, all ruffles and lace and giggles, a frenzy of must-haves, must-dos, on deadlines so urgent that who could expect a mere man to understand, a head-filling swirl that steadily, imperceptibly, pushed other thoughts aside. Girls necessarily nick-named Kitty, or Bitsy, studied empty-headedness and careful calculation, an immersion course in blushing, flushing, giggling; hours of practice in the flourishes and fancies, gestures that beguile others and -- deepest secret -- oneself into the proper role.

We needed, periodically, to bend heads close and whisper. Glances to dissect, gossip to share, laughing memories of childhoods shared and left, slowly behind. A crash course, these sessions, in the girlhood I hadn't had. Drinking it all in, made it all seem normal.

The point, of course, (the Tip inside me still resists expressing) was Boys. Whispered intensities about him, or him or that one from football team, whoever was the pinnacle of desire, the center of a dream.

But once the name was finally, hopefully, painfully revealed by one to all the others, as sighs or giggles began rising in a chorus, I'd feel a shadow of a chill, suddenly the remote imposter. I was trying to become. They were.

In those weeks, if The Good Witch, or Crowe, or even Nick Chopper, the dear old Tin Man, sensed reserve, I don't think they would have worried. They knew, as I did not yet, that there must be distance round your princess. The dreams of debutantes cannot be hers, though ultimately she is the illusion on which those dreams (and oh so many others) are modeled.

I worried, though, for I didn't understand. I worried because all I knew was I had changed, and wasn't yet certain in my skin. I worried because, when we practiced dancing, swirling new dresses for the others to admire, surrounded one another with the whispered, never-ending reminders of our beguiling art, I'd close my eyes and still see Tip, way, way out in the prairie, the low light of sunset fading from sky. All alone.

Still, a dozen girls embarking on the Season can be pretty overwhelming. As weeks passed, a tea party, a whispered confidence, detailed analysis of hair or makeup seemed as familar as if it had always been the way I passed my days. Sometimes, a day might go, and Tip would not intrude. Sometimes two days, three.

Our first performance was a garden party. Warm sun, scent of roses on the breeze; green lawn, sloping gently to a river, glowing in late afternoon light. Tea and too-sweet cakes, mothers beaming on the portico, girls in their light summer dresses, flowered, flounced. Breeze making hems tickle backs of knees -- perhaps that was why we shivered. We waited by the roses; the boys across the lawn, shifting and nudging, trying not to meet each others' glances and deliberately failing.

I danced with one or three or five, I can't remember. That was the rule, one dance for each. Only one dance. Awkward dances, too, for in our own lessons, we sometimes led, sometimes followed, and I more often led than not. The boys, of course, in their own separate lessons, worked mostly at ignoring all the steps. We chatted about the weather as we danced. The flowers. Often, we simply danced in silence.

There'd be a dozen other garden parties. Eventually, the boys would learn to lead, and we to chat: an interesting book, a piece of music learned, a plan for how he'd make a living. Our task to charm, theirs to suggest they'd be worth charming.

For me, a basic fear though, not realizing that a princess cannot marry a young man who will run a mill, or send his caravans of mules across the desert, no, not even were his trade in incense or in gold instead of salt. I thought I saw my fate. And though I didn't know about the do's and don'ts for princesses, I knew a Tip cannot swoon over a Freddie's smoldering eyes, or the way that curl of so-dark hair slips down George's brow. I knew I couldn't, even though the long weeks preparing for this dance had taught me how important they might be.

Still, I danced, and still immersed in the dreams of others, it all seemed almost natural.

Except that in a rare quiet moment, still, there would be Tip, running through the wind-tossed wheat.

***

Really, what does it mean to change? Is it a question of the violet smoke, the shock reflected in another's eyes? A snapping of your fingers, a long, sweet slide into a world constructed of reiteration, built by forgetting what had been?

Or, as wise Crowe learned when he gave up scaring pests from all his fields to follow Her, is changing really something else. Is it what Mann had said, once Dorothy had let the warm, sweet oil drip so he was no longer frozen:

Do we change when we love?

It happened at The Ball, the coming-out, the climax of the Season that The Good Witch created for my education. What else would you expect, in a fairy tale like this?

Imagine, a ballroom larger than a cathedral's apse, stone columns, sturdy as tree trunks rising far above, branches reaching out to form a roof; so high no one could tell the fairy-lights floating in the air above were really floating. Mounds of flowers, red and blue and pinkish-orange, ribbons of tinsel fracturing the light, mirrors reflecting the
scene The Good Witch summoned with a mere waving of her wand, until it seemed an infinity of wonder, filling the world and beyond.

It was as if all Oz were waiting for us to make our entry; the babble of voices, singsong of Emerald City girls, muttering of those hairy, crouching fellows from the east about whom Mr Baum was so rude, the gravelly accents of the little ones.

We were ... confections, that's the word I want. Confections as we stepped, we swayed so maidenly into the center of the stage. Confections of pink, lavender, pale lemon; confections of silk and lace and satin. Clouds of skirts that seemed to say: don't come too close, close-held breasts, deep decolletage inviting closer.

The boys ... well, really, I shouldn't call them that anymore. The young men, ranged in a line before us, grave and smiling both. Because the fantasy requires, because the crisis was upon us and the battle for the throne was looming, they were brilliant in their uniforms, deep reds and sunny yellows all gilt encrusted, breeches white above gleaming boots. The boys we'd come to know, now transformed.

As we were. As I was.

No more giggling Kitty, that was Katherine stepping stately towards the line of them, stepping surely towards the one who (I knew, because she's confessed in a whisper) asked her the big question, maybe the biggest in her life. No more Bitsy, but Elizabeth, beaming as she paraded past the crowd, eyes fixed on one young man who I suspected had something special to tell to her tonight.

No Tip, not tonight. Just me. I was at the end of the line, in the silvery mist of a dress that The Good Witch had selected with a passing of her wand. When all we girls had gathered for our fittings, mine the only one needing no work, for it was magical, and no one noticed.

Reaching the line of young men, Katherine took the arm of her special one; so did Elizabeth, and Anne. For every girl a boy, as music swelled to fill the room.

Now, in the center of the ballroom only me. The last young man, a stranger, stretched his hand for mine.

He pulled me to him, gently but irresistibly. Dizzying flashes of feeling, sights, sounds flooded in at his touch: dark hair, a smile not quite symmetrical, broad shoulders, violins demanding minuet, the dark green of his jacket, the feeling of a forearm cradling my lower back, the way my hand seemed lost in his.

The deep green of his eyes.

We danced, And danced and danced.

Around us, dimly, pairs re-partnered, a happy buzz of talk and laughter a counterpart to the music. But we two danced, and danced.

Dancing like that, you will understand what happened to me, melting there. No need to tell you that four-letter word.

We talked, not of the weather, nor of the latest gossip, but -- oh, who can say. Stories heard, yes; a painting loved. The way stars glow in velvet skies, or streams gleam silver racing through the rapids' rocks. We talked of how things felt, though I would not tell him how I shivered at his touch, or melted as his thumb grazed my inner elbow, thinking that was best for another time, another place. Feelings and memories: the sweet anticipation of a dance, tickle of a breeze ruffling a sleeve, the smell of jacaranda in the evening, running into the sun and leaping to make the catch.

There in a fairytale ballroom, I had summoned Kansas in the summer: talking of daring the dive from tire swing into in the coulee creek; the wheat, like ocean waves stirred by the wind; the thud of a friend's shoulder slamming me to make the tackle.

Ozma danced. Tip danced. There was the fairytale ballroom. There was Kansas.

He didn't mind at all, to dance with with both.

He pulled me close for a last turn around the ballroom; we were alone now in the middle of the ballroom, the center of all attention.

The music swelled, almost celestial.

Drawing me closer still. Lips pressed to mine, at last. Warm golden glow growing from somewhere deep inside me. Then, as if pulled like a top, a final spin beneath his steadying arm.

The music stopped.

"Oz," he called out.

A emerald green mist arising round his feet. Through him now I saw the the people gaping, felt emerald lift my hand high, felt emerald cupping my thighs, lifting me up and up and up.

"Oz," the voice deeper even as the emerald green began fading, "Oz, here is your princess."

And that was the way the throne was won.

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