Off to Seek a Wizard... -14- Neat, Sweet, Petite by Erin Halfelven

Wearing damp undies seemed to be the least of my troubles but they were a bit uncomfortable, especially since the slight padding held more than a little water. Amazingly, the mud and dirt had washed right out of them in the pond and off of my own skin as well. I worried about my hair since there didn't seem to be any hope of finding shampoo. What did animals use to clean their fur? Spit? Ick.

I didn't need the ice cream stick I'd found to scrape myself off after all, so I stuck it point down between two rocks for safekeeping.

Next problem.

"Ken," I said. "Don't turn around just yet," I was wringing out my bra, "but do you have more clothing in that cave of yours?"

"Sure," he said, in that tantalizingly almost familiar voice. Who did he sound like? Someone famous?

"Do you think you could find me something to wear?" I asked. Ihad more to worry about than whose voice he reminded me of.

He nodded, still with his back turned. "Most of it is Barbie stuff but there are some outfits for Skipper, too, since you're -- uh, petite. I'll go take a look." He hurried toward the burrow, still carrying the fake speargun, and Chuck followed, muttering something again about helping.

Petite? If I'm really a couple inches shorter than a Ken doll, I'm not petite, I'm downright tiny. How could this happen?

Now, since I'm a magician it maybe should be obvious to me that it's magic. But because I am a magician, I know that magic is all about illusion. And I just could not see anyway to maintain an illusion that I was only ten inches tall through everything that had happened. Running through the forest, falling in a pond that I now realized was smaller than a lot of bathroom sinks; that is, if Ken really was a twelve-inch tall plastic avatar of sanitized masculinity.

I had to suppress another giggle just then.

And what about Chuck and Maggie? Chuck was some kind of magnified rodent and he talked. Maggie was a two-tone crow bigger than a condor, in comparison to me. And she talked too, though she sounded rather more like a bird might actually sound than like the very human voices of Ken and Chuck.

Was I dreaming? Hallucinating? Just plain crazy? Those were all more acceptable than the idea that I might be experiencing real -- uh, call it sorcery to avoid the M-word.

I didn't think I was dreaming in the usual sense because it has been my experience that once you realize or even think that you are dreaming -- you wake up. And I couldn't seem to wake myself up.

But I could be in a hospital bed somewhere tripping out on some nice legal drugs, safe between two white sheets with Mom and Dad hovering over me. Horrid as that thought might be, it had a certain amount of comfort in it. I sniffed a bit, imagining my parents all worried. This, so far, seemed my most likely explanation.

I didn't think I'd gone crazy, going crazy is a way to deal with terrible stress and honest, the stress in my life was really modest. Worrying about tests, getting beat up, catching a plane, going to see the Wizard....

...going to see the Wizard...?

Oh, come on now!

I'm flying Emerald Air, to Kansas, to see a man known as The Wizard, how obvious could it be? I meet a talking animal, a semi-mechanical humanoid, and, and.... Where was the scarecrow?

At just that moment, Maggie flew down and landed nearby in the same mess of wind and feathers she had left in. "Boo!" she said. "Did I scare you?"

Those must be some drugs they're giving me in that hospital.