Shadows of the Emerald City (18 page)

“
I’m Nemi Omsbi; my father has a farm south of Munchkin City. The other is our King, Gob Ghab the First.” Gob was amazed at the amount of sarcasm the girl could get out of half a face.

“
That explains the crown,” Boq said. “Hey, are those yours? Nice tits.”

“
Yes, they’re mine. They’ve been stewing in here so long they’ve swollen up.”

“
It’s as hot as a nome’s smelter in here.” Boq declared.

“
Tell me about it,” Nemi managed to say, just as the rest of her cheek sloughed off. “I was going to ask, since we don’t have much else to do, could you teach me to swear like that?”

“
Sure.”

“
Now, Miss Omsbi,” Gob said. “What would your father say to your learning to swear?”

“
Nothing compared to what he’ll say when he finds out what
you
let happen to me!” the farm girl replied. “You’re the King! You’re supposed to protect the Munchkin people. What were you doing while that giant ate my ass?”

“
Floating in the pot.” Gob replied.

“
The giant ate your ass?” asked Boq.

“
Yes.”

“
Can’t fault his taste.” The wrestler’s head was bobbing alongside Nemi’s chest. He suckered up to it like a leech and bit off a bit. “Or yours.”

‘
Stop that!” Nemi cried.

“
Why should the giant get it all?” Boq asked.

Nemi let out a long, detailed string of invective detailed the wrestler’s ancestry, eating habits and sexual proclivities, going both forward and backward through several generations.

“
.
. . to wallow in the puked-up remains of your own feces while fornicated with your mother’s children!
”

“
See,” Boq said, “there’s nothing too it.”

The lid rose off the pot and Mr. Yoop grinned down at them.

“
Now my soup’s smelling sweet. I think that it is time to eat.” The giant stood over the pot, fork in one hand and a huge ladle in the other. Nemi and the wrestler began to swear but the giant just grinned and ladled Nemi’s head into his mouth. She screamed as he slowly slurped the remaining flesh from her face.

Bosky Boq fell silent as the giant crunched her skull in his jaws. If Gob had still been attached to his stomach he would have vomited. “Mmmm.” Said the giant as he thrust his fork at the wrestler’s head. Boq let out a spray of broth to dodge and the giant ended up spearing a larger chunk.

“
Hey, that’s my chest!” exclaimed the King. Mr. Yoop just grinned as he bit off a large chunk. He slurped as he ate, and pieces dropped out of his mouth and off his beard to fall back into the cauldron and onto their faces. He missed Bosky with the fork again but caught him up in the ladle.

Crunch, crunch, crunch, crunch

Gob Ghab was alone in the pot. Oh, bits and pieces of the others remained. Nemi’s chest, Bosky Boq’s ridiculously muscular thighs and buttocks, the King’s own rather spindly knees and calves. The pot was two-thirds empty before Mr. Yoop had eaten his fill.

“
I think I’ll cook you down to stock. The others have all filled me up.”

“
Hey,” Gob called. “That didn’t rhyme!”

The giant shrugged and spat one of Nemi Omsbi’s teeth into his eye. The lid clattered down, and the Munchkin King boiled alone in the dark.

“
Slow down!” The Glass Cat shouted. “Its just ahead here, beyond the bend.”

The cat hated traveling in Ozma’s wagon, especially when the Sawhorse was in a hurry. There were no limits to the wooden beast’s speed, but the wagon could only go so fast and remain upright. Every time she was forced to travel in it she was sure she’d be dashed against the road as if shot from a cannon and shatter into a thousand pieces of glass. In fact she was certain the Sawhorse disliked her, and would like nothing better than to smear her pretty pink brains all over the road’s yellow bricks.

Gold-shod hooves slowed from a blur to a rickety trot just as they came to the curve, and the Glass cat had managed to survive another insane journey. Both tin-men had secured a wrist to the wagon’s rail with a silk rope but the only thing that frightened the Glass cat more than being thrown from the wagon was being thrown down on the road with it tied to her, and so she was secured to the seat-cushion only by her sharp glass claws. She was happy to get off.

“
This way,” she started off into the woods almost before the Tin Soldier had cut the rope holding him and the Woodsman to the wagon.

“
Wait for us,” the Woodsman said.

“
Ozma said to hurry,” the cat replied.

“
Yes, we know.” This from the soldier. “We’re coming.”

The two tin men clacked off into the woods right at her heels.

They made good time under the trees, what with the two tin men’s tireless sword and axe making quick work of the brush. With all the waking and clattering of metal limbs, the Glass cat didn’t see how Mr. Yoop could miss their coming, but when they found the enormous hickory tree with the huge iron pot cooking under it, the giant was no where around.

“
He must have gone off,” said the soldier, “to hunt more victims.”

“
Those poor people,” the woodsman cried.

“
Now, don’t start.” The Glass cat admonished as she climbed on top of the giant’s table. “Go see who’s left in the pot.”

It took both tin-men to lift off the lid. King Gob Ghab’s head sat miserably on top of his dented crown amid a sea of boiling gravy and body parts.

“
Who is it?” the head inquired.

“
Don’t worry,” the Tin woodsman said. “Ozma sent us.”

“
Yes,” the Glass cat added from the table. “We’re from the government, and we’re here to help you.”

The Tin Soldier looked over the rim of the pot.

“
Where’s Mr. Yoop?”

“
Not in here,” King Ghab replied.

“
We’ll have to wait until he returns,” the Tin Woodsman said. “Let’s hide.”

“
What about me?” Gob asked. “Get me out first, don’t leave me!”

“
You’re already pretty well cooked,” observed the soldier. “We don’t want to alert the giant by disturbing anything.”

“
At least fish out my head,” pleaded the King. “So it isn’t devoured like poor Nemi Omsbi’s and that wrestler fellow’s”

‘
No time,” the Glass cat declared. “I think I hear the giant now.”

The Tin Woodsman stepped behind the hickory tree while the Tin Soldier eased back into a holly bush across the camp from it. The Glass Cat used her strong, sharp claws to scamper up the tree and out onto a branch high overhead. For all the noise the tin men made walking when they stood still they were very quiet indeed, which was to the good as not a minute later Mr. Yoop came out of the forest with a familiar wizened figure wrapped in his grip.

Unc Nunkie, beloved of Ojo the Lucky and a favorite at Ozma’s court, had been quietly tending his farm on the other side of Munchkin City when the giant had snatched him up. He still had his old hoe in his hands, its handle tangled in his long grey beard inside the giant’s hand. Seeing this the Tin Woodsman sprang forward, his axe a blur in his right hand, and shouted,

“
Unhand that farmer, you wicked, gluttonous giant!”

Mr. Yoop shifted Unc Nunkie to his left hand and said,

“
You,
I remember from my cage! You’ll be the next to feel my rage!” He reached for the Woodsman, who promptly brought his axe around and severed the giant’s little finger. Mr. Yoop snatched his hand back, launched a kick that caught the Woodsman’s arm, sending both it and his axe off into the trees. Poor Nick Chopper sat down in surprise, staring at where his arm should be.

Mr. Yoop wasn’t given time to gloat. The Tin Soldier stepped out of the bushes behind him and ran his saber as high as he could reach into the giant’s backside. He was just short of reaching the giant’s buttocks and instead sliced through his trousers to impale a more delicate area.

“
Ahroo!
” Bellowed the giant, who dropped Unc Nunkie and bent to clasp both hands on his jewels. This brought his head directly beneath the Glass cat, which landed on his face just as the tears began to fill his eyes.

“
Aarrgh!
” The giant lashed out with heels and hands, knocking the Tin Soldier back into the holly bush while tearing The Glass Cat, along with most of his eye lid, off his face. Lucky for he cat, glass can be quite slippery when covered in blood and she managed to wiggle out of his wounded hand before the giant dashed her into the tree. She landed lightly and quickly dashed from the clearing.

The Tin Woodsman made good use of their distraction, removing his tin hat and picking up the object he’d carried there. A golden egg, entrusted to him by Ozma and the little wizard. Somewhat awkwardly he tossed it at the giant, and it shattered on his belt buckle.

“
No!
” shouted the giant, all thought of rhyme dashed from his head as he rapidly began to shrink. He managed to straighten up some and began to run when Unc Nunkie thrust the hoe between his feet. He tripped and sprawled out on the ground. Writhing in pain and terror, he began to change shape as well as size. His limbs retracted and he sprouted scales. In less time than it takes to tell he was a snake, not much longer than a tall man’s leg.

He tried to slither into the forest, but the Glass cat had known what Ozma had prepared for him and expected this. She’d come ‘round the camp as she ran, and bounded into the clearing to pounced the snake, pinning it to the ground with her hard, sharp claws. The snake coiled around her and tried to bite, but her glass body was much less vulnerable to snakes than giants, and she kept him pinned until the Tin Soldier came over to take him in hand.

The Yoop-snake bit the soldier as well, with little more effect than to mar the fine polishing of his arm he bit him over and over until, in despair of his fine finish, the soldier shoved the snake’s own tail into its mouth. This didn’t deter the former giant one bit. He chomped down on his own tail, worried at it a moment, and bit down again a little farther along. Within a minute he’d downed half his own body, which was no longer a mass of coils but now a single loop. The loop got smaller and smaller until it was balanced in the soldier’s hand, and then it disappeared entirely.

The Tin Soldier stared at his empty palm. So did the Tin Woodsman. The Glass cat stared up at the back of his outstretched hand and, after a moment asked,

“
What happened?”

“
He swallowed himself whole,” said the soldier.

“
I don’t think that was part of Ozma’s plan,” said the woodsman.

“
Someone, please, let me out!” Gob Ghab cried faintly from the cauldron.

“
You two empty that,” the Glass Cat indicated the huge metal pot with an ear. “While I go find your missing arm.”

The two tin men shouldered the cauldron over, knocking the lid off and spilling its contents all over the grass. Gob Ghab gasped with the sudden relief, the cool verge seemed like heaven after his time in the pot. At Nick Chopper’s suggestion Unc Nunkie began sorting out the various pieces.

“
Looks like we won’t be needing the tinsmith,” the old farmer said, “There’s a whole person here, or parts enough for one anyways.”

The Glass Cat emerged from the trees with the woodsman’s arm, still clutching his axe, in her mouth. She dropped it at the woodsman’s feet.

“
That’s good,” she said. “Dorothy packed some flesh glue under the wagon’s seat. She thought it might be useful.”

“
We still have to visit the tinsmith,” The woodsman said. “I’ll need him to fix my arm. I haven’t seen him in years, you know.”

“
Let’s fix King Ghab up first,” the cat said.

King Gob Ghab was worried. Being king of the Munchkins wasn’t a very hard job,
usually
, but it did require being able to command a certain respect from one’s subjects. Gob Ghab suspected he no longer had that respect. In fact he suspected he was a laughingstock. Nick Chopper and the others from Emerald City had done what they could for him. He supposed it was better than ending up in a giant’s belly. It was just that there’d been so little left to choose from when he was rescued.

His head now sat on Nemi Omsbi’s full and finely formed chest. None of his own arms had survived, only one from each of the others. The wrestlers left arm and the goose-girl’s right. He had them both, but unfortunately the wrestler had been right-handed, the girl left-handed. Now both his arms were so uncoordinated he could barely dress. He couldn’t manage tableware beyond a spoon, and so the Queen alone dined with important Munchkin citizens. She didn’t seem displeased with that.

The queen was less happy with the rest of him. The only other original Gob-parts had been his lower legs and feet. His upper legs, belly and thighs all came from Bosky Boq. Along with his package. That was the one part the queen did like, which vexed Gob all the more because he’d thought she liked his original equipment so, and she didn’t seem to miss it at all.

He should resign, but he knew he wouldn’t. He was the fourth Munchkin King since the death of the Witch of the East. All the others had resigned when they grew tired of the job. Gob Ghab would not resign though. He thought it better to be a laughingstock and king than just a laughingstock. It was either this or join the collection of freaks at Ozma’s palace. If he was to be useless, hanging around all the time being laughed at, he’d rather do it in his own palace.