He dared then to voice his questions to the Scarecrow.
The round blue eyes looked surprised, but they always had that look.
"You are a profound young man, as philosophical as you are tall," it said. "I have thought and thought about these enigmas, but I just don't know. I'm wise, but wisdom can't go far without knowledge. And I don't have the knowledge I need. Perhaps Glinda could tell you. Us."
"She's very evasive about such things."
"If she is, she must have very good reasons."
A few minutes after dawn of the next day, the Jenny took off. Three miles due west of the capital was a rough circle of heavy woods about two miles in diameter. This, Ot said, was one of the domains of the wild beasts. Humans never ventured there unless they were fleeing justice.
"Go that way," she said, indicating with a foot a southwest direction.
"Why?" Hank said.
"It's only a little out of the way. You'll see something very interesting."
Hank shrugged and turned the Jenny's nose. Very quickly, he saw a clearing in the green mass. Near its edge on the ground was what looked like an overturned balloonist's basket or gondola.
"What's left of the Wizard Oz's balloon," Ot said. "He came down here after he left The Emerald City because he'd been exposed as a fake wizard. He didn't get far, did he?"
Hank had not expected the Wizard to stay afloat for very long. When the Wizard had risen from the city, he'd been in a balloon the envelope of which had been filled with air heated from a wood fire on the ground. As a result, the hot air had soon cooled after the balloon ascended. The Wizard had been lucky to get as far as he had.
"What happened to Oz after the balloon came down?" Hank shouted.
"He went to the northwest," the hawk said. "Very few humans saw him, but reports from animals and birds indicate that he took off for the wild country that way."
Hank wondered if he could still be alive. He'd been an old man when Dorothy met him, and about thirty-three years had passed since then. Surely, Glinda, who had spies all over the land, would know what had happened to the Wizard. He would have to ask her about him when he got back to Suthwarzha.
It took twenty minutes to leave Ozland. Then the plane was I over heavily forested, hilly country which became near-mountainous in ten minutes. This was the difficult terrain which his mother and her three strange pals, two animated objects and a self-doubting lion, had crossed. After sixty miles of increasingly rough air, Hank landed at a depot. It was a mountain meadow at the edge of which were three large tents and a group of people.
When Hank turned the ignition off, he said, "Little Father, how do you like flying?"
"I wasn't cut out to be a bird. I felt rather, ah, uncertain."
The Scarecrow unbuckled the belt without seeming difficulty. Hank had not been sure that it had enough strength to do it. It got out of the cockpit and climbed down. When it jumped off the wing, it sprawled forward on its face.
Hank got out. The Scarecrow got up and said, "I must be the most undignified monarch in two worlds."
"Maybe," Hank said. "But you are the most sober."
It looked at Hank, then laughed phonographically.
"Ah, you mean that I don't drink because I can't. Very good. However, the way I stagger, stumble, and fall, people who don't know me must think I'm a drunk."
By then the Winkies were by the plane. They had a two-wheeled cart on which was a barrel of ethyl alcohol, a funnel and a can. There were six of them, men in clothes of various colors but all wearing yellow conical hats. Hank supervised the refueling, did all that was needed before flight, and took off.
The flight was uneventful, and he landed near the huge gray castle formerly occupied by the Witch of the West. The Tin Woodman, notified by a hawk that the Jenny was coming, was waiting with his entourage at the edge of a meadow. He hurried across it and was by the plane just as its propeller quit whirling. Hank and the Oz monarch got down from the cockpits. The Woodman, however, ignored the customary salutations and embracings to blurt out a message.
"A messenger from Glinda said that we should come as swiftly as possible! She says that the invasion might come sooner than expected. Therefore, we should leave at once."
Niklaz Sa Kapyar (Nicholas the Chopper) did not much resemble the illustrations of him by Denslow and Neill. The runnel hat was missing, and the top of his head was in wavy metal, simulating the curly hair he had once had. The face did not have the comically long and thin cylindrical nose, nor was the jaw a separate piece attached by hinges. It was a lifemask in tin, the features of a young man with large flaring ears, a broad square face, bushy eyebrows, deepset eyes, snub nose, wide mouth (set in a grin by the artisan who'd made it), and a prominent, deeply clefted chin. The eyes had once been painted on, but blue glass eyes had replaced them.
The head was set on a horizontal disc above the thick short neck so that Niklaz could turn the head at 360 degrees if he felt like it.
The trunk had a deep chest to which was welded tin nipples and tin hair. It also had a simulation of a navel.
In the illustrations in Baum's books, the arms and legs were attached to the tin trunk by thick pins, and the joints were similarly secured. The real Tin Man, however, had joints which were like those in a knight's suit of armor, and the arms and legs were not flat but rounded in a lifelike manner. Though he could move less awkwardly than Baum's Tin Man would have been compelled to, he still was not graceful or swift.
Like the Tin Man of Denslow and Neill, he did not wear clothes. However, the artisan had omitted the sex organs.
He wore no crown. Why should he? There was only one like him in the land, and everybody knew that he was the ruler of the west country. A servant did, however, carry for him the symbol of the office and the man, the tin ax.
Now that the king had delivered his message, he embraced the Scarecrow. They told each other how glad they were to meet again, and they asked about each other's health (which Hank thought was funny since they never got sick), and then the Scarecrow introduced Hank, which was also unnecessary, since his identity was obvious.
The Tin Woodman spoke in a voice as phonograph-sounding as his stuffed friend. He said that he was happy to meet him, and then he relayed Glinda's message.
"I had hoped you could spend some time in my palace," he said. His right arm swiveled slightly to gesture at the huge somber stone pile on top of a hill. "But we must leave now."
Hank said they could go as soon as he had refueled and checked the oil supply and inspected for leaks and loose wires. A half hour later, the two kings were in the front cockpit. Hank and Ot got into the back one, the carburetor was primed with ether, the propeller was spun, and the engine coughed, turned, and roared. After taxiing to the far end of the field, the Jenny took off southeastwards.
The rough country got even hillier, then became a mountain range. Hank flew between the mountains, many of which were over twelve thousand feet high. The sun was covered with clouds. Generally, he followed a broad winding river at the bottom of a canyon, but sometimes Ot told him to go through passes to shorten the distance. They had been in the air for an hour and a half when Ot said, "Turn right into that pass there. The first refueling station is two miles from the river."
"Good!" Hank said. "I don't want to get caught in a storm."
Hank brought the Jenny up and out of the canyon, over its edge, and started down above a downward slope. He was at a thousand feet above the ground when Ot screamed, "Great God!"
"What is it?" Hank said. He could see no cause for alarm.