Cleaned up, Shea had finished the tale of his adventure, saying: "Things look different from what I expected."
"How different?" said Stidoth, who without his straw hat proved somewhat balding.
"I thought people in Oz stayed the same age forever, until some accident took them."
Stidoth explained: "That's how it was, more or less, before the big change."
"Big change?"
"Yeah. Seems there was this kid, Dranol Drabbo, who couldn't wait to grow up. The way things were, he'd have growed up, all right, in a couple of hundred years; but he was one of these here flibbertigibbets who can't wait five minutes for anything they happen to want.
"Well, now, this here Dranol Drabbo went to Wogglebug College and majored in magic. And one of his experiments canceled the spell that some queen of the fairies laid on Oz centuries ago. People say that there spell got rid of death, but it ain't really so. All it did was to slow down the normal business of aging to a crawl, like a snail walking. Aging was already a lot slower for us Ozians than for you mundanes. You seem to us like them there bugs that flit around for a day and then die."
"Must have been a tragedy for the Ozites."
Stidoth shrugged. "Got advantages and disadvantage! both ways, like most things in life. As 'twas, the population was getting out of hand, with the old folks hangin' on forever.
"Anyway, I was Dot's age at the time. So when we growed up we got hitched, and here we are. I didn't much like the idea of our boys going to Wogglebug, on account of what happened with Dranol Drabbo. Besides, too much book-learning can spoil a good farmer. But they sold Dot on the idea, and—well, you a married man, Mr. Shea?"
"Yes," said Shea. "Quite happily—but I know what you mean."
Stidoth chuckled. "The older boy'll be out in a couple of months, looking for a way to earn his three squares. Claims he's invented some sort of calculating machine." Stidoth's eyes narrowed. "All right, Mr. Shea, now tell us just what you came here for, and in particular why you wanted to see Dot.
Shea told of Walter Bayard's predicament. "... so I thought that, if I could persuade whoever's in charge of the Gnome King's Belt to fetch Bayard here and then send us both back to what you call the mundane world ..."
Stidoth sat in silence for several seconds, then said: "Mr. Shea, if you owned one of them there atomic bombs we hear about, would you keep it in the cellar, where some kid might set it off accidental like?"
"Of course not!
"Same way here. That there belt could be just as dangerous, in the hands of some amateur piddler in magic like Dranol Drabbo, as one of them bombs. So it's kept locked up in the palace in the Emerald City."
"What happened to Dranol Drabbo?'
Stidoth sniffed. "Queen Ozma's a fine woman, and don't let nobody tell you different. But when she was a girl, she was full of airy-fairy impractical ideas. One was you shouldn't hurt nobody or nothing, even to save your own life. She almost let Oz be conquered several times, because she wouldn't believe anyone was so wicked as to plot agin her. Even when she was warned, she wouldn't fight, because that meant hurting or killing people. Each time she was saved by some lucky, last-minute magical trick; but you can't count on that kind of luck forever.
"So the question was, what to do with young Dranol Drabbo? I'd have called in Nick Chopper and had him operate with his ax on Dranol's neck. But no, the Queen decided the worst punishment she'd allow was to send him to exile in Ev.
"Well, you know the gnomes live under the ground where Ev is, and it didn't take long for Dranol to get in cahoots with the Gnome King, Kaliko—the one who followed Ruggedo. They say Kaliko fired his chancellor, Shoofenwaller, and gave his job to Dranol. Don't rightly know what sort of devilment they're cooking up; but I'm sure it's something.
"Course, when Ozma growed up and married King Evardo, it steadied her down. He's got plenty of hard common sense."
Shea thought. "This king—is he of the royal family of Ev?"
"Sure; he's King of Ev. But he lives here in Oz and lets his brother Evring run the kingdom as regent. That way, Evardo gets the fun of being king without the headaches."
Shea grinned. "Reminds me of a song from a show back in my world;
Stidoth chuckled and slapped his thigh. "Hey, that's good! Wouldn't mind seeing that there show. Anyway, Evardo also got the duty of providing the most beautiful woman in Oz with heirs to the throne. Boy, that's one job plenty of men—"
"Stidoth!" said Dorothy sternly.
"Sorry. Anyway, they've only got two kids so far. The older's a boy—young man, almost—and I hear he's away visiting kinfolks in Ev. The other's a girl, just starting school. But a royal family needs a whole raft of heirs, in case something happens to the older ones. So I guess Evardo has lots of fun trying—"
"Stidoth!"
"Anyway, reckon you'll have to get to the Emerald City and hand a petition to some flunkey at the palace."
Shea shook his head. "It just doesn't seem like Oz somehow, those young fairyland girls growing up and having children of their own."
"Well, that's what they do in your mundane world, ain't it?"
"Yes; I'm an expectant father myself. It's just—well, it somehow spoils the magic." How logical, Shea thought, that Dorothy, though here ranked as a princess, should wed a man of background like her own!
"Don't you believe it, Mr. Shea. We got plenty of magic left. It's a matter of this here now mental attitude. When you was a kid, didn't your mundane world seem like a kind of fairyland to you, full of exciting things you later found out didn't exist? But when you growed up, you had to trade in those exciting things for the exciting things of the real world, even if they want so pretty.
"As for Ozma's getting spliced, I mind me some years ago, before Dranol worked his spell, some little princeling named—let me think—Pomp-something. Anyway, he asked Ozma to marry him. Course, he got turned down flat. Lucky young fella found another princess, who took him on.
"Then there was that there Baron Mogodore, who captured the capital by surprise and said he was going to marry Ozma whether she liked it or not. Since the law says a marriage has got to be with the free will of both parties to be legal, there ain't really no such thing as a 'forced marriage', leastaways in Oz. It's just a fancy name for plain old—"
"Stidoth!"
"Oh, all right, Dot honey, if you won't call things by their right names. I'll say he was going to 'subject her to an indecent personal assault'. That fancy enough for you?"
Shea reflected that the Stidoths had a very normal marriage, solid but not without occasional rifts and irritations. He changed the subject: "If I have to go to the capital, how do I get there?"'
"You can walk, but it's quite a piece. Don't have no magic carpets or broomsticks or nothing here."
Dorothy spoke: "Dear, why don't we lend him Alis? He can ride her to the city, turn her loose, and tell her to go home. She knows the way well enough."
"Reckon that's a good idea. How about it, Mr. Shea?"
"Who is Alis?"
"One of our mules. I forget; you mundanes ain't used to animals that talk and understand like people do. But it's too late to start now. You better stay overnight with us and set out at sun-up."
"You're much too kind, really—"
"Think nothin' of it, Mr. Shea! Anybody that's got legitimate business with the Queen, it's only right to give him a hand to get him there."
From what he recalled of the Oz books. Shea believed that Ozma's court did not go in for elaborate formalities, such as requiring presentees to prostrate themselves or knock their heads upon the floor. But his travels through alternative universes had given him a fair command of protocol. The flunkey announced: