The Oz Series

Chapter 53

Part of the Ozma of Oz: The Land of Ev and the Nome King arc.

This encyclopedia covers chapters 1 to 100 of the story and shows the world as it stands at chapter 100, so it contains spoilers up to that point. To read it spoiler free, one chapter at a time, open the interactive codex.

What happens

Dorothy tells Tiktok their first task is to find a way to escape the rocks, since the Wheelers below threaten to kill them. Tiktok begins to reassure her that there is no reason to fear the Wheelers, but his words slow, he gurgles and stops short, and he becomes motionless with one arm in the air and the copper fingers of the other hand spread out like a fan. Billina calmly deduces he has run down because Dorothy did not wind him tightly. Dorothy goes to take the key from the peg at the back of his neck but finds it gone; after she and Billina search, she discovers the clock-key fallen into a crack of the rock. She winds up Tiktok's voice, giving the key as many turns as it will go, a task she finds difficult, and the machine assures her he will now run at least twenty-four hours, explaining he ran down because she wound him little at first and he told the long story about King Evoldo. She rewinds his action clock-work, and Billina advises carrying the key in Dorothy's pocket so it will not be lost again.

Tiktok explains what he meant about the Wheelers: they are nothing to fear, only trying to make folks believe they are terrible, when in fact they are harmless to anyone who dares fight them. They might try to hurt a little girl because they are mischievous, but if Tiktok had a club they would flee. Neither Tiktok nor a club is available among the rocks, so Dorothy rewinds his think-works tightly to let him devise another plan. While he thinks, Dorothy eats her dinner and Billina pecks at cracks for bugs. Dorothy opens her tin dinner-pail and finds in the cover a small tank full of lemonade covered by a cup; within the pail are three slices of turkey, two slices of cold tongue, lobster salad, four slices of bread and butter, a small custard pie, an orange, nine large strawberries, nuts, and raisins, the nuts already cracked. She offers food to Tiktok, who declines as a mere machine, and to Billina, who prefers her bugs and ants over dead things.

Dorothy asks whether the lunch-box and dinner-pail trees belong to the Wheelers. Tiktok answers they belong to the royal family of Ev, though there is now no royal family because King Evoldo drowned himself and his wife and ten children were transformed by the Nome King, leaving no one to rule the Land of Ev; the Wheelers therefore claim and pick the trees for themselves, but every dinner-pail bears the royal E stamped on its bottom. Dorothy turns the pail over and finds the royal mark, as Tiktok said. He explains the Wheelers inhabit only a small portion of Ev just back of the woods and have always been mischievous and impertinent, so King Evoldo carried a whip to keep them in order; when Tiktok was first made the Wheelers tried to run over and butt him but found him too solid to injure.

Dorothy asks who made Tiktok, and he names the firm of Smith & Tinker in the town of Evna, where the royal palace stands. He is the only automatic mechanical man they ever completed, and calls his makers wonderful and artistic inventors. Both makers are gone: Mr. Smith, also an artist, painted a river so natural that he fell into it and drowned while reaching across to paint flowers on the opposite bank; Mr. Tinker made a ladder tall enough to reach the moon, climbed it to pick little stars for the points of the king's crown, found the moon so lovely he decided to live there, and pulled the ladder up after himself. Tiktok laments that if he gets out of order he knows no one able to repair him, being so complicated and full of machinery. He then turns half around to think of a way to escape.

Dorothy tells Billina that the best thinker she ever knew was a scarecrow she met in the Land of Oz, who traveled with her to the city of the great Wizard of Oz to get brains for his straw-stuffed head. Billina scoffs at the impossible stories about the Land of Oz, talking animals, a living tin woodman, and a thinking scarecrow, but Dorothy insists they are all real. Tiktok, turning toward them, affirms that in the Land of Oz anything is possible because it is a wonderful fairy country, and reveals that it is only separated from the Land of Ev by a broad desert. Delighted to be near her old friends, Dorothy says the scarecrow she described is King of Oz. Tiktok corrects her: there was a revolution in Oz in which the Scarecrow was deposed by a soldier woman named General Jinjur, who was in turn deposed by a little girl named Ozma, the rightful heir who now rules under the title of Ozma of Oz. Dorothy, receiving this as news, wonders about the fate of the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion, and about who Ozma is, but Tiktok resumes his thinking. Dorothy repacks the food, and Billina greedily eats the scattered crumbs despite her earlier disdain. Tiktok then bows and offers to lead them away to the town of Evna, where they will be more comfortable and he will protect them from the Wheelers; Dorothy promptly agrees she is ready.

Who is in play

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