The Oz Series

Chapter 73

Part of the Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz: The Underground World 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

After the Wizard cleans and disassembles his sword back into its leathern case, the man with the star orders his people to carry the two halves of the Sorcerer to the public gardens. Jim, hoping to find food, wants to join, so Zeb lowers the buggy top and invites the Wizard to ride with them, the wide seat accommodating the little man and two children, while the kitten Eureka jumps onto Jim's back. The procession moves through the streets: the Sorcerer's bearers first, then the Prince, then Jim drawing the buggy, and last the heartless vegetable crowd who can neither smile nor frown. Passing through the glass city's fine streets, they reach a broad plain of gardens watered by pretty brooks crossed by ornamental glass bridges.

Dorothy and Zeb get out to examine the flowers and plants, and Dorothy asks who built the lovely glass bridges. The man with the star replies that no one built them; they grow, as did the glass houses over many years, which is why the Mangaboos are so angry when a Rain of Stones breaks their towers, since the damage cannot be mended but must grow together again over time. They pass beautiful flower gardens whose colors constantly shift under the six suns, so Dorothy cannot tell the flower kinds. When they cross a field of grass, Jim stretches down and nibbles, grumbling about eating pink grass; the Wizard notes it is violet, then blue, and Jim concludes he is eating rainbow grass that does not taste bad.

Reaching a freshly plowed planting-ground, several Mangaboos dig a hole with glass spades, place the two halves of the Sorcerer into it, cover him, and sprinkle water from a brook. The Prince explains Gwig will sprout soon and grow into a large bush from which several good sorcerers can be picked. The boy asks whether all their people grow on bushes, and the Prince confirms it, surprised that surface people do not. He leads the party across more glass bridges to a garden enclosed by a high hedge; Jim refuses to leave the grass field, so the Wizard joins Zeb and Dorothy on foot with the kitten following. Inside the hedge are rows of large handsome plants with broad curving leaves, in the center of each of which grows a daintily dressed Mangaboo, their clothing grown attached to their bodies.

The growing Mangaboos range from just-blossomed babies to full-grown, almost-ripe adults, all motionless and silent as if lifeless; some bushes show a bud, blossom, baby, half-grown person, and ripe one together, explaining why Dorothy had seen no children among the Mangaboos. The Prince explains their people do not acquire real life until they leave their bushes, being attached by the soles of their feet and gaining motion and speech only when ripe and picked. Asked how long they live after picking, he says with cool, moist care and no accidents they often live five years, and that he himself has been picked over six years, his family being long-lived. They do not eat, being solid inside like potatoes, though sometimes they sprout, which is a great misfortune requiring immediate planting.

The Prince leads them within a smaller hedge circle to the single large, beautiful Royal Bush of the Mangaboos, upon which all their Princes and Rulers have grown from time immemorial. On its central stalk stands the exquisitely formed and colored figure of a lovely girl in a satin-soft gown with lace-like traceries, her flesh smooth as polished ivory, her poise dignified and graceful. The Prince, with uneasiness in his cold tones, identifies her as the Royal Princess destined to be his successor, to whom he must abandon the sovereignty when she becomes fully ripe. Though Dorothy insists the Princess looks perfectly ripe and ready to be picked, the Prince hesitates and claims she will not need picking for several days, admitting he is in no hurry to resign his office and be planted, since this is the most unpleasant aspect of their vegetable lives.

Zeb asks what the Prince intends to do with the strangers. The Prince has not fully decided but plans to keep the skillful Wizard until a new Sorcerer is ready to pick, while the rest must be destroyed in some way; they cannot be planted because he does not want horses, cats, and meat people growing across the country. Dorothy protests they would not grow underground and that they fell here uninvited rather than asking to come, but the Prince coldly calls this no excuse since they have no right to be inside the earth. Eureka complains she will starve to death and save him the trouble; the Wizard jokes about growing cat-tails, and Zeb suggests milk-weeds, which the kitten refuses. Zeb, hungry, notes strawberries and melons growing in the gardens and hopes to gather some on the way back, but the Prince interrupts that he will order them destroyed in a few minutes so they need not ruin the melon vines and berry bushes, and directs them to follow him to meet their doom.

Who is in play

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