The Lost Boy of Oz

By Paul Dana

Chapter 1: The Magic Picture

Chapter 2: Back in Philadelphia

Chapter 3: Uncle Bob's Story

Chapter 4: Dropping in on a Rainbow

Chapter 5: Jandilay's Tale

Chapter 6: The House of Comina Dreams

Chapter 7: Back in Oz

Chapter 8: The Yookoohoo Way

©2005 Paul Dana.  All rights reserved.  Used by permission only or for review purposes. 

Contact the author or publisher.  Illustrations by John R. Neill revised by Joe Bongiorno.

CHAPTER ONE

THE MAGIC PICTURE

                Jellia Jamb was stripping Ojo’s bed.

                Button-Bright watched the cheerful little maid from his own bed just opposite.  Until now he’d never minded her visits to the suite he shared with his best friend Ojo, here in the Emerald City.  Indeed, Jellia was a beloved fixture at the Royal Palace.  This particular visit, however, he considered a trifle hasty.

                “Jellia,” the boy ventured.  “Do you have to?”

                “Certainly,” replied Jellia.  “Ojo’s gone.  No reason to let the bedding get stale.”

                “But he made his own bed this morning, same as always,” Button-Bright argued.  “Maybe he wanted you to leave it till he comes back.”

                “A tidy boy like Ojo?  I doubt it.”  Jellia seized the pillow and shook it briskly from its pale green case.  “Anyway, that lesson plan of his is sure to keep him busy for months.  You must have seen it.  Queen Lurline wrote it out in her own hand, all forty-eight chapters of it.  Yes, I’m sure he’ll be spending at least three months in the Land of An, if not more.  Would you please help me with this?”

                He got up and took one end of a pale green top sheet.  It was just a week since he had wished himself, quite by accident, into the dim reaches of Oz history.  His best friend had followed him there, but before they could find each other poor Ojo had swallowed Queen Lurline’s own Magic Loaf, crammed with concentrated fairy magic.  Awesome powers had descended upon him, unexpected and unsought.  When Button-Bright first learned this, his reaction had been one of uncharacteristic anxiety.  What would happen to Ojo?  Sure enough, Queen Lurline had invited the Munchkin boy to her own country, the Land of An, for magic tutorials.  And Princess Ozma had agreed!

                “I wish you’d saved half that Magic Loaf for me,” Button-Bright had told Ojo.  “Then we’d both be magic and I could go to An with you.”

                “Don’t say that!” Ojo had protested.  “It’s not what you think.  It’s like having so much strength that you break everything you touch.  I’m almost afraid to move, or even think!  I wish it had never happened at all.”

                This made no sense to Button-Bright, then or now.  He said as much to Jellia Jamb.  “Think how much fun it would be if the two of us had the same power.  We could go anywhere and do anything.  We’d be free as birds!”

                “Seems to me you’re free already,” said Jellia.  “Magic or no magic.”

                “Then why is it that Ojo’s gone and I’m stuck here?”

                Jellia laughed.  “You know very well why.  Ojo went to study, not to play.  Maybe later, when he’s made some progress, you can visit him.  Not before.  Help me with this muslin slipcover, won’t you?”

                By the time she’d finished up and bustled away, Ojo’s bed had taken on a distinctly un-lived-in appearance.  That, and the resounding silence that seemed to fill the little suite, were more than Button-Bright could endure.  He soon took to the Palace hallways in search of companionship.

                Until lately he’d never minded finding himself alone.  He even enjoyed an occasional bit of solitude and had, as a result, earned a reputation for getting lost.  It was a habit that worried others a great deal more than it worried him.  What did worry him, it turned out, was getting left behind by his best friend.  Did other people feel this way when he left them behind?

                The echo of his own footsteps followed him down the corridors.  What company could he rustle up?  The Scarecrow had gone to his own small palace in the Winkie Country, with Jack Pumpkinhead in tow.  Doubtless they were spending jolly afternoons with their old companion the Tin Woodman, at his nearby tin castle.  Dorothy, along with Shaggy Man and the Wizard, had been sent by Ozma to the Gillikin Country, where an odd new tribe required investigation.  Who, then?

                What about Grandma Natch?

                This thought brought a smile to Button-Bright’s lips.  Grandma Natch was a cantankerous old Yookoohoo who had befriended him during his journey to the past.  He’d promised to visit her one day, far off in the Forest of Gugu where she lived, and now would be just the time to keep that promise.  It would be a long trip, but getting there was usually half the fun in Oz.  Grinning, he quickened his steps.

                Here was the door to the royal chambers.  Now it occurred to Button-Bright that he could ask the Magic Picture to show him what Grandma Natch was doing at that very moment.  It could show him Ojo too, for that matter.  Ozma’s door always stood open to her friends.  Thoroughly cheered, he stepped across the threshold.

                 He paused again almost at once.  Someone else had gotten there first.  Sitting cross-legged on the floor, so absorbed in the Magic Picture that she never heard Button-Bright’s footsteps behind her, was tiny Trot, a fellow American who had sought refuge in Oz with her devoted Cap’n Bill.  Cap’n Bill was nowhere to be seen.  Trot watched the Picture alone, and Button-Bright sensed that he had stumbled onto a private moment.  A private moment was something he understood very well.  He backed toward the door.

                Then his gaze fastened on the Picture.  What he saw there was a room, oddly familiar: a kitchen that could exist only beyond the borders of Oz.  Where?  And the woman who moved across it, elderly yet spry – surely he knew her too.  He walked forward till he stood beside Trot.

                Trot’s eyes never left the Magic Picture.  But she reached out and took Button-Bright’s hand in hers, a simple gesture that told him he might stay and watch.  He knelt down beside her.

                The woman in the Picture was dishing stew onto simple wooden plates.  Every time she filled two plates, she whisked them to a table where five men, older than she, patiently awaited their dinner.  One man, reaching for his plate, brushed a fork to the floor.  It must have made quite a noise, for all five men jumped as if a cannon had gone off, and the woman snapped at her clumsy guest.  He did not seem to mind much.  When her back was turned, he and his mates grinned at one another.  The woman served herself last, at the head of the table, and they all began to eat.

                Trot broke the silence.

                “Do you recognize her?” she asked.  “Besides Cap’n Bill and me, you’re the only person around here who ever met her.  But it was a long time ago and you didn’t stay long.”

                Button-Bright gave a low whistle.  “It’s your mother, isn’t it?  All the way out in California.  Well, I’ll be.”

                “She turned our place into a home for retired sailors,” Trot informed him.  “Mrs. Griffith’s Boarding House.  Does she seem old to you?  She doesn’t to me.  But then, I look in on her pretty often, so maybe I don’t notice the changes.”

                “She looks fine,” asserted Button-Bright.  Like his friend Grandma Natch, Mrs. Griffith had the stubborn look of one who would not let old age slow her down.  She had a certain softness too, especially in the way she laughed at the things her boarders said.  Button-Bright remembered that about her, as well as her short temper and sharp tongue.  She had treated him kindly during his brief visit.

                “How long have you been looking in on her, Trot?” he asked.

                “Oh, ages,” answered the girl.  “Ever since I heard about the Magic Picture.  The first few times she was all in black.  I guess she figured Cap’n Bill and I got drowned at sea.  Later she started taking in boarders, and that’s what she’s done ever since.  I think she’s happy.”

                “I think so too,” agreed Button-Bright, watching.  He did not like to say how amazed he was at the years that must have gone by.  Time meant little in the Land of Oz, where the seasons fled away and age left its mark on no one.  On Mrs. Griffith’s face it had etched the tale of a long life nearer its end than its beginning.  “The old salts seem to like her.”

                “Maybe they’re accustomed to taking orders,” Trot reflected.  She sighed, then looked at her companion.  “What about you, Button-Bright?  Don’t you ever ask the Magic Picture to show you your mother?”

                “I didn’t know my mother much,” he responded with a small shrug.  “She died when I was little.”

                “Really?”  This took Trot by surprise.  “How come you never told me that before?”

                “The subject never came up.  I don’t think about it much.”

                “But you must think about it sometimes,” the girl insisted.  “Don’t you miss her?”

                Button-Bright shook his head.  “Not really.  You can’t miss someone you barely remember.”

                “Maybe not.  But what about the rest of your family?  All those von Smiths!  I know you remember your father because you’ve mentioned him.  Your uncle, too.  What’s his name?”

                “Uncle Bob,” Button-Bright supplied.  “Yes, I remember them.  And the rest of my uncles.  And Grandmamma von Smith.  They raised me, after all.”

                “Well, then.  Have you ever watched them in the Picture?”

                “I never thought to try,” admitted Button-Bright, and immediately wondered why he hadn’t.  These memories lay buried within him, and on their way to the surface they seemed to scrape at his insides.  He said, “Papa’s dead, too.  He died when I was eleven.  I remember everybody dressed up in black, just like your mother when she thought you were dead.  Then I remember staying on with Grandmamma.”

                “What did your papa die of?” Trot wondered.

                “Something to do with his heart.  He was older than you might think.  He had six brothers, all younger, and Uncle Bob was the youngest of all.  I liked Uncle Bob.  Come to think of it, it’s because of Uncle Bob that I’m here right now.  Here in Oz, I mean.”

                Trot did not comprehend this, so Button-Bright went on.

                “I liked Uncle Bob because he understood about my getting lost.  In those days, Trot, I got lost even more than I do now.  Can’t say why, exactly.  I just did.  Papa and Grandmamma had fits, especially the time I went to Oz with Dorothy and Shaggy Man and Polychrome.  I was only four and we were gone such a long time.”

                “I’ve heard,” said Trot.  “And then you took that trip to Sky Island with Cap’n Bill and me.”

                “Another long one.  What a ruckus my family made!  I was several years older then and you’d think they might have calmed down.  But they hadn’t.  Except for Uncle Bob.  He said I had the Wanderlust, which he knew about because he had the Wanderlust himself.  His house was full of strange things from other countries.”

                Trot nodded.  Cap’n Bill, in his seafaring days, had collected a small treasure trove from around the world.  Every item had a story that went with it, and Trot had loved settling into Cap’n Bill’s lap while he told one story after another.

                But she was not to be distracted.  “What did Uncle Bob have to do with your coming to Oz?” she asked again.

                “I’m getting to that,” said Button-Bright.  “You remember it was my Magic Umbrella that took us to Sky Island?  Well, after I got home that time, Papa locked the Magic Umbrella up in the attic.  And it was still there when he died, three years later.  I became pretty unhappy then, partly because I missed Papa and partly because Grandmamma didn’t like me much.  She agreed that I had the Wanderlust, but when she said it she made it sound awful.  ‘He didn’t inherit it from me!’ she always said.  So I spent most of my time at Uncle Bob’s.  Or as much as I could.  And one day he said he had a present for me.”

                “A birthday present?”

                “No, not a birthday present.  It was the key to the attic.”

                That did not sound to Trot like much of a present.

                “Oh, but it was!” Button-Bright assured her.  “Uncle Bob had a funny way about him.  He almost never came out and told you what he thought.  Some people didn’t like that, but it seemed natural enough to me.  Somehow, he and I always understood each other.  When he gave me that key he said, ‘You need this, Button-Bright, because you’re young and you have the Wanderlust.’  And I knew exactly what he meant.”

                “What did he mean?” asked Trot, mystified.

                “Why, that if I wanted to leave home I should do it.  Because this key was the key to that locked attic where Papa kept the Magic Umbrella.”

                “Oh!  And once you found that, you could fly back to fairyland.”  Trot nodded.  “Now I see.”

                “Right.  I said goodbye to Uncle Bob and then I flew to all the places I’d heard about at Ozma’s birthday party:  Ix, Ev, Merryland and Mo, where you found me in a popcorn snowbank.  It was a good thing you did, too, because I’d lost the Magic Umbrella.  Or rather, I’d sent it home.”

                “Sent it home?  To your Grandmamma?”

                “Not to her.  To Uncle Bob, with a note that read, ‘Having fun.  Thanks for everything.  BB.’  I signed it ‘BB’ because grownups like notes that you sign with your initials.  I wrote the note, tied it to the Umbrella and said, ‘Fly home to Uncle Bob in Philadelphia.’  And away it went.”

                “Did it ever get there?”

                “I don’t know.  I never thought to check.”

                Trot laughed and shook her head.  “That’s you all over, Button-Bright:  off on some adventure and never a thought for what you’ve left behind.”

                “What do you mean?” asked the boy, startled.

                “Why, think about it,” said Trot.  “When Cap’n Bill and I left home, it wasn’t because we up and decided.  No, a whirlpool carried us off so we couldn’t get back, even though we wanted to.  But you just opened your Umbrella and waved goodbye.  You left it all behind.  The least you could do is check on your Uncle Bob.”

                “What?  Now?”

                “Of course now!  We’re here, the Magic Picture’s here.  Don’t you want to find out what happened to him?”

                Button-Bright considered.  What would it be like?  He had almost forgotten his Uncle, but now, having remembered again, he felt a powerful urge to see him.  At the same time, he felt that to do so would somehow change him forever.  How, he did not know.

                “All right,” he said finally.  “We’ll do it.”

                “Good!” cried Trot, clapping her hands.  “You ask.  He’s your uncle.”

                The affair seemed to have acquired its own momentum.  Button-Bright faced the Magic Picture and took a deep breath.  “Show me my Uncle Bob,” he said.  “In Philadelphia.  Or wherever he is right now.  Please.”

                At once the Picture shifted to a room he recognized.  Papa had used it as a study long ago, and most of his old furniture still remained.  Bent over the fine mahogany desk sat a gentleman in late middle age, silver-haired and rather handsome, though perhaps a little tired.  For an instant Button-Bright thought it was Papa, returning to complete some great work he’d left unfinished when he died.  But no.  Those eyes, with their kindly and rueful droop, could only belong to one person.

                “Is that him?” asked Trot.

                Button-Bright nodded.  “Yes.  Yes, that’s Uncle Bob.”

                “And that thing hanging above the desk -- just there, on the wall.  Is that your Magic Umbrella?”

                “Where?”  Button-Bright leaned forward, barely breathing.  Then he whispered, “You’re right.”

  Because of the angle, it looked almost as if it hung suspended in midair over Uncle Bob’s head.  There could be no doubt, though; it was certainly the Magic Umbrella, large as ever and very much at home.  Attached to its handle, furthermore, was a small scrap of paper that could have been Button-Bright’s own note, signed “BB.”  The boy felt certain that it was.  And the sight of it, preserved where Uncle Bob could see it every day, sent a pang through him.

                He looked at Trot.  “I have to go there,” he said.

                Trot’s eyebrows shot up.  “Go?  You mean, in person?”

                “Yes,” said Button-Bright.

                “But why?  He doesn’t look like he’s in trouble.  I don’t think he’s sick.  Why go there?”

                “Because he remembers!” Button-Bright said helplessly.  How else to express the feelings that washed over him when he saw the Magic Umbrella on Uncle Bob’s wall, or that grubby shred of paper clinging to its handle?

                “But won’t it upset him?” Trot protested.  “My mother has her life all squared away, neat as a pin.  If I burst through the door right now she’d faint.  Or have a heart attack.  It wouldn’t help anything.”

                There was no rational answer to this, and Button-Bright didn’t attempt one.  He simply held out till Trot knew he meant what he said.

 “Looks like you’ve decided,” she sighed.  “All right, then.  Might as well ask Ozma to send you there today.  Just promise you won’t get lost, all right?”

                Button-Bright knew better than to make that kind of promise.  As for Trot, she knew better than to expect it.

CHAPTER  TWO

 BACK IN PHILADELPHIA

                Princess Ozma heard Button-Bright’s tale, it seemed, with more than her customary warmth and sympathy.  All troubled souls found a ready listener in the girl ruler, whose throne room stood open to them each morning before lunch.  So it did not surprise Button-Bright that she, sovereign of all Oz, should sit down to hear his small story.  What did surprise him was the personal interest she took in it.

                “My dear friend,” she said.  “Without knowing it, you and I have stumbled onto similar roads.”

                “Similar?  How so?”

                Ozma smiled.  “It was you yourself who brought it about.  When you and Ojo made your journey into the past, you re-discovered the truth behind our legends of Queen Lurline, the fairy who made Oz a fairyland.  You showed me that her heritage, and mine, is not lost but can still be found, far off in the Land of An.”

                “Queen Lurline said you came from there, Ozma,” Button-Bright remembered.

                “Indeed.  But what do I know of An, the land where I was born?  Nothing, for I was only a baby when Lurline brought me here.”

                Button-Bright nodded.  “That’s why she picked you.  She didn’t want some grownup who wouldn’t fit in here.  She wanted you to be Oz through and through.  And you are, Ozma.”

                “Yes,” the Princess acknowledged proudly.  “Yes, I am.  Oz is my life and I hope it will be so forever.  All the same, now that I know my birthplace is a real country I can visit, with real air I can breathe, I feel that I must go there.  I want to see what sort of people Lurline rules.  I want to explore my own past.”

                Understanding dawned in Button-Bright’s face.  “Now I see.  It’s just like when Ojo and I traveled back to the beginning of Oz.  You want to go back to your own beginnings.”

                “Yes, Button-Bright.  And so do you.  That’s exactly what we both want.”

                They smiled at each other, as friends do when they uncover a common bond they had never suspected.

                “I have to admit, though,” Ozma went on, “that this journey frightens me a little.”

                Button-Bright’s eyes widened.  “Really?  I think mine frightens me too!  And yet I don’t know why it should.  Why are you frightened, Ozma?”

                “Many reasons, I suppose.  Perhaps the biggest is that I’m afraid I’ll be changed somehow.  In fact, I’m sure I will.”

                “Changed?”  Button-Bright considered this.  “In what way?”

                “Changed as anyone is changed when they find out something new.  Of course I can’t say now what that change will be like.  Even after I’ve gone to An and spent a few days with Queen Lurline, it will be hard to imagine what new feelings I’ll bring home to Oz.  Yes, no doubt I’ll be different.  And that is not an easy thing to face.”

                The boy’s face darkened.  “Ojo will be changed,” he said.  “When he comes back from An.  I know he will.  And maybe, if I go to visit Uncle Bob, I’ll change too.  Maybe we’ll both change so much that, when we see each other again . . .”

                He couldn’t find words to finish the thought.

                “You’ll lose your best friend?” Ozma guessed.  He nodded, silent.  “Button-Bright, that is one thing you need never fear.  Whatever happens to Ojo, he will always be the most loyal and loving fellow in Oz.  He will not change that way.  And I don’t think you will either.”

                Button-Bright pressed her hand gratefully.  “So you think I should see Uncle Bob?” he said.

                “I do.  If you’re ready now, I’ll use the Magic Belt to send you there at once.”

                Button-Bright was ready.  They returned to Ozma’s boudoir and she fastened the Magic Belt around her waist.  Before doing more, however, she made him a small gift.

                “Take this emerald ring,” Ozma said.  “Not to wear but to keep safe in your pocket.  When you’re ready to return here from Philadelphia, just put on the ring and say, ‘Ozma.’”  Wherever I am, I’ll hear your voice as clearly as if you stood at my side.  Then I’ll use the Magic Belt to bring you home.  After all, we don’t want to lose you forever!”

                Button-Bright pocketed the emerald ring and hugged his royal benefactor.  Then he squared his boyish shoulders.  “I guess I’d better go.”

                 Ozma placed her palms on the Magic Belt.

                “Send Button-Bright to his Uncle Bob in Philadelphia!” she commanded.

In all the world there was no magic swifter or simpler than this belt.  Button-Bright felt nothing.  He merely saw Ozma’s bedchamber transformed quietly to a somber American study.  Before him, still absorbed in his work, sat an unwitting Uncle Bob.

                Button-Bright hesitated.  It seemed odd, almost dreamlike, to be back in this room after so many years.  Now that he’d arrived he didn’t know quite how to begin.  So he walked around the great dark desk and took a closer look at the Magic Umbrella, with its worn canvas and its hastily scrawled message.  The note was indeed his own.  Someone in the Land of Mo, he remembered, had lent him pen and paper to write it.  Its dusty, yellowing fragility seemed oddly venerable, like an artifact in a museum.

                Then he felt a hand on his shoulder.                                                                                                               

                Uncle Bob had turned around in his chair.  His lined face wore a look of mingled disbelief and gladness.  “Button-Bright,” he said wonderingly.  “It’s really you.  Did you come by magic?”

                The sound of his voice, just a notch deeper than it had been when last they met, made Button-Bright feel suddenly at ease.

                “Yes, Uncle Bob.  I thought I’d stop by for a visit.”

                Uncle Bob smiled the old kind smile that went so well with his sad-dog eyes.  “Why, that’s just what I’ve been wishing you’d do,” he replied.  “Though it seemed impossible.  I got your note, as you see, so of course I never worried.  I’ve just wondered sometimes whatever became of you.  Where did you go?  Where do you live?”

                “That’s easy enough,” Button-Bright grinned.  “I live in Oz, Uncle Bob.  Have you heard of it?”

                Uncle Bob had, it turned out, and he seemed glad now when his nephew described it to him.  He never doubted a word but listened with shining eyes as the boy added detail upon detail.  Most of all it pleased him to know that his nephew lived among such loving friends as Ojo, Ozma, Trot and the others.  Last came an account of the Magic Picture and how, before sending him here, Ozma had given him her emerald ring.

                “So you can stay as long as you like,” said Uncle Bob.  “That makes me very happy, and not just because I’m glad to see you.  The truth is there are things I’ve wanted to tell you – things you would have been told long ago if I’d had my way.”

                “What kinds of things?”

                “Things about yourself, mainly.  And a few about me as well.  Are you hungry?  Should I have Cook send up some lunch before I explain?”

                This sounded like a good idea, so Uncle Bob hurried off downstairs.  By the time he reappeared with a tray full of food, Button-Bright had crawled onto a window seat and was watching the scene below.

                “It’s starting to rain,” the boy reported.  “Maybe Polychrome is lost and her father is coming after her.”

                “Polychrome?”

                “The Rainbow’s Daughter.  She’s an old friend of mine, though I don’t see her as much as I’d like.  Actually, she’s the one other person who gets lost as often as I do.  Her father, the Rainbow, always has to track her down.  What’s for lunch?”

                A beaming Uncle Bob placed his tray on the desk.  “The classic American feast!  Thanksgiving was day before yesterday, so we’re still polishing off the leftovers.  There’s turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce, and heaven knows what else.  Grab a plate.”

                Button-Bright needed no urging.  It was during a leisurely meal that Uncle Bob began his tale.

                “I’ll start,” he said, “with the Magic Umbrella.  How well I remember your first trip with it, the way you disappeared for days and finally turned up on my doorstep, Umbrella in hand.  You were only nine years old!  I was surprised, you’ll recall, but not as surprised as I might have been.”

                “You were never much surprised by the things I did,” said Button-Bright.

                “True.  In this case, however, my not-surprise had a particular reason.  I already knew about the Magic Umbrella.  I’d taken a few jaunts with it myself.”

                “You, Uncle Bob?”  This caught Button-Bright unawares.

                Uncle Bob laughed.  “Yes, my boy, your musty old uncle has actually had adventures of his own.  It was a long time ago, a good forty-one years in fact, when I was about sixteen.”

                “Why didn’t you tell me?” Button-Bright demanded, rather miffed to find that his favorite uncle had secrets.

                “I actually planned to, a few years later.  But you were only nine when you found the Umbrella, and I thought that was too young for magical adventures.  Now I see how wrong I was.  If anything, sixteen is a little too old!”

                “It isn’t,” Button-Bright contradicted.  “Trot’s Cap’n Bill was much older than that when he came to Oz.  And Shaggy Man’s not young, either.  Or the Wizard.”

                Uncle Bob said he’d take the boy’s word on this.  “Maybe it’s how old you feel,” he mused.  “Responsibilities will add a few years if you let them.  And I do have responsibilities:  property, business, workers, lots of things that keep me anchored right where I am.  Just now, for example, even though it’s Saturday, I’m occupied with papers I brought home from the office.  I envy you, Button-Bright.”

                “What about your adventures?” Button-Bright reminded him, drumming his heels impatiently against his chair legs.  “Where did you go?  What did you do?”

                A faraway look crept into Uncle Bob’s eyes.  “None of it would have happened,” he said, “without my crazy, wonderful Aunt Meg.”

CHAPTER THREE

UNCLE BOB’S STORY

                Aunt Meg, it seemed, was the black sheep of the von Smith family.  She had too much spirit, too many opinions and too little respect for her elders, or for just about anyone else in the family.  She liked her nephew Bob, however, and on his sixteenth birthday she took him aside.  Before she was finished he’d sworn a blood oath, the direst oath she could think of, not to reveal her secret till he found exactly the right person.  Bob swore, naturally, and she told him about the Magic Umbrella.

                With the Magic Umbrella, Bob learned, Aunt Meg had traveled the world.  She had even visited places beyond their world, including a mysterious country called Oz.  Now she had grown too old for such jaunts, she said, and the time had come to pass on her secret treasure.  She took the Magic Umbrella from its hiding place and set it in Bob’s hands.

                He tried it out as soon as he could.  After the first thrill of flight had palled, though, he got to thinking about magic.  “This Umbrella is real magic,” he thought.  “Not some carnival trick but real, authentic, honest-to-goodness magic.  And there’s got to be more magic, magic that this Umbrella can help me find.  All I need to do is make the right wish.”  Young Bob knew the fairy tales about wishes that ended in humiliation or disaster, and he did not care to end his own adventures that way.   So he took the time to plan his wish carefully.  He wrote it down, crossed it out and wrote it again.  He felt sure he was the cleverest fellow in Philadelphia.  And when it was done he made his wish.  “Umbrella,” he said, “take me to the home of the strongest magic there is.”  Just that.  And away he went.

                It was a colossal mistake.  Eating breakfast beforehand was the one bright thing he did, for the journey lasted many hours.  He reached his unknown destination in the dead of night, exhausted and aching for rest.  What sort of place he had found, he could not say.  He slept where he lay.

                Hours later, he awoke to the pleasant spectacle of a grassy dell dotted with wildflowers.  He heard birds singing, and a sweet breeze among the daisies.  Sweeter than the breeze, though, and surely not far off, was the sound of a stream in its stony bed.

                Beside him sat a little girl with flowers in her hair.

                “Excuse me,” said Bob.  “Can you tell me where to find the stream I hear?”

                “Oh course,” said she.  “It’s just beyond this rise.  You can’t miss it.”

                He stood and walked up the rise, whistling as he went.  Perhaps this trip would turn out better than it had seemed at first.  Below he saw the stream, right where the little girl had said.  He started down, expecting to get his drink in half a minute.  But a minute went by and he was still walking.  “It’s some trick of the light,” he thought, for the stream looked further away than before.  He kept on, a little faster now, and still he didn’t reach it.  He broke into a run and soon found himself slipping and slithering down a scree of loose shale and stones.  The stream had vanished altogether, but by now he was moving so quickly that he couldn’t stop.  He seemed to be falling, clutching at rocks that came away in his hands and fell with him.  Everywhere was the sound of falling rocks, like malicious laughter in his ears.  When he finally hit bottom a small avalanche rained on top of him, battering and bruising him till he groaned with the pain of it.

                He raised his head.  To his astonishment he found himself lying, not at the foot of a steep hill, but in a muddy ditch.  The rocks had gone.  Above he saw the little girl’s face, peering over a grassy verge.

                ‘There’s the stream,” she said brightly.  “Why don’t you drink?”

                Dazed, Bob looked down.  He was lying in two or three inches of filthy, stagnant water that smelled of rot and decay.  A deathly cold rose from that black water, filling him with fear.  It seemed to him that if he could not scramble out at once he would surely die.  But as soon as he reached out with his hands he saw the little girl’s face, and the grassy verge, lifting upward away from him.  The ditch was transformed into a deep well whose top rose up and up, higher and higher, till only a pinprick of sky remained overhead.  Again, cruel laughter filled his ears.

                That was when he remembered his own idiotic wish:  “the strongest magic there is.”  He’d found that magic, sure enough, and it had taken him for a plaything.  He sat back on his haunches and wept.

                Bob would never know how long he crouched there, wakeful and terrified, a prey to hunger and panic.  At length he fell into a wretched sleep.  When he roused, still in that same well, he knew the horror of despair.  His tormenters had left him to perish, slowly, in the cold depths of the earth.

                Then he heard a voice.  Where it came from he couldn’t tell.  It seemed to whisper, “By your left hand is a mug of hot milk.  Drink.” 

His body stiffened.  He feared another trick, like the stream.  But the voice told true.  His fingers closed round something small and solid, his lips tasted something warm and delicious.  He pulled up his knees and sipped, as a child might sip hot chocolate after a long day in the snow.  Drop by drop the hot milk penetrated his frozen body and warmed his being.  He began to feel alive again.

                That same voice whispered, “By your right foot is a dish of porridge.  Eat.”  This time he did not hesitate.  He seized the porridge, complete with its own spoon, and ate gratefully.  More followed, and still more, till his hunger had gone.  He ventured to thank his unknown friend, as well as to ask his name and the name of this horrid place.

                “My name is Jandilay,” the voice whispered.  “But because I keep to myself, others call me Hermit.  I am a Phanfasm, unfortunate stranger, and this is the Mountain Phantastico.”

                The words meant nothing to Uncle Bob.  He admitted as much.

                “Of course,” whispered Jandilay.  “No one who had heard of us would dare come to our Mountain as you have done.  Know, then, that of all evil spirits in this world, the Phanfasms are the cruelest and most powerful.  No act is too vicious to give them joy, no wretch so miserable that they will pity him.”

                “But you have pitied me,” Bob managed to say.  “Haven’t you?”

                A sigh was heard in that dreary place.  Jandilay said, “I alone, of all the Phanfasms, am ruled by the tyrant Pity.  I help poor strangers when I can.  If you trust me, I will help you.”

                Bob had no choice.  No sooner had he made up his mind, however, then Jandilay took fright.  “The others are coming!” he whispered.  “I must go.  Be strong and don’t lose hope.”

                Suddenly, Bob’s prison walls fell away into echoing vastness, empty but for a dreadful weight of malice that pressed from all sides.  Out of the blackness hideous faces appeared, more dreadful than any nightmare monster.  Gaping jaws full of jagged teeth snapped at him, and eyes of fire raked across his body.  Were these the Phanfasms themselves, or were they spirits sent to devour him?  Too terrified to think, Bob fled into the night.

                The faces harried him mercilessly.  He dodged them as best he could, through a darkness so complete that he couldn’t have said what ground he ran on.  Never had he run so far so fast, or with so little hope.  Soon it became clear that he was being herded, forced this way or that by beings who easily could have caught him if they wished, but who instead chose to run him down like a stag.  It was as if they gorged themselves on his terror and drank his panic like wine.  That same terror and panic kept him running no matter what, long past the point when his legs should have failed him.  Perhaps he hoped that his heart would burst in his chest before they tore him to pieces.  He simply ran while time stood still.

                All at once, just ahead, he saw a river of fire spanned by a single narrow bridge.  Some fearsome creature barred the way, a crocodile, scarlet and glaring.  He had no time to slow down before invisible hands caught him up and swung him bodily across this barrier.  He felt the crocodile’s hot breath like sulphur in his throat.  He screamed. 

Then he was running again, running and running through inky blackness, till he burst unexpectedly into a blaze of sunlight.

                That final shock finished him.  His legs buckled and he tumbled headlong into something soft and springy.  There he lay, dazzled and exhausted, while his lungs heaved up and down.  Every moment, he thought, would bring the Phanfasms down on him.  He closed his eyes and waited.

                Time passed, though, and gradually he became aware of the silence all around.  This silence did not mock, as it had when he lay crumpled in the well.  The air seemed fresh, even warm, and his springy bed smelled of green, growing things and rich soil.  He moved his fingers; they closed on leaf and stem, bud and blossom.  Could this be real?  He opened his eyes.

                It was on a wild and weedy bank that he lay.  Though it had a spare, uninhabited look, yet the place seemed, not exactly benign, but certainly not evil.  He sat up.

                At once his heart leaped into his mouth.  Beside him sat a pale boy, or young man, with a tiny child in his lap.  Another apparition of the Phanfasms?  He could run no more.  He would meet his end here or wherever the creature dragged him, but he would not stir a step though they shrieked till sundown.

                Then the young man spoke.  He was Jandilay!  Bob almost wept with gratitude and relief.

                “Do not be afraid,” said Jandilay.  “I am indeed a Phanfasm, and I’ve rescued you in the only way I can.  You are safe now.  You are free.”

                Safe and free, too, was the tiny boy who sat perched in Jandilay’s lap, alert and still, another rescued prisoner.  This child, Jandilay said, had arrived mysteriously in the shape of a gray goose, cast onto the Mountain Phantastico by a storm that left him too battered and spent to say much.  Jandilay had sensed that this goose’s natural form was something quite different.  A simple spell restored him at once, to the shape of a tiny child.  This would have been fine except that the child was so very young, probably less than two.  He couldn’t speak and thus could tell Jandilay nothing about himself or where he belonged.  Unless a home could be found for him, his future would be bleak indeed.

                At this point in the story, Uncle Bob’s voice trailed off and he seemed to fall into a reverie.  Button-Bright waited a bit, then gently prompted him, “Some two-year olds talk a little.  Don’t they?”

                “Oh, a few words here and there,” Uncle Bob said.  “They can say Mamma and Papa, I suppose, and cat and dog.  I’ve never had a child myself, so I’m no expert.  But this one couldn’t talk at all.  Jandilay was at a loss.”

                “Till you came along,” Button-Bright guessed.

                “Exactly.  By sheer good timing, I became a foster-parent at the ripe old age of sixteen.  Not that I didn’t put up a struggle.  No teenager wants a child, and I was very much a teenager.  But Jandilay had a trump card up his sleeve, or rather behind his back.  Along with us castaways, it seems, he had thoughtfully rescued my Magic Umbrella.  He had every intention of giving it back to me – if, that is, I agreed to take the child off his hands.  If.  How else could I get home?  I took the child and flew away.”

                Button-Bright was agog.  “You didn’t bring it here, did you?” he gasped.

                “I had to,” Uncle Bob replied.  “I could hardly have left the poor thing at an orphanage.”

                “But it was a fairy baby!” Button-Bright marveled.  “An actual baby from fairyland.  In Philadelphia!  Oh, Uncle Bob!  What did you do with it?”

                “Well, by good fortune I had several brothers old enough to have gotten married already.  The eldest had no children and no likelihood of getting any, as his wife was terribly ill.  He needed something to live for and this child came as a gift from the gods.  That was how my brother Ned became a father.”

                “Ned!” echoed Button-Bright, rising abruptly from his chair.  “But – that was my father!  Edward von Smith!  Uncle Bob, there’s something crazy going on here.  Are you telling me I had a brother?  How could I have had a brother?  And from fairyland!  You’re not making any sense!”

                “Try to understand,” Uncle Bob said gently.  “You never had a brother.  There was only one child, the one that came from fairyland.  That child was you.”

                “Me?”

                Uncle Bob placed his hands on the boy’s shoulders.  “Oh dear, I’m afraid I’ve bungled this whole story.  If I’d known you were coming today I’d have planned it better.  You were the child Jandilay found on the Mountain Phantastico.  You were the child I carried home, strapped to my back while I clung to the Magic Umbrella.  You were the child Ned presented to his sick wife.  She gave you her blessing, Button-Bright, as well as your nickname.  It was you all along.”

                Button-Bright shook his head dazedly.  “I wish someone had thought to tell me sooner,” he said.

                “I wanted to!” Uncle Bob exclaimed fervently.  “It would have been the best thing for everyone.  My worst fear was that Grandmamma would spill the beans and make it sound like a curse.  She didn’t know about the Magic Umbrella, of course, or the Phanfasms.  No one did except me and Ned.  She just knew you were a foundling, which in her eyes was bad enough.  But Ned made every one of us promise to keep it a secret.  And till today I kept that secret.  Sorry, Ned, wherever you are.”

                “So I’m not his son at all,” Button-Bright murmured.  “I’m not even your nephew.”

                “Well, legally you are,” Uncle Bob hedged.  “Ned did adopt you almost at once.  And as far as I’m concerned, you’ll always be my nephew.  Out of all my nephews – and believe me, there are many – you’re the one I love best.  But no, in reality you and the von Smiths are not related.”

                “Not related.  Not even American.”  Button-Bright shook his head.  “You know, it actually fits.”

                “Fits?”  Uncle Bob didn’t understand.

                “Well, it makes a strange kind of sense.  It’s why I started getting lost.  I didn’t know where I belonged.”

                “Ah.”  Uncle Bob smiled ruefully.  “Your Grandmamma said the same thing, only not in a nice way.  It used to infuriate poor Ned.  And the worst of it was he couldn’t disagree.  Her attitude appalled him, but her facts were rock solid.  You never really belonged to us.  And Ned knew it.”

                “So did you,” said Button-Bright.  He sat for a moment, pondering what he’d heard.  Then he said, “I do love you, Uncle Bob.  You and Father.  Did you know that?”

                Uncle Bob laughed.  “Well, you kept turning up on my doorstep, so I guess I knew.  As for Ned, I’ll tell you what he told me.  He said, ‘Now that my wife is dead, there are only two people who love me just as I am.  You’re one, Bob, and the other is Button-Bright.  Oh, it’s true he doesn’t show it most of the time.  But every so often, when I least expect it, he crawls right up into my lap as if it were a nest made just for him.  And I can tell there’s not one thing he would change, not one single detail out of place.  I’ll miss him when he leaves us.”

                “He knew I’d leave?”

                “All parents know their children will leave one day.  In your case, he and I both felt the leaving would come sooner and take you further away.  Ned just wanted to put it off as long as possible.  I wish we could tell him where you’ve ended up.  He’d like that.”

                “I’d like to know where I started out!” Button-Bright declared, so emphatically that he surprised even himself.  “No, really.  You’ve told me who my parents aren’t, which is nothing to sneeze at.  But you can’t tell me who they are.  Your friend Jandilay should have explained that.”

                He thought of everyone who could help him unlock the secret of his origins:  Glinda, the Wizard, Ozma, or even Grandma Natch, the Yookoohoo enchantress.  Not a one, he felt sure, would fail him if he asked.  He touched his shirt pocket and the hard lump inside it that was Ozma’s emerald ring.  Should he put it on?  Should he beg his powerful friends for help?

                No, he decided.  There was a journey to make and he would make it by himself.  He would follow the trail, get lost if he had to, and he would find his real parents wherever they might be.  It was the only way. 

                He stood up and walked toward the Magic Umbrella.  Its familiar canvas felt old and worn and full of power – not a great power like Ozma’s or Glinda’s, but a small and determined power that would take him where he needed to go.  He removed his old note from the elephant’s head handle and placed it on the desk.

                “I’ll go to Jandilay myself,” he said.

                This notion did not meet with Uncle Bob’s approval.  Indeed, Button-Bright had to explain more than once that things had changed, that the dreaded Phanfasms were no longer what they had been.  Not long ago, when they tried to invade Oz, the entire tribe had unwittingly drunk the Waters of Oblivion.  All their wicked plans had been forgotten and they had been sent home, as blank as newborn babes.  It would be perfectly safe, Button-Bright insisted, to seek out Jandilay at the Mountain Phantastico.  And this was just what he meant to do.

                Uncle Bob remained unconvinced till he remembered the emerald ring, tucked away in the boy’s pocket.

                “Tell me the truth, now,” he said earnestly.  “Will your friend Ozma really look after you?  Will she help you if anything goes wrong?”

                Button-Bright promised him that she would.  And with this assurance Uncle Bob gave in.

                “I don’t like it,” he repeated one last time.  “But you’re more experienced in these matters than I am, and you’ve known dangers I could never imagine – you and your Wanderlust!  Well, I suppose I’d better give you this.”

He took the Magic Umbrella from its resting place and held it in his hands.  If, for a moment, he seemed reluctant to let it go, Button-Bright felt somehow that it was not out of fear for an intrepid nephew’s safety.  Uncle Bob, too, had known the Wanderlust, and perhaps it slept still in his heart, like a dream of things dimly remembered or never known.

                “I’ll come and see you again,” promised Button-Bright, “when I’ve found out who I am.  I’ll come back and tell you all about it.”

                “I’ll count on that,” Uncle Bob said warmly.  He handed over the Magic Umbrella and they walked to the window together.

                Through this window, which opened onto Uncle Bob’s narrow balcony, they could see that a light rain still streaked their view of soggy Philadelphia.  Westward, however, the storm had broken to reveal deep blue horizons.  Golden sunbeams pierced the rain, and their union had bred a glorious rainbow that spanned the eastern sky, vivid against a backdrop of slate gray clouds.  Uncle Bob laughed.

                “There’s your friend’s father,” he said pointing to the rainbow.  “The one with the pretty name, Polly-something.”

                “Polychrome,” said Button-Bright.  “That’s true.  Polly must be up there with her sisters, dancing in the rain.  I wonder how they manage to stay dry?”

                A sudden thought seized him.  “Oh, Uncle Bob!  I could visit Polly right now!  Why, she’d be just the person to talk to!  The rainbow goes everywhere and sees everything.  If anyone knows what’s happened to the Phanfasms, it’s Polly.”

                “Can you really drop in on a rainbow?” Uncle Bob marveled.

                “I suppose so.”  Button-Bright had never considered such a thing.  “Except for Polly herself, I don’t know anyone who’s tried it.  Maybe I’ll be the first.”

                He unlatched the window, stepped outside and opened the Magic Umbrella.  A familiar sound of raindrops on old canvas filled his ears.  It was as if the Umbrella were murmuring to him in a language all its own.

                “Good bye, Uncle Bob!” he called.  “I’ll see you soon!”  Then, looking upward, he said, “Umbrella, take me to Polychrome’s rainbow!”

CHAPTER FOUR

DROPPING IN ON A RAINBOW

                How well Button-Bright remembered the delicious sensation of flight!  Rather than dragging him skyward by main force, the Magic Umbrella filled his body with an airy lightness that ballooned up into the heavens.  He floated weightlessly on the handle, which drew him as gently as a mother’s touch.  It was because of this weightless ease that he could take long trips without tiring past endurance.

                This flight, he assumed, would be a short one.  The rainbow could not be far.

                To his surprise, however, it was not toward the rainbow that the Magic Umbrella soared.  Instead, it shot straight up over the city till it poked a hole in the clouds themselves, plunging Button-Bright into clammy fog.  Then where?  All sense of direction vanished in the sudden rush of wind, the growing dark, and the echo of utter nothingness all round.  What had happened?  The Magic Umbrella always did exactly as it was commanded.  That much he knew.  But if the command were somehow confused or unclear, it might very well go off in an unexpected direction.

                He remembered one such case.  Sky Island was an acre or two of land in the mighty Pacific Ocean; but when commanded to go there, the Magic Umbrella had flown straight to a different Sky Island, an airborne Sky Island, sailing the wind currents high above the earth’s surface.

                Where, then, was the Magic Umbrella going now?  Perhaps, the boy thought, American rainbows weren’t like Polychrome’s habitable arch.  Perhaps they were mere patterns of light reflected, as scientists said, on raindrops.  Button-Bright had not asked for this; he had asked for Polychrome’s rainbow.  And if Polychrome’s rainbow could be found only in fairyland, then the Magic Umbrella would surely go there.

                This would be a long flight.  Like Uncle Bob, Button-Bright had made the journey once before and he knew what to expect.  He remembered the hours spent shifting from dazzling brightness to utter dark, from clinging mist to featureless sky, from roaring wind to numbing calm.  Rare as it was for mortals to stumble in or out of fairyland, there were nevertheless many ways to do it.  Button-Bright had been sent to Philadelphia just this morning by one of the quickest.  Dorothy Gale, on the other hand, had traveled by air, water and land, always amid violent upheavals.  These ways had been dreadfully slow.  Another slow way was the Magic Umbrella.  Button-Bright accepted this with a rueful sigh.

                Soon his thoughts turned to his origins, once so clear and certain, now enigmatic and obscure.  If he weren’t a genuine von Smith, as he’d believed till one hour ago, then who was he?

He’d been found in a dark and dangerous part of fairyland, not in his own shape but in that of a gray goose.  How had he gotten there?  Where had he started out?  And how had he been transformed?  Button-Bright had never confronted such troubling questions before.  Even with his talent for getting lost, he had generally known where his home was or was not.  Now he found himself adrift, quite literally, in a void that supplied no helpful signposts, no glimpses of a distant shore.  Where this journey would take him in the end, and whether or not he would find out what he wanted to know, he could not imagine.

He flew onward, wondering.

At long last, when his brain and his limbs had both grown weary, the grayness gathered itself into recognizable cloud shapes.  Raindrops once more tumbled about him, and he felt himself descending toward an earth he could not yet see.

Abruptly he dipped down out of the clouds.  A cloudy ceiling spread far and wide overhead, while jagged canyons of cloud surrounded him on three sides.  From the left, floods of sunshine flowed toward a distant landscape.  Below, rushing upward as he plunged out of the sky was the Rainbow.

Unlike rainbows in Philadelphia, this one grew steadily larger as he approached it, a vast arch that straddled acres of far-off earth.  Even more amazing, its great bands of transparent green, blue and rose teemed with movement, flecks of living color that soon resolved themselves into the misty forms of dancing maidens.  These, Button-Bright realized, were Polychrome’s sisters – who could have guessed she had so many? – And one of them must be Polly herself.  He hoped that she would recognize him, for no one could hope to find her in the bewildering throng.

The Magic Umbrella slowed its headlong descent.  Now the faces of the merry maidens turned upward as they saw, to their evident astonishment, a boy floating down into their midst.

Girlish voices reached his ears, and girlish arms stretched up to greet him.  Their fingers brushed his cheek like puffs of warm air, sweet but not solid.  The Rainbow itself, on which they danced so gaily, turned to light beneath his dangling feet.  Whatever would he stand on?

“It’s Button-Bright!” cried a familiar voice.

And there she was, Polychrome herself, the loveliest sister in all this radiant sisterhood.  She rushed to the boy, her gauzy draperies floating about her, and gave him an airy hug.

“My dear friend, welcome!  But this will never do.  Here, let me help you.”

With one fairy touch she turned his boyish body into a shimmer of mist and sun, like her own.  His newly transparent feet made contact with the Rainbow’s quicksilver surface.  He could stand!  He folded up the Magic Umbrella and took Polychrome’s lovely hands in his.

“Thanks, Polly,” he grinned.  “You can’t imagine how glad I am to see you.”

“You can’t imagine how surprised I am to see you!” she chided him, laughing.  “It’s not often that we have a human guest up here before.  Is it, sisters?”  Girlish voices chorused their agreement.  Button-Bright looked about and found himself hemmed in by Rainbow maidens, all examining him with great curiosity.

“Is he really human?” asked one.

“He can’t be,” said another.  “You saw how he came down from beyond the clouds.”

“But no one lives up there,” argued a third.  “Father says so.”

“What is he, Polychrome?  Tell us, tell us!”

The sisters joined in a burst of laughter, and Polychrome laughed with them.

“Button-Bright is most certainly human, as he would tell you himself if you dared to ask him,” she teased.  “He’s also a very good friend of mine.  He comes from Oz, and you know Oz folks can turn up almost anywhere.  But I don’t know how he happened to drop out of the clouds today.  I think he owes us an explanation.”

“Explain, explain!” demanded the Rainbow chorus.

Button-Bright hesitated.  He hadn’t expected to share his unusual problem with quite so many people.  Finally, omitting the true purpose of his quest, he told them how his ill-worded command had brought him here rather than to the rainbow in far-off Philadelphia.

This amused his hearers no end.  “You thought you could find us in that other world?” they cried, and fell about in giggles.  “Why, we’ve never been there in our lives!”

“And we never will,” added one.

“We’ve heard it’s a dismal place.”

“No magic at all.  Just think!”

“Which is exactly why you’ve come back to us!” laughed Polychrome.  “And very wisely too.  Oh, Button-Bright, you must let me introduce you to Father.  I can’t remember the last time an earth dweller met him.  Do say you’ll come.”

No one could have refused such a winsome invitation.  At a nod from Button-Bright, she took his hand and pulled him up the slope of the Rainbow, watched by the crowd of dancing maidens.

“Do you like our air castles?” Polychrome asked him as they skimmed higher and higher.

“What castles?  Where?”

“All around us, of course.  Don’t you see them?”

Button-Bright scrutinized the huge cloud canyons he’d passed in his descent.  Nowhere could he glimpse the least hint of a house or building.  As for the Rainbow, it was all color and sweep – no castles there.  He squinted sidelong at Polychrome.

“I don’t see anything,” he said.

Much mischievous laughter was heard from behind.  Polychrome gave her yellow hair an equally mischievous toss.  “I didn’t think you would!” she declared.  “I’ll have to show you.  Come this way!”

They all but flew to the very edge of the Rainbow, and from there, to Button-Bright’s amazement, they leaped onto the nearest cloudbank.  It held their airy forms beautifully.  Now Polychrome stretched out her arms and parted the misty wall as if it were a curtain, revealing a door through which they passed easily.  Beyond lay a small space enclosed by yet more walls of mist.

“Here now!” Polychrome said triumphantly.  “A perfect little room fitted with everything you could want.  And just think:  wherever the Rainbow goes there are dozens of these rooms, hundreds even, all waiting for one of us to step inside and get cozy.  You have only to reach out and walk into the next one.  Every cloud is a castle full of rooms!  Isn’t it wonderful?”

Button-Bright’s face wore a doubtful look.

“I don’t understand,” he admitted.  “What do you do here?”

“Well, sometimes I get tired of my enormous family.  Wouldn’t you if you were me?  Here I can be alone for a while, rest if I choose, or have something to eat.”

Button-Bright understood about the privacy, though he’d never had such a thing as a sister.  “But what do you eat?” he inquired.  “On earth you never take more than a tiny sip of dew.  And I don’t see anything that looks like food.”

“Watch!”  Polychrome dipped her transparent fingers into the wall.  When she pulled them out again, a small lump of mist sat in the palm of her hand.

“Everything is food!” she informed him.  “Here, taste it!”

She raised it to his lips.  He nibbled mistrustfully, then sucked the tiny thing up in one gulp.  A smile lit his boyish features.

“It’s like sherbet!” he said, smacking his lips.  “Only lighter and – I don’t know – sort of minty.  Could I do this on earth when there’s a fog?”

Polychrome shook her head.  “No, unfortunately.  Your usual solid self couldn’t taste our mist cakes, or even get hold of one.  But up here you can have all you want.  Try it!”

He did, with as much ease as his charming hostess.  The mist cakes felt deliciously cool in his hands and in his mouth.  Hours of tedious flight fell away as this sky feast refreshed his whole transparent body.  Uncle Bob’s lunch, after all, had been a long time ago.  Button-Bright had not realized how hungry he was.

“Now let’s meet Father!” Polychrome said, and drew him back outside.  Instead of resuming their climb up the Rainbow’s shimmering curve, though, they slid and slithered down the cloudy crags alongside.  Moments later they found themselves underneath the Rainbow!  Here, Button-Bright saw, a huge heap of silvery-gray cloud pressed up tight against the mighty arch, almost like a massive cushion.  No, it was not like a cushion – it was more like a mountainous man, his enormous shoulders bent beneath the Rainbow’s awesome weight and his great head covered with silver hair that flowed upward in rolling billows.

Button-Bright peered about.  “Where’s your father?” he asked Polychrome.

Suddenly the cloud heaved and lifted.

“Well, daughters!” boomed a voice like thunder.  “What brings you down from your dancing?  Come to visit the old man, have you?”

Polychrome shook her own lovely head.

“Oh, Papa!” she said.  “Do pay attention.  This boy is not one of your daughters.  He’s my old companion Button-Bright from down below.  Button-Bright, meet my father, the Rainbow.”

Now, through strands of cloudy hair, Button-Bright saw two huge eyes gleaming out at him.  What he had taken for the mere likeness of a mountainous man was, it appeared, the genuine article!  True, from the ribs on down his body was lost in cloud, the great legs distant and invisible.  As for his hair, it merged with the rainbow itself, blending seamlessly into the bands of color.  Between, however, a great man surely stood.  Cavernous chuckles rattled those ancient jowls.

“An earth dweller!” rumbled the Rainbow.  “Indeed.  Daughter, are you sure this is not some clever prank?  As often as you girls have made a fool of me, it’s no wonder I hide my face in my own long beard.  Let me take a closer look at our guest.”

The gray eyes narrowed.

“You must forgive my staring,” the Rainbow told Button-Bright.  “I have hundreds of daughters and they all look alike to me.  Anyone with two arms and two legs I take to be one of them.  Hmmm.  You certainly have less hair than they do, and your clothes are different.  What are you, precisely?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” Button-Bright said frankly.  “Polychrome calls you ‘The Rainbow,’ but you’re not the Rainbow, really.  You just hold the Rainbow on your shoulders.”

Polychrome concealed a sudden burst of giggles.  Her father heaved a doleful sigh.

“’Ah,” he lamented.  “Dismissed so easily by one so young!  Daughter, how long do you imagine I’ve been carrying this burden round the world?  Fifty years, perhaps?  A hundred?”

“Oh, two-hundred at least,” Polychrome assured him, as solemnly as she could.

The Rainbow’s bushy eyebrows flew up in mock astonishment.  “As much as that?   Surely not.  Boy, what do you think?  Have I been employed this way for two-hundred years?”

Button-Bright, suspecting a joke at his expense, decided to call the bluff.  “If you weren’t so youthful,” he said rather cheekily, “I might even have said two-hundred-and-fifty.  But you don’t look anywhere near that old.  Does he, Polly?”

Thunderous laughter shook the cloud on which he stood.  High-pitched echoes followed from above, where it seemed that a bevy of daughters had crept down to listen.  Now they came skimming along their father’s hair, bouncing on his beard and dancing across his shoulders.

                “Don’t be mean, Papa!” scolded one.

                “Tell him the truth!” instructed another.

“You see how it is,” the Rainbow said to Button-Bright.  “These tyrants won’t let me get away with anything.  Know, then, that I have carried the Rainbow on my back for as long as the world has known both sun and rain.  That is more thousands of years than anyone can count, including I, who have outlived them all.  Without me the Rainbow is nothing but a hope unfulfilled, and without it I am only vapor.  We are one, the Rainbow and I, joined forever by the powers of water and light.  That is why I am called Rainbow by those who know me best.  It matters little.”  A smile was seen through the misty tendrils of his beard.  “What matters more, I think, is who or what you might be.  Guest, would you be so kind as to explain yourself?”

Button-Bright decided that this huge family could be trusted with his recent revelations.  “I’ve always thought I was a human boy,” he replied.  “Now I’m not so sure.”

Polychrome frowned.  “Not sure?  Why, of course you’re sure.  What could you be but human?”

“That’s what I don’t know,” said Button-Bright.  “I don’t know who my parents are, or even what they are.  So I don’t know what I am, either.”

“This is very peculiar,” the Rainbow said to Polychrome.  “Daughter, do you suppose all earth dwellers are as vague as this one?”

“No Papa,” Polychrome asserted.  “And this one never has been before.  At least, not in this way.  Mind you, he does have a habit of getting lost.”

“And now he has lost his parentage,” rumbled the Rainbow.  “How careless. I’m sure you would be sorry, Daughter, to lose yours.  By the way, which of my daughters are you?”

 “Polychrome,” said Polychrome.  She and her sisters seemed unperturbed by this fatherly absent-mindedness.  Button-Bright, however, was aghast.

“You don’t know your own daughter’s name?” he demanded.

“Indeed not,” the Rainbow chuckled.  “I have hundreds of daughters, possibly thousands, and every one very much alike.  That pinkish girl, for instance, might be my little Cerise.  Then again, she could just as easily be Rosie, or even Magenta.  And that blue one could be either Azure or Cerulea.  I cannot keep track of them.  They can’t even keep track of each other!  You, who have lost your own parents, can hardly be surprised.”

“But that’s different!” Button-Bright protested.  “Even my adopted parents always remembered my name.”

“And how many children did they have?” inquired the Rainbow.

Button-Bright opened his mouth to say, “One!”  Then he remembered that they had not, in actual fact, had any.  These matters were more complex than he had imagined.  His face fell.

“You see,” the Rainbow said with surprising gentleness.  “Your situation and mine are not quite comparable.  Perhaps I do tend to view my daughters collectively rather than individually, but you must not hold that against me.  They don’t.  They claim to prefer it that way.  They have a great deal of freedom.”

Button-Bright nodded, a little embarrassed by his own outburst.  “I didn’t mean to be rude,” he said.  “Maybe it’s because I just found out that my parents weren’t my parents after all.”

“If they loved you like parents,” the Rainbow said, “they were your parents.  But I take your point.  Please oblige us with a full account of your difficulty.”

Button-Bright complied, beginning with Trot and the Magic Picture.  His hearers listened politely at first, then more raptly during Uncle Bob’s nightmare adventures at the Mountain Phantastico.  Upon hearing how Button-Bright himself had been found there, they exchanged thoughtful glances.

“So it seems to me,” the boy concluded, “that I must speak to that Phanfasm, Jandilay.  He’s the only one who can point me in the right direction.  Unless, of course, he drank the Waters of Oblivion along with the other Phanfasms.”

“Quite so,” agreed the Rainbow, nodding his great head.  “But if he was the hermit he claimed, this Jandilay probably stayed home while his people marched off to war.  He could be the only Phanfasm left who remembers anything at all.”

“So you think I should go there?” Button-Bright asked eagerly.

The Rainbow’s brow furrowed.  “I remember,” he said slowly, “how little we ever knew of the Phanfasms, even in their terrible heyday.  I saw only as much of their mountain as they wished, and of themselves nothing at all.  Powerful enchantments hid them behind an illusion of rocky wasteland, lifeless and barren.  What they really looked like, how they lived, and the true extent of their magical powers, no outsider could ever say.”

“How did you know they were there at all?” Button-Bright wondered.

“By their deeds.  They terrorized their neighbors.  It was not out of greed, for magic gave them whatever they wanted.  No, it was cruelty alone that made them harass innocent folks.  Fear and torment were food and drink to them.  Ultimately they drove off all who lived nearby, till not a soul dwelt within miles of their cursed mountain.

“That was long ago.  Then came their journey to Oz, which, like so many of their doings, remained secret at first.  I saw only this change:  the Mountain Phantastico wrapped itself round in a dark and menacing cloud, so impenetrable that even their cunning enchantments were hidden from sight.  Only the birds out of Oz could tell me what had happened, how the Phanfasms drank the Waters of Oblivion and were sent home, simple as babes.  Now the mountain, if it still exists, sits silent and invisible within its dark cloud.  Nothing goes in.  Nothing comes out.  The reign of terror has ended, seemingly, but for how long?  I can only say that, though the Phanfasms have done no harm since they came back from Oz, the world fears them to this day.”

“Perhaps they’re dead,” Polychrome suggested.  “That would suit everyone.”

“It wouldn’t suit me,” said Button-Bright.  “I want my question answered.  After that they can do as they please.”

“They may be dead,” the Rainbow mused.  “Or they may have changed their way of life altogether.  Or they may be gathering strength for a new assault on those they despise.  I tend to believe, however, that if they could do harm they would do harm.  And since they do not, it may be safe for you to visit their mountain.  I cannot promise this, any more than I can promise an ultimate answer to your question.  But the gamble, I think, is worth taking.”

“I don’t like it,” said Polychrome.  “Still, you have your Magic Umbrella.  You can escape if things seem dangerous.  You will be careful, won’t you?”

Button-Bright nodded.  Then, to his own surprise, he gave an enormous yawn.

“Why!” cried Polychrome, jumping up from the misty hummock where she sat.  “You must be exhausted after your journey!  We can’t let you fly off like this.  Papa, we should let him spend the night here with us.”

“That would be wise, certainly,” the Rainbow assented.  “And in the morning, boy, I myself will take you to the country of the Phanfasms.  I cannot go inside their fearsome cloud, for the sun never shines there.  But the greater part of the journey, at least, I can make.  Will that suffice?”

Button-Bright smiled gratefully.

“That would be just fine,” he said. 

CHAPTER FIVE

JANDILAY’S TALE

          Button-Bright had never slept more soundly than he did that night, floating almost weightlessly in a vaporous bed.  He did wonder, though, what would become of his body back on earth.

                “You mustn’t worry,” Polychrome told him the next morning.  “As soon as your feet touch the ground you’ll become solid again.  That’s what happens to me when I visit your hard, lumpy world.  It takes some getting used to.”

                The Rainbow remembered his promise from the day before.

                “If you’re ready,” he said, “we’ll go at once to the country of the Phanfasms.  I cannot stay long, for I’m due at a rainstorm in Ix very shortly.  But you will see how brief the journey is.”

                This proved to be an understatement.  The Rainbow, Polychrome explained, could travel distances both great and small in the time it takes to sigh.  What took longer now was rounding up his multitudinous progeny, many of whom had to be wakened from their misty slumber.  But despite his careless regard for their names, the Rainbow somehow located each daughter wherever she had hidden herself.  At last, along with Polychrome and her guest, the whole family gathered atop the mighty arch.  

All at once, without any warning, Button-Bright found himself looking down at a new and barren landscape, as desolate as the Deadly Desert that surrounded Oz.

                “Not very inviting,” Polychrome observed when they’d climbed back under the Rainbow.  “Anything that lives down there must be truly awful.”

                “Or truly dead,” said Button-Bright.

                 She touched his face with her fingers.  “There’s still time to change your mind, dear friend.  You don’t have to go.  You should stay with us, and in a few days you can put on your emerald ring and go back to Oz.  Wouldn’t you rather do that?”

                It would have been pleasant to agree.  Polychrome and her ancient father had welcomed him as warmly as his friends in Oz, and the boy would miss their companionship.  But he could not give up this mission, not when his best hope lay below.  Ozma’s ring must remain in his shirt pocket.  Opening up the Magic Umbrella, he bade a fond farewell to the Rainbow’s Daughter, as well as to the Rainbow himself.

                “I’ll be fine,” he told them.  “My worst fear is that this will turn out to be a wild goose chase.  But if that happens I’ll just have to think of something else, won’t I?”  He smiled.  “Thanks for all your help.  And for the mist cakes, they were delicious.”

                “You are welcome, my boy,” the Rainbow rumbled.  “Let us be on our way.  Good luck to you!”

Button-Bright returned those good wishes heartily.

 “Magic Umbrella!” he then said.  “Take me to the Mountain Phantastico!”

                Away he flew, down toward the wasteland.  Behind him he heard a sweet chorus of goodbyes, for Polychrome’s sisters had decided to see him off.  Their voices faded quickly as he sped through the shadowed air.  When he looked back, the Rainbow had already vanished.  He was alone again.

Ahead, clearly visible on the lifeless plain, there squatted a huge and swollen dome of dark cloud.  Within that, he thought, lay his fearsome destination.  Larger and larger it loomed, as wide as it was high, till it blotted out the horizon.  The Magic Umbrella plunged straight into its ominous flank.  Cold clamminess seized Button-Bright.  Then he popped out under the roiling roof and saw before him the tumbled feet of a mountain hidden within:  the Mountain Phantastico!

                He was set down beside a narrow stone bridge.  After closing the Magic Umbrella, he took a moment to look about.

                Everywhere he saw rock, bleak and barren rock that jutted crazily out of the mountainside or lay heaped up in slag piles.  Only the bridge suggested that anyone had ever lived here.  It spanned a precipitous chasm through which, perhaps, a river might once have flowed.  But when the boy peered into its depths, he saw the blackened scorching and searing of a mighty blaze long past.  As the bridge appeared sound, he scurried across it.

                No path showed him the way.  Button-Bright simply started uphill, zigzagging among twisted formations and treacherous piles of debris.  Whatever had happened here?  Was this all that remained of the Phanfasm domain?  Would he find anything living in this wilderness?  He climbed for a time, then paused to catch his breath on a stony seat.  If he found no Phanfasms, let alone the particular Phanfasm he sought, his quest would die away amid the rubble.  But no, he told himself.  He must not lose hope.  He got up.

                A small movement caught his eye!  What looked like a mere scrap of rock had peeled itself from the mountainside.  It was an aged man, stooped and withered, wearing rags as gray as the rock itself.  A gaunt face lifted into view beneath wild gray hair.  Two embittered eyes fastened on Button-Bright.

                “Oh sir!” the boy blurted out lest this unlikely apparition vanish back into the elements, “Thank goodness I’ve found someone!  Can you tell me where the Phanfasms live?”

                “Who are you, boy, that you seek the Phanfasms?”  The old man’s voice was as creaky as his ancient limbs.

                “My name is Button-Bright and I’m looking for a Phanfasm called Jandilay.”

                “Jandilay!”  At this, the old man took a step forward.  “What can you know of Jandilay?  Who told you that name?”

                “My uncle did,” said Button-Bright.  “Just yesterday morning.  He met Jandilay himself long ago when he came here accidentally.  This Magic Umbrella brought him from Philadelphia.  See?”

                The old man squinted at the Umbrella.  A spark of recognition lit his lightless eyes.  “Ah,” he said.  “The Magic Umbrella.  And you, boy – this is not your first visit to the Mountain Phantastico.  Is it?”

                Button-Bright admitted that this was so and went on to relate Uncle Bob’s story.

“That’s why I’m here,” he concluded.  “I want to find my real parents.  Maybe Jandilay remembers something, anything that would show me where to go next.  Do you know him?  Can I see him?"

                The old man stood for a moment, bowed and silent.  All at once, like a reflection in a pool of water, his form split into a thousand shimmering fragments.  When the fragments flowed together again, the old man had gone.  Only his anguished eyes remained, set deep in the face of a lad barely older than Button-Bright.  How sadly those eyes stared out of such fair young features!

                “I am Jandilay,” he said.  “The last Phanfasm left on the Mountain Phantistico.  And this is my true form.”

                “You’re just a child!” Button-Bright marveled.  “Is that why you helped Uncle Bob and me?  Because you were younger than the other Phanfasms?”

                “Younger?”  Jandilay laughed mirthlessly.  “All my kind were young, mere children dressed in the flesh of their fantasy.  I was the odd one, the eldest, just thirteen when first we arrived here.  But how could you know what that means?  Look around and see what our young fantasies achieved.  Look!  See!”

                Button-Bright felt that he had already seen as much rocky desolation as need be.  He looked, however, and saw abruptly the shimmering split and shift of the whole terrain.  Where formless wasteland had stood there now appeared the ruins of a great city.  On every side huge structures lay smashed to bits, their formidable masonry pounded to dust.  That the city had once been rich and magnificent he could only just discern.  Here, for example, lay the remnants of an exquisite frieze.  Crumpled columns worked in gold could be seen under shards of stained glass.  Under his very feet, the boy found beautifully tiled flooring now broken and buckled.

                He shook his head.  “Which is real?  The city or the desert?”

                “Well you might ask,” said Jandilay.  “Though my people have all fled or perished, their lives here only a nightmare memory, I still play the old game.  I hide our mountain under a shield of cloud.  I conceal our ruins under lifeless rock.  And to what end?  Whom do I protect?  You seek the truth, boy.  Very well.  I, who once gave you back your life, will make you a gift of my own, the life of the Phanfasms.  Listen.

                “We Phanfasms came here from another world, perhaps the same one where you grew up.  Does that surprise you?  Ah, but centuries have gone by since then.  We dwelt in an ordinary town where merchants sold their goods, smiths forged their wares, tailors cut their cloth, and everyone lived as quietly and simply as their neighbors did.  Magic?  Our parents knew none save petty superstition.  A medicinal herb, a pinch of salt, a muttered charm, was their magic.  We children scorned such things.  We had our own magic, the magic of imagination.  Imagination showed us worlds that superstition never conceived, but where we ourselves would have gone in a moment if we could.  And we did go, if only in our dreams.

                “It was in our dreams, our night dreams that the Mage first appeared to us.  I myself saw him while I slept.  Oh, he was a funny fellow with his twinkling eyes and his lopsided grin.  He pleased me so much that I told all my friends about him the next morning.  To my astonishment, and theirs, they had all dreamed the same dream!  And so had every other child in town.  Every one of us had seen the Mage, and every one of us had loved him.

                “Six nights in a row we dreamed of our Mage.  Six mornings we raced out of bed to compare our dreams.  It never occurred to us to tell our parents, for they would simply have put us back to bed with hot water bottles and elderflower tea.  No, this was our secret and we kept it devoutly.

                “On the seventh night, our Mage told us a secret of his own.

                “‘I make magic,’ he said.  ‘The magic of imagination, that’s what I make.  Anything I imagine I can bring to pass.  Isn’t that jolly?  And you, children – wouldn’t you like to make magic yourselves?’

                “Naturally we wanted to make magic.  What child doesn’t?  Our only question was, how do we it?

                “‘Oh, it’s simple enough,’ our Mage told us.  ‘A child can do it.  Indeed, only a child can do it.  You have but to give up one particular thing, a very little thing that keeps you pinned to this dull, dreary world of your mothers and fathers.  You can’t miss it, this small thing you must give up.  Shall I tell you that one thing?’

                “‘Tell us!’ we cried in the silent night of our dream.  ‘No matter what it is, we’ll give it up.  Tell us, tell us!’

                “So he told us.  ‘It is your hearts,’ he said.  ‘Not the beating hearts that pump blood through your veins, no, but the invisible hearts that have caused you untold pain each day of your lives.  When you kick your mother’s shins, what makes you cry yourself to sleep?  Your heart.  When your dear sister goes to live with her new husband far away, what aches to see her empty chair?  Your heart.  And when the one thing you want most is the one thing you can’t have, what weeps furious tears?  Why, that same heart, that pestilent heart, that whining heart.  Miss it?  You’ll be glad to be rid of it!  Power must know no pity.  Imagination must know no limits.  Are you ready to break this chain that binds you here?’

                “What did we know of hearts?  ’Yes!’ we shouted as loudly as we could.

                “And I, I shouted too.  Yet somehow, deep in my own heart, another voice whispered, ‘No. No, I would not give up quite everything.’  I was swept through the door that opened before us; I left behind my parents and my home; I found myself, with all the others, on this very mountain, ready to create a new world in the image of our newly unchained imaginations.  But alone among those hundreds of children, I brought with me a small, stubborn scrap of heart that had said, ‘No.’

                “Why was I permitted to do this?  Was it because, as eldest, I had grown too close to the world of our parents?  Was it because I alone spared a thought for their grief as we vanished from their lives?  I’ll never know.  But this I do know:  I have lived in fear ever since.

                “For you know, boy, what we Phanfasms became.  Loveless, pitiless, heartless and all-powerful, we dragged our darkest fantasies into the light of day.  What was to stop us?  Phanfasms we called ourselves, and as Phanfasms we ruled.  Our mountain we dressed in magnificent cityscapes.  Our childish bodies we dressed in the flesh and splendor of kings and queens.  All that we could imagine, we achieved.

                “To our neighbors we appeared as demons.  Never ask what horrors they endured, the poor wretches who were our playthings.  Know only that the survivors fled their ravaged homes till all this region lay empty and bare, as you see it now.

                “And what of me, with my one scrap of heart still beating against my ribs?  At first I did as my people did, laying waste to the lives of the weak.  But I hated myself for that, and in the end I went off to dwell alone, far from my dreadful kind.  They never knew my secret.  If they had, they would have torn me to pieces.  Instead, I made them believe me the cruelest Phanfasm of all, a creature of untold savagery, too vicious to live among others.  So they let me go, a legend in my own time, to brood on my fate.  Only one thing could rouse me, and that was the rare chance to help some unfortunate creature – a creature such as you, boy.  My bitter heart rejoiced when your uncle, with my help, took you from this place.

                “It was only a few years after this that a treacherous Nome sought out the Phanfasms.  His king, he said, meant to conquer the Land of Oz, and if we Phanfasms joined the battle we would share the spoils.  I could have joined that crusade myself.  Perhaps it would have been better if I had.  But I stayed home, alone as always, while my tribe marched off to war.  Who was to know that they, the terrible Phanfasms, would be tricked into drinking the Waters of Oblivion?  Who was to know they’d be sent back helpless and ignorant, their memories utterly destroyed?  Days after they left I found them wandering their own streets, gawking at their own city as if they’d never seen it before.  Horribly, they still wore the terrifying forms in which they’d left.  They could scarcely care for themselves.  Were it not for me they might have perished.

                “Could I give them a new beginning?  Could I set them on a happier path?  This was my chance to try.  I restored their true forms, probably for the first time since we’d left our parents.  I taught them to use such small powers as they needed to survive.  I told them that the world outside was a terrible place, that they would be destroyed if they ventured off their mountain.  I hid them safe within the cocoon of their own ill fame.

                “But my efforts failed, for the most part.  Heartless as ever, many Phanfasms took to quarrelling amongst themselves.  Worse, they rediscovered the true extent of their powers.  They still feared the world outside, but their own strife grew greater every day.  Leaders arose; factions fought; terrible weapons were invented and used.  A few knew what the end would be and vanished into the great wide world.  Where they went I still do not know.  As for me, I fled back to my hermitage.  Our mountain echoed with the clamor of war.

                “One day, quite suddenly, the clamor stopped.  An eerie stillness descended.  Bitter ash filled the air and a reek of burning stung my nostrils.  I crept up to the city knowing full well what I would find:  this, the devastation of everything we’d created.  Our tribe had destroyed itself and its works.  Except for the few who fled, I alone remain – left behind on the Mountain Phantastico.”

                “Left behind,” Button-Bright repeated silently.  “Just like your parents, that day when you and your playmates left home.”

                “Perhaps,” admitted Jandilay.  “That was our first truly heartless act.  It was only when we had left our hearts behind that we could leave our loved ones behind.”

                Button-Bright fingered the elephant’s head handle of his Magic Umbrella.  “I left my parents too,” he remarked quietly.  “My real parents, that is.  I don’t remember doing it, but it seems I must have.  Then, in a way, my adopted parents left me.  They both died.”

                “And you were set free to go a-journeying,” Jandilay said, sneering a little.  “Fortunate fellow!  You cannot guess how I envy you your freedom.”

                “But why?” asked Button-Bright.  “Couldn’t you go away too?  Some of the other Phanfasms did.  You have the power.”

                “Power!  It is my power that chains me here, a prisoner in the home it helped to build.  My power is too great and my maimed heart too feeble for the world beyond.  Wherever I go I bring terrible danger.  No, I must not leave the Mountain Phantastico.  I must stay forever, a prisoner to my power and my memories.”

                Button-Bright shuddered.  It seemed impossible – a power so great that you couldn’t trust yourself among people!  He thought of dear Ojo, gone to An with his burden of fairy magic.  Did Ojo, like Jandilay, feel trapped?  Would he still come home to his friends when his studies were done?  And to think – yesterday morning, Button-Bright had wished that he, too, possessed power like Ojo’s!  Horrible thought!

                Jandilay was looking at him.

                “Boy,” he said.  “I owe you thanks.”

                “Me?  Whatever for?”

                “For hearing me out,” replied the Phanfasm.  “Too long I’ve kept this tale shut away in what’s left of my heart.  Too long I’ve felt it lodged under my ribs like a cancer.  Now that it’s been told I feel I can breathe a little and bear my solitude more easily.”  Jandilay smiled.  “Strange, isn’t it?  I rescue a poor bedraggled goose that’s lost itself in a storm.  And that same goose returns one day as a boy who comforts me in my sorrow.  Only a madman would believe it.”

                “Oh, no,” said Button-Bright.  “Folks do help each other, Jandilay.  They do it every day.”

                Jandilay nodded.  “You may be right.  And I too, this one last time, can try to help.  I can tell you of the wet and windy night that bore you to me.  I can point you toward your past.”

                His past!  In the wonder and horror of Jandilay’s tale, Button-Bright had forgotten his own mission!

                Jandilay began.  “Storms never disturbed the Phanfasms.  Shelter, for us, was only as far as our next thought.  But you, in your goose form, were blown and buffeted till your wings gave out.  By sheer good luck the storm dropped you beside my hermitage, far from those who would have harmed you.  I found you barely alive, your feathers drenched, looking up at me with one frightened eye.  Anyone could have seen that you would soon lose consciousness.  But before you slept, you spoke a name.”

                “A name!”  Button-Bright shivered.  “Whose name was it?  Do you remember?”

                “It meant nothing to me,” the Phanfasm said.  “Yet somehow I remember.  ‘Comina Dreams,’ you barely managed to whisper.  ‘Send me to Comina Dreams.’  That was all.  I never heard your voice again, till today.”

                “Comina Dreams,” Button-Bright murmured, wracking his brain for some long-buried echo.  “Comina Dreams.  Who could she be?  Is she my mother, do you think?  My real mother?”

                Jandilay shrugged.  “I have no notion.  For all I know, Comina Dreams may be the sorceress who changed you from boy to goose.”  He paused.  “So this name does not help?”

                “Comina Dreams . . .” Button-Bright repeated the name several times, as if by doing so he could dredge it up out of his past.  “No,” he said finally.  “No, the memory is gone.  Still, a name is a name, isn’t it?  It’s more than I had before.  It’s something to go on.”

                “A very small something,” Jandilay agreed.  “As small, perhaps, as a human heart full of human hopes.  Where will you travel next?  How will you find Comina Dreams?”

                “I still have this,” said Button-Bright, opening the Magic Umbrella.  “If I say exactly the right words, it might just take me to her.  And I tell you what – when I do find my parents, I’ll come back and let you know.  Shall I?”

                “Do, my young friend,” replied Jandilay.  “I will be waiting for you.”

                Button-Bright grasped Jandilay’s hand for a moment, and for a moment that hand held his as if it would never let go.  How odd, the boy thought, to have made friends with a Phanfasm!  Ojo would never believe it.

                But it was time to go.  Button-Bright looked up at the Magic Umbrella. 

“Take me to the home of Comina Dreams,” he commanded it.  And a moment later he was airborne.

CHAPTER SIX

THE HOUSE OF COMINA DREAMS

                Who Comina Dreams might be was only one question.  Another was where she might live, and how far away.

                Button-Bright, famous lost boy, had never done more than glance at a map of the countries surrounding Oz.  The lines and colors that comprised any map made little sense to him.  So he did not know in what direction his flight was taking him, any more than he knew where he had started out.

                Below him flowed an endless stream of unfamiliar landscape.  Desolate wasteland soon gave way to rocky crags, sparsely dotted with shrubs and small tenacious trees.  These, in turn, led down to a long stretch of verdant fields and gentle hills, where sun-dappled sheep grazed peacefully.  Occasional towns were seen, as well as farming lands and one magnificent city.  The capital of Ix, perhaps?  Or of Mo?  Button-Bright knew only that it was not his home, the Emerald City, where everything would have been green.

                Truthfully, though, he did not spare much thought for this rare and privileged panorama, known only to migrating birds.  His eyes looked ahead, toward Comina Dreams.

                Comina Dreams.  The first name, Comina, had a motherly ring that warmed the boy’s heart; the second, Dreams, added an enigmatic note to that sweet simplicity.  Mystery or no, there grew in Button-Bright’s mind a surprisingly distinct and unshakeable image. Comina Dreams would be a small, plump, welcoming woman, aproned and smiling, at home in kitchen or garden.  If she dreamed at all, it would be of the lost son who even now flew toward her, dreaming of his lost mother.  Comina Dreams.  The mother of his dreams?

                He did not remember his adopted mother, back in Philadelphia, but he did remember his grandmother:  tall, hard-boned and slate-haired, with eyes that never blinked and convictions that never wavered.  Not once, in all the time he knew her, had she taken him in her lap or kissed his cheek.  When she spoke, it was only to command or reprimand.  When she touched, it was only to discipline.

                Comina Dreams could not be such a one.  He knew her only as a name, yet already he had picked out a character for her.  She might not fit that character, Button-Bright tried to tell himself.  She might not be his mother at all!  She might be, as Jandilay had said, the enchantress who had turned him into a goose and flung him out into a stormy night.  But surely not.  He had been so very young when all that happened, a toddler of one or two years old.  Marooned on a frightening and unknown mountain, he could only have spoken the name of his mother.  It would have been her comforting arms that he wanted, not the fearsome thrall of an enchantress.

                Round and round in his skull these thoughts pursued themselves, like puppies chasing their own tails.  The truth lay ahead, not within, and the Magic Umbrella brought that truth closer every moment.

                The truth.  Comina Dreams.  His heart began to race.

                Hours passed.  When he finally descended from a crystalline sky, it was toward flat, fertile country patchworked by orchards and straight dirt roads.  At the crossing of two such roads perched a white house, and in front of this house knelt a child, a little girl.  She did not notice Button-Bright till his feet scuffed the road just yards away.  Then she looked up.  Could this be his sister, perhaps?  Or his cousin?

                Button-Bright stood entranced, pulse pounding.  After a long silence the little girl asked, “Why do you have an umbrella?”

                He had not yet folded the Magic Umbrella.  He did so now, and said, “It seems a bit silly, doesn’t it?  On a beautiful day like this.”

                The day was indeed beautiful.  Under that clear blue sky, the green lawn, the beds of bright flowers and the small white house shone bright and clear.  The little girl herself stared with such penetrating clarity that Button-Bright reddened.  He walked towards her.

                “My name is Button-Bright.  What’s yours?”

                “Rexona,” said the girl, standing up.  She held a rag doll in one hand, while two more lay at her feet.  “I’m eight.  Did you come by magic?”

                “Yes.  My Magic Umbrella brought me here.”

                “We don’t see much magic,” Rexona said regretfully.  “We don’t see many strangers, either.  My daddy owns these orchards.”  She gave a broad wave that took in the whole idyllic scene.  Button-Bright looked about.

                “What does your daddy grow in these orchards?”

                “Just ordinary things:  some lunch pails, some dinner pails, and lots of picnic baskets.  Folks say our picnic baskets are the best.  See how big and heavy they are?”  She pointed to the nearest line of trees, where splendid picnic baskets hung in profusion amid the foliage.

                “Very nice,” commented Button-Bright, remembering how long it had been since he ate solid food.  Was that hunger rumbling in his stomach, or was it sheer excitement?  “What country is this?” he asked out loud.

                Rexona squinted at him.  “Don’t you know?  This is Ev, of course.  Everybody loves Ev.  Get it?  That’s what Daddy says.  Everybody loves Ev.”

                Button-Bright laughed tolerantly.  Daddy!  He hadn’t given a thought to fathers.  Perhaps it was because he’d known his adopted father so well, and loved him so much.  “Is your daddy at home?”

                “No, he’s in the orchard.  Mama’s here.  Shall I get her?”

                “Wait!”  Suddenly panicking, Button-Bright stopped her as she turned away.  “Could you please tell me -- what’s your mama’s name?”

                “Mama’s just Mama!” Rexona said, and giggled at her own joke.

                “No, really.  What’s her real name?”

                Rexona rolled her eyes in childish exasperation.  At last she said, “Darmina!”

                “Darmina.”  Not Comina, then, but a puzzlingly similar name.  Button-Bright gulped down his disappointment.  “All right.  Thanks, Rexona, I would like to meet your mother.”

                She dashed across the lawn, through the front door and into the house.  Button-Bright waited, twisting the Magic Umbrella in his nervous fingers.  Upon this encounter, he couldn’t help feeling, his whole past and future seemed to depend.

                Moments later a woman appeared:  plump and welcoming, aproned and smiling, with floury hands that wafted an unmistakable smell of kitchen.  Button-Bright’s mouth dropped open.  This, in person, was the mother of his dreams!

                “Here’s Mama!” shouted Rexona, rushing out behind her.  “Mama, this is Button-Bright!  He came by magic but he didn’t know where he was.  I had to tell him.  Isn’t that funny?”

                “Perhaps,” her mother smiled.  “Though it may not seem funny to him.  Button-Bright, I am Darmina.  Are you lost?  Do you need help?”

                “In a way,” he said shyly.  Now that the moment had come, his questions seemed almost too huge to be uttered outright.  “I get lost all the time back home in Oz.”

                Darmina’s face lit up.  “You live in Oz?  Why, my mother was born there!  But then, how did you cross the Deadly Desert?  And why did you come here, of all places?  Oz is so full of magic and adventure, and Ev is just ordinary.  Are you looking for someone?”

                “Yes,” he replied, and felt his heart give a leap.  He could delay no longer.  “I’m looking for someone I never heard of before today.  At first I thought it might be . . .” He stopped, realizing suddenly that he was close to tears.

                Darmina realized it too.  “Who?” she prompted, “Who did you think it might be?”

                “You,” he said quickly, before his voice could betray him.

                “Me?”  Now she looked as startled as he did.  “I don’t understand.  Why would you look for me?”

                Button-Bright swallowed hard and launched into the tale of yesterday’s events.  It seemed to grow longer each time he told it!  When he reached the appearance of the goose-boy, Darmina’s eyes widened.

                “Let me understand,” she said.  “You were found in the shape of a goose?”

                “I was.”

                “And you’d gotten lost in a storm?”

                Button-Bright nodded.  “Does that mean something to you?”

                “Perhaps,” Darmina hedged.  “Please go on.  I want to hear the rest.”

                He obliged her with an account of this morning’s adventure.  His audience paled upon hearing that he himself had climbed the Mountain Phantastico and talked to a Phanfasm.  Rexona thought him wonderfully brave, her mother more than a little foolhardy.  Nevertheless, it was the story’s climax that loomed large in the end.

                “And what did Jandilay say?” Darmina prodded, leaning forward.  “What was the one name you spoke while you were still a goose?”

                Button-Bright took a deep breath.

                “Comina Dreams,” he said.

                “Nonny!” exclaimed Rexona, instantly agog.  “That’s Nonny!  Mama, how did he know Nonny?”

                Darmina stood gazing at Button-Bright, her own eyes wet.  “My dear boy,” she said wonderingly.  “After all these years, it really is you!  I can’t believe you’ve come back to us!”

                “Then it’s true!” cried Button-Bright.  “It’s all true, just as I thought!  Comina Dreams is my real mother!  Where is she?  I have to see her!”

                Darmina shook her head sorrowfully.  “Listen, please!” she begged him.  “I want so much to help you, but you must listen.  Despite what you think, Button-Bright, Comina Dreams was not your mother.  She was your very dear friend and she loved you like a son.  But she was not your mother.  I’m sorry.”

                Button-Bright stared incredulously.  “Then how . . . ?”

                “There’s more,” Darmina interrupted him.  “Please, I must tell you.  My mother, Comina Dreams, died almost a year ago.”

                It was as if a wild and glorious hope, one that had filled every corner of his being, abruptly drained out through a small hole in his heart.  His face crumpled.  Seeing this, Darmina took his hand and led him toward the porch, where they sat down quietly on her whitewashed steps.  Rexona deposited herself at their feet.

                “Perhaps it will help,” Darmina said, “if I tell you about Mother.  Your friend, Comina Dreams, was a very old lady when she died.  I don’t know exactly how old; she used to live in the Land of Oz, where no one grows old or dies, and no one counts the years.  That’s no news to you, I suppose.  But here in Ev we all grow old and we all die.  So that’s what happened to Mother.”

                “I’m sorry,” Button-Bright said numbly.

                “Thank you.  We’ll miss her.  If she were still here she would have been happy to answer your questions for you.  Today, I’m the only one who can even try.”

                Darmina paused and glanced back into the house, as if her mother lay resting somewhere inside.  “You must realize how unusual it was for Mother to come here from Oz.  There’s the Deadly Desert, for one thing.  For another, most folks wouldn’t want to.  Mother told me that she came for just one reason.  She was pregnant.

                “Being pregnant in Oz, she said, was a big problem.  You have a baby inside you that never grows bigger and never gets born.  It just stays there, drifting in time, like everyone else in Oz.  It’s because of that queen who turned Oz into a fairyland.  One day everyone was aging naturally, just as we do now in Ev; next day they all stopped, including the unborn children in their mother’s wombs.  So if you were two months pregnant and you had morning sickness, it was forever.  And if you were eight months pregnant, with a belly like a watermelon, that was forever too.  I’ve been pregnant and I can imagine how sad that would be – not just the discomfort, but the knowledge that you could never hold your own child in your arms.  Never!  How do they bear it? 

“Anyway, Mother couldn’t bear it.  So she got herself here to Ev, somehow, and two months later I was born.  Ev is the only home I’ve known.  Mother never took us back to Oz.”

                “Why not?” Button-Bright wondered.

                “Again, it was because of me.  She wanted me to grow up, even if it meant that she herself would keep on aging.  So last year, an old, old lady, she suddenly died.  And you, Button-Bright – you never grew up.  You’re still a boy.  So strange.

                “But you want to know where you fit in.  I’ll do my best.  My earliest memories, from back when I was three or four years old are of you as a goose.  That seems odd now, but it was all I knew at the time.  You lived far away, naturally.  You just came here to visit, sometimes only for a day or two, sometimes for a whole week.  Mother and I loved your visits.  We called you Goosey.  I remember the games we played, all three of us, and the stories you told of your life in Oz.”

                “Oz!”

                “Oh, yes.  Didn’t you know?  Oz was your home.  It’s also where you met Mother, shortly before I was born.  Mother said that if it weren’t for you she never could have come here.  I don’t know how you helped, exactly.  Mother kept it to herself.  But whatever you did, you made our life here possible – my life, and now Rexona’s too.  For that reason alone we’ll always be grateful, Button-Bright.  Even more important, you were my best friend when I barely knew what a friend was.  That memory is dear to me, very dear indeed.”

                Button-Bright bowed his head, almost too dazed to ponder these things.  “What happened?” he asked, too caught up in the story to remember that he already knew.  “Why did I stop coming?”

                Darmina shrugged helplessly.  “That’s the question I asked Mother, over and over again.  Your last visit was no different from the others.  You were no different.  Yet the visits did stop and Mother couldn’t explain why.  I remember how worried she was.  Now it’s clear:  the storm caught you as you crossed the Deadly Desert.  Storms happen, I suppose, and this one stole you away from us.  It stole away everything you knew, right down to your memories.  It stole away your home in Oz.”

                “My home in Oz.”  Button-Bright repeated the words as if they made no sense.  “It’s unbelievable.  All this time I’ve been living there, and loving it, and I thought I came from somewhere else.  I did come from somewhere else, only that somewhere else isn’t where I was born.  I was born in Oz.  Oz!”

                “Yes,” said Darmina.  “It seems you were.”

                “But where in Oz?” he burst out again.  “And who were my parents?  Who was my mother?”

                “I can’t tell you for sure,” Darmina confessed reluctantly.  “I was young and I’ve forgotten so much.  Still, I can tell you this:  your mother’s name, or the name you used when you talked about her, was Yada.  Nothing else.  No last name.  Just Yada.”

                “Yada.”  The name had a strange sound, short and clipped, like an angry retort.  “Yada.”  And oddly enough, as Button-Bright repeated it to himself, it struck a familiar chord.  He felt he’d heard it, not in his unremembered past, but quite recently.  Where?  He could not imagine, and neither could Darmina.

                “Another mystery,” she said when he told her.  “Oh course, Yada was always a mystery to me. Goosey thought – I mean, you thought – that she was funny.  You’d say things like, ‘Yada was a snail yesterday.  I almost stepped on her.’  Or, ‘I shooed a skunk out of our house last week.  Turned out to be Yada.’  Those tales made us laugh, especially since a goose did the telling!”

                Button-Bright took in this latest information.  “So,” he said.  “This Yada must have been an enchantress.  Either that or she knew one.  But no,” he decided.  “No, she was the enchantress, because who else would have transformed me into a goose – a bird that could fly across the Deadly Desert?” 

A new and unpleasant thought occurred to him.  “Why did she transform me?  Didn’t she need me?  Didn’t she want me around?”

                “Of course she wanted you,” Darmina reassured him.  “Perhaps it was you that talked her into it.  Perhaps you wanted to visit your old friend Comina Dreams.”

                “Perhaps,” said Button-Bright.  “Or perhaps . . .” He threw up his hands, suddenly overcome by the riddle of his own life.  “Oh, Darmina!” he cried out.  “I wish you were my mother!”

                Rexona patted his back sympathetically.  “He’s right,” she said to Darmina.  “You should be Button-Bright’s mother.  Then he’d be my brother.  That would be fun, wouldn’t it?”

                “Of course it would,” Darmina smiled.  “Any mother would be proud of such a son.  But Rexona, his real mother still lives somewhere in Oz.  She probably misses him.  Don’t you think he should keep looking for her?”

                “Ye-e-e-s,” Rexona said slowly, with no great enthusiasm, “On one condition.  He has to come here as often as possible, same as he did before.”

                “You mean when he was a goose?”

                “Right.  And even if he’s someone else’s son, he still has to be my brother.”

                “I agree!” Darmina responded fondly.

                Button-Bright smiled through his perplexity.  “Rexona,” he said.  “I would give anything to be your brother.  Of course I’ll come back and visit you – on sunny days, anyway.”  They laughed, remembering the storm that had wrenched him from them so long ago.  “Right now, though, I do want to find my real mother, wherever she is.  I want to find Yada.”  Yada.  How was it that the name seemed so familiar?

                “How will you find her?” Darmina wanted to know.

                He patted the Magic Umbrella, lying across his lap.  “This should help.  It brought me to you, even though I couldn’t tell it where to find you.  I think it will make this trip as well.”

                A frown creased his brow.

                “What is it?” Darmina asked him.  “What’s the matter?”  She followed his gaze across the road and toward the orchard, with its burden of ripe picnic baskets.  Then she laughed.

                “Aha!” she said.  “I should have guessed.   Rexona, your new brother has one problem we can definitely help with:  a traveler’s appetite!”

CHAPTER SEVEN

BACK IN OZ

                By the time Button-Bright had eaten his fill, late afternoon shadows lay stretched across the lawn.  Darmina entreated him to stay overnight rather than flying off so near day’s close.  The boy could think only of his quest, whose end awaited him somewhere beyond the Deadly Desert.  Determinedly, he opened the Magic Umbrella.

                “Promise you’ll come back!” called Rexona, full of love for her new brother.

                Just as lovingly, Button-Bright promised.  “And I’ll bring Ojo, my best friend in the whole world,” he said.  “Then you’ll have two brothers.” 

                He phrased his magical command with a care born of recent experience.  “Magic Umbrella,” he said.  “Take me to the home of my mother, Yada, in the Land of Oz.”  And waving to his friends below, he once more took to the cloudless sky.

                On this flight, he had already decided, it would not do to brood over what he might find.  Brooding had done him no good these last two days, and least of all this afternoon.  In any case, dark moods did not come naturally to him.  So, pushing aside his anxieties, he flew southward over tranquil vistas.

                Doubts arose, however, when the sun touched the horizon.  He still hadn’t sighted the Deadly Desert!  That meant that he would probably reach his destination by night, and, worse, he would meet the mysterious Yada in darkness.  His stomach tightened.

                “Yada,” he said aloud to a warm breeze that riffled his curly hair.  Yada – an enchantress – maybe a woman of power.  She would not recognize this night visitor who claimed to be her lost son.  How would she greet him?  Perhaps, after all, he should have accepted Darmina’s kind invitation and saved this trek for the morning.  But there could be no turning back.  As always, the Magic Umbrella would complete its journey faithfully.

                Here, at last, was the Deadly Desert.  Its arid sands glowed prettily in the setting sun but exhaled the day’s heat like a huge oven.  Flat and fearsome, they filled the skyline till the waning light revealed a jagged border, with Oz itself on the other side.

                Was it just his imagination or had the Magic Umbrella dipped a little lower now?  He could hear a wordless whisper from below, as of a mighty forest murmuring in the breeze.  What part of Oz had he reached?  He knew the four countries of Oz:  westward lived the Winkies, southward the Quadlings, eastward the Munchkins, and northward the Gillikins.  With the sun setting on his right hand, this corner would be –

                The Gillikin Country, and the great Forest of Gugu.  He and Ojo had recently explored these wilds, and it was here, during their journey to the past, that he had met the old Yookoohoo Grandma Natch.  How much better it would have been if he’d sent the Magic Umbrella to her house where he could count on a warm welcome.  Into what strange neighborhood would he be dropped instead?

                When the sun had set, he found out.

                Down swooped the Magic Umbrella, out of open skies and into twilit forest.  Ancient trees grasped at his jacket as he passed.  Woodland hoots and scrabblings tickled his ears.  Rough earth lurched up against his feet.  He had arrived.

                Here the light had all but gone.  Before him, almost indistinguishable against a backdrop of shadowy, featureless trees stood a tiny house with an even tinier verandah.  No light beamed from its one small window.  No sound issued from its dark interior.  Cold and cheerless, it mocked the uninvited guest.  Button-Bright peered through the dusk.  Could it be that Yada – like Comina Dreams – had died here alone while he lived among friends in the Emerald City?

                But no.  Oz folks never died.  He had, moreover, asked not just for Yada’s house but for Yada’s home.  Yada’s home, then, this must be.  He strode up to the door and knocked.

                Dusk sank deeper and deeper into night as he stood on that still, silent verandah.  Of course no one answered his knock.  The little house was empty.  Stars winked on, one by one, in the purple sky.  A crescent moon peeked over the trees and shed its silvery glow upon the scene.  In that eerie light Button-Bright found that he could see a little more than he had just moments ago.  He could see that the house stood within a small clearing, somewhat overgrown yet open and airy.  He could see the tops of the trees, black against sky and stars.  Beside him he could see a rocking chair.  He touched a shawl that lay draped across it.  Had Yada, he wondered, rocked her tired bones in this creaky chair?

                Suddenly he realized that someone, or something, was watching him.

                Like dew drops on fire with moonlight, two eyes glittered from the branch of a nearby tree.  Doubtless they belonged to some forest creature, concealed amid shadowy foliage.  The creature met his gaze fearlessly.

                Button-Bright cleared his throat.  “Good evening,” he said, as politely as he could.  “Please forgive the intrusion.  I didn’t exactly know I was coming here.”

                The eyes went dark.  After a long moment they reappeared, one or two yards nearer.  Button-Bright took courage.

                “Perhaps you could help me,” he went on.  “I’m looking for a woman called Yada.  She used to live here, or possibly still does.  Do you know her?”

                A cranky chirring was heard.  “You seek Yada,” said the dry crackle of a disused voice.  “What do you want from her?”

                Button-Bright had told his story too many times lately.  “I want to talk,” he said.  “That’s all.  Just talk.”

                “No one seeks Yada for talk,” scoffed the voice.

                “Don’t they?  Then why do they seek her?”

                “For magic!” the voice rasped.  “No talk.  Only magic.”

                So Yada was an enchantress!  Button-Bright felt the breeze turn chilly.  “I don’t need any magic,” he told the querulous creature.  “At least, I don’t think so.  But there’s something I want to know.  Something important.”

                “Important to you!  Not so important to Yada maybe.”

                “It should be important to Yada!” the boy flashed back rather angrily.  “Anyway, who are you?  Yada’s honor guard?”

                Rude snickering greeted this question.  “Yada needs no honor guard, little boy.  Yada needs to be left alone.  Understand?  Completely alone!”

                “Yada will not be left alone till I see her,” Button-Bright insisted.  “I’m sorry, but my business with her can’t wait.  I must see her now.”

                “See her, must you?”  A touch of menace had crept into the creature’s voice.  “With your poor human eyes you can’t see much of anything.  Too dark.  Perhaps you’d like to see as well as I do?  Try this, then!”

                In a flash, Button-Bright’s palms struck the verandah floor.  Palms?  They looked more like paws!  He had been transformed into something small and hairy!

                “Here now!” he squeaked.  “What have you done?  Why am I changed?”

                “Be still!” snapped the voice.  “You’ll get your own form back.  Meantime, I’ve lent you a very useful pair of eyes – night eyes.  Use them.  Look around.”

                In spite of his annoyance, Button-Bright looked.  Why, the whole scene had changed!  It was as if the moonlight itself had been transformed to bright day.  Shadows no longer concealed their secrets but revealed them to his awestruck view.  Night no longer shut him out but welcomed him into its world.  He could see!  He was a creature of the night.

                “Isn’t that better?” the cracked voice asked sarcastically.  “Say thank you to Yada.”

                Yada!  Was it Yada who had transformed him?  His new vision searched this way and that.  Up in a tree he saw, for the first time, the creature which had addressed him.  It was a raccoon.

                “Where is Yada?” Button-Bright demanded.  “I know she’s here.  Where is she?”

                “I am Yada,” the raccoon said smugly.  “Now perhaps you’ll treat me with more respect.”

                Anger flared in Button-Bright’s hairy breast.  “A lot you know about respect!” he retorted.  “What horrible form have you given me?”

                “None that I wouldn’t wear myself.  You’re a perfectly presentable mouse.  That’s why you can see in the dark.  You said you wanted to see me, didn’t you?”

                “Yes,” Button-Bright squeaked as crankily as she.

                “So you’ve seen me.  Lucky fellow.  Now I’ll change you back and you can leave me in peace!”

                “Wait!”  Was this aggravating animal really his mother?  It struck him as a sorry thought.  Still, he couldn’t let her go without making sure.  “Don’t send me away!” he cried.  “Remember, I have something to tell you.”

                Yada uttered a laugh like a rusty hinge.  “Oh, yes!  Something important.  How could I forget?  Well, tell on!  Yada does not like to be kept waiting.”

                “It’s not so easy,” Button-Bright grumbled.

                “A delicate matter, is it?  Aren’t they all!  Well, let me guess.  You’re pregnant.”

                “Of course I’m not pregnant!  You saw for yourself, I’m a boy.”

                More rusty laughter shook Yada’s branch.  “Aren’t we testy!  Well then, you’re in love with someone who won’t love you back.  Sorry, not my line.”

                “I am not in love!” Button-Bright protested.  “Why must you make this so hard for me?  Honestly, I don’t believe you’re my mother at all!”

                “Mother!”

                There!  It had slipped out, and not quite as he had planned.  If only he hadn’t let the creature annoy him so!  “Yes,” he said stiffly.  “I’ve been given to understand you’re my mother.”

                “Have you indeed?”  The raccoon’s mocking tone had vanished.  In its place a new suspicion could be heard, watchful and dangerous.  “And who told you I ever bore a child?  Who told you anything at all about Yada?”

                “No one told me much.  How could they when you hide yourself away in this wilderness?”

                “Never mind where I hide!” Yada barked.  “Tell me what makes you think you’re a child of mine?  And be quick about it!  I haven’t got all night.”

                Button-Bright’s tiny heart ached.  This was not what he had wanted, not by any means.  Comina Dreams would have made an infinitely better mother than Yada, dead though she was.  Nonetheless, he had come this far and he couldn’t give up now.  As briefly as possible, he told his story one more time.

                “Hmph!” Yada said when he’d finished.  “Very clever.  I’m almost convinced – except for one thing.  No son of mine would be stupid enough to walk these woods in his own clumsy form.  And at night, too!  If it took someone else to get you sensibly transformed, then you can’t be my boy.”

                This speech took him by surprise.  “What do you want me to do?” he asked incredulously.  “Transform myself?  You’re the enchantress here.  I have no magic.”

                “Exactly!” cackled the triumphant Yada.  “You haven’t a scrap of magic from top to tail.  But my boy did.  He could transform anything, quick as you please.  It was he who turned that Dreams woman into a goose, so she could fly off and have her baby.  You never did that.  You’re not my boy.  Get out before you really irritate me!”

                “No, wait!”  Once again, here was startling information to be sifted.   “You say I had magic?”

                “My son had magic.  You, alas, have not.”

                “But I am your son!” Button-Bright exclaimed.  “And if I did have magic that would explain a lot.  Darmina said it was me that got her mother out of Oz.  Well, now we know how!  I transformed her into a goose.  And myself, too.  I did have magic!  Then somehow, when Jandilay turned me back into a boy, I must have lost it.”

                “Nonsense!” Yada sniffed.  “Magic like ours can’t be lost.  If you have it, you have it for life.  If you don’t, then you never did.  You obviously don’t.  You cannot be my son!”

                There was a hole somewhere in this maddening logic, but its precise whereabouts eluded Button-Bright.  Unless . . .

                “Oh no,” he said.

                “What is it this time?” grumped Yada.

                He did not answer straight away.  But a most unsettling thought had occurred to him, and as he pursued it he saw how dreadfully possible, or possibly how dreadful, it was.

                “When Uncle Bob brought me to Philadelphia,” he said, “I couldn’t talk yet.  And when I did learn to talk I couldn’t remember who I’d been or where I came from.  So if I had magic, still inside me after everything that had happened, would I know it?  Would some kind of instinct tell me?  Would I start doing magical things by accident?  Or would I figure I was just like all the ordinary, unmagical people around me?”

                Yada opened her small jaws to reply.  Thinking better of it, however, she whisked around and scuttled down out of her tree.  Once on the forest floor she halted, regarding Button-Bright with an alert and speculative eye.

                “It’s just conceivable that you wouldn’t know,” she said finally.  “Our kind cannot perform magic without some slight preparation.”

                A shudder ran down Button-Bright’s humped spine.  “What kind of preparation?”

“Oh, nothing much.  Your power is in you all the time, but you need a proper talisman to use it.  So you make your talisman, which is any little object that you can wear or carry, and while you make it you imagine your powers pouring into it.  Mine’s a bracelet.  I’m wearing it now.”  She held up her front right paw, and there, indeed, Button-Bright now saw an inconspicuous bracelet carved of wood.  “Once the talisman’s finished you can use your power as much as you like.  If you lose it, you simply make another.  But if you never make one at all, or don’t do it right, you might as well be mortal.” 

She watched him as he shifted anxiously from paw to paw.  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said.  “And there’s only one way to find out.”

“Maybe I don’t want to find out,” he said.

“Not want to find out?”  Yada was thunderstruck.  “Ridiculous!  You can’t mean that!  Our magical heritage is a great gift!  All that we long for, all that we crave, magic gives us in the wink of an eye.  Do you want to fly without that paltry umbrella?  Transform yourself into a bird!  Do you want to dive down to the bottom of the lake and lose yourself among shoals of fish?  Become a fish yourself!  Do you want to wander the forest at night, and spy into its secrets?  You already know you can do it as a mouse, or as a raccoon, a weasel, an owl, or any other creature of the dark.

“And there’s more.  Do you want a piece of hot apple pie?  That pebble is yours to command.  A new jacket?  This leaf will do nicely.  A new chair?  Your old broken one can take any shape you wish.  You need never . . .”

Button-Bright had heard enough.  “Stop, stop!” he shouted, the fur standing up across his arched back.  “I didn’t come here looking for magic!  I’ve seen what magic can do, up on the Mountain Phantastico.  You know what I saw?  Ruins, only ruins!  The Phanfasms had everything and they destroyed it all.  For good measure they destroyed each other, too.  Just one Phanfasm is left, sitting by himself and picturing the damage his magic would cause if he stepped off that mountain.  He’s stuck there!  He can’t budge.  Magic like that is a curse.  I don’t want it!” 

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Yada retorted.  “It’s not magic that causes trouble.  It’s fools and what they do with their magic.  Now, smart folks like us can avoid all that.  Look at your do-gooding friends in the Emerald City.  Look at me!”

“Yes, look at you!  All alone in the middle of nowhere, not a friend in sight.  I don’t see much difference between you and poor Jandilay.  You’re as bad off as he is!”

“How dare you say that!” shrieked Yada.  “Idiotic boy!  Do you think I miss that mixed-up rabble called humanity?  Do you think I’m pining away for a nice chat across the back fence?  I could live in town if I wanted, make no mistake.  I could have friends.  But I don’t want them.  The only friends I want are my solitude and my freedom.  Those are the best friends our kind can have.  It’s our destiny, boy.  It’s the Yookoohoo way.”

“The Yookoohoo way?”

“Of course the Yookoohoo way.  That’s what you came for, isn’t it?  To grab a handful of our Yookoohoo birthright.”

“No,” Button-Bright said.  “No, it isn’t.  I didn’t realize.”  His life was beginning to remind him of an American baseball game.  He’d seen one once in the Magic Picture.  Here he stood, with no bat in his hands, while somebody kept pitching surprises at him.  Now another one had whizzed by.  Yada was a Yookoohoo.  Could he be a Yookoohoo as well?

“I’ve met some Yookoohoos,” he remembered.  “Just recently.”

Yada rolled her eyes.  “Relatives, no doubt.  What a treat.  How did you like them?”

“I had problems with one or two,” the boy admitted.  “Most of the others I liked.  The children were funny.  But the best of all was old Grandma Natch.”

Yada gave a mirthless cackle.  “Grandma Natch!  I might have known.  The old lady’s got to you already.”

“What do you mean by that?” demanded Button-Bright, miffed at Yada’s tone.  “Do you know Grandma Natch?”

“I know her all right, the self-important old harridan!  Grew up in her house, along with my bratty little sisters.  Grandma Natch, boy, is my mother.”

“No!  Really?”  A toothy smile lit up Button-Bright’s furry face.  “Grandma Natch is your mother?  Why, that makes her my grandmother!  Grandma Natch, my grandmother.  All this time I’ve been calling her Grandma, and now it turns out she really is!  That’s the best news I’ve ever heard!  Wait till I tell Ojo!  Wait till I tell Grandma Natch!”

In his glee, Button-Bright was hopping about and chirruping like a mad creature.  Yada did not share his delight.  She glared angrily at him.

“So!” she growled.  “Find your long-lost mother and it’s a catastrophe.  Find your grandmother and it’s a jubilee!  Ungrateful child!  I almost believed you were my boy come home to me.  Now I doubt it.  Goodbye, little impostor!  And good riddance!”

She raced back up her tree, fuming.  Button-Bright gaped.

“Don’t go!” he shouted after her.  “You can’t leave me like this, all mousey!  Who’ll change me back into a boy?”

“Change yourself!” she shouted back.  “With your Yookoohoo magic!”  And with that, she disappeared into the foliage.

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE YOOKOOHOO WAY

                Magic!  Button-Bright wanted no part of it, and he said so to the branch that Yada had vacated.

But then, how, would he get his natural form back?

                His options had shrunk.  Ozma’s ring, he knew, must have vanished along with his clothes.  The Magic Umbrella lay two feet away, closed up tight and about fifty times bigger than he was.  No help there.  He could only get to the Emerald City, or to Glinda’s Castle, or even to Grandma Natch’s house, by running there on his four tiny feet.  This he did not wish to do.  Perhaps, if he waited long enough, Yada Natch might take pity on him.  But no, best not to rely on that stubborn, selfish, argumentative creature who could, it seemed, irritate him like no one else.  What sort of mother would act this way?  Even before leaving him stranded, she had been nothing but rude and dismissive.  He wasn’t at all sure that he wanted her help.

                That left one option:  to fashion a magic talisman, just as she had explained, and find whatever magic slept within him.

                Drat that Yada Natch!  She had deliberately backed him into this corner!  She wanted him to prove, once and for all, that he was her son – or not, as she seemed to think.  He wouldn’t give her the satisfaction.  And whatever else he did, he wouldn’t unleash his Yookoohoo power.  He wouldn’t admit it existed at all!

                What would his dear Grandma Natch say to that?  The question sprang unbidden into his head.  He shuddered.  Just moments ago he’d been thrilled to believe himself her grandson.  Now he’d rejected the magic that made her what she was.  And what was she?  Not some power-mad maniac who wreaked havoc on a helpless world, like the dreaded Phanfasms.  Rather, she was a mettlesome old lady who had stuck by Button-Bright when things looked dark.  And if she, like her daughter Yada, hid herself away in the shadows of the Forest, it was not because her own power might run amok.  This life suited her.

                Of course, she had grown up making magic.  So had most of Button-Bright’s other magic-making friends, including Ozma and Glinda.  They had adjusted to it gradually.  Only the Wizard had come to it late in life, and even he had learned bit by bit under Glinda’s tutelage.  His magic had not crashed down on him, all in a lump.

                But Ojo’s had.

                Poor Ojo!  Button-Bright remembered how he had struggled against his powers, his face creased with worry and fear, and how in the end he’d been forced to submit.  But now he was studying magic far away in the Land of An.  He would come back one day soon, fully prepared to help Ozma wherever she needed him.  Could Button-Bright do the same?  Could he apprentice himself to, for instance, Grandma Natch?  The notion shed new light on his predicament.  Magic could be controlled.  To stay with Grandma Natch for a few weeks, to absorb even a small part of her knowledge and wisdom, would surely give him wonderful new insights into his power – if power he had.

                That, then, remained the key question.  Did he or did he not possess an untapped store of Yookoohoo magic?  He must fashion a talisman, and, as things stood, he must do it without hands!

                Yada had made it hard for him.  But he would find a way!  In his travels through Oz he had seen his share of mice and other rodents.  He thought about them now, how they managed to survive in a hostile world.  And survive they did.  He could picture them, sitting up jauntily with nuts clasped in their tiny paws, gnawing through hard shells for which humans required clumsy nutcrackers.  They gnawed through other things too, such as walls, molding, and all manner of food containers.  Such accomplished gnawers could certainly shape a talisman out of wood, couldn’t they?  Button-Bright would try.

                First he needed the wood.  This was a forest, so plenty of dead wood lay scattered nearby.  He investigated and soon chose a likely scrap of bark, just the right size for his dainty paws.  But no sooner had he sunk his sharp teeth into it than it fell to bits.  He must find something sturdier.

                Next he tried a fallen branch.  It all but blunted his incisors, as well as making his tiny head ache.  Very well, it would have to be something in between.

                There ensued a long string of false starts and endless foraging.  More than once he grew so discouraged that he stopped altogether and crouched sulkily in the pitiless gloom.  He even fell into an exhausted sleep, only to wake up and attack the problem with fresh vigor.  Hours passed.  The night grew as old as Grandma Natch while he gnawed through every sort of wood he could find.

                Finally, at wit’s end, he noticed an acorn.

                Acorns.  Squirrels ate these mighty morsels, and what a squirrel could eat, a mouse could sculpt.  He hugged the acorn between his front legs and set to work.  The talisman he had in mind was nothing fancy.  He envisioned a bead, a simple round bead such as one might thread on a string.  That, surely, would not present a problem.  He worked away, gnawing with all the enthusiasm of newfound confidence.

                A round shape refused to emerge.   He gnawed on, carelessly eating the crumbs as he went, and the acorn dwindled gradually in his paws.  In the end there was nothing left.  What had happened?

                He would have to find another, and this time he would use more care.  Three acorns later, with a fair dinner inside him, he found himself the possessor of a tiny, lumpy, yet nonetheless suitable acorn-bead.  His talisman!  Now he must figure out how to use it.

                He tried everything he could think of.  He concentrated on it.  He whispered to it.  He sang to it, shouted at it and made up a little rhyme about it.  He tossed it, rolled it, buried it, dug it up again, and danced around it in a patch of silvery moonlight.  He held it in his paws and moaned like an old sibyl.  Nothing worked.  In all Oz, he concluded, there could be no more useless talisman and no more frustrated mouse.  He’d wasted an entire night!  What had gone wrong?

                “Having trouble?” inquired a familiar voice from overhead.

                Button-Bright looked up.  There, back on her usual branch, sat Yada Natch.  If he’d had an arm he would have thrown his talisman at her bandit face.

                “Yes!” he groused.  “I’m having trouble.  No thanks to you!”

                “Show me,” said she.

                He lifted up his acorn-bead.  She eyed it critically.  “Well?” he said.

                “It’s not pretty,” she remarked at last.  “But then, it doesn’t need to be.  I see no reason why it shouldn’t serve you – that is, if you poured your power into it while you worked.”  She smiled her smug, irritating smile.  “Did you pour your power into it?”

                Of course he’d forgotten that crucial step.  It had taken all his concentration just to make the thing, such as it was.  He pouted.

                “You’ll have to make another,” the smug voice went on.  “And this time, imagine an urn full of power, right in your heart.  Tip that urn onto your talisman – not after it’s done, like the fool you are, but while you work on it, bit by bit.  That’s the key.  Don’t let up for a moment; keep your mind on that urn of power from start to finish.”  She shrugged her sleek shoulders.  “Then we’ll see.”

                Button-Bright kicked his acorn with one hind foot.

                “Must you watch?” he asked grumpily.

                “Not if I’m not wanted,” said Yada Natch.  Having gained the upper hand, she took no offense.  “I’ll check back in a few minutes,” she added.  “Enjoy yourself!”  And again she disappeared into the night.

                One more acorn.  One more long gnaw.  Button-Bright had never worked so hard in his life.

                The job must be done, though, so he found a fresh acorn and confronted it manfully, if not mousefully.  “An urn of power,” Yada had said.  “Right in your heart.”  He pondered his heart, beating like a tiny hammer in his mouse chest.  He imagined an urn full of Yookoohoo magic inside it, hot and steaming.  He imagined a slim, fiery stream of magic trickling onto his humble acorn.  He began to gnaw.

                “Don’t let up for a moment!” the instructions went.  He didn’t, though focus of any kind was hardly a specialty of his.  He focused and gnawed, gnawed and focused, while the acorn took shape between his teeth.  Did mice sweat?  His brow seemed moist, but he paid it no heed.

                Power.  Acorn.  Power.  Acorn.

                Abruptly, something told him the task was finished.  He examined his work, lumpier than the first but otherwise not much different.  Would it succeed as he intended?  Did it hold, invisibly, the enormous power of a Yookoohoo?  He grasped it in his paws.

                “Give me back my natural shape!” he whispered.

                Nothing happened.  Focus, he reminded himself.  That’s the key.

                He pictured Yookoohoo magic hidden inside his talisman.  He pictured his own familiar body with its curly head of blond hair, its sun-browned arms, its easy grin.  He willed his body back from wherever it had gone.

                And back it came, as suddenly and silently as a fresh breeze.

                Motionless on his two human legs, he stood gazing at his two human hands.  In one hand he saw the talisman he’d fashioned.  Awe filled the heart of Button-Bright.  It was true!  He was a Yookoohoo, with Yookoohoo magic his to command and Yookoohoo relatives waiting to acknowledge him.  What on earth should he do next?

                He placed the acorn carefully in his shirt pocket, alongside Ozma’s emerald ring.  Beneath these twin talismans his boyish heart beat its own familiar pace, measured and stately.  He must go to Grandma Natch!  He must begin his apprenticeship at once, this very day!

                “Sun’s coming up,” said a strange voice.

                He turned around.  On the verandah, rocking quietly in the gray dusk of night’s end, sat a woman.  She was small and skinny, neither young nor old, with spiky white hair and a narrow, guarded face.  Her eyes gleamed under sharp-browed shadows.  Her low voice betrayed a slight tremor.  A shawl lay bunched across her knobby knees.

                “Mother,” said Button-Bright.

                “Apparently,” said Yada Natch.  “And you, apparently, are my son.  Hmph!  Took you long enough to come home this time.”

                “I’ve been busy,” he said, hitching his shoulders.

                “So you told me.”  She fell silent, watching him as she rocked.

                “Mother,” he said at length.  “Could you tell me something about myself?”

                “You know who you are,” she replied.  “You are a Yookoohoo.”

                “Yes, but I don’t remember anything before Philadelphia.  I don’t remember you, or this place, or Comina Dreams.  What was it like?  What kind of life did we have?”

                “Oh, that.”  She looked away into the Forest, still almost black under the gray sky.  A few faint stars gleamed stubbornly overhead, challenging the dawn.  “There’s not much to tell.  It’s a long time ago.  One thing you’ll never know, and that’s who your daddy was.”

                “Why?”

                “You were born less than two years before the Big Change – you know, when that fairy queen put her spell on us all.  Your daddy was gone by then, and after the Change folks forgot everything that had ever happened to them.  So I forgot your daddy.  He can’t have been worth much, I think.  Otherwise he’d still be here.”

                “You don’t know that,” Button-Bright pointed out.

                “It’s as good a guess as any.  Do you want to hear this or not?”

                “I want to!” said Button-Bright.

                “Then be quiet and listen!  Now, as I said, you were less than two when the Big Change came.  You couldn’t talk yet, and it’s a known fact that Yookoohoos can’t transform themselves before they start talking.  Well, there you were, a crawling, bawling, fussy little monster who would never grow an inch for all eternity.  Remember, we’d all stopped aging.  I couldn’t bear it!  I had to do something!  So I turned you into a mouse and a good thing too!  Eighteen-month-old boys are no use at all, but eighteen-month-old mice are full-fledged adults who can take care of themselves.  From that moment on you never went back to your real form.  First you learned to talk, and then you learned Yookoohoo magic.  You could become anything you wanted!  You tried a little of everything, though for some reason the mouse was always your favorite.  You took to traveling, too, always in bird form.  Sometimes you’d disappear for weeks.  As time went on, you and I saw less and less of each other.

                “Then came the day when that Dreams woman showed up.  She had a friend with her, Chelery-something.  They were both pregnant.  One of them, I think it was Chelery, wasn’t even showing.  A tall, thin thing she was, with a permanent case of morning sickness.  Snappy, too.  So I told them the truth.  It was only by leaving Oz that they could start their babies growing again.  Well, Miss Chelery didn’t like that.  Better to put up with her aches and pains than to emigrate, she said.  The sound of her voice hurt my ears, like somebody whistling off-key.  I don’t think she wanted a baby anyway.

                “But the Dreams woman did.  You liked her.  So you decided to help her out.”

                “I turned us both into geese!” said Button-Bright.

                “That’s it.  Then off you flew to Ev.”

                “And that was the last you saw of me?”

                “No, not yet.  For a long time after that you kept flying back and forth between me and her.  What you saw in her I never understood and never will understand.  No, don’t try to tell me!”  Yada held her hand up fiercely, for Button-Bright had opened his mouth to speak.  “It’s no business of mine, what passed between you two.  I was as good a mother as I could be, that’s all that matters.  I did my best.”

                She bared her teeth as if daring him to contradict her.  He said nothing.

                “Anyway, things went on like that for a good long while.  Then one day you flew off and that was that.  I never saw you again till last night.”

                “Didn’t you come looking for me?” Button-Bright wanted to know.

                She threw up her hands.  “What would be the point?  You were your own person.  You went your own way.  That’s what Yookoohoos do.  I left my mother.  You left yours.  It’s how things have always been, and I didn’t expect them to change for my sake.  Still don’t.”

                “But I was so young!” Button-Bright insisted, his cheeks burning with an unaccustomed heat.  “You said so yourself.  I was less than two!”

                “You don’t understand!” cried Yada.  “You loved your freedom!  All Yookoohoos do.  And what about me?  I was fond of you.  Yes, believe it or not, I was.  I have a heart.  Every time you flew off, goodness knows where, it cost me something.  But a Yookoohoo must be free; no one knows that better than I do.  So I let you go.  I had to.

                “Now you stand here judging me.  That’s your right.  But it doesn’t look to me as if you’ve changed much.  Where are your friends from the Emerald City?  You can’t tell me they sent you off without a word.  They would have come along, wouldn’t they?  They would have helped you.  That’s how humans are.  If they love you, they’ll follow you to the ends of the earth.  Nasty, clinging things!  But you, you didn’t want them.  You sneaked off by yourself because of what this journey meant to you.  When feelings run deep, we Yookoohoos find out our own way.  Alone!  Yes, my boy, you’re Yookoohoo through and through.  And you’ll prove it one more time – maybe tomorrow, maybe the day after.  One more time, boy, you’ll leave me.  And one more time I won’t stop you.  It’s the Yookoohoo way.”

                Protest died on Button-Bright’s lips.  Right up till the end he could have sworn that Yada was wrong about him, utterly and completely wrong from top to bottom.  But she was right about one thing:  he had planned to leave her again, and not tomorrow or the day after.  He’d planned to leave today, this minute.  Next stop, Grandma Natch.

                Did that mean it was all true?

                Uncle Bob must have thought it was, though he’d never even heard of the Yookoohoo way.  He’d handed over the Magic Umbrella, all those years ago, and his beloved nephew had left him where he stood.  Maybe that’s what Button-Bright had been practicing for when he first started getting lost.  Unconsciously, perhaps, he’d been rehearsing the day when he would leave for good.

                And still he got lost!  He lived now in the world’s most wonderful city, surrounded by friends who loved him, yet still he got lost.  Did that mean he was still practicing, still rehearsing some far-off day when he’d leave again?  Could he leave Ozma, Dorothy and the Scarecrow?  Could he leave Trot and Capn’ Bill, Jack Pumpkinhead and the Tin Woodman?

                Could he leave Ojo?

                No!  No, the answer came back, so vehemently that it startled him.  However often he got lost, however often he took to wandering he could not leave Ojo.  Ojo might have gone to the Land of An for a time, but the Emerald City remained his home.  And Ojo’s home was Button-Bright’s home.  They were best friends.  No, he could never leave Ojo – not today, not tomorrow, not even the next day.  Yada Natch was wrong.  He’d found his place in the world and he meant to stay there.

                “Seems I’ve given you something to think about,” Yada Natch said sourly.

                He gazed at her, the prickly, unpredictable mother he’d just re-discovered after losing her untold ages ago.  She knew him better than he knew her, it seemed.  But she didn’t know him as well as she thought she did.  Perhaps there was more to both of them than either was inclined to admit.  Perhaps, as long as he was here, they should take the time to know each other better.

                He shrugged.  “This Yookoohoo business is pretty complicated,” he said.  “Maybe I need help figuring it all out.”

                “Help?”  Yada surveyed the wreckage of his talismanic endeavors.  “There’s not that much help in the world!”

                “Maybe,” said Button-Bright.  “Still, I don’t suppose you’d care to take on an apprentice?  That is, if you have time.”

                “Time indeed!” Yada snorted.  But her eyes narrowed thoughtfully under her frowning forehead.  “I could find the time, I suppose, if it came to that.  No doubt you could use a little instruction.  How long, do you think?”

                “I don’t know.  Three weeks, maybe.  A month.”

                “A month.  And then you’d leave.”

                “Yes,” Button-Bright had to acknowledge.  “Yes, I would.  My home is in the Emerald City.  But I could come back now and then for a brush-up.  I don’t want to get rusty.”

                The ghost of a smile played across her thin little mouth.  They both knew, and didn’t need to say, that Yookoohoos never got rusty.

 “All right,” she said.  “An apprentice you’ll be.  But don’t think I can spend every minute with the likes of you.  I need my privacy.  Understand?”

                “I do understand,” grinned Button-Bright.  “It’s the Yookoohoo way.”

The End

Click here to read the prequel: Time Travelers in Oz