L. Frank Baum_Oz 14 (4 page)

"All the same," said Dorothy, "I'm mighty glad you could make this tent
appear, with our dinners and beds all ready for us."

Ozma smiled.

"Yes, it is indeed wonderful," she agreed. "Not all fairies know that
sort of magic, but some fairies can do magic that fills me with
astonishment. I think that is what makes us modest and unassuming—the
fact that our magic arts are divided, some being given each of us. I'm
glad I don't know everything, Dorothy, and that there still are things
in both nature and in wit for me to marvel at."

Dorothy couldn't quite understand this, so she said nothing more on the
subject and presently had a new reason to marvel. For when they had
quite finished their meal table and contents disappeared in a flash.

"No dishes to wash, Ozma!" she said with a laugh. "I guess you'd make a
lot of folks happy if you could teach 'em just that one trick."

For an hour Ozma told stories, and talked with Dorothy about various
people in whom they were interested. And then it was bedtime, and they
undressed and crept into their soft beds and fell asleep almost as soon
as their heads touched their pillows.

The flat mountain looked much nearer in the clear light of the morning
sun, but Dorothy and Ozma knew there was a long tramp before them, even
yet. They finished dressing only to find a warm, delicious breakfast
awaiting them, and having eaten they left the tent and started toward
the mountain which was their first goal. After going a little way
Dorothy looked back and found that the fairy tent had entirely
disappeared. She was not surprised, for she knew this would happen.

"Can't your magic give us a horse an' wagon, or an automobile?"
inquired Dorothy.

"No, dear; I'm sorry that such magic is beyond my power," confessed her
fairy friend.

"Perhaps Glinda could," said Dorothy thoughtfully.

"Glinda has a stork chariot that carries her through the air," said
Ozma, "but even our great Sorceress cannot conjure up other modes of
travel. Don't forget what I told you last night, that no one is
powerful enough to do everything."

"Well, I s'pose I ought to know that, having lived so long in the Land
of Oz," replied Dorothy; "but I can't do any magic at all, an' so I
can't figure out e'zactly how you an' Glinda an' the Wizard do it."

"Don't try," laughed Ozma. "But you have at least one magical art,
Dorothy: you know the trick of winning all hearts."

"No, I don't," said Dorothy earnestly. "If I really can do it, Ozma, I
am sure I don't know how I do it."

It took them a good two hours to reach the foot of the round, flat
mountain, and then they found the sides so steep that they were like
the wall of a house.

"Even my purple kitten couldn't climb 'em," remarked Dorothy, gazing
upward.

"But there is some way for the Flatheads to get down and up again,"
declared Ozma; "otherwise they couldn't make war with the Skeezers, or
even meet them and quarrel with them."

"That's so, Ozma. Let's walk around a ways; perhaps we'll find a ladder
or something."

They walked quite a distance, for it was a big mountain, and as they
circled around it and came to the side that faced the palm trees, they
suddenly discovered an entrance way cut out of the rock wall. This
entrance was arched overhead and not very deep because it merely led to
a short flight of stone stairs.

"Oh, we've found a way to the top at last," announced Ozma, and the two
girls turned and walked straight toward the entrance. Suddenly they
bumped against something and stood still, unable to proceed farther.

"Dear me!" exclaimed Dorothy, rubbing her nose, which had struck
something hard, although she could not see what it was; "this isn't as
easy as it looks. What has stopped us, Ozma? Is it magic of some sort?"

Ozma was feeling around, her bands outstretched before her.

"Yes, dear, it is magic," she replied. "The Flatheads had to have a way
from their mountain top from the plain below, but to prevent enemies
from rushing up the stairs to conquer them, they have built, at a small
distance before the entrance a wall of solid stone, the stones being
held in place by cement, and then they made the wall invisible."

"I wonder why they did that?" mused Dorothy. "A wall would keep folks
out anyhow, whether it could be seen or not, so there wasn't any use
making it invisible. Seems to me it would have been better to have left
it solid, for then no one would have seen the entrance behind it. Now
anybody can see the entrance, as we did. And prob'bly anybody that
tries to go up the stairs gets bumped, as we did."

Ozma made no reply at once. Her face was grave and thoughtful.

"I think I know the reason for making the wall invisible," she said
after a while. "The Flatheads use the stairs for coming down and going
up. If there was a solid stone wall to keep them from reaching the
plain they would themselves be imprisoned by the wall. So they had to
leave some place to get around the wall, and, if the wall was visible,
all strangers or enemies would find the place to go around it and then
the wall would be useless. So the Flatheads cunningly made their wall
invisible, believing that everyone who saw the entrance to the mountain
would walk straight toward it, as we did, and find it impossible to go
any farther. I suppose the wall is really high and thick, and can't be
broken through, so those who find it in their way are obliged to go
away again."

"Well," said Dorothy, "if there's a way around the wall, where is it?"

"We must find it," returned Ozma, and began feeling her way along the
wall. Dorothy followed and began to get discouraged when Ozma had
walked nearly a quarter of a mile away from the entrance. But now the
invisible wall curved in toward the side of the mountain and suddenly
ended, leaving just space enough between the wall and the mountain for
an ordinary person to pass through.

The girls went in, single file, and Ozma explained that they were now
behind the barrier and could go back to the entrance. They met no
further obstructions.

"Most people, Ozma, wouldn't have figured this thing out the way you
did," remarked Dorothy. "If I'd been alone the invisible wall surely
would have stumped me."

Reaching the entrance they began to mount the stone stairs. They went
up ten stairs and then down five stairs, following a passage cut from
the rock. The stairs were just wide enough for the two girls to walk
abreast, arm in arm. At the bottom of the five stairs the passage
turned to the right, and they ascended ten more stairs, only to find at
the top of the flight five stairs leading straight down again. Again
the passage turned abruptly, this time to the left, and ten more stairs
led upward.

The passage was now quite dark, for they were in the heart of the
mountain and all daylight had been shut out by the turns of the
passage. However, Ozma drew her silver wand from her bosom and the
great jewel at its end gave out a lustrous, green-tinted light which
lighted the place well enough for them to see their way plainly.

Ten steps up, five steps down, and a turn, this way or that. That was
the program, and Dorothy figured that they were only gaining five
stairs upward each trip that they made.

"Those Flatheads must be funny people," she said to Ozma. "They don't
seem to do anything in a bold straightforward manner. In making this
passage they forced everyone to walk three times as far as is
necessary. And of course this trip is just as tiresome to the Flatheads
as it is to other folks."

"That is true," answered Ozma; "yet it is a clever arrangement to
prevent their being surprised by intruders. Every time we reach the
tenth step of a flight, the pressure of our feet on the stone makes a
bell ring on top of the mountain, to warn the Flatheads of our coming."

"How do you know that?" demanded Dorothy, astonished.

"I've heard the bell ever since we started," Ozma told her. "You could
not hear it, I know, but when I am holding my wand in my hand I can
hear sounds a great distance off."

"Do you hear anything on top of the mountain 'cept the bell?" inquired
Dorothy.

"Yes. The people are calling to one another in alarm and many footsteps
are approaching the place where we will reach the flat top of the
mountain."

This made Dorothy feel somewhat anxious. "I'd thought we were going to
visit just common, ordinary people," she remarked, "but they're pretty
clever, it seems, and they know some kinds of magic, too. They may be
dangerous, Ozma. P'raps we'd better stayed at home."

Finally the upstairs-and-downstairs passage seemed coming to an end,
for daylight again appeared ahead of the two girls and Ozma replaced
her wand in the bosom of her gown. The last ten steps brought them to
the surface, where they found themselves surrounded by such a throng of
queer people that for a time they halted, speechless, and stared into
the faces that confronted them.

Dorothy knew at once why these mountain people were called Flatheads.
Their heads were really flat on top, as if they had been cut off just
above the eyes and ears. Also the heads were bald, with no hair on top
at all, and the ears were big and stuck straight out, and the noses
were small and stubby, while the mouths of the Flatheads were well
shaped and not unusual. Their eyes were perhaps their best feature,
being large and bright and a deep violet in color.

The costumes of the Flatheads were all made of metals dug from their
mountain. Small gold, silver, tin and iron discs, about the size of
pennies, and very thin, were cleverly wired together and made to form
knee trousers and jackets for the men and skirts and waists for the
women. The colored metals were skillfully mixed to form stripes and
checks of various sorts, so that the costumes were quite gorgeous and
reminded Dorothy of pictures she had seen of Knights of old clothed
armor.

Aside from their flat heads, these people were not really bad looking.
The men were armed with bows and arrows and had small axes of steel
stuck in their metal belts. They wore no hats nor ornaments.

When they saw that the intruders on their mountain were only two little
girls, the Flatheads grunted with satisfaction and drew back,
permitting them to see what the mountain top looked like. It was shaped
like a saucer, so that the houses and other buildings—all made of
rocks—could not be seen over the edge by anyone standing in the plain
below.

But now a big fat Flathead stood before the girls and in a gruff voice
demanded:

"What are you doing here? Have the Skeezers sent you to spy upon us?"

"I am Princess Ozma, Ruler of all the Land of Oz."

"Well, I've never heard of the Land of Oz, so you may be what you
claim," returned the Flathead.

"This is the Land of Oz—part of it, anyway," exclaimed Dorothy. "So
Princess Ozma rules you Flathead people, as well as all the other
people in Oz."

The man laughed, and all the others who stood around laughed, too. Some
one in the crowd called:

"She'd better not tell the Supreme Dictator about ruling the Flatheads.
Eh, friends?"

"No, indeed!" they all answered in positive tones.

"Who is your Supreme Dictator?" answered Ozma.

"I think I'll let him tell you that himself," answered the man who had
first spoken. "You have broken our laws by coming here; and whoever you
are the Supreme Dictator must fix your punishment. Come along with me."

He started down a path and Ozma and Dorothy followed him without
protest, as they wanted to see the most important person in this queer
country. The houses they passed seemed pleasant enough and each had a
little yard in which were flowers and vegetables. Walls of rock
separated the dwellings, and all the paths were paved with smooth slabs
of rock. This seemed their only building material and they utilized it
cleverly for every purpose.

Directly in the center of the great saucer stood a larger building
which the Flathead informed the girls was the palace of the Supreme
Dictator. He led them through an entrance hall into a big reception
room, where they sat upon stone benches and awaited the coming of the
Dictator. Pretty soon he entered from another room—a rather lean and
rather old Flathead, dressed much like the others of this strange race,
and only distinguished from them by the sly and cunning expression of
his face. He kept his eyes half closed and looked through the slits of
them at Ozma and Dorothy, who rose to receive him.

"Are you the Supreme Dictator of the Flatheads?" inquired Ozma.

"Yes, that's me," he said, rubbing his hands slowly together. "My word
is law. I'm the head of the Flatheads on this flat headland."

"I am Princess Ozma of Oz, and I have come from the Emerald City to—"

"Stop a minute," interrupted the Dictator, and turned to the man who
had brought the girls there. "Go away, Dictator Felo Flathead!" he
commanded. "Return to your duty and guard the Stairway. I will look
after these strangers." The man bowed and departed, and Dorothy asked
wonderingly:

"Is he a Dictator, too?"

"Of course," was the answer. "Everybody here is a dictator of something
or other. They're all office holders. That's what keeps them contented.
But I'm the Supreme Dictator of all, and I'm elected once a year. This
is a democracy, you know, where the people are allowed to vote for
their rulers. A good many others would like to be Supreme Dictator, but
as I made a law that I am always to count the votes myself, I am always
elected."

"What is your name?" asked Ozma.

"I am called the Su-dic, which is short for Supreme Dictator. I sent
that man away because the moment you mentioned Ozma of Oz, and the
Emerald City, I knew who you are. I suppose I'm the only Flathead that
ever heard of you, but that's because I have more brains than the rest."