The Lizard of Oz: Chapter One
The Humbug
The day after yesterday, the fire of enchantment burnt low and children, and even grownups, found nothing new in the world, nothing worth seeing or doing or bothering about, nothing except machines. There was no magic left except in a classroom in Winthrop, Massachusetts, where a pair of talking fish, Mrs. O’Rourke and Mr. Shermin, lived in a fishbowl.
Their school was near the airport, across the harbor from Boston. The sound of planes overhead was loud everywhere but in the basement, where two classes had the good luck to be assigned. The teachers, Miss Osborne and Miss Shelby, were friends and had removed the partition between their rooms so the classes could be together. It was an extraordinarily bright and creative set of kids and teachers. The principal was so proud of them that he suspended normal rules, so they could go on field trips whenever the weather and the mood were right. It was as a field trip that the quest began that took them to Oz and to Ome to bring back enchantment to the world.
It all began one morning when Mrs. O’Rourke got out of bed and stretched her fins, and shouted, “Good morning, everybody!” as she always did on school days. But this time, no one answered. So she wiggled to the front of the fishbowl and pressed her eyes against the glass. The whole class was there: Eugene and Mark and Linda S. and Linda C. and Cindy and Donny and Peter and Gaynell and Kathy. They all looked blank and bored and disenchanted. No one was smiling or laughing or playing.
So Mrs. O’Rourke wiggled to the other end of the fishbowl, where Mr. Shermin lived. Mr. Shermin knew most everything. He used to be a teacher until he decided he wanted to be a fish, and then he knew how to make himself a fish, which not many people, even teachers, know how to do.
Mr. Shermin said, “It’s the Humbug.”
“The Humbug?” asked Mrs. O’Rourke.
“Yes, the Humbug. You may think that noise in the sky is airplanes. But, no, that’s the Humbug. He’s been flying around beating on his humdrum and disenchanting everybody. I was afraid we’d start to hear him down here. It was just a matter of time.
“But where can we go? What can we do?”
“Calm down now, Mrs. O’Rourke. Calm down.” Mr. Shermin could just imagine what it would be like living in a fishbowl with Mrs. O’Rourke if she didn’t have anybody to talk to but him. So he tried hard to think of a way to break the disenchantment.
Mrs. O’Rourke calmed down and cheered up and calmed down — up, down, up, down, like on a sea-saw, only she wasn’t at sea, just in a fishbowl, waiting for Mr. Shermin to think of how to get the world back to its usual enchanted self.
“The only way to break the disenchantment,” he told her, “is to make the Humbug change his tune. But the only one who can do that is the Lizard of Oz.”
“The Lizard?”
“Many stories tell about the Wizard of Oz and his Emerald City. In those stories, that city isn’t really emerald. The Wizard makes everyone wear glasses with green lenses that make everything look green. But he’s just an ordinary person who pretends to be magic. The Humbug wrote that story. The Humbug doesn’t want people to know about the Lizard and magic. He wants everyone to think that enchantment is make-believe. He named his story The Wizard of Oz and made it a very good story, so people would confuse it with the Lizard and forget there ever was a Lizard.”
“But who is the Lizard of Oz?”
“A magical creature who lives in the green, green grass of Ome.”
“Ome?”
“Yes, Ome is the nicest part of Oz, with lakes and trees and lots of grass to roll in.”
“How can we get there?” asked Mrs. O’Rourke.
“The best way is in a little green VW.”
Mrs. O’Rourke remembered that Miss Osborne had a little green VW. But before she could say that, she saw Eugene, the tallest of the kids, standing next to the fishbowl.
“Can I help?” Eugene asked.
“Holy mackerel!” exclaimed Mrs. O’Rourke. “Mr. Shermin,” she asked. “I thought you said the children are disenchanted?”
Mr. Shermin explained, “Down here in the basement, the Humbug isn’t as loud as he is in the rest of the school. So these children don’t hear him as much, and they’re not anywhere near as disenchanted as everyone else. And Eugene, at least, is still enchanted enough to hear talking fish.”
Just then, they heard a dull humming noise through the windows, then faint words repeated over and over, “Humdrum Humbug beating on his humdrum. Humdrum Humbug beating on his humdrum…”
“Quick, Eugene!” shouted Mr. Shermin. “Put cotton in your ears! And tell everyone else to put cotton in theirs. Maybe it’s not too late. You kids may still be enchanted enough to get to Oz, and roll through the green, green grass of Ome, and find the Lizard and get him to change the Humbug’s tune.”
The entire book is here at Medium, one chapter per posting. It is also available as paperback and ebook at Amazon.
Links to other chapters and the story of how this story was written.
