The Lizard of Oz: Chapter Twenty-Seven
Winthrop
They had no trouble finding their way Home. Everything was familiar, as if they had always lived in Ome, and Home was the place next door. As they got away from the dragon, the supernatural effects wore off. And it felt great to be their usual selves.
Miss Shelby told Mr. New Man what to expect and how to behave. “You’re going out into the world now — the real world. And I’m going to be with you when you see it all for the first time — brand-new and full of surprises. Oh, brave new world!”
Miss Shelby had learned all the street names when Mr. Shermin told her at the beginning of the trip. So when they arrived in Winthrop, she told Miss Osborne which way to go, and soon they were back at school.
The kids all piled out of the little green VW, and Miss Osborne started walking up the front steps with the torch in her hand.
Just then, overhead, they heard an airplane; and as the plane got closer, they heard: “Humdrum humbug beating on his humdrum. Humdrum humbug beating on his humdrum . . .”
Miss Osborne lost her balance, tripped on the top step of the school, and fell. The torch hit the door, and the door was ablaze and the building was ablaze, and all Winthrop was ablaze, and the whole world was ablaze with the fire that doesn’t burn.
“Out of sight,” said Mr. New Man.
“Gosh,” said Donny, “everything’s beautiful.”
Mark asked, “Miss Osborne, why wasn’t it always this way?”
“I don’t know, Mark,” she answered. “I just don’t know.”
Mr. New Man asked, “You mean it wasn’t always this way?”
The sound above them changed. It was still a drum, but it was a different beat — a wild dance beat.
“Man,” said Mr. New Man, “that Humbug’s turned into one humdinger of a drummer.”
Miss Osborne looked up toward the sound, but all she saw was clouds — light fluffy little clouds. She wondered if maybe one of them was Cloud Nine. She wondered if Mr. Carroll was still there.
The sun came out. Maybe, as Plato said, it wasn’t the real sun; but it shone brightly. Miss Osborne stood up, brushed herself off, and picked up the torch. It was hard to say if it had lost anything in the fall. She opened the blazing door of the school and walked in.
Just then, Mr. Shermin came running and stumbling and dancing toward the school. “Marvelous!” he exclaimed, fighting hard to catch his breath. “It’s simply marvelous. I never believed it could be this way. I came rushing back, thinking you’d all be depressed after doing all that you did for nothing. I hoped that what I had learned would help console you and give you some hope. And I’m greeted with this. It makes my head swim — like when I changed myself into a fish.”
“What did you learn, Mr. Shermin?” asked Miss Shelby.
“All I can say is what I thought I learned. I really don’t know what to make of this. You see, Mr. Plato didn’t tell the whole story; or, rather, the story didn’t have all the answers. No story could hope to have all the answers. It struck me that just a few days ago this very class was enchanted. Regardless of what was going on in the world around them, regardless of what had developed through the centuries, these children were enchanted. Then I realized that Plato’s explanation, or at least the way I took it at first, was weighted too much on the side of environment.
“Enchantment is in you. It’s a spark in you that grows, then fades, and maybe it never totally goes out. Lord, I hope it never totally goes out. It’s in you. That’s what I came to tell you — the fire is in you. You don’t have to go chasing to the ends of the earth — it’s in you.
“But now I see this . . .”
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Links to other chapters and the story of how this story was written.
