Oz Reimagined: New Tales from the Emerald City and Beyond (26 page)

They came to a green park filled with freshly mown grass and trimmed hedgerows. In the middle of the park was a little two-story house with a green-tiled roof, green walls, and green shutters. The road of yellow bricks ended at the green door of the house.

Dorothy pressed the doorbell, and a Chinese woman came to the door. She wore a green dress and scowled at the strange party.

“We’re here to see Oz,” Dorothy said.

The woman scrutinized them. “You’re not with a newspaper, are you?”

“No,” Dorothy said.

“Are you here for money?”

“No. We’re here to ask for his help but not for money. We admire him because we heard how powerful he is.”

The woman seemed doubtful, but at least her scowl relaxed. “Well, it might do him good to see some visitors who admire him. But you mustn’t tell him any news about what’s going on in the world outside these walls.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, for instance, don’t mention the Wicked Warlord of the West, or the Mechanical Cavalry of the Rising Sun.
Don’t talk about the Treaty of Broken China Figurines or the Prison of a Hundred Young Flowers either. It would upset him.”

Since Dorothy had no idea what any of these things were, she assured the woman that she had no plans to mention them.

“You’re probably annoyed that we seem to be hiding everything from Oz, as though we are showing him the world through colored glasses and musical filters. But it’s not his fault that his magic didn’t work out the way he wanted it to.”

Dorothy grew even more confused, but she nodded, just to move things along.

“All right, come with me.”

The room they were in was small and lit by a faint lamp. The walls were filled with framed photographs and newspaper articles.

The woman left them and closed the door behind her.

“Hey, I know this man,” said Scarecrow. He walked up to a few of the English articles on the wall. “This is Sun Yat-sen, the George Washington of China. He loves freedom almost as much as an American.”

“It’s Nakayama Sho,” said the Tin Woodman. He looked at some of the Japanese articles framed on the wall. “I’d heard some of the officers at the Japanese company back in Manchuria speak of him. They think of him as almost an honorary Japanese.”

“It’s Sun Rixin,” said the Lion. “He’s a Christian who did not believe in the old magic that the Boxers fought for. He’s almost a foreigner himself.”

“This is President Sun,” said Dorothy. “I’ve seen his pictures in the textbooks. He’s the most famous revolutionary in China. He brought down the Last Manchu Emperor and was going to free China, but then he disappeared.”

The four of them began to argue, each asserting that he or she was right about who the man in the pictures was.

“I am all of these things and none of these things,” a thin and weak voice spoke from the dark.

Gingerly, Dorothy walked over and pulled back a curtain. They saw an old man lying in bed, only his wizened face visible above the blanket.

“How did you end up here?” asked Dorothy. “How did you become the Great Oz?”

The Great Oz was sitting up, propped up by pillows. The four companions stood around the bed.

“If I’m not mistaken,” said the Great Oz, “all of you came from the Veiled Shanghai, because you spoke of things I had done there.”

Dorothy and her friends nodded.

“In the world that you all came from, I was once known for my skill with words. I suppose some might say I was a magician, able to conjure up armies out of peasants, create revolutions with a few well-placed tracts.

“For years, the Qing Court hounded me, and I was a man of many names and many disguises, and everyone had a different idea of who I was. Some saw me as the man to bring China into the modern world as a colonial base for Japan. Others saw me as an advocate of complete Westernization, abandoning China’s traditions. Yet others thought I was a nationalist, blinded by zeal to the problems of the
common people. Still others thought I might be a Communist.

“Yet through it all, I had only one wish: for China to be respected as an equal of the other nations of the world and not subjugated as the Sick Man of East Asia. I believed I could strengthen this anemic land with an injection of ideas I learned from the West and Japan.

“When the Revolution succeeded in 1912, I thought my dreams would come true. Yet all that followed was more suffering for the people of China. The Great Powers did not live up to their ideals for the respect of the rights of all mankind, and they preferred China to be weak and divided, a carcass to feast upon. The Chinese warlords placed their own interests above those of the people and fought for spoils. I was too naive, and those I thought were my comrades betrayed the revolution until the man I once trusted the most drove me from China. In exile, I became a nobody.

“And one morning, I woke up in this new Shanghai, this Shanghai through a dark mirror. Everyone told me that I was a great magician—that I could make things happen just by thinking and speaking. But I am not a magician at all, only a bad revolutionary. The man who betrayed me, the Wicked Warlord of the West, defeated me with his magic and made sure that my powerlessness was plain for all to see.

“And so the few who still have faith in me allow me to hide in this house, and they hide the truth of the world from me, thinking that it would break my heart. I call myself the Great Oz as a joke, like Ozymandias, whose accomplishments were once thought so great and turned out to be so many mirages.”

“So you’re not a magician at all?” Dorothy asked.

“No,” the Great Oz shook his head sadly. “I am just an old man living with dreams and memories.”

“How will you get us home?” asked Dorothy. “Beini said that you could.”

“How will you give me brains?” asked Scarecrow.

“How will you give me a heart?” asked the Tin Woodman.

“How will you give me courage?” asked the Lion. And he stood up menacingly over the frail figure of the Great Oz.

“I cannot,” said the old man. “I’m sorry.”

“You must,” said Dorothy. “I believe in you. You might not believe that you have any power, but back in the Veiled Shanghai, young students are marching in the streets shouting your words; workers and merchants are on strike for a future you promised; even the lowliest and meanest Chinese have faith that there is hope to your vision, and they do not care if you don’t believe in yourself.”

A hint of the red blow of health came into the Great Oz’s sallow cheeks. “Is everything you said true? The people of Veiled Shanghai are united?”

Dorothy nodded. “They’re risking everything to bring down the traitors in Peking.”

“Then you must defeat the Wicked Warlord of the West,” the Great Oz said.

“He’s behind the warlords imprisoning the students in Peking,” Dorothy realized. “He’s the greatest of the traitors they’re protesting against in the Veiled Shanghai. But how can I defeat him? I’m just a girl.”

“Yet defeat him you must, or else none of us can wake from this dream.”

And so the four companions began their trek toward Peking, the distant citadel of the Wicked Warlord of the
West. It would be a journey of many days and many nights, but Dorothy, being young and determined, did not think that was a problem.

The Wicked Warlord’s name was Yuan Shikai, and he was once the most trusted friend of the Great Oz.

“A revolution!” he had said. “A revolution is exactly what China needs!”

And then, when the revolution had finally toppled the Manchu Emperor, he had forced the Great Oz into exile and declared himself a new emperor. Promptly he made all the Chinese his slaves again.

Now the Wicked Warlord always kept on eye on the Emerald House. He looked through his Panopticon and saw Dorothy and her companions leave the Emerald House for his citadel.

He’s sending them to come after me
, he thought.
The Great Oz has some fight left in him after all.

He picked up the phone and called his friends in the International Settlement, for the Wicked Warlord was a good friend of the Great Powers—they gave him the Panopticon, and then enjoyed all the concessions he was willing to give them as ruler of the docile Chinese.

A team of Shanghai Municipal Police officers had blocked off the road ahead of Dorothy and her companions. The officers wore hats with brims in the front, and in the night they looked like the beaks of crows.

“Oh no,” said Dorothy. “I think they’re looking for vagrants who are out after curfew.”

Any other path they could take would probably have checkpoints, too. The companions huddled in a corner and debated what to do.

“I have an idea,” said Scarecrow. And then he explained himself.

“That’s a very risky idea,” said the Lion. “And not well thought out at all.”

“Exactly,” said Scarecrow, “I haven’t got any sense.” And he smiled.

The police captain watched as the strange party approached. In the lead was a young American man, who was clearly inebriated and wearing a jacket several sizes too large.

“Hold it there!” the captain said. “Why are you out so late? Don’t you know that’s against curfew?”

“S-sorry,” the young man said, slurring his speech. “Guess I had too-too much fun tonight.”