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"Dorothy! Oh Dorothy, do come down!"
Dorothy stuck her head out her window. There was a boy below, dressed in a purple suit of clothing with a green cloak tied 'round his neck. Dorothy knew she'd never seen him before in her life—the queer thing was, he seemed familiar anyhow.
"I'm awfully sorry," Dorothy called down. "But I don't think we've been introduced." She cocked her head to the side. "Is that the Saw Horse? Did Ozma send you?"
After a moment the boy nodded. "Please do come down," he said plaintively. "I'll explain everything, it's just that it's so awkward having to shout up to you like this."
Dorothy took a moment to fetch her sun hat from a peg and to smooth the skirts of her blue cotton dress—for she had left all her finery in the Emerald City when she'd gone to visit Auntie Em and Uncle Henry—and then she was taking the stairs two at a time, for she was very curious about the strange boy who she thought must be a Gillikin due to the color and cut of his clothes.
"Dorothy," Auntie Em sighed. "How many times must I tell you—"
Dorothy kissed her aunt and ignored her admonishments. "I'll be back," she promised.
The boy was still there, waiting for her. He had unruly black hair, his skin was brown from the sun, and he didn't look any older than she did. "My name's Tip," he said.
Dorothy bit her lip. "Oh." She knew the story of the boy Ozma had once been, of course.
Tip sighed. "It's not—quite—what you think."
"I'm not sure what I should think," said Dorothy.
"The Scarecrow is being Regent for the day," said Tip. "You don't have to worry. Please, there's something I want to show you."
"Where are we?" Dorothy asked softly, turning around slowly to get a good look at the queer place the Saw Horse had taken them. It looked a bit like a church—there were stone benches and a stone table in front of them that a preacher might have rested his Bible on—but it had neither roof nor walls and there was a stream flowing merrily behind the stone table.
She looked back to face Tip, who had a sober expression on his face. "Do you know about Ozian religion?"
Dorothy shook her head. "Not really," she said. "The Wizard told me that you had no churches until he came and built the one in the Emerald City."
"That's not true," said Tip. "This is a church."
Dorothy frowned. "There's no cross anywhere."
"That's because," Tip said, "people in Oz didn't worship the baby Jesus and his father until the Wizard came. Many of us still don't."
"You're heathens," said Dorothy. Her voice held no condemnation—she'd traveled too long and too far for that—but there was a faint tone of puzzlement.
Tip shrugged. "I suppose." He sat down on the arm of one of the benches and unbuckled his shoes. After a moment, Dorothy followed his example. Soon they were both barefoot in the grass.
"This," Tip said softly, "is a temple of the Fairy Lurline." He began to walk toward the stream. Almost as if enchanted, Dorothy followed him.
"Who's the Fairy Lurline?" Dorothy asked in hushed tones. There was something about the place—perhaps that it was a church—that made Dorothy unwilling to raise her voice.
"When the world was young," Tip said, "the Fairy Lurline came to the Land of Oz and blessed it. She left her daughter to rein in her place." Tip let the cloak fall from his shoulders. "The daughter's name," she continued in a sweet, light voice, "was Ozma."
"Oh, Ozma!" Dorothy cried, throwing her arms around her dear friend. "You have no idea how worried I was!"
"I wasn't really a boy," Ozma said—and was there a note of regret in her voice? "It was all an illusion. I persuaded Glinda to make the cloak for me, in case I was ever in any trouble that it would not be good to be a girl and a princess of Oz."
"I'm glad," said Dorothy, hugging Ozma tight. "I knew you used to be a boy, but you wouldn't be you if you weren't Ozma!"
"Dorothy," said Ozma quietly. "Will you sit with me?"
The two of them sat in companionable silence, dangling their feet in the stream. Dorothy found herself studying Ozma quite closely—how very different she looked dressed up in a boy's suit of clothes, without her customary poppy headdress to keep her black curls from running wild.
"You aren't that Ozma—are you?" Dorothy was quite surprised to realize that it had been her that had spoken.
Ozma shook her head. "Ozma was the Fairy Lurline's daughter, but Ozma was also the daughter of Ozma. And Oz was the son of Ozma. Everyone of my line is an Oz or an Ozma—it's only our wives and husbands that are any different. My full name is Ozma Tippetarius."
"Oh," said Dorothy softly.
"Dorothy," said Ozma quietly, "how old are we?"
Dorothy frowned. "Why, nearly fifteen, I expect. It's hard to tell sometimes—it feels like time flows queerly here in Oz."
Ozma nodded. "King Evardo of Ev—you must remember him, we saved him and his family from the Nome King and then later they came to my thirteenth birthday party—he wrote to me to offer his brother Evington's hand in marriage."
Dorothy's stomach felt as if a great weight had been placed in it. "Will you?"
"I don't want to," said Ozma. "He's a kind boy, but I don't want to marry him. I think, perhaps, Mombi may have broken something within me by having me live my first eleven years as a boy—even if she did always poke fun at me for calling me girlish."
Dorothy swallowed, hard. "Ozma, I don't understand what you're saying!"
Ozma looked up at Dorothy. There was such a wild, fierce expression on her face that Dorothy almost didn't recognize her friend. "I'm saying that I don't want to marry any boy at all. If I am to marry anyone, dearest Dorothy, it would be you—but I can't go back to being Tip for real, Glinda won't transform me back, and my wishing belt won't work for this. I think it's because it's a half-hearted wish—I don't really want to be a boy again, even if I could marry you, because I'm too used to being a girl and I always felt there was something queer about me when I was a boy, anyhow. But I must be wrong as a girl too, for how else can I explain how I feel about you?"
Dorothy took Ozma's face in her hands and kissed her forehead. "If you're wrong, then so am I. I feel the same way about you and I never was a boy, only a farm girl from Kansas."
Ozma closed her eyes. "Truly?" she whispered.
"Truly," Dorothy murmured. "You're my dearest friend—you know that."
Ozma's expression softened. "Will you pray with me, Dorothy? To Lurline, so that I may never need to marry, unless it is to you?"
"Of course I will," said Dorothy. Perhaps it wasn't Christian, but it would mean a lot to Ozma.
"And you'll stay here with me for a while," said Ozma, taking Dorothy's hand and clasping it. "Won't you? Only I don't quite feel ready to go back to the Emerald City yet, or to put the cloak back on. I was scared, you know, that you might like Tip better."
Dorothy shook her head. "There's no one I like better than you, Ozma—even you."