Kiki Aru didn’t know much about Oz and didn’t know much about the beasts
who lived there, but the old Nome’s plan seemed to him to be quite
reasonable. He had a faint suspicion that Ruggedo meant to get the best
of him in some way, and he resolved to keep a close watch on his
fellow-conspirator. As long as he kept to himself the secret word of the
transformations, Ruggedo would not dare to harm him, and he promised
himself that as soon as they had conquered Oz, he would transform the
old Nome into a marble statue and keep him in that form forever.
Ruggedo, on his part, decided that he could, by careful watching and
listening, surprise the boy’s secret, and when he had learned the magic
word he would transform Kiki Aru into a bundle of faggots and burn him
up and so be rid of him.
This is always the way with wicked people. They cannot be trusted even
by one another. Ruggedo thought he was fooling Kiki, and Kiki thought he
was fooling Ruggedo; so both were pleased.
“It’s a long way across the Desert,” remarked the boy, “and the sands
are hot and send up poisonous vapors. Let us wait until evening and then
fly across in the night when it will be cooler.”
The former Nome King agreed to this, and the two spent the rest of that
day in talking over their plans. When evening came they paid the
inn-keeper and walked out to a little grove of trees that stood near by.
“Remain here for a few minutes and I’ll soon be back,” said Kiki, and
walking swiftly away, he left the Nome standing in the grove. Ruggedo
wondered where he had gone, but stood quietly in his place until, all of
a sudden, his form changed to that of a great eagle, and he uttered a
piercing cry of astonishment and flapped his wings in a sort of panic.
At once his eagle cry was answered from beyond the grove, and another
eagle, even larger and more powerful than the transformed Ruggedo, came
sailing through the trees and alighted beside him.
“Now we are ready for the start,” said the voice of Kiki, coming from
the eagle.
Ruggedo realized that this time he had been outwitted. He had thought
Kiki would utter the magic word in his presence, and so he would learn
what it was, but the boy had been too shrewd for that.
As the two eagles mounted high into the air and began their flight
across the great Desert that separates the Land of Oz from all the rest
of the world, the Nome said:
“When I was king of the Nomes I had a magic way of working
transformations that I thought was good, but it could not compare with
your secret word. I had to have certain tools and make passes and say a
lot of mystic words before I could transform anybody.”
“What became of your magic tools?” inquired Kiki.
[Illustration]
“The Oz people took them all away from me—that horrid girl, Dorothy, and
that terrible fairy, Ozma, the Ruler of Oz—at the time they took away my
underground kingdom and kicked me upstairs into the cold, heartless
world.”
“Why did you let them do that?” asked the boy.
[Illustration]
“Well,” said Ruggedo, “I couldn’t help it. They rolled eggs at
me—_eggs_—dreadful eggs!—and if an egg even touches a Nome, he is ruined
for life.”
“Is any kind of an egg dangerous to a Nome?”
“Any kind and every kind. An egg is the only thing I’m afraid of.”
A Happy Corner of Oz