"You believe I'm lying?"

The tin mask was expressionless, but the voice was indignant.

"Yes. Your story just won't hold water. It's leaking like a sieve. Just to take one thing, your new tin head. You'd be dead. Your brain would be rotting. But even if it weren't and the tinsmith managed by some surgical miracle to transfer your brains and nervous system to the tin head, how would it be kept alive? It needs blood and food. But you say that even this impossible thing wasn't done. You were given a new head, an empty tin one, and suddenly you, your brain, your spirit, call it what you will, is in the tin head. Baum didn't say that, but it's implied."

"What is your reasoning about this?" the Tin Woodman said. His voice was emotionless.

"I think that you did lose a foot, and that it was caused by a spell—whatever that means—put on you by Mombi. You thought that it was an accident, and you had an artificial foot made of tin. The connection must have been made by a leather ring or sheath, though. Otherwise, the metal would've rubbed your flesh raw. How am I doing so far?"

"You make sense," Niklaz said. "But what seems to be sense is not always so in reality."

"Then, when you lost the other foot, you knew that someone had enchanted—I hate to use that unscientific word—enchanted the ax. You figured out quickly who was behind the ‘accidents.' Your reluctant future mother-in-law and the only known local witch, Mombi. Isn't that right?"

"You'd make a fine detective," Niklaz said. "A fine theoretical one, anyway."

"But not a good practical one, is that what you mean?" Hank said, cocking his head to one side. He grinned. "Let me continue to theorize.

"So, though you might be a simple man who chopped and sold wood for a living, you were smart enough to seek out someone who might protect you. Or, maybe, this someone had had her eye on you, and she came to you. It'd be a hell of a long walk for a man with two good feet, but one who had artificial feet, well!"

"Her?" the Scarecrow said. "You said, ‘Her.'"

"A long walk," Niklaz said. "To where?"

"To Glinda in her Quadling capital," Hank said. "I don't think you went to her. She came to you. Or maybe she transported you to her by magical means. In any case, you two met face to face. And she made a bargain. She'd put you in a new body, one that could not be killed, though it could be destroyed. Not easily, however. She promised you immortality or a very long long life, anyway. She probably had to argue with you for some time. You might be immortal and near-invulnerable, but you'd be giving up a lot for that. You'd never taste good food and drink again. On the other hand, you'd not have the daily inconvenience and mess of digestion and excretion. You wouldn't have to worry about bad breath or toothaches or losing your teeth or having cancer or heart failure.

"You wouldn't have a stroke or go blind or have an earache or have to suffer the aches, pains, loss of strength, and sadness of growing old. Need I go on? The profits would be greater than the losses.

"The greatest losses, though, would be that you'd have no sexual pleasure and no children."

"Those are great," the Tin Woodman said. "But possibly the worst is something you forgot. I'd be a freak. I'd no longer be regarded by humans as being human. I'd always be an outsider. I could be their king, but I'd not be able to share fully the acceptance and warmth that one human can give to another. On the other hand, as you say, how many humans ever do give the acceptance, understanding, and warmth that they should if they're fully human?

"Really, they're all freaks. Well, no, I shouldn't say that. Almost all are. There are some genuine, fully human humans among them. But they're so rare that they're freaks, too."

"Well, I don't think they're as bad as that," Hank said. "But I'll have to admit that there are few of us who get to be what we should be."

"Or even try," Niklaz said.

"You may not have stood for a year with nothing to do but think," Hank said. "But you must have done a lot of thinking."

"I lived alone in the woods."

"Now," Hank said. "Continuing my surmises—or is it deductions?—Glinda did come to you with an offer. And you took it. So she transferred your persona, I don't know how, your soul or your cerebral-neural system to the tin body. Which was made all at once and not piecemeal as in the story you told everybody. I don't mean that she literally transferred your brains. Obviously, she couldn't do that. But she did transfer whatever it is that makes you you to the tin head."

"Why would she want to do that?" Niklaz said. "What would she get out of it? Witches, white or red, seldom do anything just out of the goodness of their hearts. Not when magic is involved. That requires too much magical energy and is very dangerous."

"Just what I was going to ask, rhetorically, that is. She did have a use for you. She wanted you to accompany Dorothy to the land of Oz. You'd be Dorothy's adviser and protector. And, if Glinda's plans worked out, Dorothy and you and the other companions would eliminate the West Witch. And perhaps incidentally, perhaps not, get rid of that humbug, the Great Wizard Oz."

"Humbug?" the Scarecrow cried. "How dare you? He gave me the only thing I lacked! Brains!"

"I won't argue with you," Hank said. "Wizard or not, he was clever and shrewd."

"And good! A good man! Great and good!"

"O.K. But I think that Glinda..."

"Glinda was behind this," Niklaz said, "events went the way you say they did."

"Yeah. I think that Glinda wanted to get rid of Oz. Maybe everybody else, including the East and West witches, thought that Oz was a true and powerful wizard. But she knew he wasn't. She knew that his strength was just a front, and it could easily crumble. Which it did. Look at how you two and my mother and the Cowardly Lion exposed him. There was a danger that he'd be overthrown or run—he did run, escaped in a balloon, anyway—and some evil person would take over. So she connived to make him leave, and now there's a good ruler in his place. You, Your Wiseness," he said to the Scarecrow.

"Oh, no. Well..."

"You're Glinda's good ally," Hank said. "The Wizard never had anything directly to do with her, though he wasn't dumb enough to oppose her. He knew that if he and Glinda met, she would know quickly he wasn't a real wizard. He kept his distance from her. Just as he stayed aloof from the common people, even the servants and guards of his palace. He ruled, but he hid from everybody. What a lonely life he must've had!"

"If I could weep, I would," the Scarecrow said.

"I, too," the Tin Woodman said.

"You two aren't really freaks," Hank said. "You're more human than most of the people I know."

"Freaks? Me? Us?" the Scarecrow said.

"Your pardon," Hank said. "I mean different."

"You've constructed an impressive theory," Niklaz said.

"Is that all it is?"

"Ask Glinda."

"She won't answer most of my questions."

"Then she must have good reasons for not doing so."

The Scarecrow said, "You should get some sleep, Hank. The weather-scouts say that the skies may be clear by tomorrow afternoon."

"Yes, cut the chatter," a cow in a nearby stall said. "Go to sleep. You keep waking me up. Do you want to sour my milk?"

***

As the Jenny flew over Suthwarzha, Hank saw that Glinda's workers had really hustled while he was gone. They had built a larger hangar at the edge of a meadow on the east side of the castle. The meadow was, however, nearer the edge of the plateau than Hank liked.

The wind was coming from the southwest across the desert, bringing hot, dry, and gusty air. Just as he came in for the landing approach, he saw the windsocket turn to point into the northwest. He started to crab the Jenny, intending to turn her nose just enough so that, though the plane would be pointed one way, she would still move on a straight line. But the joystick moved without him, and the Jenny was at exactly the right attitude for the landing.