The Magic of Oz

CHAPTER 13. The Loss of the

Black Bag

Kiki Aru, in the form of the Li-Mon-Eag, had scrambled into the high,

thick branches of the tree, so no one could see him, and there he opened

the Wizard's black bag, which he had carried away in his flight. He was

curious to see what the Wizard's magic tools looked like, and hoped he

could use some of them and so secure more power; but after he had taken

the articles, one by one, from the bag, he had to admit they were puzzles to

him. For, unless he understood their uses, they were of no value whatever.

Kiki Aru, the Hyup boy, was no wizard or magician at all, and could do

nothing unusual except to use the Magic Word he had stolen from his

father on Mount Munch. So he hung the Wizard's black bag on a branch of

the tree and then climbed down to the lower limbs that he might see what

the victims of his transformations were doing.

They were all on top of the flat rock, talking together in tones so low

that Kiki could not hear what they said.

This is certainly a misfortune," remarked the Wizard in the Fox's

form, "but our transformations are a sort of enchantment which is very

easy to break--when you know how and have the tools to do it with. The

tools are in my Black Bag; but where is the Bag?"

No one knew that, for none had seen Kiki Aru fly away with it.

Let's look and see if we can find it," suggested Dorothy the Lamb.

So they left the rock, and all of them searched the clearning high and

low without finding the Bag of Magic Tools. The Goose searched as

earnestly as the others, for if he could discover it, he meant to hide it

where the Wizard could never find it, because if the Wizard changed him

back to his proper form, along with the others, he would then be

recognized as Ruggedo the Nome, and they would send him out of the

Land of Oz and so ruin all his hopes of conquest.

Ruggedo was not really sorry, now that he thought about it, that Kiki