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Chapter Twelve - Ozma and Dorothy
In her magnificent palace in the Emerald City, the beautiful girl Ruler of all
the wonderful Land of Oz sat in her dainty boudoir with her friend Princess
Dorothy beside her. Ozma was studying a roll of manuscript which she had
taken from the Royal Library, while Dorothy worked at her embroidery and
at times stooped to pat a shaggy little black dog that lay at her feet. The little
dog's name was Toto, and he was Dorothy's faithful companion.
To judge Ozma of Oz by the standards of our world, you would think her
very young--perhaps fourteen or fifteen years of age--yet for years she had
ruled the Land of Oz and had never seemed a bit older. Dorothy appeared
much younger than Ozma. She had been a little girl when first she came to
the Land of Oz, and she was a little girl still, and would never seem to be a
day older while she lived in this wonderful fairyland.
Oz was not always a fairyland, I am told. Once it was much like other lands,
except it was shut in by a dreadful desert of sandy wastes that lay all
around it, thus preventing its people from all contact with the rest of the
world. Seeing this isolation, the fairy band of Queen Lurline, passing over Oz
while on a journey, enchanted the country and so made it a Fairyland. And
Queen Lurline left one of her fairies to rule this enchanted Land of Oz, and
then passed on and forgot all about it.
From that moment no one in Oz ever died. Those who were old remained
old; those who were young and strong did not change as years passed them
by; the children remained children always, and played and romped to their
hearts' content, while all the babies lived in their cradles and were tenderly
cared for and never grew up. So people in Oz stopped counting how old they
were in years, for years made no difference in their appearance and could
not alter their station. They did not get sick, so there were no doctors among
them. Accidents might happen to some, on rare occasions, it is true, and
while no one could die naturally, as other people do, it was possible that one
might be totally destroyed. Such incidents, however, were very unusual, and
so seldom was there anything to worry over that the Oz people were as
happy and contented as can be.
Another strange thing about this fairy Land of Oz was that whoever
managed to enter it from the outside world came under the magic spell of
the place and did not change in appearance as long as they lived there. So
Dorothy, who now lived with Ozma, seemed just the same sweet little girl
she had been when first she came to this delightful fairyland.
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