Chapter Five:

 

Dorothy, the Scarecrow, and Toto had walked for nearly two hours when they came to a grove of fig trees at the side of the road.

During that two hour period, Toto had not screamed once, Dorothy had worked up a powerful appetite, and the Scarecrow had insulted her shoes three more times, shown her how to fold an origami chicken, complained bitterly regarding the lack of decent bistros in this particular region of Oz, made several snide but extremely amusing remarks about the various inhabitants of some of the farmhouses they passed, and asked her roughly four thousand questions about herself.

So, when Dorothy saw the grove of trees, and noticed that the figs they bore were ripe, her entire mouth and throat and empty tummy clenched in a spasm of ferocious hunger. She'd had nothing but a cup of Starbucks and a Power Bar for breakfast, and that had been many hours and at least one universe ago.

She had also found the Scarecrow to be an absorbing companion, for the most part, but he could be a bit tiring, she'd determined, and dealing with his incessant questions had proven to be hungry work.

“. . . so, when Irving Feldsteen poured the ink on your spelling paper in the second grade," the Scarecrow was saying. "Didn't you think he really did it because -?”

"Excuse me," she interrupted him. "But I think I see some lunch over there. The complete annals of the Irving Feldsteen Affair will have to wait."

She pointed the grove of fig trees out to him, then took off at a trot, hell bent on figs for lunch. Toto followed at her feet.

Once among the gnarled fig trees, she quickly zeroed in on a particularly perfect fig and plucked it from its branch.

The tree from whence the perfect fig came immediately cried "Hey!!" in outraged tones, and summarily slapped her wrist, knocking the newly picked fig from her hand.

Dorothy, startled, leapt back out of the tree's estimated slapping range and simultaneously pulled her weapon, a snub nose .45 in a Yaqui slide on her hip, as she dropped into a shooters crouch.

"Can you believe this?" the tree called to some of its companions in the grove. "First this crazy woman pulls a fig off me without even saying hello, and THEN she pulls a gun on me!"

Various disapproving voices from the rest of the fig grove concurred with, and amplified, the aggrieved tree's complaints.

"I'm sorry," said Dorothy, holstering her gun and trying to hang on to her temper. "We've come a long way and I was starving. Where I come from, the trees aren't so touchy."

"Touchy!" countered the tree. "How would you like it if someone came along and just pulled your ear off or something? Maybe you'd like to set fire to me now! What the hell? Why don't you just chop me down!"

The Scarecrow caught up to Dorothy and Toto just then and observed the situation a moment.

"Are you hungry, Dorothy? Would you want some of these figs? Are you sure?" he raised his rather aristocratic nose in the air and sneered faintly at the fig grove. "I have seen better, certainly. But I suppose these might do, in a pinch."

"Why, you arrogant, snot-nosed bag of hay!" the touchy fig tree exclaimed. "What do you know anyway? These are the best damn figs in Oz! People come all the way from the Emerald City to get these figs!"

"Oh, I doubt that," the Scarecrow said, rummaging in his knapsack. He pulled out an extra large hypodermic needle and a small vial filled with amber liquid. "I see at least three that have worms. And they're all undersized."

The Scarecrow filled the hypo from the vial and discarded the small empty bottle.

"They are NOT undersized, goddamnit! What's with the needle, anyhow?"

"I think perhaps your attitude could do with a bit of adjustment," the Scarecrow said pleasantly, advancing on the ill-tempered tree. "Don't try to get away, now, this won't hurt a bit. Oh, that's right, you're a TREE, aren't you? You can't get away, can you? How silly of me."

"You can't stick me with that thing, smart guy," the tree said, furious. "You'll never get that teeny needle through my bark."

"Actually, this might hurt, come to think of it," the Scarecrow said, and plunged the hypodermic into the soil right at the tree's tender roots.

Apparently, it did hurt. The tree howled in affronted pain.

"Ow! You little sonof.  .  . whooooooaaaaaa!! Oh, cool, man, look at all those colors. Totally gnarly, dude . . .”

The Scarecrow stepped very close to the tree and stared into what he thought were probably its eyes. He reached into the tear behind his ear, pulled a shard of glass out of his head, and pressed it into a limber fork in one of the tree's branches.

"Wouldn't you like to cut a few figs for us?" the Scarecrow suggested to the tree. "None of the shriveled ones, mind."

"Fucking-A right, I would!" the tree agreed at once, and set about selecting and cutting the very best figs it had. 

"Excellent," said the Scarecrow, with some satisfaction. "Just put them in this knapsack, if you would."

"You bet!" said the tree, agreeably.

Dorothy privately thought that it was a pretty dirty trick the Scarecrow had played on the tree. And she was beginning to get a clue as to why the Scarecrow might have been securely wired to a post in an isolated cornfield when she'd found him.

Still, the figs really did look good, and she really was starving.

When they had enough for a small scale feast, the Scarecrow retrieved his bulging sack and they all left the grove and moved on past a bend in the road.

Dorothy tapped the Scarecrow on the shoulder. Firmly. She really WAS starving.

"Can I have one? Now? I'm starving."

"You don't mean to eat it here, surely, Dorothy?" the Scarecrow said, horrified. "Standing out in the middle of the road and not a place setting in sight? That would never do."

"I repeat," she growled, gritting her teeth. "I - AM - STARVING!"

"Oh, Dorothy . . ." he said, laughing. "You really are refreshing. And you have lovely teeth, by the way. Look there, just past that next bend? Can you see it? A woodsman's cottage? Do you think you could manage to get that far without fainting? It's only a short way. I should be able to find a few needful amenities there."

"Damn it, I want to eat n -” Dorothy began, but the Scarecrow had suddenly grasped her hand and was pulling her toward the cottage at a fast clip, leaving her little breath to argue with. Toto had to scramble to keep up.

As they came closer, Dorothy could see that the cottage was small, picture book perfect, and looked as though it had been uninhabited for some while. She also noticed that someone had made a mistake and added one finger too many on the Scarecrow's left hand, and that he had a strong grip. Wiry. Perhaps whoever had made him had started with a wire armature before adding hay, stuffing, and so forth.

The party of three halted at a large tree stump just outside the cottage door. The Scarecrow dumped his knapsack on the stump, and went to knock on the cottage door.

No answer. He listened for a second or two, peered in one of the dusty windows, sniffed the air, and then pronounced his opinion.

"Deserted," he said. "Excuse me."

He then set about picking the lock on the door, a neat, workmanlike job, Dorothy, veteran of many tech assignments, noticed. After a moment, he disappeared inside.

Toto commenced to sniff his way around the small structure and to eat a few cowslips he found growing around the doorstep. Dorothy took advantage of the Scarecrow's absence to slip a few figs out of the sack and gobble them up.

The Scarecrow returned from his investigations of the interior of the cottage laden with an armful of things. Dorothy could see pans, a butane camp stove, two bottles of passable Fume Blanc, a set of  Fiesta-ware dishes, a corkscrew, a red check table cloth, a bottle of cooking brandy, flour, sugar, vanilla extract and a small tin of anise seeds, two candlesticks and a bud vase.

"Just the bare necessities, I'm afraid," the Scarecrow commented. "We'll have to rough it. I seem to recall there being a brook near this cottage somewhere," he added, and handed the wine to Dorothy. "Why don't you see if you can find it? Sink these in the water. They should be properly chilled by the time we're ready to eat."

Dorothy thought about arguing, but decided against it. She had to admit to herself, some of the items he'd pillaged from the cottage looked extremely promising, meal-wise. She took the wine and left to search for the brook.

"Toto, you little swine, don't you dare eat all those cowslips," she heard the Scarecrow saying, as she moved out of earshot. "Save some for the table."