Kiki thought this over. Pleasant as were the countries he had visited, he heard everywhere that the Land of Oz was more beautiful and delightful. The Land of Oz was his own country, too, and if there was any possibility of his becoming its King, he must know something about it.
While Kiki the Hyup thought, Ruggedo the Nome was also thinking. This boy possessed a marvelous power, and although very simple in some ways, he was determined not to part with his secret. However, if Ruggedo could get him to transport the wily old Nome to Oz, which he could reach in no other way, he might then induce the boy to follow his advice and enter into the plot for revenge, which he had already planned in his wicked heart.
'There are wizards and magicians in Oz,' remarked Kiki, after a time. 'They might discover us, in spite of our transformations.'
'Not if we are careful,' Ruggedo assured him. 'Ozma has a Magic Picture, in which she can see whatever she wishes to see; but Ozma will know nothing of our going to Oz, and so she will not command her Magic Picture to show where we are or what we are doing. Glinda the Good has a Great Book called the Book of Records, in which is magically written everything that people do in the Land of Oz, just the instant they do it.'
'Then,' said Kiki, 'there is no use our attempting to conquer the country, for Glinda would read in her book all that we do, and as her magic is greater than mine, she would soon put a stop to our plans.'
'I said 'people,' didn't I?' retorted the Nome. 'The book doesn't make a record of what birds do, or beasts. It only tells the doings of people. So, if we fly into the country as birds, Glinda won't know anything about it.'
'Two birds couldn't conquer the Land of Oz,' asserted the boy, scornfully.
'No; that's true,' admitted Ruggedo, and then he rubbed his forehead and stroked his long pointed beard and thought some more.
'Ah, now I have the idea!' he declared. 'I suppose you can transform us into beasts as well as birds?'
'Of course.'
'And can you make a bird a beast, and a beast a bird again, without taking a human form in between?'
'Certainly,' said Kiki. 'I can transform myself or others into anything that can talk. There's a magic word that must be spoken in connection with the transformations, and as beasts and birds and dragons and fishes can talk in Oz, we may become any of these we desire to. However, if I transformed myself into a tree, I would always remain a tree, because then I could not utter the magic word to change the transformation.'
'I see; I see,' said Ruggedo, nodding his bushy, white head until the point of his hair waved back and forth like a pendulum. 'That fits in with my idea, exactly. Now, listen, and I'll explain to you my plan. We'll fly to Oz as birds and settle in one of the thick forests in the Gillikin Country. There you will transform us into powerful beasts, and as Glinda doesn't keep any track of the doings of beasts we can act without being discovered.'
'But how can two beasts raise an army to conquer the powerful people of Oz?' inquired Kiki.
'That's easy. But not an army of PEOPLE, mind you. That would be quickly discovered. And while we are in Oz you and I will never resume our human forms until we've conquered the country and destroyed Glinda, and Ozma, and the Wizard, and Dorothy, and all the rest, and so have nothing more to fear from them.'
'It is impossible to kill anyone in the Land of Oz,' declared Kiki.
'It isn't necessary to kill the Oz people,' rejoined Ruggedo.
'I'm afraid I don't understand you,' objected the boy. 'What will happen to the Oz people, and what sort of an army could we get together, except of people?'
'I'll tell you. The forests of Oz are full of beasts. Some of them, in the far-away places, are savage and cruel, and would gladly follow a leader as savage as themselves. They have never troubled the Oz people much, because they had no leader to urge them on, but we will tell them to help us conquer Oz and as a reward we will transform all the beasts into men and women, and let them live in the houses and enjoy all the good things; and we will transform all the people of Oz into beasts of various sorts, and send them to live in the forests and the jungles. That is a splendid idea, you must admit, and it's so easy that we won't have any trouble at all to carry it through to success.'
'Will the beasts consent, do you think?' asked the boy.
'To be sure they will. We can get every beast in Oz on our side—except a few who live in Ozma's palace, and they won't count.'
4. Conspirators
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.
'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.
'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.'
5. A Happy Corner of Oz
There is no other country so beautiful as the Land of Oz. There are no other people so happy and contented
