Saturday, October 07, 2017

This Week's Oz Short Story

The second story in the 1984 edition of Oziana is "The Piglet's Revenge, or How Eureka Became Pink" by Glenn Ingersoll, with illustrations by David Ingersoll. This explains two Ozzy mysteries, namely how Eureka returned to Oz (well, that was simple enough, she was brought there), and why she was described as pink in every appearance after her first in Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, where she is quite plainly described as being white. True, one of the colored Mangaboo suns shines pink light on her at one point, but that was not a permanent condition, and didn't even last that one incident. It seems that Eureka, even though back in Oz, is a pariah, after having tried to eat one of the nine tiny piglets, and is under suite arrest in Dorothy's rooms. But she manages to escape, and endears herself to the palace inhabitants, who now think she's reformed. The piglets, however, know otherwise, and realize they will have to work together to finally get Eureka to leave them alone. There's a lot of set-up in this story, but it pays off in the end with a mad chase through the palace and Eureka taking a tumble from a high ledge into a pool of pink dye. This was a lot of fun, and we see a lot of the story (and life in the palace) from the piglets' point of view. Their names are cute, too.