This Week's Oz Short Story

Yet another tale from The Lost Tales of Oz, this one being "Tommy Kwikstep and the Magpie" by Jared Davis. It's another little slice-of-life story, this time about Tommy Kwikstep off to deliver a message. He's accompanied by a magpie friend named Corina. When they get to the amethyst mining town of Amethyston, they find that the woman receiving the message is Locasta, the former Good Witch of the North. She gave up that title many years ago (in part explaining the differences between Locasta and Tattypoo, the Good Witch of the North actually seen in the Oz books), and is running a music hall. While waiting for a reply message, Tommy meets Perry, Jinjur's son. They decide to wander around Oz together (Tommy turns his messenger service over to another local entrepreneur), and a year later make their way to the Emerald City, where they get into a conversation with Ozma and Dorothy about love in Oz. It's all very quiet, without a lot of actual adventures, but it lays a lot of groundwork for how one can interpret early twentieth century stories in a modern twenty-first century context.