Sunday, December 27, 2020

This Week's Oz Short Story

The final story in the 2019 issue of Oziana is "The Giant Weasel of Oz" by Nathan M. DeHoff, with illustrations by Darrell Spradlyn. Several birds, of different sizes and colorations, come to the Emerald City to ask Ozma and the Wizard to help find their stolen eggs. A little investigation turns up the fact that all the thefts line up, from one endof Oz to the other. The Wizard extends the line across the Deadly Desert, and discovers that the thief is heading towards Rock Island, a rocky outcropping in the Nonestic Ocean that is home to many rocs. The Wizard, Dorothy, Betsy, Trot, and Button-Bright all head out there to tntercept the thief, which turns out to be a ciant flying weasel! (Well, nobody can accuse the title of false advertising, at least.) The weasel rereats back to Oz, where our intrepid investigators discover her origins and turn her back into a nice, ordinary weasel who can't fly.

For such a short little tale, this one packs it in. With the Wizard using transportation pills to quickly get everyone where they need to go, they cover a lot of ground. And it turns out there really was a good reason to create a giant weasel, it just all kind of went wrong. At any rate, this is another fun adventure set in Oz that makes good use of a lot of the mythos.

So now there's only one issue of Oziana left to go—for now, at least. Wow, that went quicker than I expected, and I got to revisit a lot of stories. So, we'll find out about the final few stories starting next week, which coincidentally is also next month, and next year!

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