The Latest Oz Short Story

The next story from the 2024 edition of Oziana is "Hope Melts Eternal" by Suren Oganessian, with illustrations by Mel Vavaroutsos. This tells the story of a pivotal portion of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from the point of view of Lan, the assistant to the ruler he calls the Wise Woman of the West, and he does not take at all kindly to anyone who calls her the Wicked Witch of the West! He and his brother, Arook, are two of the only Winkies who are actually loyal to her, and work for her of their own free will. So naturally, as soon as the Wizard and the Wicked Witch of the South, Glinda, send the assassin Dorothy into Winkie Country, things start to go wrong. Lan and Arook are two of the dozen soldiers who try to destroy Dorothy and her accomplices, but they are frightened off by the Lion. At one point, after she is captured, Lan interrogates Dorothy and tries to find out why she is the cunning mastermind that she is, and has his view of her shaken up. But after she liquidates the Wise Woman, he realizes that she is just a clever actress, and he and Arook decide it would be best to leve Winkie Country before any of the freed slaves realize where their loyalties actually lie — and that's where things end, although it's implied that both men would take up with other would-be conquerors of Oz later. That might make for an interesting series, seeing the operations of General Jinjur or Ugu the Shoemake from the inside. It makes sense that even someone like the Wicked Witch would have her followers, and their own point of view. If we've learned anything from Wicked, it's that the nature of good and evil is not so cut and dried.