The Wishing Horse of Oz by Ruth Plumly Thompson, illustrated by John R. Neill
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| Originally published: 1935 Acquired: September 2022 Read aloud: June 2023 |
When writing up Speedy in Oz, I noted how Thompson's books often have analogues in Baum's, but Wishing Horse is different—it has no analogue in Baum's work as far as I can think of, and indeed, it seems to me that it must have been fairly unusual as a fantasy for the 1930s in general. Skamperoo, the king of Skampavia, a small poor country across the Deadly Desert from Oz, comes into the possession of magic wishing emeralds, and uses them to wish himself an amazing horse (the charger Chalk) and then to make himself emperor of Oz. But he's crafty (or rather, his advisors are), so he also wishes all the existing rulers and magic users of Oz disposed of, and he wishes that no one ever remember them. So Ozma, Glinda, the Tin Woodman, the kings and queens of the Munchkin and Gillikin countries, the Wizard of Oz, and even the visiting Red Jinn of Ev, are all gone in an instant, and no one remembers them—except Dorothy. You see, just before the spell takes effect, the beard of the Soldier with the Green Whiskers turns red, and Dorothy uses a wishing pill she happens to have in her pocket to make a wish that no matter what happens, she will be able to save Ozma and Oz. In classic Ruth Plumly Thompson fashion, this isn't really explained, but it seems to be that the Soldier's beard is somehow reacting with the magic of the wishing pills. (It's suggested that the beard is reacting to red magic, but we eventually learn that the wishing emeralds were formed with green magic, so who knows.)
What you get, though, is one of those classic sf&f stories where the universe is wrong, but only one person remembers: I think this is a combination of what TV Tropes would call "Backstory Invader" and "Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory." Dorothy realizes that Ozma and a lot of other people are missing... but no one other than her remembers them, not even the Scarecrow! My son did not like this, though he was also a bit confused—it's definitely a more complicated kind of magic spell than we usually see in Oz stories. The only person she can convince is Pigasus, the flying pig introduced in Pirates in Oz. Whoever sits on Pigasus's back speaks in verse, and this mental connection means that Pigasus can read Dorothy's mind and know that she is telling the truth. So Dorothy and Pigasus take off by themselves on a desperate mission to find some kind of assistance in restoring the proper history of Oz.
(It did sort of bug me that Dorothy doesn't even try to bring Toto with her; you think if anyone would believe Dorothy that Oz history had been changed even without evidence, it would be Toto.)
I don't think it has an analogue in another Oz book, but you can tell that Thompson probably reread both Wonderful Wizard and Road to Oz before writing it. The latter because Wishing Horse opens with basically the same kind of gigantic party and parade that closes Road. While I found it a bit annoying in Road, it's a clever way to open Wishing Horse. We see so many characters from previous books: along with the ones I already mentioned, we see High Boy, Notta Bit More, the Hungry Tiger, Sir Hokus, Prince Tatters, Kabumpo and the Royal Family of Pumperdink, Ojo and Unc Nunkie, King Ato and Roger, Tik-Tok, Scraps, Jack Pumpkinhead, Snif the Iffin, and many more. Because we see so much of how things are supposed to be, it's jarring when suddenly things are different. Thompson can be clever when she wants.
You can tell Thompson reread Wonderful Wizard because Wishing Horse is the first Oz book since the first to remember that the Good Witch of the North kissed Dorothy on her first trip to Oz in order to protect her. Exactly how this protection worked was a bit vague, and it never came up again; you might have assumed that it faded when Dorothy returned to Kansas at the end of the first book, given it never did anything for her again. But here it protects her from Gloma, the Black Witch of the East (who ought to be the Black Witch of the West, because Thompson always swaps the locations of the Munchkin and Winkie countries). Maybe the protection afforded by the Good Witch of the North only works against other witches? I don't think Dorothy was ever threatened by a witch specifically in all the intervening books. The whole encounter with Gloma and her people in the Black Forest was interesting; it's one of those rare threats that Thompson takes slowly and carefully, and I appreciated that. Like many Thompson communities, the denizens of the Black Forest transform their visitors to be like them, but they're not just a group of maniacs to be run away from, but rather potential friends to be won over in classic Dorothy fashion.
Anyway, on finding no one in Oz can help them, Dorothy and Pigasus travel to the Nome Kingdom, because King Kaliko has an army and politically owes his position of power to Oz intervention. Thompson always does well by Kaliko (and I always like reading his dialogue in a very obsequious voice), tricky but also careful not to overtly cross someone from Oz. Kaliko says he'll loan her an army... but only if she can come up with another army; Kaliko's wizard (the Nomes had a wizard in Tik-Tok, so clearly Thompson reread that too) also tells her that Ozma and all the other disappeared people are asleep submerged in Lightning Lake on Thunder Mountain, so Dorothy and Pigasus set off once again.
One often has the feeling that Thompson makes up her books as she goes along; she starts with a general sense of how that will end, but never goes back to the beginning to revise it to line up with the end more. Rarely has that been more clear to me than in Wishing Horse, where Dorothy and Pigasus never ever make it to Thunder Mountain; instead, they bump into a friendly seer, Bitty Bit of Some Summit, and he solves all their problems for them. So what had been a strong, engaging plot for most of its run suddenly fizzles out. Did Thompson not know how to handle Dorothy and Pigasus on Thunder Mountain?
With Bitty Bit, the two travel back to the Emerald City and corner Skamperoo and convince him to give up the emeralds. Again, it seems like things are going to explode at the climax but instead they kind of peter out, because by the time they get there, someone else has stolen the emeralds from Skamperoo! You might think this will complicate things, but in fact, a kitchen boy runs in with them, Pigasus grabs them, and then the kitchen boy runs away, all too easy. The complication is they still need to trust Skamperoo and Chalk to make the right wish to undo everything; in the book as written, it's Bitty Bit who makes this leap of trust, but I changed it to Dorothy as I read it aloud to my four-year-old son, which I think works better for a lot of character reasons. So kind of a disappointing ending to an otherwise strong book.
I will say that Skamperoo himself is one of the fun parts of the book; the narrator calls him a big baby early on, which my son thought was hilarious. He just wants to rule someplace nicer than Skampavia... though Skampavia would be nicer if he was a better ruler! Chalk is one of her typically strong horse characters; moral, but also loyal to his owner, even if his owner wants to do something wrong. I liked that at the end, they both reformed.
On the whole, as we come closer to the end of our run of Thompsons, you can see that she's kind of cutting loose a bit. Neither Speedy nor Wishing Horse are really like her other Oz books or, indeed, any Oz books. We have just six Thompsons to go (only four "canonical" ones), so I look forward to seeing what else she does next. My son reported enjoying this one, and I believe him—though as always he did not like the "bad parts," which in this case were when people didn't remember Ozma, and when Skamperoo was ruling Oz.
Some continuity thoughts: maybe Thompson didn't reread Road because she makes some mistakes about Merryland, Ix, and Noland, the three countries adjoining Skampavia. She says Merryland has a king (but it has a queen), that Zixi of Ix is friendly and pleasant (but she could be quite fierce), and that no one lives in Noland (sort of logical based on the name, but not the case). I edited all this as I read it.
Near the end of the book, we learn that the wishing emeralds were created by the Wizard Wam (an ancient Oz magic worker previously mentioned in Cowardly Lion) for the King of Green Mountain. My son suggested that "Green Mountain" could be an older name for "Big Enough Mountain," the big green mountain in the Quadling Country colonized by settlers from Emerald City in Speedy. Good idea, and I don't think there's anything in either book to contradict it.
Next up in sequence: Captain Salt in Oz
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