"Public domain?" Jack Pumpkinhead always sounded to Ozma like he should be blinking in confusion, but the carved holes that served as his eyes simply didn't allow it. "What does [i]that[/i] mean, dear father?"

Ozma sighed. "It means you've been calling me your dear father for longer than anyone in the Reading World has been alive." She shifted on the green velvet cushion of her throne. "And the joke itself is so old, its whiskers have grown whiskers."

Jack's head cocked to one side. "Whiskers?" His head cocked the other way so that his face swiveled toward the Glass Cat sitting on the finely woven grass-colored carpet covering the throne room's emerald floor. "I believe she must be referring to you, friend Bungle, as I [i]have[/i] no whiskers to speak of."

Maintaining any semblance of equanimity at the antics of her subjects sometimes took more strength than Ozma thought she had. "Please, Jack! Will you kindly settle down and let us talk?"

"Of course, dear father." Jack's arms flopped to his sides, and he became still again on his little bench beside the throne. Not that he would remain long in such a state, Ozma knew. Nor would she ever truly want him to...

A crystalline clearing of throat returned her attention to the matter at hand. "So," Ozma said, shifting once more on her cushion. "You've been prowling about Glinda the Good's library, I take it?"

Bungle's tail swished along the carpet, sparks of static electricity flashing through her like tiny fireflies. "Prowling's what we cats do. Surely you of all people would not ask me to act against my nature?"

"Nature?" Ozma arched an eyebrow and let her temper rise just a bit, less concerned about keeping herself in check with this particular one of her subjects. "You're a glass statue brought illegally to life by a magical powder. You've less about you that could be considered natural than this pumpkinhead."

"Indeed." Jack nodded. "For while I was [i]also[/i] brought illegally to life by a magical powder and the actions of my dear father back in the days when she was a little boy, I am constructed of all-natural materials." He thumped a bushy hand against the side of his head. "Including a freshly-carved and entirely organic pumpkin."

Ozma couldn't keep a twitch from tugging the corner of her left eye, and the smile that spread lazily along the Glass Cat's muzzle told her that the creature had noticed it as well. "I see," Bungle said, and she applied her tongue to a paw, the high-pitched rasping noise one that always spiked the hair along the back of Ozma's neck. "And since, friend Jack," the cat went on, "neither you nor I were capable of requesting that we be brought to life, against whose good name and reputation should the illegality of our creation be lodged, hmmm?"

Jack touched the place his chin would've been if he'd had one. "Quite the puzzle." His head swiveled around. "What do [i]you[/i] say, dear father?"

Heat blossomed over Ozma's cheeks. "I say that I did indeed build you, but it was Mombi who cast the spell, not me!"

"Very true." Jack's carved smile remained as wide as ever. "She used the Powder of Life the one time on me while you only used it on the Sawhorse and then on the flying sofa assemblage we called the Gump." He stopped. "Wait. Twice is [i]more[/i] than once, isn't it?"

The heat seemed to soak into Ozma's whole head, but she managed to keep it from reaching her tongue. "Please, Jack," she said as gently as she could. "Can Bungle and I resume our conversation?"

"Of course, dear father," he said, subsiding as usual.

Trying to breathe in some of the tranquil calm her oldest friend always radiated, Ozma turned back to Bungle. "So, yes, entering the public domain means that anyone can produce any sort of creative work they like involving us, and it's all perfectly legal." She shrugged. "But it's nothing to worry about, I assure you. We're much too well-established for an outside force to wreak any lasting change upon us."

"And yet?" Bungle's ears flicked. "Does it not [i]also[/i] mean that if someone inside wished no longer to be tied to our little cosmos, she could venture outside and sample the ribald sweetness of the real world?"

The air around Ozma seemed to solidify. "You...want to leave?" she asked, barely able to form the words.

Bungle surged to her see-through paws. "After living here constrained for more than a century, how could I [i]not[/i]?" She glared at Ozma. "The thought of escaping makes me so giddy, I might even someday consider forgiving you for keeping me ignorant of the truth for the past however many decades!"

Ice shooting down her spine, Ozma leaped from the throne, ignored her myrtle and mint silken gown tangling behind her, and fell to her knees before the cat. "Please, Bungle! You've got to understand! The land Dorothy came from is a mere literary shadow of the Reading World, and even [i]it[/i] resounds with death, disease, and destructive weather! Reality is harsher and more unforgiving than you can ever imagine!" Hands shaking, she caught Bungle in her arms and hugged her to her chest. "I never meant to constrain you—or any of my subjects! But once Oz left its protected bubble, I—" Her throat tightened. "I've been so frightened, Bungle! Frightened of what might happen to any of us who ventured outside!"

"What are you—? Stop it! Stop it!" The cat squirmed, and Ozma let her go, mindful of those sharp glass claws. Bungle half jumped, half tumbled back to the floor, landing wide-eyed on all fours. "Enough histrionics! You are beloved by every sapient being in the realm! The only remaining witch in Oz is at your beck and call! And the items of clothing you're wearing right now contain more magic than any normal creature will see in her entire lifetime! What have [i]you[/i] to fear?"

Swallowing, Ozma rose to her feet. "I can't explain it to you." A thought made her cough out a laugh. "And you're too much a cat to believe me if I tried." She forced her head up, forced herself to meet the faceted emeralds of Bungle's eyes, forced herself to confront the steely resolve glinting there. "You'll have to see for yourself, won't you?"

The cat settled to the floor and dabbed her tongue at her paw in a much gentler fashion than before. "If you know the answer to a question, why bother asking it?"

"Very well." Ozma took a breath and blew it out. "Let me give you a piece of my magic, then, a charm that will draw you back should you find yourself far from home and without any other recourse." Reaching under the raven-black fall of her hair, she undid one of her several chokers and brought it out, the red stone looking almost liquid on the black band.

"Really?" The cat's ears perked, then folded. "So Glinda can spy on me even after I've left the area of her influence?"

Ozma held her hand up. "I solemnly swear that she will not." And since she'd known Bungle for some time now, she wriggled her fingers to let the choker's stone shimmer in the throne room's light. "It should go quite well, too, I'm thinking, with the heart-shaped ruby that beats so strikingly within your chest."

Bungle's raspy little purr was immediately drowned out by her clearing her throat. "I'll allow it," she said, stretching her neck. "But only because I know how much I mean to you."

With a laugh, Ozma knelt again. "You really do, you know," she whispered, gently fastening the choker so the stone nestled into the glass above Bungle's breastbone.

"Oh, hush." Bungle brushed her whiskers against the top of Ozma's hand. "Don't you get all tedious and [i]sentimental[/i] on me."

"As long as you promise to come back." It took more effort to get the words out than Ozma had thought it would, and she'd already been expecting them to feel like pins jabbing into her tongue.

Bungle had gotten to her paws and was taking a few mincing steps back and forth across the carpet while examining her reflection in the polished emerald of the throne room wall. "Perhaps I will," she said. "When I become bored with the Reading World." She looked over her shoulder, gave a wink, and bounded along the carpet toward the giant double doors at the end of the throne room.

The first of her subjects to realize that public domain meant freedom of a sort they'd never known before, and Ozma couldn't gather enough of a voice to wish her a safe voyage. And for all that she'd long had dreams verging on nightmares about this very moment, she found herself unable to recall a single word from any of the grand speeches she'd imagined herself making in those dreams.

Turning away and wiping one long, gauzy sleeve across her eyes, she almost ran into Jack Pumpkinhead standing there beside her. "Please, Jack." Her voice cracking, she took his hand and gazed up at his broad smile. "Tell me I did the right thing."

Again, the pumpkinhead didn't blink. "I'm sorry, father, but I'm afraid I don't know that."

"Yes." Ozma looked back down the long, empty throne room. "Me, neither."

[hr]

The Emerald City had never looked more gloriously radiant, but that was to be expected. Bungle had only previously graced it with her ordinary presence. Now that she was newly enlightened...

Trotting along Central Avenue toward the main gate, she couldn't feel anything but pity for the poor fools, trudging about their days selling each other bread and milk, laughing at each other's mindless frivolities, possessing no understanding at all of the truth. The world they inhabited closed about them like a palisade wall, a barrier that the merest sort of effort would overcome, but could they be bothered to make that effort?

No, they could not.

At the gate, she kept her nose in the air and didn't bother acknowledging the Soldier with the Green Whiskers when he tipped his hat and said, "Good afternoon, Bungle." Outside the gate, she merely sniffed when Jellia Jamb called, "Don't be late for supper tonight, Bungle. I'm making cheese chowder!" And a hundred yards down the Yellow Brick Road, she only stumbled about half a step at the sight of Glinda herself seated in a golden chair among the flowers, the tips of her fingers pressed together and her eyes unblinking as they followed Bungle's progress.

[i]Let the witch watch,[/i] Bungle thought, flicking her whiskers into a feline chuckle at the word play. After all, she'd found the dusty old books lying atop one of Glinda's bookcases when she'd leaped up there in her ongoing quest to find new napping spots. Most likely, the witch had placed them there in an attempt to hide their contents from anyone enterprising enough to take advantage of them. But of course, she hadn't accounted for Bungle.

Not that Bungle normally cared much for books, but these had had a scent about them, a clear-flowing-water freshness that belied their dust-bedecked outer coverings. And what she'd found inside—the truth about Oz and its place in the literary and actual universe as well as the spell for leaving this realm of never-ending, never-aging, never-changing tedium—the books had opened Bungle's eyes in ways she was certain Glinda had sought to prevent.

And just Glinda, Bungle was now convinced. Ozma's reactions in the throne room earlier had proven to Bungle's satisfaction that Her Majesty had no hand in this cover-up. The softness of her heart had no doubt led her to accept the so-called good witch's assessment of the public domain situation, but when faced with someone truly stalwart, Ozma had bowed to the inevitable and given her leave to go despite whatever dire warnings Glinda may have planted in her ears

It seemed only fitting, therefore, that Glinda witness Bungle's triumph.

The spell had claimed that it could be activated anywhere in a world that had entered the public domain: she'd only come out of the city so as not cause any undo uproar among the citizenry. So she stopped, glanced back at Glinda, spoke the words, performed the gestures, and slipped through the suddenly fuzzy spot that opened in the air before her.

Not knowing what to expect, she spread her legs and whiskers, readied herself to spin in case she began to fall and to slash in case she was beset by the actual humans who were said to inhabit the Reading World. Ears perked and eyes wide, she stepped out into—

A deep dark stretch of woodland?

Bungle glanced quickly around. It didn't look much different from the woods between Munchkinland and the Emerald City. The branches overhead and the roots beneath her paws may have stretched themselves along in a more tangled fashion, perhaps, with the tree trunks a bit mossier and more bulging, the air heavier with the scent of rotting vegetation, and the breeze a bit cooler and damper than she liked.

And the silence! None of the automobiles honking or guns firing or air conditioner units grinding away that she'd read about in the accounts of the Reading World she'd found atop that bookcase! No jabbering mobs of humans lurching about, barely avoiding collisions with each other and stomping on one's tail! No explosions or shouting or airships crashing or—

"By my ears and whiskers!" a pleasant purr of a voice said behind her. "To coin a phrase..."

Turning, Bungle saw a pair of unmistakably feline eyes and a set of grinning feline teeth regarding her from the shadow of a gnarled oak. "And yet," she said, peering more closely at the shadow, "by my own ears and whiskers, you have neither."

The grin widened. "Well, you can't have everything." A large feline shape began darkening the shadows around the eyes and teeth until an actual cat sat there looking back at her. "Where would you put it, for starters?"

Now that she could see the cat, Bungle wished that he'd stayed invisible. Large and ungainly, he looked more like a creature stitched into the shape of a cat from leftover bits and pieces of other animals, and Bungle found herself fervently wishing that he wouldn't prove to be as annoying as Scraps, the [i]other[/i] patchwork person of her acquaintance. "So where are we?" she asked, hoping for a straightforward answer.

"Here." The cat, still grinning, patted the ground in front of him. "Of rather, [i]I'm[/i] here." He lifted his paw and waved it vaguely in Bungle's direction. "You're over there somewhere."

Without another word, Bungle turned and began marching away from him through the woods. The books had told her that the Reading World was a human place full of shabby, secret, concrete alleyways and buildings that metaphorically scraped the sky. She was sure they had to be around here [i]somewhere[/i].

The gray light beside her flickered and puffed into that same big cat. "Such atrocious manners you have!" he said, still grinning. "Aren't you going to ask my name?"

Bungle sighed. "Why would I care?"

"Excellent!" He walked with an odd rocking motion, both his right legs moving forward, then both his left legs. "You're halfway to becoming one of us!"

She gave him a sidelong glance. "And why would I want to do that?"

He gave her that same abominable grin. "Now you're three-fifths of the way." His tail flicked to tap Bungle's back. "We all of us here have titles rather than names, of course: titles show how important one is, after all. I'm the Cheshire Cat, and we shall call you the Glass Cat."

If her fur had been able to bristle, it would've been doing so. "I'm [i]already[/i] called the Glass Cat," she got out through clenched teeth.

"How fortuitous!" His voice was still by far the best part of him, but Bungle found that it was becoming more grating by the moment. "Then you're three-quarters of the way to arriving here from your current state of there!"

"And yet?" She didn't even try to keep her ears up. "I'm not at all interested in being here! I'm interested in the real world, not some turgid, dull, dreary woods!"

"Tulgey," the Cheshire Cat said. "That's the word you're looking for."

Looking over at him, she narrowed her eyes. "What makes you think that?"

"Because, as anyone clever will tell you, it's the right word."

"Well, [i]I've[/i] never heard it before!"

"I'm not surprised." He somehow managed to turn that unusual gait of his into a strut. "I just made it up myself, after all."

And that, Bungle was about to announce with multiple claws against the side of his bloated head, was enough of that. But before she could do more than stop, something ahead in the twilight of the tree canopy began to snuffle and snort. Something large, Bungle thought. Larger than either her or her companion, she was certain, and very possibly larger than a lion or a kalidah.

Sniffing the air brought her nothing but the same damp odor of the place, and as much as she hated to admit it, this Cheshire Cat was her only source of information. "Is that friend or foe ahead?" she murmured.

"Why, foe, of course," he announced as jovially as ever.

Bungle snapped her head in his direction, and the heart-shaped ruby pounded in her chest to see that most of him had gone, only his infernal grin remaining. "It's your final test," the grin said. "To truly become one hundred percent here, you must slay the Jabberwock."

The roar that followed blasted a wave of charnel stink over her so thick, she thought she could feel it spatter her beautiful clearness. The force of it nearly knocked her to the dirt, though it did have the positive effect of blowing every trace of the Cheshire Cat away. She turned her glare toward the sound, and something enormously tall and thin, all arms and teeth and legs and bat-like flapping wings, lurched from behind a tree and towered over her.

She stared up at it. It stared down at her. Then, with much flexing of toe claws and finger claws, much flailing of leathery wings and long, snaky neck as well as much gnashing of peculiarly large, rectangular teeth, the Jabberwock squatted down and roared again.

Without allowing herself to think, Bungle leaped up into the creature's mouth, dug her claws into its tongue, and scrambled for the back of its throat.

Fortunately, its roar choked off almost at once: the sound combined with the stink and the spray of its breath were quickly becoming tiresome. Dashing past the beast's teeth before circumstances could show her whether they were strong enough to shatter solid glass, Bungle didn't pause, leaped the abyss of its gullet, and slashed into the foul meat of its upper esophagus.
 
Hot, sticky fluid drenched her, but the monster's thin neck proved to be its undoing. Bungle's claws tore straight through, and almost before she realized it, she was tumbling out into empty air, the Jabberwock shrieking and writhing and collapsing into a heap that at least cushioned her fall when she dropped onto it.

Blessed silence reigned for a moment, then a voice sang out, "Oh, frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"

Wiping at the horrid redness encrusting her vision, Bungle peered up at the Cheshire Cat stretched grinning along the bough of a nearby tree. "Listen carefully," he said, "and you'll hear a sound that can only be described as 'chortling.'"

For an instant, she considered reacting in an uncouth fashion. But instead, she pressed the pads of one forepaw to the red stone around her neck and let herself concentrate on the sweet fragrance of her room back in the palace, on its many sunbeams and padded little nooks, on Ozma's lovely face.

A shimmery feeling rang humming through her glass, and a puff of clean air—and more interestingly, a puff of clean light—shivered over her. The woods whisked away like a morning fog, and Bungle's next breath smelled the way it was [i]supposed[/i] to smell, everything around her properly green-tinted and warm.

[hr]

"Bungle!" Ozma leaped from her throne, delight and dismay filling her at the sight of the Glass Cat dripping with brownish, reddish goo. "Guards! We need fresh towels here at once!"

Not waiting for them, though, she swooped down upon Bungle, bundled her up in the trailing ends of her gown, and began wiping the filth away as best she could. "Are you all right? What happened? Why did you return so quickly? Was it truly awful?"

"It was...disheartening," Bungle said, but that she wasn't fussing or hissing or trying to wriggle free told Ozma a great deal more than her words. "I don't think I actually reached the Reading World, however, but the place I went, well, I'd rather not return there."

"Indeed," came a very familiar contralto voice.

"Glinda!" Jack Pumpkinhead called, and Ozma looked over to see Glinda the Good herself draped in her usual pure white gown and reclining on a sofa that only appeared in that part of the room whenever the sorceress came to visit. "Have you come for supper?" Jack continued. "Jellia Jamb's making cheese chowder!"

"Thank you for the invitation." Glinda inclined her head toward Jack. "I believe I will accept." She shifted slightly and inclined her head toward Ozma and Bungle. "The public domain is a wild and unpredictable place, and very few are those who have found their way through it to the Reading World beyond."

Bungle's ears perked. "Interesting that you didn't say 'few are [i]we[/i].'"

Glinda's smile always reminded Ozma of a large river, its placid surface giving no hint as to what currents might be running beneath. "Alas, I've been forbidden from making the attempt."

"Forbidden?" Already holding still, Bungle seemed to grow even stiller, her wide eyes turning toward Ozma's. "But then...why did you let me go?"

Ozma kept her attention focused on wiping the muck from Bungle's neck. "You would've gone regardless. And I...I just—" Memories struck her hard,  the wonder and the terror, the casual cruelty, the overwhelming kindness, the vast and indifferent banality of the Reading World.

"Father?" Jack asked quietly. "Is something wrong?"

Grabbing at the anchor of his resonant baritone, Ozma pulled herself back to the present just as a thunder of footsteps rang outside the throne room, courtiers rushing in, their arms burdened with green towels. A bit more effort banished all other thoughts except taking a towel, wiping Bungle's face, and saying, "I'm fine, thank you, Jack. I think, however, that I need to have a good, long talk with Bungle."
 
"Yes." Glinda laughed and stretched. "Perhaps she can get you to see sense."

And if Glinda's smile made Ozma sweat, the sorceress's laugh made her wish she could've spent the entirety of her life as an ignorant boy named Tip.

An impossibility, of course, but that didn't stop Ozma's sigh from feeling as if it came all the way up from her ankles. "For so many years, I've had a tiger by the tail." She nodded to Glinda and was rewarded with the rarest of all sights: her friend, mentor, and confidante blushing. Bending down, Ozma gave Bungle's nose a kiss. "But now that a [i]second[/i] feline's involved, well, it might just be time to mount a true expedition back to...to..."

She couldn't find the words, so she abandoned the effort and instead let her temper rise a bit. "Still, I'm not sure how I feel about being manipulated this way by my most trusted advisor." She shot Glinda a glance. "Or would you have me believe that Bungle just happened upon the exact set of books that would set this chain of events into motion?"

Again, Glinda's smile revealed nothing.

But Bungle gave a loud snort. "I'm inclined to call it happenstance. A truly clever witch, after all, would've arranged for this to have happened much earlier than today."

"Earlier?" Jack came stumping over, his fine green suit always askew no matter how much effort the royal tailors put in to fitting it over his rough wooden frame. "But then we'd have to wait that much longer for supper!"

With a glare, Bungle stopped rubbing her head against the towel in Ozma's hand. "Why do you care about supper? You're no more able to eat than I am!"

Again, Ozma felt most keenly the pumpkinhead's inability to blink. "Why, because everyone's together chatting at supper!" he said, folding his arms. "And that makes it the loveliest time of any day!"

Standing, Ozma let the once-again-transparent cat loose from her arms and caught Jack by the hand. "Very true, my friend." She reached her other hand out to Glinda and couldn't help beaming when the sorceress stepped over and took it. "One might also be tempted to observe, especially in light of Bungle's recent experience, that there's no place like—"

She let Bungle's hiss cut her off. "Finish that sentence," the Glass Cat said, brandishing her claws, "and I shan't be responsible for my actions." Her nose in the air and her tail aloft like flag, she turned and began marching away along the grass-colored carpet.

Ozma laughed, and with the sorceress on one side and the pumpkinhead on the other, she followed Bungle out of the throne room.