could get quite annoyed with us for feeding them
such tiny morsels. Okay. We'll let them go. But what about her?" he
said, pointing to Ozma. "She would be quite a delicacy."

"Delicacy?" echoed Ozma. "I am not a delicacy. I am Ozma, Queen of Oz!"

The marshmallow man looked at the child and giggled. "You are the Queen
of something? Yeah, right! And I suppose that next you're going to tell
me that mortal men will one day be able to travel to the moon and back.
Ha! That's a laugh!"

"But it's true!" argued Elephant. "Ozma is the ruler of Oz."

"Indeed," added Lisa. "I'll admit, I was also a little shaken when I
first learned that the Queen of Oz was a little girl. But you must
understand that Ozma is of Fairy descent. She is not like a mortal child
at all. She has special abilities and powers that..."

[Illustration: Elephant and others in Cages]

"Silence!" shouted the marshmallow man. "I am not interested in hearing
your lies! This child is simply a tender and mouthwatering human
delicacy for the crocodiles to eat! That is all!" He looked at Ozma and
laughed. "Fairy descent? This is not a Fairy! I know about these things!
Fairies are tiny little critters with wings like those on one of our
dragonflies. This is just a human child. A perfectly ordinary human
child!"

Ozma looked at him indignantly, but she said nothing more. She knew that
it would be hard to convince anyone of her origin without some sort of
proof. And, indeed, what would serve as sufficient proof to convince
this Doubting Thomas? She knew all too well that, throughout history,
skeptics have always been known to cling to what they thought to be
truth, even when it was a foolish belief that they were clinging to.
Indeed, mortals in America had placed a great deal of faith in a
substance called radium. A highly radioactive and dangerous substance,
radium was being treated as a miracle medicine that had been hailed as a
cure-all for anything! This marshmallow man was every bit as
small-minded as the mortal men. If she were going to prove her position
and power, she would have to break through the imaginary wall that he
had built up in his mind concerning the proper look of Queens and
Fairies.

"My good man," she said in her most dignified voice, "I can understand
why you might assume what you do. It is true that I look more like a
little girl than the ruler of a vast country like Oz. And it is true
that some Fairy groups can be described as you hav