“We’d tear him limb from limb, if he existed,” said Caraway Coyle. “Watch me do a three-quarter snarl. It’s so cool.” He obliged, looking suddenly like a hydro-encephalitic dog with a mosquito in its nose.

“I thought he was the Wizard of all Oz,” said Brrr, trying to bring them back to it.

“Anyone can name himself whatever he wants,” said Cubbins. “Wizard of Oz or WOO or the King of Beasts.”

“I know this much,” said Brrr. “He sends human soldiers into our forest.”

“A good reason to stay out of his way,” replied Cubbins. “Deep down, we wild Bears are unrepentant followers of Ozma, though she has been long disappeared from the public eye and is presumed dead. Still, we carry a torch for her. In her time, she was less hostile to beasts in the wild than the current administration is. May she come again. They say she will return to rescue Oz in its time of tribulation.”

“Who says?” asked Brrr.

“General prophecy. Common sense. I don’t know.”

“People who say it, say it,” barked Ursaless.

Cubbins continued. “Well, all I want to know is, what’s keeping her? It’s tribulating enough these days. Threat and panic everywhere you turn. We have to wait until it gets worse?”

“Listen to smartypants there. We never believed in Ozma,” said Ursaless. “I never did, so you never did either. I’m the Queen.”

“I don’t believe in you, so there,” said Shaveen, though when the Queen glared at her she pointed at Brrr.

“You have your hands full, governing this crew,” murmured Brrr.

“Well,” said Ursaless, “some say the brighter among us left for the human world. More possibilities for advancement, et cetera. Maybe they had more get-up-and-go. Personally, I think it takes character to stay here and hold down a court. Maintain a presence in the ancestral wild. The forest bucolic.” She made it sound like a paradise, the pestering flies, the drunken circularities repeated by an inbred family. “Anyway, when we bother to believe in her, we wait for the return of Ozma. No good comes of commerce with humans. Mark my words, you Lion.”

“But do they come back? Your cousins in the human world?”

“Cubbins, can you help our guest? I’m growing weary of giving an audience.” She let loose a flagrantly stagy yawn, and returned to the dollop of honey dripping off a wedge of comb the size of a small boulder.

Cubbins nodded to the others and jerked his head to the Lion: this way, friend. The Lion followed him, trying hard not to waggle his rump. As he passed, though, the Bears made remarks under their breath.

“Captivating family you have here,” said Brrr, when they were far enough away to avoid being overheard.

“Go easy on them,” said Cubbins. “They can’t really help it. It’s what happens to us Bears.”

“You go loopy on honey?”

“I don’t think the honey has much to do with it,” said Cubbins, “though I can’t really be sure. I don’t care for fortified honey yet, so I don’t partake. Still, I’ve observed that a taste for the stuff develops as Bears mature. In any case, I suspect it’s just that we don’t have much of a race memory, that’s all. Bears are creatures in the present. Any Bear who finds that the present just isn’t enough, well, that Bear strikes out for the human world-the Tenniken of which you speak, or other parts. Maybe they want to see if they can acclimate themselves to a weight of memory under which humans live and are pinned. I have no idea if they manage, for they never come back. Maybe the WOO gets them. Who knows?”