“Thank you, your Ozness,” said Brrr, hoping it was a joke, hoping if he played along he’d end up happy. The WOO placed the medal around his neck. Had Jemmsy’s medal for courage been as cheaply manufactured, as odious? Brrr lifted the medal to sniff it, to bring back Jemmsy. A pin mounted on the back cut the softer part of the pad of his paw.

“I can’t accept this-” he began to say, but the Wizard had moved on to address Dorothy, and the little girl was beaming in such high hopes of an exit visa from Oz that the Lion didn’t have the nerve to interrupt.

Still, as they were dismissed and ushered away, Brrr continued to imagine that he might somehow parry the dubious honor into a rehabilitation, perhaps even a position in the Wizard’s court. He was mistaken, though. His timing couldn’t have been worse. The Wizard’s long reign had come to an end at last. Oscar Zoroaster Diggs, the great and powerful WOO, abdicated the throne and departed the Emerald City by a hot-air balloon, said to be the way he had arrived four decades earlier. Why, why leave now, when his adversary, the Wicked Witch, was finally done for? No one was certain. Perhaps the crafty old geezer could hear that palace knives were being sharpened for a use more sinister than the carving of rump roast.

“Cowardly Lion,” said Dorothy to him, snapping her fingers in his face to get his attention. “With any luck my visit is drawing to a close, and I need to talk to you before I go.”

He roused himself from the lethargy of resentment. Dorothy shut the door to the chamber of the shabby guesthouse in which he was lodged. There was no direct light, given that to the north a government bureau loomed six stories above them. “Sadly in need of redecoration,” said Dorothy, smoothing her skirt over her behind and sitting down on the chenille bedspread, “but nothing compared to what Auntie Em and Uncle Henry are faced with, given that I set out from home bringing the whole house with me.”

“Are you making the rounds, dispensing last little bromides? You can save your breath.”

“Don’t be like that. When the time comes for me to leave, I know you won’t want to make a public fuss over me. So I’ve come to say something in private.”

Brrr hadn’t actually planned to attend Dorothy’s valedictory session. He just nodded at her: Go on.

“I love your pals, you know; the Scarecrow and the Woodman. But I love them for their quaintness, while I love you for the animal in you.”

In most Animal circles referring to one’s animal instinct would be considered a ferocious insult. But Brrr thought it best not to challenge Dorothy to a duel at this stage. He’d probably lose.

“You see, I grew up on a farm. I had a little pet hen once. She followed me around, in and out of the kitchen, into the farmyard. She couldn’t speak, of course. We’re talking Kansas, where free speech in general is not highly prized.”