“Is there a moral to this story?”

“One day she crossed the road. Do you know why the chicken crossed the road?”

“Is this a joke?”

Nothing was a joke to Dorothy. “Because I was on the other side,” she finished. “I was standing on one foot and singing a little song about, oh, I don’t know what. And that brave little hen crossed the dangerous road to be with me.”

“What happened to her?”

“One Saturday night Uncle Henry wrung her neck and Auntie Em made chicken stew. I cried and cried but actually she tasted pretty good.”

Brrr shook his head. “I’m not getting the point of this, Dorothy. I think you’ve been away from your own kind too long.”

“That is exactly my point!” she exclaimed. “You see, I lost my parents, too. Auntie Em and Uncle Henry aren’t even relatives. They wrote away to an orphanage in Independence, Missouri, requesting someone because Auntie Em needed some help around the house, what with her sciatica. I’m who they got.” She chewed her pigtail. “Perhaps they regret it now, or maybe not. Hard to say.”

“Dorothy,” said Brrr, “I was about to take a nap.”

“Sorry. The point is: You and I are more alike than you think. And ornery as Auntie Em could be, and pigheaded as Uncle Henry is, they are my own family now, and I miss them and love them. I would cross the road for them, like my pet hen did for me. You must feel no different about your own family.”

“With all due respect, I have no family, Dorothy.”

She put her arms around him, which was an odd comfort.

“Take care of Liir,” she whispered. “Okay? He has no family either. And he’s a little…well, dim.”

“I don’t have any obligations to that boy.” Brrr was all too aware how he had failed Jemmsy and Cubbins. Better that Liir should get on in his life without being shackled with a big burly Lion for a sidekick.

“For me?” she said. “If the Witch was his mother, my word: it’s my fault he’s an orphan now, too. Like me and you both. I can’t bring him home with me, and I daren’t leave him alone. He needs someone, Brrr, and so do you.”

He pulled away from her, uncomfortable with this consultation. She sat with her hands folded in her lap, gravely. She was waiting for a promise. There was something eerie about her gentle manner and her steely patience. Winds would wear a cliff down to a stony strand before she would change her mind about the goodness of the world.

He had to love her for it. He kissed her furrily. He knew she was taking this as a promise to regard Liir as his own family, but he was just getting rid of her. He wasn’t in a position to take care of a minor, not when he was so minor himself.

“Good-bye, Dorothy,” he said. “I hope they learn to love you at home as much as we love you here.”