See and Be Seen! Tizzy Splendthrift, society spy, reports on a very naughty party held last night in an undisclosed private residence in the tony district of Goldhaven, to which Oz’s glittera-muses, the great and the good from as far up the social pyramid as can be mounted, got up to no good-and we do mean up…

Whipping the pages so hard they tore. The financial columns and the editorial pages arguing about whether Nick Chopper was well connected enough to bring the Throne’s attention to a proposed scheme of merit-credits for the tiktok workforce…. Whether it would be any good for Oz…. The social obligations, if any, of rewarding clockwork for ticking on time…. The suffering of laborers and their families if a general strike was called…. NICK CHOPPER: BLEEDING HEART OR BLOODY HEARTLESS?

Brrr didn’t care. It was the parties he wasn’t invited to, the salons, the committee meetings dedicated to raising funds to repaper the libraries in imperial Ozma style, now that it was no longer forbidden to speak her name…. The drunken lunches of the newsmongers who laughed at the excesses of the high and mighty! He’d have been glad enough to rag on his former friends, had he been invited to do so.

Then some journalist, writing under a nom d’espionnage, published a column questioning the correctness of the Palace’s having awarded even so much as a Low Plenipotentiaryship to a Lion who had been, after all, a collaborationist. He’d worked at the Wizard’s bidding, hadn’t he-when more respectable Animals were imprisoned, or had fled into the outback?

A collaborationist. Working for the Wizard, who had done so much to oppress the Animals of Oz. When once Brrr had been tarred as the Witch’s familiar, now he was a lackey of her enemy. He was a turncoat for all seasons. You couldn’t win.

Perhaps, the argument went, if the Cowardly Lion were stripped of his honors, hardworking Animals would feel justified, at last, in returning to the cities and towns of Oz and entering the workforce again. Hadn’t Brrr been known as a Cowardly Lion? If he were all that brave, he’d surrender his honors himself, voluntarily, for the symbolism of it. His apology to the nation.

Let him be rehabilitated as a common citizen and join the Animal workforce that Loyal Oz hoped would soon be returning from exile-those who hadn’t been exterminated, that is. Bring back the Animals as a backup labor resource. Show the agitated millworkers they could be let go if they made trouble.

So off then, outa there, but good. Brrr tried not to think of the injustice of it, but of course the injustice greeted him daily. Was there any reason he should be so embattled other than the maliciousness of fate?

He didn’t avoid the thought of Dorothy; he didn’t need to. She evaporated out of Oz as successfully as the Witch herself had. One would have thought Dorothy had been brought from abroad for no other reason than to have her wet way with the Witch. But that was paranoia, wasn’t it? Fuck Dorothy. In a manner of speaking.