After a number of false starts, Uncle Henry located a restaurant where other God-fearing white people seemed comfortable entering, and a few were even safely leaving, which was a good sign. So they went inside.

A staid woman at a counter nodded at them. Her unmoving features looked carved in beef aspic. When she slipped off her stool to show Henry to a table, Dorothy saw that she was tiny. Tiny and stout and wrapped round with shiny red silk. She only came up to Dorothy’s lowest rib. To prevent her from saying A Munchkin! Uncle Henry said to Dorothy, with his eyes, No.

They ate a spicy, peculiar meal, very wet, ful of moist grit. They wouldn’t know how to describe any of it to Aunt Em when they went back, and they were glad she wasn’t there. She would have swooned with the mystery of it. They liked it, though Uncle Henry chewed with the front of his lips clenched and the sides puckered open for air in case he changed his mind midbite.

“Where are these people from? Why are they here?” asked Dorothy in a whisper, pushing a chopstick into her basket so Toto could have something to gnaw.

“They’re furriners from China, which is across the world,” said Uncle Henry. “They came to build the railroad that we traveled on, and they stayed to open laundries and restaurants.”

“Why didn’t they ever come to Kansas?”

“They must be too smart.”

They both laughed at this, turning red. Dorothy could see that Uncle Henry loved her. It wasn’t his fault she seemed out of her mind.

“Uncle Henry,” said Dorothy before they had finished the grassy tea, “I know you’ve nearly poorhoused yourself to bring me here. I know why you and Aunt Em have done it. You want to show me the world and distract me with reality. It’s a good strategy and a mighty sound ambition. I shal try to repay you for your kindness to me by keeping my mouth shut about Oz.”

“Your sainted Aunt Em chooses to keep mum about it, Dorothy, but she knows you’ve had an experience few can match. However you managed to survive from the time the twister snatched our house away until the time you returned from the wilderness—whatever you scrabbled to find and eat that might have caused this weakness in your head—you nonetheless did manage. No one back home expected we’d ever find your corpse, let alone meet up again with your cheery optimistic self. You’re some pioneer, Dorothy. Every minute of your life is its own real miracle. Don’t deny it by fastening upon the temptation of some tomfoolery.”

She chose her words carefuly. “It’s just that it’s al so clear in my mind.”

“A mind is something a young lady from Kansas learns to keep private.”

As they began to pile up their plates, the Munchkin Chinee—that is, the little bowing woman in her silks and satins—scurried to interrupt them, and she brought them each a pastry like a crumpled seedpod.