By : L. Frank Baum (1856 - 1919)
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Uncle Henry has been ordered by his doctor to take a vacation from the stress and labor of having to replace the Kansas farmhouse due to the first one being swept away in a cyclone. He is accompanied by his adolescent niece, Dorothy Gale (this is the first of the Oz books in which the reader learns her last name), while aboard a small steamship headed to Australia while Aunt Em and Dorothy's pet dog Toto, stay behind to look after the newly built farmhouse. While traveling on the sea, a terrible storm suddenly hits, bringing rain and lightning, tossing the little ship violently over the waves. Henry and Dorothy are separated when she is accidentally thrown overboard and cast away into the water along with Billina, a yellow hen that was also on board. The two take refuge in a wooden chicken-coop floating nearby.
The next morning Dorothy and Billina wash ashore to an unknown region. Once on dry land, Billina scrates around the beach to find food. Her beak strikes metal, finding a key. Dorothy holds onto it, reasoning that all keys must open something. In Dorothy's search for food, they come across a message inscribed in the sand: "BEWARE THE WHEELERS"! Dorothy soon comes across two trees, one bearing lunch-boxes and one bearing dinner pails. Dorothy picks something to eat from a lunch-box tree. She guesses that they are in a "fairy country" because lunch boxes do not grow on trees in ordinary countries, and only in a fairy country would an animal like Billina be able to talk. However, Dorothy knows they are not in the Land of Oz because that country has no coastline. After the meal, they meet these gaudily dressed, loud-yelling baddies who have wheels instead of hands and feet, and roll around on all fours. Dorothy and Billina climb a small rocky mountain to escape them and find a door carved into its side. Having found the key on the beach, they open it and find Tik-Tok, a round copper mechanical man whom they activate by winding up all three of his clockwork motors (one each for thinking, motion and speech) with the key like a wind-up toy.
Tik-Tok informs Dorothy and Billina that they are in the Land of Ev, which has recently lost its royal family due to the King of Ev selling them to the Nome King, who rules in a neighboring underground kingdom. Afterwards, the King regretted what he had done and in despair jumped off a cliff into the sea and was drowned. Tik-Tok protects Dorothy and Billina from the Wheelers and takes them to the royal residence where Princess Langwidere resides. Langwidere is the spoiled and highly vain niece of the deceased king of Ev, and she has many exchangeable, detachable heads. When Dorothy refuses to let Langwidere take her head and add it to her collection, Langwidere has a tantrum and locks Dorothy in a high tower within the palace.
Luckily, Princess Ozma and her Royal Court of Oz, (many of whom appeared in the two previous Oz books) just happen to cross over the Deadly Desert on a mission to free the royal family from the Nome King. Upon arriving, Ozma takes charge and has Dorothy, Billina and Tik-Tok released from Langwidere's custody. Cheerful reunions ensue with the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion, and new introductions are made to Ozma and the Hungry Tiger, a massive tiger who desires to eat fat babies, but is prevented from doing so by his conscience.
The expedition journeys to the underground kingdom of the Nomes, where the Nome King reveals that he has magically transformed the royal family into decor ornaments. When Ozma asks him to release them, he offers a bargain: the Oz people may enter his chambers and try to guess which of the Nome King's many ornaments they are, but if they fail to guess correctly, they will also become ornaments themselves. Ozma, the twenty-seven soldiers of the Royal Army of Oz, including the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and Tik-Tok all suffer this bizarre fate. Dorothy escapes it only by luckily touching a purple ornament in one of her guesses. When the guests from Oz retire one night, Billina sleeps under the King's throne and overhears the King telling his chief steward how one can tell which of the ornaments were once people. She also learns that the King's magic powers reside in the Magic Belt that he wears.
Billina was originally not going to be allowed to guess, but she so infuriates the Nome King by laying an egg under his throne (eggs are poison to Nomes) that he orders her to take her chances of being transformed by guessing. Since she knows the secret of the transformations, all of her guesses turn out to be right. The enraged Nome King refuses to honor his promise to let the Oz people and the Ev royal family go; he commands his army to recapture all of them by force. The Scarecrow throws two of Billina's eggs, which he had luckily kept, into the Nome King's face. While the King is blinded by egg in his eyes, Dorothy takes his magic belt and uses its power to rout his army.
After returning the royal family of Ev (the queen mother, five boys, and five girls) to their rightful forms and place, Ozma, Dorothy, and the others finally return to the country of Oz where a great victory celebration is held in the Emerald City's royal palace. Dorothy is officially made a Princess of Oz, Billina elects to remain in Oz, and Ozma uses the magic belt to send Dorothy to Kansas where she is happily reunited with her Uncle Henry.
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