The Forest Monster of Oz Part 13

"He did it to several of the small and helpless beasts in the Lunechien Forest," said the simian. "Even insects are not safe from him."

"Well, he is a spider, as far as that goes," replied the Cowardly Lion.

"Insects are a normal diet for him. But small children are not! How dare he even think of hurting little Dorothy? What a wicked creature he really is! Where is he? Let me have a talk with this nasty arachnid!"

"That's the spirit!" cheered Cubby. "Come on, let's go!"

The Lion had already forgotten about his exhausted condition. The thought of Dorothy being in danger had taken precedence over all other thoughts in his head. He followed Cubby closely until he felt he had to rest. They traveled and rested for as long as it took before at last they reached the border of the Lunechien Forest of Oz.

"I sure hope we can find him in his sleep again," whispered the Lion to himself.

"Come on," said Cubby. "I know where his lair is. If he hasn't moved on to more densely populated territory, that is."

"W-wouldn't it be rude to just b-barge in on him?" said the Lion, his cowardly nature suddenly returning.

"I don't think so," replied Cubby. "I think we need to stop his wicked deeds as soon as we possibly can. We can't let him get to Dorothy, you know. Nor the Scarecrow or the Tin Woodman or the Woggle-Bug. No one is safe as long as the Forest Monster is at large."

"You're right!" said the Cowardly Lion dutifully. "We are the only ones who can stop him. Where is this overgrown daddy long legs?"

Cubby led the huge animal through the forest to the lair of the gigantic spider. When they got there, they were met with a most unexpected sight.

There was a pack of Land Sharks. They looked frightful and hungry, and they surrounded Ozma, Tweaty, Nibbles, Lisa, Hootsey and Elephant.

"Those are some of my friends who live in this forest," explained Cubby.

"Except for the little girl. I don't know who she is. Is that Dorothy?"

"No," said the Lion, his voice sounding hollow. "What is she doing here?

Why are your friends here? They should have followed your act and fled."

"It iss dinnah time!" shouted one of the Land Sharks. "I believe ve shall bekin vith ze big gray helefantt!"

"No!" said Cubby. "Don't let them do it!"

The Cowardly Lion trembled with fear as he watched the huge Land Shark turn to face the little monkey. When the Shark moved toward Cubby with its jagged teeth exposed, he pounced on it.

"Get ziss kitty offa my back!" screamed the Land Shark. "It ha.s.s sharp clawss, und zay are hurtin' me!"

The Lion jumped off, and the impact of his jump knocked the Land Shark over. To tell the truth, the Land Shark's legs were rather thin, and his balance was not very good to begin with. This displayed to the others the Land Sharks' main weakness. Thinking quickly on his feet, Elephant raced toward another of the Sharks and knocked it over on its face. The Shark's front teeth were dislodged, and it ran behind its fellows.

Without its teeth, the Land Shark was much more vulnerable than it had been previously. Seeing that the other Land Sharks were distracted by the Lion and Elephant, the Forest Monster took its opportunity to strike. Within moments, the Land Shark was no longer a threat to anyone, having been drained of all of its life force. The added burst of energy gave the Forest Monster more ability to take out more of the Land Sharks. But he was so preoccupied that he failed to notice Watts and his four companions surround him with their ferocious teeth bared. This caused the Forest Monster to hesitate while he sized up the situation.

Here he was, the bad guy, trying to get bigger and stronger at the expense of the Land Sharks, yet at the same time inadvertently saving Ozma and her friends, and now Ozma's forces were bearing down on him while his back was turned. "Hey! This is grossly unfair," he said, almost crying. Just then, a group of Droffs, accompanied by several Sniffers and Stinkfoots, arrived. The confusion allowed Ozma to use her silver wand to cast a spell. Between the Forest Monster, Elephant, the Stinkfoots, Sniffers and the Cowardly Lion, the Land Sharks were disabled within a matter of forty-five minutes. Those who had not been deenergized by the Forest Monster or otherwise rendered harmless by one of the others had fallen to their spindly knees and were pleading for mercy. One was staring directly into the foot of one of the newcomers and crying hysterically. All the while, Ozma had been using her wand to turn the Sharks into tiny snails, which Cubby picked up and put into a nearby pond.

"It is finished," said the Cowardly Lion. He pushed his aching body to the ground and licked one of his wounds. "The Land Sharks are subdued. I don't think they will have the same cruel spirits now that they are snails."

"Indeed not," said the Forest Monster. Turning to the Cowardly Lion, he added, "You fought bravely. For one who is called Cowardly, you certainly didn't show any signs of having earned that t.i.tle in this battle."

"But I felt them," sighed the Lion. "I was only acting brave because I saw my friends in danger. To tell you the truth, I was scared out of my wits the whole time."

"Your friends?" echoed the Forest Monster. "You call us your friends?

Even me? Do you not remember who I am, and what you once did to me while I was sleeping?"

The Lion did a double take. "Oh, yeah! I was so caught up in the battle with the Land Sharks that I forgot what I had come here for."

"I was, too!" agreed Cubby. "But the Cowardly Lion was coming here to have a talk with you," he added, remembering the words that the Lion had spoken to him earlier. "He said that he was ashamed of what he did to you without giving you a sporting chance." These last words on Cubby's part were intended only as an observation. He had no idea that they would have any effect on the Forest Monster at all.

"Is that so?" wondered the huge spider. "You mean to say that you came here to apologize to me? And you even counted me among your friends. How wrong I have been in my a.s.sessment of your character. You are not so cowardly after all. In fact, I feel proud to have fought alongside of you. I would like to start over and get to know you for what you really are."

The Lion was taken aback. "You would?" he said. He had no idea what else to say. He had come to the Lunechien Forest thinking that he was to face the greatest enemy he had ever known, and that enemy was speaking to him as if they were old friends who had just met after a long period of separation.

"Of course I would," said the spider. "I see now that I was wrong to hate you so badly when I didn't even know what sort of fellow you really were. And seeing how I felt when we were attacked by those Land Sharks without having any way to fight them off showed me how grossly unfair I was for having taken the energy from helpless insects and animals. I was as bad as them, and I don't ever want to be like that again! It's much too frightful. I'd rather have a solid group of friends than have all the power in the world."

"I think I am guilty of the same thing," sighed the Lion, still a little spooked by the abruptness of the Monster's turnabout in nature. "I knocked your head off as you slept, but I didn't know what you were like, either. All I knew was what I was told: that you were eating all of the lions and the other animals, and that they wanted to make me their king if I stopped you."

"So you are their king now," said the Forest Monster. "I do not begrudge you the position any more. You are welcome to it. I suddenly feel like I don't care for any position of power any more. When I was gaining the power I now possess, I was allowing myself to be blind to anything but my ever-growing hatred of you. Now that I see how unfounded that hatred really was, I feel that it was I who was the true coward. I was sapping the life energy from countless helpless creatures. I did not give them any sporting chance, either. Nor did I have any excuse to justify what I was doing except that I wanted revenge. It is I who should feel ashamed of himself, not you. Now I have all of this power and strength that was brought about by my hate, and it is no longer of any value to me. All it has done was to make me all the more angry and heartless. If this is the price of strength, I think I'd rather be weak. It is far better to be small and have friends than to have all the strength in the universe but be so full of anger and resentment that you can't even enjoy it."

"So now that you have become a mountain of power," replied the Lion, "you no longer care to be powerful?"

"Exactly," sighed the Forest Monster. "If there were a way to reverse time and put things back as they should be, before I ever hurt anyone, I would do it. I wish I could apologize to all of the poor animals that I sapped. If their spirits are still in the vicinity, I hope they see how utterly foolish I feel for having taken such unfair advantage of them."

"It is very sad that so many of our friends and families had to be destroyed in order for you to have learned this lesson," said Elephant, thinking sadly of the loss to the forest and its denizens. "But I hope that you will try to reverse your reputation now by putting your strength to good use. It is hard to forget what you did, but I think that, in time, we will all be able to accept you as a neighbor. At least, if you act like one."

"Oh, that I will do," said the spider gratefully. "I will do all that I can to make up for my past misbehaving."

"Then it seems we are no longer needed," said one of the Sniffers. "We met the Droffs on our way here, and they have agreed to help us plow our fields. If our job here is done, I think we should like to go home and get started."

"Me wants to plow fields," said the Droff who stood beside him.

"Then something positive did come of all this tragedy," said Hootsey.

"Not only have the Sniffers and the Stinkfoots made friends with the Droffs, but the Forest Monster has had a major-league change of heart.

But can we at least find the empty sh.e.l.ls of our families and give them a proper burial?"

"That would be right," agreed the Forest Monster.

"Wait a minute," said Ozma. "You mean to say that the bodies are still around? You didn't devour them entirely?"

"No," explained the Monster. "I only drained them of their energy. I never actually hurt their physical bodies. Only their internal energy."

"And their energies are still inside of you," observed Lisa, catching on to what Ozma was getting at. "So you never actually _killed_ them! Their bodies are still alive, but dormant because they have no life energy.

That means that, if we could reverse the process, we could put all of their energy back into their bodies again!"

"It would," agreed Ozma, "if the Forest Monster would agree to do this." She turned to the tremendous arachnid. "It will probably mean that you will have to allow yourself to become small again. I don't mean as small as you were when the Cowardly Lion first met you, either. I mean that you will again be reduced to the size of a regular, normal spider in order to restore all that you have wronged to their former liveliness."

"Oh, yes!" said the Forest Monster. "This I will gladly do! I am happy to go back to that small size. It allows me to maintain a lower profile, and I would like the opportunity to practice spinning my webs in private. I'll bet that, in time, I will be able to spin the most gorgeous webs you can imagine! If that comes to pa.s.s, I would consider it a great honor if one of my masterpieces could be coated in silver and gold, I should like to give it to Your Majesty as a gift."

"I would be delighted to receive it, I'm sure," said Ozma kindly, though she was not sure what she would actually do with such a treasure. "But I think it is now time to restore the Lunechien beasts."

"I agree," said the Cowardly Lion. "And, as everything seems to have come out well, I think it is time I head home to the Forest where I am now king. I've already been away too long as it is."

"Of course," said Ozma, taking his paw in her hand. "Thank you for all your help."

"Think nothing of it, my Queen," he said. Then he lumbered off toward Lion Country.

"And now," continued Ozma, "back to the job at hand." She put her fingertips to her temples and concentrated. The Forest Monster felt a slight tingling sensation in his heart, but nothing else happened.