Somewhere Over The Rainbow

King Of The Forest

     The Wicked Witch laughed as she used the black smoke trailing out of her broomstick to spell out a message in the sky.

     "Who's her? Who's her?" Cowardly Lion asked, terrified.

     "It's the Witch! She's followed us here!" Rhianna answered.

     "'Surrender Dorothy and Rhianna,'" Cowardly Lion read the message.

     The said girls gasped in fear. This wicked woman would not give up. Meanwhile, the Ozians were terrified and confused.

     "Dorothy and Rhianna? Who's Dorothy and Rhianna?" one woman asked.

     "The Wizard will explain it!" another woman spoke as she and another woman started running.

     "To the Wizard!" people started shouting as they ran through the streets to the Wizard's palace.

     "Dear! Whatever shall we do?" Dorothy cried out.

     "Well, we'd better hurry if we're going to see the Wizard!" Scarecrow replied.

     The group followed the crowd to the Wizard's palace. A guard stood in front of the palace doors with a spear in his gloved hands.

"Here! Here, here! Everything is all right," he tried to calm the panicked crowd. "Stop that now, just. . . It's all right! Everything is all right! The great and powerful Oz has got matters well in hand. I hope." He mumbled that last bit so the crowd couldn't hear. "So you can all go home! There's nothing to worry about! Get out of here now, go on! Go on home. Go home." He shooed the crowd away.

But as the citizens of Emerald City went home, Rhianna, Dorothy, Toto, Scarecrow, Tin Man, and Cowardly Lion walked up to the guard.

"If you please, sir, we want to see the Wizard right away. All five of us," Rhianna told him.

"Orders are, nobody can see the great Oz! Not nobody, not nohow!" the guard responded.

     "But. . . But, please! It's very important," Dorothy pleaded.

     "I got a permanent just for the occasion," Cowardly Lion added.

     "Not nobody, not nohow!" the guard shouted at them.

     "But they're Dorothy and Rhianna!" Scarecrow told him, gesturing to the girls.

     The guard's eyes widened as he looked at the girls with shock. "The Witch's Dorothy and Rhianna?" he questioned, to which they nodded. "Well, that makes a difference. Just wait here. I'll announce you at once." He marched inside the palace, closing the door behind him.

"Did you hear that? He'll announce us at once," Scarecrow told his friends excitedly. "I've as good as got my brain."

"I can fairly hear my heart beating," Tin Man said.

"Rhianna and I will be home in time for supper," Dorothy added.

"In another hour, I'll be king of the forest. Long live the king!" Cowardly Lion declared. He walked onto a dais.

"If I were king of the forest—
Not queen, not duke, not prince—
My regal robes of the forest
Would be satin, not cotton, not chintz.
I'd command each thing,
Be it fish or fowl
With a woof! And a woof!
And a royal growl.
As I'd click my heel
All the trees would kneel,
And the mountains bow,
And the bulls kowtow,
And the sparrow would take wing
If I, if I were king.
Each rabbit would show respect to me,
The chipmunks genuflect to me.
Though my tail would lash,
I would show compash
For every underling
If I, if I were king.
Just king."

     Playing along, Dorothy, Rhianna, Scarecrow, and Tin Man bowed down to him. Dorothy and Rhianna acted like flower girls as Scarecrow and Tin Man picked up a rug and draped it around Cowardly Lion's shoulders like a cape, and they went back to the dais. Tin Man then took a vase and used his axe to break it, making it look like a crown, and placed it on Cowardly Lion's head.

"Monarch of all I survey.
Monarch of all I survey."

     Rhianna, Dorothy, Scarecrow, and Tin Man bowed down to him.

"Your Majesty, if you were king, you wouldn't be afraid of anything?" Dorothy asked him.

"Not nobody, not nohow!" he replied.

"Not even a rhinoceros?" Tin Man asked.

"'Imposs-erus!'" Cowardly Lion replied.

"How about a hippopotamus?" Rhianna questioned.

"Why, I'd trash him from top to 'bottom-us,'" Cowardly Lion responded.

"Supposing you met an elephant?" Dorothy asked.

"I'd wrap him up in 'cellophant'!" Cowardly Lion replied.

"What if it were a brontosaurus?" Scarecrow asked.

"I'd show him who was King of the Forest!" Cowardly Lion told him.

"How?" his friends asked.

"How?" he repeated, and he dropped the rug. "Courage! What makes a king out of a slave? Courage! What makes a flag on the mast to wave? Courage! What makes the elephant charge his tusk in the misty mist or the dusky dusk? What makes the muskrat guard his musk? Courage! What makes the sphinx the Seventh Wonder? Courage! What makes the dawn come up like thunder? Courage! What makes the Hottentot so hot? What puts the ape in apricot? What have they got that I ain't got?"

"Courage!" Rhianna, Dorothy, Scarecrow, and Tin Man replied at the same time.

     "You can say that again," Cowardly Lion said with a smile, but then he stopped, looking confused. "Hmm?"