While Gordon was still taking in the sights, a gigantic woman stepped into view. She was so tall that he had to tilt his head back in order to make out her facial features more clearly. She had a beauty and an elegance about her, just as Elma did, albeit without the sweet feminine look in Elma’s eyes. This woman had more of a proud haughty beauty, but dressed in a similar long elegant fashion to Elma’s. She stooped down and enclosed Gordon in her fingers. He estimated that he was no taller than one of her fingers which now surrounded him, holding him gently. There was no risk of him slipping out of her hand and falling to the ground.

The giantess drew him right up to her face.

He remembered reading of the giantess Mrs Yoop, who had teased the native Oz boy Woot the Wanderer along with the Tin Woodman and the Scarecrow, by changing their forms. (See L Frank Baum’s novel “The Tin Woodman of Oz.”) Ozma had restored the natural forms of the three travellers, but only at the cost of exhanging Woot’s green monkey form for Mrs Yoop’s form, after Ozma had turned Mrs Yoop into a duplicate of Woot the Wanderer. Thus Woot got his original form back, and Mrs Yoop was stuck with the appearance of the green monkey which she had previously forced on Woot purely for her own amusement. Had Mrs Yoop now found some way to restore her form to normal? The book had stated that not even Mrs Yoop could reverse one of her own transformations, and the green monkey form had been so powerful an alteration that even Ozma could not reverse it, only exchange it for another.

“Are you Mrs Yoop?” asked Gordon.

“Not a bit,” said the giantess, “Wasn’t she that Yookoohoo who ran afoul of Ozma such a long time ago?”

“That’s right, at least as far as I’ve read,” said Gordon, “I hope you’re not thinking of transforming me into something else like she did to Woot the Wanderer and the others.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” said the giantess, “My name is Marva. I’m not a Yookoohoo. I couldn’t turn you into something else even if I wanted to, and why in Oz would I? You look so good to eat just as you are. I’m going to take you home and gobble you all up.”

“Are you serious?” he asked.

“Of course I am,” said Marva, “You’ve nothing to worry about. Nobody ever gets hurt in Oz, and my tummy would simply love to have you there. I’ll just pop you into my mouth now and carry you that way, so that I can look forward to my lunch even more. You’ll make a fabulous treat, I’m sure. You’ll have plenty of time to think about it first, while you’re in there. I’m not going to swallow you until I get home and take you out and serve you properly at the table and then set about formally eating you.”

To his complete bewilderment, Marva opened her mouth wide in front of him and placed him inside it. She closed her mouth, leaving him in complete darkness and began walking.

Gordon wondered why, in all his conversations with Elma, she had never even mentioned that a giantess lived in her home town, let alone the fact that the woman looked upon their citizens as tasty delicacies to be used as meals for her personal enjoyment. He thought of her detailed announcement about when she would proceed to swallow him. Then he remembered his penlight torch and took it out of his pocket. He turned it on and lit up her surrounding mouth. Her teeth were all around him, except for the back of her mouth. He held onto one of her lower teeth, using the gaps between them to position his free hand, while he leaned his head a little over the back of her mouth and shone the torch down into her throat. In some ways the cavern below reminded him of the cave that had brought him to Oz. This was a vertical cavern which would take him on quite a different journey. It seemed wide enough to swallow him easily, and slippery enough, that he would slide down inside her throat, the moment that she exerted enough force to gulp him down. As the giantess appeared to have her heart set on the idea, and certainly possessed the size advantage to carry it out, he decided that there was nothing for him to do but make the best of it. He had seen many of the wonders of Oz, which would not have been possible if he had stayed safe in Australia. He wouldn’t have missed those experiences for anything. He would just have to look up the giantess Marva as one of the less conventional wonders of Oz.

After some time, her mouth opened, and he switched off his torch and put it back in his pocket. He saw Marva’s finger and thumb approaching her mouth, as they moved closer and then reached in and plucked him out. He looked around and could see that he was in an immense kitchen, in front of an open oven.

Marva placed him on a baking dish which was already in the oven.

“Don’t worry. I won’t leave you in there for too long. It’s just to warm you up a bit. I’ll be back to eat you for my lunch in a little while,” she said, and closed the oven door.

He looked out of the oven window, as Marva walked out of the room. Just like that she was preparing to have him for her lunch. Marva had left the room using a doorway at the side of the room. Only seconds later, he saw the back door of the kitchen open, and into the room stepped Princess Elma, except that now she was absolutely gigantic, just like Marva!

Elma walked briskly over to the oven and opened it. She took him out and ran out of the kitchen into Marva’s garden, and then into the gigantic forest.

“No wonder the trees were so tall,” said Gordon.

“I heard what she said about eating you and followed her here,” said Elma, “I’m glad she decided to cook you first, or I might not have been able to rescue you in time. You saved me in the alley back in Australia, and I was worried that I might not be able to save you in return.”

“But how did you become a giant?” asked Gordon.

“I AM a giant,” said Elma, “Everyone in Big Wig Town is a giant, but only while we’re wearing our wigs. They grow and make us grow with them. That’s what I was trying to tell you when you saved me, but my throat was very sore.”

“You were saying ‘Scarecrow in Oz … only in Oz’,” said Gordon, “I thought you were talking about wanting to get back to Oz as it was the only place to see the Scarecrow.”

“I was saying ‘hair grow in Oz … only in Oz’,” said Elma, “When those two brutes first attacked me, I put my wig on for the first time in 14 years in Australia. I wanted to grow to giant size, so that they couldn’t menace me anymore. However, the wig did nothing for me. In that second, I realised that the wig only works in Oz. That’s why I was trying to tell you that I needed my wig much more than my jewels. Although you were good enough to recover  them both for me.”

(The Big Wigs were also introduced in the 1926 novel ‘The Hungry Tiger of Oz’ by Ruth Plumly Thompson.)

“My goodness!” said Gordon, “If you’d also thought I looked good enough to eat …”

“I’m sure you would be,” said Elma, “But it’s not polite to eat one’s friends, as the Hungry Tiger has been teaching Eureka the kitten, just like we were talking about in the Emerald City last night. Besides, you once saved me, and …. I invited you to come to Oz with me, because I love you.”

She pressed her giant lips to his face affectionately.

“If you like me too, I can take my wig off and give you a regular kiss as well,” she added.

“I’ve loved you since I first laid eyes on you after taking on those men in the alley,”  said Gordon, “Now I see what you meant about their being an abundance of living space for me in the spare rooms of your castle. You meant that I’d have more than enough space in any one single room.”

“I do hope you’ll stay here with me,” said Elma, “You’ll have to look out for Marva, as I imagine she’ll always dream of recapturing you and one day eating you, but I’d hate to see you leave.”

“I couldn’t picture myself walking away from your company,” said Gordon, “I’ll take my chances with Marva. At least, if she does manage to gobble me down one day, I’ll have had such a wonderful time with you first.”

Now it all made sense. The identical wig was used not for visual appearance’s sake, but to alter her size to that of a giantess. He would be living with a giant princess in a giant town, but she could become his size and explore all of Oz with him whenever she felt like it.

Elma took off her wig.

Gordon watched in awe as she shrank to his size, with the wig shrinking at the same rate just as long as it was no longer resting on her head. Then he took her in his arms and gave her the regular kiss that she had mentioned. 1992 onwards in Oz would be as good as 1900 to 1978 in Oz.

“I know for sure that I’ve found the place I’d like to stay in,” said Gordon.

“And I know something for sure too,” said Elma, “When I first left Oz, I felt that something had always been missing, despite the spleandour of all the four countries in Oz, and the Emerald City at the centre. There had never been anyone special for me to share it with. And there wasn’t anyone special in Australia either, until you grew up so that I could meet you. A year ago, I despaired of meeting such a person, until I saw you looking down at me after you’d fought off those men.”

“I was feeling that way, about walking in scenic parks without a girlfriend to hold hands with,” said Gordon, “Perhaps we could take short trips back to Australia, just for a few days every now and then, not long enough to age noticably, but just long enough to spend a bit of time in the place we’ve both been for at least 14 years, but this time being there together.”

Elma liked the idea, and the two were now the only people in Oz who knew about their occasional secret trips to Australia, and the only people in Australia who knew that they spent most of their time in Oz.

*          *          *          *

Thirty years later….

Gordon still had the appearance of a 23 year old, and Elma still had the appearance of a 28 year old, when they made another of their brief visits to Australia. For the last 15 years or so, they had been careful not to be seen by anyone who had known them in 1992, because their lack of visual ageing would have looked highly suspicous to say the least. Now three decades after their first meeting in the alley, they noticed that the outside world had become even significantly worse than it had been in 1992.

“It really wouldn’t worry me at all, if Ozma closed off that cave now, while we were on the Oz side of it, of course,” said Gordon.

“Nor me,” said Elma, “I haven’t enjoyed our last two visits here much, and this time I think I might have seen enough of Australia altogether.”

“So it looks like neither of us wants to come back,” said Gordon.

They made their way back to the bush track, and were approaching the point where they needed to leave the path for the cave, when they saw a very large stocky man walking towards them with a mean disposition.

The man stopped in front of them, just as they reached the divergence point.

“I don’t know how much plastic surgery you two must have had to preserve your faces like that, but you’re the runt who kicked me and the gal whose jewels could have set me up for life.”

“You’re one of the men who tried to rob me in 1992,” said Elma.

“You got it in one, Missy. Only these days I’m a prize fighter, and your skinny boyfriend here has got some payback coming, before I start on you.”

The man was much more solidly built than Gordon, whose martial arts skills had well and truly atrophied after three decades of forgetting his training in the relative peace of Oz. His martial arts had been of no benefit at all in preventing Marva from eating him, and he had found no use to keep practicing in the thirty years that had followed. The concept didn’t exist in Oz, which meant that there was no dojo anywhere in the kingdom for him to attend, even if he had wished to continue his training. The only advantage he could  think of was to use their slim builds to outrun the robber turned prize fighter.

Grabbing Elma’s wrist, he said, “Run for the cave,” and started running with her beside him.

They could hear the prize fighter starting to pant behind them.

“He won’t have a torch,” whispered Gordon, “We can try to lose him when we get to the cave.”

“If he doesn’t catch us first,” said Elma.

“He won’t.”

They reached the cave a few meters ahead of their pursuer and ran inside, switching on their penlight torches. They kept running, but they could still hear the prize fighter running behind them.

“He got here in  time to follow us by the light of our own torches,” said Gordon, “If he catches us, not only are we in for it, but he’s the last person Ozma would ever want us to let loose in Oz.”

“Don’t worry. Just stay ahead of him,” said Elma.

Soon they saw the light at the Oz end of the cave and ran out.

Elma put on her wig and grew to gigantic size, just as the prize fighter emerged. She picked him up and began squeezing.

“I believe you thought you had some level of size advantage, when you referred to my beloved as a runt,” said Elma.

“I …. What on earth is this?” panted the prize fighter, whose more stocky build had caused him to tire more easily than the two he had been chasing.

“This place barely qualifies as being on earth, and you’ll never see it again,” said Elma, placing the prizefighter back just inside the entrance to the cave, “Throw him your torch, Gordon. I think we already agreed that we won’t be needing it again, nor the cave entrance.”

Gordon tossed his torch to the prize fighter.

“You can find your way back to the Wahroonga bush with that,” said Elma.

She picked up an enormous boulder and pushed it into the cave entrance, sealing it off completely. No normal sized person from Wahroonga could ever move it from the other side. It would be so solid that it would be taken for a dead end in the cave. Anyone else who walked along the cave tunnel in the future would simply turn around and return, unaware that a doorway to Oz had once been just beyond it.

“You have a good heart, Elma,” said Gordon, as she took off her wig and shrank back to normal size, “After what he once did to your throat, and with the knowledge of what he tried to do to us today, most people I knew back on earth wouldn’t have asked me to give him a torch. He would have had to find his way back in the dark.”

“Ozma has always led by example, showing mercy to former enemies and helping them whenever possible,” said Elma, “It seems that this princess should do no less.”

“Which means your friends and aforementioned ‘beloved’ are even better off, when you’re around,” said Gordon.

They held hands and began their final walk back to Big Wig Town together.