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witchesoz · 1 year

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Volkov lore: Wood soldiers and Ore-Diggers

Volkov published his « The Wizard of Emerald City” in 1939. He published its sequel, “Urfin Jus and his Wooden Soldiers” in 1963. It is a… major reinvention, let's say that, of “The Marvelous Land of Oz”.

The story speaks of Urfin Jus (basically a mix of Jinjur, Ugu the Shoemaker and a few other minor Oz villains). Urfin Jus is a Munchkin living in Blue Land, however Urfin absolutely hates the other Munchkins. He is taller than them, he did a conscious effort to stop his jaw from munching constantly so as to differentiate him, and he does not wear the traditional blue but rather brown. He also is a grumpy, sly, selfish man – so much that he actually willingly became a servant and assistant of Gingema, the Wicked Witch of the East. After her death, crushed by Ellie’s trailer-house, he explores her cave and takes from it several magical items that can be useful. One turns out to be… the Powder of Life.

Urfin Jus, in his every-day life is a joiner. It isn’t much to ruin and harass the so-hated Munchkins, but he manages – notably by crafting dolls that have scary faces so as to terrify Munchkin children. When he discovers that the Powder of Life can animate objects, he creates a wicked plan: he crafts an entire army of wooden soldiers he brings to life with the Powder and has them marching on the Emerald City to become king of the Magic Land. At first, the heroes of the city (Faramant Guardian of the Gates, Din Gior the long-bearded soldier, the Iron Woodman and Strasheela the Wise, new ruler of the City) defend it very well – but they have a traitor among their ranks, a man named Ruf Bilan who allies himself with Urfin Jus and lets his army inside. The heroes now captive ask a good friend of them, a crow named Kaggi-Karr, to go to Kansas and ask Ellie to come rescue them.

Ellie thus begins a travel to Magic Land with her dog Totoshka and her uncle Charlie Black, a one-legged sailor (and an equivalent of Baum’s Captain Bill). After all sorts of adventures underground (since they cannot reach Magic Land on the surface, because of the desert and the mountains), the trio reaches Magic Land, free the captured heroes, defeat the wooden army, and send Urfin Jus in exile. Then Ellie is brought back home again, and everything is fine.

Some interesting facts and points in this book:

# Urfin Jus uses his knowledge of making dolls with horrifying face well by creating his soldiers – he creates them with horrifying faces that scare their enemies. However, said wooden soldiers are at first mocked by other people because they are entirely naked, and Urfin Jus has to paint clothes on them.

# Urfin isn’t alone in his plan: in the beginning of the novel, one of the Great Horned Owls (the pets of Gingema) joins Urfin and guides him in his wicked deeds. The Owl’s name is Guamokolatokint, and he dislikes it when Urfin uses “Guam” as a name – ultimately they agree on using Guamoko, though the Owl is unsatisfied with his name being cut short. Guamoko is noted to be a very old Owl, and his wisdom is essential – while Urfin Jus is a determined and inventive man, he lacks the foresight of the Owl. In the end, when Urfin Jus is defeated, Guamoko abandons him and remakes a life for himself as a ruler of the Magic Land birds.

# The courtiers of the Emerald City are shown to actually be vain, lazy people who enjoy a bit too much their wealth, spending their days chatting and having fun, only pretending to take care and be busy with state matters. But despite that, they still stay faithful to Strasheela, refusing to swear allegiance to Urfin Jus and openly expressing their disdain and disgust with those among them that become servants of the invader. There is also a funny moment, after Urfin Jus conquered the Emerald City – in his megalomania, he gives himself an almost never-ending list of titles, which he is forced to cut short when he realizes that his new ministers are unable to repeat them properly.

# There are several hooks and hints for the book that would come next: Ellie and co travel underground to reach Magic Land, in the process spot a marvelous city, and when Urfin Jus is defeated the traitor Ruf Bilan runs away and hides underground.

# About Uncle Charlie Black – he actually just returned to Kansas after years of absence. This great traveler had been captured by a tribe of cannibals, and Ellie’s family (the Smith) assumed he had been devoured. As it turns out, Charlie Black became friend with the cannibals, who were very nice people (at least when he proved them he was more useful living than in a stew). They accepted him into his tribe, and even later helped him go back home.

# Urfin Jus has another companion called Topotun, a bear rug he accidentally animated when he first got hold of the Powder of Life. Topotun is actually a kind and sweet thing, and acts as the “good influence” at Urfin Jus side. Too bad the rest of his counsellors are just as evil: a creepy wicked puppet and the cruel former pet of a wicked witch. In fact, Volkov introduces a nice idea: the Powder of Life gives the creatures it animates a personality depending on their appearance. The creatures that look scary or horrifying will become evil, cruel or wicked, while the creatures that look beautiful, cute, kind or sweet will become good and benevolent.

# The heroes ask Urfin Jus to think about his evil deeds during his exile, in hope that he will realize that all he tried during the novel did not brought him an ounce of happiness: he worked extremely hard to build an entire army, but that was entirely stupid and difficult to control ; his so-called allies disliked him and abandoned him at the mere sight of defeat ; the hard and difficult siege of the Emerald City only resulted in him ruling over a population that hated him and refused to obey him, making him a very paranoid king, and ultimately he was dethroned in a very humiliating way by the rightful rulers… Contrary to the Wicked Witches, who were inhuman beings whose cruelty knew no limit, they hoped that Urfin Jus, being a man, would understand how evil leads to no happiness. SPOILERS: He doesn’t, but after two other wicked plans failing miserably, he will finally understood how being wicked is not for him and abandon all evilness.

# Strasheela is noted to be, just like the Scarecrow of Baum, bored out of its wits when ruling the Emerald City. Note that, contrary to the Scarecrow, he does not abandon his job and continues to rule – he just dislikes ruling when everything is peaceful and joyful because he has nothing to do. In fact, this is why later Stella the Witch of the South offers him a "magic television", the equivalent of Baum's Magic Picture, so he might entertain himself by looking at what happens in the world.

# Some people have noted that Urfin Jus looks a lot like Severus Snape. A grumpy and sour cynic, with an inventive and resourceful mind, preferring to be alone and dressing in dark clothes, with bushy eyebrows and a hooked nose, hugely popular in the fandom and despite being very unpleasant not truly evil…

“The Seven Underground Kings” is the third Magic Land book, released in 1964. Just like how “Urfin Jus and his Wooden Soldiers” was inspired by “The Marvelous Land of Oz”, this one was inspired by “Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz”, Baum’s tale of an underground travel.

In Volkov’s book, we follow what happened to the treacherous Ruf Bilan, who at the end of the last book ran away underground. He arrived in Underground Land, an entire city and land located… well underground. This country has a peculiar government system, where seven kings take the crown in turn. Basically, each king rules for a month, while the six others are put to sleep by the Soporific Waters of the Sacred Spring. However Ruf Bilan wrecks it all by destroyed the Sacred Spring, and depriving Underground Land of its Soporific Waters. Resulting in the seven kings being awake at the same time… and the beginning of a big political fight between them. Hopefully, at the same time Ellie arrives with her cousin, a boy named Alfred. They were exploring a cavern in Iowa and got lost, ending up in Underground Land. The seven kings believe Ellie to be a fairy and ask her to restore the Soporific Waters, but she cannot do it – however she sends Totoshka to Magic Land with a letter. Her good friends immediately send a team of Winkies (led by a Winkie craftsman named Lestar) and they manage to create a pump that takes the Soporific Waters out of the depths of the Earth. However this water is very concentrated – the heroes put all the seven kings to sleep at once, and when they finally wake up, the water ended up erasing all of their memories. The seven kings become commoners, the heroes suggest and encourage the Underground citizen to go back to the surface and resettle, rebuilding a new nation, and finally Ellie, Alfred and Totoshka return home on the back of a dragon named Oyho.

However, before everything ends, Ramine, the Queen of the Field Mice, appears to Ellie – and reveals that she is actually a fairy! Yep, there are fairy mice. And Ramina makes a sad prophecy to Ellie: she will never see her friends from Magic Land again.

Yep, Volkov seemingly wanted this book to be the end of the Magic Land tales.

But, just like Baum, the series would not die…

Other informations of interest about this book:

# Each of the seven kings of the Underground City actually corresponds to one of the seven colors of the rainbow, and their palace is the Rainbow Palace – which was built as a reminder of the rainbow underground-dwellers will now never seen again (yes, because originally they lived above ground).

# There is a recurring joke about the two Underground doctors constantly fighting and arguing with each other. At the beginning of the book, the two doctors, Boril and Robil, are shown fighting as the Underground Land is formed… and in the “present” of the book, centuries later, two doctors named Boril and Robil also fight. This is actually explained by the fact the latter duo are the descendants of the former: the job of doctor is hereditary, and visibly their names are also passed from father to son. The fight of the two doctors is actually based on the effects of the Soporific Waters: do they kill someone or not? Because you see, the sleep of the Waters is so deep the person stops breathing and the heart stops beating, so doctor Boril claims that the persons are dead. But Robil objects that there is no rigor mortis, and the bodies are still warm.

# Ellie’s cousin is named Fred Cunning – and true to his name, he is a clever boy who will grow up to become an engineer.

# The book actually reveals the history and origins of Magic Land. Long ago, before official history was even recorded, a powerful wizard named Hurricap lived in the land that is known today as America. He was the mightiest wizard existing, and was eager to give people what they wished for: he gave them an invulnerability to the claws of the beasts ; a great speed to go faster than stags ; a bow that never missed its targets… But after many years of granting people’s request, Hurricap became tired and went into reclusion to never be bothered again. He wandered the world and found out what would later become Magic Land – and he surrounded it with high mountains and a great desert so that people would never find it. He also declared that it would forever be summer in Magic Land, and that it would be so magical all animals will be able to talk. All that done he prepares to begins his retirement and rest – until a magpie warns that he isn’t exactly alone and that there is already an awful lot of people living here. “Why didn’t I saw them?” the Wizard cries. The magpie simply answers that he is a bit too tall, and them a bit too small: indeed Hurricap isn’t just a wizard, he is a giant wizard whose head reaches the top of the tallest trees, and on top of that his old age weakened a lot his sight (plus, as the narration jokingly precises, eyeglasses did not exist back then). Dissatisfied, Hurricap said he wasn’t going to take back all the magic he gave to the land, because it would be too much work, but he left the land to the people and he built himself a splendid palace in the mountains nearby – forbidding any dweller of the land to ever go near him. The rule was respected for many years, until centuries later the wizard died and his palace crumbled to ruins, but even then the Magic Landers refused to go near the place. And thus, slowly the memory of Hurricap was lost, and people believed that their land has always been magical and cut-off from the rest of the world…

# Afterward, several states and kingdoms formed themselves in Magic Land, and they started fighting against each other. A thousand years before the present, in the West of Magic Land, there was a kingdom ruled by a man named Naranya. He ruled for such a long time his son, Prince Bofaro, grew tired of waiting and plotted to overthrow his father with several thousand supporters – but his conspiracy was discovered. The old king decided to inflict upon his treacherous son and his allies the fate they intended for him (imprisonment for life): he banished them to the Cavern, a gigantic underground cavern filled with strange beasts under their kingdom, and declared that their descendants would never be allowed to return to the surface. All the king allowed to give them were tools for farming and weapons to defend themselves against the Cavern’s beasts. They discovered the Cavern was an entire underground land, with a lake and everything, and where autumn was eternal: trees and bushes crimson, rose and orange ; yellow grass… The only light was created by golden-ish clouds hanging under the roof of the cavern. As for the beasts of the Underground realm, the new dwellers did not worry much: the beasts kept fighting each other. You had the Sixpaws, hideous creatures with six limbs and dirty shaggy fur, and the dragons (described as giant crocodiles with leathery wings) – the dragons kept attacking the Sixpaws because they devour the eggs the dragons bury under the earth, while the Sixpaws keep attacking the dragons because they devour the Sixpaws young whenever they can, resulting them not caring much for the new inhabitants.

# As years passed by, they grew fields using the rare rainfalls that came from the golden clouds. They captured dragons and sixpaws young, that they tamed and trained to become docile working beasts… the people of the Underground became known as the Ore-Diggers, because they spent most of their time digging for gold and precious metals. However, trouble came because of the court created by their ambitious king Bofaro: a bunch of idle courtiers and servants that kept growing larger and larger each day, eating away most of the kingdom’s riches. Eventually they had to come back to the surface – and started trading with the Blue Land of the East, offering copper, bronze, iron, glass and gems in exchange of grain, eggs, vegetables, butter and fruits (note that the Ore-Diggers could only come out at night, given that their eyes were unaccustomed to the bright sun light, resulting in “night markets”).

# Bofaro had seven sons he loved deeply, so much he couldn’t manage to designate one his heir, and after seventeen different wills, he decided to name all seven his heirs, forcing them to rule one month each. But as soon as Bofaro died, the brothers began quarreling, each wanting to rule first: the tall Prince Vagissa wanted succession by height, the fat prince Gramento by weight, the strong Tubago by strength, etc… After a good physical brawl they divided the land, city and palace between themselves, each choosing a different color of the rainbow to identify their belongings. But quickly things went sour: the country had no fixed laws since they changed every month, each king got a squad of dragon-riding guards to protect themselves against eventual attacks of their brothers, each king tried to invent remarkable and new customs to differentiate himself from his brothers, resulting in official greetings of the king changing each month, and each month people had to change their clothes…

I won’t tell you the full history, Volkov spends an awful time detailing the past of the Underground Land, but basically the Ore-Diggers physiology changed a lot throughout the centuries (becoming paler, leaner and getting wider eyes each century), and the excesses of the seven kings grew worse and worse, until they found the Soporific Waters of the Sacred Spring and used it to put to sleep six of the seven courts, resulting in a balanced and sustainable lifestyle. Though the trouble was that after six months of sleep, the wakers had no tiredness at all and did not need to sleep for the entire month of their rule – plus the enchanted sleep magically extended their lifespan, since they did not aged or evolved during their slumbering. And also, the Ore-Diggers became more and more unaccustomed to the real light, and more and more suspicious of the people of the surface, until they ended up cutting all ties with them.

# Now, to return to Magic Land proper, Volkov also reveals to us more about the witches. Three hundred years and four months after the Soporific Water was discovered, four sorceresses lived at the four corners of what is known today as America: two good witches, Villina and Stella, and two wicked witches, Gingema and Bastinda (sisters, but quarreling so much they did not want to see each other). However, as time went by the settlement of humans grew closer and closer to the dwelling of the witches, and they decided to leave America – the four witches (also called “fairies” in the book, because visibly witch/fairy is the same thing) consulted their magic books, found out about Magic Land went there – all at the same time. Resulting in the four of them meeting face to face in Magic Land: Gingema, wizened because of all her wickedness ; the one-eyed Bastinda always with her black umbrella (a magic umbrella that carries her around like a wizard would use a magic carpet) ; Stella who has the secret of ever-lasting youth ; and the white-haired Villina who is the only one of the four Witches able to change her magic book’s size to transport it easily. Gingema and Bastinda refused to share the country, despite Stella’s offer to each have their own part of Magic Land, so Villina offered to have a battle between them – but Gingema and Bastinda realized that Villina’s magic book was much more powerful than theirs, and so that they would be easily defeated. So they decided peacefully to split the country between themselves; Gingema received the Blue Land, Stella the Rose Land, Villina the Yellow Land and Bastinda the Violet Land, and they all decided that the central area would be serve as a “buffer” between them, and that none of them would rule it.

At the time, the Magic Landers had overthrown their tyrants and kings, tired of their constant fighting, and changed the weapons into farming tools to live peacefully. The tribe who traded with the Ore-Diggers in the Blue Land were gone for long, and had been replaced with the small-sized and jaw-moving Munchkins – Gingema appeared to them, declared herself their ruler, and proved them her power by conjuring storms and tornadoes. She said she would leave them live their life peacefully, if only they would pay her a tribute in mice, frogs, leeches and spiders for her to eat. The Munchkins still kept trade with the Ore-Diggers, and there was still a Night Market, for they needed metal, but the Ore-Diggers were so unaccustomed to light and suspicious of people that they now never traded directly with them, and only appeared in the deepest darkness, where the Munchkins could not see.

Bastinda conquered the peaceful and hard-working Winkies: she made them build a castle for her, took a few Winkies as her servants, and hid herself inside the castle, never leaving it for the duration of her rule. The Good Witches also became rulers of their lands, but did not oppress their people, instead helped them in all the ways they could and improved their life.

# We also get to hear a bit more about James Goodwin, the man from Kansas. He was a “loser”, not because he was lazy or stupid but merely because he had such a bad luck everything he tried failed. He finally had success when he bought a hot air balloon and was paid by people to let them travel in it – but one day Goodwin was swept away by a tornado to the center part of Magic Land. There, the people believed him to be a wizard. He had them build him a city (they traded a lot with the Ore-Diggers, who gave them a lot of emeralds), secluded himself in it and spread the rumor has the most powerful wizard in the world. He only made one mistake: he became greedy and tried to invade Bastinda land, only for his army to be attacked by the Winged Monkeys. Goodwin himself nearly got captured by managed to make an escape.

[In fact, in the books I described, James is asked if he wants to return to Oz to help the heroes. And he flats out answers no - that he had enough of magic and would never return to Magic Land for anything in his life.]

# Actually I was wrong here – visibly the Powder of Life was not in Gingema’s cave. This book explains that a storm brought unknown seeds to Urfin’s garden. No matter how much he took the plants away they would grow twice as big and lively, so he ended up pulling them by the roots, cutting them into pieces and drying them out – resulting by accident in the brown powder of life.

- - - - -

You know how Russian novels are know to be extremely long, descriptive and complex? Well you clearly see those books are Russian. Volkov, contrary to Baum, wanted to create one expansive but logical and continuous world, avoiding the erratic world-making of Baum. The trouble however is that it results in entire chapters of backstory, exposition and historical justifications of everything... quite hard to sum it up as a result. But it is also very interesting, because it gives us a glimpse of what Oz could have looked like if Baum had made the effort of actually explaing in details a lot of his unexplained plot points.

#volkov lore #alexander volkov #volkov's magic land #urfin jus #the seven underground kings #wooden soldiers

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