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The King stepped forward but the ugly troll placed himself
foursquare before him and barked  Halt!
 We re on our way to our new home in the Amethyst City,
protested the head Nome.
 For  Amethyst read  Emerald , retorted Fattywiggins.  The
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king of Jewels.
 Purple emeralds yet? said the Nome as if he had a card up
his sleeve.
 Purple shmurple, said Fatty to gain time, while Xavier
Jaxon cut in with  You won t go further.
 Who ll stop us?! yelled the king, at last roused and in
violent dudgeon.  Not you three utterly insignificant creepy-
crawly idiotic stupid ignorant uninformed badly educated mo-
ronic fat ungainly hideous poorly dressed cretins with bad
breath! I don t think 
These words made Fattywiggins and her friends see green
and the girl leader remembered the courage she had gathered
to face the foe.  Yes, us! she snarled and stuck out her tongue
very provokingly.
The Ugliest Troll also said,  Yes, we will, nor did Xavier J.
look like giving ground.
 How do you expect to do that? the Nomes in chorus
wanted to know.
 With these, cried the three friends and had sudden recourse
to the egg basket on the back of Xavier s bike. Each seized an
egg and brandished it.
It was an old ploy, used time and time again, in Oz and out
of it§, to drive away unwanted (g)nomes but it never failed to
work. The Nomes as one went a ghastly sidewalk color.
The Nome King was the first to regain partial poise. He gave
a sickly laugh and said,  You win that round. It s true we Nomes
are scared to death of eggs. However, if you ll check back you ll
see that hens eggs, when propelled against us, have no more
harmful effect, in fact, than to make us hop about in transports
of rage.§§ I m afraid you ll have to come up with something more
lethal than that.
Fattyw and her friends were disappointed. They had hoped
for a whole lot more from their arsenal of eggs.
Now, in despair, they each picked out a Nome face for a
§ See, among others,The Vegetable Man of Oz.
§§ See Ozma of Oz, pp. 221-2. Editor s notes.
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target and hurled a purple egg at it.
Snap! Crackle! Pop! With loud reports the three sighted
Nomes vanished, leaving nothing to be seen but the egg on their
faces and that soon dropped to the ground.
 Hurrah! Hurrah! shouted the joyful vigilante army, while
the Nomes turned tail and fled, not even taking their picnic
provisions with them. Up into the woods they sped with howls
of horror, and swift the invincible three pursued them, an egg
in each hand.
Fast they flew through the forest and ever and anon when a
Nome would stand and try to show fight a person or a troll
would throw an egg and destroy him utterly, whereupon his
surviving fellows would bellow in renewed terror and race
further.
That was all very well but before long there was only one
egg left, and the Nomes knew it!
By now the fleeing goblin rabble and their pursuers had come
out on open high ground beyond the woods. A clutch of the
grey creatures were seen to run together in a hasty parley. Then
one of their number turned, a solitary hero, to face his enemies.
None of the three friends was a dumbie. They all knew what
the brave Nome intended. He was a volunteer to give his life
for the common good, to draw off the one remaining egg.
Then the freedom fighters from the Emerald City would be
ammunitionless and at the mercy, after all, of the insurgent
Nomes.
It was the moment of truth, and Fattywiggins was aware of
it.
Then, just as all was lost, all was won.
There was a terrific yellow SPLATTT! in front of the hero
Nome that stopped him in his tracks.
Our friends looked up to see a fleet of purple swan chariots
zooming over and zeroing in. Those with good eyesight could
even see, peering intently over the chariot sides, the faces of
many intelligent pigs, plus those of a couple witches, good and
bad.
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C H A P T E R F I F T Y - T H R E E
There was a lot of explaining to be done. Glinda did it.
 After Your Highness left my castle tower, she said to Queen
Ozma who sat on the Chair of State in the Palace of Magic,  I ll
freely confess I felt a bit lonely and out of things. I turned for
solace as so often to the big Record Book and followed with
minute attention all that you enacted during your progress home.
All seemed going forward splendidly for your reception of the
Nome cohorts and their attendance at your coronation as
Governess of the Nome province of Gillikinland South.
 There was only one fly in the ointment. A certain Miss
Fattywiggins was not getting ready for the fête but instead was
reported as proceeding with a couple of her cronies to some
sandboxes whence they withdrew eleven big purple eggs. These
I recognized at once from the printed description as a specialty
of the widely suspected sorceress Mombi and you can be sure it
piqued my curiosity to know what the girl would attempt with
those. Had the beloved Princess of Oz nourished a snake at her
bosom? Was Fattywiggins, consorting with the ill-reputed
Mombi, going to turn on her sovereign and do her a mischief?
 I turned from the entries in the Book of Records and brought
into use my example of Wizard Diggs spectroscreen and now I
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could both see and hear what the three conspirators were
doing. Far from plotting evil it soon transpired from their talk
that they had some quixotic plan in mind of saving Ozma and
all Oz from a fate they were not even fearing.
 I began to grow sympathetic and followed with interest as
the group boarded bicycles. Dames of Blocksburg! It looked as
if they were going to go try to turn back the entire army of the
Nomes with less than a dozen eggs!
 To even out the odds a bit I let harness the swan fleet and
flew away promptly, still monitoring on the spectroscreen. First
stop was indicated to be Witch Mombi s hut, where I needed to
stock up on the prepotent purple eggs. As it turned out, I inter-
rupted a social call. The charming Caresso-pigs were with the
sorceress, apparently having called to thank her for some treat
they d recently enjoyed.
 When the group heard of the jeopardy of Miss Fattywiggins
the pigs clamored to be allowed to go to her relief, while Mombi
willingly gave free access to her fowl runs. It took no more than
half an hour to full up the chariots and then we were off. The
rest you know. No more than an additional dozen of the bombs
were dropped before the Nome horde surrendered, signed a
cease-fire, and scuttled back underground and out of Oz.
Ozma wiped her brow.  Truly, it was a narrow escape. And
to think we were all awaiting the ultimate horror with utmost
equanimity.
 Well, you know how Purplitude works by now.
 Dare we hope the purple plague is over? the Oz ruler
needed to know.
  Oh, I think so. With the Nomes no longer stirring up things
with their explosives, the Purpleys will subside again. You ll have
a few hundred years, if not eons, before they ll ever make
another move.
 And the purpleness will fade?
 Just like a bad bruise. It will pale to dull blue, then a sickly
yellow, until at last Emerald City faces will reappear a healthy
normal pink or green. But it will take a while.
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