From CHAPTER 17 of TIK-TOK OF OZ by L. Frank Baum.
For those of you unfamiliar with Polychrome, she of one of my two favorite fairy girls to appear in the pages of the Oz books of L Frank Baum, the other being Queen Anne Soforth. Allow me to introduce you to both, dear reader.
Queen Anne Soforth of the land of Oogaboo, who is described as “old enough to make jelly”, rules over the smallest and poorest kingdom in one corner of the Land of Oz.
Deciding one day she no longer wishes to do housework, she gathers her army, consisting of sixteen officers and one private soldier (which, as it happens, is all the men in her kingdom save one), and sets out to conquer the Land of Oz.
Afterward she planned to go out into the world and conquer other lands, and then perhaps she could find a way to the moon, and conquer that. The text explains: “She had a warlike spirit that preferred trouble to idleness.”
In my opinion, the effort is less absurd than the author seems to think, since her soldier is immortal and invulnerable: for the people of Oz are under the blessing of the first fairy queen, and cannot age nor die. Asura from Hindu Myths have conquered worlds armed with blessing no less potent.
Queen Anne soon encounters Polychrome, the rainbow’s daughter, once again accidently stranded on Earth when she ventured too far from the foot of the rainbow after a shadow; and the Shaggy Man, a wandering bum beloved of everyone, for he owns the Love Magnet; and the copper clockwork man, Tik-Tok, literature’s first depiction of a robot.
Betsy Bobbin and her talking Mule comprise the balance of the party. Through misadventure and untoward pride, they companions soon find themselves prisoners of the underground Nome King, who is offended that surface dwellers mine his metals out of his ground, instead of being content with the surface, which is their own. He is, of course, a temperamental tyrant, cruel to his underlings, and a powerful sorcerer with a magic belt of jewels.
We join the scene as Polychrome makes her appearance in the vast bejeweled cavern throneroom of the monarch.
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The Nome King, thinking himself wholly master of the situation, was laughing and jeering at his prisoners when Polychrome, exquisitely beautiful and dancing like a ray of light, entered the cavern.
“Oho!” cried the King; “a Rainbow under ground, eh?” and then he stared hard at Polychrome, and still harder, and then he sat up and pulled the wrinkles out of his robe and arranged his whiskers. “On my word,” said he, “you are a very captivating creature; moreover, I perceive you are a fairy.”
“I am Polychrome, the Rainbow’s Daughter,” she said proudly.
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