He acknowledged that. A ludicrous figure padding his way overland, with no particular destination, nor much of a yen to settle on one. Indeed, the farther he got from the pale of the Lions, the more desolate the landscape became, and he in it. The rises known in Gillikin as the Madeleines-for their gentle ridged shapes, like the spongy cake so beloved of schoolboys-were less appealing on the Munchkinland side of the border. Their name changed, too. The Wend Fallows. Wind-reddened, turnipy hills that, lower down, broke up into a network of arroyos, most running south by southeast. Beautiful to no one but the stray hermit or mendicant. What streams there were flushed into the mighty Munchkin River, which fed Oz’s largest lake, Restwater. But-martyrs roasting on an open fire!-Wend Fallows was ugly as sin. A furzy sort of brown nap coated the hillsides, like a mold that has died but refuses to stop clinging. On south-facing slopes, caterpillars had ravaged the spindly trees.
