How It All Goes Down
- The group of travelers journey through a dark and claustrophobic forest with their new rafiqi guide, who will take the group up into the mountains. A rafiqi sounds like the Oz equivalent of a Sherpa.
- The cook disappears one night and Killjoy takes the loss of his owner with equanimity (calmly). He just becomes Liir's BFF instead.
- This is turning into a slasher film, with the cook disappearing and all.
- Finally they get out of the forest, without anyone else disappearing or dying.
- Now the group travels through the Thousand Year Grassland, which we hope is a case of exaggeration, otherwise this book is going get crazy long.
- The travelers meet a tribe of people known as the Yunamata. They remind Elphie a little of the Quadlings.
- Travelers start accusing the bees of killing the cook and blame Elphie for his disappearance.
- Elphie cuttingly says, "Oh, I forgot the size of the human imagination" (4.1.2.17).
- But really, Elphie doesn't care about the cook's fate at all.
- Now the group enters the territory of the Scrow, and most are afraid of them.
- Liir idolizes the rafiqi guide, and Elphie thinks about how ridiculous he is. She mostly ignores him:
Elphie thought: Such silly things, children – and so embarrassing – because they keep changing themselves out of shame, out of a need to be loved or something. (4.1.2.20) - Elphie likes the grasslands and wants to drown in them. She's becoming an emo poet.