"But a seer must be constantly looking for things," explained Bitty Bit, spreading his hands expansively, "that, you know, is his business. I am always looking for something and tonight it happens to be sea serpents."
"Sorry to disappoint you," said Pigasus, more mildly, "but since we are not sea serpents, perhaps you'll be good enough to unwind your tower. As it happens, I have a little looking to do myself. As a matter of fact, when you and your tower overtook us I was searching for a safe place for this young Princess and myself to spend the night."
"Look no more!" begged Bitty Bit, leaning so far over the sill Dorothy involuntarily put out her hand to save him from falling. "You shall both spend the night in my castle. COME!" Grasping Dorothy by one hand and Pigasus by one wing, the little seer with superhuman strength for one so small and wrinkled dragged them both through the open window of his shooting tower.
[CHAPTER 16]
The Seer of Some Summit
Since coming to Oz, Dorothy had traveled in many strange ways, but to find herself shooting through the midnight sky in Bitty Bit's tower was surely the oddest of all. Both she and Pigasus stared from the window in wide-eyed wonder as the tower uncoiled and started shrinking rapidly backward.
"We may as well go home at once," observed Bitty Bit, rubbing his little hands briskly together. "You are much more interesting than sea serpents and I can easily look for sea serpents some other night. Now don't be alarmed when we bump."
"Bump?" repeated Dorothy rather nervously.
"Of course," the sage told her calmly. "As I go forward, the tower stretches out in any direction I wish to go; when I return, it shrinks, contracts, and retires within itself like a telescope, and by the time we reach the castle it is no larger than an ordinary tower. Mm—better hold on to something, we're almost there!" Running around the circular room a few feet from the wall was a gold railing. Pigasus had just time to hook his wing around this railing and Dorothy to seize it with one hand, when Bitty Bit's tower with a resounding crash snapped back, but up to a vertical position, so that what had been the floor of the little room became the east wall and the window a skylight. Dorothy and Pigasus, describing a complete circle on the bar, landed in a more or less upside down position on what had been the back wall. "That's why I have it cushioned," explained the seer, who also had executed a neat somersault. Hopping up, as if landing on his head was a perfectly usual and ordinary occurrence, Bitty Bit opened a trap door in the floor and motioned for Dorothy and Pigasus to follow him down a long winding stair.