root, branch and leaf - concluded
Quickly the two children darted forward and toward the light, they could hear a sort of frantic moaning coming from the glow ahead of them. As they got close they were astonished by what they could see. Another faery, of course, but what a faery! A fiery faery!
Were those legs or wheels turning furiously on the spot? Fred and Sue could not be sure. Were those ribs and a chest puffing in and out - or a bellows and cogs? One moment it seemed like flesh (albeit shiny faery flesh) and the next moment the creature appeared to be made of metal and smoke. And the hair! Well, the hair was really the problem, shooting out from the spirit child’s head and curling and whirling about like so much steam, it made the children cough; Worse though it tangled itself in the bushes and trees like so much smoky rope, refusing to dissipate.
“Help! Help!” sang out the little faery voice. “I’m all caught up and the Earl is close behind and me and he’s annoyed extra special with me - I swallowed one of his toys, hee, hee, hee! I mean, oops! I mean, HELP!”
Fred looked at Sue and Sue looked at Fred. They were both beginning to consider all these faeries to be just as silly as anything and anyone.
Still, they couldn’t waste time - not with the Earl so close upon their track. Even now they could hear once more the chomping and tramping sounds of the Earl and his troops.
Fred knew what he had to do. He pulled out the hairbrush that Grandma had given and wielding it like an axe he swept it up at the thickets of misty hair, hoping to untangle them - but just as soon as that hairbrush touched the faery stuff there was a flash and the spirit child vanished.
“Hee, hee!” they heard - like the buzzing of an insect.
Fred turned the hairbrush over and there in the silver polished back the children could see a winking, dancing faery.
“They really do seem to like silver.” Fred said. Silly faeries, he thought.
“Hush!” Sue jostled her brother, “We have to really hurry now, just one more faery to find and we must do it before the Earl catches up!”
She grabbed Fred’s arm and pulled him off the path and into the black between the trees.
“Which way?” Sue wondered aloud.
“Fred pointed. “The moon,” he exclaimed happily, “just like I wanted!”
And it was. Full and bright above them and through the gaps in the branches there it was. The two children smiled and waited as their eyes began to adjust to the not so gloomy and slight blue tinged forest about them. “I can see another path,” said Sue. “Let’s try that one.”
And so the children scampered off, and were soon following the winding little way that the moon illuminated for them.
As they scurried along they could hear all about them the galumphing sounds of the Earl’s retinue - trumpets were ringing out, horns bellowed and feet were marching, iron boots thudding like drums.
But there was no time to worry. Almost before you could say “well this is the last part of the story,” a light appeared, flickering about the edges of the path touching the puddles of moonlight with its own bright glow and then ducking away so fast that Sue and Fred had trouble following with their eyes.
Sue considered for a moment, standing stock still despite the urge they had to run, run, run!
She gazed at the moon and she gazed at the winking light at the edges of the track and then she pulled out Grandma’s ring, with a flourish. She held it up high, raising her arm as much as she could.
And do you know, the moon was in the ring then, and where it came down there lay upon the ground a vibrant ring of silvery light and - floosh! The shy little faery had touched it and disappeared.
“Oh! Oh!” A tiny voice cried out from the ring - and Sue quickly put it on her finger.
They had done it! All three of the last faeries - what a relief!
“Now then,” Sue said firmly, “we have to” -
Alas and oh dear, for whatever it was that Sue had in her mind it never did reach her mouth, for at that precise moment the two children found themselves caught and surprised and wriggling furiously in a great big (and very smelly) net, a net that seemed to come out of nowhere.
“HA HA HA!” said a very loud voice, a voice belonging to the very cunning and somewhat smug looking, Earl. “Ha, ha, ha!” he said once again as he stepped up close to his captives, “Ha, ha” -
“Yes, we get that, thanks very much” said a prickly Sue, “ha, ha, ha indeed. Thank you yes, we heard you the first time.” She was scowling as well.
“Ooh!” the Earl laughed. “Aren’t we the grumpy bucket?”
“Grumpy bucket?” Sue looked at Fred.
Fred shrugged.
Sue sighed.
The Earl laughed a bit, he was enjoying himself after all and then he smiled. “Well, yes, I may have just made that up, ‘grumpy bucket’, but I like it, I’ll use that again!”
“Should I write it down, your Earliness?” asked a cringing servant from near at hand.
“If you like,” the Earl replied diffidently. He was waving a hand. “More importantly,” he said in a commanding voice, “we must be getting back - I have everything we came for. HA, ha,” he stopped himself this time, “sorry.”
And so it was that the two trussed up children and the three collected faeries all found themselves guests of the Earl and within his marvellous metal forest.
“What a lot of forest, we’re seeing these days.” Fred noted seriously.
“Hmm,” said Sue. She was still sulking.
Despite her sulking though, Sue was very impressed by what she could see; all the spinning cogs and pulsing machine parts as they made flowers rise and fall and the steel trees glinted and chimed softly with the night chilled breeze.
The Earl saw the children shiver and called for blankets and warm drinks. He also commanded that the children be released from the nets.
The children eyed the steaming drinks suspiciously and didn’t drink - the Earl was a stranger after all and he’d put them in a net! - But they gladly accepted the blankets.
“Thank you,” they said politely.
“Think of it as a swap,” said the Earl, flashing his teeth and twirling the moustache that Earl’s always have in stories like this.
He had taken from them the hairbrush, mirror and ring.
“But they’re not ours,” protested Fred, “we’re just borrowing them from our Grandma, so it’s not a swap, it’s stealing!”
“Oh,” said the Earl. “Well, not to worry, I’ll be giving them back to you very soon.” He twirled his moustache again for emphasis.
Fred wasn’t listening, like his sister he was very impressed with the surroundings and was watching all the huffing and puffing of the mechanical forest. Trees made of pulleys and bushes of levers, there were even sculpted birds and animals and some of the animals even moved being clockwork probably or steam powered. The hairy faery must have swallowed one of those, he thought, nodding to himself.
And there were lights, lights everywhere, inside the machines and in the iron trees and steel leaves and the silvery forest floor.
“All these lights...” he said softly, “they must be the faeries, all of them.”
The Earl nodded, “oh yes, they seem to love this place. Bit of luck really. If only the noisy tumbling people of Tuttenham would feel the same way…”
“Well,” said Sue, “how can you tell? I mean, what you’ve done is the same as us really.” She pointed to the hairbrush, mirror and ring. “The faeries are captured after all.”
The Earl considered this. “Well, I’m sure they say if they weren’t having fun, they wouldn’t dance around or glow so brightly, something like that I’m sure.”
The children snuggled a bit more under the blanket. “What now?” Fred asked finally as curiosity got the better of him.
“You know I‘ve thought rather a lot about that.” The Earl rubbed his hands together and flicked his armour for good measure, ping!
“There is a legend that says three faeries planted in the ground become a root, a branch, a leaf. My plan is to plant these little ones and find out if that’s true. It is said that the tree born of faeries is the tree of knowledge. And with that knowledge I’m sure I will find a way of getting the people of Tumble Town to stop their noisy tumbling and come and live down here.”
The Earl began to busy himself opening a hatch in the floor of the forest and revealing the fertile soil beneath. “Here we go then” he said, carefully planting the brush, ring and mirror and summoning a servant with a can to water them.
Everyone gathered to look.
There was a hush.
A bit more hush.
The Earl sighed.
“Oh come on,” he whispered impatiently.
Perhaps those were magic words because as he said them there was a rustling, burrowing sound and out from the earth there came a tree.
A little tree.
A tiny tree.
A tiny, wheeny teeny tree point of fact. It shook its microscopic leaves and a few seeds, almost too small to see, fell about it.
After that - nothing.
“I’m a little underwhelmed,” the Earl announced.
He took a step forward and bent over the tree, the tree no binger than the fingers on his hands.
“Is there something I’m not seeing?” he prodded the fresh leaves curiously.
Since the Earl had taken his attention from the two children, Sue and Fred winked at one another and went into action. They grabbed the seeds and flung them into the earth the Earl was standing on. They had no watering can but the soil was still damp from before.
“What?” The Earl glanced behind him.
And now there was real magic. With a tremendous roaring and tearing, the tiny tree at the Earl’s feet suddenly leapt up showing it was but the tip of something far bigger - and even as the Earl registered this fact so too the seeds the children had thrown sprang up and outwards, larger and bigger and wider and - the children backed away quickly. It was a forest!
“Hee hee!” There were laughing faery voices everywhere.
Out from the soil came a swarm of them, all the lights that the children had seen before were leaving in a rush, a great arc of light, curving high and long over their heads and back to the real wood from which they had come. It was their home after all.
The children could hear the Earl roaring and shouting furiously, unable to find the way back to his own man-made wood because of the new faery-born trees.
“Hurry!” said Fred suddenly. “We have to follow the light as well, or we’ll never get back to Grandma’s house."
Oh for a magic carpet or something, thought Sue. Both children were feeling VERY tired after all their adventuring. Just the last part now, the final race home, hand in hand and chasing a silvery rainbow.
A comfortable bed really would feel like a pot of gold!
It was almost dawn as they limped exhaustedly to the back door of the cottage and everything was still and quiet. But all the same, there at the kitchen window was Grandma - and she opened wide the door and hugged them as they entered.
“I’m so proud of you!” she said. “All the forest lights have come back.”
Fred nodded, “well they only wanted to visit you see, they really did like the Earl’s silver woods, but just to visit, that’s all.”
“Silly Earl,” said Grandma.
“Yes,” agreed Sue, “but you know, his mechanical forest really was - really IS, wonderful, even the faeries thought so, and the Earl just wanted people to live there.”
“Hmm…” said Grandma.
“Exactly,” Fred agreed, “and now there are real trees in the Earl’s forest as well. I’m going to tell everyone how great it is - I want them to see.”
“The Earl did have a point,” Sue nodded.
Grandma was astonished. “You really think so? My, then you have changed after your adventure.”
“But really Grandma,” Sue nodded again, “The Earl was quite nice.”
“He just couldn’t see the wood for the trees,” Fred grinned.
Sue sighed. “I was really hoping you wouldn’t say that.”
Fred was looking thoughtful again though, and he said slowly, “I don’t think the people will come off the mountain just yet - but once they’ve visited a few times, maybe eventually the Earl will get his wish after all.”
Grandma smiled, “well I got my wish,” she said warmly and hugging the children again, “and well worth the cost of a hairbrush, a mirror and a ring - but what about you two,” she looked at the children, “do you have wishes?”
“Bed,” Sue said.
“Bed,” Said Fred.
“Two wishes, easily granted!” laughed Grandma, shooing them up the rickety stairs.
THE END.
............................
i hope this was an enjoyable little story - thanks for the earlier comments :))
selene, the ha ha ha is just for you!
posted from dreamwidth
Were those legs or wheels turning furiously on the spot? Fred and Sue could not be sure. Were those ribs and a chest puffing in and out - or a bellows and cogs? One moment it seemed like flesh (albeit shiny faery flesh) and the next moment the creature appeared to be made of metal and smoke. And the hair! Well, the hair was really the problem, shooting out from the spirit child’s head and curling and whirling about like so much steam, it made the children cough; Worse though it tangled itself in the bushes and trees like so much smoky rope, refusing to dissipate.
“Help! Help!” sang out the little faery voice. “I’m all caught up and the Earl is close behind and me and he’s annoyed extra special with me - I swallowed one of his toys, hee, hee, hee! I mean, oops! I mean, HELP!”
Fred looked at Sue and Sue looked at Fred. They were both beginning to consider all these faeries to be just as silly as anything and anyone.
Still, they couldn’t waste time - not with the Earl so close upon their track. Even now they could hear once more the chomping and tramping sounds of the Earl and his troops.
Fred knew what he had to do. He pulled out the hairbrush that Grandma had given and wielding it like an axe he swept it up at the thickets of misty hair, hoping to untangle them - but just as soon as that hairbrush touched the faery stuff there was a flash and the spirit child vanished.
“Hee, hee!” they heard - like the buzzing of an insect.
Fred turned the hairbrush over and there in the silver polished back the children could see a winking, dancing faery.
“They really do seem to like silver.” Fred said. Silly faeries, he thought.
“Hush!” Sue jostled her brother, “We have to really hurry now, just one more faery to find and we must do it before the Earl catches up!”
She grabbed Fred’s arm and pulled him off the path and into the black between the trees.
“Which way?” Sue wondered aloud.
“Fred pointed. “The moon,” he exclaimed happily, “just like I wanted!”
And it was. Full and bright above them and through the gaps in the branches there it was. The two children smiled and waited as their eyes began to adjust to the not so gloomy and slight blue tinged forest about them. “I can see another path,” said Sue. “Let’s try that one.”
And so the children scampered off, and were soon following the winding little way that the moon illuminated for them.
As they scurried along they could hear all about them the galumphing sounds of the Earl’s retinue - trumpets were ringing out, horns bellowed and feet were marching, iron boots thudding like drums.
But there was no time to worry. Almost before you could say “well this is the last part of the story,” a light appeared, flickering about the edges of the path touching the puddles of moonlight with its own bright glow and then ducking away so fast that Sue and Fred had trouble following with their eyes.
Sue considered for a moment, standing stock still despite the urge they had to run, run, run!
She gazed at the moon and she gazed at the winking light at the edges of the track and then she pulled out Grandma’s ring, with a flourish. She held it up high, raising her arm as much as she could.
And do you know, the moon was in the ring then, and where it came down there lay upon the ground a vibrant ring of silvery light and - floosh! The shy little faery had touched it and disappeared.
“Oh! Oh!” A tiny voice cried out from the ring - and Sue quickly put it on her finger.
They had done it! All three of the last faeries - what a relief!
“Now then,” Sue said firmly, “we have to” -
Alas and oh dear, for whatever it was that Sue had in her mind it never did reach her mouth, for at that precise moment the two children found themselves caught and surprised and wriggling furiously in a great big (and very smelly) net, a net that seemed to come out of nowhere.
“HA HA HA!” said a very loud voice, a voice belonging to the very cunning and somewhat smug looking, Earl. “Ha, ha, ha!” he said once again as he stepped up close to his captives, “Ha, ha” -
“Yes, we get that, thanks very much” said a prickly Sue, “ha, ha, ha indeed. Thank you yes, we heard you the first time.” She was scowling as well.
“Ooh!” the Earl laughed. “Aren’t we the grumpy bucket?”
“Grumpy bucket?” Sue looked at Fred.
Fred shrugged.
Sue sighed.
The Earl laughed a bit, he was enjoying himself after all and then he smiled. “Well, yes, I may have just made that up, ‘grumpy bucket’, but I like it, I’ll use that again!”
“Should I write it down, your Earliness?” asked a cringing servant from near at hand.
“If you like,” the Earl replied diffidently. He was waving a hand. “More importantly,” he said in a commanding voice, “we must be getting back - I have everything we came for. HA, ha,” he stopped himself this time, “sorry.”
And so it was that the two trussed up children and the three collected faeries all found themselves guests of the Earl and within his marvellous metal forest.
“What a lot of forest, we’re seeing these days.” Fred noted seriously.
“Hmm,” said Sue. She was still sulking.
Despite her sulking though, Sue was very impressed by what she could see; all the spinning cogs and pulsing machine parts as they made flowers rise and fall and the steel trees glinted and chimed softly with the night chilled breeze.
The Earl saw the children shiver and called for blankets and warm drinks. He also commanded that the children be released from the nets.
The children eyed the steaming drinks suspiciously and didn’t drink - the Earl was a stranger after all and he’d put them in a net! - But they gladly accepted the blankets.
“Thank you,” they said politely.
“Think of it as a swap,” said the Earl, flashing his teeth and twirling the moustache that Earl’s always have in stories like this.
He had taken from them the hairbrush, mirror and ring.
“But they’re not ours,” protested Fred, “we’re just borrowing them from our Grandma, so it’s not a swap, it’s stealing!”
“Oh,” said the Earl. “Well, not to worry, I’ll be giving them back to you very soon.” He twirled his moustache again for emphasis.
Fred wasn’t listening, like his sister he was very impressed with the surroundings and was watching all the huffing and puffing of the mechanical forest. Trees made of pulleys and bushes of levers, there were even sculpted birds and animals and some of the animals even moved being clockwork probably or steam powered. The hairy faery must have swallowed one of those, he thought, nodding to himself.
And there were lights, lights everywhere, inside the machines and in the iron trees and steel leaves and the silvery forest floor.
“All these lights...” he said softly, “they must be the faeries, all of them.”
The Earl nodded, “oh yes, they seem to love this place. Bit of luck really. If only the noisy tumbling people of Tuttenham would feel the same way…”
“Well,” said Sue, “how can you tell? I mean, what you’ve done is the same as us really.” She pointed to the hairbrush, mirror and ring. “The faeries are captured after all.”
The Earl considered this. “Well, I’m sure they say if they weren’t having fun, they wouldn’t dance around or glow so brightly, something like that I’m sure.”
The children snuggled a bit more under the blanket. “What now?” Fred asked finally as curiosity got the better of him.
“You know I‘ve thought rather a lot about that.” The Earl rubbed his hands together and flicked his armour for good measure, ping!
“There is a legend that says three faeries planted in the ground become a root, a branch, a leaf. My plan is to plant these little ones and find out if that’s true. It is said that the tree born of faeries is the tree of knowledge. And with that knowledge I’m sure I will find a way of getting the people of Tumble Town to stop their noisy tumbling and come and live down here.”
The Earl began to busy himself opening a hatch in the floor of the forest and revealing the fertile soil beneath. “Here we go then” he said, carefully planting the brush, ring and mirror and summoning a servant with a can to water them.
Everyone gathered to look.
There was a hush.
A bit more hush.
The Earl sighed.
“Oh come on,” he whispered impatiently.
Perhaps those were magic words because as he said them there was a rustling, burrowing sound and out from the earth there came a tree.
A little tree.
A tiny tree.
A tiny, wheeny teeny tree point of fact. It shook its microscopic leaves and a few seeds, almost too small to see, fell about it.
After that - nothing.
“I’m a little underwhelmed,” the Earl announced.
He took a step forward and bent over the tree, the tree no binger than the fingers on his hands.
“Is there something I’m not seeing?” he prodded the fresh leaves curiously.
Since the Earl had taken his attention from the two children, Sue and Fred winked at one another and went into action. They grabbed the seeds and flung them into the earth the Earl was standing on. They had no watering can but the soil was still damp from before.
“What?” The Earl glanced behind him.
And now there was real magic. With a tremendous roaring and tearing, the tiny tree at the Earl’s feet suddenly leapt up showing it was but the tip of something far bigger - and even as the Earl registered this fact so too the seeds the children had thrown sprang up and outwards, larger and bigger and wider and - the children backed away quickly. It was a forest!
“Hee hee!” There were laughing faery voices everywhere.
Out from the soil came a swarm of them, all the lights that the children had seen before were leaving in a rush, a great arc of light, curving high and long over their heads and back to the real wood from which they had come. It was their home after all.
The children could hear the Earl roaring and shouting furiously, unable to find the way back to his own man-made wood because of the new faery-born trees.
“Hurry!” said Fred suddenly. “We have to follow the light as well, or we’ll never get back to Grandma’s house."
Oh for a magic carpet or something, thought Sue. Both children were feeling VERY tired after all their adventuring. Just the last part now, the final race home, hand in hand and chasing a silvery rainbow.
A comfortable bed really would feel like a pot of gold!
It was almost dawn as they limped exhaustedly to the back door of the cottage and everything was still and quiet. But all the same, there at the kitchen window was Grandma - and she opened wide the door and hugged them as they entered.
“I’m so proud of you!” she said. “All the forest lights have come back.”
Fred nodded, “well they only wanted to visit you see, they really did like the Earl’s silver woods, but just to visit, that’s all.”
“Silly Earl,” said Grandma.
“Yes,” agreed Sue, “but you know, his mechanical forest really was - really IS, wonderful, even the faeries thought so, and the Earl just wanted people to live there.”
“Hmm…” said Grandma.
“Exactly,” Fred agreed, “and now there are real trees in the Earl’s forest as well. I’m going to tell everyone how great it is - I want them to see.”
“The Earl did have a point,” Sue nodded.
Grandma was astonished. “You really think so? My, then you have changed after your adventure.”
“But really Grandma,” Sue nodded again, “The Earl was quite nice.”
“He just couldn’t see the wood for the trees,” Fred grinned.
Sue sighed. “I was really hoping you wouldn’t say that.”
Fred was looking thoughtful again though, and he said slowly, “I don’t think the people will come off the mountain just yet - but once they’ve visited a few times, maybe eventually the Earl will get his wish after all.”
Grandma smiled, “well I got my wish,” she said warmly and hugging the children again, “and well worth the cost of a hairbrush, a mirror and a ring - but what about you two,” she looked at the children, “do you have wishes?”
“Bed,” Sue said.
“Bed,” Said Fred.
“Two wishes, easily granted!” laughed Grandma, shooing them up the rickety stairs.
THE END.
............................
i hope this was an enjoyable little story - thanks for the earlier comments :))
selene, the ha ha ha is just for you!
posted from dreamwidth