Dewberry and the Lost Chest of Paraqon Page 4

  Mother Nature paused for a few moments before continuing. “Go back to your home,” she finally said. “I will think over the matter and join you there in one hour.”

  Trace accompanied the ladies home right away. Forty-five minutes later, when the fairies were again conscious, he left, requesting that Madam Toad send him a nut message later telling of Mother Nature’s decision.

  Mother Nature arrived fifteen minutes later, as promised, in the form of cold winter rain. The fairies stayed on Madam Toad’s back porch, protected from the pounding wetness.

  Mother Nature addressed them in her clear, rich voice, which was now a bit watery and splashy. “I will leave the matter of how to deal with Dewberry entirely to you.

  “A magical creature caused this situation, even if she did it without direct use of magic, so I can offer a solution to the problem. The answer is a Repeat Day. I have only ever used this time-altering magic on one other occasion, to rectify another problem, which I cannot share with you. At midnight, the day that has just occurred will repeat itself. Of course, in different parts of the world, the day begins at different times, so it will affect people all over the world for the twenty-four hour time period that coincides with your repeat Saturday.”

  The fairies nodded their under standing as Mother Nature went on. “Beginning at midnight, your time, individuals all over the world will experience the events of the last twenty-four hours over again without realizing what is happening. Since they do not know that time is repeating, in theory, people should do exactly the same activities they did before, so there will be very little effect on the future.

  “Only those who are aware of the problem will remember both days. This includes your fairies, Mr. Periphery, and the select elves, gnomes, witches, dwarves, leprechauns, and brownies that you consulted. You have about five hours, until midnight, to inform everyone involved of what is to happen. Tell them to repeat as many of their Saturday actions as possible, exactly as they occurred.

  “Of course,” Mother Nature added, “I hardly need to tell you the exceptions to the repeat actions. There can be no quest to seek the chest. The young fairies should stay carefully, and quietly, away from any activities that were involved in the finding of the chest.”

  Madam Toad, Madam Swallowtail, and Madam Goldenrod were all very relieved to have a solution placed before them. They hastily thanked Mother Nature, who disappeared into the night with a loud crack of thunder.

  Next, the mentors set to work quickly, sending nut messages with rabbits and birds in the back yard to all of the parties in question, warning them of the Repeat Day and telling them to exactly copy their actions to the best of their abilities with the exception of any activities or discussions involving the chest.

  Then, Madam Swallowtail went to seek out Primrose and Snapdragon, while Madam Goldenrod traveled home to speak to her granddaughter.

  Chapter Eight

  Dewberry’s Fate

  In the morning, it was Saturday again for Dewberry, which was confusing, but necessary.

  Madam Goldenrod had arrived at her granddaughter’s home the night before at just about bedtime, and around the time Dewberry’s parents were getting extremely worried about their daughter’s unusual behavior that evening.

  When Dewberry, as Lauren, had arrived home from the trip to the zoo that afternoon, her parents were back from running their errands. Though it was common for Lauren to shut herself in her room, reading for hours, it was unusual for her not to be able to swallow more than about two mouthfuls of her favorite dinner— spaghetti with meatballs. And it was also strange for her not to be able to com municate more than just with nods and shakes of her head. Clearly, she was upset over something.

  When Grandma arrived, she convinced Mr. and Mrs. Kelley to let their daughter sleep, and assured them that everything would be fine in the morning. It had just been a tiring day. She hoped this would be enough info r mation for Dewberry’s parents since they wouldn’t remember the day anyway come midnight.

  Then Madam Goldenrod went in to talk to Dewberry and tuck her in. To alleviate her granddaughter’s worries, she briefly explained what was going to happen and told Dewberry that they would talk tomorrow, Saturday, while Dewberry’s parents were out.

  This was such a relief to the young fairy—that there was a solution to the problem she had caused. She was able to fall asleep, free from most of her anxiety.

  Early Saturday morning, Dewberry had breakfast with her parents, the same one she had had on the original Saturday. Then her parents left to run their errands, and Dewberry went out onto the back porch to wait for her grandmother. She sat with her cape and crown, but did not put them on to play Queen-Sorceress-Muse. Since she had been alone when she played the previous day, she didn’t think it mattered that she didn’t repeat the exact play activities.

  Grandma Kelley had gotten up early to make sure she rewrote all of the letters she wrote the previous day. She was glad to get

  that activity out of the way so she would have time to talk with her granddaughter. Before Madam Goldenrod left Madam Toad’s house the previous night, the fairy leader confirmed that the decision Madam Goldenrod had made about Dewberry’s fate was acceptable. As soon as the letters were deposited in the mailbox, Grandma Kelley went next door.

  Dewberry sat quietly, waiting for her grandmother to begin speaking. Madam Goldenrod sighed a little as she began. “Do you remember how disappointed you were not to be chosen as leader of the River of Wisdom mission?” she asked.

  Dewberry nodded as her grandmother continued. “I remember what you told me when you got back: that the Spirit of Ignorance was such an idiot, any fairy could have easily tricked him into giving up the nymph. Since that time, you have been very anxious to prove yourself. And you have worked hard. I was so proud of you for discovering the answer to the jigsaw-puzzle mystery.”

  Madam Goldenrod leaned forward and gave her granddaughter a hug. Then she asked Dewberry another question. “Do you know the most common age young fairies discover that they are fairies?”

  Dewberry shook her head as her grandmother answered the question. “It is usually somewhere between seven and ten years of age. However, I am going to tell you a secret. Some fairies will never learn that they are fairies. There is a purple tulip fairy that lives just three blocks from here. She is twenty years old. But she is silly, selfish, and very spoiled; and she is incapable of making good decisions most of the time. It takes a tremendous amount of maturity to accept the responsibility that comes with being a fairy. She may never be ready to handle it.

  “It was my decision to tell you,” Madam Goldenrod continued, “when you were eight. I thought that living next door, I could keep a close eye on you. Plus, I had never been chosen to be a fairy mentor before, and I was anxious to get started. In a way, I wanted to prove myself too, and be successful, in the same way that you have a thirst to prove yourself. I realize now that you were told too early.”

  Dewberry couldn’t resist an interruption. “But Teasel and Pumpkinwing are younger than I am, and they were told at age six that they were fairies.”

  “Each girl matures at a different rate,” Madam Goldenrod responded. “And as I explained, there is no set time when fairies are told about their fairy spirits.

  “Even though you thought you were acting outside of the magical realm, your fairy gift of the ability to discover infor mation and acquire knowledge so easily gave you the means to find out the details about the legend of the lost chest. Due to the skill of Mr. Periphery in hiding the secrets of the legend, it is very unlikely that another human being could have pieced the clues together to actually locate the chest. I know you didn’t believe magic was involved,” Madam Goldenrod added kindly. “You thought there was simply lost knowledge in the chest, so you are not entirely to blame.

  “It is actually remarkable that you accomplished what you did, and under different circumstances you would be given high praise for your cleverness and hard work. You have talke
d about becoming a doctor someday. Imagine what your gift could allow you to do in that profession. Your research alone may be responsible for curing currently incurable illnesses. Or you may discover some miracle for safe and easy weight loss, or pain-free childbirth.

  “However,” Madam Goldenrod’s tone became sterner, “your impulsive nature on this occasion can earn you no praise. You didn’t stop to question your actions; you just plowed on. The inability to stop and question, especially when you didn’t understand everything, indicates a serious lack of judgment. You never stopped to consider why the chest was so well hidden. If it was supposed to be such a great gift for mankind, why wasn’t it made available to the world before now? When you saw the petroglyphs and pictographs, why didn’t you stop and find out their exact meaning before opening the chest?”

  Madam Goldenrod allowed this information sink in, and let Dewberry ponder for a few minutes, before she went on. “Do you see my point?” she finally asked.

  Dewberry nodded reluctantly. She very much understood her grandmother, and she was beginning to fear what her consequences might be for acting with out thinking first. “Are Primrose and Snapdragon in trouble too?” she asked.

  Again Madam Goldenrod sighed. “Do you think they should be in trouble?”

  “No,” answered Dewberry immediately. “They just went along with me. They didn’t cause this problem. And they warned me several times to stop and consult my handbook or a mentor. I wish now that I had taken their advice.”

  Madam Goldenrod was nodding. “It is a good sign that you are able to learn from your mistakes. Primrose and Snapdragon will be given a warning; but otherwise, they are not in trouble. Fairies are almost always given a second chance when they make a mistake before their fairy spirits are taken away from them and their memories altered to forget all fairy knowledge.”

  Dewberry was holding her breath, hopeful that she would be included in the category of “fairies given a second chance.” She continued to listen attentively as her grandmother went on. “Your fairy spirit is not going to be taken away from you, and there will be no memory alteration.”

  Dewberry barely had a chance to breathe a small sigh of relief as her grandmother added, “However, I am going to take your wand and handbook from you for one year. And you will not be able to participate in fairy activities for the rest of this year. You will be allowed to attend December’s Christmas Fairy Circle since it is nearly a year away. Then I will give you back your wand and handbook next year on this date. For the time that you are without them, I want you to concentrate on doing well in school, like you always do, and think carefully about taking action only when you have full information. This will give you time to learn patience and develop wisdom to go with your knowledge.”

  Dewberry nodded. So far she agreed with everything her grandmother (and fairy mentor) had told her. “Are my wand and handbook really disappointed with me?” she asked.

  Madam Goldenrod shook her head, smiling. “Of course not,” she answered. “They love you. But I wonder if you can tell me all the purposes of your fairy handbook.”

  Dewberry thought for a few moments before answering. “It gives me information, answers questions, and advises me. But also, its purpose is to limit infor mation until I am ready for it. When I am older, I will understand things better and be able to make wiser decisions, so I will be able to handle the more complex information.

  “If I had consulted my handbook about the lost chest,” Dewberry went on, “I probably would have discovered how dangerous it would be to open it. Even if the handbook didn’t know the details about the legend, it would have known that I needed to be careful and would have warned me.”

  “Good answer,” said Madam Goldenrod, nodding.

  Shortly after Madam Goldenrod went back next door, Primrose and Snapdragon arrived to visit Dewberry, just as they had on the original Saturday. The girls had cookies and juice together, but they didn’t go to the zoo. Since they had only visited the grebe bird, and the zoo had not been crowded, there wasn’t much danger that they would have an impact on anyone else’s future by not going to the zoo.

  The girls played games together in the back yard and talked about boys at school. Primrose was a year ahead of Dewberry and Snapdragon, but they all attended the same elementary school.

  Dewberry told her friends that she would not be attending Fairy Circle again until Christmas. Even though Primrose and Snapdragon were sad about this, they were happy that nothing worse was going to happen to Dewberry.

  Grandma Kelley drove Primrose and Snapdragon home at about the same time the girls had been dropped off on the original Saturday.

  Dewberry was quiet in the car on the way home from dropping off her friends. She was thinking about everything that had happened on the two Saturdays that were really one.

  It was funny how much older she felt. She was thankful that her mistake had been fixed, and she had learned from it. Even though she would miss fairy activities during the upcoming year, she was looking forward to practicing being careful and wise about her actions.

  On Saturday evening, Dewberry was able to enjoy her repeat spaghetti and meatball dinner.

  But something else very strange happened as a result of this experience. Dewberry, who had never feared anything, was suddenly cautious of all boxes, chests, and trunks. She wasn’t at all curious anymore about what was in her aunt’s cedar chest or her father’s travel trunk. In fact, Dewberry wasn’t even sure she liked shoeboxes anymore. People stored things in them, and it was troublesome to think that they could contain almost anything, or at least anything small enough to fit into a shoebox.

  It seemed that Dewberry had all of a sudden developed caution, which tempered her curiosity somewhat. Though it was odd not to wonder about things, or investigate as much as she used to, after awhile, Dewberry decided this change was okay, and that it must have something to do with growing up.

  Fairy Fun

  From the Fairy Handbook

  Why Fairies are Afraid of Jigsaw Puzzles: Fairies cannot stand to do jigsaw puzzles. If faced with one, they are often bewitched by the puzzle and become trapped in it. Fairies follow the curving lines, tracing them over and over again, sometimes never making their way out of the puzzle unless helped out by a witch, elf, or some other magical creature. Occasionally, another fairy can help, if quick enough and brave enough to bear the effects of the puzzle for as long as it takes to pull out the trapped fairy.

  The reason fairies are afraid of jigsaw puzzles has to do with a goblin curse, described in a book called Sixty-Three-and a-Half Goblin Tales. The jig saw puzzle tale is Number Forty-Two, and tells of the anger of a lady goblin toward a dandelion fairy who tricked the goblin into releasing two captured brownies.

  Dandelion was carrying a jig saw puzzle with her to a friend’s home to play when she stumbled across the goblin and brownies. Dandelion helped the brownies get free, making the goblin very angry. The goblin noticed that the fairy was carrying a puzzle and performed a clever Fairy-Puzzle-Trapping-Curse, just as the brownies and fairy escaped from her.

  The dandelion fairy and the brownies were unaware of the curse. When Dandelion tried to piece together her jigsaw puzzle that afternoon while visiting a fairy friend, both fairies became trapped in the puzzle. Fortunately, a garden gnome noticed the trouble and brought a witch to help them.

  Since then, the warning has been passed down from generation to generation for fairies to avoid jigsaw puzzles.

  From Sixty-Three-and-a-Half Goblin Tales

  by Odious V. Nastia, lady goblin

  and storyteller:

  Tale Number Forty-Two

  “Why Fairies Fear Jigsaw Puzzles”

  Or

  “That Dratted Dandelion and Those Blasted

  Brownies”

  Those blasted brownies were in my clutches. I had them locked in a parakeet cage, which is the most fitting place for a couple of nasty, overgrown, mischievous boys. They were only there two hours though bef
ore that dratted dandelion fairy came along. I was just stirring up a vat of Very Venerable Vittles, intending to add the brownies when the gravy was thick enough, when Dandelion popped by my hut unexpectedly. She had been on her way to a friend’s house to play. At first she acted like she had smelled my vittles stew and just could not resist stopping in to share recipes with me. She tricked me! Never listen to a fairy’s cooking advice. I told her I was using my grandmother’s recipe, and that it had always turned out very tasty. However, that dratted Dandelion managed to convince me that I needed to add tarragon to the recipe, because that was the way her grandmother used to make Very Venerable Vittles. So I had to climb up the stepladder to reach the tarragon. While my back was turned, Dandelion performed an Unlocking Spell on the parakeet cage. Then those blasted brownies threw handfuls of pepper at me, making me sneeze so much that I couldn’t catch them while they jumped out the window and rode off on a rabbit. In my sneezing fit, I also upset my lovely vat of Very Venerable Vittles. But I got them good in the end. That dratted Dandelion was carrying a jigsaw puzzle—yes, she was—and when she flew off just after the brownies escaped, I took out my Spell Stick (sometimes I call it my Curse Club) and enacted the Fairy-Puzzle-Trapping-Curse. I had one of my spies follow her, a crooked rook he was, and he came back and told me that Dandelion and her friend both got trapped in the puzzle that very afternoon. Serves them right! But a gnome noticed what had happened and brought a witch to help them. So what! Eventually, the curse will spread to all jigsaw puzzles because that is the way I designed it. Well, I don’t like to brag, but nothing can ever undo a curse like that, done by me. I plan to polish my medal every year in February over that one, I can tell you. Forever more, fairies will have to either avoid jigsaw puzzles or get trapped in them. Pretty sad for them, if you ask me, because jigsaw puzzles are actually a lot of fun. Ha!