Lillian Ch. 3

At first the Turvy Prince merely stared after her, as did all his rambunctious subjects; but it was not long before he regained his wits. "After her, boys!" he called.

And so it was that Lillian, when hardly out of the horrid banquet hall, found herself caught in a swarm of little ragged imps. They plucked at her elbows and snatched at her dress, and whenever she found an opening in the crowd and tried to dart out, a new grinning face would pop up and block her path. They were everywhere - their unpleasant glinting eyes and their white flashing teeth.

"I must wake up," thought a miserable part of Lillian's muddled mind; and, farther back, a yet more miserable part of her answered, "I can't wake up." And then there came a calm - a calm very like the end of a nightmare. Lillian found herself sitting on the dusty ground, looking up and around at the many impudent faces of her foes. Why had the noise and the pestering stopped?

A voice was rising and falling above her, strident as a blue jay, bright as one of Mama Mouse's sewing needles, and yet with a clear and musical note running through it - the laughter of a brook, the song of a bluebird. "You should be ashamed of yourself," it said. "Haven't you any manners at all?"

The speaker, Lillian now saw, was a slender girl of about Turvy size. She should have looked exactly like a Turvy, right down to her tousled brown hair, had it not been for the elegance and neatness of her clothes. Also - Lillian jumped a little when she saw this - she had a pair of long transparent wings, slightly like a dragonfly's. This girl stood with her hands on her hips, glaring with no apparent mercy at the Turvy Prince, who was rubbing his nose.

"Gee, Pep," he said, with a whine in his voice. "Why'd you do that?"

"You deserved it! And I'll punch you again - I'll punch all of you - if I ever find you treating anyone so again."

"We were only having a little fun."

"Turvy fun! Oh, you hooligans!" She turned to Lillian, and a sympathetic smile lit her face. With a flit of her wings she came close and offered Lillian a dainty hand. "Come along, dear. You needn't worry about them anymore." For the first time Lillian noticed that her rescuer was not alone; there were several other winged girls about, who now crowded close with sympathetic cries to look at her. Before Lillian could take anything in or fully realize what was happening, Pep picked her up under the arms and buzzed off with her, over the heads of the disgruntled Turvies.

"Never again!" Pep warned over her shoulder as she passed the Turvy Prince.

"Turvies can punch, too, you know!" he cried back; but Pep just laughed. After a short zip into the wood, Pep landed and set Lillian abruptly down. It was so sudden Lillian tumbled to a sitting position. The next thing she knew she was surrounded by a bevy of pretty girlish things with wings, all fussing over her and exclaiming in sweet, sympathetic voices.

"Oh! You poor, poor dear. You must be frightened half to death."

"Those Turvies are ever so rowdy, aren't they?"

"Someday they'll learn better!"

"Oh, girls, give her some breathing room for goodness' sakes!"

And Lillian found herself looking up at four friendly, interested faces, all puckered brows or smiling lips or kindly twinkling eyes. A hand was offered her, and she pulled herself up.

"Are you all right?" asked Pep.

"Yes, thank you," she said, still a little out of breath. She looked down at the hem of her dress and found it covered in dust, with a tear in it. "I'm a mess," thought Lillian. She shook her shoulders and smoothed down her face with her hands, just as Mama Mouse had taught her to do.

There was a burst of friendly laughter from one of the fairies (for that, of course, was what they were).

"Why, wherever did you learn to do that?" someone asked. "You look exactly like a mouse!"

Lillian looked up at the speaker in perplexed displeasure. The innocent smile on the red lips, the undisguised curiosity in the wide brown eyes, irked her almost as much as the sly teasing of the Turvies. How could anyone be so ignorant?

"I am a mouse," she said, somewhat defensively.

The smile disappeared from the fairy's face. Suddenly, indeed, she looked quite bewildered, almost sick. The fairies looked at one another, and the uneasy flitting of their wings or the way their pretty fingers went to their mouths had the air of shocked gossip found in Mrs. Mouse's manner sometimes. Lillian felt they were talking about her without even saying anything.

"What?" she asked, confused and a little frightened. This was the second time in one day her declaration of the simple fact that she was a mouse had caused a stir.

"You really believe that you're a mouse?" said the fairy who had laughed, her mouth pursed and her head shaking in a sorry, unbelieving way.

"Well, what else could I be?" cried Lillian.

"What else could you be? You're a Lillidy!" exclaimed another of the fairies - one with flaming red hair and rather reddish skin.

"A what?" repeated Lillian, aghast.

"A Lillidy," repeated the red one. "Haven't you ever seen one before?"

"I don't know what you're talking about!"

"Girls, girls, let's all calm down," said Pep, and turned to Lillian. "What's your name?" she asked.

"Lillian."

"Oh! Lavender Lillian! Why, Pep, she must be Sam's sister."

"How nice! And after all these years looking for her."

"Hush, girls!" said Pep, rather sternly this time. Again she turned to Lillian.

"I'm sorry we're being so confusing," she said, her mouth curling into a smile.

"It's just - well, you really mean to say you think you're a mouse?"

At this point, Lillian did not care to repeat herself. She stared at Pep, and her mouth hung open a little.

"I'm sorry. Of course you think you're a mouse. That's clear." But Pep looked more puzzled than ever as she spoke. "Well - well -" She seemed to give up finding something to say and looked from fairy to fairy with a flustered air.

"Girls, I think we should go to the Fairy Queen," she said.

"Oh, yes!"

"A fine idea, Pep!"

"The Fairy Queen will know just what to do!"

Lillian could take no more of this. "Would you all please stop!" she cried, and stamped her foot.

They did stop. And they looked at her.

"I don't know what you're talking about," said Lillian, so miserable she felt she might cry. "I'm tired and cross and I want to go home. And I don't care if you think mice are funny, or that I'm really a Lillidy or whatever you called it, or that I need to be taken to a fairy queen. I just want -"

"Oh, you poor, poor dear!" cried one of the fairies - a slight little creature dressed in pale blue with light blonde hair, with a sweet and gentle voice which up until now had not said much. She fluttered up to Lillian and stroked her arm. "I'm so sorry. We aren't any better than the Turvies, are we? But we meant well, Lillian, truly we did."

The note of sweetness in her voice and manner, more than the kindness of the words themselves, soothed Lillian's ruffled feelings.

"Look!" cried Pep. "I have an idea. Let's all go have a nice cup of tea at the Fairy Tree."

Lillian looked up, interested in spite of herself. "Fairy Tree?"

Pep nodded. "The Queen's palace. Oh, you'll love it there, Lillian - if you love pretty, woodsy things. Of course, if you don't want to come, you don't have to - but we'd love for you to meet the queen, and have tea, and know that we really mean to be friendly."

"I can't go," said Lillian, trying to be stubborn although beginning to cave. "I want to go home. Mama Mouse will be worried about me, and I don't want her to think I've been in trouble, and -"

"Oh!" cried the fairy who had first laughed at her. "But she can't help but notice you've been in trouble. Your torn dress and muddy clothes has 'Turvy' written all over it."

Lillian looked down at her town hem. What the fairy said was only too true.

Poor Lillian had already had a hard day. This was the last straw. She began to cry.

"Oh!" cried the fairy in blue and laid a comforting, gentle hand on Lillian's arm. "There, there, dear. Everything will be all right. Why are you crying?"

"I don't want Mama Mouse to know," sobbed Lillian. "She'll be so upset - and - and -" She choked on her words. It was just as well; she couldn't have explained her fear of relating the awful jeering of the Turvies.

"Your Mama Mouse need never know," said Pep, her voice comforting in its firmness. "We can clean you up and fix your dress, and it will look like you've only been out for a stroll."

The offer sent a ray of hope to Lillian's heart. She sniffed away her tears and wiped her eyes. "Are you sure she won't be able to tell?" she asked.

"Certain! Fairy thread will fix that dress up in nothing flat."

And so Lillian allowed herself to be taken under Pep's wing - almost literally, as well as figuratively. For Pep, who despite her dainty appearance was really very strong, lifted Lillian in her arms and zipped off with her.

Away they sped at the quick but easy pace of a honeybee, the three other fairies right beside them. The trees whisked past and birdsongs darted by; Lillian felt she was taking in the whole wood at once, its light and its shade and its song and its silence. It bewildered and enchanted her as a pleasant dream bewilders and enchants.

And then, all at once, Pep buzzed to a halt.

"Here we are," she said.

Lillian blinked as the suddenly still world came into focus. Right in front of her was a moss-covered old tree, leaning at a gentle angle; and in this moss-covered tree was an elegant oval door, painted pink; and at either side of this pink oval door stood a fairy guard, dressed in a uniform of green and pink and carrying a twig, like a sword, over her left shoulder. Each stamped her left foot and saluted with her right hand at sight of Pep.

"Hullo, girls," said Pep to the guards. "Is her majesty in?"

"Yes, she is," said one of the fairy guards.

"Very good," said Pep, and, pushing the door open with her tiny foot, flitted inside.

She set Lillian down on a carpeted floor - carpeted with pink carpet that matched the little oval door - and Lillian, looking around, found herself in a quaint and whimsically furnished hallway. It had doors opening on either side of it and twisted away at a gradual downward slope into the tree.

"You're taking me to the Fairy Queen?" asked Lillian.

"Oh, not unless you want to see her," said Pep.

"Oh, but you will want to see her!" cried one of the other fairies (they had all followed Pep inside). "The Fairy Queen is ever so nice."

"It isn't tea time yet, though," said Pep. "We've about ten minutes to clean you up, Lillian."

These next ten minutes were by far the pleasantest part of Lillian's unpleasant adventure in the wood. The four fairies whisked Lillian into a tiny sewing room, and gave her a fresh yellow dress of Pep's to wear; and while one of the fairies washed Lillian's face at a basin of morning dew, the other three took Lillian's old lavender dress and sewed the rips and tears together with gossamer until it looked as good as new.

During those ten minutes Lillian learned the names of Pep's three fairy friends. The very sweet and gentle one with pale gold hair and big blue eyes, the one who washed Lillian's face while talking sweetly all the while, was named Minnie. She told Lillian she lived beside a lake, in a sort of cave formed by the boulders on the pier; and she kept a pair of damselflies who drew a carriage for her, and spent her free time feeding the minnows which loved to swim up to her front porch.

"I'll take you to the lake sometime, and you'll love it," Minnie said.

The other two were sisters - twins, as a matter of fact - but they were not at all alike. Tuttlebee had gold hair and brown eyes and looked altogether like an illustration from a book of fairy tales; Fyria had red hair and reddish skin, and looked like a spark of fire come to life.

Lillian did not like either of them very much. Tuttlebee giggled too much and said things without thinking - she had been the one to laugh at Lillian and say she looked just like a mouse. Which, of course, was more than obvious and as a result had annoyed Lillian. Why Lillian disliked Fyria is harder to say; for Lillian did not know herself.

Truth be told, Lillian's dislike of these two fairies was more the Turvies' fault than anyone else's. The Turvies had irritated Lillian, and Lillian's irritation had extended, not only to the Turvies, but to everyone and everything who didn't fight that irritation by being particularly agreeable. And so you see, Lillian's dislike of Tuttlebee and Fyria may not have been merited.

When Lillian looked, and almost felt, as neat and clean as though the Turvy incident had been a dream, Pep said, "Well! Now for tea with the Fairy Queen. If you want it, of course, Lillian."

"Oh, do please come!" said Minnie, clasping her hands. "We'll have ever such a nice time."

By this time Lillian had grown to trust and almost to love the fairies, and the idea of spending another half hour or so with them was pleasant rather than otherwise. And so she said, "All right; I'll come."

And so they went.

Poor Lillian! She had thought nothing could upset her more than what the Turvies had done and said.

Unpleasantly for her, she was wrong.