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Lillian Ch. 4


Chapter Four

As Pep led Lillian down the pink-carpeted, twisting hall, Lillian noticed that every one of the several Fairy guards they passed saluted as they went by.

"Pep," said Lillian at length. "Why are they saluting?"

"Oh!" said Pep, her voice a laugh. "That. They have to salute for me. I'm the Fairy Princess."

Lillian had already encountered too many royal persons today to be really surprised. She pondered this new information for a few moments before asking, "The Fairy Queen's your mother, then?"

"Oh! no," said Pep. "It doesn't work that way, with fairies."

Lillian opened her mouth to ask what in the world she meant, but just at that moment they reached an open doorway with fairy guards stationed at either side of it. "Here we are!" exclaimed Pep. "Now, don't be nervous, Lillian. Just be on your best behavior, and Her Majesty will take the same fancy to you that I have."

If anything, this reassurance only made Lillian more anxious; but she had no time to grow really worried, for Pep poked her head into the room and cried, "Your Majesty! May we have tea with you?"

And a surprised, pleasant voice from within answered, "Pep! Why, of course you may. How many extra cups of tea will we need?"

"Five," said Pep, tripping into the room. She turned and beckoned to Lillian to come in, but it took the other fairies' friendly pulling and prodding to actually carry Lillian over the threshold.

Pep went on brightly to the Fairy Queen, "I brought Minnie and Tuttlebee and Fyria, and a new friend we found being teased by the Turvies. Your majesty, meet Lillian."

The Queen turned her smiling brown eyes on Lillian, and Lillian blushed beneath her gaze. Her majesty was not in an imperious attitude at all - merely sitting in a fine old armchair with a teacup and saucer in hand - and yet there was something majestic that emanated from her very being. She had a kind, elegant face, beautiful despite the lines of care and strain etched into it - for evidently even fairies can age.

"How lovely to meet you, Lillian!" she said. "Do have a seat. I hope the Turvies were not too hard on you?" Real concern edged her voice and glowed from her face.

"No, ma'am," said Lillian, sitting down in a chair between Pep and Minnie (the twins were sharing a settee across the room). "That is - not very hard."

"What a polite little liar you are, Lillian!" exclaimed Pep teasingly. "You know that's not true."

"Dear, you mustn't hesitate to tell me everything," said the Fairy Queen, setting her teacup and saucer on a little table beside her seat and leaning forward anxiously. "I'm responsible for the Turvies, to some extent at least, and it's my duty to find out what mischief they've been up to most recently." And so, her fears put to rest by the kindness of her new friends and by a warm cup of tea, Lillian settled in and told the tale of her adventure with the Turvies.

Speaking of it in a comfortable little room with teacups and nice furniture all around made it feel farther away and longer ago than it really was, and as the telling went on Lillian grew more and more at ease; but the lines in the Fairy Queen's forehead grew deeper and deeper, and her beautiful eyes clouded with worry. When Lillian had finished, she shook her head and buried her face in her hands.

"Oh, those Turvies, those Turvies, those Turvies!" she said, and fell silent.

After a few moments, she sighed and lifted her head. "I just don't know how to handle them anymore," she said, with a wry, tired smile.

"You can't put it all on yourself," said Pep, in such a caring, chiding tone it was hard to believe she wasn't the Queen's daughter. "Those Turvies are too much for any one person to handle."

"Then what will become of them?"

Pep shrugged. "The whole wood will have to pitch in together, I guess," she said.

The Fairy Queen shook her head. "But Pep, you know the whole wood won't pitch in. I've tried to recruit their help, but the Turvies are better recruits."

"Oh, fiddle-faddle! The Turvies just seem to be having a better time than us, that's all. Besides. Everyone's more or less afraid of the Turvies."

"Oh! Poor Lillian," cried Tuttlebee suddenly, in a gentle laugh. "Look at her. She doesn't have any idea what we're talking about, poor thing."

Fyria cocked her head in surprise. "Don't you know all about the Turvies?" she asked.

Lillian, who had turned rather red during this last speech or two, strove not to show her annoyance. "Well, not very much," she said.

"Lillian's not from around here, I don't think," said Pep in quick explanation to the Fairy Queen.

"Oh?" The Fairy Queen looked at Lillian with interest.

Lillian, still burning with a self-conscious flame, sat with her hands folded in her lap and a foolish little smile on her lips. "Yes," she said. And then, because the Fairy Queen was still looking at her, and because for some reason she wanted to avoid mentioning the mice at all costs, she said, "I am a trifle confused. Who are the Turvies? And why do you feel responsible for them?"

"Oh, how to describe it to you!" said the Fairy Queen. "Children always are the hardest - or is it that they are the easiest, but we grown-ups insist on making things more complicated? Well! It's a long story, and it may be you'll think it rather a silly one."

"I'll try not to," said Lillian.

"Oh, pray don't do that. It is a silly story full of silly people and silly choices - that's what makes the whole thing so serious. I suppose I'll start from the beginning - or as close to the beginning as I can get.

"Long ago, Lillian - oh, very long ago, near the real beginning that doesn't matter at the moment - we little people of wood and stream and field were in our babyhood. I mean babyhood in several ways. First of all, I mean it was near the beginning of our life as a group of people. Second and more importantly, we really were like babies - simple and happy (or sad, as the case may be) and lively and curious, content with little things, fond of playing and eating and sleeping and laughing - very irresponsible. We were irresponsible because we had nothing to be responsible about, like babies. Not in a bad way. Not yet.

"Of course, like babies, we wouldn't remain that way forever. We couldn't. We had to grow and learn and feel more and more all the time, so quickly that it sometimes hurt. And all the time, as we grew, we had more and more things to be responsible about. Bigger things, more important things - societies, kingdoms eventually. Finally, there came the day of our growing up: the day we would be given our greatest responsibility."

"What was that, ma'am?" asked Lillian.

"Ah, it's rather hard to explain. I can put it no more plainly than to say there was to be a marriage of peoples."

Lillian gave the Fairy Queen a quizzical look.

The Fairy Queen laughed. "It would have been backwards for any other world," she said. "Always marriage comes first and society after. But not for us Fairies and Turvies. For us we were first to have the less important things - towns and governments and laws - and then the thing towns and governments and laws were meant for: families. It's never been done before, that I know of."

"But - what does that mean, 'a marriage of peoples'?" asked Lillian, still rather bewildered.

"Just this. In the beginning Turvies and Fairies were quite separate. We were our own peoples, not two halves of one people. This, too, is strange and unique and has never been done before. Anyway - we were happy to be apart. But the day was coming when that would end and a new order begin - when the two peoples would mingle, when each Turvy man would take a fairy wife. It was the moment of choice - the growing-up choice, which everyone has to make sooner or later. Accept the new order, or no? We Fairies said, 'Yes.' The Turvies said, 'No.'"

"But - how?" asked Lillian. "All of them?"

"All of them. Their King began it. He was supposed to marry me, but he said he'd rather not. Every last one of them followed suit."

"Oh, dear," said Lillian softly.

"Yes, and ever since it's been a story of mischief and unruly behavior. We grew up; they didn't. All our happy times as friends are over, and will be until they decide to grow up."

She sighed and looked off into the distance, one elegant finger on her queenly chin. "What is worse," she said, now seeming to talk to herself, "ever since that day the Fairy-gardens have ceased to bloom, and the Turvy-orchards in the oak forest have as well."

Pep turned to Lillian. "You can't imagine the havoc Turvies wreak in the wood," she said. "They love to mix things up any way they can - turn things upside down and inside out, as they say. One of their favorite things to do is steal the eggs from bird nests and switch them all around."

"So robins sometimes end up with baby crows," said Tuttlebee.

"And chickens sometimes end up with baby ducklings," said Fyria. She giggled. "Oh, was that funny!"

"Just think if a duck had ended up with a baby chick," said Minnie soberly. "They can't swim. The poor thing would have drowned."

"It's disgraceful, the things they do!" finished Pep. ("They" meaning, of course, the Turvies, not the chicks that cannot swim.)

"Enough talk of the Turvies," said the Fairy Queen at last. She waved her hand in a languid way, as though to even think of them tired her. "Let's turn our mind to happier things. Pep says you are not from this wood, Lillian. Is that so?"

"Yes," said Lillian.

"I am unfamiliar with the world beyond the wood. Where do the Lillidies live?" At that innocent question of the Fairy Queen's, Lillian felt herself go all red and hot. It was the second time in that one day she had heard the word "Lillidy" - the third time anyone had implied she was something besides a mouse. The first two times she had been able to flare up and deny such a blatant mistake - but now? Flare up at the Fairy Queen? Impossible!

"I've never seen a Lillidy," she said. "I don't even know what a Lillidy is."

Lillian was not the only one whom the Fairy Queen's words had made uncomfortable. Pep and her friends had been unsettled, too, and shown it by glancing from one to another and giving an occasional nervous twitch of a wing.

Now, Tuttlebee looked up and said,

"You have seen a Lillidy. You are a Lillidy."

"I'm not!" cried Lillian, her temper rising now that it was provoked by Tuttlebee and not the Fairy Queen.

"Then what are you?" asked Fyria, something of a challenge in her manner (it could have only been her red hair and naturally brilliant eyes).

"I'm a Mouse!"

"Oh, but that's not so," said Tuttlebee, her brown eyes wide and concerned. "Lillian, haven't you ever looked at yourself? Your hands, your hair, your face - you're not a mouse. You're a Lillidy."

Lillian was on the verge of tears, and what she would have done next is anyone's guess - but thankfully for her, the Fairy Queen interrupted.

"Girls, girls! Calm down. Whether or not Lillian is a mouse, raised voices won't help anything."

As a matter of fact, no one had really raised her voice yet; but fairies (especially Fairy Queens) have higher standards than us when it comes to such matters. Lillian looked down at her lap and took deep, steaming breaths. A tear slid down her cheek - and before she could wipe it away herself, somebody did it for her. She lifted her head and found herself looking into the Fairy Queen's sympathetic brown eyes.

"There, there, dear," she said. "Don't cry. You've had a long day. Do you want to go home?"

Unable and unwilling to do anything else, Lillian nodded - a small, shy nod, but very eager.

A smile like a tender ray of sunlight lit the Fairy Queen's face. "Very well, then," she said. "Pep will take you."

"Oh, but your majesty!" Pep jumped up and buzzed over to stand beside them. Her own brown eyes were bright and eager. "Don't you think - oh, I know, I will take Lillian home - of course I will, Lillian, don't you worry - but don't you think we should introduce her to some Lillidies first?"

The Fairy Queen shook her head. "No. Lillian does not want to meet any Lillidies. She wants to go home."

"Oh, but - your majesty! Don't you see? Lillian is Sam's Lillian. Lavender Lillian, whom we've been looking for all this time..."

"Pep, I have given you my answer, and I am very disappointed that you have tried to change my decision. A fairy princess must never be headstrong when she is ordered to do something. Now go."

Pep made no answer besides a meek, "Yes, your majesty," and led Lillian out of the room. Minnie and the twins did not follow them.

After they had left, Tuttlebee drew close to the Fairy Queen, who was looking with a sad little expression at the just-closed door.

"I don't understand it, your majesty," said Tuttlebee, her sweet face stamped with puzzlement. "Don't you think she's Sam's sister? It seemed so..."

"Oh, I knew she was Sam's sister the moment she walked into the room," said the Fairy Queen. Her face was very tired now, and her voice sounded a little like a sigh. "Her face leaves no doubt about that. Besides, she's wearing lavender, and she's just the right age. Yes," and her voice was very weary, "she's Sam's sister."

Tuttlebee's brow furrowed in confusion; then she said, "But shouldn't we tell Sam?"

The Fairy Queen shook her head. "Not now, Tuttlebee dear. Soon, perhaps...but not now."

Tuttlebee pondered for a moment in silence, and said no more. But Minnie, sitting quietly in a corner with her tea, sighed a deep sigh and whispered from the bottom of her heart, "Poor Sam."


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