Chapter one: Stranded
"The Land of Marvels has gone," he said. "And the next land hasn't even come yet. I don't know what it will be either. Well – Connie's gone with the Land of Marvels. She would do a silly thing like that!"
Bessie went pale. "But what can we do about it?" she said. "Whatever can we do?" We've in charge of her, you know. We simply can't let her go like this. We must find her somehow."
"How can we?" said Silky. "You know that once a Land has moved on, it doesn't come back for ages. Connie will have to stay there. I don't see that it matters, anyway. She's not a very nice person."
From The Folk of the Faraway Tree
"But we have to do something!" cried Jo. He was starting to feel the panic setting in now. Connie was gone. It was his fault, he knew it.
Moonface looked grave but firm. "There's nothing we can do Jo, you of all people should know that."
Beside him Fanny began to silently cry. Bessie, pale as a sheet now, looked to Jo. "Jo... what do we do now?". Jo stood silent, staring at the ladder as if Connie would come down it at any minute. How desperately he wished it was true.
"...Jo?..." Fanny's voice was small and quivered.
He stared at her with blank eyes.
"...I don't know."
Connie stood still. So still she could of been a stone angel in an old church yard, if stone angels could be imagined dressed in a dirty, ragged white party dress and a mouth open so wide a gold fish would be proud. She hadn't been able to move when she'd heard the wind whine, or when witches and goblins and hundreds of other strange little creatures had started to pour down the hole in the ground back to the tree. To be honest she hadn't understood, at the time, what on earth (if she was even still on earth) was going on. But she understood now. She understood very well.
Suddenly she was screaming. Why had she come up here? Why wasn't she warned? A small knot of locals stopped and stared at the little screaming child. But Connie didn't notice. She was on the ground now thumping the grass, trying to dig it up with her hands. This was a trick! Holes did not just disappear! Any minute not she would hit a trap door, fall through and it and be back with her cousins. But this was no trick and Connie found nothing but dirt beneath the dry landscape.
The little knot of onlookers was fast becoming bigger as people became aware of the little (now very dirty) child, who apparently was quite crazed."Poor mite" whispered one witch to her neighbour, "look at her clothes. Must be a beggar child". "Where's the policeman" cried a middle sized Nome. "Someone should fetch him". Connie's ears pricked themselves up at this and for the first time she noticed the crowds she was attracting. It was a crowd of the strangest and, to frightened little Connie the scariest, people the little girl had ever seen. And they wanted to get the police on her! She'd heard them! Without a second thought Connie jumped to her feet and ran. The child was vaguely aware of people shouting, but she didn't care. She ran, through the grass, over the path and through part of a town and didn't stop till her sides ached.
It was then that the terrible thought came to Connie. She did not know where she was. What if the ladder came back and she wasn't there for it. It had, after all, disappeared quite suddenly. What if it came back suddenly too, and she wasn't there for it. She span around... then stopped dead. Which way had she come from? Connie didn't recognise any of these roads. The little girl then realised that she carelessly hadn't looked where she was going. She was lost.
Connie sat with her back against a tree and cried.