CHAPTER TWO: A Fairy's Curiosity
The winds rush about exchanging the most delightful secrets, and if one only knew how to listen to them, one would indeed know of the most intriguing things. But the winds being the flighty things that they are, have mangled their own language that even they themselves have a hard time understanding each other.
Tinker Bell had always been a curious fairy, and she had quite a sharp ear that was always ready for the most interesting things. So when she came to understand snatches of the winds' conversations, she became especially interested in what they spoke about the children's dreams. In their dreams, there were whispers of things and places which were completely unknown and mysterious to the little fairy.
She heard of Arithmetic and Kindergarten School and Hopscotch, and of other queer-sounding words. Naturally, her interest was roused, and she wondered if Football was a strange fruit, and if it tasted as disgusting as its name sounded. For many, many, many days she sat by herself atop a craggy cliff where the winds blew strongest, holding on tight to a piece of the root of a dead tree which stuck out from the hard ground. She listened until she felt quite dizzy from the winds' aimless whooping.
For many, many, many more days she thought of all she had heard. She went about doing her little fairy things and tried talking to the other fairies about these strange words, but they looked at her with with either disinterest or scorn, that she decided she would be better off thinking her thoughts alone. She did just that, sometimes returning to that outcropping of rock where the winds blew strongest. Finally, she could contain her curiosity no more and decided to find out just what those things exactly were.
She had understood enough of the winds' language to know how to ask her questions. Clearing her throat daintily, she spoke.
"Excuse me."
The winds were flying and shouting about so wildly that they did not even notice the little fairy. Tinker Bell called out again, in a much louder voice. "Excuuuuse meeee!"
In her eagerness she let go of the dry root on which she had wrapped her appendages around, and one particularly feisty gust of wind managed to blow her away with it. Tinker Bell shrieked her displeasure, and only then did the winds hear her. They quieted down a little, so the fairy was able to flap her own wings and hover.
"Yesssss?" They asked.
"What are yooouhoo whooo are youoooo why are youuuu?" Another gust of wind howled.
"I only wanted to know how you knew of those things," she inquired politely.
"Oh, yesss, we knowhoooo --" "Thingssss!" "We blowhhhhhh!" "We knowhhhhhh!"
They were all talking at the same time that Tinker Bell didn't quite know which one to listen to, so she addressed the gust of wind that took her on his back.
"How do you get there?" she asked, a little less politely, for she was getting impatient.
"We knowhhhhh!" "We blowhhhhh!" "Blow highhhhhh!" "Blow lowhhhhhh!"
She realized she could get nothing from this "conversation" and was keenly disappointed. In her anger she shot off into the sky, glowing red with her emotions.
She continued her upward flight, until she had surpassed the point that was the highest any fairy or bird or any other thing in that place had ever flown. From that vantage point, she noticed that the line where the sea and the sky met was rather blurred. In fact, the sea and the sky did not meet at all, but was one. It wasn't exactly clear, either, whether it was a line or a point or a curve, for the harder she stared at it, the more blurred it seemed to her, as if the line or point or curve was avoiding her gaze.
She did not realize that she was flying towards that line or point or curve, or that she was going at a very great speed. Was she even flying anymore? Or was it pulling her into it?
And then, quite suddenly, with a deafening bang that left her ears ringing, she was in it. She was pierced with the brightest shafts of color, blindingly brilliant, wonderfully warm. For endless moments, she floated in it, laughing loudly in ecstasy, until the colors melted away into distant points of bright lights, which seemed to look like dazzlingly shining fairies themselves, except that they were not moving, and that they were so far, far away.
In another blink of an eye, the lights rearranged themselves until they were all in front of her. And then they were no longer the brilliant spots in that endless blackness, but somber, sober pinpricks in the night sky.
And that was how the first ever being breached the Barrier and arrived at a cool summer night in London.