CHAPTER THREE: A Place Called London
Tinker Bell flew through the cool night, and because the sky was dark, the moon having hidden her face from the uncaring world, the little fairy was drawn towards the bright lights of the city.
She explored the streets of London, and marvelled at all she saw. She was especially amazed by those huge grey blocks of somethings which stood side by side along the very straight strips of yet another grey something on the ground. She did not know that those grey strips on the ground were the pavement, for there was neither the need nor the space for pavements in the jungle where she came from. She also did not know that the huge grey blocks of somethings were buildings and houses, for her idea of a house was a cozy hole in a tree lined with the softest moss and the most comfortable dry leaves one could pick up from the forest floor.
She noticed that the huge grey somethings had rectangular holes along their surfaces, some of which were illuminated. She approached one of them in her usual fairy hurriedness, so that when she hit an invisible barrier she was very much shocked and flattened, and her wings crumpled from behind her. She did not know about glass, and as she slid down the cold and hard surface with a groan and her eyes crossed in pain, she cursed its magic. For it was, to Tinker Bell, very strange and new, and in her awe magical.
When she sagged into the outer window sill – the rectangular hole was, of course, a window – she gave herself a moment to recover, and then her curiosity was back, and more carefully this time she peeped into the illuminated inside of the house.
There were two people sitting in cozy chairs. Both were holding a pair of pointed sticks in their hands which were stuck through soft-looking masses piled on their laps. The pile looked larger on the younger figure's lap, and Tinker Bell soon saw why. When the woman adjusted herself to a more comfortable position, the soft pile was dislodged, and the fairy saw a large bulge where the woman's stomach should have been. As Tinker Bell watched, the two women moved their sticks against each other, and two balls of string jumped merrily up and down the floor as the sticks ate them away slowly.
"Oh, Mother," the younger woman was saying, "I am just so excited! If it is a little girl I shall name her Susanna. Wouldn't it be the sweetest thing?" The words were accompanied by smile and a faraway look as the sticks momentarily halted.
"Yes, wouldn't it?" was all Mother said, her eyes never leaving her knitting.
"Of course Harry wants a boy," the woman continued, "and if it turns out to be a boy he shall be named Adolphus." The last was punctuated with a dark look and a shudder. "Harry is most insistent. He said he wanted something to remember his Old Uncle Addy by. I have nothing against that dear man, Mother, but – Adolphus -- !"
"Hmm…" Obviously, Mother was not listening.
Tinker Bell soon lost interest, so she flew away from the window, and peeped in through others. She saw all sorts of people in their nightly routines. Old grandmothers and grandfathers were snoring in their beds; cranky babies were being bounced against the shoulders of their even crankier and harassed nurses; young men were hunched over dimly lit desks, their fingers smeared with ink as they struggled to put their ideas to paper; mothers with the softest voices were telling their tales to little children who were nodding off to sleep.
All of this was very interesting and new, and Tinker Bell aprreciated all that she had learned that night, but found her own eyes drooping persistently as she sat on the cold window sills. She had been flying about all night – in a very strange place, no less -- so it was only right that weariness was begging her to rest already.
She looked up and down the street, but the few trees she found looked so very scrawny in their tree boxes that she knew she would not find a comfortable spot in them to rest her tired wings. With the last of her energy, she forced herself to fly again, away from the huge blocks of grey somethings and the lights hanging by those strange leafless trees that stood so very straightly, their trunks a strange black color.
At last she came upon the comforting familiarity of a jungle. In Tinker Bell's opinion, the trees in this jungle were so very thinly spread, and were nowhere near the size of the trees she was used to back home. Of course, she did not know it, but she had not come upon a jungle, for there had not been a jungle in what was now known as London for many thousands of years, and new jungles dared not sprout in that area, for they would only find the huge grey blocks of somethings very unfriendly, the long grey strips on the ground even more so.
She went about the park – yes, that was what Tinker Bell's jungle was—looking for a nice spot, and she found it in a crook between two branches of a willow tree whose arms were swaying in the light wind, the very tips touching the grass by its roots. The spot needed no further furnishing, for it was already covered with a cushion of the tree's fallen leaves. With nary another thought, the exhausted fairy settled down and closed her eyes, and almost instantly she was asleep.
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Tinker Bell was awakened the next morning by the delighted shrieks of little children that were playing in the park. It was a Saturday, and there was no school, and as the fairy strained her eyes against the glare of the late morning sunshine, she saw that the park was filled with children and their Mothers and their Fathers and their Nursies. There were even a few dogs that jumped about with the children.
It was a feast for the most curious of minds, and Tinker Bell stretched her arms and her wings in excited anticipation of another day of new discoveries. But before she could bounce out of her cozy nest, a squeaky voice startled her.
"Excuse me, but where are the nuts?"
The fairy almost jumped out of her skin when she heard this voice so close to her ear. She saw that the speaker was a squirrel, and the bushy-tailed animal was already burrowing into her pile of leaves. The fairy thought it was rather rude of him, and drew her breath in preparation for her indignant speech. But before she could say anything, the squirrel continued, without ceasing from his frantic digging, "I can't find them! I can't find them!"
Tinker Bell's anger dissipated when she saw the animal's agitation. "Find what?" she asked.
"The nuts I left here yesterday! Or was it the day before yesterday?" In his attempt to remember the when of the matter, his little paws left the pile of leaves and one of them settled beneath his lip in a most thoughtful expression. Only then did he see the fairy, and his eyes became round in surprise.
"Why, you've got the strangest feathers!" The animal stared at Tinker Bell's glowing skin and her pale, transluscent wings. "Aren't you the queerest bird I've ever seen!"
The fairy took offense. "Bird! I am no bird! I am a fairy!" she declared airily.
"A fairy? That's the first I've heard of it," the rodent said as if he did not believe her.
"And you are the rudest animal I have ever met!" Tinker Bell cried. Actually, that was not true; just last week a snake came up her tree back home and asked if she would not mind being eaten for breakfast. Presently, the incident conveniently slipped the fairy's memory.
At that moment, as Tinker Bell stood with her hands on her hips as she scolded the squirrel, she heard the rustling of leaves behind her and saw the squirrel's eyes widen in alarm. Before she knew it, the squirrel had planted his paws into her shoulder and knocked her down. Something huge whizzed past them, and her hair stood as she felt the air rushing behind the thing.
"What was that?" she asked as she picked herself up, shaken.
"That," said the squirrel in a very grave voice, still lying stunned on the pile of leaves, "was a football."
So Tinker Bell learned that a Football was something to be avoided not because it tasted offensive, but because it flew about it the most unpredictable manner.
Then she heard voices slowly getting nearer. "Where is it?" "Have you seen where it landed?"
The squirrel jumped to his feet when he heard these voices, and cried in alarm.
"What's wrong?" asked Tinker Bell, confused.
"Children! Quick! Hide!" The rodent's chatter grew more frantic with each word.
"Why? What's wrong with them?"
"What's wrong? What's wrong! Those children will set your tail on fire if they catch you, and they'll force you to eat the most awful things you can give a name to!" The squirrel owed this information to an unlucky experience of having been captured before by two boys who were especially mean. As he bounded down the tree, the search for the lost nuts forgotten, Tinker Bell heard him cry, "Don't be seen, little bird! Don't be seen!" And then he was gone.
In her fright, she burrowed herself into the pile of leaves, but her hiding proved to be vain when one of the children climbed right up the tree as he looked for the lost football, and saw the shaking pile of dry leaves. A grubby hand dug around and closed itself around the fairy's waist, and then the boy cried out to the others: "Look here, mates! Look what I found!"
In his excitement he shook poor Tinker Bell, but the fairy recovered enough of her wits to bite the boy's finger with her sharp little teeth. The boy howled in pain and let go of her.
"Oww! It bit me! It bit me! The fairy bit me!"
The other children crowded below him and laughed.
"Fairy! Haha! Iggy here's seeing fairies! Hahahah!"
"Fairies, indeed! There's no such thing as – "
Before the child could finish the sentence that would have doomed Tinker Bell, another one of their playmates cried out from farther off, "I've found the ball!"
And so Tinker Bell was saved by a Found Football, and she softened her initial opinion of that thing in her gratitude.