by Joan Aiken
“It’s my dream!” shouted Clem joyfully. “Oh, oh, oh, it’s my beautiful, beautiful dream!”
At the sound of his voice, the dream came floating and fluttering down from the high cranny where the Tooth Fairy had hidden it; like a falling leaf it came floating and fluttering down, and then wrapped itself lovingly all around Clem.
“This is my own dream,” he told the Tooth Fairy. “And here is a pearl, which I brought for you. Now I shall take my dream home.”
At the sight of Clem joyfully hugging his dream, the Tooth Fairy became so sad that she began to melt. She grew smaller, like a lump of ice in the sun.
“Don’t, don’t, don’t take your dream away, Clem! Please, please leave it with me!” she begged. “It is the only beautiful thing I have, in all this silent whiteness. It is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. If you leave it with me I will give you a hundred years!”
“I don’t want a hundred years,” said Clem. “I would rather have my dream.”
“I will give you a carriage, to travel faster than the sun!”
“I would rather have my dream.”
“I will give you a bonfire that you can carry in your pocket.”
“I would rather have my dream.”
“I will give you a ray of light that can cut through stone.”
“I would rather have my dream.”
“I will give you a garden that grows upside down and backward.”
“I would rather have my dream.”
“I will give you a word that will last forever.”
“I would rather have my dream.”
When the Tooth Fairy saw that Clem really meant to take his dream away, she grew sadder still.
“Very well,” she said at last. “Give me the pearl, then.”
She sighed, such a long deep sigh that the whole castle trembled. Then she pulled back the bolt made from a serpent’s tooth, and opened the door. Clem walked out of the castle.
When he turned to wave good-bye to the Tooth Fairy, she was sitting huddled up on a tooth. She looked so old and small and withered and pitiful that he began to feel sorry for her. He stood thinking.
“Listen!” he called after a minute or two. “Would you like to borrow my dream? Suppose you keep it until the next time you come to take one of my teeth. How about that?”
“Yes! Yes! YES!”
Her white eyes suddenly shone like lamps.
So Clem gently let go of his dream and it fluttered away, back into the Tooth Fairy’s castle.
“Good-bye, Dream—for a little while!” he called. “I’ll see you next Tooth Day.”
“Wait!” called the Tooth Fairy. “Since you have been so kind, Clem, I’ll give you back your pearl.”
“No, no, keep it, keep it! Why would I want a pearl? Put it into the wall of your castle.”
Clem ran down the stair that had built itself of snow. On the stony beach down below, his boat was waiting for him. He jumped into it, and it raced back over the sea, over the floating dreams, red, black, silver, and green like leaves.
But Clem looked behind him and saw his own dream waving and fluttering like a flag from the tower of the Tooth Fairy’s castle, and the pearl shining like a round eye in the wall.
“It won’t be many months before she comes with the dream,” thought Clem, and he poked with his finger in the gap between his teeth, where already he could feel a new tooth beginning to grow.
When he arrived home, the Bread Fairy, the Milk Fairy, and the Apple Fairy were there to welcome him.
“I have lent my dream to the Tooth Fairy,” he told them. “But it won’t be many months before she brings it back.”
And he ran upstairs, washed his face, brushed his teeth, and jumped into bed.
He took with him the round black stone, which rattled gently when he shook it.
“The Tooth Fairy will look after my dream,” he told the Slipper Fairy and the Clock Fairy. “She has it safe.” Then he fell asleep.
When Clem was fast asleep, still holding the black stone, which rattled gently to itself, all the fairies came to look at him.
“He doesn’t know,” said the Water Fairy. “He doesn’t know that he has brought away the most precious thing of all, all, all, all, all.”
“If he ever learns how to open up that stone,” said the Bread Fairy, “he will be more powerful than any of us.”
“He will be able to grow apple trees on the moon,” said the Apple Fairy.
“Or grass on Mars,” said the Grass Fairy.
“Or make tick-tock Time turn backward,” ticked the Clock Fairy.
“Well, let us hope that he uses it sensibly, sensibly, sensibly,” said the Soap Fairy softly.
“Let us hope so,” said the Curtain Fairy.
“Let us hope so,” said the Bathmat Fairy.
But Clem slept on, smiling, holding the black stone tightly in his hand.
And, by and by, he began to dream again.
A Leaf in the Shape of a Key
LEAVES WERE FALLING FROM THE trees, because it was the second day of November. It was also the day after Tim’s birthday, and he had a new bicycle to ride in the garden.
First he fed the snails, who lived by the garden pond, with some orange jelly left over from his birthday tea. The snails loved orange jelly, and ate up a whole plateful. Tim would also have given some jelly to the stone goblin who sat by the garden pond, but the goblin was not fond of jelly. In fact he never ate anything at all. He always looked gloomy and bad tempered. Perhaps this was because one of his feet was stuck beneath a huge rock.
“Would you like to ride on my bicycle?” Tim suggested.
The goblin’s eyes flashed. He looked as if he would like a ride very much.
But that was no good either, because Tim couldn’t lift the rock, which was very heavy indeed.
Tim went off, riding his bicycle over the grass. The stone goblin stared after him.
Leaves were fluttering down all over the lawn, and because there had been a frost the night before, the grass was all crunchy with white frost crystals.
As Tim pedaled about, he began catching the leaves when they floated near him, and putting them in the basket of his bicycle. He caught a red leaf, a yellow leaf, a brown leaf, a pale-green leaf, a dark-green leaf, and a silvery leaf. Then he caught another red leaf, two more brown leaves, and two more yellow leaves. Then he caught a great green leaf, the shape of a hand. Presently his basket was almost filled up with leaves. He pedaled back to the pond and showed all his leaves to the snails and the stone goblin.
“Look! I have caught twelve leaves!”
Now the goblin began to pay attention. “If you have caught twelve leaves, all different,” he said, “that’s magic.”
Tim spread his leaves on the grass and the goblin counted them.
“That one is a walnut leaf. And that’s an oak leaf. This is a maple leaf. And that is from a silver birch. This one is from an apple tree. And that is a copper-beech leaf. And here we have an ash leaf. And you also have a hazelnut leaf, a pear-tree leaf, a rose leaf, a mulberry leaf and a fig leaf. You are a very lucky boy, Tim. You have caught twelve leaves, and all of them are different.”
“What must I do now?” said Tim, very excited.
“You must catch one more leaf. And that will give you what you want most in the whole world.”
On his birthday the day before, Tim had been given his bicycle, and a lot of other presents, and he felt he already had most of the things he wanted.
But there was one other thing.
“Oh!” he said. “What I would really like is to be able to get into the little cave up above the garden pond.”
There was a steep bank on one side of the garden pond—almost like a little cliff—where water came trickling out of a hole and ran down into the pond.
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In the cliff there was a tiny cave. It was no bigger than the inside of a teapot. You could see into it, and it was very beautiful, all lined with moss like green velvet. There were tiny flowers growing in the moss, no bigger than pinheads. They were blue and white. Tim longed to be small enough to get inside this beautiful place.
The stone goblin’s eyes flashed again.
“Ride off on your bicycle,” he said, “and catch one more leaf. Then bring it here. You must bring me the very first leaf that you catch.”
Tim rode off at top speed. Almost at once a leaf came fluttering down in front of him and fell right into his basket.
“Watch out!” shouted a blackbird, swooping past him, very low. “Don’t trust that goblin! He means mischief! I can see it in his eye.”
But Tim took no notice of the blackbird’s warning. He pedaled quickly back to the goblin with the thirteenth leaf in his basket.
“Here it is,” he said, and he took it out.
The thirteenth leaf was pale brown, and it was in the shape of a key.
“Look in the middle of my stomach,” said the goblin, “and you’ll find a keyhole.”
Tim looked, and he found the keyhole.
“Put in the key and turn it,” said the goblin.
Tim put the key into the hole and turned it. He had a hard job, for it was very stiff, but it did turn.
As soon as Tim had turned the key, the goblin began to grow bigger. He pulled his foot out from under the heavy rock. He stood up, rather stiffly.
“That’s better!” he said.
He was still growing, bigger and bigger.
“You promised that I should get into the cave,” said Tim.
“So you shall,” said the goblin.
He picked Tim up easily in his hand, reached over the pond, and put him into the cave.
“Why!” exclaimed Tim. “You weren’t growing bigger. I was growing smaller!”
He was tremendously happy to be in the cave, and he began to clamber about, looking at the beautiful flowers. Now they seemed as big as teacups. But Tim found that, since he was so small, he sank up to his knees in the thick wet green moss, which was not very comfortable. Still, he was so pleased to be there that for some time he did not look out through the doorway, until he heard the blackbird squawking again.
When Tim did look out, he had quite a shock. For the stone goblin had climbed onto his bicycle and was pedaling away.
“Well, I did offer him a ride before,” thought Tim.
But then he saw that the goblin was pedaling toward the garden gate, which opened into the road.
“Stop, stop!” shouted Tim. “I’m not “allowed to go out there! It’s dangerous!”
But Tim had grown so small that his voice came out only as a tiny squeak. The goblin may not have heard. He took no notice at all. He was waving his arms about, singing and shouting, and pedaling crazily from side to side.
“I’m free!” he was shouting. “At last I’m free! I can go anywhere I want! I can go all over the world!”
Then Tim found out a frightening thing. He was so small that the little cliff under the cave entrance seemed terribly high to him, and there was no way down it. He was stuck in the cave.
“Help!” he shouted to the goblin. “I can’t climb down! Please come back and lift me down!”
“I’m not going to help you!” the goblin shouted back. “You should have thought of that before. You’ll just have to stay there! Good-bye! You’ll never see me again.”
And he pedaled right out of the garden gate.
Poor Tim stared down the terribly steep cliff at the pond below. The pond was like a huge lake. “Whatever shall I do?” he wondered. “Mum and Dad will never find me here. They’ll never think of looking. I’m smaller than a mouse. I can’t shout loud enough for them to hear me. I shall have to stay in this cave forever and ever. What shall I eat?”
He sat down miserably on the wet green moss.
But he had not been sitting there very long when, to his surprise, he saw four long horns with eyes at their tips come poking up over the sill of the doorway. The horns belonged to two snails who had come climbing up the cliff. Snails don’t mind how steep a cliff is, because they can stick themselves to the rock with their own glue.
“Don’t worry now, Tim,” they said kindly. “Just you hold on to us. We’ll soon get you down the cliff. Hold tight on to our shells.”
They turned themselves around. Tim put an arm tight around each of their shells, and they went slowly down the cliff, headfirst. It was a bit frightening for Tim, because they crawled so very slowly; he had rather too much time to look down. In the end he found it was better to look at the snails’ shells, covered with beautiful pink and brown and yellow patterns, or to watch the clever way they stretched out their long necks and then pulled in their strong tails.
At last they came to the bottom of the cliff, and then, very carefully, they crawled around the stone edge of the pond, until Tim was safely back on the grass again, beside the empty plate, which seemed as big as a whole room.
“Oh, thank you!” said Tim. “I thought I would never get out of there! It was very kind of you.”
“It was nothing,” said the snails politely. “After all, you gave us all that orange jelly.”
Tim was safely out of the cave. But he was still tiny, much smaller than a mouse, and he didn’t know what to do about that.
And the stone goblin had gone off with his bicycle.
But just at that moment he heard a tremendous crash in the road beyond the hedge.
And at that very same moment, Tim grew back to his right size again.
Five minutes later, Tim’s father came into the garden, looking both angry and puzzled. He was carrying Tim’s bicycle.
“Tim! How did this get into the road?” he said. “I found it up by the crossroads. The front wheel is bent—some car must have run into it. And there are bits of broken stone all over the street. Have you been riding out there? You know you are not allowed to do that.”
“The stone goblin took it,” said Tim.
“Don’t talk nonsense!”
“But look! He’s gone!”
Tim’s father looked up at the empty place where the goblin had been, and at the heavy rock. It was much too heavy for Tim to have lifted. So was the goblin.
Tim’s father scratched his head. Then he fetched his tools and straightened out the bent wheel. “No riding in the street, now!” he said.
“Of course not,” said Tim.
He began riding over the grass again. He caught lots more falling leaves. But he never again caught twelve different kinds.
The stone goblin never came back.
But whenever there was orange jelly for tea, Tim remembered to give some to the snails.
The Queen with Screaming Hair
CHRISTINA’S PARENTS WERE THE KING and queen of Laurestinia, an island seven miles long by three miles wide. It was wrapped in mist every day till eleven o’clock, and the laurel trees on it bloomed all year round; there were a great many of them. At the time Christina was five—when this story begins—the king and queen sailed away to visit their Empire, which they did every six years. (The Empire was another, even smaller, island, across forty miles of foggy sea.) The king and queen left Christina in the charge of Miss Pagnell, her governess, and the prime minister, and Crimplesham, the palace cat, who was the most important of the three, as you shall see.
A band played the national anthem as the royal yacht steamed away from the dock, and everybody sang:
“Our country is foggy, our country is free,
Its people are happy as happy can be,
Apart from an iceberg just once in a way,
Our climate is mild as the middle of May,
Our people are joyful, our laurels are green,
> Here’s luck to our land, and its beautiful queen!”
When the yacht was out of sight, Christina went back to her nursery, feeling rather forlorn, and wanting comfort. Crimplesham the cat was there, in one of his dignified moods, looking particularly stripy, like a business-cat, sitting with his tail tucked tightly around his paws, and the pupils of his eyes narrowed to slits as he stared out of the window. He looked as if he had no attention to spare for Christina. So she stared out of the window too, and soon it began to rain, which made everything worse.
A pair of blunt-ended golden scissors lay on the sill—Christina had been making paper dolls before it was time to say good-bye to the king and queen—and presently she picked up the scissors and began cutting snips off the ends of her long golden hair, which hung down to her waist. Then she snipped some flowers out of the flowered curtains. Then she turned and looked at Crimplesham, who was still staring into the distance.
Then Christina did a fearful thing. (You must remember she was only five at that time.) Afterward she did not know what had come over her—for mostly she was good as gold, and Miss Pagnell wrote Excellent on her report week after week. But at this moment she was seized with a wish to know what Crimplesham would look like without his long white whiskers. And the next minute—snip snap—the whiskers were lying in two white heaps, on either side of his front paws. It happened so quickly that it took both the princess and Crimplesham a few seconds to realize that the whiskers were really off. Then Christina let out a little squawk of horror at what she had done. For it had been so horribly simple to take the whiskers off; but how was she ever going to get them back on again?
As for Crimplesham—his eyes flashed like two arc lamps. And he began to grow. He grew until he was at least sixteen feet high, and he roared at Christina, “You little numbskull! You little ninny! Look at what you’ve done! Now all kinds of terrible misfortunes will follow. Why, in the name of all that’s striped, did you have to go and do that?”
