Back at home Mrs Wilder was getting worried about James. He was always difficult to find when he ran off to the little woods, he probably had a hiding place there, but he always came back when he got hungry. �He must be starving!� she said to herself, �where could he be?� Mrs Wilder sat down at the kitchen table to wait. She would give him one more hour and then she would go and look for him. Up in his Raven�s Den James was awestricken. What was happening down there? Below his vantage point he could see all manner of strange looking creatures. They walked, slid, crawled and hovered all the way down the hill towards the Lag Island in the middle of the river. Little tiny flying sprites spiralled through the air while slimy underground dwellers slid down the hill, tentacles flailing madly, upsetting some of the more normal looking sprites, who looked the same size and shape as James himself. From the sea to the forest thousands of sprightly voices could be heard. Some were high-pitched and some were grumbling and thunderous. Together they created a beautiful constant hum of activity. It sounded like heaven to James. Nothing on earth could sound so beautiful and look as magical as the Speur looked today. Where had they all come from? James was goggle-eyed. Was he asleep? Quickly he stood up and head butted one of the trees large branched nearly knocking himself out. Thud! No, he wasn�t dreaming. Down on the Lag Island itself, three huge golden disks rose slowly from the earth into the air, one by one they spiralled upwards to the sky. Beams of light connected them to each other and James could see some of the strange creatures being borne up and down in the beams from one disk to the other. Was this real? James wondered, his eyes wide with excitement and his hair standing on end with joy. This was going to be an extraordinary day indeed. James waited until there were only a couple of creatures left descending into the valley before he climbed out of the Sycamore tree just in time to see his mother peering through the trees calling his name. �James,� she said, �James, are you there?� James was surprised. She was standing right in front of him and asking was he there! Was she blind? �Ma, I�m here.� James answered, waving his arms above his head, but his mother couldn�t see him any more. �Ma?� he called to her again, realising the truth. �James,� shouted Mrs Wilder, �Come home for dinner this minute, or I swear to god�!� she fumed and cursed and stomped off back down towards home, promising to throw his dinner in the rubbish bin as soon as she got home. There are lots of different types of people in the world. There are lots of types of boys and girls. Some children will think about consequences while some will just rush about not thinking of anything in particular. James was neither of these. He realised what was happening. He knew it was unbelievable and that he should go home and go to bed and hope his mother would be able to see him in the morning (Incidentally, this would have worked) but he wouldn�t do that, because it just wasn�t in his nature. This was indeed an amazing incident but it was also something much more important than that. It was an adventure. ******** Turtle McTurnips was in a grand mood. It was just heavenly in the river today. All the sprites and crawlers and hovering maulers piled onto his watery hand to be borne across to the island to the weird and wonderful carnival circus. Turtle controlled the water with his mind, bending it into a friendly hand shape and lifting the next group off the wooden platform, Greenspan had most thoughtfully erected, and whooshing them across to the Carnival gates. The revellers then jumped onto the island side of the river and headed for the Magic blossom tent where they could drink the Magic Blossom and fly upwards to join in the fun. James watched the giant turtle swim below the huge watery hand as he got closer to the riverbank. He was following a group of sombre sprites that were just about his size and wore big grey serious looking hoods over their heads. attempt at copying them consisted of wearing his jacket over his head and keeping his hands in his sleeves. He really didn�t look like them at all but with all the strange creatures wandering around he certainly wasn�t the oddest looking being about. Most importantly, though James didn�t know it, none of the Insider people could see his eyes and the eyes of a fairy are very different from human eyes. �Some eyes must see their world dissolve, replaced with lifeless ground. The inside folk are doomed to watch, the golden islands drowned. The human knows nothing, of the magiks all around. Ignorance will let his eyes seem childlike, white and round*.� *Tantimus Brain of the Winds and the Elvin council (hys 1265 � 1991) alarum and have the whole carnival down on his brave young head. Fairy�s eyes are not white nor are they round and by his presence James was committing a serious crime. Humans could not enter the fairy world. It hadn�t been done since 952 A.D. by a young boy named Brian. It was said that the Dru as punishment for his offence took the human boy�s soul. But what the Dru did was never truly understood and the words of Tantimus the wind sprite were often used when trying to interpret the Almighty Fairy leader�s decisions. |
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