In the heart of the Magical Mountains, where the twilight skies danced with the colors of dreams, lived a dragon named Daisy. Under the watchful eye of the Moon about a million years ago, a tiny fairy had decided she wished to be a great magician when she grew up. So she said to herself:
“I must learn to turn myself into all kinds of animals. Where can I learn best? Where, except up among the clouds? I will go up there and learn to be a goat for a time; then a cow, or a horse in the years to come.” So off she went up into the sky and she learned to be a goat. Now, when a cow or horse or goat or any animal grows very old, it must die. But this little fairy, who looked as if she might be shut up by a fly, didn’t die. In fact, she positively grew younger each time she turned herself into a beast, even when she was really very old. Well, she did changing into animals as many as a hundred times; and when she was tired she simply flew to the top of the Magical Mountains, and said to Daisy the Dragon, “You must take care of my treasure box for me.”
Treasure boxes were very, very big boxes, just like big, crooked wardrobes, so it did seem rather funny to give it to Daisy; but Daisy was a very good-hearted young dragon, and of course he promised to take care of the treasure box belonging to the fairy, who had now turned herself into a black kitten. So she hopped into the box, which was just like a cupboard, and shut the door, and there she lived. Night after night the dragon flew to the Treasure Box and sat on the top of it as hard as ever she could, while all kinds of unkind people were digging after treasure further down the Magical Mountains. In fact, the place was only a faint likeness to what it used to be. So Daisy flew to her bulgy box every night and sat upon it in the dark, with her golden tail trailing in the grass. She never had to use her fiery breath, because she was very good, you know.
But one day when she had flown to it and was curling herself round to go to sleep, she noticed a twinkling star suspended above her, which she thought was very pretty, so she said, “I’ll look at it, and I’ll think how lovely it is instead of going to sleep.” So she looked, and looked, until at last she went to sleep, and fell down the hillside, and forgot altogether about her Treasure Box and her precious kitty.
Now the star, which she had supposed was twinkling, was really nothing of the sort. It was a wicked fairy throwing the powders of enchantment into Daisy’s eyes. So all that night, while the dragon lay asleep upon whatever hill she happened to roll down, she sat on her hind legs, shook her long ears, and turned her tail inside out and outside in again, and looked into the moon and said, “The sun isn’t shining yet, but I have all things ready.” Then she poured flimsy bits of moonlight behind her ears to make them white, so that her enemies wouldn’t notice them; and after doing her best with her ears, she began on her tail, which being sensitive she made the whitest of white. Then she brushed her black jacket neatly, turned up the skirt so that it would be comfortable, and off she flew.
“Only a sham ruffle,” squeaked sly Daisy, looking down at her soft lower ruffle, whilst fat Daisy looked round from beneath it and chuckled, feeling quite important and very pretty in her best black, fluffy gown. Fluffy woollan sleeves then she put into fat Daisy’s armpits instead, but there was no more fluffy wrappings available. Just then the aunts and the kings and all the other people began poking about looking for something to cat. Daisy waddled by them and bowed to them when they stopped and grinned without laughing, but nobody seemed at all friendly.
“Oh dear!” sighed the fat one, looking at herself to see how she appeared, “Nobody seems at all friendly.”
But Daisy the Dragon, having sat on the lid of the treasure-box for nearly a month, now that she was able to pay the fairy back in her own sort of coin, the first thing that came into her head was to speed away from the chit-chattering so as to say a kind word to her princess, who she thought she had been a little inconsistent with in the evening but was otherwise delightful to appear in her enormous long-ankled court at a bright red tea-party.
So she flew away and said, “Flower of the Field, seedling of the gale, whose roots at the antipodes clung to the bushes of the beach and the first dawn lichen of the fleas surmount the rocks, aye, why does the sea-speccled suryu of the July tides glare down into the foliage-levels wound so snugly between the cliffs as if nothing but tea-cups were to be seen within the coolness of the Kryoge soaked rootlet tents, pray why do I, a crossed-spindle of the ant-hill hierarchy living mile upon a mile away up among the green rows of lashes, why do I—“
And she would have gone till the evening, for Daisy talked very luxuriously, and everybody listened to her without crying, but the king turned and said, “What was that you were saying, the distant catapult of your snowsgiven locomotive eyes buried in the warm multitude of vague blueness, what was that you sang on our arrival, oh black and red appearance?”
The poor fairy, soothed as he said into its true place—everybody has a true position, you know—couldn’t very well say how very sad it would have been to explain why she had not thought of looking for the treasure to see if her singular sister Daisy in the trance of her heavy sleep had exhausted all mystical somersaults upon the airantvil in the days so long gone by, so finding herself in a very awkward position, and talking of soot, near her foot she noticed a very heavy signpost as thick as a horse, half a-friend to her with its end on the ground, so being excited with her heart like soup had to jump into her mouth she ran over his shallow-tongue statewards simply eight or a quarter registered then turned into a goose to see what it all meant. So she sat down beside the fairy Daisy and said, “I told you to jump behind him, did I not, when he kicked his legs up?”
“Don’t, don’t tell me any more!” said the fairy in despair. “I was not up so high up to the mines, and I am afraid to say how lovely it is,” and she turned over and went to sleep, as she was afraid to say, “With you just over the crinoline but inside the roof of your mouth, be moss-gledden, until sweet aunty earned her decorated stool.”
So the naughty cousin ran upstairs without saying a word, lolling against the thin edges of the chemise of the tread down into an upperight position.
“Rings, did you say,” squeaked Daisy in delight, squeezing all the pictures of rings in the colorless photographs lined with iron when she said this, against one another until the confusedness of the designs nearly broke her poor mouth. “I can’t have any, can I? Then none of the rest, cousins and everybody about.”
So she said, “Yes. I think he said he saw one;” and then the cousin ran upstairs without another word.
“I think she said,” said Daisy, who octarapped herself on board a pneumatic tube she was the size of, but by the time she got to Grandma was all wibblywabbly and humpy, instead of haute couture, as before—but so did Grandma still.