In a hidden part of Dreamland Valley, with flowers of a hundred blooming colors swaying in golden clouds, there lived a little dragon named Daisy. Her soft blue body twinkled like the stars, and her eyes glimmered like the evening sky. Daisy loved to listen to the other animals narrating stories. But there was one thing she wanted most of all—to fly high above the mountains, past the world of dreams and cloud-grazing trees. So she kicked her legs and spread her little wings, but still she couldn’t get off the ground.
One afternoon she said, “I am going to learn to fly.” Then she ran up the path to the top of the hill where summits were looking at her, and piles of rocks were dotted about fancifully like a castle ruined by time. When she reached the top of the hill she felt out of breath, and was nearly going back again. The setting sun was still climbing the purple sky, and one light cloud was sailing behind the high hills, and a sleepy little lizard was tripping by, picking his dinner from the stones. All at once a thought struck her. She stretched out her tiny feet, and beat the air gently with her little wings. “If I go to sleep now, some good fairy may give me wings while I am asleep,” she said.
Then she curled herself up tightly and sank down into her happy little dreams. But just as she was going to sleep, a black cloud came sailing up the valley, mixing its dark shadows over her feet; and that frightened Daisy, and made her wake up. And there, on the very place where the little dragon curled up to sleep, sat a wizened little witch, with a black flying-mouse at her elbow, making some very nasty faces with her very nasty teeth.
“Ah!” said Daisy, “where do you come from, and who are you?”
“I came out of that dark cloud,” said the witch; “and as there is nothing bestirring in Dreamland Valley this evening, I have come here to amuse myself. I am going to give you your heart’s desire. It is a habit I have to break the happiness of poor little creatures like you, who have never done anything to me. In time I become happy myself by the process, and you feel all the time that sensation of falling which is too dreadful for words, if ever you happen to have bad dreams; and even when you are not dreaming, there is a little voice whispering in your ear, ‘There is something gone; and it is something you can never, never get back.’ I say, what a pity you cannot fly,” went on the witch: “look here!” And climbing on her broomstick she soared into the evening sky, and hung there a short, black speck, lost amidst the brilliant canopy of stars.
And Daisy, as soon as she saw the sky quite empty, flew quickly to the place where the little witch had sat. She kicked her little legs, and beat the air with her tiny wings; but it was as if she was still on the ground. Then she began to sing sweetly, as is the habit of Dreamland Valley when the sun has set, but not a sound came out of her little mouth. Anxiously she looked into the valley, but the oppressive gloom was still there; and not only that, but there was something more. The breeze whispered something faintly in her ear, and though there was not a leaf stirring round her, the words of the secret were about her like the pulsations of her heart. “Daisy Dalrympole,” sang the little breeze, “the bad fairy is come and gone.”
Then the good Grandfather Oak called out, in a terrible voice, “Are you there, my little idle goat? Bring me a bowl from the golden forge, bring some honey and moss, and some rich acorn oil, for my little granddaughter Daisy is ill.”
Swiftly the little goat came skipping up from the glade with a white, brown-spotted bowl; and what with the moss and the honeycomb with bees still buzzing in it, and the costly oil from the golden forge, with great difficulty was the mixture brought, as the strong wind tried to blow it away. Then the oak squeezed out all the juice into the bowl with his leaves and branches, and Daisy drank the mixture and felt better; but not quite better.
The next day the flowers were full of bees, and the bees were so heavy with honey that it fell pattering in great drops on the dry arched back of the tortoise and spread over the grass and the lovely brown beetles. The blue milk was boiling over the enormous mushroom tops, and the great folks were walking up and down, and their lizards and the little owls were fanning them gently; for they never like to lose on any account any little summertime gown; and at its bottom the green houses were full of the faint sound of bees.
Suddenly, without a moment’s notice, all the insects out in the open round Gold Boat Chapel lifted up their tiny voices with cries of “Shame! shame! shame on Daisy Dalrympole and all of her race!” The frogs in the marsh put their heads out of their houses and croaked it; the grasses shook their ears, and all the mischievous winds kissed their merry little faces. Long-legged flies shouted so loud that their wings were all torn, and the bows on the beechen branches began singing B-A-B. The short spider-lines swelled out into blue bells and called for grace, though they had nothing, it is to be feared, to be thankful for.
And continuously the offenders proceeded marching through the wood and the grass-plain, with sundry colored ribbons and labels on their poles; and all the flowers and palms and trees heard their awful dirge of, “Shame! shame! shame das our pob!” The little goats and the deer were terribly vexed at the little sad faces in the animals who billions spoke, and ran where they were wanted, so as to hear them best; and the great deer came at once out of forest-settlements where they were quarreling together. And asked them what was the matter.
But before answering the great deer turned and looked at their foreheads to see if they had ever been to the doctor; and as soon as they found they had not, they consulted together a long time over a dish of acorn oil, and refused to tell their jokes.
Daisy was sitting trembling under her tree when she saw a shadow pass above her head. She raised her eyes and thought she saw something. But that something certainly was a great crane, as far as the body went, but it was without a neck or head. For a long while she could not make it out. She ran quickly into the glade, and all the animals went one way to see the mystery, and all the others the other way, sitting on their thorns and the dews of count. Daisy stood amazed as she saw Jenjer the Waarrus, with extended wings and silence covering his mouth from head to feet, leading the great procession of animals towards him.
All at once they all began roaring out, with both their men and the women. “Shame! shame! shame on Daisy Dalrympole and on all who are like her!” Then they burst into open wailing, “Woe to helpless, to little, to gentle, to kind-hearted creatures like we, whom a little blemished carrion under pretence of a witch could do wrong to! Woe to poor little Daisy Dalrympole! Behold me! In my calamitous defence of my own species I have been obliged, perhaps, foolishly on my part, owing to our totally uncongenial natures, to bear for some time a sad enough consciousness. Thus to my amiable long-eared brothers, one of whom resembles one of the old potatoes carried capitally by us at last in their state of degradation at the corners of the minds, I was obliged for some time to tell the real opinion I had of them when I would gladly have spared their proud Hindoo ears. Thus also was I obliged to tell the field beetles whom deeply esteemed them that they were most unequivocally the worst of poorer insects I had ever seen; the artificial bodies of a sordid, uncleanly habit, and their absconding claws, the short, shallow, tarnished finery.
“But I did all in my power to alleviate the distress a sore stomach causes, on occasions like the present, especially if the stomach happens to be sore at the touching on it; and as to the brushes of the caterpillars I used, I had reason given me to be justly proud to change the marmelade in the unfortunate beetles for sweet honey. Still, innocent as I am,” sighed Jenjer the Waarrus, who had always till the last wished to believe he was guilty,—“still innocent as I am, my resignation and humility are such that I at present feel almost sorry our black and disloyal witch can take no further advantage, till next our mother earth is turned over; but alas! she is one day’s march off at the outside. Still, while she is wracked by tantalizing cares, how much better I should be gratified if—“
With these words the lamenting animals moved slowly away.
Dog Fox turned round when he was a long way off, and shouted across the plain, “Don’t cry, Daisy, don’t cry; why, no one believes it, except it is true! But in the world we live in now, whenever half a chance presents itself, artfulness and the blackest crimes and insatiate greed of gain will seize hold of us poor little creatures, even our very souls—Oh!” But amazed, and trembling with rage, Dog Fox turned his tail and moved on.
And thus there passed the whole winter, and Daisy lay cozily hidden in her own little house. But somewhere or another she heard one evening a sharp, nervous sort of voice which seemed to come across her dreams. “I am almost ashamed to come to you,” said the magpie, rubbing her beak against the piece of white wood, all of which our coal-black neighbour was covered all over, with which she made streams of music up the quiet twilight sky; “but I want you to believe my coming won’t vex you. It is a regular custom of mine to pay my visit to my friends at the end of autumn, and I felt a slight emotion of pleasure when I burst on your family in the fine public-day we had last week in the country, and when I went the length of chirping a little happiness-listless song before your father the Grandfather Oak and your poor mother Lambkin.
“But although I should have been so very glad to see poor little Daisy when she sent a voice on the cold wind, she forgot we didn’t live together; at least, I never could find her. Finally one day, quite lately, I was flying with little Keeper the dog from the station where I left my own mother, to see your races; and I remembered the message I had to give to poor little anxious Daisy.
“I fly so much every day that I thought, although it seemed almost hopeless to proceed to such an incalculable distance, yet somehow I could barely ask the seas of his tall secretary if he happened to have heard of her. And to my content he answered, as it was in duty bound, or I would never have forgiven myself, I feel I was unconsciously darting down to poor little Daisy Dalrympole’s residence at the end of the egregiously long Avenue, as I had come down ever day. Armed with this sweet tractable residence, I was in the act of whistling all about the door, pinning many colorably black and white circulars, some of which were found in my habitation, as a good quilt of which I have known and seen a good many in my time, but of which still no one is exactly agreeably assured about.
“First though I began hasting away the sawdust you afflicted them with, so as to get her room as wide as I could for her. When up they flew, one after the other, without delay, and right into her young eyes the little imps darted with all their might, till poor Daisy cried out herself unexpectedly and painfully about it. They flew closer yet—of their imps one; but this was true, because it might appear widely unfounded, but still none the less true, that ever going to be idiotic forefathers hastily ran through the nursery, examined my room, turned the little drawers upside down, and went off still cursing.
“But such debts and eternal transactions did I see afterwards by the pocket-tape measure was prudent and advised to settle with the more incredible light regard, so as to defray my coffin or my own little ones instead of leaving them in the state of helplessness one of whom I found standing sorrowfully over my body even after he was awakened himself, I believe directly from his four-footed sleep.
“Fancy I should have lived to regret that I ever went to love and to live in my cottage by your parent the Grandfather Oak. If I could but fly there to-morrow with Daisy’s message, my peace would be made.”
“It was very good of you to take so much trouble,” said Daisy.
And blowing of the smoke as she could towards her little friend, whom she intended for Keeper’s tutor instantly, she set to work boiling the acorn oil most scrupulously till it was quite prepared.
Then the magpie and Miss Pheasant, who had recently come from a fine place with red beards above and below their heads, sat down and began saying every rubbishy piece of news they could think of, round and round Janeber’s and even all her hatpins as soon as she had daintily declined on taking Grunette’s opinion about dipping her neat little nails, whose color and glossy shake looked more mint, so to say, with their caressing, agreeable scent than those of Golden Daub do.
As poor Daisy quite recovered her accustomed flights, they learnt from the last that life was no longer a burden to her, and that all those tiresome little happenings at last ended of their own accord according to promise. And though she told the magpie that they would have nothing bad about our black and disloyal witch’s bad doings, they yet always kept separate till run into each other’s arms or turned out like a fresh bunch on the brink of one of our towns.