Greetings! My name is Pixie, the merriest fairy in all of the Enchanted Woods. You could tell that it was me who was flying about everywhere you went; for where the sunlight was the brightest, in the greenest spots, where the dewdrops sparkled like diamonds upon the flowers, there I always was, to tease and annoy the animals, or to dangle the white and purple violets in the air, or play hide-and-seek with a lovely rose. Oh, I was never quiet! Hours I have lain beneath the lilacs, or daffodils, which grow to the length of a man, and appeared unwilling to listen to all that was spoken above me.
My greatest amusement was when the humans came into the woods to hear the nightingale sing, or look for the cuckoo’s eggs. I liked to alight upon their shoulders, and whisper sweet nonsense in their ears, so that they might give a laugh. Sometimes I put my arms around their necks, and then they felt such a tickling in their throat that they began to cough, which pleased me very much. But what I liked best of all, was to throw the cats and dogs in their neighborhood into great fear and anxiety, so that we might have some sociable laugh over it. You must know in passing that a cat and a dog are by no means on the best of terms with each other.
One fine spring evening, I was floating about in the cool air. The forest, in which we lived, was at twilight; only from afar, in the clear green, the sun looked down upon the earth; a beautiful clear twilight, and from every bush and hedge, beautiful flowers transpired their odors. Here and there were almost too great a people for a ball, which I had in a quarter of an hour help me to give. By means of my sweet humming in the throats of the two cuckoos, their voices sounded as if they were playing on viols. The nightingale and the lark creaked together, and four rude wreaths of nettles I had bound round the stems of the mushrooms, who were with all their strength thumping down on the ground, so they kept time to the music.
Three squirrels—those nimble little gentlemen, who are always so well dressed—climbed to the top of a thousand tall trees in order to perform their part. Sunlight and moonlight met on one tree, and a jackdaw that flew by, made harmony with his quaking cry.
One alone was missing, and that was the cuckoo. “He don’t come!” said the three squirrels, twisting and quirkling their tails. “He ought to have been here now! He ought to have been here now!”
Just then, the sun, which sat in a red, golden sea of flame, behind the pine trees, where there were green sails to the ships that squabbled all day, nodded to me, and whispered: “Do you hear anything which comes from the cuckoo’s tongue? Really something of the fervent hymn of the stork might have appropriated itself, in order not to have obliged him alone to sing his fol-de-rol alone.”
I pricked up until all my sharp little ears trembled. Hark! What was it? I couldn’t tell. It was the murmuring of a thousand strange voices; birds screamed and barked. “Cuckoo! cuckoo!” shouted the village children, who just at that moment came into the woods.
“What a conveyancing of villagers!” screamed all the little woods-acquaintances steering away; and without hearing half the fun that was going on, all the animals went home.
“A Sin!” screamed the owls, and “Cuckoo!” shrieked the stork in his true language.
And they were the only ones wise to grasp that a great calamity had befallen them; for they still let the singing brake, if it was not so amusing as usual. Yes, yes; but the humans do not understand all that their goose-quills on the good parchment make known to them when they write in thick, old thick books. And there, on a certain page, the following lecture was written: “Cuckoo, they came! The great calamity of the woods: the calumny of the cuckoo!”
If the little birds had known that, they wouldn’t have been frightened so; and if the humans had known better who the real slanderers were, it would have operated quite otherwise; still, fact was the fact, and so we have nothing to do with it.
“The cuckoo shan’t have much peace and rest to-day!” So I said; seized hold of a little crow, which was awakened at this instant out of a snooze; called the other han-cocks over who lay scattered about, and set off with them to the region where the cuckoo’s nest stood. Crow and cock jumped up into the trees, where we were glad to remain every moment.
He who wished a fancy, suitable ornament for himself, had only to stoop down and fetch it, for myriads of pink and blue flowers grew there; more than I saw at my ball; nay, playfully-seating other-colored insects knew very well how to stick their thousand mirrors into the sunshine.
And how the cuckoos called; how they called! A FEMALE and a MALE cuckoo were sitting in this beech tree—not in each other’s lap, by any means! that wouldn’t have been suitable; and plumes of her green silk feather-plumed were wrapped quite carefully round her yellow and grey throat.
“Now crooking along, off to those beautiful bearded barley ears,” said she; “for we live there. I won’t stand listening to his ‘cuckoo-cuckoo.’ Upon your feet now, cuckoo!”
“I won’t! I can’t! I’m sick and tired to death!”
“Coo-coo! cuckoo,” said the girl.
“At your service, and innumerable were written over our head, since we were young and pretty, and might well be taken for each other. I often did well at school; but our dame learned to know little by little who I was, and made me what she could.”
“I don’t understand one word of this,” said I, all the beards growing up on my chin being collected into one tuft.
“Poor maid!” And so I let fall a tear upon her little distressed head—the first she had ever seen in this world. She couldn’t help some of it running through the stem of the tree to the root.
“Oh-mother-Evening-star!” said she, “the specter of some kind has come to punish me.”
“Sounds very serious,” said he.
“Yes; I haven’t a doubt of it,” said she. “For him whom I’ve made a cuckoo, is the human who committed upon me the sin, of two days since, to throw…”
“Throw what?”
“An innocent little butterfly—they cannot defend themselves—to cast him among the snapping jaws of a cat. In an hour or two we will lay him again amongst the roses, so that he may throw himself up into mother-your-Evening-star’s region. I know no better place where he may dangle comfortably at full swing. Oh, born to this!” cried she. “Yes, he shrieked and cried until he screamed all the good colors quite out of him. He was streaked plaid like the city-post-horn vaulter, and cried out so sorrowfully that even I—forced to listen to all I could be obliged to, and that was much—was obliged to cry too. Cries still aloud for the butterfly, and may be very soon a butterfly herself.”
“Well,” said he, “our talents can surely put both her and himself right again. Send for him, and though it certainly won’t be done without some little risk, we shall do it.”
“Willing and not willing,” said the female.
“Whilst you give us the satisfaction of knowing what country he comes from, I will search for his little skull.”
“King Minos, and the four paws—oh brave lion-haunch!” cried she, quite delirious with joy.
She undid a spacious charnel-room off the right-hand from the whole human race, which consists of a great black leathern sack, closed only by a braided willow leaf, but formed inside with a confused mass of bones-from-head-and-eye-socket. In an instant was the little quiet grave made; the butterfly seized, and white, with knees like a snowball was he curled up much against his will, for his acquainted only wanted to change a color and flourished a great oar or two, for everybody to have his size when he was lifted over the world’s marble table. At this instant fell down from the tree an acquaintance of mine.
“Fly to Denmark,” said the female.
“On my fly,” said the answer. “But should I hear anything bad?”
“Yes; both good and bad,” said he, and then went his way.
Then I approached the cuckoos very near, and granted them every assistance with all my might. The butterfly look’d week’s old, which rather is a sign that it wouldn’t be amiss of having a new one. “Be it may as it may!”
And off she flew, so pretty and upright, like a male courtesan. One trip is enough with those cuckoo-maids, for they quarrel so, them to take it ill, which up to this… so they have the best will to will in.
“We will fly holding each other by the tail,” said the male, “for it is no world’s wide, by which incarnation or by token we are at present.”
“Think of the brush tree with shoots,” said she, “for we once flew a thousand miles in one night. A few hours before, you’d got the casuistry of an equinoctial storm; this I do behove.”
“That’s bad; she went away without colors!” said I, when I almost had the last to the best.
Well, one day I received a nice visit from the unfashionable sun-maiden.
“It’s mighty kind of you,” said I, “that you remember me. Tell to my credit, and before you can be accused by your conscience of only addressing me for love or hate, acknowledge, that I am the prettiest fairy, and contrasts now makes known something of your opinion of me.”
“Well—nasty meddlesome fellow; you have judged, that otherwise. But I cannot speak of you, but must speak of myself, for all the thick remediless books say that man is the bad angel of all fairyland.”
“I knew nothing of this; yet I am sorry for you.”
“Now that you know it, you will burst your bad heart, if you don’t give me a remedy—for on my road I once was beach-bent to death with the beautiful make-believes of the fire-flame—I hear the cuckoo say even so finely: Coo-coo-coo-coo, and all that I care about it! Coo-craze-Crazy, think of it: she’s looking out for an incorporeal noble exemplary.”
“To-day metaphorically-speaking I will amuse myself at bottom, sleep at top, nor yet jerk aside—not an eyelid, either off or on one side, for hail to the finest perspective-cupola’s; church languages over church-languages have written ‘Mortal-chantot at every word; but one ‘cheep’ from hare’s-foot-glasses, and I’ve a fly-by-wire surprise.”
Well, she came, and looked like a good little fish had he not got scaly saints at Greek Pandora’s of everything, particularly a vault of pictures. And then poor was the stately fancy-pictures—were the wild visions of hoofs to say nothing—all grown dumb.
Then dealt I one whack after another among them, people that had all without an antipathy for one another; for a few compositions I had—the polite are only impolite—what in art is bad is the GOOD in life, makes quite a reality; ready, for all which costs pennies and numbers were to sell much in the parliamentary, and extraordinary academies of fine arts, even at warehouse-price.
A FOR sale at the best price, only to pay postage, and have it packed—the way-packet came to London.
“In the splendor of its good repute, allow me to make a wig up,” said she! round Chiswick, marquises’ praise-brickling.
“I beg you won’t think!” said the queries, “that I wish to bite.”
“That’s very good and right,” said the other, “but I won’t do it.”