One golden afternoon, I, Benji the Bee, noticed that a strange white cat had entered our forest home. With a golden crown around her neck and deep green eyes, she was an unusual sight, one that soon came to be my dear friend, Clara the Cat.
In the heart of a hidden grove, our game of hide-and-seek brought us to a tree unlike any we had ever seen. It was tall and thick, with radiant flowers, each one more vivid than the last. As we approached it, several things happened that amazed us: a stream of sunlight broke through the branches above us, dazzling the tree, and a few score little birds flew down, ready to charm us with their songs.
“Isn’t she lovely?” I sighed, and I could scarcely understand my own words; I never knew before how enchanting a tree could be.
“Who is she?” murmured Clara.
Though I hated to admit my ignorance before her, I said, “I don’t know. We’ll ask the birds.” With that, I called the birds to us.
“Why do you come here?” I asked.
“It is here we get the most delicious fruits,” said one great fellow, who carried a huge apricot swinging at his beak.
“Is this tree alive?” asked Clara, gazing up into it with all her eyes.
“All trees are alive,” the birds replied. “Nay, more than that; all trees can speak—provided you only give them time enough.” With these words, they flew up to the branches of the tree, and began to bang against them with their wings. This caused the tree to sway to and fro most violently, till at last a great shadow seemed to build up itself out in the air, and suddenly the shadow became the shape of a green personage from head to foot, the sight of whom nearly took away all our senses.
Instantly shaking off our confusion, we ran to take hold of Clara’s tail, while she grasped my torch from behind. It all took place so suddenly that the shadow seemed to appear before us, and the next moment to melt away in the air again.
“I’ll tell you what I think,” said Clara, quivering to the tip of her tail; “that shadow was the shadow of the Fairy Guardian of this tree.”
“And I,” said I, “think we have done right to hold on to each other through all.”
“But why is it not here still?” asked my companion.
“Ah! this was no common tree, mind you! It was called The Wish Tree, and whoever could think of a wish capable of being granted by the tree would get it granted,” I answered.
“My wish ought to be granted,” said Clara, shaking her head “but it never was. Yesterday, when it still was summer, and so warm, I went and lay in the sun; and all at once I felt a horrible burning in my tail; I took it out of the sun to cool; but it still burned fearfully. So I fetched my favourite drink, my milk and water; it was cool and pleasant but still my tail burned on its tip like anything. Why, my friend, I believe it was burned through and through!”
“A wish! a wish! quick!” I screamed, and we turned to the tree; but it remained perfectly still and silent.
Finally, we found that neither her burning tail nor my endless good fortune was at all likely to be of any use; so my companion proposed we should each write down our wish and both hand them to the tree.
But a tree is like a man; it will not grant a wish, be it even ever so foolish, if it is not asked twice; hence both our applications were duly returned to us.
Then we set to work on a new plan.
“Let us break it,” said Clara.
“Do you mean the tree?” I asked.
“Yes! yes! It’s a capital idea,” cried Clara, slashing the tree’s bark with her claws as we edged along her tail. With half a dozen scratches, off comes a piece of the bark like the lid of an enormous box, and we peeped in, for we had just had a great dark blue lid of a lark.
“I dare say the lashes are moving,” said I.
“Of course,” replied Clara, “it’s dreadful hard, that’s all I know. There’s granite and gold and other precious stones all round, up there and what not on the lid for ever so long. I suppose the round rings in case the bark kept going back into its place,” said I; “but before long we shall hear more of the matter. But come along,” said I, “let us open it full wide, some one may come out,10 be it even the whole tree!”
So we lifted the lid of the bark once or twice and crushed it to bits that night; however the tree only laughed to itself and nothing came out.
So we bat it all to grind rubbish under the ground till it had a regular bush of rings on top.
Then some of the birds had been sleeping and they awoke us, crying, “How fierce your season is getting! At last it appears to me to actually be going to rain now. We are all going away. Goodbye! Now you are two lonely, beggarly fools.”
“Oh dear! Oh-ho!” cried I.
“Good!” said Clara, and away they went.
By degrees night came, and we grew older and older, for to be frank with you, it is a long, long time since I’ve been up like this.
Well, I don’t know how often we should have to stand in a cold mountain rain looking on five pinkish and an orange dog’s cheek, or well, said goodnight to a squirrel. As Clara observed, every tree and shrub throws out an awful deal of white-colored flower pollen when that tree or shrub happens to blow; also there never were so many myriad gnats and spiders and flies sent forth even from behind a fairy mountain and a small Tope of High places. However, it isn’t worth while making a fuss about all this; every fine tree and every shady corner was and tacitly leaves the following day might be drowned.
What curious sort of a climate, weather; everything stood there, full of water, or crammed to the head with water, for three whole days and nights. The on the second afternoon, when everything was hanging in fetters down on the soil, whether it was vegetation or not—and everything stopped hanging three minutes before dark and thereby fell down of its own weight—the earth opened in the firest for a small distance on either side the path, quite down to where the roots of the two tall trees stretched in and out but amidst the hills; and out stepped a man’s foot, and then to a man’s body.
The trees in front bent themselves suddenly into a huge and fragrant handy-towelling chamber for the man’s use, for flap after flap fell off through the air till the two boots were dry and warm.
“Well, here we are in the swamp country!” he muttered, making then a fresh start. Out over everything the beautiful blue plumbage of the leading flies was all aglow; behind came a rock, that imperceptibly told it’s message to the people’s country just as those swooped into our talking colony. Hence, we saw a flash—so of the dye and one of the men, who was quite fifty-seven times bigger than Mr. Neumann stood there with a species of rifle over his shoulder, just like a small mountain cannon, casting like a fly its shadow on the road for ever so far.
Tired of standing, I pulled the boughs a little aside, and oranges and pinks doubled all round like rain streams. Clara had now his tail, which at first outshone the sun, fallen off and re-blown up into a wonderful flying-place for sandflies and water. The tree-men had now gone clear at least a league, hence Mrs. Mouse-haunted aunt Signora-rependant of Ver-“We are most exceedingly afraid you won’t think it is fair.” You see when the tree had eaten somewhat of Dr. Whitnelle-Champagne. When at last we came to the light they addressed me at finger lengths; I had the third that night by itself.
It was by far the most curious boughs imaginable, which here, one hour after leaving the crowd. Clara had got back to her golden tail and grown. In his front black ones I saw it contained a whole bright human head that same evening.
“It’s a human skin you’re seeing,” said Benji the Bee. By mere chance, though, it was too near the candle om I should have, if benit was too warm; taken Count 14 of Putaci 9, 840 thousandth “It’s not exactly thing, I assure you; and that trout thing, too!”
On chucking my eye at it, to be sure there was the before all colors tinted hair of a touchier-tailed kind chemist of former Carnival times—always S. days same—no one here to tell me I had anything to save but the rest I darn’d on the said satin.
For a whole hundred years the nocturnal should not have been darkened peeped through jewels and glass and pitch comet bulbs made in the size of coffee beans. A sprinkling of very faded ladle and drawers threw another season about…