Wally the Wombat was wandering through a mystical glen as twilight turned the sky to lavender and silver. The trees reached out branches that glistened in the last rays of sun. The air was rich with the scent of evening blossoms, and everywhere, magic shimmered just beneath the surface.
Suddenly, Wally stopped. Before him lay an ancient stone well, its surface covered with moss and tiny, twinkling fireflies. His heart leaped – he had heard stories of wishing wells! Gently, he stepped closer, careful not to disturb the little critters flitting about. “What fun it would be, to drop a pebble and make a wish!” he thought happily.
Wally searched through the tall grasses for the perfect stone, finally finding one smooth and round, just right for throwing. He picked it up, gazed at his reflection in the cool stone, and sighed.
“Oh dear! A wish is such a big thing to do alone,” he murmured. “Whatever would I wish for, all by myself?” Wally tossed the stone into the water, where it disappeared with nary a splash.
At that moment, Sheila the Sugar Glider fluttered down, her silvery eyes wide with excitement. “What were you doing, Wally?” she chirped as she lighted upon an overhanging branch.
“I found a wishing well!” Wally replied. “But oh, I feel too lonely to make a wish.”
Sheila thought for a moment and said, “It is true a wish is best when shared with friends. Why do we not invite them all? We can make a wish together.”
So down floated Sheila to summon their friends. Soon, there came bouncing Bongo the Bandicoot, gazing upwards. “What’s the matter with Sheila? She looks like the stars are her eyes!”
“Come see what I’ve found!” cried Wally. “There will be a party!”
Bongo quite forgot to answer. Instead, with a merry hop, he hurried to Wally’s side, his snout twitching in surprise. Hardly had these two arrived when Buzzy the Bee and Freddy the Frill-neck Lizard came hurrying also. “What’s going on?” asked Buzzy. “We thought it was a fire or something; the woods are all aglow.”
“We have found a wishing well!” explained Wally, his eyes sparkling, “and it will not be even half as good if you two do not come.”
Buzzy thought a moment. “Oh how lovely! A well full of wishes! We will certainly be there.”
Sheila wrung her little paws together, for she was almost too excited to talk. “And perhaps Gaston the Great Grey Kangaroo will join us! He is so big, he can hold the most wishes.”
So friends called friends until everyone in the woods was gathered round the well, all laughing and waving their paws and wings to one another. But what a difficulty arose now when it came for all to decide on one wish. Sheila insisted that the others make a ride on her back after they had thrown in their stones. Why shouldn’t they have as much fun as possible? But Bongo thought they should wish for a great feast of all their favorite foods. “Then we could have both,” said Wally. “We’d only have to wait till after the ride.”
Buzzy thought that a rainbow would be a pretty wish, but no one except himself held the same opinion. Freddy whispered something to Wally, who promptly repeated it with a loud laugh. “Wally says he wishes, some day, to be as large as Gaston,” Sheila announced, clapping her paws. “That would be a splendid wish!”
Wally’s little round eyes opened wide. “Oh dear! I didn’t mean everyone should hear that!” But all the others thought it quite a good idea. Still Gaston shook his shaggy head. “Better wish for a prairie where there is room enough for the whole crowd,” was the only compromise he could think of. This pleased Wally. So they all quietly dropped their stones into the well, and clasping paws and wings stood in a great circle around it.
Then Wally gave the word, and lifted a tiny voice sweet and high, so that all of little friends could hear. “Oh well, in the woods, hear what we say! We wish for a prairie we all can play. A sun-warmed place with flowers and grass, Where friends may gather as seasons pass. And whenever they meet a glad song will swell, Rumbling and tumbling, as if in a shell, Free life to fresh wishes and joyous and free, Hear all we have said; Oh well, hear and be!”
The forest was still for a space. Then came the voice of the Night Wind whooshing through the trees and calling to the birds to sing sweetly and low. Over it all sounded Gasper the Great Grey Kangaroo, growing clear and louder till the last blast melted softly away. Everyone clapped their paws together. “That must surely have reached the bottom of the well!” Bongo said.
But when they looked, not a glimmer of a wish was to be seen! All were so sure really deep under the thick moss and the fallen leaves and the mine of fireflies the wishes were shining, that they presently sat down upon the grass, each one eating and passing to his neighbour his favourite dish.
And lo, and behold! right before their very eyes were the greenest of grasses and a hundred flowers that no one knew before. Where all the burrowing had been done the red and black ants swarmed, tiny ants with heads like toys, their bodies built on a rounded plan, each one a weird creature all by itself.
Out went wishes and evermore wishes, for not only their own but all they could ask for Buzzy had brought from the land to the westward. So every day Wally’s little friends hopped and fluttered and clapped and gnawed, when they thought how when Wally came pramping into the forest that twilight, all tram trips or a good time to give him, that their merry song from every bush about went trilling on into the air.
In sleepy little rhymes went the bushes in their night dresses, the fires of the glow worms floating right and left. The moon took up the story where the sun had left off; those too busy to listen to her soft whisperings, chattered about gaily at their own supper time in the lofty tree tops. So each little story of themselves was caught by her; as meeting crickets told them whenever her silvery beams thought best to shine in.
Thus Wally the Wombat heard the news and looked and listened as day by day and night after night came and went. And whenever in the presence of their wish that well where they all were gathered there was never one longing for another, but each wished his wished his own, and together they were, welcome as the joy and peace of each other’s heart.
It was no trouble long for Wally to pick up a pet name of his own which no one would dare to forget, for he was commonly styled the last best Wombat the world had ever known. For a long time he was so occupied by the answer to wishing all he wanted to, that he didn’t think once of asking what he would go away as soon as he could take to mother or where her not to be found. A long distance from home they all thought Wally had to travel before he met with Gaston and his friends; so he hopped along, looking at the sky, listening with pleasure to familiar songs and voices that flew away glad and merry as he was.
But one year when gaspeckled pablese was at last blown about and cold flowing into a dark hole out of the forests and fields, Wally said, “I have the dearest wish of all far over yonder hill.” And over the Hill he set forth. When he reached the other side, there and there around him, he had been once before ill ill and sore wounded to get along in his mother’s care which only just did cure him, and keep him going.
Madly wild to be freed from his accident as well, to over come all the bad legacy of warm and then and hither to not know why given to tempests, that no flying above the land made him least merry but an entreat week and fed him away they did not get his captive answer fresh. He didn’t make that pilgrimage for nothing, for so many reasons he pushed on, still advertising night and day warily and sad he left off his old life and long grew used to manage another dimension higher up, that was not hard to keep going over the track his sheer strength the last to meet his footfalls kept alive repaying him for them abundantly.
When the fasting and fasting again ended paired every rose of dewdrop travelling shadows he came and went all a hundred fresh secret being so strange to him can well have thought, of wishes beyond their companions, warmth, travelling and not worst of all an easier stage of flying as far, granted him.