Nodwin and the Pixie’s Curse - 9 - The Garden’s State
January 9, 2008 by Basil Munroe Godevenos
The Garden’s State
“Please slow down!” Stella’s skipping was tossing Nodwin about in her pocket.
“Sorry!” Stella called, and settled into a much more stable walk.
Nodwin was able to poke his head out of her pocket without fear of a sudden motion snapping his neck on its edge. What he saw amazed him. Huge trees sailing by as if he were a bird flying among them. He looked down at the ground, whizzing by at stupendous speed. This is what it might feel like to ride a chipmunk - something the Pims had never dared to try.
Stella chattered along the way about this and that, and Nodwin provided, like a good, patient friend who was being done a favour should, polite, interested replies when his turns came up in the conversation.
Before very long (Nodwin was astonished at the distance they had traveled in such a short time, and wondered at how long it would have taken him alone) they arrived at a small woodsman’s cot which had been made the best of by the woodsman’s wife, presumeably Stella’s mother. There was a bit of lattice with some creeping vine growing up the side of the cot, some lovely dressing in the windows and a little stone path leading up to the door. The garden gave Nodwin pause.
What obviously was meant to be a few beds of pretty flowers in neat rows was the scene of a botanical massacre. Nearly every bloom had been torn off its stem. Who would do such a thing to a beautiful garden like this one?
“Oh no!” Stella cried. “They’ve been at the garden again!”
“Who?” Nodwin asked, but Stella was preoccupied by her own dismay.
“Mother and I worked so hard!” Stella gently plucked Nodwin from her pocket and placed him on the ground. “You stay here, I must go tell Mother what’s happened, and if she saw you in the house, she might think you were a mouse and try to hit you.”
“Who did this?” Nodwin called after her, but she didn’t hear him. Nodwin looked around, suddenly feeling very alone in a very strange place, a place inhabited by giants, and who knew what else. He looked at the flowers, beheaded; something was wrong here. He heard a noise from behind some of the fallen blossoms.
Then Stella’s voice rang out in the relative silence, carrying all the way from inside the cot. “Mother! The Faeries have destroyed our garden!”
Nodwin’s breath caught. Faeries would never do this. Not ever! But if Stella thought it was Faeries … Pixies!
Nodwin turned around and began to run toward the cot, but before he had taken more than two steps, he was surrounded by grey-white skinned people with scraggly dark hair and sunken, circled eyes. As they advanced he crouched into a defensive position, holding up his shield and thrusting at them with his spear. But they were quick, nimbly stepping out of its way as others closed on him from the rear. As they smothered him he called out.
“Stella!”
