The Fairy Doll Read Free

bells.
    ‘Ting. Bicycle basket,’ it said.
    Elizabeth knew what a cave was like; there had been caves at the seaside; there was one in the big wood across the field, and this very Christmas there was a clay model cave,
in the Crèche, at school. If she had been a clever child she would have argued, ‘Bicycle basket? Not a bicycle basket?’ but, not being clever, she went to look. She
unstrapped the basket from her bicycle and put it on its side.

    The ‘ting’ had been right; the bicycle basket, on its side, was exactly the shape of a cave.
    The cave in the wood had grass on its top, brambles and bracken and trees and grass. ‘What’s fairy grass?’ asked Elizabeth, and ‘Ting,’ a word rang in her head. The
word was ‘moss’.
    She knew where moss was; they had gathered some from the wood for the Christmas-tree tub. A week ago Elizabeth would not have gone to the wood alone, but now she had Fairy Doll and she set out
through the garden, across the road and fields; soon she was back with her skirt held up full of moss.
    She covered the outside of the bicycle basket with the moss like a cosy green thatch; then she stood the basket on a box and made a moss lawn around it. ‘Later on I’ll have beds of
tiny real flowers,’ she said.
    It is odd how quickly you get used to things; Elizabeth asked, and the ‘ting’ answered; it was a little like a slot machine. ‘What shall I put on the
floor?’ she asked.
    ‘Ting. In the garage.’
    A cleverer child would have said, ‘In the garage ?’ Josie, for instance, would not have gone there at all, but Elizabeth went, and there, in the garage, Father was sawing up
logs.
    ‘What did they put on the cave floors?’ asked Elizabeth.
    ‘Sand, I expect,’ said Father.
    Sand was far, far away, at the seaside; Elizabeth was just going to say, with a sigh, that that was no good when she looked at the pile of sawdust that had fallen from the logs, and,
‘Sawdust! Fairy sand,’ said the ‘ting’.
    ‘What about a bed?’ said Josie.
    ‘A bed?’ asked Elizabeth, and back came the ‘ting’. ‘Try a shell.’
    ‘A coconut shell?’ asked Elizabeth, watching the blue tits swinging on the bird table, but a coconut seemed coarse and rough for a little fairy doll. A shell? A shell? Why not a real
shell? Elizabeth had brought one back from the seaside; she had not picked it up, the landlady had given it to her; it was big, deep pink inside, and if you held it to your ear you heard, far off,
the sound of the sea; it sounded like a lullaby. Fairy Doll could lie in the shell and listen; it made a little private radio.
    The shell needed a mattress. ‘Flowers,’ said the ‘ting’.
    Josie would have answered that there were no flowers now, but, ‘Is there a soft winter flower, like feathers?’ asked Elizabeth. ‘Ting’ came the answer. ‘Old
man’s beard.’
    Do you know old man’s beard that hangs on the trees and the hedges from autumn to winter? Its seeds hang in a soft fluff, and Elizabeth picked a handful of it; then she found a deep red
leaf for a cover; it was from the Virginia creeper that grew up the front of the house.
    Soon the cave was finished – ‘and with fairy things,’ said Elizabeth. She asked Father to cut her two bits from a round, smooth branch; they were three inches high and made a
table and a writing desk. There were toadstools for stools; stuck in the sawdust, they stood upright. On the table were acorn cups and bowls, and small leaf plates. Over the writing desk was a
piece of dried-out honeycomb; it was exactly like the rack of pigeonholes over Father’s desk. Fairy Doll could keep her letters there, and she could write letters; Elizabeth found a tiny
feather and asked Godfrey to cut its point to make a quill pen like the one Mother had, and for writing paper there were petals of a Christmas rose. If you scratch a petal with a pen, or, better
still, a pin, it makes fairy marks. ‘Later on there’ll be all sorts of flower