The Brown Pixie

The only taxonomist who ever glimpsed some real pixies wondered for the rest of his life why some were mud-brown and the rest bright blue.

Emily, a little girl I am going to tell you about, found out more about it than anyone.

She was a clever girl. And she was short. So short that her cousin Holly, when Emily first moved in with her and their grandmother, once taunted Emily about it.

“You’re so short you should go live with the pixies! My mother always said so!”

This was particularly thoughtless since neither of the girls’ mothers was living.

Their grandmother overheard Holly’s taunts, and after a mild scolding Holly apologized. But Emily had to live in the same room with Holly and use the short dresser and sleep on the bottom bunk, and it rankled.

Then one afternoon Emily left her grandmother’s house without telling anyone. She placed her note in her top desk drawer so that no one would find it too quickly. It read,

“Grandmother, I have finally taken Holly’s advice and I am going to find the pixies. At least they will not be able to call me “Shorty”.

After placing the note Emily walked out her grandmother’s back door, ran down a long soy-bean field, passed through a barrier of trees, and walked across a field of Queen-Anne’s lace up to her waist. After looking around for a few moments, she turned to her right and plunged over a ditch hedged by large berry bushes. On the other side of the berry bushes she found herself in a sheltered meadow with one sprawling oak tree in the middle. She walked out to it, and as there didn’t seem to be any place to go next, she climbed it and, lying along the bottom branch, almost fell asleep.

About the time the sky was readying for sunset Emily heard a tiny voice somewhere beneath her.

“If the monster doesn’t move before sundown the entire party will be ruined!”

Emily saw in an instant what must have happened and struggled to suppress her laugh.

“So we’re allowed to make noise now?” spoke a slightly gruffer, but still miniscule voice.

“Look at it lying senseless in a tree, with those monstrous blunt ears – I’m sure it’s very unfeeling and dull. I’m going to get back to work.”

After this came rustling and muttering. Emily dared to cast her eye downward but she never saw the owner of the voice.

“You’re not so dull, are you?” a third small voice hissed in her ear.

Emily tensed and didn’t move. “Come where I can see you” she said.

A blue pixie as long as Emily’s thumb shot around and sat on Emily’s arm, in front of her eyes. Emily silently took its measure and thought that if living with the pixies meant being the biggest, she might not mind it.

“I’m Shaver,” it said. “I’m a Blue Pixie.”

“I know you’re blue, I’m not colorblind” Emily answered.

“Oh, well, the brown ones can’t see color and we’ve never managed to convince them we look different from them, apart from their not having wings. They think it’s most unnatural for us to live in the grass instead of the mud on the creek bank, but we’d be rather conspicuous there, wouldn’t we?”

“Do you have a Queen?” Emily asked.

“Are you one?” Shaver asked curiously.

“I could be. I’m so big, I could see everything at once and keep track of my subjects.”

“Can you see my mother down there roasting a caterpillar?”

Emily frowned. “I’m not sure yet where to look.”

“Take my hand” Shaver said, floating upwards into the air. “I’ll show you around.”

Emily was not sure how this would work but she sat up and touched her hand to Shaver’s. The next second there was a jolt downwards and Emily had fallen off her branch. But instead of crashing on the ground she found herself rushing downward through wailing air and long green swords of grass. When she and Shaver finally landed, Emily looked up and saw the pixie towering over her.

“Stand up” said Shaver. “Well, you’re not so tall after all, are you?”

Emily only came to Shaver’s chin. “Change me back,” Emily said.

“That’s up to you. Undo the last moment when you took my hand.”

“I can’t change time, you idiot.”

“Can’t you? Well, there’s nothing to do, then. If I had known…”

“I want to go home.”

“I thought you wanted to be the Pixie Queen.”

“I don’t have my camera or my fireworks or anything I would need!” Emily cried, who had been dreaming up ways to compel the awe of the pixies.

“Pity” said Shaver.

***

When Emily had been missing for nearly two days, some policemen from the nearest town searched her and Holly’s room. Holly was embarrassed and begged her grandmother to stop the search.

“Don’t you want them to find your cousin, child?” Grandmother asked.

“No” Holly whispered.

Grandmother stared at her.

“What’s this?” a detective asked, pulling a box from under Emily’s bed.

“No!” Holly screamed. “Those are Emily’s pictures!”

The cop began handing out the photos and the room fell silent.

“Child” Grandmother said, dropping three photographs. “Why didn’t you tell me Emily was doing these things to you?”

Far away, as far as three whole fields, Emily the Brown Pixie was roasting a grub in the tiniest mud hut on the creek bank.

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Here ends the story of Emily the Brown Pixie. Below is the original, unfinished sketch from which I took the start for the story above, which is a writing assignment.

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The only scientist who ever looked at pixies wondered for the rest of his life why some of them were blue and some were brown. However, I know a little girl named Emily who watched a colony of pixies for an hour (sitting very still in a tree until her foot fell asleep) and she explained it to me.

The blue pixies, she says, live in the black mud around the pond. The brown ones live in the marsh grass. “So everything makes sense” she said.

Emily ran down my green backyard, and when she came to the end of it she was looking at a green alfalfa field, so she ran down that too. When she came to the end of the alfalfa field, she was looking at a lot of trees. A narrow green trail opened on the very edge. Emily could never resist a trail.

That is how she came to find the pixie colony. At the other end of that trail was a grassy place with a pond, and trees all the way around it. Emily could not see any houses or cars, which was exactly how she wanted it, so she crossed the grassy place and climbed the tree in the middle.

She sat there long enough for fifteen mourning doves to land on the tree and then fly away again when she moved; and it was also long enough for the sky to begin turning a little purple, getting ready for sunset.

Then she heard a voice far below near the roots of the tree.

“If that monstrosity isn’t gone by sunset the whole party will be ruined!” hissed a small voice.

“Mother, she’ll hear you!” another voice said even more quietly.

“With those big ears? I’m sure it’s as dull as a bumblebee!”

A gruffer voice broke in here. “So we’re not being quiet anymore?”

“Oh, phoo” said the mother voice, “It’s sitting in a tree, isn’t it? What’s more dull and solid and unhearing than a tree? I’m sure I could prepare the whole party and it would never even suspect my existence!”

It seemed that whoever was talking thought that Emily would become like a tree simply by being in a tree, which is not very reasonable. However, people will believe unreasonable things when they want to.

Emily kept very still for a few moments as the voices below her stopped talking. Then she slowly lay down along a branch and put her hands behind her head.

“See there” the mother said. “I was right, it’s ignoring us completely. Help me tie these two berry sprigs together, Hammond!”

As soon as she dared, Emily turned over and cast an eye down toward the roots of the tree. She found herself looking into the very small eyes of a very small brown pixie, who immediately squeaked and sat down suddenly on a tree root.

“What is it, Shaver?” the mother pixie asked petulantly. Emily carefully stared across the grassy plot to other trees keeping her eyes from looking at the group below.

But as soon as poor Shaver opened her mouth, she got the hiccoughs very fast and high-pitched and couldn’t say a word. The Pixie Mother sent poor Hammond, who seemed to be her husband, down to the pond to dunk Shaver in it till she should get over her hiccoughs. (I would not recommend this method of curing hiccoughs, but Emily thought that the pixie mother simply made up the remedy on the spot so that she could work in peace.)

“And don’t talk to your blue cousin Arnold on the way, and hurry back to help me with the caterpillar pie” she said to her husband.

“Fine, simply fine, Weskitch” Hammond answered cheerfully.

Emily glanced at the frightened Shaver as the convulsed little pixie was being dragged away by her father, and made a little shuddering motion at the mention of caterpillar pie.

This did not help Shaver at all, because she started to laugh and hiccough at the same time, which was probably very painful.

Then Shaver and Hammond had disappeared from view, and Emily was left to watch Weskitch, the pixie mother, pull a caterpillar out of a hole in the ground and prepare it into a sort of pie, which was then cooked in another hole in the ground. Hammond returned back in time to start the fire.

“Where’s Shaver?” asked her mother.

And Hammond replied, “I left her talking with Arnie so I could come back and help you.”

Hammond was a blue pixie who was married to a brown pixie. Both had very long hair and no clothes, and no need of clothes as far as Emily could tell.

Emily watched Hammond and Arnie running back and forth between the little grass tent decorated with bright red and orange berries, set up at the roots of her tree, and a larger grass tent a little further out. Soon she saw that where the long brown grass had fallen down on top of other grass during lat year’s autumn, the pixies had woven it together to make a roof.

Emily was very interested when guests began arriving for the party. Most commented on the wonderful smell of caterpillar pie. Emily smiled when she heard this, and then nearly fell out of the tree when a raspy little voice said in her ear, “You’re glad, aren’t you, that you’re up here where you can’t smell it!”

“Sit in front of me where I can see you” answered Emily.

So Shaver, who had climbed the tree to talk to Emily and get some sympathy from her about the pie, leaped lightly onto a branch across from Emily’s face, and they spoke very quietly, looking down at the party.

“The occasion of the party is that light-spraying machine there” Shaver explained. Emily looked down and saw a box-like object a few feet away from the grass party tent.

“Ah, someone’s dropped their flashlight” Emily said.

“My mother will start the flashlight into flashing when darkness settles on us, and surprise everyone” Shaver explained further. “They’re all wondering how she’s going to light up the party. No one’s ever had an evening party this early in the year, before the fireflies are about.”

This may seem like a long speech to you, but it seemed even longer to Emily, because Shaver acted out every idea by leaping up from her branch, and swaying and making other motions with her whole body.

But after Shaver was finished, she and Emily didn’t talk for a little while, because an argument broke out below them.

“That’s Arnie” Shaver whispered.

Arnie was shouting at Wesktich, “Have you forgotten what it means to be a pixie? How can you sell your pixie soul to a light-machine?” As he said this he pointed with both hands to the flashlight and threw his head back to the darkening sky.

Weskitch was yanking her own hair furiously. “Are you done?” she squeaked. “Hammond has some things to say in my defense!”

“Ouch!” whispered Shaver, throttling her own throat and dropping down chest-first onto her branch.

She seemed, Emily says, to be acting out her father’s feelings, and Emily reports that Hammond did look terrified when Arnie turned on him and exploded with a “Yes?”