My rooms were quiet, once everyone was gone and I liked it that way. I wondered round trying to find something to clean and or tidy, but there wasn’t anything. I decided to make a mess of the kitchen by cooking myself something for tea. There was no food in the larder, probably something to do with me not doing the shopping.
“Looks like it’s going to be the canteen for me then,” I thought, yawning loudly. A fried mushroom sandwich appeared on the counter, still steaming, along with a message.
“I heard that thought and the yawn, eat this and have a rest, Maud.”
“Thank-you,” I thought as loudly as I could and sat down to eat it. I was just trying to work out what to drink when a mug of hot chocolate appeared.
“You read my mind,” I thought, yawning. The plate and mug vanished as soon as I had finished and I went off to my bedroom with the thought that I would wake up to a nice clean and tidy kitchen which required restocking with food.
I climbed into bed and closed my eyes and suddenly I was at a fair ground, except all the rides were run by clowns who were carrying large bunches of balloons.
“You should have a go on this ride,” a clown insisted, pushing me into the seat and fastening me securely in place. I was just about to protest when the ride started. I thought it was one where you travelled round in a circle and the seat went up and down getting faster as you went, but this one seemed to wander round the fairground weaving in and out of the other rides as it went, then it twisted and I fell off, landing in a large net full of balls.
“This is strictly for children under the height of five foot tall,” said the clown dragging me out of the net by my hair.
“I am four foot nine,” I said, trying to disentangle my hair from his grip.
“But you are over 12 years old,” he said flinging me away from the net full of balls. I landed in a large tea cup.
“I would advise you to get out of that quickly,” said someone who looked like the mad hatter from “Alice in Wonderland”. “The tea is brewing and we will be pouring it out shortly. It would be a shame for that pretty white dress to be covered with tea stains,” he smiled as a leapt out of the cup. I would have waved my wand, but I couldn’t find it, some things are never there when you want them. I was slightly disappointed when he didn’t pour tea into the mug that I had climbed out of, instead he poured it into a rather nice tea set.
“Would you like a cup?” he asked
“Yes, that would be nice,” I said. He handed me an empty cup.
“What about the tea?” I asked. He emptied the teapot over my head, laughed and ran off, fortunately the tea was cold, I suspected that it had never been even warm. I threw the tea cup after him, with little expectation of actually hitting, but it made contact with his head and he stopped dead and fell flat on his face. All the clowns around me turned round to face me.
“You’ve killed him,” they all said, not bothering to take into account the fact that the mad hatter had just rolled over onto his side, picked up the tea cup and started eating it.
“He isn’t dead,” I said pointing to him. He finished the tea cup, leapt up, put a Police helmet on his head, pulled a pair of handcuffs out of his pocket, grabbed my right wrist, turned me round and cuffed my hands behind my back.
“You are under arrest,” he said.
“Shouldn’t you caution me?” I asked.
“Look where you are walking, there are some nasty holes in the ground,” he laughed as I fell through one and started plummeting through the sky in a landscape that looked like a picture from a children’s book all block pastel colours.
“This has to be a dream,” I told myself as a wrestled with the handcuffs.
“You should think the cuffs large and you small,” came a voice from nowhere. I did and the cuffs fell off, I flapped my wings and missed the ground by a matter of inches.
“You are a fairy, these things shouldn’t be a problem,” said the voice.
“What the hell is going on?” I thought.
“Now now, Fairies shouldn’t use language like that,” the voice replied laughing.
“Who are you, where are we and why don’t you show yourself?” I asked.
“You are a fairy godmother, you should have all the answers, why don’t you tell me,” came the reply.
“What makes you think that I have all the answers, just because I am a fairy godmother?” I asked, settling myself on a lollipop shaped tree.
“How can you provide the solutions if you don’t have the answers?” the voice replied. I was about to say that it was rude to answer a question with a question, when it crossed my mind that it wouldn’t get us anywhere.
“I know the questions, if you know the right questions then you will get the right answers and that will solve the problem,” I replied.
“Do you have all the questions?” the voice asked.
“I doubt if anyone does, but hopefully I have enough questions to start unravelling the problem,” I replied. “So, where am I and who are you?”
“Like I said, find out and I’ll tell you,” said the voice laughing, then I heard a door shut and the laughter was cut off as if the laughing person had gone through a door and it had shut behind them.
“I shall follow that road and see where it leads to,” I thought spying a road that lead into the distance. “After all, I am going to get nowhere sitting up this tree, it isn’t even comfortable.”
The light from the sun, shinning through my bedroom window, woke me up. I was lying on the floor next to my bed. I tried to stand up, but my head started throbbing.
“You just stay right where you are,” said Enid. “I’ve rung for an ambulance, they say you shouldn’t move, there’s a nasty cut on your head and they don’t want to risk you moving in case you have injured your back.”
“What happened?” I asked, trying to work out how to ask what she was doing there without sounding ungrateful.
“I don’t know,” said Enid. “Maud asked me to drop by to check up on you, you haven’t done any shopping lately, she thought you might be low on food.”
“She sent me a fried mushroom sandwich last night and some hot chocolate,” I said.
“Maud my be good, kind and considerate,” said Enid, looking like she was going to be sick. “But she does not do deliveries to anyone, not like that. She might take food to someone, but she wont send it unannounced.”
“She did yesterday,” I insisted.
“So where is the plate and mug?” Enid asked.
“They vanished, when I finished,” I replied and winced at the sound of someone hammering on my door.
“That will be the ambulance people,” said Enid. “You stay here, I’ll let them in.”
“Do I get any choice with that?” I thought as the world went dark.
By Janice Nye © 2020
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