153. The Clue of the Well Hidden Flower

On a day I was feeling a little depressed, I wrote a poem. The Leafies saw me write it and wanted me to read it to them. They made themselves comfortable on a branch to hear me recite it.

“We are the garden,

A bunch of blooming plants.

We are the garden,

Our gardeners have feet

And boast they have a head

But most of all they have hands.

One day they declare us weeds

And pluck us out at their will

To plant

Something else

Allowed to flower

In our place.

We are the garden

A bunch of helpless plants

In an enclosed space.”

Before I had begun, my dad had come strolling by, shaking maracas softly and dancing the conga and humming to himself. When he saw what we were at, he made a pause, and stayed to listen. 

                               

“Oh, my, Arley!” he said when I was done. “What a depressing poem! You didn’t write that, did you?”                          

Before I could say it was indeed mine, the Leafy Vinny shouted at the top of his small voice, “No! It’s beautiful! We’re moved to tears!”

Dad and I turned to look at the Leafies. There were tears in their eyes. And they rose like one man and burst into clapping, so hard they almost brought down the branch they were on. 

                                             

“It has made me glad to be a free plant living in a wild forest,” said Frankie.

“Nonsense!” insisted my father. “It’s just as bad out here. Haven’t you got anything better to be doing, son? Why are you out here alone?”

“I’m not alone,” I said. “I’m with my friends, the Leafies.”

                          

   

“Right!” cried Bob, the linden tree Leafy. “We may be small and unimportant but we’re always here for those who need us.”

“No offence meant,” said Dad. “Your loyalty is legendary. I know Alpin has suddenly grown too old for you, but where is that little girl in red who is your girlfriend or something like that?”

He had no idea that I usually got to see Rosina only for a few minutes once in a blue moon, even when she had not been engaged in warfare. Perhaps I could have seen more of her now, but it was my mother she was waging war against. I was not too happy about their quarrel and I didn’t want to have to take sides.

“Rosina and Mom are fighting a war about the recycling business,” I explained to Dad. “They have no time to do anything but try to predict each other’s next mean move.”

 “Oh,” said Dad sadly. “I know eactly what you mean. For a minute there, I forgot about that. It´s such a pretty day, the sky so gloriously blue. Arley, why don’t you come with me and help me find something I am seeking?”

“The missing Rhine Gold?” I asked. I had heard there was some trouble about that too.

“Nah!” said Dad, waving a hand. “That gold sometimes changes hands but it always ends up back in its original hiding place sooner or later. It’s probably back there already. What I am looking for is my first love, the Valkyrie Little Mathilde.”

Remembering old times with Dirk and Fritz, the two Rhine dwarfs that had come visiting, had brought to Dad’s mind his childhood sweetheart. This was a lovely little girl training to be a Valkyrie. He asked the dwarfs what had become of her, and their answer made him feel he had to find her.

“All the information I have about what happened to Mathilde is that she is somewhere in this forest. Aside from that, I have a clue, but it is rather useless. See this tiny scrap?”

                  

                        

 Dad produced a tiny scrap of parchment with something painted on it.

“This is the only surviving portion of the parchment on which your granny wrote down the spell she made Mathilde disappear with to get her out of my life. You see why I have to find her? She has been missing all these years and I thought all the while she had left me because she wanted to.”

He didn’t see how the scrap of parchment could be of any use because all one could read on it was “the well hidden flower.” I studied the parchment. The surviving words were in runic alphabet. Vinny climbed on my shoulder and studied it too. We looked at each other and nodded.

                                  

“There is a thick grove of trees here that break into flower early in the fall. They should be in bloom right now. I have no idea why, because they are very visible and showy, but the flowers that grow on these trees are called well hidden flowers. Eucryphia is the name of this plant. That means well hidden in Greek.”

“Very good, Arley!” cried Dad, who is always quick to praise his children, or in fact, anyone else too, when they do something even close to right. “I’m impressed.” And he beamed on me.

Once we knew where to go, it did not take us long to get there. As we walked to Eucryphia Grove, Bob explained that one of the Leafies had brought the seeds of those trees from somewhere in the tropic of Capricorn, probably Chile or Australia. 

Bob said the Leafies always knew there was something strange going on in that grove, but were not sure what. Most people who approached it fell asleep and woke up somewhere else. Those that didn’t, never got to enter it. They returned saying a dragon had scared them away.

The Leafies thought there was some kind of buried treasure hidden there. So they decided not to provoke its guardian. Leafies don’t have much use for treasures.

When we got to the grove, we knew we had arrived because of all the white flowers on the trees, a strange sight in autumn.

Before we could enter it, the dragon Bob had told us about came out. It was a silver scaled animal with a thin curling moustache and a tail so long that it circled the grove lazily.

“Neidy!” cried my father. He had recognized the dragon. “Is it you?”

“About time!” answered the dragon. “If it isn’t the high and mighty king of the British fairies! How you have grown! And grown quite old too. About time you showed up, don’t you think? Well, go ahead and wake her. You’ll meet no resistance from me. I’m bored to death of being here.”

“Mathilde, my darling!” cried Dad. “I’ve come to save you!”

We followed him as he charged gallantly into the grove. Within it there stood a vertical glass urn. Heavy smoke from a perpetual fire within the urn burned but never consumed selected green herbs that kept the apprentice Valkyrie sound asleep inside. It was so thick that at first  we could not see her. The dragon himself toppled the glass urn with his tail. The fire, that had no power to burn anything but the herbs, went out with the first touch of the air outside. The delicately scented fumes dispersed in the fresh air of the cool October afternoon.    

When he saw Mathilde, Dad rushed to help her crawl out of the fallen urn. But when she scrambled to her feet, there was a problem that botched what we thought would be some kind of romantic reencounter. She was much, much younger than we  –or especially he - had expected her to be. 

                         

“Is it really you, Oberon?” she said. “This is what you look like now?”

“Yes, yes! How old are you now, Mathilde?”

“Well, I was fifteen when I was put to sleep. And I have been sleeping for centuries, so I must be about eleven, I suppose.”

That was exactly what she looked like. Eleven years old.

“Well,” said Dad, “that should make my wife happy. But I don’t know what to do or say.”

I did. Despite her heavy, shimmering, silver armour and her grave helmet over waist long platinum braids, she reminded me of my sisters Heather and Thistle and I thought it was with them she would like to be friends.

“Why don’t you invite her to Michael O’Toora’s Halloween Party?” I said. “She can make friends with Heather and Thistle there.”

“Wow!” cried Littler Mathilde before Dad could speak. “I would so love that! I’ve never been to a Halloween Party. Every October, I dream about being to one. May I?”

“The perfect solution,” muttered Dad through his teeth, putting a hand on my shoulder and giving me a grateful squeeze. “Of course you may!” he shouted jubilantly. “I’ll introduce you to my daughters! They’re your age!”

“Can I bring Mütterchen?” asked Mathilde, hopping and clapping her hands. “She hasn’t seen me for so long, she’ll want to spend time with me.”

“Bring anyone you like,” said Dad. “If there is anyone who believes the more the merrier, it is the leprechaun that gives these parties.”

                                 

                                                     “Oh, oh!”

And a little later...

                                    

“Are you sure he said that?” Ula, Mathilde’s mother, asked her daughter. “Because today, this comes to us like rain to a dry field.”