303. The Path of Poisonous Plants

 303. The Path of Poisonous Plants

This is Little Dolphus, the intellectual Leafy, speaking, It is i who has been telling you the story about Durisilva, imitator of Louis XIV, and owner of the filched big wig. And that is why I will be the one to keep telling it, for your pleasure, I hope.

The last chapter ended when the do-it-all fairy August Gentlerain expressed his intention of going off to recover the big wig of discord himself. But then in this one his little niece Azuline, who knew her uncle well becasuse she would spend her Saturdays collaborating  with her Aunt Mabelle in the library of Gentle House  just as her cousin Arley had done before her, offered to go for the wig herself.

“Auntie says that you are always up to your ears in work, Uncle Gen. And time enough we children will have to find flowers so that my brother can comb usa new. Besides, while we search for flowers we can also search for the big wig. Our sister Hum has taught us to twitter the language of birds. We will ask here and there if any knows anything about the bird that stole the wig. We are sure to find it.”

“I don’t know,” answered Gentlerain. “I have spoken with Henny and he says he has given Brushland a sedative. This is not the ideal solution, but the truth is that right now I have a dozen problems that require my full attention. Though I am not sure it is a good idea to allow you to wander about asking questions unsupervised.”

And that was when I offered to look after the children Azuline, Rosendo and Anemone myself while they searched for the big wig.

“They shall have the protection of the Leafies. We are everywhere and I won’t take my eyes off them for a second,” I assured Gentlerain.

“All right then,” responded August Gentlerain, “under the supervisión of the Leafies. But with one condition. I don’t think the thieving bird will have left the island. But on no account are the children to leave it. If you learn that the bird has flown away from it, you are to tell me about this immediately, and I will be the one to chase after the bird. I expect you to do this. Out there things aren’t like they are in here.”

We promised what we had to promise to obtain permission to seach for the bird and we were able to set off.

“Where shall we start seaching? Should we ask the first bird we see?” said Rosendo.

This did not strike us as a bad idea, but the first bird we saw turned out to be a little weird. And as you will soon see, worse adjectives will be applied to him. We had just agreed to question a bird when something that looked like one appeared on the limb of a tree. A limb that was bending almost to the point of breaking under the bird’s weight. 

“I have heard you say you are about to question a bird. Well, I am one, and your questions are welcome.”

The said bird was rather large compared to the sort of birds one usually sees in the gardens of Apple Island. It was as large as a normal sized fairy, short and fat, but normal. It did boast of a lot of very colourful feathers.  Its aspect probably fooled the children, but I, who am an intellectual, thought that more than like a bird it looked like the bird-catcher Papageno of  The Magic Flute, the opera by Mozart. But despite this, I let him speak.

“If I were you, I would ask Willibald and Winnibald of the tribe of the Mandrake Sprites. It is very likely that those two have the wig. Highly likely.”

Though we should have asked more questions, the only question we asked was where we could find these individuals.

“Well…these guys live in the Reticent Road, the Way of Caution. Do you know what I mean? Not everyone knows such a place exists on this island.”

Since I am an intellectual, I knew what the weird bird was talking about.

“The Poisonous Path,” I said.

“Ohhh…we don’t call it that. There is nothing like that here. Just a road for connoisseurs, that must be walked on with caution. With prudence, lots of prudence. The Prudent Path.”

The bird was speaking of a place that I had not been to and that some thought should not exist on this island, but it did, because poisons are not guilty of the uses to which certain people put them and can be employed with a good purpose sometimes. And since we four were agreed that we were prudent and cautious and well-intentioned, we decided to head for that path at once.

When we got to the start of this road we saw a sign that said “All plants are poisonous in a certain measure. Don’t misjudge us, don’t misuse us.”

 At first, as we entered the path, we saw it was overgrown with all sorts of plants, I warned the children that some were famously poisonous, for I recognized several upon seeing them, though there were others that were not toxic to my knowledge. But it was best to touch none, being where we were. “Walk as if we were in a field of nettles,” I said to the children, and they folded their little wings and pressed their arms to their sides and did all they could to not graze anything. Soon we coincided with some fairies that seemed to be of the family of the Mandrake Sprites, guardians of the path, and we asked them if they knew where we could find Willibald and Winnibald. 

They told us these fellows lived at the end of the path.

So we continued walking it and it became less thick and dense as we advanced, with shorter grass and red, white-spotted mushrooms on each side. This had to be a village of diminutive sprites, I thought, for the mushrooms were homes and the belladona flowers and their stems seemed to act as trees. So we shrank ourselves so as to fit in.When we got to the last of the mushrooms, we again asked some sprites if Willibald and Winnibald were anywhere about.

                                                 

“There you have them,” one of the fairies answered. And two fellows got off a mushroom and came towards us.

“What do you want with us?” they asked.

Azuline explained that we were after a large wig that had been stolen by a bird.

“And what makes you think we have it?”

“We’ve been told you need one,”said Azuline. And then, though she is a blue fairy, she blushed a violent red. Red as a tomato the poor thing became. For she had suddenly noticed that Willibald and Winnibald were both bald as billiard balls.

“I see. Fine. Very funny,” nodded Willibald.

“It wasn’t her idea,” protested Rosendo. “We knew nothing of you, nor of what you looked like. We were told by a weird bird to ask you. And we´ve been fooled into doing it, if the wig isn’t here.”

“We don’t need any wigs. We are proud of what we are like. We have some cool, cone-shaped hats that we wear when the sun is too bright for us. They have their own system of air-conditioning. Of heating in winter too. We don’t need heavy wigs that will burn up our brains.”

“Well, we’re very sorry about this. We didn’t mean to offend,” said Azuline.

“Well, then, no sour feelings! You must have run into a member of the Jocose Gang. They are always nettling us. And now you had better leave, because you are wasting your time here and this is no park for kids to play in,” said Winnibald. And then he warned us, “Don’t get too close to the oleander flowers. They might make your hair fall off.”

And we began to unwalk what we had walked, but not before little Anemone stopped us to say she didn’t want to wear a belladonna flower cap on her head either.

“Don’t worry,” Rosendo assured her. “I wouldn’t put deadly nightshade in your hair. Nor oleander either, though its flowers are pretty.”