Arthur's Adventures

A very close friend of mine, a wordsmith and magic maker, surprised me the other day with a short story about Arthur, a Ruckie I recently made for her Grandson.
It is so beautiful, funny, touching and, comes with an illustration by Arthurs new forever friend. I love surprises of this kind :)
First, let me introduce Arthur!

And now for his adventure....

Arthur’s Adventures
by Laume
Illustrated by Markus

One day a little Spryte named Arthur was in the meadow picking wild onions for his supper when he heard a noise. At first he thought it was a digging noise. He popped his head up out of the grasses and looked around. Maybe someone else was digging wild onions too. There was no one about.

He went back to digging, but the noise continued. So he stood on his tippy toes and looked again. He couldn’t see anyone in the meadow, no one but a few buzzing bees gathering nectar from the last of the wild flowers.

“Hmmmm, that’s strange” thought Arthur.

The noise became louder. So the Spryte stopped his digging and stood very still. He twitched his large ears back and forth. He decided the noise, which now sounded more like a snuffly sound than a digging sound, was coming from the edge of the forest on the west side of the meadow. Curious, he put his digging stick and the pile of onions into his collecting bag, strung it over his shoulder, and went to investigate.

The noise got louder and louder. It came from behind a large felled tree laying on it’s side. A mass of roots rose up into the sky, covered in moss and flowers, hiding whatever was making the snuffly sound. What was making this sound? Was it dangerous? Arthur moved very quietly and slowly. He peeked around the tangle of roots and there in the dirt and shadows sat a little bear cub, alone and crying.

“Oh!” Arthur said out loud. He didn’t mean to say it out loud. The little bear cub stopped his snuffly, sniffly crying and looked up to find Arthur looking down at her.

“Oh!” said the little bear, surprised to find she was not alone.

“Oh!” said Arthur again. And then “Are you…. uhh…. are you lost?” He looked around, he listened with his long ears, but he didn’t see or hear any mother bear or brother or sister bear.

The little bear looked around too. A startled look came over her face and then with a fresh burst of tears she said “I guess I’m that too!”

Arthur didn’t know what ‘that too’ meant, but he didn’t want the bear to keep crying. He didn’t really want to get down in the dirt either, it was rather muddy under the roots of the tree. Instead he said “If you come out into the sun here, maybe I can help.”

The little bear stopped crying. She held one of her furry paws close to her chest. She used her other paw to wipe her eyes and then she climbed, a bit awkwardly, out to the edge of the meadow.

Arthur sat on a soft pile of drying grasses and patted the ground next to him. The little bear sat down beside him.

“My name is Arthur” said Arthur. “What’s your name?”

The cub took her paw out of her mouth. “Tansy."

“Why are you only walking on three of your paws? asked Arthur, noticing that cub was still holding her right front paw tight against her.

Tansy looked like she was about to start crying again, but instead she looked down at the muddy paw she was cradling close and put it in her mouth.

Arthur tried not to look disgusted. He didn’t think he’d want to taste muddy fur. He waited quietly.

“I was playing in the big tree with my brother Tumble. He was being mean to me. He wouldn’t share the best branches and he kept pulling my ears. So I climbed down to play by myself. I walked a little ways and found a tree that was filled with fat red birds. The tree was talking to the birds.”

Arthur did like to talk to his tree friends, but he hadn’t ever heard them talk back. At least, not out loud. “The tree was talking to the birds? What was the tree saying?”

“It was saying BZZZZZZzzzzZZZZZZzzzzzzZZZZZZZZ.”

Arthur was confused. He had never heard of a tree that said BZZZZZZzzzzZZZZZZzzzzzZZZZZZ. And that didn’t explain why her paw hurt. “Did you fall out of the tree and hurt your paw?"

“No!” Tansy looked at him, annoyed. “I’m a very good climber and I don’t fall out of trees! I thought the birds might want to play, so I climbed up into the tree. There was a big ball hanging on the tree so I reached over to grab it. It bit me!” Now Tansy looked embarrassed. “I guess then I did fall out of the tree. But it was because the ball bit me. It bit me much harder than Tumble bites me.”

Tansy stopped talking. She looked like she might start snuffling again. Arthur had listened to Tansy’s story and was beginning to put the pieces together in his head. It was like a puzzle. He thought he knew what had happened to Tansy.

“And then I got scared and ran away from the tree. I thought I was going back to the big tree where Tumble was playing and Mama was laying in the sun, but I guess I ran the wrong way and now I’m bitten and I’m lost. I’m lost and alone.” She raised her paw up over her eyes and looked sad. Arthur thought she looked a bit melodramatic. But then again, he wasn’t a small bear cub that didn’t know where she was, maybe she was really truly that frightened.

“I think I know why the “ball” bit you” said Arthur. “And I think I know where your brother and mother might be. There’s a grandmother oak tree near the rocky hill on the other side of this stretch of woods. Was there a hill near the big tree?”

“Yes! We have a cave there for sleeping in at night.”

Arthur stood up, adjusted his bag of onions and said “We’ll go slowly. Let’s go.” And off they went into the forest.

Arthur walked around the fallen log. Tansy climbed over it. Arthur jumped over a little stream. Tansy splashed and rolled in it for a few minutes while Arthur waited patiently. He thought her paw mustn’t be hurt that badly as she certainly seemed to have forgotten all about it. Arthur came to a large patch of nettle and carefully walked around it. So did Tansy. “That plant bites too.”

Finally they met up with a small path that Arthur knew cut across the woods and their journey became a bit easier, although Tansy still liked to jump up on all the logs she saw along the way.

The wood started to thin and Arthur stopped. He pointed to a small tree standing alone in a large patch of sun. “Is that the tree that bit you Tansy?”

“Yes!”

The little cub was frightened, but Arthur walked right up to tree and beckoned her to follow. Tansy slowly joined him. “This used to be part of a farm long ago, where people lived." He pointed to the edge of the open patch of sun. "See the old foundation and fireplace over there where their house used to stand?” Tansy didn’t know what a people was but she did see a stack of rocks piled high where he had pointed.

“And this isn’t a ball, it’s a beehive” Arthur added, pointing at the buzzing ball high up in the tree.

Tansy knew what bees were, she saw them in the flowers and the blackberries and meadows.

“A bee hive is where the bees store all the honey they make from the flowers they collect all summer. It is the food they will eat to keep them alive in the winter when the flowers stop blooming. The ball didn’t bite you Tansy, the bees inside it did. Bees don’t usually bite, but they thought you were trying to steal all the food that they had worked so hard to gather for themselves.”

“I didn’t know it belonged to the bees.” Tansy looked contrite.

“It’s okay" Arthur reassured her. “But now you do. And you’ll know not to put your paw inside a bee hive again! But I have a better idea." He reached up and plucked a small red apple from the tree and handed it to Tansy. “And this isn’t a red bird, it’s a red apple. Take a bite. It’s delicious.”

Tansy didn’t need any encouragement. It smelled delicious. She took a bite. She took another bite. Juice spilled out of the sides of her mouth as she mumbled “It’s bigger than delicious!” One more bite and the apple was gone.

Together they gathered more apples. Arthur found a ladder laying on the ground and put it carefully up into the tree far away from the bee hive. He filled his collecting bag as full as he could with big, ripe apples, occasionally dropping one on the ground for Tansy to eat immediately. When his bag was full, he climbed back down to the ground.

“Time to go find your mom and brother.”

It wasn’t far to the big grandmother tree and halfway there they met Tumble and Mother bear headed their way, looking for Tansy. Tumble ran ahead and jumped at Tansy, knocking them both over in a tumble of two happy bear cubs. Mother bear came beside Arthur. Tansy managed to escape her enthusiastic brother’s hugs and ran over to give her mother a big hug as well. When all the hugs were over, Tansy and Arthur took turns explaining the afternoon’s adventures to the rest of her family.

“Thank you for helping my wee little lost bairn.” Mother bear had kind, tired eyes.

“You’re welcome” said Arthur.

He pulled off his bag then and offered most of the apples to the bears. They happily sat down and shared the bright pile of fruit. Even Tansy ate more apples, although Arthur didn’t know how she could possibly have more room in her tummy. He knew, however, that as autumn moved forward, the bears would eat all that they could to prepare for a long winter’s hibernation. He offered them a few onions too. Mother bear took one politely but the two cubs wrinkled their noses.

“Apples taste better than onions” said Tumble.

The sun was starting to slant through the trees, casting the golden light that Arthur knew meant that twilight would not be far behind. He had a long walk home, so he said goodbye to his new friends and went back through the trees towards the far side of the meadow where this story began many hours ago.

As he walked, he thought about the mushrooms he had in a big metal pot on the wood stove in his wee kitchen. He thought about the onions and herbs he would soon add to the mushrooms, how it would turn into a warm and delicious soup. He thought of the bowl of hazelnuts he had cracked open this morning that he would eat with his soup. And he thought of the fresh apples that he had saved for himself, nestled on the bottom of his bag, and how he would have a big piece of apple pie with his tea when darkness fell and he was snug in his home at the edge of the wood.

Wasn't that wonderful?

Till next time,
The British Faery