An Angry Pixie.

I looked up the Faraway Tree, where the man with his saucepans had vanished. Presumably in the same direction as the Dame a few days before. Driven as usual by curiosity, I started in the same direction, clambering over well spaced branches, head down and focused on finding secure footholds. I had once seen our old gardener Zac take a tumble, and even once slid down a jacaranda myself, so was now doubly cautious.

Just as I started to puff with the exertion, my hand, reaching for an elusive branch,unexpectedly made contact with something soft and which was suddenly thrashing about to try and release my grip. It was a struggle to maintain my balance, but when I did, there seated on the branch above with feet now dangling askew and arms crossed, was a Pixi. I instinctively knew she was a Pixie because her ears were pointed and her blue shoes were shoes only a Pixie would wear. They had bells on their toes. Which jingled as she vented her displeasure on me. I would find out later that she was known as the Angry Pixie.

"What are you doing in my tree?!" she demanded, hands now uncrossed and on her hips.
" I decide who comes up." she added, leaping to her feet in a brilliant display of agility. As she continued with her diatribe her voice became strident with her indignation at my inattention. However I was too intrigued by both her appearance and presence to take her admonishment seriously. I just realised that she was angry. Very Angry for such a seemingly minor transgression. Suddenly and unexpectedly she burst into tears and was sobbing into a large hanky whose colour matched her pixie shoes.

The tears snatched at my well -honed motherly instincts and soon we were sitting side by side on the branch. After a good cry she blew her nose voloubly in a final farewell to the tears and upset. Instinctively I knew there was a reason for her unhappiness. Slowly, over a welcome cup of tea she produced from a cubby hole in the tree trunk, she started to confide in me. Of her happy Pixie childhood in the trees, the death of her mother and how her beloved father had become infatuated with an elegant and beguiling lady whose pixie shoes and cap always matched, and whose skirts were never askew like hers. Again tears threatened as she relived her abandonment. The alienation that had come her way.

"But surely there are other people up here in the Faraway tree you could be friends with?" I tentatively suggested.
" Perhaps they have come from other lives and places as well".
I could see that she was thinking over what I had said, pondering what Iwas attempting to imply. Hopefully considering that the entire world was not necessarily a legitimate object for her anger.

" For a start", I took a chance and continued, " There is the man with the saucepans. I saw him scramble up here a short while ago"
"Oh, him" she shrugged indifferently. All those damn saucepans. So irritating."
I relayed his story to her. Her eyes softened. " I didn't realise that" she mumured. Thoughtfully.
" And of course Dame Wash-a-Lot" and as I remembered my own stepmother it was my own time to be thoughtful.
"There's a strange one" ventured the pixie." She used to be always scrubbing and throwing the water all over me. Even came one day and insisted on tidying up my house. Told me I was messy." and so saying she smoothed her skirt and the look in her eye told me it was a point of contention.
"Then a few days ago she came flying up the tree, more nimble than usual. No sign of her washtub! She disappeared into her house and there hasn't been the sound of running water since. Just music and a growing pile of wine bottles on the doorstop." She paused to consider the transformation. And I was able to share with the Pixie some of the story behind another person she shared her tree with.

We finished our second cup of tea. Time to go home before someone at Riversleigh wondered where I had disappeared to. Later I was to learn they were all doing disappearances of their own into the branches of the Faraway Tree, into lands where their lives and dreams were emeshed.

The once angry Pixie hugged me goodbye promising to search out the the other Tree inhabitants, wondering how I really knew about the man with the saucepans who like her wasn't sure where his real home had vanished to.