Ting-a-ling Part 10

"Now," said he, "if we can get a string around the middle feather of his tail, we are all right."

"How so?" asked Ting-a-ling.

"Why, then you get on, and start him off, and by pulling the string you can make him go any way you wish; for you know he steers himself with his tail."

"Good!" cried Ting-a-ling, and they both looked for a string. When they had found one, they stole up to the pigeon, who was eating corn, and tied it fast to the middle feather of his tail, without his knowing anything about it.

"Now jump on and I'll start him off," said the green fairy; and Ting-a-ling ran up the pigeon's tail (which almost touched the floor), and took his seat on its back, holding tight on to its feathers. Then the green fairy ran around by the pigeon's head, and shouted in its ear, as it was pecking corn,--"_Hawk!_"

The bird just lifted up its head, and gave one shoot right out of the window of the pigeon-house. It went high up into the air; and Ting-a-ling, when he looked around and saw which way he ought to go, pulled his string this way and that way, and he found that he could steer the pigeon very well, and even make him keep up in the air, by pulling his tail-feather straight up. So on they went, and they got to the Giant's castle before the Giant himself. The pigeon flew over the castle, but Ting-a-ling steered him back again, and backward and forward, two or three times, until the bird thought he might as well stop there; and so he alighted on the roof, and off jumped Ting-a-ling.

The first thing he saw there, after the pigeon had flown away again, was the green fairy!

"Why, where did you come from?" cried Ting-a-ling.

"O," said the other, laughing, and jumping up and down, "I thought I'd come too, and I hung on to his leg. It was nice, sitting up among his warm feathers, when his legs were curled up under him; a great deal better than being on top."

Ting-a-ling was very glad to have his friend with him, and he took him down-stairs. When the Giant got home, there they were, both in the middle of the table in the great hall, ready to welcome him. Tur-il-i-ra did not ask where the green fairy came from; but he was glad to see him, and he ordered supper to be laid on a table out on the lawn; for he was warm with his long walk. After supper, the two fairies came down to the Giant's end of the table, and he told them all that had happened, and how fortunate it was that the bowstring of the Kyrofatalapynx had broken.

"He did it!" cried the green fairy, pointing to Ting-a-ling; and then he told the whole story of their doings, and Ting-a-ling had to explain how he had gone with the Giant. Tur-il-i-ra listened until they had quite finished, and then exclaimed, "Well! I never saw such a little thing as you are, Ting-a-ling, for being in the right place at the right time.

Never, never!" And he brought his hand down on the table with such an emphatic bang, that Ting-a-ling and the green fairy shot into the air like rifle-b.a.l.l.s. Ting-a-ling went up, up, and up, until a high wind took him, and it blew him over a river, and a wood, and a high hill, and a wide plain; and then he fell down, down, down,--right into the middle of a soft powder puff-ball, with which a lady was powdering her neck.

"Mercy on us!" cried the lady, when she saw a little fairy in the puff-ball that she was just going to put up to her throat.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"It's only I, Nerralina," cried Ting-a-ling, who immediately recognized her; "wait a minute, until I get my breath."

Sure enough, it was Nerralina, the Princess's lady, who had been on a visit to her mother, in a distant country, and returning, had ordered her slaves to pitch her tent where she now was, about half a day's journey from the palace. Ting-a-ling told his story, and they had a nice time, talking of their past adventures; and in the morning Nerralina took Ting-a-ling with her to his home in the palace gardens.

As to the green fairy, he came down in a spider web. When he got out and stood on the gra.s.s, he said, "I shall not go back to that Giant. He is good, but he is too violent."

So he went to the river and got a nice chip, and he loaded it with honeysuckles and clover blossoms, and pushed it off into the stream; he then lay down on his back in the middle of his clover, and, sucking a honeysuckle, floated away in the moonlight, down to his home, where he arrived in two or three days, just as his honeysuckles were all gone.

When Tur-il-i-ra saw what he had done, he was in great trouble indeed.

He ordered all his slaves to bring their little children, and he gathered up great handfuls of them, and spread them out all over the gra.s.s, so that they might look for the two lost fairies. But of course they could not find them; and just as the sun was setting, and the Giant was going to bed in despair, there came a horseman from Nerralina, telling him that Ting-a-ling was safe, and was going home with her.

Early in the morning Tur-il-i-ra went to the palace gardens, and Ting-a-ling seeing him, they went down to the wood where they were when this story opened. Tur-il-i-ra wanted Ting-a-ling to go back and finish his visit.

"No," said the fairy. "I like you very much indeed, but I'm afraid I'm most too little for your house."

"Perhaps that's true," said the Giant; "and when you want to see them, there are so many good people here in the palace. I am sure I like common human beings very much, and I would wish to be with them always, if they were not so little."

"I like them too," said Ting-a-ling, "and would live with them all the time, if they were not so big."