The little boy screwed up his face as he looked at the pussy willows. “I just don’t get it. How can something start life at the end of a tiny branch and grow up to be an animal that purrs at our feet and chases mice in the basement?”
His sister shrugged. “Maybe that’s where the stork finds them before he brings them to their mommies.”
He stared at them a moment, considering. “That makes sense.”
The family of fernlets huddled together as they emerged from the soil for the first time. The sun shone down and a vast forest loomed around them. It was all rather frightening after the dark of the earth and they needed some time to collect themselves.
“Why does it take so long for things to turn green again? This is taking forever!”
The child’s grandmother took a breath and considered the matter. “Well, there’s little elves out there who were hired to the job. They get paid in birdsong, bullfrog croaks, and peepers, so as soon as you hear those you know it has begun. They have tiny paintbrushes, you see, and they have to paint each blade of grass and every single plant. It goes rather slow at fast because they’re out of practice, but once they’ve caught their stride it goes ever so fast. Some folks call that the ‘green-up’ but I just call it spring.”
____________________
Once upon a time the King of the Forest decided to humour the feline and give him the title of Chief Arborist. Years passed with no equipment, salary, or even a thank-you, but the cat never shirked his responsibilities. He taught himself to trim branches with his teeth and prune with his claws, certain his forest was the loveliest in all the land.
She stopped short when she noticed the fragile first leaves of the season. They bobbed with joy on the breeze that wafted past, and she smiled the first smile the leaves had ever seen. They were dazzled, and both lives were all the richer for it.
The fairy tapped the bud with her wand and waited. The pod opened slowly, the outer capsule splitting away, exposing yellow and green tendrils that prodded the air and lingered, protective, over the burgundy mass of flower about to burst into life.
“What…is that?”
“It looks like some sort of mandible. Maybe the jaw bone of an eel or something.”
The oldest rolled her eyes. “Don’t be silly. It’s obviously an octopus comb. They use them all the time to keep the seaweeds in their gardens from getting too knotted.”
The wizard narrowed his eyes at the children. They watched in horror as he reached for his wand. Should they run? Was there anywhere to hide? They held their breath as he muttered a few rhymes and pointed his wand at them…and nothing happened at all, for it was spring and the wand was far too busy growing buds and dreaming of leaves to bother with children just being kids and a grumpy old wizard.
Jennifer Shelby 