(Image by Mohamed Qovaizi)

Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Allison. She lived in a little house on a hill that was deep in the forest. Allison was about nine years old, and one of her chores was to pick the tomatoes from her family garden at the end of each day. 

One evening, just as the sun touched the horizon, Allison looked up and saw a soft light glowing deep in the forest about a mile from her house. Being a very curious little girl, Allison set down her tomato basket and walked down the hill to the edge of the forest. She stood there for a minute trying to decide what to do because her mom and dad told her to NEVER go into the forest by herself. But she was so curious about the glowing light that she decided to check on it really quickly, and then hurry home before her parents knew that she was gone. She decided to follow a faint trail that led into the forest. She walked along silently. As the light faded, the large trees seemed to form shapes of strange animals. She looked up and in the fading light saw an owl staring at her saying, “whooo, whooo”. She followed the path toward the light, but it was much farther than she had expected, and soon it was pitch black. She started to get scared, and wanted to turn around and go back home, but now it was so dark that she couldn’t see the path behind her! All she could do was to keep walking forward toward the strange, golden light ahead.


When she got close to the light, Allison got on her hands and knees and crept up behind a bush. She slowly peeked over the top and was amazed at what she saw. In the clearing were fairies! Hundreds of fairies! Allison was never so amazed in her life. The fairies were dancing and singing. The golden light that she had seen from her house came from magic lanterns that cast their glow over the festivities, and the fairies would fly around the lanterns in pairs as part of the fairy dance. Allison had never seen anything like this before. All she could do was stare in amazement and fascination. 

Allison was so enthralled by what she was watching that she didn’t notice the stick that was under her left foot. As she shifted into a more comfortable position, the stick went CRACK! All of a sudden, the music and singing stopped, and all the fairies stared in her direction. Allison slowly stood up, introduced herself, and apologized for interrupting the fairies festivities. The queen of the fairies, whose name was Zyla, flew up to Allison and asked her in a musical voice (all fairies have beautiful voices) what she was doing in the forest so late at night. Allison said, “I wanted to see what was causing the light in the forest but then it was so dark that I couldn’t go home and the owl was in the tree watching me and I’m really scared now and I don’t know what to do…” then she started to cry. Zyla told Allison that she could spend the night in the forest, and the fairies would protect her with their fairy magic. All the fairies started to gather leaves and pine needles and made a soft bed for Allison. Then they collected all the little fairy blankets and sewed them together with invisible fairy thread into one big blanket large enough to cover Allison. Then Zyla waved her hand over the blanket and said some magic words. All of a sudden the blanket turned into a big, fluffy golden blanket, guaranteed to keep Allison warm all night long. Allison snuggled under her warm, fuzzy blanket and fell asleep while the fairies sang a soft, quiet lullaby.

When the sun rose, Allison sat up in her bed and rubbed the sleep from her eyes. She said to herself, “What a strange dream. Fairies singing, magic lanterns - how strange”, then shook her head. When she finally was fully awake, she stepped out of her bed and looked down. At her feet was a neatly folded fluffy golden blanket.