Tell Me Another Story: The Book of Story Programs

by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey

Now, when Gillibloom found that the fairies had all gone and left him to himself, and the four-footed things and the two-footed things, and the things that have feathers and fur and gauze-wings and shell-wings had gone too, he had felt differently from what he ever had before. He had been bellowing for a long time that night, because he was determined to learn to cry and get it over, and then go back to his people, but now he said to himself: "I will not cry any more. And anyway it is not Quite Crying, and if Almost Crying makes everything run away from me, I don't know what Quite Crying would do."

So he tried to shut his mouth, and stop its bellowing, but it would not stop. And he tried to smooth his forehead, and it stayed wrinkled, and he tried to draw up the corners of his mouth, and they would not stay, and he tried to open his eyes, and they would not open. And there was a strange feeling in his throat, and his heart beat very fast, and though he had not dipped up the water of the Standing Pool for as much as two hours, his cheeks were all wet.

"Oh," said Gillibloom to himself, "what has happened to me! what has happened to me!"

And he started running as fast as he could through the silent forest to the Earth-Woman's house, and as he ran he said to himself: "What has happened to me? What has happened to me? Am I afraid?"

Now for a fairy to be afraid is just as impossible as for it not to be a fairy, but Gillibloom knew he was somehow changed, and he could only run and call aloud at the top of his voice, "Am I afraid? Am I afraid?"

Now the Earth-Woman lives in the very middle of the wood, in a green house that nobody can see by day, and a dark brown house that nobody can see by night. And when she heard Gillibloom come screaming through the forest, she stepped to her door and stood waiting for him, and in a minute he was there, and laid hold of her skirts and clung to them.

"Well! Well!" said the Earth-Woman, "and who is this?" Then she stooped down and took up Gillibloom between her thumb and forefinger, and looked at him. "By acorns and nuts!" said she. "It's the Cry Fairy."

"No! no!" said Gillibloom. "No! no! I'm the Almost Cry Fairy. I'm never going to Quite Cry, for I don't know what it would do to me."

The Earth-Woman laid her finger to Gillibloom's cheek and touched it and put it, all wet, to her lips. She nodded and then shook her head.

"Well," said she, "you were a silly, weren't you? Now what do you want me to do?"