CHAPTER XXIX
THE SECRET WISH OF THE FAIRY QUEEN
"Good Queen," said Zuzu to the Fairy Monarch Zulena, when the Bumblebee Express had finally brought them back again to the Fairy city of Almalena, "there is something which perhaps you have forgotten, or which at least you have not mentioned for some time."
"And pray what is that?" asked the Fairy Queen.
"Why, we have all of us quite forgotten the poor King, who has lost his shadow."
"Indeed, I have not," said the Queen Zulena; "but, as I have told you, I can only show you where the Wicked Fairy lives who took the shadow. As that is something belonging to the country of the Island, I have only partial power over it. If I should seize upon this shadow and take it to the palace, there is no one there whom it would fit; and as to taking it up the Golden Ladder myself, that is quite out of the question. If I did that I should be called a very forward Queen indeed; so upon the whole I hardly know what to do about it, except to take you upon a visit to the home of the Wicked Fairy Gobo."
"If it be true that the Wicked Fairy has also taken the White Cricket," said Lulu, "then the King can not telephone you any more."
"That is true!" said the Fairy Queen; and to their great surprise she broke out weeping, the first time that any such thing had ever happened in all her life. "I have not heard from the King for many days," she said; "and now I know that he can never telephone me again, because certainly the White Cricket which I gave him has been taken away by this Wicked Fairy."
"But," said Lulu, who also wept at seeing the good Queen in trouble, "why can we not find this Wicked Fairy and ask whether he has these things? Perhaps we can get them back again. I could carry the White Cricket in my pocket, and Zuzu could carry the shadow, if it were not too large, and so we could manage in some way to get back up the Golden Ladder, even if your Majesty could not send us in the Bumblebee Express."
"Could you do that, my dears?" said the Fairy Queen, "would you be so good as to do these kind things for me?"