Now Primrose was wearing the little Cross round his neck. When the Fairy saw the Cross, she screamed and started away from Primrose, for she could not touch him because of the Cross.
But the Fairies had no intention of letting the child off so easily. They hovered about him in a wide circle and conferred softly about what was to be done with him.
Little Primrose’s heart was untroubled within him. The Fairies conferred, and their thoughts were so black that they came out in a cloud of black forest wasps buzzing round their heads. But Primrose just looked at them, and as he could see no harm in them, how was he to be frightened? On the contrary, the wings of one of the Votaresses took his fancy, flapping like that, and so he toddled up to her to see what she was really like.
“That will do nicely,” thought the Votaress. “I cannot touch him, but I will entice him into the Wolf’s Pit.”
For near by there was a pit all covered over with boughs, so that you could not see it; and the bottom of the pit was full of horrible stakes and spikes. Whoever stepped on the boughs was bound to fall through and kill himself on the spikes.
So the Votaress Fairy enticed Primrose to the Wolf’s Pit, always slipping away from him, and he always following to see what her wings really were. And so they came to the Pit. The Fairy flew over the Pit; but poor little misguided Primrose stepped on the boughs and fell down the hole.
The Votaresses shrieked for joy, and hurried up to see the child perish on the spikes.
But what do Fairies know about a baby!
Primrose was light as a chicken. Some of the boughs and branches fell down with him, the branches covered the spikes, and Primrose was so small and light that he came to rest upon the leaves as if they had been a bed.
When Primrose found himself lying down upon something soft, he thought: “I suppose I had better go to sleep!” So he tucked his little hand under his head and went sound asleep, never thinking that he was caught in a deep hole and could not get out.