“Make her take her other form,” she replied; “and then she cannot hurt us while she stays in our country. She is a fairy, as we have just found out, and all fairies have two forms.”
“Oh!” said Jack; but he had no time for more questions.
The screaming, and fighting, and tossing about of little bits of cloth and cotton ceased; a black lump heaved itself up from the ground among the parrots; and as they flew aside, an ugly great condor, with a bare neck, spread out its wings, and, skimming the ground, sailed slowly away.
“They have pecked her so that she can hardly rise,” exclaimed the parrot fairy. “Set me on your shoulder, Jack, and let me see the end of it.”
Jack set him there; and his little wife, who had recovered herself, sprang from her friend the brown woman, and sat on the other shoulder. He then ran on—the tribe of brown people, and mushroom people, and the feather-coated folks running too—after the great black bird, who skimmed slowly on before them till she got to the gipsy carts, when out rushed the gipsies, armed with poles, milking-stools, spades, and everything they could get hold of to beat back the people and the parrots from hunting their relation, who had folded her tired wings, and was skulking under a cart, with ruffled feathers and a scowling eye.
Jack was so frightened at the violent way in which the gipsies and the other tribes were knocking each other about, that he ran off, thinking he had seen enough of such a dangerous country.
As he passed the place where that evil-minded gipsy had been changed, he found the ground strewed with little bits of her clothes. Many parrots were picking them up, and poking them into the cage where the handkerchief was; and presently another parrot came with a lighted brand, which she had pulled from one of the gipsies’ fires.
“That’s right,” said the fairy on Jack’s shoulder, when he saw his friend push the brand between the wires of what had been his cage, and set the gipsy’s handkerchief on fire, and all the bits of her clothes with it. “She won’t find much of herself here,” he observed, as Jack went on. “It will not be very easy to put herself together again.”
So Jack moved away. He was tired of the noise and confusion; and the sun was just setting as he reached the little creek where his boat lay.
Then the parrot fairy and his wife sprang down, and kissed their hands to him as he stepped on board, and pushed the boat off. He saw, when he looked back, that a great fight was still going on; so he was glad to get away, and he wished his two friends good-bye, and set off, the old parrot fairy calling after him, “My relations have put some of our favourite food on board for you.” Then they again thanked him for his good help, and sprang into a tree, and the boat began to go down the wonderful river.