Liddie was a blond girl who spent most of her time in the forest. She liked to read there, have a rest, and put various treats in the feeding racks for deer. She loved it when she could simply lay down on moss, smell the scent of mushrooms, and sample the forest berries that grew all around. But one day Liddie met someone she’d never seen in the forest before. Actually, she hadn’t even known that someone like that existed.
It was a beautiful, colorful autumn afternoon. The air was crisp, but despite that, the sun kept her nicely warm. Liddie was just walking past some ferns, looking for mushrooms that could be hiding in this corner of the forest, when she heard faint tiptoeing. She turned around but no one was there.
A moment later, she could hear a gentle voice. “Where did I put it? I’m such a scatterbrain. What am I going to do now?” Liddie knelt down behind a tree to stay out of sight and looked around for the source of the voice. After a while, she spotted a small fairy. She was completely green. Only her head was adorned with a red cap and she was wearing a red coat. She was hopping from the ferns and to the blueberries, searching for something. Liddie rubbed her eyes because she thought she was just imagining this. But when the little fairy hopped closer to her, Liddie realized that it wasn’t a dream.
Liddie peeked out from behind the tree and asked: “Hi, fairy, what are you looking for?” The fairy was so startled that she fell down on her bottom. She’d had no idea that Liddie was there. “Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you, I just want to help you,” Liddie quickly assured the fairy.
At first, the fairy was scared and shy. But then she launched into an explanation in her gentle voice: “I’m a forest fairy. I make sure that animals don’t come to any harm here. But now I’ve messed everything up. I’ve lost my wand. It helps me stop the winter frost from arriving earlier than it should. If it appears somewhere and it’s still autumn, I melt it with my wand so that everything is the way it should be. But now the frost has started to show up and the beetles aren’t ready for winter yet. It’s too early. But I don’t have my wand to stop it.”
Without hesitation, Liddie leapt into action. “Don’t worry, forest fairy, I’m bigger, so I can see farther. I’ll help you find the wand so that you can fix everything and save the beetles,” Liddie said and started searching. She knew every corner of the forest, every tree and den. And so she started searching everywhere. Leaf after leaf, moss after moss, and tree after tree. The forest fairy, of course, searched too.
A few hours passed and Liddie felt as though she’d searched the entire forest. She sat down on the ground, wondering where else the wand could be. It couldn’t have just evaporated into thin air! Liddie knew that the life of the beetles depended on it, and she didn’t want to give up the search yet. And then something else occurred to her. She climbed a tree that had a magpie’s nest in it. That’s because magpies are birds which are drawn to shiny, sparkly things. And of course the wand was there. The magpie had liked it so much, it carried it to its nest.
Liddie quickly grabbed the wand and took it to the fairy. The fairy thanked her profusely and as quickly as she could, she started hopping here and there through the forest, putting things in order. Liddie was glad that everything had turned out well.
But when she looked up the tree toward the nest, she could see the magpie sitting on a branch there, looking sad because someone had taken away the shiny thing from her nest. Liddie felt sorry for the magpie. She pulled out a tiny mirror, which sparkled beautifully, from her pocket. She waved at the magpie and the mirror flashed in the sun. Then she extended her arm, indicating to the magpie that it could take the mirror. The magpie flew down and happily carried the mirror to her nest. It even seemed to Liddie that the magpie had smiled at her. Liddie was overjoyed that she was able to help the forest and the animals that lived in it yet again.
