The Peculiar Princess

The Pixie Queen

The Pixie who had escorted them to the queen bowed and the others bowed too.

"What brings you to my palace?" asked the pixie queen sitting back on her throne. Her wings glistened in the sunlight that streamed in through the tall glass windows.

"We came to you to ask if your majesty could help us summon a unicorn,dragon and a mermaid," said the pixie, looking up at the pixie queen.

"Lily, I would love to help but may I know the reason why you need to summon these magical beings?" asked the queen looking at the pixie whose wings fluttered now and then.

"Your majesty, I wanted to help these strangers," she said looking up at Danny, Princess Marvella and Selene. One of them is a swan maiden."

"Well, I don't sense any evil in any of you, but it is not an easy task to summon these creatures. We will need to prepare soup called the summoning soup for each of the creatures. The soup is a sort of potion and each soup requires different ingredients. I have most of them but there are some things I might need."

"We will help you fetch them, your majesty," said Danny, stepping forward from the rest.

"If so, why wait, follow me," said the pixie queen rising from her throne. They followed her through a doorway out of the throne room down a corridor where giant glowing leaves floated close to the ceiling.

On they went passing passages hung with beautiful portraits of men and women with wings and golden crowns on their heads.

They climbed several staircases and came to a door. The pixie queen took out her wand from her cloak and tapped on the door. The door faded away and they walked inside a room.

The room was filled with books. There were shelves stuffed with all manner of books.

The pixie queen browsed through one shelf, stopped and pulled out a book. It was a large old leather bound book discoloured with age.

She opened it on a table and turned the yellow pages carefully, as if she was afraid it might fall apart any moment.

The book had strange diagrams. The pixie queen stopped at a page and said, "Ah here it is, the soup of summoning. Let me read it out to you.

The Summoning Soup is an ancient pixie potion that had been handed down generations of pixies. To prepare the Summoning Soup you''l need:

Three ounces of Yarrow

Two ounces of Sage

Four cloves of garlic

The root of a Moon Mandrake

Three ounces of Rosemary

You will also need to recite the true name of the being you are trying to summon while these ingredients simmer in your cauldron.

"I will need a Moon Mandrake and the true names of the beasts you wish to summon," said the pixie queen, looking up from the book.

"Where can we find the Moon Mandrake?" asked Danny as the pixie queen shut the book.

 "You will have to travel to the Moon Marsh," said the pixie queen as she walked upto the shelf she had pulled out the book.

"And where is that, your majesty," asked Danny, scratching his head. "We need to start right away. We are running out of time." 

"Yes, I will provide you with horses to carry you to the Moon Marsh where you will be able to find the moon mandrake. But I must warn you, it's going to be a dangerous journey."