*****
…It was the middle of the night by her little bedside clock, when Daisy was woken up by scratching noises in her bedroom. It had been well over a year since the Grelflin had visited, and ended up with the tragedy of losing them all, so Daisy was quite sure that it couldn’t be another of those.
She tried to keep her breathing natural, and reached out with her senses. She was surprised when she encountered a block. It was quite powerful, but even at only five, Daisy’s powers were awesome, and she had no trouble moving it to one side to allow her to creep in.
“What are you doing?” gasped a voice, “get out of my head at once.”
“Why?” asked Daisy reasonably, “You snuck into my bedroom uninvited…”
“Maybe,” interrupted the voice, “but that doesn’t mean you are at liberty to poke about wherever you like.”
“Before I do more than poke,” said Daisy, “perhaps you would like to explain what you are doing in my bedroom?”
“I am looking for a Windle for a Weeny,” said the voice.
“And you are?” prompted Daisy,
“I’m a Weeny of course, what else would I be?
“No, I meant your name.” clarified Daisy
“Oh, yes… Sorry… It’s Wendy.”
Well at least it a normal name, and ‘Wendy the Weeny’ does have a certain ring to it, thought Daisy.
“I thought so too,” said Wendy.
“So you read minds then?”
“Yes, if they are strong like yours, but most normal humans are just babble.”
“I know what you mean,” agreed Daisy, “I have the same trouble.”
“But I still have to find my Windle,”
“Ok I’ll help, but first I need to see you. Are you ok with the light if I switch it on?”
“Yes that’ll be fine.”
Daisy reached across to her bedside table and switched on the lamp. She almost jumped clean out of the bed when she saw the one-and-a-half metre high Hedgehog sitting by the wall,
“You are a Hedgehog,” she gasped.
“No no no. We are Weenies. It’s only humans that call us Hedgehogs. It’s not nice, and we don’t spend all of our time under hedges, and we are definitely NOT hogs.”
“But you are so big.” said Daisy, “The only Hedge… err… Weenies that I have ever seen have been quite small.”
“That’s because I am a member of the royal family… I am a Princess really… We don’t go out a lot, because… well you can imagine what most humans would do if we were seen wandering about.”
“Now about this Windle… ” said Daisy hesitantly, “What is it and how come it got lost in my bedroom?”
“Well it’s about this long, and this wide,” said Wendy indicating with her hands, “It has two levers on each side and a large knob like thing on the end… oh and it has three wheels.”
“What’s it used…?” Daisy started to ask, and then realising that she really did not want to know, added, “No, never mind, it doesn’t matter.”
She remembered a time when she had asked her mother what something was, and had been rewarded with a puzzling ‘It’s a Windle for a Weeny.’ For a long time she had imagined that it was something real, but had eventually come to the conclusion that it was just something her mother said when she didn’t know herself. It might be fun, to actually find it and show it to her mother. When asked what it was, she could truthfully say ‘It’s a Windle for a Weeny’. She giggled to herself.
“This isn’t funny,” protested Wendy, “It’s important. If I don’t find it I will never get to be Queen, and all of the royal family will start shrinking.”
“What, down to normal Hedge…err…Weeny size?”
“Yes, It was discovered by our family when we were normal Hedge…err you’ve got me doing it now…Weenies, and while we had it all of our family started to grow, and we’ve been like this ever since.”
“Well it sounds too important to be careless with. What happened?”
“My brother. We kept telling him it wasn’t a toy, but he kept using it as a skateboard. Mum called him, mentally called him that is, and he rushed home, but lost it somewhere on the way.”
“Will you start shrinking now it’s gone?”
“It’s already started. My brother shrank down to normal Weeny size within minutes of getting home, but the rest of us are getting smaller much more slowly. We think it was because he was the one who lost it.”
“Right then we had better start looking.”
A great mentality had Daisy, and also some pretty awesome powers, but she was still only five, and it simply did not occur to her that having a conversation with a Hedgehog was pretty odd. She probably would have worked it out, if she had thought about it and come to the conclusion that it was her own peculiarities that allowed her to understand the snuffles and grunts normal to this creature. But it didn’t occur to her as anything out of the ordinary, so she threw back the covers and got out of bed to help in the search.
The next few minutes saw frenzied activity with every nook and cranny of the room being searched, and all the while Wendy was shrinking. There was no Windle to be found, and both had to eventually admit that it was not in Daisy’s bedroom.
“Well ok what route did your brother take coming home?” she asked the one metre high Hedgehog.
As soon as Wendy had mapped it out for her, Daisy, still in her pyjamas, reached for and took the Weeny’s hand and teleported them both to the first likely looking place. She shivered. It was cold out here at this time of night. She wished that she had remembered her dressing gown, but knew that there really was not enough time. Searching madly under every piece of undergrowth and behind every tree they started to follow the trail. Daisy didn’t know if she could make it much further it was so cold, but she knew she had to try.
They had almost reached Wendy’s home and Daisy, frozen to the marrow, looked at the one and a half foot tall Hedgehog and could see the desperation in her eyes. She redoubled her efforts, sending her thoughts out in all directions, searching for anything unusual.
Suddenly she found it. It wasn’t hidden as they had supposed, it was buried. Not very deeply, but it had obviously been done deliberately. The question was who had done it and more importantly why. Quickly she grabbed the thirty centimetre high Hedgehog and teleported to the spot and frantically started to dig.
“Why can’t you leave things alone and mind your own business?” asked a voice.
Startled Daisy looked around, and was rewarded by the sight of a normal sized Hedgehog glaring at her. I know it’s difficult to tell whether a Hedgehog is glaring or not, but by its stance and attitude there could be no doubt. It was definitely glaring.
“Hector!” blurted the one and a half sized Wendy, totally amazed to find her brother here “What are you doing here?”
“Who Hector?” asked Daisy, still digging.
“Stop the flippin’ digging,” said Hector, “I’m Wendy’s brother, and I planted that thing there.”
“What, you mean you buried it here?” asked Daisy astonished at the revelation.
“Too right I did, and if I had any sense I would have done it long ago.”
“But why?” asked Wendy, before Daisy had a chance to ask the same question. “You knew we’d all shrink and wouldn’t be the royal family anymore.”
“I did it because I want to be a normal, like all the other Weenies. All my friends are normal, and they kept taking the micky, and I had to be careful that I didn’t hurt them when we were playing. Anyway what royal family? We don’t do anything. We don’t run anything. Really we are just a laughing stock.”
“That’s very true,” said Wendy thoughtfully, “we can’t even go out slugging and snailing with everyone else.”
“And how were you going to find a boyfriend?” asked Hector, pushing his luck Daisy thought, “The only Weenies of the size you were, are family.”
“That is very true also,” observed Wendy, who by now was ba
ck to her normal size, “I quite like Arthur, but he avoids me.”
“Isn’t that sort of like… discrimination?” asked Daisy.
“Rather more practical than discrimination I think,” said Hector, “and who can blame him? One of her hands was bigger than him!”
Daisy came to a decision, and closing her eyes she concentrated her thoughts and all of the earth that she had scooped out started to flow back into the hole. As soon as it was all in place, leaves and twigs from around settled on to the spot until for all intents and purposes it was exactly the same as everywhere else. She was glad that she had decided to dig with her hands, hoping the exercise would warm her up, rather than using the power of her thoughts to retrieve it, because by now it would have been recovered.
“I’ve let it sink,” she said, when she had finally finished, “It’s now about two metres down so, I don’t think anyone will accidentally dig it up. Is that ok with you guys?”
“Yes, it is,” declared Wendy, “I hate to admit that my brother is right, but he most certainly is on this occasion. We’ll just tell our parents that it couldn’t be found. They’ll probably be very angry for a while, but in the end I’m sure they’ll see that it’s really a good thing.”
“Yes thanks,” added Hector, “It’s great to be normal again. I can even get through cat flaps now and pinch the cat’s dinner. I do love that cat food.”
“And I,” added Wendy, “am going to find Arthur.”
Thankfully Daisy wished them well. She would have liked to have hugged them, but hugging Hedgehogs is not to be recommended. Gathering her thoughts, she teleported directly back to her bedroom, where she leapt under the bedclothes and slowly started to thaw out as she dropped off to sleep…
******
…So there you have it, no four foot high Hedgehogs, and a perfectly logical reason for why there isn’t. Maybe one day some building project will unearth the Windle, but as no one will recognise it for what it is, it’ll probably end up being melted down, but either way it won’t ruin the lives of any more H…Weenies.
The End
About the Author
Born in the Royal Military Hospital in Portsmouth, England in 1938 and attended Titchfield (Hampshire, UK) Primary School and Fareham (Hampshire, UK) Secondary Modern Boys School until 1953
Joined the Royal Air Force as an Apprentice in 1955 and served 14 years, being discharged in 1968. During that period, in 1962, he met and married Kim, and they are still together after 49 years After, a short period as a Prison Officer, he entered the Computer Industry with Golden Wonder Ltd and stayed in that profession with various companies until 1991. He then joined an Inner City Medical Practice in Leicester (Leicestershire UK) as Fundholding Manager and Practice Manager until his retirement in 2003. He currently lives in Leicestershire and also spends time in Sax, a small town near Alicante in Spain.
He can be contacted at mailto:[email protected]
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Daisy Weal and the Weenies Page 2