Once upon a time, there was a small, round girl named Ivy, who was doing her best to live happily ever after. Ivy lived with her grandmother, Meg the Healer, and that made her happy. Ivy had Grandmother’s big, overgrown garden to play in, and that made her happy. Ivy even had her own work to do every day, and that made her happy too.
Her work was helping Grandmother take care of sick and injured creatures. Some of them were forest animals, like rabbits, raccoons, or foxes. Some of them were magical creatures, who had come to be her friends. One was a three-legged griffin. Another was an aging dragon. And a big hive of friendly pixies lived in a hole in the oak tree, and followed Ivy everywhere! Ivy loved all the creatures, and they loved her, and so they let her feed them and tend to them, and that made Ivy very happy indeed.
Grandmother’s garden was a wonderful place. It was right on the edge of the tidy village of Broomsweep, next to the Dark Forest, in the small kingdom of Evermore. Grandmother’s cozy cottage sat right in the middle of the big, overgrown garden. The garden was brimming with flowers and shrubs and weeds of all colors and kinds. It was full of good things for Grandmother to use in her potions. And it was the perfect place for Ivy and her friends to play hide-and-seek. It had comfortable holes and dens of different sizes, hidden here and there, that sick animals might inhabit while Ivy and Grandmother took care of them. And sometimes, even after a creature was all better, it liked living in the garden so much it would move right in and stay there.
That was how they met Cedric, the three-legged griffin. He was a big, beautiful griffin, with a front part like an eagle and a back part like a lion, but he had lost one back leg in an accident. Cedric had come to the cottage one night, asking for help. He needed to learn how to land on just three legs without crashing, and he needed a place to live. So Grandmother and Ivy had welcomed him. They helped him learn to make graceful landings. They became such good friends that the griffin stayed on, in an enormous nest behind the cottage.
Each morning, when Ivy went cheerfully about her work, Cedric greeted her from his big nest in the back of Grandmother’s garden.
“Good, good, good morning! Very good! Most good!” he would say, in his strong eagle voice, as he wagged his lion tail.
“Good morning, Cedric!” Ivy would reply. Then a tiny white dog would pop out from under Cedric’s wing and yap happily. His name was Poof. He had big brown eyes and a little pink tongue. Even though he was very small, he was not at all afraid of the griffin. He liked to live with Cedric and hide under the griffin’s huge wings. As soon as breakfast was finished, the griffin would make a mighty leap and fly to the top of the cottage roof, so he could keep watch over all of Grandmother’s garden.
“I guard the garden!” he would say. “Griffins guard!”
“Good Cedric!” Ivy would say.
“Yes, good Cedric,” he would answer. “Mighty Cedric!”
Then Ivy would sprinkle seeds on the ground, near the hazel trees, for the birds and squirrels. She visited every creature in the garden to see if they needed food or fresh bedding. One morning, she took care of a rabbit with an infected ear. Then she comforted a porcupine who was missing some of her quills. Then she tended to a small mole with a toothache. She always petted the creatures who needed petting. She was extra careful when she petted the porcupine. She spoke softly to the animals, just like Grandmother did. Even though they didn’t understand her, they seemed to like the sound of her voice.
If Grandmother asked her, Ivy even gave them some of the special tonics Grandmother cooked up. She might give them Sneezlewort Potion, for sneezes, or Limberjuice, for aches and pains. She was always very sure to measure carefully and do everything the way Grandmother told her. She wanted to be a healer, just like Grandmother.
When Ivy made her way about the garden, the pixies flitted all around her. They were tiny winged people, smaller than Ivy’s pinky finger. Sometimes, they had tiny temper tantrums. When someone made them mad, the pixies might poke or pinch them, or pull their hair. But when they were happy, they tickled Ivy’s neck and laughed tiny laughs like wind chimes. They did somersaults and twirls and all sorts of tricks in midair. They rode on her head and shoulders while she went about her work, and made everything more fun. Ivy was delighted to have them for friends. Every day, she put a cup of honey in the hole in the oak tree, where the pixies lived. The pixies loved honey. And they loved Ivy. She felt like the luckiest girl in the world.
When Ivy had finished with her chores, she would go down by the stream and visit Balthazar, the dragon who lived under the weeping willow tree. He was small for a dragon, but even so, Ivy had been a little apprehensive around him when he first came to the cottage, looking for a cure for a dreadful fiery sneeze. (It can be a terrible thing when a fire-breathing dragon sneezes!) But when she got to know him, Ivy found that Balthazar was very old and wise, and had many stories to tell. After a few doses of Grandmother’s Sneezlewort Potion, he had stopped sneezing fire. He stayed under the weeping willow tree, where he was usually napping.
Sometimes, Ivy’s human friends came to the garden to visit as well. Peter, who lived next door, used to tease her, until she had showed him how to make friends with the pixies. Now he was nice to Ivy, and they often laughed together as he helped her care for the creatures. Edwina and Marta, the shoemaker’s daughters, had come to be good friends with Ivy and Peter too, and sometimes joined them to play games in the garden.
All in all, it was a great place for living happily ever after. And Ivy did. Until, one day, something happened.
Copyright © 2019 by Katherine Coville. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
