Princess Floralinda and the Forty-Flight Tower - Tamsyn Muir Page 0,27

aggregate, that is; all the individual birds who had their necks wrung by Cobweb found their woes over very suddenly, for they went directly to bird heaven). In those early days, when her brain had been working so quickly, Cobweb had made her own preparations, and had told Floralinda to take her down to flight thirty-eight. There she had set up a sort of laboratory, with a fairy-sized fire made of half an ever-burning coal, and cunning containers that she had cured out of orange-peel and made watertight. She had also made for herself a whole sort of visor out of orange-pith that was very funny to look at, but that protected all of her face, and the most beautiful little gloves of peel to shield her hands. She would put this all on, looking like the funniest orange doll, and make quite a lot of mess, and a fairy’s-building-site amount of noise what with the fire, and the bubbling containers all sloshing, and the chain with all the rings on clinking every time Cobweb moved. What exactly she was doing Floralinda wasn’t aware of, because it all took place very close to the big dead spider and Floralinda didn’t like to look.

But the culmination of those early experiments came to pass in those autumn evenings. Cobweb made Floralinda tie some of the gauze into a sort of sack, with a string through the top made of curtain-cord, so that it could be pulled shut in a hurry. They put a lot of choice breadcrumbs inside this sack, and Floralinda sat very still until a little bird hopped inside, and then—tug! the cord was pulled, with the bird struggling within.

Cobweb put on her orange-skin gloves, and took one of the tapestry-needles, and unplugged the pith top of one of her miniature orange-skins, and dipped the needle inside. She was as careful as a tiny surgeon as she held the needle over the skin until all the excess dripped off, and then she plugged it up again; she held it before her as she advanced to the struggling, cheeping bag, and as Floralinda held the bag still Cobweb pricked the needle through the gauze and into the bird.

How terribly that bird flapped! Floralinda was relieved that Cobweb had not run it through, which she had been afraid of; then Cobweb stared at the bag, and commenced counting out loud. Before she had counted to two, the bird’s struggles slowed; and before she had counted to five, the bird had stopped struggling altogether. When they opened the bag, the bird had curled up its poor bird toes, and was dead.

“Oh!” said Floralinda.

Cobweb looked it all over, and checked its eyes, and listened to its heart, and did a number of awful things besides. Then she sighed in relief; she took her pad of notes (this was one of the fly-leaves of the Reader’s Digests, cut up into squares with the embroidery-scissors, and tied together with thread) and her pencil (a scrap of lead from a whole pencil that Floralinda had found in a drawer) and wrote down in fairy-sized letters:

SAMPLE #1. ACTIV. ASSEUMD NEWROTOXIN. (Cobweb did not possess a dictionary.)

“Cobweb,” said Floralinda, “why, what did you do?”

“I didn’t do much,” said Cobweb, “but that spider venom jolly well did; that bird’s asphyxiated, as any fool can see.”

Once it had been explained to Floralinda what ‘asphyxiated’ meant, she said she was very glad that the spider had not bitten her.

“Oh! it wouldn’t have done that to you,” said Cobweb.

Floralinda was relieved.

“I get the impression that you would have gone rigid, asphyxiated and then melted into a sort of nutritious slop,” said Cobweb, “that the spider could have crunched up into a nice moist ball to suck dry; you see, a spider keeps all its poisons in different pouches and mixes them up as needed, as if it kept them all ready in one it would kill itself. I have correctly mixed one poison, so now, if you get back into position, we are going to need four more birds.”

And Princess Floralinda was not relieved at all!

But in those early days Floralinda still congratulated herself, in her terrible secret heart-o’-hearts, that she had stolen Cobweb. She tried to justify it to herself all the time, because she was really a princess still, and it hurt too much to think that she had committed such a mortal sin as imprisoning a fairy. Floralinda still wanted to go to Heaven, and even though she hadn’t put