The Magic Faraway Tree

2. Off to the Enchanted Wood

The children ate their breakfast quickly. Their mum told them to make sandwiches for themselves and to take a small chocolate cake from he pantry.

"You can take some doughnuts too," she said, "and there are apples in the bowl over there. When you come back, I'll bake some fries in the oven and you can eat them with tomato sauce."

"Ooh, mum we will be hungry!" Said Joe at once. "Let's hurry up with the sandwiches, we want to start off as soon as possible."

"Be home by six o'clock," said mum. "And look after Rick."

"Yes, I will," promised Joe.

Finally, everything was ready. Joe packed the food into a bag and sling it over his shoulder. Then the four children set off to the Enchanted Wood.

It didn't take them long to get there. A narrow ditch was between the lane and the wood.

"You've gotta jump over the ditch Rick," said Joe. 

They all jumped over. Rick stood still when he was in the wood.

"What a strange noise the leaves of the trees make," he said. "It's as if they were talking to one another, telling secrets."

"Wisha-wisha-wisha-wisha," whispered the trees.

"They are telling secrets," said Beth. "And do you know Rick, if the trees have any message for us, we can hear it by pressing our ears to the trunks of the trees! Then we can really hear what they say."

"Wisha-wisha-wisha-wisha," said the trees.

"Come on," said Joe impatiently. "Let's go to the Faraway Tree."

They all went on and soon came to the magical tree. Rick stared at it in astonishment.

"Wow! It's so enormous!" He said. "I've never seen such a big tree in my whole life, apart from now. And you can't even see the too. Goodness! What kind of tree is it? It's got oak leaves, and yet it doesn't really seem like an oak."

"It's a funny tree," said Beth. "It may grow acorns and oak leaves for a little while and then suddenly grow plums. Then another day it might grow apples or pears. You just never know. But it's all very exciting."

"How do you climb it?" Asked Rick. "In the ordinary way?"

"Well, we will today," said Joe, "because we want to show you our dear friends who live inside the tree. But sometimes there's a rope that is let down the tree, and we can go up easily with the help of it. Or sometimes Moon-Face lets down a cushion on the end of the rope and then pulls us up one by one."

He swung himself up into the tree, and the others followed. After a while Rick gave a shout. "Wow! It's amazing! The tree is growing nuts now! Look!"

Sure enough it was. Rick picked some and cracked them. They were hazel nuts, ripe and sweet. Everyone had some and enjoyed them.

When the all got very high up, Rick was most surprised to see a little window in the trunk of the faraway tree.

"Does anybody live there?" He called to the others. "Look, there's a window here. I'm going to peep in."

"You shouldn't!" Souter Joe. "The Angry Pixie lives there, and he hates people peeping in."

But Rick felt so curious that he just had to peep in. The Angry Pixie was at home. He was filling his kettle with water, when he looked up and saw Rick's surprised face at his window. Nothing made the pixie more angry than to see people looking at him. He rushed to the window at once and flung it open. "Peeping again!" He shouted. "It's too bad! All day and night people come peeping. Take that!"