The Enchanted Wood

        Charlotte was a rich little girl who lived in an enormous house that had an even more enormous garden. Indeed, the garden was so enormous that it even had an orchard at the end.
        One day, Charlotte was walking among the trees collecting apples when suddenly a squirrel jumped out in front of her and waved.
        "If you give me all the apples you're carrying, I'll take you to the Enchanted Wood," said the squirrel. "But I do need all of them."
        "Squirrels don't eat apples," answered Charlotte.
        "I want to hide them in people's shoes, so they can't put them on," he explained.
        "Very well," said Charlotte, after a moment's thought, and she gave the squirrel her apples. However, she kept back one in her pocket, as she couldn't bear the thought of giving them all to the squirrel.
        The squirrel lead her through the orchard, under a hedge, behind a yellow bush, and into the Enchanted Wood.
        Charlotte had lots of fun! She found she could fly, grow to any size she wanted, and produce strange popping noises from her fingers. She made many friends, including a badger, a hare that wore a spoon in its hat, and a bird that said it was a nightingale but was really a cuckoo.
        "They certainly don't call this the Enchanted Wood for nothing," she murmured as she stroked a rainbow.
        The cuckoo agreed. "Woods don't come more enchanted than this," it said, in a bad nightingale accent.
        After a day of play, Charlotte began to feel tired, and she asked how to get back to the outside world.
        "Oh dear," said the hare. "Didn't the squirrel follow you in?"
        "Is that an apple in your pocket?" asked the badger.
        "Oh dear oh dear oh dear!" said the hare.
        It took Charlotte two years to find the way out herself. Luckily, though, because of the way magic works, only two minutes had passed in her own world. By then, though, the squirrel had left.
        "Busy, I expect," thought Charlotte.

So

When Charlotte got up the next morning, she found that for some reason she couldn't put her shoes on.

Illustration by Roy Bartle
Image size: approx. 26K.