Cross Purposes and the Shadows
1890
The Fairy Queen of Faery is bored. Her subjects are too polite, too predictable, too impossibly well-behaved to provide any entertainment. So she dispatches her fairy Peaseblossom and goblin Toadstool to the mortal world to find interesting children - dreamers with longings strange enough to spice up her court. Peaseblossom brings Alice, the squire's daughter who wishes she could watch a setting sun forever. Toadstool finds Richard, a poor widow's son who only wants to buy his mother a new umbrella. But the best-laid schemes of fairies and goblins go disastrously awry, and soon both children are lost alone in the wild woods of Faery, with only strange creatures and stranger guidance to lead them home. This is George MacDonald at his most beguiling: part bedtime story, part philosophical inquiry into what children truly want and why. The three linked tales in this collection explore what happens when mortal longing meets magical reality - and whether those who wander into Faery ever return unchanged.
