Mystery of the Hidden Elves by Gertrude Chandler Warner

Author:Gertrude Chandler Warner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Albert Whitman & Company
Published: 2021-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

“I’m not sure I like trolls,” Benny said. “Can we hear stories about elves? One that isn’t scary?”

“Of course.” Helga’s calm voice was comforting with the sounds coming from outside. “Most elf stories are happy stories.”

She looked up at a picture sitting on the fireplace mantel. “The boy in that picture is my brother. He had a strange thing happen to him one time. He had the job of taking the sheep up to the mountain pastures in the summer, and he had to stay with them for weeks by himself. One night, there was a bad storm. The sheep got frightened and scattered. My brother tried hard to find them all the next day, and he rounded up most of them, but he knew a few were missing. All of a sudden, a boy appeared—a boy my brother had never seen before. The boy offered to help him find the sheep. By the end of the day, they got them all back together, but when my brother went to thank the boy, he was gone. My brother never saw him again.”

“Was the boy an elf?” Violet asked.

“I don’t know, but my brother thought he might have been. My mother thought that one time she saw elves, too, special elves, the king and queen of the elves in East Iceland.”

“Wow!” Benny said. “I didn’t know elves had kings and queens.”

“Elves in Iceland do. My mother had been out collecting wild herbs, and she sat down for a while to rest. The sun was warm, and she had gotten up very early that morning, so she fell asleep. When she woke up, she was amazed to see a group of people riding by. A regal-looking man and woman rode in front. They all wore fine, beautiful clothes in all different colors, clothes like she’d never seen before. She only had the clothes her mother wove for her from sheep wool, and none of it was in the pretty colors she loved. People were very poor in those days.”

“What happened next?” Jessie asked.

“They rode behind the rock, and my mother wanted so badly to see more of them that she ran after them. But once she went around the rock herself, she didn’t see anything. They were gone. She never forgot that day. She was sure she had seen the elf queen and king, and she said when she grew up, if she had the money, she would buy herself a red skirt just like the elf queen wore.”

“Did she get to buy a red skirt?” Violet asked.

The old woman smiled. “She certainly did, and she bought me one too. She loved those skirts.”

Violet liked hearing these stories of elves. They sounded so much more peaceful.

Suddenly, the lights began to flicker. Then they went dark.

“Oh, great,” Todd said.

“We don’t often lose power in the summer,” said Gunnar. “This storm is unusually strong. Stay here. I’ve got some lanterns we can use.” He brought out lanterns with lights inside that looked like candles.

“The candles remind me of the old days,” Gunnar’s mother said.

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