Pixela

Pixela lived with her mother and father in a castle at the top of a tall toog tree in the middle of the Mahika Forest. One day she was picking flowers near her home when she heard a loud noise. A group of monsters appeared with huge axes.

Pixela was a little afraid, but she wanted to look tough. “What do you want?” she demanded.

“We are here to cut down that toog tree,” one of the monsters said. He pointed at the tree with Pixela’s castle at the top. “We need the wood.”

“Never!” Pixela cried. “That’s my home. Why do you need to cut it down?”

“Toothpicks!” the monster said. “Our king, Grumpy Lord Baxter, eats a lot of meat, and he always gets it stuck in his teeth. He gets toothaches all the time, so he needs toothpicks to clean out all the stuck meat. Maybe then he won’t be so grumpy. Everyone knows toog trees make the best toothpicks.”

Pixela knew she had to stop them, but there were ten of them and only one of her. If she had her magic wand, she could make them disappear, but it was back in her bedroom.

One of the monsters raised his ax, and the ax screamed at her! It was a magic ax with a mouth on the side of the blade. “Chop, chop!” it yelled.

Pixela covered her ears and fell back. She could not stand loud sounds. They made her ears ring and her wings hurt. The other axes started to scream too until the forest was filled with a sound like a piece of metal being ripped in half.

The axes stopped screaming to take a breath and Pixela took her hands from her ears and clapped them as hard as she could. Poof! She disappeared and appeared inside her bedroom up in the castle.

It was Saturday morning and her parents were sleeping in. There was no time to wake them up. Pixela grabbed her wand and flew out the window, flying very fast toward the ground. The monsters were all around the tree now, stepping on the lilies her mother had planted. The first monster raised his magic ax and aimed it at the tree.

“No!” Pixela shouted. She pointed her wand at him. Poof! The monster and his terrible ax disappeared.

The other monsters raised their axes too. They all started screaming. The sound made Pixela’s head ring but she ignored it and waved her wand again.

Poof! Poof! Poof! Three more of the monsters disappeared. The rest started to run away. Pixela poofed their axes so they would not cut down any trees and let them go.

“Pixela, is that you screaming down there?” Pixela looked up to see her dad looking sleepily out of his bedroom window.

Ten minutes later, Pixela’s mom and dad were outside. She told them what had happened.

“I guess we need a fence to keep out the monsters,” her father said. “And maybe some guard chickens.”

“And I’ll have to plant the lilies again,” her mother said with a sigh. “Those pesky monsters. I would have sent Grumpy Lord Baxter some dental floss if he had only asked.”