The Pumpkin Pixie
By Ed Boxall
(but borrowing a lot of ideas from folk tales from the south of England)
A story about pumpkins, pixies, pies and dad jokes.
When I was a child, I used to visit my granddad and grandma a lot. My granddad loved his garden. His vegetable patch was filled with tidy rows of carrots, potatoes, cabbages, parsnips and peas. His greenhouse was full of tidy raised beds of tomatoes and cucumbers.
But one bit of the garden wasn’t tidy at all: the pumpkin patch. The pumpkin patch was a higgledy-piggledy wild jungle of long, meandering, tangled pumpkin stalks with their huge shady leaves, where little birds hopped and mice ran.
One of my favourite things was going out into the garden to watch the pumpkins over the year as they grew. I got to know each pumpkin, watching them as they changed from orange flowers to soft, small green handfuls to big, tough orange pumpkins. Best of all, we’d harvest them when they were ready in October. Pumpkins of all different shapes, sizes and varieties hid like bright treasure among those leaves. I always liked the weird ones the best – the ones that had grown into odd shapes. And I liked the ones that had been scratched by badgers. Badgers sometimes went looking for food in Granddad’s garden at night. They couldn’t break the thick skin of Granddad’s pumpkins, but you could see the scratches where they tried. As the pumpkins grew, the scratches would heal and make rough pumpkin scabs that looked like islands on a map.
This story isn’t about badgers though. That’s just a nice memory I thought I’d share. This story is about pumpkins, pixies, pies and dad jokes.
Because my granddad told dad jokes. All the time.
If I said, “I feel like fish and chips tonight,” he’d always say, “Well, you don’t look like fish and chips at all.”
If I was feeling sick and said, “I’m really poorly,” he’d say, “Oh, I always thought you were Ed.”
When he was reversing in the car, you knew he’d always say, “Ah, this takes me back.”
And he wouldn’t say ‘hello’ or ‘good morning’ like a normal person. He’d say…
“Why can’t dinosaurs clap their hands?”
And I would say, “Because they’re extinct.”
Anyway, one autumn day, Granddad and I were picking pumpkins when I spotted one I really liked. I’d watched this one grow through the year – it was my favourite. Huge, with a strange flat top, bulges all over the place, and lots of good badger scabs.
“Don’t pick that one,” said Granddad casually. “Pumpkin Pixie’s sleeping on it.”
I thought Granddad was being Granddad and joking. It’s just the sort of thing he’d say. So I picked it.
Granddad went completely white.
“Oh dear,” he whispered. “I really wish you hadn’t done that.”
We took the pumpkins inside – the kitchen counter was soon covered in pumpkins of all shapes and sizes.
We had fish ’n’ chips that evening and played Connect 4 for a while with hot chocolates. I read my comic in bed and fell asleep.
And then, in the middle of the night, we were woken by…
Thud, thud, thud, thuddathuddathudda! We looked outside to see hundreds of conkers flying through the air, smashing against the walls and windows. One just missed me, flew inside and broke a vase just before I closed the window.
“Looks like you’ve upset the Pumpkin Pixie, I’m afraid, Edward.”
So we put armour on to protect us from the conkers. By armour, I mean we all put on thick winter coats, put saucepans on our heads and swimming goggles on to protect our eyes. We grabbed tennis rackets to knock away the conkers too. And we bravely ventured outside into the conker attack.
We crept across the garden, conkers coming at us all the time, which we bravely batted away with tennis rackets. We could hear rustling and high-pitched Pixie-giggling in the bushes.
“What shall we do?” I whispered.
“Let’s sing him a lullaby,” said Nan. “That sometimes works.”
So there we were, in the middle of the night, standing in our pyjamas in the garden, singing “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”. We sang it again and again until, after about five times, the garden grew quiet. We crept back to bed.
“Seems to have worked,” said Granddad, a little doubtfully.
But two hours later, at three o’clock in the morning, the most enormous thunderstorm erupted directly over our house.
Thunder! Lightning! Rain pouring through the ceiling!
And the strangest thing was that the rest of the street was perfectly calm.
Granddad scratched his head.
I scratched my head.
Grandma said, “You did put the pumpkin back, didn’t you?”
…which was obviously the first thing you’d do.
We hadn’t.
Let’s be honest, Grandma was the smartest of the three of us by a mile.
So we got umbrellas and raincoats, went outside, battling the wind and rain, and put the pumpkin back where we’d found it.
The storm stopped.
We went inside and went to bed.
But just as we were turning out the lights…
…the storm started again, worse than ever. And this time we could hear Pixie giggling louder than ever!
“Oh, he’s really tricking us tonight,” said Granddad.
“He’s in a very silly mood,” said Grandma.
“If he’s in a silly mood… I bet he’d like some jokes.”
“Well, I can help with that,” said Granddad.
So the three of us marched into the garden and shouted dad jokes into the darkness.
“Isn’t it awful how you can’t get 12-inch rulers any longer!”
“What do you call a sleeping bull? A bulldozer!”
“Why did the scarecrow win an award? Because he was outstanding in his field!”
The bushes rustled. Something scuttled past the shed.
And gradually, the storm began to fade.
We thought we’d finally done it.
But then came another terrible noise.
SPLAT! SPLAT! SPLAT!
The Pumpkin Pixie was throwing our finished Jack-o’-lanterns at the house… and, what’s worse, at the neighbours’ houses. Lights in houses nearby were going on.
Grandma shook her head.
“That’s it,” she said. “We need to say sorry properly. He’s in a really bad mood.”
Nan went outside and, dodging flying pumpkins, called out:
“We’re so sorry, Pumpkin Pixie! We’ll make you the pie.”
Suddenly there were no pumpkins flying at us.
We went inside and Nan got out her biggest pie dish and some pastry.
We began by putting in things you’d expect, like onions, potatoes and gravy.
Then we filled it with dreams of autumn.
We put in golden leaves, conkers, chestnuts, cosy jumpers, the smell of bonfires, Halloween sweets, dreams of Jack-o’-lanterns and the sound of rain tapping on the windows.
We even put in the feeling of new cosy family TV series starting in the autumn. Back then it was The Paul Daniels Magic Show or The Two Ronnies. Nowadays it’s The Great British Bake Off or The Traitors.
We could put these magic things inside because my nan was a witch. Did I forget to mention that? A good witch, obviously.
Then we put the pastry on top. Half an hour on gas mark 6 and it was ready.
Granddad carried the pie into the garden and placed it on a little chair. Quite a few grumpy neighbours, who had been woken up, had come out to watch.
“Pumpkin Pixie,” called Grandma, “we’re sorry we took your pumpkin. We’ve made you something special. We hope you’ll accept it!”
And then we went to bed. And at last, slept until morning.
We rushed outside.
The pie had completely disappeared.
There wasn’t a crumb left.
But lying on the chair was a tiny golden autumn leaf. We could see tiny writing on it – far too small for us to read.
We took the leaf inside to the kitchen and fetched Granddad’s enormous magnifying glass to read it.
It said:
“Why did the pumpkin roll down the hill?
Because it couldn’t walk!”
Granddad laughed so much that he nearly fell off his chair.
And as I sat there laughing with him, I noticed something moving on the windowsill.
I turned my head.
And there he was. The Pumpkin Pixie.
He was about the size of a mouse, with a glowing orange body and beautiful, transparent butterfly wings.
He smiled at me and I knew the world was made of impossible magic forever.
Then he fluttered his wings and flew away into the autumn morning.
And I never saw him again.
