Dora and The Flying Bed

It was a wonderful Saturday morning; the sun was beaming brightly; the sky was a pretty pale blue and all the kids were laughing and running and playing outside but not Dora; Dora was stuck in bed with a terrible, nasty, awful illness; one that made her shiver all over and cough and sneeze and made her forehead feel even hotter than the sun outside.

“You’re much too ill to go out”, her mother had insisted, laying a cool hand upon Dora’s forehead and frowning, “Better you stay in bed, young lady, and get some rest”.

But it was deadly boring being stuck in bed, especially with the sound of all the kids playing outside her bedroom window so happily.

“Oh how I wish”, said Dora, sneezing, ”How I wish that I could go outside”.

Just then, however, Dora heard a noise from under bed; what sounded like a man’s voice,
“Oh no!”, it said, “Don’t do that whatever you do”.

But how could a man be under her bed?

She listened again, this time pressing her right ear close to her bed. Yes, there was definitely something moving and making a sort of grumbling sound.

Leaning over the edge of her bed; her bright red hair hanging down and brushing her bedroom carpet, she peered warily into the darkness beneath it and then, to her surprise, she saw a tiny
creature appear.

At first she thought it may have been a mouse; it was certainly the size of a mouse but it was walking upright on two legs and then, as it came closer to her face, she saw that it had a nose and eyes and a mouth just like a mans and a long, bushy grey beard aswell.

“Wow!”, gasped Dora, her eyes brightening amid the darkness beneath her bed, “What are you?”.

“What am I ?”, said the creature grumpily, “I am a bed troll, that’s what I am. A troll that lives under beds and, as a rule, I never show myself to little girls but you have just done a most unfortunate thing..oh dear..a most unfortunate thing indeed!”.

“I have?”, asked Dora, scratching her upside down head, “What have I done?”.

The creature prodded Dora angrily in the nose with a tiny, stubby forefinger, “You, young lady, have made a wish and sneezed at the same time and one should never do that; it brings terrible bad luck”.

Fascinated by this tiny creature, as small as the smallest of all her dolls, but rather dizzy from hanging upside down, Dora reached out a hand and grabbed hold of it, much to its surprise and unhappiness then, lifting it out from under her bed and into the light, she straightened herself up,sitting the bed troll gently upon the duvet in front of her.

“Arrghh!”, said the bed troll, shielding its eyes from the light, obviously accustomed more to the gloom underneath peoples beds.

“Oh, I’m sorry”, said Dora, hurriedly placing a pillow behind the troll so that it provided him shade from the sun.

“Another thing one should never do is grab an angry bed troll”, yelled the little man looking up at her with glaring eyes, “We may look small but believe you me we can be fierce. Why, if you weren’t a little girl then I…”.

But Dora wasn’t paying attention, her mind was too full of questions; suddenly an entirely new
and remarkable world had opened itself up to her and she wanted to know all about it.

“Do all trolls live under beds?”, she asked, examining the troll more clearly now that it was out in the light and noting that it looked rather like the primitive cavemen she had seen in books with a tunic made of light brown fur, “And what do they eat?” .

The tiny creature seemed stunned by Dora’s lack of knowledge about trolls, “Of course not”, said the troll, shaking his head, “Only bed trolls live under beds. Bridge trolls live under bridges and cave trolls live in caves; though, generally, we trolls prefer a home that is dark and secluded and, to answer your second question…”.

Suddenly, Dora saw the troll walk across her duvet, that now looked to her rather like a large snowy landscape, and over to the wall against which the left side of her bed was pressed before reaching out; picking one of the flowers off of her flower covered wall paper and eating it.

“Wow! You eat wallpaper?”, asked Dora.

“I eat flowers on wallpaper”, the Troll corrected her, “Or fruit, depending on your taste in interior decorating. Sometimes there are birds and other creatures in the wallpaper pattern and then I go hunting with my bow and arrow”.

Dora reached out and tried to pick one of the flowers from the pattern on her wall, the way the troll had done, but she couldn’t, it was just a flat picture.

However then something even stranger, and even a little frightening, happened. Suddenly, Doras entire bed began to shake.

“Whats that?!”, said Dora, looking round about her in a panic to see if there was an earthquake.

The troll, who had been knocked off of his feet by the shaking of the bed, picked himself back up and dusting himself off, replied, “That’ll be your wish, no doubt, coming true”.

“My wish?”, asked Dora, remembering what the troll had said earlier about wishing and sneezing
and then, before either of them could shout help, the bed suddenly rose up into the air, almost
a metre off of the bedroom floor and Dora screamed.

“What’s happening now?”, she asked the troll as she held on tightly to a bed post for fear of falling
off the bed.

“Whatever it is you wished for, I presume”, said the troll, sighing and shaking its head.

And then, all of a sudden, Dora noticed something very odd about her bedroom ceiling; now it was not just sky blue but actually looked like the sky and then a small, white cloud drifted past her right ear and a seagull squawked close to her left and Dora realized that they were no longer in her bedroom anymore but flying…through the sky.

“Well, I wished that I could go outside and you can’t get any more outside than this”, said Dora, peering over the edge of her bed and then wishing she hadn’t.

They must have been miles off of the ground and, far below, Dora saw hundreds of tiny buildings and roads and, moving within the roads, lots of tiny cars and trucks and busses like little beetles scurrying about.

“I wonder where we are?”, said Dora to the troll, not able to recognize any of the buildings, “It must be a long way away from my town”.

But, just then, Dora felt the bed start to descend and descend at such a rate that Dora felt sure the bed was going to crash and; frightened, Dora grabbed hold of the troll, holding him close like a teddy bear before darting under her duvet for cover.

To Dora’s relief, however, the bed didn’t crash; in fact, it came to land as gently as a feather floating to the ground but something equally terrifying and surprising did happen.

“What is this!”, said a man’s voice with a thick foreign accent, “Furniture falling from the sky. Is this
how the world ends?”.

Dora peered out from below her duvet at the person who had just spoken; a small, fat man in shiny, golden robes with a tall crown on his head whom she guessed must be some sort of king.

And then, suddenly, she felt the duvet pulled away from her roughly and, looking round, she saw that the bed had brought them to some strange and very exotic looking palace, probably in some far away country.

“Your majesty”, said another man who was tall and thin in long, flowing black robes and a black, silk turban, pointing towards her, “There is a child in the bed and some kind of…um…ogre”.

“Ogre, my foot!”, protested the troll in her arms, angrily, “I’m a troll is what I am”.

“No matter what you are”, replied the King, “Anyone who can make a bed fly must have great magical powers”.

Dora shook her head frantically, “Oh no, your majesty”, she said, “I’m just an ordinary little girl; that’s all, with a very bad cold” and then, as if to prove the point, Dora sneezed.

“Ahh”, said the King, smiling, “That is even more interesting. A very odd coincidence you might say,
for my daughter is also ill in bed and has been for many months now. Perhaps, the Gods have sent you to cure her”.

But the man in the black turban didn’t seem happy with this idea, “Your majesty”, he protested, scowling, “I said that I would cure your daughter. Would you trust these strangers from who knows where, over your court physician?”.

“No doubt they will not charge me the same fee that you have asked for”, retorted the king angrily, “Half my kingdom and my daughters hand in marriage”.

Then, taking Dora gently by the hand, the King led her and the troll to a room in his palace where they saw a young, beautiful woman asleep on a golden bed.

“My daughter, Princess Asia”, he said, sighing wearily, “Many months ago, she fell into a deep, mysterious slumber; a mark, the shape of a red rose thorn appearing upon her hand and she has slept ever since. No one has been able to wake her or remove the mark. Only my new court Physician claims he knows the secret”.

Dora examined the mark upon the palm of the sleeping princess; it was almost like a tattoo
or a birthmark on her skin; something very strange and magical and Dora didn’t have a clue
how to remove it and was just about to suggest soap and water when she remembered how
the troll had picked the flowers from her wall.

“Can you pull out that thorn, the way you take pictures out of wallpaper?”, she asked the troll
lifting him up and placing him on the bed near to the princesses hand.

The troll shook its head, “I’m not sure”, it said, “There’s a great deal of difference between skin and wallpaper”.

But the troll was willing to try and, reaching deep into the flat surface of the princesses skin, he tried to grip hold of the edge of the thorn shaped mark but there was something tugging against him; some power and, looking up at the Kings black robed physician, Dora could see that he had his eyes tightly closed as if meditating on something; trying to grip hold of something with only his will.

Then, to the kings astonishment, he saw the mark move away from the palm of the princesses hand, travelling over her wrist and up her arm.

“The mark is moving?!”, said the King in disbelief.

“Just like the painted birds and creatures, this one needs to be hunted”, replied the Troll, laughing to himself then, taking a little bow and arrow that were hanging from his back, the troll took aim and fired into the heart of the thorn shaped mark and, suddenly, it stopped moving and, climbing up over the princesses arm to where the tiny arrow was buried, the Troll pulled upon the arrows shaft and out came it and the painted thorn.

And, just then, the Princess Asia opened her eyes.

“May the Gods be praised”, said the King, happily, when he saw his daughter regain consciousness, “You have awoken her”.

Only the King’s physician didn’t seem too happy about the Princesses miraculous recovery; infact he turned and ran out of the princesses bedroom as fast as he could because, you see, it was he who had put the magical thorn in the princesses hand.

The King said that he would give Dora and her Troll any reward they asked for and the Troll thought he might like living under a royal bed but Dora just wanted to go home to her house and her mother and so she got back into her bed hoping that it might fly her back home and, sure enough, when she thought of home and wished to return there, the bed started to rise into the air once again and, before long, she was back, safe and sound, within her bedroom.

“How are you feeling now?”, said Dora’s mother re-entering her bedroom to check on her and feeling her forehead, “Do you still really want to go out and play?”.

“Oh no”, replied Dora, yawning, “I’m really feeling quite sleepy, now. I think I’ve had enough adventure already”.