There were once four children who spent their summer holidays in a white house,happily situated between a sandpit and a chalkpit. One day they had the goodfortune to find in the sandpit a strange creature. Its eyes were on long hornslike snail’s eyes, and it could move them in and out like telescopes. Ithad ears like a bat’s ears, and its tubby body was shaped like aspider’s and covered with thick soft fur—and it had hands and feetlike a monkey’s. It told the children—whose names were Cyril,Robert, Anthea, and Jane—that it was a Psammead or sand-fairy. (Psammeadis pronounced Sammy-ad.) It was old, old, old, and its birthday was almost atthe very beginning of everything. And it had been buried in the sand forthousands of years. But it still kept its fairylikeness, and part of thisfairylikeness was its power to give people whatever they wished for. You knowfairies have always been able to do this. Cyril, Robert, Anthea, and Jane nowfound their wishes come true; but, somehow, they never could think of just theright things to wish for, and their wishes sometimes turned out very oddlyindeed. In the end their unwise wishings landed them in what Robert called“a very tight place indeed”, and the Psammead consented to helpthem out of it in return for their promise never never to ask it to grant themany more wishes, and never to tell anyone about it, because it did not want tobe bothered to give wishes to anyone ever any more. At the moment of partingJane said politely—
“I wish we were going to see you again some day.”
And the Psammead, touched by this friendly thought, granted the wish. The bookabout all this is called Five Children and It, and it ends up in a mosttiresome way by saying—
“The children did see the Psammead again, but it was not in thesandpit; it was—but I must say no more—”
The reason that nothing more could be said was that I had not then been able tofind out exactly when and where the children met the Psammead again. Of courseI knew they would meet it, because it was a beast of