A recipe for cherry cake 2/4

When Mary arrived at the clearing in the woods, she asked to see Abigail. She was a bit worried about the method Lieutenant Moonshine would use to get her there and was very relieved when she saw Frosty and his cloud approaching. She'd not really enjoyed being moved around on a puff of wind. All right for Jennifer Jane perhaps, but a bit undignified for an adult.

Mary waved as Frosty landed and then ran forward and began to scramble up onto the cloud. She knew that snowmen didn't like being kept waiting in the warmth at ground level.

"Don't get on there," shouted Frosty, looking round as she climbed on.

It was too late. Mary felt something break under her foot and she fell to the ground. She wasn't hurt but she could see that Frosty was very upset.

"Now you've done it, you've trodden on the elevator control and broken it and now I won't be able to take off."

His voice started to rise in panic.

"I'll be stuck here for ages getting hotter and hotter until I melt. Oh what am I going to do?"

He looked as if he was going to start crying at any minute. Mary thought quickly. Obviously snowmen had to be kept cold or they'd melt. The answer had to be to take him somewhere cold as quickly as possible. Her freezer at home was far too small for him to get into. Frosty was taller and much fatter than she was.

"I know what we can do," she said suddenly, "would you come with me in my car so that I can take you somewhere really cold?"

"Anything you like," said Frosty tearfully, "only be quick, I'm starting to get warm already."

Mary and Frosty ran back to the house. Thank goodness she'd insisted on having a car of her own to use when Dave was away on business. She had to push the passenger seat right back to get Frosty in, but it wasn't too long before she was driving as fast as she could towards the village. She was very lucky and was able to find a parking space only one shop away from the butcher.

"Come on," she said and pulled Frosty out of the car and into the butcher's shop.

"Where's the freezer?" she shouted at the amazed butcher as she pushed past the queue of people waiting to be served.

The butcher pointed towards a door at the back of the shop as everyone stared in surprise at the sight of a snowman running in to the big freezer while Mary held the door open. She shut the door with a sigh of relief.

"It's a man in fancy dress seeing how long he can stay in a freezer. He's being sponsored for a charity," she said thinking as quickly as possible to try and explain her strange behaviour.

"Thanks for your help and don't worry, he won't touch any of the meat."

The butcher and his customers were still shaking their heads and murmuring in disbelief as Mary got back in her car and drove back home. She went straight to the clearing intending to wish for someone to come and do something about the broken cloud. To her surprise there were two fairies already looking at it. One of them was Lieutenant Moonshine.

"Whatever's happened here," she asked, "we got worried when Frosty didn't come back and he hadn't been to the Witches' Home, so we came over to see what's going on."

Mary explained what had happened.

"Good thinking," said Lieutenant Moonshine, "if you'd not been able to get him nice and cold quickly he'd have melted and we'd have lost him for good. Snowmen are very few and far between you know."

Mary was quite relieved that she seemed to have done something right, even if it had been her fault in the first place. Then she stared up at the sky in amazement. A most strange looking flying object was approaching.

"It's the repair man from the Witches' Home on his flying carpet," said Moonshine.

"I hope it's that nice apprentice Robert," said the other fairy.

"Now then Polly," said Lieutenant Moonshine sternly, "behave yourself."

The carpet glided into the clearing and landed beside them. Robert seemed to Mary to be very young. He looked just like an ordinary lad wearing a boiler suit, not at all like an apprentice wizard.

"I thought you'd be riding on a broomstick as you've come from the Witches' Home," said Mary.

"Not practical," said Robert, "how do expect me to carry all these tools on a broomstick?"

"He has to use ever such a lot of complicated equipment," said Polly admiringly.

There were certainly a lot of tools. A large box full of spanners, oil cans, tow ropes, a big battery, and a set of jump leads. There were some things that she couldn’t even recognise.

Mary thought he was probably carrying as many tools as Dave kept in the garage for his car, if not more. She looked back at Robert who was climbing all over the cloud and making notes in a little book.

"Oh dear oh dear. You fairies will keep on up-dating these old models. Look at this streamlined canopy, encourages them to go too fast and overload the equipment. It's a wonder they last as long as they do. Hardly worth the effort of repairing actually, still I'll have to give it a go I suppose. It's a tow job I'm afraid, you won't get it back for a couple of days at least."

"I'm sure you can mend anything," said Polly admiringly, "I'll look forward to seeing you again when you bring it back to the Wish Warehouse. I'll be able to give you a nice cup of tea."

"Oh do be quiet Polly," said Moonshine, "the boy's got quite enough to worry about without you bothering him. Now then Robert, Mary was wanting to go to the Witches' Home, so as you're going back there would you mind giving her a lift?"

"O.K. hop on," said Robert who had just finished attaching a tow rope to the cloud.

Mary got on the carpet and sat down. At least she could see where she was putting her feet and wouldn't break anything.
Polly and Robert waved shyly to each other as the carpet took off with the cloud in tow.

The flight took quite a long time because the carpet couldn't tow the cloud very quickly but at last they arrived on the Witches' Home lawn. Robert flew slowly over the ground to the far end of the building and then came to a halt. Abigail ran up as Mary got off the carpet.

"I thought I recognised you. What's happened? That looks like Frosty's cloud".