We were getting extremely bored listening to the lesson and waiting patiently for Granddad to finish reciting all these really strange plant and animal names, when suddenly I looked around me and asked in alarm:
“Where’s Dailan Kifki?”
I couldn’t see him anywhere, and he’s definitely too big to go unnoticed or to hide underneath a head of lettuce.
I’d been sitting on the grass like everyone else, yawning this wide over Granddad’s lesson, and I started to slide away sideways, just very slowly… slowly… so I could escape and go looking for Dailan Kifki before anything serious happened.
Fortunately Granddad was having so much fun busily explaining a snapdragon that he didn’t notice me getting away from his lesson. I crawled slowly over to the Fireman, who immediately put himself at my service without even asking what the matter was.
I pulled him away from the crowd till we were out of Granddad’s line of sight. We hid behind a cabbage and I asked him in a whisper:
“Where’s Dailan Kifki?”
“I on’t-day oh-nay…” the Fireman whispered back.
“I’m absolutely sure the little pest has escaped again. We’ve got to find him!”
Then the Fireman explained, very seriously:
“To find a lonely elephant who’s missing in the wood, you need a lot of patience and your senses must be good.”
“Yes, that’s true,” I said, “but you also have to know the terrain very well, and if you ask me we’re going to get ourselves lost in this blessed Forest of Gulubú, so we’d do well to find Mister Dwarf Carozo to lead our expedition.”
But the really big problem was that Mister Carozo was sitting in the very front row of Granddad’s lesson, and to reach him I’d have to go past a whole crowd of people who were sitting all quiet and serious just like at school.
“So what do we do?” I asked the Fireman.
And the Fireman thought for quite some time, frowning, with his finger to his forehead, then replied:
“To remove a dwarf discreetly from your Granddad’s class, just look: You take a fishing rod and neatly tie a fishing line and hook.”
I thought this was an excellent idea: we’d fish Mister Carozo out without Granddad noticing, because if we were to wait for the break-time bell, we would be toast. Granddad’s lessons never last less than five hours.
Since there were no fishing rods around, the Fireman used his axe that shone as bright as the moon to cut off a strong, flexible branch. Since we didn’t have any fishing line we used the laces from his boots. And since we didn’t have a hook, we used a safety pin that was attached to my pinafore.
When you’re in a forest you just have to figure out a way, don’t you?
Between us we held the branch tight, and aimed very carefully with a very steady hand, to be absolutely, completely sure we were fishing out the dwarf and not some other person. (Just imagine if we’d fished out my Auntie Clodomira!) And then… Zzzzzzooooom! without anybody noticing, Mister Dwarf Carozo was flying towards us through the air on the pin that was tied to the shoelaces which were tied to the branch, and landed safe and sound right beside us.
A terrible shouting broke out behind the cabbage. Mister Dwarf was furious and said some really awful words like “By sampiolín!”, “Patatip!” and “Oh, tambapatán!”.
The Fireman gagged him with his handkerchief, so that Granddad wouldn’t realise we’d fished out one of his students without permission, and like that, all muffled up, he picked him up and between us we carried him farther away, this time behind a pumpkin.
Mister Carozo was still protesting, kicking his feet and waving his arms.
“Do excuse us, Mister Dwarf,” I said. “I’m ever so sorry we took you out of the lesson, where I can see you were having such an interesting time…”
“Interesting my foot!” said the dwarf. “I was more bored than a fly!”
“So why are you grumbling so much?” I asked.
“I’m not grumbling because you fished me out,” he explained. “I’m grumbling because I was having such a beautiful trip through the air on that fishing line and you brought me down much too soon!”
“Well, if that’s the problem,” I said kindly, “we can fish you up again so you can keep having fun.”
No sooner said than done. We hooked the safety pin onto his T-shirt, and the pin was tied to the shoelace that was tied to the branch, and we twirled him through the air back and forth and back and forth for quite some time.
And Mister Carozo swung from side to side utterly delighted, laughing himself silly because the air was tickling him.
Until the Fireman’s arms got tired and he put him back down on the pumpkin.
“More, more!” cried Mister Carozo. But I knelt down and said to him very seriously:
“No, sir. Later we can swing you around as much as you like, but for now you must understand that we only fished you out of class and brought you here so you can help us with a serious, dangerous expedition, and not for these high jinks.”
“What’s happened?” he asked, in great alarm.
“What’s happened is that we’ve lost Dailan Kifki, and as you are the only person who knows all the nooks and crannies of this forest, you must be our guide to find him.”
“And what do you want to find him for?” he asked, combing his beard with his little finger. “He can stay here and live in the forest.”
“No, sir,” I said emphatically. “Dailan Kifki is mine, and I have to take him back home. And imagine, if he stayed here and one day you decided to flatten down the forest, Dailan Kifki would surely be squashed to death by a tree.”
And do you know what the dwarf replied?
“When Granddad’s lesson is over, we’ll all go to my house for some hot chocolate in pretty little porcelain cups. Then we’ll see.”
“But it’s already getting late,” I said, my bottom lip starting to quiver, “and any manner of disaster could happen to Dailan Kifki…”
“Supisichi,” he said, finally.
And the three of us made our way into the wood, hand in hand in hand: the Fireman, Mister Carozo, and me.