- Text Size +

Hey guys this is my second attempt at a story. It’s set in Yorkshire, where I'm from so if you don't the odd reference I'm sorry; just ask me for an explanation.
Anyway this is the first part. The story itself is going to be a lot shorter then Alice (Not literally as she did get rather tiny) but in terms of length.

Let me know what you think of it.

Ta,

The Gardener

It was Katie’s mum who had originally got her the summer job.

For as long as Katie could remember she had been interested in gardening, an interest her parents had encouraged. So when a gardening job at the local stately home had appeared in the village newsletter her mother wasted no time in volunteering her. Katie was a little taken aback at first, but her mother, curator of the village hall, head of the local W.I, organiser of many a village fete and general pillar of village life, was the sort of women you had to expect to give your opinion to you and then act upon it accordingly.

Katie, was however, secretly pleased that her mother had taken the initiative. She’d just returned from university and the long summer seemed to stretch in front of her like a hot sticky dirge of boredom and stuffy village life. Returning to her little village of High Danby from her student life in Manchester had been a bit of a comedown and she looked forward to having something to occupy herself with until September.

So it was, with some optimism, that she trudged up the long drive of Hyton Hall to start her first day as gardener. The building had been a permanent fixture in her childhood. A little bit of a tomboy she had always played with the local boys in its grounds and its slightly wild gardens held a special significance to her.

Hyton Hall was large and Edwardian, the culmination of generations of work by the Hyton family to finally make it into ‘civilised society’. Throughout Katie’s childhood Old Mrs Hyton had been its sole custodian, a bit senile in her old age she had been unable to support the estate and control its finances, resulting in its sale upon her death the previous year. The Hall’s new owners, a Mr and Mrs Croft, had come from London with, in her mother’s opinion at least, ‘far too much money then was decent.’ It had been Mrs Croft’s idea to ‘civilise’ the garden, very in keeping with the Hyton family attitude, Katie thought, and so it was her job to achieve this.

Katie carefully walked around the side of the house retracing her childhood steps to the door to the old kitchen. She checked her appearance to make sure she was presentable. She was wearing her usual gardening gear, a pair of tight fitting dungarees that were worn at the knees; these covered the majority of slight 5’4 frame, doing their best to accentuate her firm C-cup breast and her small pert bottom. She had tried to contain her long ginger hair with the use of a bandana but it still managed, somehow, to spill over in endless waves that reached into her cleavage. Untangling her hair from her pockets, buttons, cleavage and anywhere else it had managed to infiltrate she knocked, rather gingerly, on the old wooden kitchen door.

In keeping with her tomboyish childhood she had managed, in the short walk to the Hall, to accumulate mud on her shoes and dungarees and was trying to remove it when the door began to creek open. Realising only two late that her efforts had led to the mud smudging over her arms and cheeks  the door opened and she was surprised to see a boy about her age with messy black hair and a cheeky grin on his face. Katie wasn’t sure why but she immediately went red and shuffled nervously under his gaze, still trying, in vain, to remove the mud that now adorned her cheeks hands and cute freckly nose.

‘Er...’ She stammered, her face now almost the same colour as her hair. ‘I’m Katie, the new gardener.’

The boy’s grin broadened and he stuck out his hand ‘I’m Sam, nice to meet you.’

Katie stuck out her hand rather timidly, which was very unusual for her, and then blushed an even deeper red as she realised she had spread mud all over his fingers.

‘Er...sorry’ was what she meant to say but she never got further than the S.

Sam, still grinning, cut in with ‘Never mind it’ll wash, do you want me to show you where the all the gardening stuff is?’

‘Yes please’ she said meekly, infuriated that her blushing still hadn’t receded; it was as if her body was committing some form of betrayal.

She trudged up a long garden path behind Sam, finding her eyes accidently straying to his buttocks as he walked to a collection of greenhouses in a small copse of trees. 

‘Everything’s in here’ he said pointing towards the old glass buildings. ‘Mum wants you to start with these flower beds’ he said indicating the ones around the greenhouses.

They had defiantly seen better days, in fact it was almost impossible to determine where the wildflowers ended and the beds actually began.

‘Er...thanks’ she said, her new unfamiliar nervousness still getting the better of her.

Sam turned and began to walk across the lawn back to the house ‘If you need anything else just let me know, I’ll be in most the day, there ‘s a fat chance of me going out anywhere interesting around here isn’t there.’

Katie wanted to agree and talk at length about the boredoms of living in High Danby but instead her body mutinied and she simply smiled, becoming even more conscious of the mud smeared on her shoes, legs, arm, face and now, somehow, her neck.

* * *

For the rest of the day Katie devoted herself to her work. She cleared the area around the greenhouses, expertly planting the slightly nauseating plants that Mrs Croft had chosen for this section of the garden. The work was easy really. It involved nothing more then removing the wilder flowers in the bed and replacing them with the pre-potted selection Mrs Croft had provided.

As the day wore on Katie began to notice slight irregularities about the garden. They itched away at the back of her mind. The First was that at no point during her work did she have to remove any weeds from what should have been an overgrown jungle. The second was the wildflowers themselves, they seemed to Katie’s rather rational brain, to be a little too...neat. It was as if they had been grown by somebody who understood nature beyond anything Katie ever could. Not organised chaos but arranged randomness were the only words Katie could find to explain it. The third thing was that she kept hearing a very dull buzzing noise in her ears. It seemed to be coming from all around her but once she concentrated on it it would stop as abruptly as it had started.

 Finally the last thing that had been plaguing Katie wasn’t to do this the garden at all. It was more to do with her reaction to Sam. She considered herself above silly crushes now that she had turned 20 but she had somehow just shut down when he had talked to her. Even when she was trying to work her thoughts had still managed to slip to Sam’s tight jeans and the slightly devious twinkle he had in his deep blue eyes.

Before Katie knew it the light was beginning to fade and she could see, what must have been Mrs Croft, beckoning her into the kitchen. When she finally downed tools and reached the Kitchen door Mrs Croft just looked her up and down rather quizzically.

‘Thank you very much Katie.’ She said slightly patronisingly ‘Did you find everything ok for you today?’

‘Everything was ok thank you.’ Said Katie’s lips while her brain was thinking ‘I’m 20 not a bloody child you posh old bat.’

‘Well shall I see you the same time tomorrow?’ Mrs Croft enquired in the same tone.

‘Oh yes, bright and early’ Katie said her lips still fortunately in charge of her brain.

As she turned to walk up the long drive towards the road Mrs Croft shouted after her ‘If you see my Sam in the village try and keep him out of trouble would you, he seems to gravitate towards the wrong people, if you know what I mean.’

Katie didn’t know what to say to this and so for the second time in a day she simply smiled at a member of the Croft family and then continued her journey home.

* * *

The next few days for Katie would follow a similar pattern. She arrived at the Hall early and, after making a slight fool of herself in front of Sam, began work on different sections of the garden. Katie’s rational mind seemed to be picking up the same inconsistencies. Everywhere the garden seemed to contain a certain, arranged neatness and sheer absence of weeds. It was as if somebody had secretly been maintaining the garden for years. Katie had thought back to her childhood playing with the local boys in these very gardens. It seemed that even when Old Mrs Hyton had had the garden it was still easily accessible. This was bizarre due to her infirmness and lack of resources to maintain the place. It wasn’t however until her fifth day of working there that Katie finally gained answers to all of her nagging little doubts.

The day had started like all the others. She had got to the Hall for nine, managed to trip over a rake in front of Sam as he bought her a cup of tea, and settled into Mrscrofifying a section of the garden. She was working on a few borders near to the greenhouses, where she had started gardening just a few days before, when she noticed something rather odd about her first days work. Upon closer inspection the pansies and roses that she had planted were almost half covered by the collection of wild flowers that had seemingly sprouted out of nowhere.  She inspected the flowers carefully for a few minute and then, confused, went back to her work.

Then she heard it, that same dull buzzing coming from above her head. Quietly and carefully, without trying to think to hard about the noise, she quickly grasped above her head and was astonished to find her hand clamp hold of something small and wriggly. Dreading to think about what she had captured Katie slowly lowered her hand in front of her face.  Letting out a little gasp she was astonished to find a tiny women, about 6 inches high, with her arms folded over her considerable bosom, her lips puckered into the sexiest of indignant pouts, scowling at her from underneath her short mop of tousled blond hair. On the back of the little women where what appeared to be a pair of wings, they were beating so fast that Katie was having trouble seeing them. Startled Katie let go almost instantly and watched as the little women hovered in front of her eye line still with a deliciously grumpy expression on her impish face.

Katie then watched astonished as the little fairy poked her aggressively on the nose and said ‘What do you think you’re doing to my garden!’

Katie started to stammer ‘I was...er...fixing it up...for...er...Mrs Croft.’ She finally got out.

‘Fixing! More like ruining is what you’re doing! It took me weeks to get the garden growing happily. You’re ruining everything!’ the fairy shouted confrontationally. 

Katie looked around at her newly planted, Mrs Croft approved, borders. They looked garish and tacky next to the wild neatness of the rest of the garden. Suddenly she felt very apologetic.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t know you looked after the garden, I did think it was a bit too tidy, but, well I didn’t know fairies existed. I’m sorry.’ She added again.

‘Yes well’ the fairy added, her fire slightly doused by Katie’s rapid apology. 

There was a silence both parties didn’t know what to say to each other, it was broken only by a slight buzzing as the fairy hung effortlessly in the air in front of Katie’s face.

Unsure of what to do next Katie’s brain automatically fell back on her manners ‘My names Katie what’s yours?’ she said extending a small muddy hand towards the fairy.

‘Claricia’ she said shaking the tip of Katie’s index finger, still with a trace of unpleasantness just below the surface.

‘Friends...?’ Katie asked hopefully. 

‘For now yes’ the fairy said ‘whether we stay that way remains to be seen’

Claricia landed gently on a nearby rock and sat toying with a leaf as she surveyed the giant ginger interferer. Now that she was more stationary Katie was able to get a better look at her. After only a few seconds of study it was obvious to Katie that Claricia was the most feminine thing she had ever seen. Below her untidy mop of blond hair the fairy had a full figure comparable only to a 50’s pin up. Her big firm breasts were squeezed snugly into what appeared to be a dress weaved entirely from different wild grasses. This dress only just covered her buttocks leaving rather little to Katie’s imagination. These large round buttocks poked ever so slightly out from underneath the dresses frill and were glorified buy a pair of long toned legs, culminating in a small pair of shoes that seemed to be weaved from the same grassy material.

All thought of confrontation gone, Katie’s inquisitive mind yearned to know more about this magical little creature.

Her first question seemed to be the most obvious, to Katie at least ‘Er...how come you speak English?’

Claricia looked casually from her rock, still surveying the muddy giant leant above her ‘My family have live around here for generations; we’ve been speaking it since the days of Danelaw.’

‘Wow...have you always lived in High Danby?’

‘Me yes, but my family, not always, 200 years ago we used to live further inland until people drove us out of the lands bordering the Aire and the Calder’ the fairy said moving slightly giving Katie a rather sexy view of her shifting cleavage.

Katie couldn’t help it, as the little fairy talked about her heritage; she started to stare at her with a slight longing. It was nearly noon now and the sun light was playing off her hair in a way that Katie was finding most enticing. Realising that she was perving on another women, and a tiny one at that, her logical mind kicked in and she began to push those thoughts back into her subconscious.

Katie sat listening to the fairy for a few more minutes still feeling a slight air of hostility to her presence. However once the conversation turned to gardening the two began to really hit it off. Gardening, or ‘tending’ as Claricia called it, wasn’t just her job it was, as far as Katie could see, the very reason that she was in the first place. The fairy held no real distinction between the garden and herself. The wellbeing of both seemed to be completely linked. The enthusiasm with which Claricia talked about plants was infectious. Katie happily told her how she hated what Mrs Croft wanted her to do to the garden and watched wide eyed as Claricia turned and by sprinkling a fine cloud of gold mist over one of Katie’s flowerbeds transformed it back into a bed of wildflowers.

‘It took me ages to get that right.’ She said proudly as she flew back to the rock. ‘They always used to only come out in black and white, I’m not sure why, but my mother was never happy about it. She said it drew unwanted attention.’

Katie didn’t know what to say, she was still gobsmacked at witnessing what was, for want of a better word, magic.

After Katie had regained the power of speak her and Claricia began to discuss her training. It seemed that she had only just been given the garden to watch over since her grandmother had become too old to mange it. Claricia really wanted to impress her family for rewarding her with this garden but as it turned out Katie’s unwanted interference had come just before a planned inspection of her recent efforts.

Katie watched still spellbound as Claricia walked amongst the giant flowers whist she was talking, turning all of Katie’s effort back into their original state. As she watched the voluptuous little fairy walk between the grasses she began to wonder what it would be like to walk amongst the flowers, their huge storks rising above her as she would tend to them. She watched as Claricia would absentmindedly touch the stems of nearby flowers rejuvenating them back to life.

She lent in to get a closer look at her new tiny friend when she said ‘’I bet it must be amazing to walk around a giant garden like that, I’d love to try it.’

Without a moments hesitation Claricia turned to look at the giant redhead. Then smiling impishly she let out a cloud of the same golden mist she had been using to heal the flowers. The second the mist touched her body Katie felt a sudden rush coupled with a falling sensation. Closing her eyes in shock she felt herself land on something soft. Cautiously and carefully she began to open them.

What she discovered was beyond her wildest dreams but also shocked her to the core. She was surrounded by a sea of green. Plants rose up around her like brightly coloured monoliths, grasses, once no more than a few inches high, rose up past her breasts. She was shrunk. Now no more then six inches tall she felt more like a little doll then a person. She looked down at her miniature dungarees, her now tiny gardening boots had sunk ankle deep into the mud. She breathed deeply and tried not to panic. The rational side of her brain managed to take over; if Claricia had shrunk her then she could un-shrink too. Unfortunately as she turned round, brushing aside a daisy as tall as her hip, she noticed her old spade , now the size of a small tower block sticking into the dirt. There was nothing else for it, the rational side of her brain gave up and, rather embarrassingly, she let out a little scream and then fainted. She then fell silently, landing in a cute little heap of ginger hair, mud and denim in a nearby patch of clover.   

 

You must login (register) to review.