The Fairy and the Pocket of Wishes
Finn discovers a fairy in his magical pocket and helps her rescue lost wishes trapped in the woods, learning kindness is the greatest magic of all.
- 6 min read
In a cottage at the edge of Whistlewick Woods, there lived a boy named Finn who collected ordinary things. He had a jar of smooth pebbles, a box of fallen leaves, and a drawer full of buttons that sparkled just so in the sunlight. But Finn’s favorite possession was his jacket—a green velvet jacket with the deepest, most mysterious pocket you could ever imagine.
One misty morning, while Finn was searching for acorns beneath the old oak tree, something peculiar happened. His pocket began to wiggle.
Finn reached inside and pulled out… a fairy!
She was no bigger than his thumb, with wings like stained glass windows and hair the color of honey caught in sunshine. She wore a dress made entirely of dandelion fluff, and she looked rather dizzy.
“Oh my, oh dear!” she squeaked, spinning in circles. “That was quite the tumble!”
“You were in my pocket?” Finn gasped.
“Was I?” The fairy looked around. “How wonderfully strange! I’m Mallow, by the way. I’m a Wishkeeper.” She said this very proudly, puffing out her tiny chest.
“What’s a Wishkeeper?” asked Finn.
Mallow’s shoulders drooped. “Well, I’m supposed to collect wishes that get lost. You see, when someone makes a wish—on a star, or a birthday candle, or the first snowflake—but the wish is too scared or shy to go where it’s meant to go, it falls to the ground. That’s where I come in!” She did a little twirl. “I gather them up and keep them safe until they’re brave enough to come true.”
“That sounds important!” said Finn.
“It is!” Mallow brightened, then immediately slumped again. “Except… I’ve lost my Wish Bag. All the wishes I’ve been collecting are gone! Without them, those wishes will fade away like morning mist, and the people who made them will feel a little sadness in their hearts without knowing why.”
Finn knew exactly what that felt like—that little tug of something missing. “I’ll help you find them!” he declared.
Mallow’s wings shimmered with hope. “Would you? Oh, but wishes are tricky! They hide in the strangest places.”
“Well,” said Finn, patting his mysterious pocket, “strange is my specialty.”
And so their adventure began.
Mallow explained that wishes leave a glittering trail that only Wishkeepers—and apparently, children who truly believe—can see. Finn squinted, tilted his head, and there it was! A trail of sparkles, like invisible fairy lights suddenly switched on, leading deep into Whistlewick Woods.
They followed the glimmer past the chattering creek and through the fern forest, until they reached a bramble bush as big as a house.
“The trail goes in!” said Finn.
“Bramble bushes are terribly prickly,” Mallow worried, perched on Finn’s shoulder.
But Finn had an idea. He reached into his mysterious pocket and pulled out… a pair of gardening gloves! (He had no memory of putting them there, but the pocket worked in mysterious ways.) With the gloves protecting his hands, Finn carefully parted the brambles.
Inside was a hollow space, and there, tangled in the thorns, were dozens of glowing, bubble-like wishes! Each one swirled with colors and whispered soft hopes: “I wish my grandmother’s cough would go away…” “I wish I could be brave enough to talk to the new student…” “I wish my lost cat would come home…”
“Oh, the poor dears!” cried Mallow. “They got stuck!”
Very gently, Finn and Mallow freed each wish, letting them float into the open air where they bobbed happily, no longer trapped.
“We need something to carry them in,” said Mallow.
Finn reached into his pocket again and pulled out… a butterfly net! (Again, mysterious.) They scooped up the wishes, which felt like holding warm, happy thoughts.
“But this isn’t all of them,” Mallow said, counting. “I had forty-seven wishes in my bag. This is only twenty-three.”
The glittering trail continued on, leading them to Moonfall Pond, where the water was so still it looked like a mirror. The trail sparkled right to the water’s edge, then down.
“Oh no,” whispered Mallow. “Water makes wishes heavy. They sink!”
Finn peered into the pond. Far below, he could see more glowing wishes settled on the bottom, dimming like dying stars.
“I could swim down,” Finn offered, “but I can’t hold my breath long enough.”
Mallow tapped her chin. Then her eyes went wide. “Your pocket! What else is in there?”
Finn reached in deep, deeper, impossibly deep—his whole arm disappeared—and pulled out… a wooden box with a glass bottom! It was a glass-bottom viewing box, perfect for seeing underwater.
But that wasn’t all. Tied to the box was a fishing rod with a net attached.
Working together, with Finn operating the rod and Mallow directing from above (“Left! No, your other left!”), they scooped up the sunken wishes one by one. Each wish they rescued bobbed back up to the surface, glowing brighter as it dried.
“Forty-six, forty-seven!” Mallow counted joyfully. “That’s all of them!”
But now they had a new problem: how to carry forty-seven wishes safely?
“I wish I had my Wish Bag back,” Mallow sighed.
The moment she said it, Finn felt his pocket grow warm. He reached inside and pulled out… a beautiful bag woven from moonbeams and spider silk, stitched with silver thread!
“MY WISH BAG!” Mallow squealed. “It was in your pocket all along! Oh Finn, your pocket isn’t ordinary at all—it’s a Pocket of Wishes!”
“A Pocket of Wishes?” Finn repeated, amazed.
“The rarest kind of magic!” Mallow explained, carefully transferring all the rescued wishes into her bag. “It gives you exactly what you need when you truly wish to help others. Not everyone has one, you know. Only the kindest hearts.”
Finn felt warm all over, like drinking hot chocolate on a cold day.
With all the wishes safely gathered, Mallow flew up to Finn’s eye level. “Now I must take these wishes where they need to go, so they can come true. Thank you, Finn. You saved forty-seven people’s hopes today.”
“Will I see you again?” Finn asked.
Mallow grinned mischievously. “A Pocket of Wishes and a Wishkeeper are never far apart for long. When lost wishes need rescuing, I have a feeling I’ll know where to tumble!” She patted his jacket affectionately.
With a sprinkle of dandelion dust and a giggle like wind chimes, Mallow disappeared in a swirl of golden light, carrying the wishes up into the sky where they scattered like stars, each one heading home.
Finn walked back through Whistlewick Woods, his hand in his mysterious pocket—his Pocket of Wishes—feeling the wonderful weight of knowing he had magic inside him all along. Not the magic of spells or wands, but the magic of kindness and helping others.
That night, as Finn hung his green velvet jacket on his bedpost, he could have sworn he heard tiny snoring coming from the pocket. He peeked inside and smiled. There, curled up on a bed of rose petals he definitely hadn’t put there, was Mallow, fast asleep.
And that’s exactly where Wishkeepers belonged—close to pockets full of wishes and hearts full of hope.
The End
Sweet dreams, little one. May your own pockets—and heart—always be full of wishes ready to come true.