"THERE were once four children who had the good fortune to find in the sandpit a strange creature. Its eyes were on long horns like snail's eyes, and it could move them in and out like telescopes. It had ears like a bat's ears, and its tubby body was shaped like a spider's and covered with thick soft fur -- and it had hands and feet like a monkey's. It was old, old, old, and its birthday was almost at the very beginning of everything. But it still kept its fairylikeness, and part of this fairylikeness was its power to give people whatever they wished for. "You know fairies have always been able to do this. The four children found their wishes come true; but, somehow, they never could think of just the right things to wish for, and their wishes sometimes turned out very oddly indeed. . . ."