Pixies make it a day that Pete will never forget

This third and final story for Christmas features Dartmoor's favourite little people, the pixies or, as they are known at Christmas, elves. This one I call: THE LUCK OF A PIXIE

“This view was good enough for Spielberg...”, said Pete to his captive audience, as they sat on the downs overlooking Burrator Reservoir and Sheepstor, his home, eating their packed lunches taking a break during his latest guided walk.
Pete loved his job, showing off the best place on earth to all the visitors that flocked to Dartmoor every year, the place where he’d lived all his life. He had just turned 21 and was one of the youngest guides on the moor.
When Spielberg had filmed War Horse there, he was one of the extras and this had given him some inside knowledge to the film shoot as being so young and keen, the crew were always happy to show him how everything worked.
He was allowed to hang around the sets, even when he wasn’t actually in the scenes. He loved the way they transformed the ruin of Ditsworthy Warren House into a proper working farm, and he was present when they shot the scenes of the horse as it raced against a car across the downs where they now sat.
All this experience he brought to his spiel as he walked the customers over the moor, the part which had been his playground growing up. His mother had insisted on calling him Petey, as he always came home covered in muddy peat at the end of his day’s adventures.
Being the eldest of three siblings, he felt it was his job to help keep a roof over their heads as his father had been left paralysed after a nasty accident on the farm where they lived and worked.
A tractor had overturned on him, crushing his legs. The farm owner had done everything he could to help them, even converting their cottage to make it more wheelchair accessible, assuring them they had a home for life, even though his father was unable to perform his role on the farm anymore. Peter and his brother and sister did what they could to help out, alongside their mother, but they knew the compensation their father had received wouldn’t last forever, so they took every job opportunity they could get, foregoing any chance of further education they might have chosen instead.
As well as the farm work and the guiding jobs, Peter also helped out at the tourist information centre in Princetown where his knowledge and tales of the moor proved invaluable to the visitors which in turn gained him large audiences for the talks and walks that he laid on quite frequently.
But recent talk of the imminent closure of the Princetown site by the park authority troubled him greatly, as losing this source of income for the family would be a great blow. He didn’t have the time to travel any further afield for work, as this would compromise his chores on the farm.
Peter had never been one to worry about money before his father’s accident as he’d always been rather lucky growing up, but in a quirky kind of way. Give him a raffle ticket, and he always won something, scratch off a scratch card he never failed to win, but always small sums.
There was one occasion, when he was very young, whilst helping his father on a stall at the Tavistock market, that he’d found a gold watch lying on the floor by their stand. Asking around, no one claimed it, even leaving it with the police produced no owner, so after the appropriate length of time, it was presented back to Pete and his father went and pawned it for a pretty penny!
The locals said he had the luck of a pixie, even going as far as saying he must be a Changeling from pixie parents but his mother had always laughed this off, as she would never forget the pain of giving birth to him.
However, even she couldn’t help notice there was no family resemblance with Peter. She even had a vague recollection that the nurse who had put him into her arms for the first time had pointed ears poking through her long blonde hair with piercing blue eyes the rest of her features hidden by a surgical mask.
That was the only time she’d seen that particular nurse during her whole stay. She had put it all down to an hallucinatory effect the gas and air had on her during the difficult birth.
Talking of pixies, one of Peter’s favourite places to take visitors to was the Pixie Cave on Sheepstor. As soon as he was shown where it was by his father, he made a visit to it part of his daily adventure. He knew you had to leave an offering every time you went inside, so he always made sure he left behind a piece of cloth or thread for the inhabitants.
Maybe this was why he was so lucky? When he was old enough, his parents allowed him to spend nights on the moor and instead of using a tent he squeezed himself into the cave and slept there, always feeling safe and oddly at home.
In order to take full advantage of his lucky nature, as soon as he was of age he’d do the weekly National Lottery, using the app on his mobile phone. On many occasions, whilst inside the cave on the day after a draw, his phone would ping, informing him that he’d won something.
On this particular visit today, he wondered what the pixies had in store for him. He always made a point of being first inside and last out, so that he could help his guests manoeuvre through the tight entrance, stand up, and get accustomed to the darkness inside. This time was no different, helping the last visitor crawl out, he paused a moment to leave his own offering and just then he heard a scrabbling sound coming from amongst the rocks at the back of the cave.
Peering into the darkness, he could make out a tiny figure looking up at him with pointed ears, dressed in green, topped off with a pointed red hat.
The silence in the cave was broken by a ping from his mobile. “Check your phone, son!”, commanded the tiny creature, as it turned and disappeared back into its rocky lair where Peter couldn’t follow.
Instead he went outside, back into daylight, all the better for reading his phone, and when he did so he had to sit down, unable to believe his eyes, for flashing on the screen was the message, “Congratulations! You have won £12,000,000!”
Pete tried desperately to take this in, plus what the pixie had called out to him, as he had disappeared, “We always look after our own!”

MERRY CHRISTMAS!