The Warlock is Missing by Christopher Stasheff

seek!"
    The children didn't need persuading.
    They wound through the woods for half an hour, with Puck dodging around the roots of shrubs and through gaps in the underbrush, and Fess following him, to beat down a path. Behind him came the unicorn, with her nostrils flaring, and white showing all around her eyes.
    Finally, the children could hear the cries too. They were very high, as Fess had said, and sounded very distressed. As they came closer, the children could understand the words: "A rescue! A rescue!"
    "Help us! Aid, good folk!"
    "There is, at least, no present danger," Cordelia said. "There's unhappiness in those words, but no great fear."
    "Then let us find them ere it comes," Magnus said.
    "'Tis here!" Puck cried.
    The children stopped, startled, for the voices had still been so faint that they had thought them some distance away. But Puck dove into the underbrush almost under Fess's nose and started pulling back branches. The unicorn let out a musical neigh and pushed forward, pawing at the bushes and fallen leaves. Between them, they uncovered a small iron cage, with two foot-high people in it. They were clothed in green, the one decorated with flowers, the other with red, yellow, and orange leaves. They looked up with children's faces, and cried with delight when they saw the unicorn.
    " 'Tis one of the Silver People!"
    "Greeting, Velvet One! What good chance brings thee?"
    The unicorn whickered softly, butting her nose against the cage.
    "She wants them out." Cordelia knelt by the cage, and the two fairies fell silent, staring up at her, wide-eyed. "Oh, fear me not! I wish thee no hurt!"
    "'Tis but a lass," the flowered one said to her sister, in a high, clear voice.
    "Aye! A bairn would not wish us ill!" The leafy one turned back to Cordelia. "I am Fall, and here is my sister, Summer."
    Summer dropped a curtsy. She was chubby and ruby-cheeked, with a smile that seemed as though it could never fade.
    "I am Cordelia." The girl bobbed her head in lieu of a curtsy, since she was already kneeling. "What is this horrid contrivance that houses thee?"
    "Why, 'tis a rabbit's trap." Puck sauntered up. "How now, sprites! What coneys art thou, to be caught in so rude a snare?"
    "As much as thou art a lob, to stand there and jibe without loosing us," Fall retorted. She was slender and supple, with short-cropped brown hair.
    "A hare was caught within," Summer explained. "We could hear its frantic thumpings, and we took sticks to pry the door up and free it."
    "Most kindly done." Puck grinned. "And did it lock thee in, for thanks?"
    "Nearly," Fall confessed. "We held up the door, and the hopper thumped on out—but as it fled, one great hind foot caught me in the middle, and sent me sprawling. My sister could not keep the door up alone."
    "It crashed down on me, most shrewdly," Summer sighed, "and we were trapped within."
    "But what manner of trap is this, that can hold a fairy?" Cordelia asked.
    "One of Cold Iron," Puck snorted. "What fools were they, to risk such capture!"
    "And what a knob art thou, to stand and mock us!" Fall jammed her tiny fists on her hips, glaring at him.
    'Truly, Puck!" Cordelia reproached him. "'Tis most unkind of thee! Hast thou no care for others' feelings?"
    "Why, none! Or canst thou truly believe that they'd be thereby injured?"
    "Nay, certes they would! Unkind words too oft give hurt!"
    "Nay, not to mem. Say, ask!"
    Cordelia turned a questioning glance on the two fairies.
    A slow, grudging grin grew on Fall's face. "I cannot deny it. His teasing doth not trouble me."
    "Nor I," her sister smiled, "so long as we may chide him in return."
    "As bad as children," Cordelia proclaimed with every ounce of her ten-year-old dignity.
    "And as careless of time as a grown-up." Geoffrey frowned, glancing about him. "Whosoe'er set this trap, will shortly come to search it. Ought we not to set them free?"
    "Aye, at once!" Cordelia fumbled with the trap. "Yet how doth it open?"
    "Ye've but to lift," Geoffrey