When Martynka first met Little Annita, she was only four years old. She was living in Los Angeles with her mother and her mother’s friend. Martynka had just moved into the apartment when she heard a strange sound coming from downstairs. Curious, she went down to find a little girl playing with a tunka. She thought she had found a lost urchin and gave her some bread to keep her quiet so they could return her to her parents. However, the child refused the bread and instead asked for a drink of water. After that, the child asked to be carried up to her mother. To Martynka’s surprise, the child was just under four feet in height; she had mistaken the child for an adult man at first. She named the child Little Annita due to the fact that she had thought that Annita was a man at first glance.
When Martynka took Little Annita home, she told her friends about her new friend. They were amused by this little girl’s story of how she ended up as an orphan in an unfamiliar place. Since it was summer vacation, most of their classes started later than usual. As a result, they had extra time to explore their neighborhood and find Annita an empty apartment on the top floor of an old building. Over the course of several months, they furnished this apartment and fed Annita through a window so she could cook for herself. Eventually, they helped Annita learn how to speak again so she could tell them where she had been and what happened there.
One day when their landlord wasn’t home, they peeked into one of his closets and found an old toy-size airplane. Curious as to where he kept it, they climbed up to Annita’s floor and discovered an open door that led to an abandoned rooftop patio-style area. The wind had torn off part of the roof but there was still enough space for a toy-size airplane to fit inside. This is where Little Annita discovered another world through Martynka’s portal; it was called Earthplace because it resembled our world but has some magical properties of its own. Through this portal, Little Annita learned about electricity and computers and learned how to create lightshows with fire-starting devices and smoke bombs. She also learned how to make paper airplanes and other fun toys that she shared with her friends in Earthplace.
Although Little Annita loved visiting Earthplace, her friends learned that she missed this magical place more than she wanted anyone to know. Since Martynka lived nearby, they asked if she would help them take their friend back there one day. To their surprise, Annita agreed without hesitation; she opened a portal herself one sunny afternoon and led her friends through it onto Martynka’s porchstone cold feet! The portal closed behind them but they didn’t worry as they knew they were safe with Martynka-the most powerful magician in all of Fairyland! They quickly explained what had happened and invited their new friend inside so they could warm up and talk over hot chocolate while waiting for the portal to reopen again.
When the portal reopened, everyone ran inside so quickly that they nearly knocked over Little Annita’s table full of food! They caught their breath long enough to explain what happened after that-how Little Annita had wanted to return home but how their friend Martynka lived far away from Los Angeles in Fairyland itself. This made sense since Fairyland is much larger than Earthplace; it has many different lands like mountains and forests as well as its famous lakesand oceansas well as its numerous riversand brooksand creeksthat run through its lands like veins through a living being.