Fairy Rescue

by Gwyneth Rees

  ‘Queen Flora is ever so worried about you,’ Maddie told her. She explained how she had met the fairy queen the previous night when she had tried to go to the party. ‘Tell me what happened, Poppy! And where are Daisy and Primrose?’

  Poppy sat up and began to relate the events of the previous day. ‘It was horrible,’ she said. ‘We didn’t know what had happened at first. We flew up to have a rest on our favourite branch and as soon as our feet touched it we realized it was sticky, so sticky we couldn’t lift our feet off it again. Then we all reached down to try and wipe the sticky stuff off our feet – and our hands got stuck too. It was just awful and we guessed it was bird-lime, so we called out for help. None of us had any fairy dust left because we’d used it all up making your arrows. Otherwise we could have used that to unstick ourselves.’

  ‘Queen Flora said it was bird-lime!’ Maddie exclaimed.

  ‘Yes, well, before any other fairy could hear us, an old man came along. He could obviously see us and at first we thought he was going to help us. But he snapped the branch right off and shoved it – and us – into a bag on his back! After that we couldn’t see anything so we couldn’t even tell where he was taking us. Finally we got to wherever it was – his house, I think – and he opened the bag and took us out. He put us all in a big white sink to wash off the bird-lime from our feet and hands, and he seemed to know all about fairies because he checked all our pockets to make sure we weren’t carrying any fairy dust or anything else that might help us escape. But as he was washing my feet he realized I only had one wing. That seemed to make him cross, and instead of putting me in a cage along with Daisy and Primrose he took me outside and put me in that bag with all the garden rubbish.’

  ‘Poppy, that’s terrible!’ Maddie exclaimed. She didn’t know what was more terrible – the fact that Poppy and the others had been kidnapped in the first place, or the fact that Poppy had been thrown away on account of only having one wing.

  ‘I guess for once in my life being a freak has worked in my favour,’ Poppy said jokily.

  ‘Don’t say that,’ Maddie snapped. ‘You’re not a freak and you shouldn’t say that, even as a joke.’

  ‘Well, what else do you call a fairy who’s only got one wing?’ Poppy said. ‘I’m not exactly normal, am I?’

  ‘Just because you’ve got something wrong with your body doesn’t make you a freak,’ Maddie said firmly.

  Poppy sighed. ‘If you say so.’ She was looking around Maddie’s bedroom. ‘Do you have this room all to yourself then? In fairyland there are so many of us that we all have to share.’

  ‘Yes – but it’s only mine while I’m staying with Grandma and Grandpa. My real bedroom is at home.’

  ‘Do you have any brothers or sisters?’

  ‘No.’ Maddie paused. ‘I did have a twin sister, but she died soon after we were born.’

  ‘That’s a shame. I expect you’d have liked a sister, wouldn’t you?’

  Maddie nodded. ‘I often wonder what she’d have been like. I reckon we’d have done everything together.’

  ‘Queen Flora says that human children are very special,’ Poppy said. ‘She says there’s so much potential in every human child that it’s no wonder that whenever one dies . . .’ She broke off suddenly, as if she thought she might have said too much, and quickly changed the subject. ‘What’s that thing you carry in your pocket? It’s not very comfortable to sit on.’

  ‘Oh, that’s just my inhaler. It’s a sort of spray with medicine inside that I have to use sometimes because of my asthma.’

  ‘What’s asthma?’ Poppy asked curiously.

  ‘It’s a sort of illness that makes you get all wheezy and breathless. Most of the time I’m perfectly all right though. But listen, Poppy, we have to try and find Daisy and Primrose before anything bad happens to them.’

  ‘I know, but how are we going to find them? That old man’s house could be anywhere.’

  ‘Well, it’s got to be one of the houses that Jack collects garden rubbish from, which means it’s got to be somewhere near here. Can you remember anything about him – or about his house?’

  ‘I didn’t see his house except the inside of that big white sink. And I didn’t notice much about him, except that he had a very unfriendly face.’

  ‘Well, was he tall or short? Was he thin or fat? What colour hair did he have? What was he wearing?’ Maddie prompted.

  Poppy frowned as if she was trying hard to remember. ‘The trouble is, all humans look tall if you’re a fairy, and I couldn’t see his hair because he was wearing a hat. He wasn’t really thin or fat – somewhere in between. His clothes were very ordinary, as far as I remember.’

  ‘Did he speak to you at all?’

  ‘Only once. He was very rude,’ Poppy remembered now. ‘When he was dumping me in the rubbish bag he said that he only collected perfect specimens.’

  Maddie stared at her. ‘He said that? That he collected things?’

  Poppy nodded. ‘Perfect specimens – that’s what he said.’

  ‘Was he carrying a butterfly net?’

  ‘I didn’t see one.’

  ‘Well, did you see any butterflies inside his house? Dead ones, I mean – in glass cases?’

  Poppy shook her head. ‘I told you. All I saw was the inside of the sink.’

  ‘Listen, Poppy, I think I know who this old man might be. I think it might be someone called Horace Hatter, who went to school with my grandfather.’ Maddie told Poppy how they had seen Mr Hatter in the woods, and how her grandfather had told her that Horace was obsessed with collecting things. ‘He used to collect butterflies – but what if he’s moved on to fairies?’

  Poppy looked appalled. ‘Do you really think someone would collect us?’

  ‘I bet Horace would! But don’t worry. If it is him, we can go to his house straight away and rescue Primrose and Daisy.’

  ‘Do you know where he lives then?’

  ‘No – but my grandpa does. Come on! Let’s go and ask him!’

  As she rushed to the door she realized that Poppy wasn’t following. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I forgot you can’t fly. You can sit inside my pocket again if you like.’

  ‘I’d rather sit on your shoulder,’ Poppy replied. ‘Then I can see what’s happening. None of your family believes in fairies, do they?’

  ‘No,’ Maddie said.

  ‘Good. That means they won’t be able to see me.’

  Maddie lifted Poppy up on to her right shoulder. ‘I’m just a bit worried you might fall off,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, but I won’t! See, I can hold on to your hair really tightly.’

  Maddie wasn’t sure she liked the sound of that but since Poppy was already clutching her hair and she couldn’t even feel it, she guessed it was OK.

  ‘Fairies don’t weigh anything you see,’ Poppy explained to her. ‘I could swing from your hair or climb up it as if I was climbing up a rope, and you wouldn’t feel a thing! Shall I show you?’

  ‘No, thanks,’ Maddie said quickly, turning to look in the mirror to check what Poppy was doing. Poppy was standing on one leg, pointing the other one outwards like a ballet dancer and steadying herself by holding on to Maddie’s ear lobe. ‘Stop mucking about, Poppy!’ she said, but she couldn’t help giggling because it did look pretty funny.

  They went downstairs and found Maddie’s grandfather in the back garden examining his roses for greenfly. Milo was in the garden too and Poppy asked Maddie to put her down on the ground so she could go and speak to him.

  ‘I’ll have to spray these roses again – the little pests are all over them,’ Grandpa grunted to Maddie as she joined him.

  ‘Tell him I’ll have a word with those greenfly if he wants and he won’t need to spray them,’ Poppy called out.

  But somehow Maddie didn’t think her grandfather would believe her if she told him that.

  ‘Grandpa,’ she began slowly, ‘you know how you told me Mr Hatter has a really big butterfly collection?’

&nb
sp; ‘Yes, sweetheart. A lot of people used to collect butterflies in the old days, I’m afraid.’

  ‘It’s just that I’d like to see it.’

  Grandpa looked at her in surprise. ‘I thought you didn’t approve of butterflies being captured?’

  ‘Well . . .’ Maddie quickly tried to think up something to say that wasn’t an absolute lie. ‘I certainly don’t approve of him capturing any more butterflies, but . . . but . . . if they’re already dead . . .’

  ‘I didn’t know you were so interested in butterflies,’ Grandpa said, staring at her.

  ‘Well, I wasn’t until . . . until . . .’ She looked over at Poppy for help, but the fairy wasn’t looking in her direction. Instead Poppy was balanced on Milo’s head, holding up one of the dog’s floppy ears while she whispered into it.

  Suddenly Maddie’s eyes fell on Grandpa’s library book that was lying face down on the garden table. ‘. . . Until I got a book out of the library that’s all about butterflies and it’s really interesting,’ she blurted.

  ‘Really? Wouldn’t you rather go looking for live ones in the woods then?’

  ‘Yes, but . . . but I’d just really like to see if Mr Hatter’s got the same ones that are in my book,’ Maddie said.

  ‘Hmm . . . I’d like to see this book,’ Grandpa said, going back to his roses.

  ‘Well . . .’ Maddie was stuck now.

  Fortunately Poppy had started to pay attention to their conversation. ‘Tell him it’s upstairs and you’ll show it to him later,’ she hissed as Milo gave her a ride back across the garden.

  So Maddie said that – although she didn’t have a clue how she was actually going to find a book on butterflies at such short notice. Luckily Grandpa was too preoccupied with his greenfly to question her any further.

  ‘Poppy, where am I going to get a book on butterflies?’ Maddie burst out as soon as they were back in her room again.

  ‘I don’t know, but I think I’d better go and let Queen Flora know what’s happened.’

  ‘When I met Queen Flora in the woods last night she said she was going to a meeting of the Fairy High Council in Scotland,’ Maddie told her. ‘She said she was going to seal off the entrance to fairyland until she got back.’

  ‘Oh,’ Poppy exclaimed, sounding disappointed. ‘That means I can’t get back into fairyland yet either. If she’s gone to Scotland she must have flown there at sunrise this morning and she won’t be back until sunset tonight. Flower fairies have to travel at sunset and sunrise if they want to get anywhere instantly. We’re not like book fairies who can travel wherever they want to whenever they want to, through their entry-books.’

  ‘Book fairies?’ Maddie queried in astonishment.

  ‘Yes. Haven’t you heard of them?’

  Maddie shook her head.

  ‘Oh, there are many more types of fairy than just us,’ Poppy told her. ‘The most common kinds are flower fairies, book fairies, tooth fairies and dream fairies.’

  ‘I know about flower fairies and tooth fairies,’ Maddie said, ‘but I’ve never heard of book fairies or dream fairies before.’

  ‘You have to sleep in a magic bed to meet a dream fairy,’ Poppy explained, ‘and book fairies live in Book-fairy Land, but they visit here quite a lot through their entry-books.’

  ‘What’s an entry-book?’ Maddie asked, completely fascinated now.

  ‘It’s a magic book that you find in a library. It acts as a passageway between here and Book-fairy Land. You usually find them in the reference section or on a top shelf where humans can’t reach them very easily.’

  Maddie was about to ask more questions when Poppy’s face suddenly lit up. ‘I’ve got an idea,’ she said. ‘It’s Thursday today, isn’t it? Well, on Thursday afternoons the mobile library always comes to this village. I know because there’s an entry-book inside it and sometimes my friend Opal comes through it to meet me. Opal’s a book fairy. I met her when she flew off to explore the village one Thursday and the mobile library left before she got back. She had to wait a whole week until she could go home again, but luckily she guessed there would be flower fairies in the woods so she came and stayed with us while she was waiting.’

  ‘Wow!’ Maddie could hardly believe all the new things she was learning about fairies. ‘Do you think Opal will be there today?’

  ‘I don’t know, but let’s go there now. There’s bound to be a book on butterflies that you can take to show your grandfather.’

  ‘But I’m not allowed to go into the village on my own,’ Maddie told her.

  ‘Get your mother to come with us then.’

  ‘We’ve only just come back from the village. I don’t think she’ll want to go again right now.’

  ‘Well, ask your grandmother or your grandfather,’ Poppy said impatiently.

  ‘I can’t get out a book on butterflies when Grandpa’s there, can I?’ Maddie sighed. ‘I could ask Grandma, I suppose.’

  When Maddie went downstairs she found Grandma doing some baking and Mum sitting on a stool in the kitchen chatting to her. ‘I need to go into the village again,’ she told them. ‘I want to get a book from the mobile library.’

  ‘I didn’t know you knew about our mobile library, Maddie,’ Grandma said.

  ‘Oh, I’ve just seen it here before on a Thursday,’ Maddie mumbled. ‘Could I borrow your library card, Grandma?’

  ‘Of course. It’s in the bureau if you want to use it.’

  ‘You brought lots of books with you from home, Maddie,’ Mum said. ‘Why do you need to get more from the library?’

  ‘I just want to,’ Maddie muttered.

  ‘Well, I really don’t feel like walking into the village again this afternoon, and Grandma and Grandpa are both busy,’ Mum said firmly.

  Just then Poppy jumped down from Maddie’s shoulder on to the kitchen table. The next moment Grandma’s eggs, which had been sitting in their cardboard carton waiting to be used in the cake mix, went tumbling down on to the stone kitchen floor.

  ‘Oh, goodness!’ Grandma cried out. The lid of the carton had been open and all of the eggs had fallen out and smashed. Now there was yolk and egg white and bits of broken shell all over the floor.

  ‘How on earth did that happen?’ Mum exclaimed.

  Maddie was staring at Poppy, who was rubbing her hands together in satisfaction as she stood beside Grandma’s mixing bowl.

  ‘I’ll have to go to the village now to get some more,’ Grandma said.

  ‘Maddie . . .’ Mum began suspiciously, but Grandma interrupted her.

  ‘You can’t blame her. She wasn’t standing anywhere near those eggs. I don’t know how it happened. I must have pushed something against them without realizing, I suppose.’

  ‘Well, let me go and get the eggs for you.’

  ‘No, no. You stay here and clean this lot up. I’ve been in all morning. A bit of fresh air will do me good. Come on, Maddie. You can come to the village with me and we can stop at the library if you like.’

  So Maddie and her grandmother set off for the village with Poppy riding on Maddie’s shoulder, complaining the whole way about what a slow method of travelling this was compared to flying along with the other fairies.

  ‘Your grandfather had better hurry up and take you to see this Horace Hatter after this,’ Poppy said impatiently. ‘And Milo had better remember what to do when we get there.’

  ‘Milo’s got to do something?’

  ‘Yes – I told him all about it while we were in the garden. As soon as we get to Horace’s house you must let him off his lead, OK?’

  ‘OK,’ Maddie said. ‘But I hope you haven’t asked him to do anything silly.’

  They soon arrived at the village and Grandma showed Maddie where the mobile library was. It was quite a small van, which was sitting in front of the post office with its back doors open. There was nobody inside it because the librarian was in the post office talking to the lady behind the counter.

  ‘Go in and choose what book you want,’ G
randma told her. ‘I’ll go and get my eggs and come back for you.’

  As Maddie stepped inside the van, she said, ‘OK, Poppy, let’s look under B for Butterflies.’

  Together they searched the shelves under B and then under N for Nature. But there were no books on butterflies. Just as Maddie was getting desperate Poppy shrieked excitedly, ‘Look – the entry-book is glowing! I can never remember which one it is until it starts doing that!’

  She was pointing at a large book on the top shelf, which was sparkling as they watched it. Maddie could hardly believe her eyes as it slid out from its shelf all by itself and hovered in the air for a few moments. Then the book opened and the page it had opened at began to glow gold. A beam of light suddenly shot out from the book and something white came whizzing towards them in the beam, getting bigger and bigger as it got closer, until suddenly a fairy was there in front of them.

  ‘Opal!’ Poppy shrieked, leaping off Maddie’s shoulder.

  ‘Poppy!’ Opal shrieked back, flying forward to grab Poppy by both arms before she could fall to the ground.

  Opal was a very pretty fairy with her hair in long golden bunches. Her dress was a whitish colour with bluish-green flecks in it, which seemed to sparkle as she moved about. Poppy quickly introduced her to Maddie and told her why they were there. But she had hardly finished speaking when Opal burst out, ‘One of our fairies has gone missing too. Her name’s Emerald and I was just coming to look for her. She went missing from the mobile library last week when it came to this village.’

  ‘I hope she hasn’t been kidnapped along with Primrose and Daisy,’ Poppy said.

  ‘Why would anyone want to kidnap her?’ Opal exclaimed.

  ‘There’s a man who lives here who likes to collect things,’ Maddie told her, ‘and I think he might have started collecting fairies. If he has, then I guess he’s probably interested in collecting different types of fairies.’