“What’ve we got?” Clank asked.
“House … House … Get off,” Bobble groaned, his knees beginning to buckle under Clank’s weight.
“Oh, sorry,” Clank said.
“I can’t feel my legs,” Bobble wailed.
But Vidia’s legs wanted to dance, because she knew they had done it. Against all odds, they had found their way back to the human house—and to Tinker Bell.
Inside her room, Lizzy lay on her bed with her head buried under a pillow. Tink fluttered beside her. “I’m so sorry, Lizzy,” she jingled.
Tinker Bell couldn’t tell if Lizzy understood or not, but at least she began to speak. “I’m so glad you’re here. You’re my best friend.”
That made Tinker Bell feel worse. Lizzy’s father should be her best friend, not a visiting fairy. Lizzy pulled her head out from under the pillow and opened the fairy field journal. “You want to hear a secret?”
Tinker Bell leaned closer, indicating that she did.
“It’s something I’ve never told anyone before.”
Tinker Bell flew near Lizzy’s lips so she could hear her whisper.
“I wish I were a fairy,” Lizzy confided. “Just like you. Then I could help the flowers bloom, and talk to the animals, and fly around with the other fairies all the time. That would be fun.”
Lizzy’s secret gave Tinker Bell an idea. She grabbed Lizzy’s finger and led her to the middle of the room.
“Where are we going?” Lizzy asked.
Tinker Bell pantomimed for Lizzy to open her arms and close her eyes. As soon as Lizzy’s lashes fluttered down, Tinker Bell flew above her head and shook a big handful of pixie dust all over her.
Tinker Bell laughed as she watched the pixie dust take effect. Lizzy’s pigtails floated upward first. Then Lizzy herself. Her eyes flew open and she let out a shriek as she floated higher, grabbing wildly for the bedpost. She clutched it with both hands.
Lizzy grinned from ear to ear. Wheeee! She opened her arms like Tink and took an exploratory flight across the room.
Lizzy did fine—at first. But she soon lost control and flipped over several times before crashing into a bookshelf. “Whoaaa! Ouch!”
For the next attempt, Tinker Bell gave Lizzy a little tug. Lizzy went bouncing from one wall to the next, with a short sprint across the ceiling. “Oh, my! I’m flying.” Lizzy giggled gleefully. “Look at me! I’m a fairy!”
The rescue party had finally arrived.
Once they had sneaked into the kitchen, Vidia filled them in on the layout of the house. “Tinker Bell is upstairs,” she told them. “The little girl has her in a cage.”
“In a cage!” Rosetta cried.
“There’s also a large human man in the house who doesn’t like creatures with wings. He pins them up in a display case.”
“Great,” Fawn said dryly. “Anything else?”
Vidia tried for an airy tone. “Oh, yes. The cat.”
“The cat!” Iridessa yelped. “What cat?”
Before Vidia could answer, she saw Clank and Bobble pointing nervously toward the doorway and backing away.
“That cat!” the two of them wailed together.
Mr. Twitches came stalking in, huge, hairy, wet, and mad. A flash of lightning behind him made him look even more evil than usual.
“Fawn?” Bobble prompted.
“You’re an animal fairy,” Rosetta reminded her.
Fawn shook her head. “I can reason with bunnies and squirrels, but not Mr. Soggy-Bottom.”
Mr. Twitches bared his teeth and prepared to pounce.
“Run!” Fawn yelled.
Mr. Twitches leapt, and the fairies ran toward a nearby broomstick. They raced up the broomstick and jumped from the top of the broom to the bottom of a coat hanging on a nearby peg. They quickly climbed up the coat and hopped to the safety of a high shelf full of dishes—all except Clank!
Heavy Clank panted and gasped as he struggled to haul his bulk up the coat.
“Clank!” Silvermist warned as Mr. Twitches circled underneath the coat with his eyes on the vulnerable tinker.
Bobble leaned down and stuck his hand out for Clank to grab.
Too late!
Mr. Twitches sprang, flinging himself at the coat. His claws sank into the cloth. The cat’s weight began to pull him downward.
Clank was launched into the air and landed inside a teacup on a shelf. His bag of pixie dust broke, and sparkling dust fell everywhere. “I’m okay,” he assured them.
Vidia pointed to the stairway in the hall outside the kitchen. “We still need to get to that stairway,” she said.
They would have to cross the kitchen. Mr. Twitches paced back and forth on the floor, looking up at them and plotting his next move.
“If we could just build a bridge or something,” Silvermist said.
“That’s it!” Bobble said. “A bridge!” Then he paused, thinking hard. “But a bridge made out of … what?”
“Uh, guys!” Clank said in a worried voice.
Vidia and the others were still pondering their tactics.
“Guys,” Clank repeated.
Vidia glanced up and gasped. All of the cups, plates, and silverware in the kitchen, which had been sprinkled with Clank’s pixie dust, were now hovering slightly above the shelves. Vidia’s eyes widened. “Clank! You’re a genius!”
Clank blinked, wondering what he could possibly have done to win Vidia’s approval. “Huh?” Then he saw what she had in mind. “Oh,” he began. A floating plate smacked him in the head. “It was nothing,” he groaned.
“All right!” Vidia said enthusiastically. “Let’s do this.”
The fairies made a floating bridge out of plates and saucers. They began crossing the room. But then Mr. Twitches took his own flying leap and landed on a plate in the middle of the bridge, sending cups and saucers spinning in every direction.
The fairies hung on for dear life, clinging to the cups and saucers as they spun around the kitchen like an amusement park ride.
Vidia was thrown off her plate but managed to grab on to a floating fork. The fork spun across the kitchen, carried Vidia into the hall, and came to a stop against a light fixture near the stairs.
Fawn, still hanging on to her own plate, flew past a plant on the windowsill. “Rosetta!” she called out to the garden fairy. “Is this what I think it is?”
Rosetta looked over and began to beam. “Darling, that’s exactly what you think it is. Catnip!” She shouted to Vidia, still watching from the hallway. “You get to Tink and we’ll take care of the cat.”
“Got it!” Vidia shouted back. She pushed off from the wall, riding her floating fork, and surfed to the bottom of the stairs just as Dr. Griffiths came out of his office.
Vidia veered to miss him and dropped into the shadows.
Dr. Griffiths began to climb the stairs. As soon as his back was safely to her, Vidia began climbing them herself … one step at a time.
Upstairs, Tinker Bell was still giving Lizzy a flying lesson. There was a knock on the door, and they both froze.
“Lizzy!” Lizzy struggled to land. “Coming, Father.”
“Lizzy!” he repeated.
Lizzy held on to the furniture to pull herself down and hurried to open the door. “Why, hello, Father. May I help you?” Her voice sounded too innocent, the voice of a child who was hiding something.
“What’s going on in here?” Dr. Griffiths asked.
“Nothing,” Lizzy answered in the same too-innocent tone.
Dr. Griffiths walked into the room. “Nothing? It sounds like a herd of elephants have been marching up here.”
Tinker Bell darted into the fairy house, where she could hide and watch.
Dr. Griffiths looked around the room, his eyes taking in the piles of fallen books, the tumbled boxes on the floor, and the crooked lampshades. “Look at this room! It looks like a cyclone hit it.”
“It’s not that bad,” Lizzy argued.
“Not that bad? Your books
are all over the floor. Your toys are everywhere. You tore your curtains.” He pointed upward. “How did you get footprints on the ceiling?”
Lizzy looked up, and so did Tink. Sure enough, there they were. Footprints on the ceiling. Lizzy couldn’t help grinning.
Big mistake.
Dr. Griffiths glowered. “This is simply too much. A temper tantrum of this magnitude is unacceptable.”
“But I wasn’t having a tantrum,” Lizzy protested.
“Then how did this happen? The truth this time.”
“Well, I … I …” Lizzy swallowed a big gulp of air. “I was flying!” she blurted out.
“You were what?”
“Flying. My fairy showed me how.”
“Really? You have a real fairy living in your room?”
“Yes. And I can prove it. Just look at the research we did.” Lizzy grabbed the fairy field journal and thrust it into his hands.
Dr. Griffiths flipped through it with poorly disguised contempt. “Oh, Elizabeth! This is what you’ve been doing? Field journals are supposed to be filled with facts. Not fairy tales.”
“These are facts!” Lizzy argued.
Dr. Griffiths angrily shut the journal. “I don’t understand this foolishness, Lizzy. You have such talent. Why would you waste it this way?”
He marched over to the wall and began tearing down Lizzy’s fairy art gallery. He crumpled one picture after the other.
“Father, wait!”
“I know this is difficult for you to understand. But this is all make-believe.”
“No!” Lizzy cried. “They’re real.”
“Elizabeth, this discussion is over.” He picked up the fairy field journal and dropped it into the trash.
Tink saw Lizzy’s sad face turn to despair. “But, Father …” Lizzy’s voice broke with a sob.
That did it. Lizzy needed to stand up to this big human bully of a father. Safe or not, it was time to help her out.
Tinker Bell zoomed out of the fairy house and hovered right in front of Dr. Griffiths’s nose. She glowered and shook her fist. She didn’t care that he couldn’t understand what she was saying—Tinker Bell wasn’t about to let anything stop her!
Dr. Griffiths froze. He stumbled backward and fell onto Lizzy’s bed. “It … it … can’t be!” he whispered.
He stared, as if in shock. Tinker Bell hoped he was suitably intimidated and impressed. She did a couple of figure eights so he could really see her in action. After making a neat landing on the table, she struck a “ta-da” pose.
“It’s okay, Father. She won’t hurt you.” Lizzy took Dr. Griffiths by the hand and led him to the table where Tinker Bell stood.
Dr. Griffiths knelt down beside the table, his expression changing from shock to wonder. “It’s … it’s … extraordinary.”
“Aren’t her wings beautiful?” Lizzy sighed.
“Yes,” he agreed. “Very similar to Apoidea. Or, no, no, Odonata. Look at the limb proportionality to the cranial radius. Fascinating.”
And with that, he lifted his arm. He was holding a jar. He was planning to trap Tink.
“Tink! Watch out!” cried a familiar voice.
Tinker Bell turned around, stunned. “Vidia? What are you doing here?”
“Get out of the way!” Vidia yelled.
Just as the jar was about to come down on top of Tink, Vidia slammed right into her. She knocked Tink clean off the table and sent her flying into a pile of books.
Blam!
Vidia was inside the jar. She had pushed Tinker Bell out of the way and let herself be trapped.
And it had all happened so fast, Dr. Griffiths didn’t realize he had captured a completely different fairy.
Tinker Bell saw Dr. Griffiths cranking up his automobile. And she saw Vidia, inside the jar, fluttering helplessly.
Vidia had put herself in danger to save Tinker Bell. Saving Vidia was now up to Tinker Bell.
“Father, you can’t do this!” Lizzy called out.
But her father refused to listen. “Lizzy, I don’t have much time. The trustees will only wait for me until nine o’clock. Please go back in the house.” The engine sprang to life with a great roar. Dr. Griffiths jumped into the driver’s seat, threw the car into gear, and drove away at top speed.
Tinker Bell zoomed out of the bedroom and down the stairs and was just entering the kitchen when Lizzy came into the room. “Tinker Bell. I’m so sorry. My father’s taking your friend to the city. I tried to stop him, but he just wouldn’t listen.”
Before Tinker Bell could say a word, there was a happy- sounding “Meooww” from the hallway.
Tink and Lizzy turned to see where it came from and saw Fawn, Rosetta, Iridessa, Silvermist, Clank, and Bobble come riding into the kitchen on Mr. Twitches’s back.
“Tinker Bell!” they all shouted with glee.
The group hopped off the blissfully happy kitty—still full of catnip—and sent him on his way.
“Tinker Bell. You okay, Sweet Pea?” Rosetta asked.
“What happened?” asked Silvermist. “Where’s Vidia?”
Tinker Bell was happy to see her friends, but she didn’t have time to celebrate. “Lizzy’s father trapped Vidia in a jar while she was saving me,” she told them breathlessly. “We have to hurry and rescue her!”
There was a pause while this information sank in. “It’s still raining,” Iridessa pointed out.
Tink tapped her chin, thinking. “We can’t fly, but I think I know somebody who can.”
Lizzy stood in the middle of the kitchen while the fairies flew around her. They helped her into her rain slicker and hat.
Lizzy chewed nervously on her lip. “I’m scared, Tinker Bell. Floating around my room is one thing, but flying all the way to London?”
Tinker Bell lifted Lizzy’s chin as if to say “No problem.”
“That easy, huh?” Lizzy’s tone said she wasn’t really convinced. But she managed a little salute. “Okay. Okay. I’ll be brave.”
“All right, fairies,” Tinker Bell instructed, “we need all the pixie dust we can get. This girl’s got a long journey ahead of her.”
Lizzy opened her arms and the fairies flew around her, each contributing his or her own precious pixie dust. They sprinkled and sprinkled until Lizzy’s rain slicker twinkled and shone.
Lizzy rose into the air. Tink flew up and nestled under the collar of her coat. “All aboard!” Tink told them.
The other fairies climbed into Lizzy’s pockets.
“Whoa! This better work.” Lizzy picked up speed as she headed toward the kitchen door.
Bam!
Lizzy missed the door and rammed into a ceiling beam. “Oops. Sorry, fairies.”
Lizzy corrected herself. On her second try, she flew cleanly through the door. Outside, she was unsteady at first, but her flying grew stronger and more confident as they flew through the storm and over the fields.
Tinker Bell was proud of her student, and her student was having a ball. “Whoa! I’m doing it! I’m flying!” Lizzy widened her arms and picked up speed, lowered her head, and went spiraling up into the stormy sky.
Tinker Bell looked down from her perch beneath Lizzy’s collar. It had taken a while to catch up to Dr. Griffiths, but now Lizzy was doing a great job following his car. They soared across London Bridge, past Big Ben, and through the twisting city streets.
Dr. Griffiths was driving quite fast, clearly in a rush to reach the museum.
“Tinker Bell!” Lizzy cried. “I can’t keep up. He’s going too fast.”
“Don’t worry,” Tink said. “I think I know how to stop him.” She darted out from beneath Lizzy’s collar and hurtled toward the car.
Tinker Bell took a couple of deep breaths, flew under the car to the engine, and balanced on it. Chugging machinery pounded around her. She saw a glass oil pot. If she could knock it over, she could probably stop the car. She reached out to topple it, but it wouldn’t budge.
She climbed down a copper tube through
the maze of pumping machinery. When she spotted something sparkly, her tinker’s intuition kicked in.
Something told her that whatever that sparkly thing was, it was probably what made this huge machine go. Because if there’s one thing fairies know, it’s this: If it sparkles, it’s important.
Moving stealthily forward, she examined the wires leading to the sparkly thing. With all her might, she pulled on the lead wire. It gave, but not much.
Tinker Bell yanked harder.
Again, it gave. But it didn’t break.
Tinker Bell gritted her teeth. She let go of the copper tube so she could pull with both hands. She beat her wings furiously so she could hover upside down. And on the count of three, she gave a tremendous tug.
The response was huge!
There was a hideous, horrible noise, and a burst of electricity arced across the engine, barely missing Tinker Bell.
The car came to a skidding stop, and Tink was flung from beneath it. She turned over and over, finally coming safely out of her spin.
She saw Dr. Griffiths beating his hands against the wheel of the stopped car. “No! No! No! No!”
He realized that the automobile was out of commission. But he wasn’t finished yet. He jumped out of the car and continued down the street on foot.
Tinker Bell could see the jar in his hands.
This guy was really beginning to get on her nerves. He was as relentless as Mr. Twitches.
Tink could feel her face turning red with anger.
She followed Dr. Griffiths down the street and up the steps of the London Museum. He had his hand on the door when a voice rang out overhead.
“Father!”
Dr. Griffiths came to a surprised stop.
“Father! Father! Don’t take her in there.” Dr. Griffiths looked up and saw Lizzy soaring overhead, trailing a sparkling cloud of pixie dust.
He reeled back, amazed. “What in the world … ?”
Lizzy floated down and hovered beside him.
“Lizzy!” he breathed. “You … you … you’re … flying!”
“Yes, I am.”
“But how? How are you doing that?”
Tinker Bell and the Great Fairy Rescue Junior Novel Page 5