by Gwyneth Rees
Except that there was nothing written on it.
Evie turned it over but the paper was blank on both sides. Evie couldn’t understand it. Queen Celeste had told her that the instructions she needed to make Grandma’s hospital bed magical would be in the letter.
Evie felt frustrated for the rest of that morning and when she went to the hospital with Mum in the afternoon she decided to take the fairy letter with her to show Harry.
She sat with Grandma for a while, listening to Mum telling her how lovely her garden was looking. Grandma’s eyes flickered once or twice but apart from that she didn’t respond. ‘I’m just going to see Mr Watson,’ Evie said, slipping out of the room while Mum was rearranging Grandma’s flowers.
Harry was sitting in his chair in his dressing gown and he didn’t have his drip attached any more. He was sipping a cup of tea and eating a biscuit.
‘Are you better?’ Evie asked him.
‘Much better. The doctor says I can go home in a day or two.’
Evie frowned. She had got used to Harry being here. Still, it was good that he was well enough to leave the hospital.
‘I’ll miss your visits, though,’ Harry added, as if he could sense what she was thinking.
‘Will anyone visit you when you go home?’
‘My daughter – when she can. And I’ve got a few friends in the village. Then there are my fairy friends, of course. I should think they’ll be along to see me pretty soon.’
‘You should leave some chocolate out for them,’ Evie said. ‘Then they’ll definitely come.’
Harry smiled. ‘Don’t I know it! Greedy little things, aren’t they?
‘Star is the greediest. She gets chocolate all round her face. Moonbeam isn’t so bad.’
‘Star and Moonbeam, eh? Mine are called Sky and Twinkle.’
‘Mr Watson, can I show you something?’ Evie was pulling the fairy envelope out of her pocket. She didn’t tell him the whole story about her visit to Dreamland, but she did explain about the fairies giving her a letter. ‘But when I opened it there was nothing written on it,’ she finished, showing it to him.
Harry took the letter from her and turned it over in his hand. ‘I got a birthday card from my fairies once,’ he said.
‘Did you?’
‘It was my eightieth birthday and they left me a star-shaped card. It didn’t look like anything special at first and there was no writing on it to say who it was from. But when night-time came and the moonlight was shining in through my window, the card started to twinkle just like a real star. And on the back there was fairy writing. It said, HAVE A MAGIC BIRTHDAY, HARRY!’ He chuckled as he remembered. ‘I’ve still got it but the fairy dust has worn off now so you can’t read the message even in the moonlight.’
‘Do you think there’ll be writing on my letter if I read it in the moonlight, then?’ Evie asked, suddenly feeling more hopeful.
‘I wouldn’t be surprised.’ Harry watched as Evie carefully folded up her letter and returned it to its tiny envelope. ‘Tell me something, Evie . . . Has your grandmother lived round here for a long time?’
Evie nodded. ‘All her life. Why?’
‘Well, ever since you told me about your grandma’s brass bed, I’ve been wondering . . . Before I retired I used to make brass beds, you see. I had a little workshop in a village near here. And what with hers being a magic bed, I’ve been wondering if it could be one of mine . . . Do you know when she bought it?’
‘Before my mum was born, I think,’ Evie said.
‘I wonder if they bought it from my shop. There can’t be that many shops around here that were making magic beds.’ He looked at her. ‘Did the fairies tell you how a magic bed is made?’
Evie nodded. ‘The person who makes it has to believe in fairies, and then three people who believe in fairies have to sleep in it.’
‘I only found that out myself when my niece came to see me with her children one day. It was more than ten years ago now. The children were tired so they went upstairs to have a nap on my bed. It was that night that I first saw the fairies. The children must have activated the magic – and I was the one who had made the bed. My daughter didn’t believe me when I told her about it, of course. She’d moved away long before that. Married with two boys of her own, she was, by that time.’ Harry asked Evie to pass him his wallet from the bedside cabinet so that he could show her a photograph of his two grandsons. ‘Both of them are college students now. Nice lads, but I don’t see them as often as I’d like.’
‘I don’t think my grandma saw me . . . I mean, sees me . . . as often as she’d like either,’ Evie said. Suddenly she felt guilty about leaving Grandma to come and chat to Harry. ‘I’d better go back now.’
‘Let me know how you get on with reading that letter, won’t you?’ Harry said, and she promised that she would.
As soon as the moon came out that evening, Evie took the fairy letter out into the back garden and opened it up. Since her conversation with Harry, she had found herself wondering why Queen Celeste hadn’t told her how to read the letter when she’d given it to her. Unless she was testing her fairy sense again. Evie felt a little guilty when she thought how it was really Harry’s fairy sense that had told her what to do – especially as he had told her where to look for the fairy postbox too.
But Evie didn’t have time to worry about that because as the moonlight shone down on the letter something strange began to happen. The paper began to sparkle, just as if it was covered in fairy dust. Then gold writing appeared on it. Evie held her breath as she started to read what Queen Celeste had written.
A magic bed can transfer its magic to an ordinary bed in the following way:
The person or persons who made the magic bed AND the three people who activated the bed’s magic must all be found. They must link hands around the new bed. When the chain of people is complete, the new bed will sparkle with fairy dust while the magic reaction takes place, and from then on it will be a magic bed. But be warned –doing this will completely drain the magic from the original bed.
Evie got a bit of a shock when she read the last sentence. If Grandma’s old bed lost its magic, then Evie wouldn’t be able to see Star and Moonbeam again. But if this was the only way Grandma could get to fairyland, she knew she had no choice.
Evie studied the letter for a long time. She would somehow have to get all the people mentioned by Queen Celeste to stand around Grandma’s hospital bed together – if she could find them. Harry thought he had made Grandma’s brass bed – but she would have to find out for sure. And Grandma and herself were two of the people who had activated the bed – but who was the third?
‘Mum, did any other children ever come and stay here with Grandma?’ Evie asked after she had gone back inside the house. She guessed that the third person had probably been a child rather than a grownup, since children tended to believe in fairies more than adults did.
Mum was in the kitchen making cocoa. She didn’t usually drink cocoa, but she said that staying in the house where she’d spent her childhood was reminding her of all the things she had loved when she was younger. And cocoa was one of them. ‘Why?’
‘No reason. I was just wondering.’
‘One of my cousins came over from Canada once, with her children, but I think they stayed in a hotel.’
‘Could any of them have gone upstairs for a nap on Grandma’s bed while they were here, do you think?’ Evie asked, remembering Harry’s story about how his magic bed had been activated.
‘Why do you want to know that?’
‘It’s just . . . just . . .’ Suddenly she had an idea. ‘It’s just a survey I’m helping Mr Watson with. He thinks Grandma’s brass bed is one of the ones he made, you see, and he wants to know how many different people have slept in it.’
Mum almost laughed. ‘Why on earth does he want to know that?’
‘I told you. Because he’s doing a survey.’ Evie knew that people did surveys to find out all sorts of daft things. Her
mum had got one in the post last month asking her which shops she visited each week and which types of breakfast cereal she had eaten over the last five years – how silly was that? So why shouldn’t Harry be doing a survey about who had slept in his beds?
‘Well, all I know about that bed is that it was handmade locally a few years before I was born. I should think Grandma and Grandad are the only people who’ve slept in it.’
‘And me,’ Evie pointed out. ‘And you. And someone else might have slept in it too, when they came to stay.’
‘I don’t think Grandma would invite someone who wasn’t family to sleep in her bed, Evie. That’s why she had the spare room.’
Evie frowned. Her mum had a point.
‘By the way,’ Mum said, ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you – how long are you planning to leave your doll’s house in the middle of Grandma’s dining table? I don’t know why Grandma asked you to bring it. It’s not as though you play with it any more.’
Evie thought she may as well tell Mum the truth about the doll’s house. After all, Mum was going to find out soon enough when she saw it sitting at the bottom of the garden. ‘Grandma asked me to bring it because she wanted me to put it at the bottom of her garden for the fairies to play in.’
Mum frowned. ‘Evie, I’m beginning to get quite worried about you. None of your friends believe in fairies, do they?’
‘No . . .’ Her best friend had stopped believing in fairies quite recently when she’d woken up one night and caught her dad taking away the tooth she had left for the tooth fairy.
‘So aren’t you worried the other children will laugh at you, if they find out that you believe in them? Children can be very cruel sometimes . . .’ Mum broke off, looking very far away all of a sudden. ‘You’re so trusting, Evie. You remind me of . . .’ She didn’t finish.
‘Who?’ Evie asked. ‘Grandma?’
Mum shook her head. ‘Never mind. What’s that piece of paper for? Were you going to write a letter to someone?’
Evie looked down at the fairy letter she was still holding. It had lost its writing now that the moonlight was no longer shining on it. ‘Oh, no . . . I was just going to put it away upstairs. I think I’ll go to bed now. I’m quite tired.’ She went over and kissed her mum goodnight.
As Evie reached the door her mother asked, ‘That old bed isn’t too uncomfortable for you, is it? We can always swap back again if you want.’
‘Oh, no, Mum. It’s fine! I sleep really well in it.’
‘All right, then. Well . . . sweet dreams.’
Evie smiled, and wished her mum the same.
Evie woke up the next morning surprised – and quite disappointed – that Star and Moonbeam hadn’t visited her during the night. She went over to the dressing table to check how many violet creams were left and found the same number as the previous day. Not that she had really expected Star and Moonbeam to come in the night without waking her up.
In the afternoon, she took two violet creams with her, wrapped up in cling film, when they went to visit Grandma. ‘They’re for Harry,’ she explained, when her mum noticed her holding them. She wanted to give them to him so that he could leave them out for his dream fairies. That way they were sure to come back and visit him soon.
When they got to the ward, Grandma’s doctor was writing in some case notes at the nurses’ station and Mum went over to speak to him. Evie went straight to Harry’s room but found that it was empty. At first she thought he must be having a bath or something, but when she went inside the room his bed was stripped of sheets and all his things were gone from the locker. She went back to the nurses’ station to find that Mum had gone off to speak with the doctor in his office and all the nurses were busy. She stood there for what seemed like forever until one of the nurses stopped what she was doing and asked, ‘Can I help?’
‘I’m looking for Mr Watson.’
‘Mr Watson? Oh, yes . . . He went home this morning.’
‘Oh.’ Evie didn’t know what to say. She needed to speak to Harry and now she couldn’t. She found that she was fighting back tears. She hadn’t expected Harry to leave without saying goodbye to her.
‘Are you Evie?’ Another nurse was looking at her now.
Evie nodded.
‘Harry left something for you.’ She went to the other end of the long desk and came back with an envelope that had Evie’s name on it.
‘Thank you,’ Evie said, smiling with relief. So Harry hadn’t forgotten about her after all. She opened the envelope. There was a card inside and Harry had printed his address and phone number at the top of it.
Dear Evie,
Sorry I don’t have time to say goodbye in person but my neighbour is coming to collect me at lunchtime. I wanted to thank you for your visits. They really cheered me up. I think your grandma is very lucky to have you as her granddaughter.
I must start packing to go home now. I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to sleeping in my own bed – and to seeing Twinkle and Sky again!
Kind regards,
Harry.
P.S. Come and see me some time if you would like to.
Without thinking, Evie showed the letter to her mother as soon as she returned from her talk with the doctor. ‘I really want to go and see him, Mum. Can we go on the way back from the hospital?’
Mum shook her head. ‘He’ll be busy settling in at home today.’ She seemed distracted. She gave the card back to Evie without even asking who Twinkle and Sky were.
In Grandma’s room, Mum pulled her seat nearer to the bed and picked up Grandma’s hand. ‘Why don’t you sit round the other side?’ she said to Evie. ‘I’m sure Grandma would like it if you held her hand too.’ Her voice sounded a little trembly.
‘Mum, is anything wrong?’
Her mother didn’t reply. She just kept stroking Grandma’s hand.
Evie wished Grandma would open her eyes again. She remembered all the times Grandma’s eyes had crinkled up with laughter at something funny Evie had said. She tried to think of something funny to tell her now, but she couldn’t. Grandma seemed to be in a very deep sleep today in any case. ‘Has Grandma still been waking up in the night?’ she asked her mum.
‘No.’ Mum’s eyes filled with tears. She looked at Evie’s anxious face for a moment or two, then she rested Grandma’s hand back on the bed and stood up. ‘Come with me.’
She led Evie along the corridor and into the little room where the patients sometimes went to watch TV. The room was empty today and the television was switched off. Mum sat down on one of the chairs and waited until Evie was sitting too.
She spoke very softly and slowly. ‘Evie, the doctor just told me that he thinks Grandma probably won’t wake up again any more.’ She was watching Evie’s face carefully as if she wanted to make sure that Evie understood what she was telling her. ‘He thinks she might have had another little stroke.’
Evie heard what her mother said, but felt strangely like she was being told some bad news about somebody else’s grandmother. She couldn’t seem to take it in.
‘They don’t know how much longer she’s got but . . . but they don’t think it’ll be more than a few days,’ Mum continued, gently.
‘A few days?’ Now Evie was staring at her mother in disbelief.
The shock on Evie’s face was too much for Mum. As Evie continued to stare at her helplessly, Mum burst into tears.
There wasn’t much time left now for Evie to turn Grandma’s hospital bed into a magic one and she still didn’t know how she was going to do it.
Mum spent a long time on the phone to Dad that evening. He told her that after tomorrow he was going to take a few days off and join them at Grandma’s. Mum seemed to cheer up a bit after his phone call and she even suggested that she and Evie make some fairy cakes together, since Grandma had all the ingredients in her cupboard.
Evie knew Mum was trying her best to cheer her up, but her heart wasn’t really in it as she got out Grandma’s big mixing bowl and helped M
um weigh out the sugar and flour. While the cakes were in the oven, Mum went upstairs to have a bath and Evie decided that she couldn’t wait any longer to speak to Harry. She went out into the hall and phoned the number he had written at the top of his card.
‘Evie!’ he exclaimed as soon as he heard her voice. ‘I didn’t expect to hear from you so soon. Sorry I had to leave without saying goodbye.’
‘That’s all right. Harry . . . Mr Watson . . . I need your help.’ She took a deep breath and started speaking very rapidly. ‘It’s to do with the fairies. They want to take Grandma to fairyland in her dreams, but they can only do it if I can get together the person who made her magic bed and the three people who activated it, so that we can make her hospital bed magic. But I don’t even know for sure if you’re the person who made her bed and, even if you are, I can’t find the other person who slept in it besides Grandma and me, and—’
‘Slow down a minute,’ Harry interrupted her. ‘Firstly . . . I can easily tell if that bed is one of mine if I come and have a look at it.’
‘Can you? Only you’ve got to do it soon because the doctor doesn’t think Grandma’s got much time left.’
‘Oh dear . . .’ Harry’s voice immediately became softer. ‘I am sorry to hear that.’
‘Evie, who are you speaking to?’ Mum was coming down the stairs in her dressing gown. Evie could hear the bath water still running – she’d forgotten that Grandma’s bath always took ages to fill.
Evie struggled to think of a good person to pretend to be speaking to, but she couldn’t. ‘Harry,’ she said.
‘Mr Watson – from the hospital?’
Evie nodded.
‘You phoned him after what I said?’
‘You didn’t say I couldn’t phone him today. You just said we couldn’t visit him.’
In her ear Harry said, ‘Let me speak to her, Evie.’
‘He wants to speak to you,’ she said, quickly handing the phone to her mother.
Mum went all polite then, asking Harry how he was and saying she was sure he must be glad to be home. Whatever he said in reply made her nod. ‘Of course. Yes . . . Well, I’m glad she cared enough to phone you too . . . Well, that’s very kind of you . . . . Our address here is 67 Churchfield Road, but . . . Oh well, in that case, Evie will be pleased to see you, I’m sure. Shall I put her back on?’ She handed the phone back to Evie. ‘Mr Watson is going to pop in and see you tomorrow morning. He’s got something he wants to show you.’ She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘It’s some old photograph he’s got of his shop that he thinks you’ll be interested in. Try and sound interested, won’t you? We don’t want to hurt his feelings.’