Fairy Dreams

by Gwyneth Rees

  Evie smiled and nodded.

  ‘Has that done the trick?’ Harry asked as soon as she got back on the phone.

  ‘Mr Watson, have you really got an old photograph of your shop to show me?’ Evie said, smiling as Mum gave her a thumbs-up sign of approval before going to check on the bath.

  ‘I hope I can find one,’ Harry replied, sounding a bit doubtful.

  But Evie was already worrying about something else. She lowered her voice so that Mum couldn’t hear. ‘How are we going to find the third person who slept in Grandma’s bed? My grandad didn’t believe in fairies, so it can’t have been him. And the only other person I know who’s ever slept in that bed is my mum and she really doesn’t believe in fairies!’

  ‘Hmm . . . Have you asked your mother who else might have stayed in the house?’

  ‘Yes, but she doesn’t know – apart from some Canadian cousins and I really hope it isn’t them. I’m hoping Star and Moonbeam will visit me tonight so I can ask them about it.’

  ‘I’m not sure they’ll be free to visit you tonight, Evie. Twinkle and Sky left me a welcome-home message in proper ink so I could read it straight away. They say they’re having one of their emergency parties tonight to cheer up the Moon.’

  ‘Is it blue, then?’

  ‘Too cloudy to tell, but I presume so.’

  ‘Star and Moonbeam didn’t come and see me last night either,’ Evie said. ‘That must be why. They must’ve been too busy sewing sequins on their party dresses or something.’

  Harry laughed. ‘I’d better go . . . My daughter will be here soon. She’s coming to look after me for a few days while I get my strength back, bless her. Just think, Evie, she was younger than you when I made that bed of your grandmother’s.’

  Evie put the phone down, trying to imagine Harry’s daughter as a little girl. She found it quite difficult. She glanced at the old photograph of her mother, which Grandma kept on the hall table, and found it almost impossible to think of her as that little girl in pigtails and round glasses.

  Evie went to bed that night not really expecting to see the fairies. So when she woke to feel her feet being tickled, she was delighted.

  ‘Star and Moonbeam! I thought you wouldn’t come tonight!’

  Star flew out of the bed first and landed on Evie’s pillow. She was wearing a blue party dress with blue ribbons tied around her ankles. Moonbeam was just behind her, wearing a blue sparkly dress and a sparkly pendant in the shape of a blue crescent moon.

  ‘There’s a Blue Moon party in the park tonight,’ they told her. ‘If we don’t cheer him up, we won’t have any moonlit nights any more because he’ll stay moping behind a cloud forever. We were wondering if you wanted to come.’

  ‘Come with you to the fairy party?’ Evie could hardly believe her luck.

  ‘Yes. You were quite easy to shrink last time, so it won’t be any trouble.’

  Star was sniffing the air as if she could smell something interesting. ‘Have you been baking?’

  ‘Mum and I made fairy cakes. They’re downstairs.’

  ‘Cakes for us? Ooh, yummy! Can we see them?’ And before Evie could point out that, despite their name, the cakes hadn’t been made just for them, Star had flown out of the open bedroom door.

  Evie rushed down the stairs after her, hoping Mum wouldn’t hear them. ‘They haven’t been iced yet,’ she whispered as she joined Star in the kitchen and switched on the light so they could see better. ‘I was going to make pink icing tomorrow.’

  ‘Why don’t you make blue icing now – and then we can take them with us to the party?’ Star said. ‘We can shrink them to make them the right size.’

  ‘Everything has to be blue at a Blue Moon party, you see,’ Moonbeam explained, flying over to hover above the fairy cakes with Star. ‘All the fairies will be wearing blue dresses. Have you got something blue you can wear?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ Evie frowned. ‘Most of my clothes are at home.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter,’ Star said. ‘When we get to Dreamland we’ll lend you something.’

  ‘A fairy dress?’ Evie was excited. ‘Will it be sparkly?’

  ‘Of course. And we’ll lend you some matching fairy knickers too.’

  ‘You’d better hurry up and ice these cakes or they won’t be ready in time,’ Moonbeam put in. ‘Have you got any blue icing?’

  ‘I can make some,’ Evie replied. Grandma had every food colouring imaginable. Evie went into the walk-in cupboard and found what she needed on one of the shelves. She had mixed up icing lots of times before with Grandma so she knew exactly what to do. The fairies watched her add water to the icing sugar and mix it together before adding a tiny amount of blue food colouring.

  ‘That’s perfect,’ Moonbeam said, watching the icing take on a bright blue colour as Evie stirred the mixture.

  ‘Now all we have to do is spread it on the cakes.’

  Soon all the cakes were iced and Evie found a big tray of Grandma’s to put them on.

  In Grandma’s bedroom, the fairies told Evie to stand in the middle of the floor with the tray so that they could shrink her – and it – before she got into bed. That way the fairy cakes wouldn’t get squashed under the covers. The fairy magic happened just like before. But this time when Evie opened her eyes after being sprinkled with fairy dust she found that she was standing in the middle of Grandma’s bedroom carpet, which now seemed to stretch out a very long way all around her.

  Star quickly took the tray of cakes from her and flew off with it. Moonbeam took Evie’s hand so they could fly inside the bed together.

  As they flew along the tunnel to Dreamland, Moonbeam called ahead to Star, ‘Slow down or you’ll drop the cakes!’

  Star clearly had her mouth full as she called back to them that the cakes were fine.

  ‘Stop eating them!’ Moonbeam shouted out crossly.

  But Star had flown even further ahead by that time and it seemed like she couldn’t hear.

  By the time Evie and Moonbeam arrived in Dreamland, Star had already taken the cakes – minus one – to the park and returned with a blue fairy dress, which she had managed to borrow. ‘One of our friends lives there,’ she said, pointing to a nearby cloud house. ‘I’m sure she won’t mind if you go in to get changed.’

  The door of the cloud house was opened by a pretty blonde fairy with a light blue dress and blue ribbons in her hair. Star introduced her as Twinkle.

  ‘Are you Harry’s friend?’ Evie asked her.

  ‘That’s right. Do you know him? I visit him with Sky. She lives here too but she’s already gone to the party because she’s playing in the orchestra.’

  ‘Twinkle, can we come inside so that Evie can change into her party dress?’ Moonbeam asked.

  ‘Of course.’ Twinkle led them into a room that had white walls made entirely of cloud. There was a lovely sofa made of cloud too, which had a pink cover thrown over it. The table and chairs were made out of beams of light just like the ones in Queen Celeste’s palace. Several photographs hung in frames around the room – mostly photographs of fairies – but Evie noticed there was also one of Harry. ‘He’s our best human friend,’ Twinkle said, seeing her looking at it, ‘so we took a picture of him. I’ll take one of you too, if you like, when you’re wearing your fairy dress.’ She went off to fetch her camera and Star said that Evie had better hurry up and get changed because the party had already started. She showed Evie into one of the fairy bedrooms and told her to call out if she needed any help.

  Evie took off her pyjamas and put them on the cloud bed. Then she put on the blue sparkly dress and matching knickers – which both fitted her perfectly now that she was fairy-sized herself. There was a mirror on one wall and when she went to look at herself she couldn’t help smiling – she looked so pretty. Now all she had to do was fix her hair.

  Twinkle lent her a moon-shaped hairbrush and some blue sparkly ribbon. ‘If you had wings you’d look exactly like a fairy,’ she said. ‘Shall I take
a photo of you with Star and Moonbeam?’

  The fairy camera was a gold box with a big star on the front of it that slid up and down like a shutter when it was taking a picture. ‘It’s got fairy dust inside it,’ Twinkle explained.

  ‘Can you take a photo for us too?’ Star and Moonbeam asked.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Can I have one?’ Evie said, thinking how cool it would be to have a photograph of her with the fairies, to show all her friends.

  But this time Twinkle shook her head. ‘I’m afraid you can’t take fairy photographs out of fairyland,’ she explained. ‘It’s against the fairy rules.’

  ‘You can have a fairy goody bag to take home with you instead,’ Moonbeam put in quickly. ‘We always get great goody bags at the end of our parties.’

  ‘What’s in a fairy goody bag?’

  ‘Something different every time, so you’ll have to wait and see.’

  ‘OK, everyone . . .’ Twinkle was putting down her camera. ‘If we’re all ready, I’ll go and fetch the shoe dust.’

  ‘Shoe dust?’ Evie looked at Moonbeam.

  ‘It’s a special type of fairy dust,’ Moonbeam explained. ‘You’ll see in a minute.’

  Twinkle came back into the room holding a round box with a pink lid and a handle in the shape of a gold high-heeled shoe. She carefully took the lid off the box and took out a handful of gold-coloured dust. She sprinkled some over Star’s bare feet, and Star’s toes immediately began to sparkle. Suddenly a glittering blue shoe – decorated with a shiny blue star – appeared on each foot.

  ‘Wow!’ Evie exclaimed. ‘That’s amazing! But I thought you said Queen Celeste didn’t let you use fairy dust to make clothes.’

  ‘Oh, she feels differently about shoes,’ Star replied. ‘And this way we only ever own one pair at a time. Otherwise our houses would be full of them!’

  Twinkle gave the shoe dust to Moonbeam – who got shiny blue shoes with moon-shaped buckles on them – before sprinkling some over Evie’s feet.

  ‘It feels tickly,’ Evie said as she watched her own toes sparkle. Then she was wearing sparkly shoes too, which were very grownup looking and matched her dress exactly.

  Last of all, Twinkle sprinkled her own feet to produce a very smart pair of blue and silver shoes with blue bows at the front.

  ‘How long will the magic last for?’ Evie asked, feeling a bit like Cinderella in her magic party outfit. What if the magic wore off before the end of the party and she was left wearing nothing at all?

  ‘The clothes won’t vanish – don’t worry. And the shoes will only disappear if you take them off,’ Star replied.

  ‘But what if I need to take them off to give my feet a rest?’ Evie asked. Her mum was always taking off her shoes to give her feet a rest in the middle of parties, especially if they were new shoes. She said it was because new shoes nearly always pinched your feet. And these shoes looked much more like the kind of shoes her mum wore than the kind she normally wore herself.

  ‘Fairy shoes never hurt your feet,’ Moonbeam reassured her, ‘even if you dance in them all night. So you won’t need to take them off.’

  ‘Come on,’ Star said, opening the front door. ‘We don’t want to miss all the food, do we?’

  The three fairies led Evie to the park where the Blue Moon party was already in full swing. Evie thought it was beautiful. The whole park was lit up with blue fairy lights, and fairies were dancing in blue dresses and sitting at little tables that had blue tablecloths on them with blue candles in the centre. Blue balloons were hanging from the trees or floating about in bunches, tied together with blue ribbon. A fairy orchestra was playing lively dance music, and sitting right at the front was the fairy Evie had seen before with the harp. Twinkle pointed out a pretty fairy who was playing a blue violin and said proudly, ‘That’s Sky. She’s a very violinist. She tried to give Harry lessons once, but he made such a din that his neighbour started banging on the wall.’

  A long table was laid out with fairy food. Evie noticed her fairy cakes with their blue icing, and beside them a really huge cake which had blue icing that sparkled. ‘That’s one of your cakes too,’ Star told her. ‘We used a bit of fairy dust to reverse the shrinking. That way we can give a slice to everyone.’ There were plates of blue cloud tarts, mini blueberry muffins and magic fruit biscuits that had been sprinkled with blue hundreds-and-thousands. There were bottles of blue fizzy drink too and blue glasses to drink from.

  ‘Will the Moon actually come to the party?’ Evie asked, looking out into the Night Sky and seeing only stars.

  ‘See that big cloud over there?’ Moonbeam said, pointing. ‘He’s hiding behind that. He can see us, though, and later on, when he’s cheered up, he’ll come out.’

  Evie was unsure how anyone could be cheered up by a party they weren’t actually at.

  Moonbeam explained it to her. ‘He watches us down here having all this fun, dancing in our blue dresses and eating our blue party food. Then he sees how pretty the blue fairy lights are – and the blue candles and the blue balloons. And after a while he looks at himself, and instead of feeling depressed because he’s blue, he starts to think that blue is actually a very nice colour. So he starts to feel much better about himself and he stops feeling sad and comes out from behind his cloud. Then, because he’s not sad, he goes back to being his normal brilliant-white colour. And then he’s so happy that he usually starts humming.’

  ‘Humming? ’

  ‘Yes.’

  Just then the music stopped abruptly and all the fairies stopped chattering. Everyone was looking in the direction of a platform where Queen Celeste was standing on a blue carpet, wearing a stunning blue dress that was trimmed with blue raindrops. On her feet she wore a pair of very stylish, high-heeled, pointy-toed blue-and-gold shoes. ‘Let the fireworks begin!’ she announced grandly, reaching upwards with her wand, which had a sparkling blue star at the end of it.

  With that, there was a loud bang and a shower of blue shooting stars lit up the sky. More fireworks followed until the sky was totally filled with blue stars of all different sizes, which fizzed and banged and sparkled as the fairies watched.

  ‘There he is!’ several fairies shouted at once. Everyone clapped as the Moon emerged from behind his cloud. In a matter of seconds he was no longer blue but had returned to his normal bright colour. All the fairies cheered loudly and Evie joined in.

  At the end of the party two fairies stood at the park gates giving everyone a party bag to take home with them. Evie couldn’t wait to see what was in hers and she opened it as soon as they got back to Twinkle’s house. Inside was a tiny pot of shoe dust, a miniature bottle of fairy perfume, a pink pen with a star on the end of it, which lit up when you wrote, and some pink and yellow sweets that had Evie’s name written on them. Evie saw that the fairies each had sweets with their names on them too.

  ‘Can I really take these things home with me?’ she asked, spraying some fairy perfume on her wrist and nearly sneezing because it had rather a strong smell.

  ‘Yes. The shoe dust won’t work outside Fairyland, but it is real so take good care of it. You might want to use it if you ever visit us again.’

  ‘I’ve had such a wonderful time!’ Evie gasped. ‘Thank you so much for inviting me!’ She suddenly felt very sleepy. She couldn’t help yawning.

  ‘The Moon is humming us all to sleep now,’ Moonbeam told her, yawning loudly herself. ‘He always does that after we’ve thrown him a good party.’ She opened the window so they could hear better, and Evie heard that the tune the Moon was humming was the fairy lullaby.

  ‘Come and lie down on the sofa,’ Twinkle suggested. ‘It’s very comfortable. You’ll be asleep in no time.’

  Evie did as Twinkle said, kicking off her fairy shoes and watching them sparkle for an instant before disappearing. Then she closed her eyes, knowing that when she woke up again she would be back in Grandma’s brass bed.

  Evie was waiting at the window when Harry arrived with
his daughter the next morning. Mum was on the phone talking to Dad again and she nodded when Evie said she was going to open the front door. Evie could hear her telling Dad she’d ring him back later.

  ‘I found that old photograph I was telling you about,’ Harry said, winking at her.

  Mum came to greet them and asked Harry and Margaret to sit down while she went to put the kettle on. ‘We should have some fairy cakes to offer you too, but I’m not sure where Evie’s put them.’

  Evie flushed. ‘They . . . er . . . they aren’t here any more.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I iced them but they didn’t turn out like I’d expected.’ Evie thought of the tiny fairy-sized cakes that she had taken to the fairy party. ‘I sort of gave them away.’

  ‘Gave them away? Who to?’

  Fortunately, Harry seemed to realize what the problem was and he came to her rescue. ‘To the birds, I expect, was it, Evie? That’s what I always do with my cooking when it doesn’t turn out right. I give it to our winged friends out there and they always seem to enjoy it.’

  Evie nodded. After all, she had given the cakes to her winged friends, hadn’t she?

  Mum was shaking her head. ‘I don’t know why you didn’t wait for me to help you ice them, Evie. They were perfectly all right when I took them out of the oven last night.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Evie muttered, as Mum went off, a little huffily, into the kitchen.

  ‘I hear you might be sleeping in one of Dad’s brass beds, Evie,’ Margaret said, smiling at her. ‘It’s amazing that it’s still in one piece after all these years.’