Like eating cinnamon pies and chocolate twigs and running so fast she could almost fly. Or building puffy cloud castles that floated up into the deep-blue sky. Or going to her secret hiding place near the top of the castle tower. Isabelle always had great ideas when she sat in the cozy space between the girlgoyles (her word for the gargoyles, since they looked like girls). The girlgoyles weren’t magical—they never came to life or told jokes or helped her out in any real way—but they didn’t nag her, either. Sometimes, when she was feeling extra lonely, she pretended that one of them was her long-lost mother. Even though she was a tiny baby when Mom went away for good, Isabelle felt close to her when she was with the girlgoyles. She missed her all the time. She definitely did not believe what everyone said. Her mother was not the worst fairy godmother ever.
If only Clotilda would leave her alone, she’d go there right now.
But Clotilda would not leave her alone. Not for one second. Not when she could be telling her what to do.
“A great fairy godmother believes in happiness,” Clotilda recited. “She knows just what to do when her princess finds herself in an emergency.”
That didn’t sound so complicated. “Okay,” Isabelle said, “go ahead and test me.”
Clotilda turned to the first practice quiz at the back of the book. “Question Number One: What must you possess to pass your first level of fairy godmother training?”
Isabelle groaned. These questions! They were never as simple as they seemed. Plus, she could smell gooey pumpkin cakes baking in the kitchen below. Also, a bluebird had landed at the window and was singing a magical song.
“A ton of sparkles? A brand-new wand?” she tried, looking past Clotilda and out to the beautiful sunny day beyond her.
Clotilda pulled the curtains shut. “Isabelle, you should know that no one’s going to trust you with more than a teaspoon of sparkles until at least Level Two. Wait for the choices. I bet once you hear them, the right answer will click.”
Isabelle hated waiting. She hated the choices, too, because they were always confusing. Most of all, she hated feeling jealous of her sister. Clotilda had passed all four levels of training, as she would say, lickety-split. Or as Grandmomma would say, faster than any new godmother ever, she “couldn’t be more proud.”
Clotilda was a picture-perfect godmother. She was loving and kind (just not always to her sister), cheerful and smart, and skilled in the fine art of fairy godmother gift-giving. Isabelle had watched her turn a raisin into a sleek black convertible and an old trunk of rags into a fabulous wardrobe. She knew which magical blessings to offer new babies, and when blessings were not enough to ward off evil, she could snap her fingers and put a princess into a long sleep to protect her. Clotilda even looked like Isabelle’s version of a perfect fairy godmother. She had pretty ears, dainty feet, and shiny long hair. She wound it into a bun in the morning, and it stayed put all day.
Isabelle’s hair never stayed put. No matter how many pins she used, it always looked messy.
“I’m sorry,” Isabelle said. “Give me the choices.”
Clotilda spoke very, very slowly. “It’s either a) kindness, b) determination, c) gusto, or d)”—she paused dramatically—“all of the above.”
Isabelle liked the sound of the word gusto, but she wasn’t sure what it meant. “Determination?” she guessed.
Clotilda said nothing.
“Kindness?”
When Clotilda scowled, she looked a lot like Grandmomma. “The right answer is d) all of the above.” She started to read Question Number Two, but then she stopped halfway through. “Isabelle, snap to it! Training starts in two days. Don’t you care about becoming a great fairy godmother?”
“Yes! I mean, no. I mean, what was the question?” Isabelle hadn’t been listening. But that wasn’t because she didn’t care. The truth was Isabelle cared a lot. She cared more about becoming a fairy godmother than almost anything else in the fairy godmother universe.
She just didn’t like tests. There were too many rules.
Every time she opened the rule book she fell asleep.
For Isabelle, the answer to the question “What do you need to pass your first level of training?” was not all of the above. It was none of the above. She had to be more than
a) kind,
b) determined,
c) full of gusto (whatever that was), and
d) all of the above.
No matter how scary it seemed, she was going to have to e) be brave, f) take some risks, and g) get all of the answers by whatever means possible.
At least, she had to try.
Copyright © 2019 by Sarah Aronson
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
First edition, February 2019
Jacket art by Heather Burns, © 2019 Scholastic Inc.
Author photo by Lynn Bohannon
Jacket design by Maeve Norton
e-ISBN 978-0-545-94166-2
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