“Perfect!” said Poppy. “Good idea!”
It wasn’t easy flying with a big crate, but Poppy and Sylva were so good at working together that they did very well, and were back at the Fairy Bell sisters’ house in no time.
Clara was at home, having spring-cleaning lemonade with Iris Flower.
“Oh, Clara! Iris! Look what we got from the jumble pile!” Sylva called.
Poppy and Sylva carefully lifted the dollhouse out of the crate. “We’re getting good at this,” Sylva said with a grin. Iris and Clara were amazed.
“Are you absolutely positive Queen Mab is giving this away?”
“We’re positive! She said so herself!” said Sylva.
“She gave it to the two of us,” said Poppy. “And we’ve worked out exactly how we’re going to share.” Poppy grinned at Sylva, and Sylva grinned back.
With their spring-cleaning all finished, the blessing of Queen Mab on their heads, and the scent of a hundred daffodils in the air, the two best friends played with their fairy dollhouse in the fairy house garden, and didn’t even stop for lunch.
nine
“Sylva! Look what I found!”
Sylva was busy arranging the copper pots in the kitchen of her downstairs fairy house. “Just a minute, Poppy,” she said. “I need to fix this handle. I wish Tink were here right now. Mending pots and pans is her specialty.”
“Ooh, Sylva! It is so cute!” Poppy cried. She was at the back of the dollhouse, looking very closely at something on the windowsill of her upstairs rooms.
Sylva came around and looked with her. “What is it? I don’t see anything.”
“It’s a kitten, Sylva,” said Poppy. She pointed to the tiny lump of gray fur on the windowsill of the fairy house attic. “A teeny tiny kitten.”
“Ooh! A doll kitten! She’s so pretty!” said Sylva, carefully petting the kitten with her pinky finger. “I wish it were a real kitten,” she said. “Wouldn’t you like to have a pet of your very own?”
“More than anything!” said Poppy.
“You should come to Queen Mab’s petting zoo more often, Poppy,” said Sylva. “I’ve learned so much about animals there.”
“I will . . . sometime,” said Poppy. Truth be told, Poppy was a bit nervous around animals. That’s why she was so happy to find this little doll kitten, curled up and still, and no bigger than the button on her jacket. “But now I do have my own little kitten. Even if she is a doll.”
Don’t you think that finding a tiny doll kitten in a magic dollhouse is enough excitement for one chapter? I do, which is why I’d better stop this chapter right here. (Because if I went ahead and told you the astonishing thing that was to happen to that kitten . . . I’d be worried you might faint!)
ten
“Now that we have a doll kitten,” said Sylva when Poppy came over the next morning, “we need some doll fairies to go with her.”
“You’re right,” said Poppy. “Too bad it’s not summer. We’d be eating corn on the cob. And we could save the corn husks to make dolls.”
“I think there might be some corn husks in the mud room,” said Sylva. “Clara hangs flowers and plants there to dry. She might have saved some husks. You never know with her.”
Sure enough, next to a posy of lavender drying from the rafters, not far from the rose hips and herbs and flowers drying for pots of fairy tea, and just behind a sheaf of pussy willows, there was a bunch of corn husks.
“Perfect!” said Poppy. She carefully took down the husks and turned to her friend. “We’d better get some water from the spring to soak these in,” she said. “Then we’ll be able to twist them into shapes.”
“This sounds pretty tricky,” said Sylva. “We could just make twig-fairies instead.” Sylva’s craft projects sometimes didn’t turn out quite the way she hoped they would.
“Tricky but worth it,” said Poppy. “Let’s give it a try.”
“As long as you do the hard parts!” said Sylva.
“I will, I promise,” said Poppy. They did their secret best-friends handshake: two shakes, a spin around, and three wing touches. “Iris showed me how to make dolls out of corn husks last summer,” said Poppy.
“I think Clara showed me, too,” said Sylva, “but I forgot!”
“What did I show you?” asked Clara, flying into the fairy house. She was carrying a bucket of water, which she set down without spilling a drop. She saw the sheaf of husks in Poppy’s hands. “Oh! I bet you’re making corn-husk fairies. May I help?”
“You already have,” said Poppy. “We were just going to get some water, but now we don’t need to.”
It wasn’t long before Iris and Susan Flower joined in, stopping on their way to plant some flowers in the queen’s cutting garden.
“Fairy dolls!” said Iris.
“I loved doing this when I was just a little fairy like you two,” said Susan.
“We’re not little!” said Poppy and Sylva together.
Then Goldie and her best friend, Avery, showed up. Avery said she would make the dolls some clothes, and Goldie insisted on glitter for their wings. “Otherwise, they’re so drab!” she said.
Rosy and Squeak came in from their morning stroll.
“Lolo,” said Squeak in a small voice.
“Oh, Squeak, of course you’re sad,” said Rosy. “There’s no baby fairy!” So she and Squeakie got to work on a (very lopsided) baby fairy doll. Between twisting the stalks and tying the knots and cutting the ends to make everything look nice and even, there was a lot to do. But not one of the fairies wanted to stop, except for a quick break for cookies and rose-hip tea.
When at last all the snippets of twine and glitter and cloth had been swept away, and the corn-husk dolls were all assembled in the fairy dollhouse, Sylva, Poppy, and their sisters sat back proudly to look at their work.
“It’s a fairy-doll family,” said Poppy.
“Ahhma,” said Squeak.
“Yes,” said Sylva. “Almost like magic.”
eleven
Sylva and Poppy had wanted to have a sleepover that night, but Clara insisted that they needed a good night’s sleep, and they could meet up again in the morning. But Sylva was restless after dinner. “I’m going for a flyabout,” she told Rosy. “I’m on the lookout for feathers. We need some for the dollhouse garden.”
“Would you like me to go with you?” asked Rosy. “Goldie can look after Squeak for a bit.”
“Not for long, though,” said Goldie.
“No, I’m fine,” said Sylva. “I’ll go down to the osprey nest on the point to see what I find there.”
The biggest, messiest osprey nest on Sheepskerry Island was out near Pirates’ Cove. Sylva collected fourteen feathers from underneath the nest, enough to build a feather fence all the way around the fairy dollhouse. She turned to go home.
It was a lovely mild spring evening, and Sylva was enjoying her flight. Just before she flew out of the cove, she caught a sweet gust of wind that took her up into the sky.
“Wheeeeeee!” she said. Sometimes it was fun to act like a little fairy and just play on the wind. Now she was high over the ground. She looked out to sea.
The water was still and calm. The air was clear. Way out in the water, far, far away from Sheepskerry, a ship loomed into view. Sylva stared at it for a minute. There was something unusual about the ship. Something that didn’t seem quite right. Then she realized what it was.
I’ve never seen a ship with such dirty old sails before, she thought. They’re almost black.
Then she caught another gust of wind. “Wheeeeeeeee!” she cried, and she floated away.
I don’t suppose you know what kind of a ship has filthy black sails, do you?
Or what kind of sailors would be aboard such a ship?
I’ll give you a hint.
Sometimes, they say, “Aaaargh.”
twelve
When Poppy came over the next day, there was a lot to do in the fairy dollhouse. Now that there was a family of fairy-d
oll sisters, everything had to be rearranged.
Poppy moved two beds into the upstairs bedroom and put the baby in the crib in the downstairs great room, which is where all fairy babies sleep. Sylva added enough chairs around the dining room to seat all the fairy dolls. Together, they made plates out of buttons and pillows out of pussy willow buds, and soon the house looked as lively and happy as it ever could have in Queen Mab’s day.
“I’m just going to dab a little paint on this old kitchen chair,” said Sylva, “so it looks nice enough for our house.”
“Careful, Sylva,” said Poppy.
“I’m always careful,” said Sylva. She took out a jar of white paint (which she had discovered in the pile under her bed). “I’ll just shake this up and—”
Do you suppose Sylva had tightened the lid before she shook the paint? She had not!
Paint spattered all over the two fairies. Luckily, it missed the dollhouse almost entirely. Only the little doll kitten got some paint on her tail.
“Oh, Sylva!”
“It’s not too bad!” cried Sylva. “Quick, wash her off!” Sylva splashed water on the tiny gray doll kitten, and soon her fur was pretty clean.
“Let’s put her on a stone to dry in the sun,” said Poppy.
“There’s a sparkly one over near the rose bed,” said Sylva.
Poppy carefully and gently picked up the tiny kitten and put her into the palm of her right hand. Sylva cupped her left hand over Poppy’s. Together they walked slowly toward the sparkling stone.
All at once, a gust of wind came up. The trees rustled. The air swirled with blossoms. The sun came out from behind a cloud. A bright rainbow of light shone right onto the tiny doll kitten.
And at that moment, the little gray doll cat turned into a
real
live
fairy
kitten.
thirteen
Clara thought the house was on fire.
“YI-EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!”
“WHOOOOOOOOOOW!”
“Poppy! Sylva! Are you hurt? What’s going on?”
Sylva and Poppy burst into the kitchen along with one fairy kitten and a whole lot of excitement.
“She’s real!”
“She came alive!”
“She got big!”
“There was a light—”
“Maybe it was Tinker Bell!”
“And then . . . she turned into a real kitten!”
The thing about magical islands is that you never know when magic is going to happen. Maybe Tink was thinking of her little sister Sylva at that very moment, and sent a charm her way. Maybe there was old magic in the air from the days of fairies long ago. Many years afterward, when Sylva told the story around the summer campfire to the younger fairies, she led them to believe that it was Queen Mab who brought the kitten to life. But to this day, no one knows for sure.
Poppy and Sylva certainly did not care how the magic had happened. All they knew was the magic did happen, and it happened to them.
“A kitten! She’s a real live kitten!” Poppy cried. The fairies could not take their eyes off the darling little cat. She wasn’t doll-sized anymore. She was just as big as a real kitten ought to be.
She had gray fur, and two bright blue eyes that made her look as if she could almost understand everything you were thinking. And there was a dab of white at the end of her tail.
“I cannot believe she’s a real cat, Poppy!” Sylva said. “We are so, so—”
“Lucky!” They both said that word together.
“Let’s call her Lucky!” said Sylva.
“That’s a perfect name,” said Poppy. “You are Lucky, my little kitten.” She tried to give Lucky a kiss, but Lucky squirmed out of her arms and darted across the kitchen floor. “I’ll have to learn how to hold her better,” said Poppy. “Get her, Sylva!”
“I’ll show you,” said Sylva. She had held so many tiny animals at the petting zoo that she knew just what to do. She scooped up Lucky with both arms and gave the squirmy kitten a big hug. “Whoa! She won’t keep still. Let’s get her something to eat. Can you believe we have a kitten of our very own?”
Clara took Lucky from Sylva and looked at the kitten very carefully. She had had some experience with injured animals that needed to be rescued.
“Well, she seems to be in very good shape,” said Clara. Lucky cocked her head to one side as if to say, Of course I am! I’m in great shape!
“Can I try to hold her again,” asked Poppy, “if I am very careful?”
“Cradle her—like a baby,” said Clara, “and let’s get her some food. She may be hungry.”
Sylva opened up the pantry of the Bell sisters’ kitchen. She wasn’t exactly sure what to feed a kitten. One reason was that Sylva had never had a pet of her own. But another reason was that there were almost no fairy pets on Sheepskerry Island.
I’m sure that surprises you. It surprised me when I first learned of it. You’d think that Sheepskerry would be just the place to have pets galore. But other than the occasional turtle and one or two crickets, most fairy sisters had never had a pet, nor had they even thought of having a pet. Queen Mab felt it was too dangerous.
If you think about it for a moment, you can see that she might be right.
Fairies are very small, by our standards. They can fit in the palm of the hand of a child. Fairy pets are even smaller than fairies. And if those pets are kittens or puppies, they can be cute and adorable and funny and loving, but there’s one thing they cannot do: They cannot fly.
Imagine a darkening twilight at Lupine Pond. Imagine a curious kitten in the tall grass. Imagine a great horned owl looking for its dinner. And imagine—
Actually, I’m not going to ask you to imagine anything else.
That’s why Queen Mab had a petting zoo at the palace, and the fairies took turns taking care of the animals there. She did not forbid pets on the island, but she certainly did not encourage them.
“Kittens need healthy meals,” said Poppy. “That’s one thing I know.”
“How about some fresh fish?” asked Sylva. “We have some in the icebox.”
“Fresh fish, and a little springwater,” said Poppy. “That will be perfect for a baby kitten like my Lucky.”
They took out a small saucer and put the springwater in that. The fish went in a little plate just next to the saucer.
“Pssst! Pssst! Here, Lucky!” said Poppy. Lucky came right over. “She does what I say!”
“I think she might just be hungry, Poppy,” said Sylva. “Look at her eat that fish! This is probably the first meal she’s ever had that wasn’t made of pretend food.”
“Imagine! You were a doll kitten all your life,” said Poppy to Lucky when she had finished her food. She petted the little kitten carefully. “Now you’re going to be one curious cat, aren’t you, Lucky?”
And as if Lucky had heard Poppy’s words, she lifted her head, opened her eyes wide, and darted out of the kitchen.
“Oh no! She could go anywhere!”
“She’s in this house somewhere. Let’s find her, Poppy!”
fourteen
The two friends flew high and low and finally found Lucky playing in a huge pile of shirts and blouses up in Goldie’s room. “Lucky, you are so adorable!” said Sylva. “Even if you are good at running away.”
Poppy waved Goldie’s red-and-white polka-dot blouse in front of Lucky. She pounced on it, batted it once or twice . . . and then she flipped! “Ooh!” cried the two friends together.
Clara called up the stairs. “Fairies! I’m heading over to the Flower sisters’ for the evening. Are you two going to be all right with that kitten?”
“We’ll be fine!” Sylva called back.
“You’d better get Lucky out of Goldie’s room before she comes home,” Clara said as she was leaving. “She’ll love Lucky, but she won’t love the idea of her precious clothes being used as toys. See you later! Take good care of your kitten!”
Sylva could not resist let
ting Lucky play in Goldie’s room a little bit longer. “I’ll just borrow this one shirt for Lucky to play with,” she said to Poppy. “She likes it so much, and Goldie never wears it.” Lucky pounced when Sylva waved the shirt. “You hold Lucky while I clean up.”
Poppy looked a little worried. “I’m not so good at holding Lucky, Sylva,” she said. “You saw what happened in the kitchen.”
“Honestly, Poppy, if she’s supposed to be our cat, you’ll need to learn to hold her,” said Sylva.
Poppy carefully took Lucky from Sylva’s arms. “I do need to hold her—you’re right, Sylva. I’ll carry her over to our fairy house so she can meet her new sisters.”
“She’d be better off staying here,” said Sylva. “She can get comfortable with her new surroundings.”
“But she’s going to live with us,” said Poppy, “at our house, Sylva. You can come see her and we can share her, but she’s really my cat.”
Sylva couldn’t believe her ears. What was Poppy thinking! The dollhouse was theirs together. They had made the doll family together and decorated the rooms together. So the cat should be theirs together, especially since it was a real live fairy kitten, not just a doll. What did it matter where Lucky was when they first spotted her? She could have been anywhere, and she just happened to be upstairs. Sylva noticed that Lucky was squirming even more in Poppy’s arms.
“You can’t even hold Lucky properly,” said Sylva. “You’re doing it all wrong.”
“Am not!” said Poppy.
Sylva and the Lost Treasure Page 2