Elly decided to explore Jess’s school. She remembered telling Madame Silverwings that she would like to go to a human school. Did she really mean it? What would it be like? It certainly looked very different to a fairy academy. Lining the walls were lots of kids’ paintings – pictures of their pets, their families and their holidays. Elly thought they were beautiful. Fairy school-kids are hardly ever allowed to paint because it’s so messy. There are fairy smocks, of course, to protect their clothes, but fairies aren’t supposed to get their smocks dirty either. Elly peered through a door marked ‘Gym’ and saw a room full of colourful mats and sports equipment. Elly sighed. The only gyms that you found at a fairy school were wing-gyms, which were filled with boring machines to help you strengthen your wings for flying.
Back in the corridor, Elly saw something that made her gasp. It was a sign, and on it was written:
No flying down the corridor! Walk slowly.
Elly wished there were signs like this in her school. Jess is so lucky to go to a school like this, she thought enviously.
A few moments later, Jess came bursting out of the classroom. She was very red in the face.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Elly, worried. ‘Didn’t Mr Crankle like it?’
Jess shook her head. ‘He didn’t just like it. He loved it! He said it was the most original thing he’d seen all day. He wants to enter it in the science fair.’
‘So why do you look like you’re about to cry?’ said Elly, puzzled.
‘Because I’m excited. And happy,’ Jess said, laughing. ‘And it’s all because you granted my wish.’
Elly looked at her in surprise. ‘I didn’t grant your wish,’ she said.
‘Yes, you did,’ Jess insisted. ‘Before you came over I was wishing that something would happen so my assignment would be finished,’ she said. ‘And now it is. You’re an excellent fairy.’
Elly didn’t know what to say. Had she actually managed to grant someone’s wish? And if so, how come it felt so much better than she’d ever imagined it would?
Chapter Eleven
Elly woke up the next morning right in the middle of a dilemma. Elly had always thought that a dilemma sounded like a rather nice, snuggly thing to be in – a bit like a warm bed on a cold night. But now that she was actually in one, she realised it wasn’t quite so nice after all.
Only a couple of days ago, everything had been so clear. She wanted to leave Mossy Blossom Academy, and stop being a fairy forever. But helping Jess yesterday had made her feel differently about everything. Elly had granted her first ever wish and been told that she was an excellent fairy. It was very weird to have someone say that to her. Elly was much more used to being told exactly the opposite.
And it had made her think.
First she thought: Perhaps helping humans wouldn’t be so bad, if they were like Jess?
And then she thought: Maybe granting wishes would be fun if I could grant them in my own way?
But although these were good thoughts, Elly knew it wasn’t as simple as that. If she wanted to become a fairy, she had to graduate from a fairy academy and get her wish-fulfillment licence. But right now she wasn’t sure she could last another day at fairy school, let alone three more years.
Elly was in the dilemma all through breakfast, and she was still in it when she joined the Fairy Flock. She was so deep in her dilemma that it took her a moment to notice she was flying next to Gabi Cruddleperry.
‘Ready for the test today?’ smirked Gabi. ‘I can’t wait to see what your dumb old wand will do this time.’
Elly looked down at her wand, which was making a happy, purring sound. Jess had made her feel guilty for not treating it very well so Elly had given it a thorough clean and had straightened out some of its kinks. It was even fully charged for once.
‘My wand is exactly the same as yours, Gabi,’ Elly said crossly. First year students had to use a standard, school-approved wand. It came with none of the fancy attachments that newer, more expensive wands did but it was considered important to learn magic on simple wands first.
But Gabi shook her head. ‘You’re wrong, Elly,’ she said, pulling out a brand new wand. ‘They’re totally different.’
Elly gasped. The Twinkleizer 480! This was such a famous brand that even she recognised it. Only licensed fairies were supposed to use them. Elly could guess how Gabi got hers. Her parents owned Wand World – the biggest wand shop in Fairydom – and Gabi was very spoilt.
It was an impressive-looking wand with a slick, silver handle and a star that flashed different colours as it moved. Instead of the school wand’s seven basic buttons the Twinkle-izer 480 had thirty. There was a small keyboard that folded out so you could type in more complicated instructions. It even played music.
‘Do you know how to use it?’ Elly asked. The only downside of the Twinkle-izer 480 was that it was very complicated.
‘Of course!’ bragged Gabi. ‘It’s not that hard if you’re an experienced fairy. Wait till you see the star-trails it makes.’ She showed Elly a display window on the handle with lots of different wand-trail shapes preprogrammed into it.
‘I just click the shape I want and the wand makes a trail,’ explained Gabi, scrolling through hundreds of tiny pictures. Some of the shapes seemed very strange to Elly, like footballs and bananas. Who would want lots of tiny bananas trailing along behind their wand?
Elly tightened her grip on her own wand. She hadn’t practised making trails since Jess had done the repairs. Would it still be working when it was time for Mrs Clovercloud’s class? If it wasn’t, she would probably be thrown out of school. But was this a good thing or a bad thing? Elly realised she was right back in the middle of her dilemma again.
Saphie was already in class when Elly arrived at Mossy Blossom. ‘Are you ready for the test?’ she whispered. ‘This star-trail thing is much more difficult than I thought.’
But Elly didn’t get a chance to answer, because just then Mrs Clovercloud flew in.
‘We’ll start the test immediately,’ she said briskly. ‘Primrose Petals, you’re first.’
Primrose stood up, looking nervous. Her plaits twitched slightly as she swished her wand through the air. A trail of stars appeared in its wake, but they weren’t silver. They were green. And instead of fading away gently they made a loud popping sound and smelled strongly of soap.
Mrs Clovercloud sighed.
‘Primrose, I think you may have put dish- washing liquid in your wand by mistake. You’ll need to work on that for next week.’
Primrose sat down, her plaits hanging dejectedly. ‘Yes, Mrs Clovercloud.’
Gabi was next. Elly nudged Saphie. ‘Check out her wand,’ she whispered, and Saphie’s eyes widened when she saw it. Elly leant forward. She was curious to see how well the new wand performed.
Gabi held the wand up high so that everyone could see that it was a Twinkle-izer 480. Then she swished it with a flourish.
Everyone waited for stars to appear. But they didn’t. Instead, a herd of tiny piglets emerged, running around in circles above Gabi’s head, oinking madly. The pigs didn’t fade away, either. If anything, they grew bigger and brighter.
‘Gabi,’ said Mrs Clovercloud, ‘What are you doing?’
Gabi started swishing the pigs away from her face, looking puzzled and annoyed. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Clovercloud,’ she said, flustered. ‘I must’ve pressed the wrong button. Let me try again.’ She pressed another button and a trail of tiny puppies tumbled into the air, yapping and waggling their tails. When the piglets saw the puppies they started squealing in fright.
‘Those wands are banned at school, Gabi,’ said Mrs Clovercloud disapprovingly. ‘Where is your school-issued one?’
‘Just give me one more chance,’ begged Gabi, pressing again. The next trail was made of tiny scissors that quickly joined the chase, snapping open and shut like they were trying to cut the tails off the piglets and the puppies. The classroom had become very noisy. Elly and Saphie looked at each other and tried not to laugh.<
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But Mrs Clovercloud had had enough. ‘Take all these trails outside immediately,’ she said crossly.
‘Yes, Mrs Clovercloud,’ said Gabi meekly. She fled from the room with the piglets, puppies and scissors trailing along behind her.
Mrs Clovercloud looked around fiercely. ‘Is there anyone here who can do this spell correctly?’ she said.
There was a silence. No-one wanted to volunteer. Then a whisper went around the room. Someone must have put up their hand. Elly looked around to see who it was and realised it was her. ‘I think I know, Mrs Clovercloud,’ Elly found herself saying.
‘Really? You?’ asked Mrs Clovercloud dubiously. ‘I’m tired of having my time wasted.’
Elly nodded. ‘Yes, Mrs Clovercloud. I’m pretty sure,’ she said, although inside she wasn’t sure at all. She stood up. Everyone was watching and Elly knew they were waiting for something to go wrong.
‘I can’t watch!’ moaned Primrose, her plaits covering her eyes.
Elly took a deep breath and swished the wand through the air. A trail of perfect, silvery stars followed behind. They lingered for a moment, shimmering and twinkling, until they gently faded away.
‘Ooooh!’ said the class in unison.
Elly pressed the button again, this time twirling the wand in a loop so that the stars curled out and floated in a spiral towards the roof.
‘Aaaah!’ said the class.
Even Mrs Clovercloud seemed impressed.
‘Elly,’ she said, ‘these are wonderful wandtrails. Show us again so that everyone else can learn.’
But the moment Elly waved her wand again she knew something was wrong. There was a twanging sound closely followed by a splintering sound. Suddenly the air was full of a weird blue mist, and all around her, fairies were shrieking and ducking under their tables.
Elly looked around in confusion. It was raining inside, and the rain was blue. And sticky. She looked at her hands and was shocked to see that they were totally blue. Her wand was blue too, and as Elly stared she realised that blue stuff was oozing out of a big crack in the handle. Finally it dawned on her what had happened. The pen Jess had put inside her wand must have broken. The blue rain was actually ink. Elly didn’t have a good feeling about this.
Slowly, she turned to look at Mrs Clovercloud. She had learnt something about her teacher very early on. When she was cross her cheeks went bright pink. When she was furious, they went scarlet. Right now, though, it was hard to tell if Mrs Clovercloud was cross or furious because her cheeks were blue. Her nose was blue too. And her ears? All blue. In fact, Mrs Clovercloud was blue from head to toe. But even without being able to see the real colour of her cheeks, Elly had the feeling that she knew exactly what sort of a mood Mrs Clovercloud was in.
And it wasn’t a good one.
Chapter twelve
If you had happened to look through a certain school window recently, you would’ve seen something that you can see through hundreds of school windows on any given day of the week, all around the world. A schoolgirl, nervously waiting outside the head-mistress’s office. If you hadn’t read this book you might’ve felt a little bit sorry for the girl, because everyone knows how long the wait outside a head-mistress’s door can be. Then you probably would’ve thought nothing more about it.
But you have read this book, haven’t you?
And if someone were to tell you that this particular school was none other than Mossy Blossom Academy for Fairies, you would probably guess that this was Elly and that she was feeling very, very uncertain about her future.
The chair that Elly was sitting on while she waited was known as the Chiding Chair. It had a particularly unpleasant habit of telling anyone who walked by the crimes of the person sitting on it, in a very loud, disapproving voice. Often sitting on the Chiding Chair was a worse punishment than actually seeing Madame Silverwings. Today the chair was saying, ‘Elly dyed her entire class blue!’ to anyone who would listen.
Usually this would’ve made Elly squirm with embarrassment, but today she barely noticed. Her head was buzzing with thoughts. One day I’m going to start my own fairy academy. Everyone will ride skateboards and there’ll be no wands.
She sighed. It was a nice dream but it’d be a long time before it could come true. And it didn’t change the fact that she was about to get into a whole lot of trouble. She had dyed a teacher ... again. Of course, technically, Madame Silverwings had said she wasn’t allowed to dye any more teachers purple and Mrs Clovercloud was actually blue. And a very attractive shade of blue, at that. But Elly had a feeling that this wouldn’t make that much difference to the Head-Fairy.
What was she going to tell her parents? Getting expelled had seemed like such a good idea – until it looked like it might actually happen. Maybe she just wouldn’t tell them. Maybe she could just pretend she was going to school every day until she figured out what to do.
But when Madame Silverwings finally opened the door Elly realised that this wouldn’t work. Her mum and dad were already in Madame Silverwings’ office, waiting. Elly gulped and then hurriedly tried to explain the situation. ‘It was an accident, Madame Silverwings,’ she said. ‘My wand has been playing up and I ...’
But Madame Silverwings interrupted her. ‘Elly,’ she said. ‘I have just received some very exciting news.’
Elly was suspicious. What was going on? Madame Silverwings was beaming and her parents were looking at her with the proud faces they usually only wore when Kara made some new kind of burping sound. It made Elly nervous.
Madame Silverwings handed her a piece of paper. ‘Read it aloud,’ she said.
‘Successful application for transfer of student from Mossy Blossom Academy to South Street School,’ read Elly.
Great. Some lucky student was going to do an exchange at a human school. And to make it worse, it was to Jess’s school. Maybe reading the letter out was part of her punishment.
‘Isn’t it exciting, Elly?’ said Elly’s mum, smiling. ‘It’s a great honour, you know.’ Elly thought everyone was being very weird.
‘I guess it’s exciting for whoever it is who’s going,’ she said, ‘but I’d be more excited if it was me.’
Madame Silverwings laughed.
‘It is you who’s going!’ she said. ‘Why else would I tell you? I sent in an application for exchange on your behalf.’
Elly stared at the Head-Fairy in astonishment. ‘But I ... but you ...’ she stuttered. Madame Silverwings had said that only top students got to go on these exchanges. No-one could possibly consider Elly a top student.
‘Your behaviour has vastly improved recently,’ explained Madame Silverwings. ‘Everyone has commented on it. So it was decided that your, er, unusual skills would make you the perfect candidate for an exchange.’
‘We always knew your brilliance would shine through eventually,’ said Elly’s father fondly. ‘That’s always been clear.’
But only one thing was clear to Elly: there was no way Madame Silverwings knew that she had dyed Mrs Clovercloud blue. If she did, she wouldn’t be sending her on a school exchange.
Elly looked around at the adults. They all looked so delighted that suddenly Elly felt bad. She was not a brilliant student and there was no way she deserved the honour of going on exchange. Elly decided she had to tell them the truth. ‘Madame Silverwings,’ she said sadly, ‘there’s something you need to know. This morning I –’
But before she could finish there was a loud noise outside and Gabi Cruddleperry rushed past the window, followed by a trail of squealing piglets, yapping puppies, and clacking scissors.
‘Go away!’ Gabi shrieked, swatting at them with her hands. But the wand-trails paid absolutely no attention.
‘What extraordinary behaviour!’ said Madame Silverwings disapprovingly.
‘She’s got a new wand,’ explained Elly, trying not to laugh. She wondered if Gabi was going to get in trouble.
But Madame Silverwings seemed to have other things on her mind. ‘Con
gratulations, Elly,’ she said, leading the Knottleweed Eversprightlys to the door. ‘I do hope you’ll drop by one day.’ She opened the door.
‘But Madame Silverwings,’ protested Elly, ‘there’s something important I have to tell you. Something that changes everything.’
But it was as if Madame Silverwings didn’t want to hear what Elly had to say. ‘Oh, it can’t be that important, surely!’ she said, ushering the family out of the room. ‘It’s been a pleasure knowing you, Elly. You are a very original fairy.’
Then she shook Elly’s hand vigorously and closed the door – but just before she did, Elly glimpsed something lying on Madame Silverwings’ desk. A silver rod, a star and some shards of plastic, all surrounded by a pool of blue ink. Elly was astonished. Was it possible that Madame Silverwings knew about what had happened in Mrs Clovercloud’s class after all? She tried to take another look, but before she could, the Head-Fairy firmly closed the door.
‘Well, you’ve clearly made a very strong impression on her,’ said Mrs Knottleweed Eversprightly proudly.
But Elly wasn’t listening. She could’ve sworn she heard Madame Silverwings say, as if to herself, ‘A very original fairy indeed – but please don’t come back!’
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