by Kiki Thorpe
Copyright © 2005 Disney Enterprises, Inc.
All rights reserved. Published by Disney Press, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney Press, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011-5690.
ISBN 978-1-4231-5824-0
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Table of Contents
All About Fairies
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IF YOU HEAD toward the second star on your right and fly straight on till morning, you’ll come to Never Land, a magical island where mermaids play and children never grow up.
When you arrive, you might hear something like the tinkling of little bells. Follow that sound and you’ll find Pixie Hollow, the secret heart of Never Land.
A great old maple tree grows in Pixie Hollow, and in it live hundreds of fairies and sparrow men. Some of them can do water magic, others can fly like the wind, and still others can speak to animals. You see, Pixie Hollow is the Never fairies’ kingdom, and each fairy who lives there has a special, extraordinary talent.
Not far from the Home Tree, nestled in the branches of a hawthorn, is Mother Dove, the most magical creature of all. She sits on her egg, watching over the fairies, who in turn watch over her. For as long as Mother Dove’s egg stays well and whole, no one in Never Land will ever grow old.
Once, Mother Dove’s egg was broken. But we are not telling the story of the egg here. Now it is time for Tinker Bell’s tale.…
ONE SUNNY, BREEZY afternoon in Pixie Hollow, Tinker Bell sat in her workshop, frowning at a copper pot. With one hand, she clutched her tinker’s hammer, and with the other, she tugged at her blond bangs, which was Tink’s habit when she was thinking hard about something. The pot had been squashed nearly flat on one side. Tink was trying to determine how to tap it to make it right again.
All around Tink lay her tinkering tools: baskets full of rivets, scraps of tin, pliers, iron wire, and swatches of steel wool for scouring a pot until it shone. On the walls hung portraits of some of the pans and ladles and washtubs Tink had mended. Tough jobs were always Tink’s favorites.
Tink was a pots-and-pans fairy, and her greatest joy came from fixing things. She loved anything metal that could be cracked or dented. Even her workshop was made from a teakettle that had once belonged to a Clumsy.
Ping! Ping! Ping! Tink began to pound away. Beneath Tink’s hammer the copper moved as easily as if she were smoothing the folds in a blanket.
Tink had almost finished when a shadow fell across her worktable. She looked up and saw a dark figure silhouetted in the sunny doorway. The edges of the silhouette sparkled.
“Oh, hi, Terence. Come in,” said Tink.
Terence moved out of the sunlight and into the room, but he continued to shimmer. Terence was a dust-talent sparrow man. He measured and handed out the fairy dust that allowed Never Land’s fairies to fly and do their magic. As a result, he was dustier than most fairies, and he sparkled all the time.
“Hi, Tink. Are you working? I mean, I see you’re working. Are you almost done? That’s a nice pot,” Terence said, all in a rush.
“It’s Violet’s pot. They’re dyeing spider silk tomorrow, and she needs it for boiling the dye,” Tink replied. She looked eagerly at Terence’s hands and sighed when she saw that they were empty. Terence stopped by Tink’s workshop nearly every day. Often he brought a broken pan or a mangled sieve for her to fix. Other times, like now, he just brought himself.
“That’s right, tomorrow is dyeing day,” said Terence. “I saw the harvest talents bringing in the blueberries for the dye earlier. They’ve got a good crop this year, they should get a nice deep blue color…”
As Terence rambled on, Tink looked longingly at the copper pot. She picked up her hammer, then reluctantly put it back down. It would be rude to start tapping right now, she thought. Tink liked talking to Terence. But she liked tinkering more.
“Anyway, Tink, I just wanted to let you know that they’re starting a game of tag in the meadow. I thought maybe you’d like to join in,” Terence finished.
Tink’s wing tips quivered. It had been ages since there had been a game of fairy tag. Suddenly, she felt herself bursting with the desire to play, the way you fill up with a sneeze just before it explodes.
She glanced down at the pot again. The dent was nearly smooth. Tink thought she could easily play a game of tag and still have time to finish her work before dinner.
Standing up, she slipped her tinker’s hammer into a loop on her belt and smiled at Terence.
“Let’s go,” she said.
When Tink and Terence got to the meadow, the game of tag was already in full swing. Everywhere spots of bright color wove in and out of the tall grass as fairies darted after each other.
Fairy tag is different from the sort of tag that humans, or Clumsies, as the fairies call them, play. For one thing, the fairies fly rather than run. For another, the fairies don’t just chase each other until one is tagged “it.” If that were the case, the fast-flying-talent fairies would win every time.
In fairy tag, the fairies and sparrow men all use their talents to try to win. And when a fairy is tagged, by being tapped on her head and told “Choose you,” that fairy’s whole talent group—or at least all those who are playing—becomes “chosen.”
Games of fairy tag are large, complicated, and very exciting.
As Tink and Terence joined the game, a huge drop of water came hurtling through the air at them. Terence ducked, and the drop splashed against a dandelion behind him. The water-talent fairies were “chosen,” Tink realized.
As they sped through the tall grass, the water fairies hurled balls of water at the other fairies. When the balls hit, they burst like water balloons and dampened the fairies’ wings. This slowed them down, which helped the water fairies gain on them.
Already the other talents had organized their defense. The animal-talent fairies, led by Beck and Fawn, had rounded up a crew of chipmunks to ride when their wings got too wet to fly. The light-talent fairies bent the sunshine as they flew through it, so rays of light always shone in the eyes of the fairies chasing them. Tink saw that the pots-and-pans fairies had used washtubs to create makeshift catapults. They were trying to catch the balls of water and fling them back at the water fairies.
As Tink zipped down to join them, she heard a voice above her call, “Watch out, Tinker Bell! I’ll choose you!” She looked up. Her friend Rani, a water-talent fairy, was circling above her on the back of a dove. Rani was the only fairy in the kingdom who didn’t have wings. She’d cut hers off to help save Never Land when Mother Dove’s egg had been destroyed. Now Brother Dove did her flying for her.
Rani lifted her arm and hurled a water ball. It wobbled through the air and splashed harmlessly on the ground, inches away from Tink. Tink laughed, and so did Rani.
“I’m such a terrible shot!” Rani cried happily.
Just then, the pots-and-pans fairies fired a catapult. The water flew at Rani and drenched her. Rani laughed even harder.
“Choose you!”
The shout rang through the meadow. All the fairies stopped midflight and turned. A water-talent fairy named Tally was standing over Jerome, a dust-talent sparrow man. Her hand was on his head.
“Dust talent!” Jerome sang out.
Abruptly, the fairies rearran
ged themselves. Anyone who happened to be near a dust-talent fairy immediately darted away. The other fairies hovered in the air, waiting to see what the dust talents would do.
Tink caught sight of Terence near a tree stump a few feet away. Terence grinned at her. She coyly smiled back—and then she bolted. In a flash, Terence was after her.
Tink dove into an azalea bush. Terence was right on her heels. Tink’s sides ached with laughter, but she kept flying. She wove in and out of the bush’s branches. She made a hairpin turn around a thick branch. Then she dashed toward an opening in the leaves and headed back to the open meadow.
But suddenly, the twigs in front of her closed like a gate. Tink skidded to a stop and watched as the twigs wrapped around themselves. With a flick of fairy dust, Terence had closed the branches of the bush. It was the simplest magic. But Tink was trapped.
She turned as Terence flew up to her.
“Choose you,” he said, placing his hand on her head. But he said it softly. None of the rest of the fairies could have heard.
Just then, a shout rang out across the meadow: “Hawk!”
At once, Tink and Terence dropped down under the azalea bush’s branches. Through the leaves, Tink could see the other fairies ducking for cover. The scout who had spotted the hawk hid in the branches of a nearby elm tree. The entire meadow seemed to hold its breath as the hawk’s shadow moved across it.
When it was gone, the fairies waited a few moments, then slowly came out of their hiding places. But the mood had changed. The game of tag was over.
Tink and Terence climbed out of the bush.
“I must finish Violet’s pot before dinner,” Tink told Terence. “Thank you for telling me about the game.”
“I’m really glad you came, Tink,” said Terence. He gave her a sparkling smile, but Tink didn’t see it. She was already flying away, thinking about the copper pot.
Tink’s fingers itched to begin working again. As she neared her workshop, she reached for her tinker’s hammer hanging on her belt. Her fingertips touched the leather loop.
Tink stopped flying. Frantically, she ran her fingers over the belt loop again and again. Her hammer was gone.
TINK SKIMMED OVER the ground, back the way she’d come. Her eyes darted this way and that. She was hoping to catch a glimmer of metal in the tall grass.
“Fool,” Tink told herself. “You foolish, foolish fairy.”
When she reached the meadow, her heart sank. The trees on the far side of the meadow cast long shadows across the ground. To Tink, the meadow looked huge, like a vast jungle of waving grass and wildflowers. How would she ever find her hammer in there?
Just then, her eyes fell on the azalea bush. Of course! Tink thought. I must have dropped it when I was dodging Terence.
Tink flew to the bush. She checked the ground beneath it and checked each branch. She paid particular attention to the places where a pots-and-pans fairy’s hammer might get caught. Then she checked them again. And again. But the hammer was nowhere in sight.
Fighting back tears, Tink flew across the open meadow. She tried to recall her zigzagging path in the tag game. Eventually she gave that up and began to search the meadow inch by inch, flying close to the ground. She parted the petals of wildflowers. She peered into rabbit burrows. She looked everywhere she could think of, even places she knew the hammer couldn’t possibly be.
As Tink searched, the sun sank into a red pool on the horizon, then disappeared. A thin sliver of moon rose in the sky. The night was so dark that even if Tink had flown over the hammer, she wouldn’t have been able to see it. But the hammer was already long gone. A Never crow had spotted it hours before and, attracted by its shine, had carried it off to its nest.
The grass was heavy with dew by the time Tink slowly started back to the Home Tree. As she flew, tears of frustration rolled down her cheeks. She swiped them away. What will I do without my hammer? Tink wondered. It was her most important tool. She thought of the copper pot waiting patiently for her in her workshop, and more tears sprang to her eyes.
It might seem that it should have been easy for Tink to get another tinker’s hammer, but in fact, it was not. In the fairy kingdom, there is just the right amount of everything; no more, no less. A tool-making fairy would need Never iron to make a new hammer. And a mining-talent fairy would have to collect the iron. Because their work was difficult, the mining-talent fairies only mined once in a moon cycle, when the moon was full. Tink eyed the thin silver slice in the sky. Judging from the moon, that wouldn’t be for many days.
For a pots-and-pans fairy, going many days without fixing pots or pans would be like not eating or sleeping. To Tink, the idea was horrible.
But that wasn’t the only reason she was crying. Tink had a secret. She did have a spare hammer. But it was at Peter Pan’s hideout—she had accidentally left it there quite a while before. And she was terribly scared about going back to get it.
Tink got back to the Home Tree, but she was too upset to go inside and sleep. Instead, she flew up to the highest branch and perched there. She looked up at the stars and tried to figure out what to do.
Tink thought about Peter Pan: his wild red hair, his freckled nose turned up just so, his eyes that looked so happy when he laughed. She remembered the time that she and Peter had gone to the beach to skip rocks on the lagoon. One of the rocks had accidentally nicked a mermaid’s tail as she dove beneath the water. The mermaid had scolded them so ferociously that Peter and Tink had fled laughing all the way to the other side of the island.
Tink’s heart ached. Remembering Peter Pan was something she almost never let herself do. Since he had brought the Wendy to Never Land, Tink and Peter had hardly spoken.
No, Tink decided. She couldn’t go to Peter’s for the spare hammer. It would make her too sad.
“I’ll make do without it,” she told herself. What was a hammer, after all, but just another tool?
TINK SLEPT FITFULLY that night and woke before the other fairies. As the sky began to get lighter, she crept out of the Home Tree and flew down to the beach.
In one corner of the lagoon, there was a small cave that could only be entered at low tide. Tink flew in and landed on the damp ground. The floor of the cave was covered with sea-polished pebbles. This was where Peter had come to get stones for skipping on the water, Tink remembered.
Tink carefully picked her way through the rocks. Many of them were as big as her head. They were all smooth and shiny with seawater.
At last Tink picked up a reddish pebble the size and shape of a sunflower seed. She hefted it once into the air and caught it again.
“This might work,” Tink said aloud into the empty cave.
Might work, her voice echoed back to her.
As the tide rose and the waves began to roll in, Tink flew out of the cave, gripping the pebble in her fist.
Back in her workshop, Tink used iron wire to bind the flat side of the rock to a twig. With a pinch of fairy dust, she tightened the wires so the rock was snug against the wood. She held up her makeshift hammer and looked at it.
“It’s not so bad,” she said. She tried to sound positive.
Taking a deep breath, Tink began to tap the copper pot.
Clank! Clank! Clank! Tink winced as the horrible sound echoed through her workshop. With each blow, the copper pot seemed to shudder.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” Tink whispered to the pot. She tried to tap more gently.
The work took forever. Each strike with the pebble hammer left a tiny dent. Slowly, the bent copper straightened out. But the pot’s smooth, shiny surface was now as pitted and pockmarked as the skin of a grapefruit.
Tink fought back tears. It’s no good, she thought. This pebble doesn’t work at all!
Tink raised her arm to give the pot one last tap. Just then, the pebble flew off the stick and landed with a clatter in a pile of tin scrap, as if to say it agreed.
Suddenly, the door of Tink’s workshop burst open and a fairy flew in. She wore
a gauzy dress tie-dyed in a fancy pattern of blues and greens. Her cheeks were bright splotches of pink. Corkscrews of curly red hair stood out in all directions from her head, and her hands were stained purple with berry juice. She looked as if she had been painted using all the colors in a watercolor box. It was Violet, the pot’s owner, a dyeing-talent fairy.
“Tink! Thank goodness you’re almost done with the…Oh!” Violet exclaimed. She stopped and stared. Tink was standing over the copper pot, gripping a twig as if she planned to beat it like a drum.
“Oh, Violet, hi. Yes, I’m, er…I’m done with the pot. That is, mostly,” Tink said. She put down the twig. With the other hand, she tugged nervously at her bangs.
“It looks…uh…” Violet’s voice trailed off as she eyed the battered pot. Tink was the best pots-and-pans fairy in the kingdom. Violet didn’t want to sound as if she was criticizing her work.
“It needs a couple of touch-ups, but I fixed the squashed part,” Tink reassured her. “It’s perfectly good for boiling dye in. We can try it now if you like.”
The door of Tink’s workshop opened again. Terence came in, carrying a ladle that was so twisted it looked as if it had been tied in a knot.
“Hi, Tink! I brought you a ladle to fix!” he called out. “Oh, hello, Violet! Dropping off?” he asked as he spied the copper pot.
“No…er, picking up,” Violet said worriedly.
“Oh,” said Terence. He looked back at the pot in surprise.
Tink filled a bucket with water from a rain barrel outside her workshop and brought it over to her worktable. As Violet and Terence watched, she poured the water into the copper pot.
“See?” Tink said to Violet. “It’s good as—”
Just then, they heard a metallic creaking sound. Suddenly—plink, plink, plink, plink! One by one, tiny streams of water burst through the damaged copper. The pot looked more like a watering can than something to boil dye in.