by Gwyneth Rees
‘WOW!’ Lucy and Thomas gasped.
‘At least we’ve still got all this Goodness left,’ Goldie said, ‘but the way it works is this. For every tooth a fairy collects, she gets a handful of Goodness dust to take back to her own sector. The more children who give us their teeth in any particular sector, the more Goodness dust gets sprinkled about in the area where they live.’
‘So if we don’t stop Precious stealing all the teeth from our sector,’ Bonnie continued, ‘the Goodness levels there are going to go down really badly.’
‘You mean the Goodness levels where we live?’ Lucy asked, not liking the sound of that at all.
‘Yes,’ Goldie replied. ‘We think Precious must actually be living somewhere in our sector, because no matter how quickly we respond when we find out that a tooth needs collecting, she always manages to get there before we do!’
‘How do you know when a tooth needs collecting?’ Thomas asked curiously.
‘We see it on our pillow map,’ Bonnie said.
‘Your pillow map?’
Bonnie nodded. ‘Each fairy sector has its own map and every time a tooth gets put under a pillow anywhere in that sector, the exact spot on the map lights up. Then we go off straight away to collect it. We all keep maps of our own sectors pinned up inside our houses and we check them every night.’
‘Is that why Queen Eldora warned me not to let my teeth touch my pillow when I was showing them to her?’ Lucy asked, remembering the fairy queen’s reaction when she had tipped them out on to her bed.
‘Yes. You see, we think Precious must’ve made her own pillow map – and that’s how she knows when a tooth is being left for us.’
‘It’s very complicated being a tooth fairy, isn’t it?’ Lucy said thoughtfully. ‘What with all these maps and meetings and rules about everything?’
‘You can say that again,’ Bonnie and Goldie said, giggling. ‘It’s like we told you – flower fairies have much more fun!’
In the Wing Fitting Room, Queen Eldora was waiting for them along with two boy fairies who were dressed in dark-coloured, pinstriped suits.
‘These are our fairy tailors,’ Queen Eldora said. ‘It’s their job to measure you for your new wings.’
The fairy tailors each produced a measuring tape and started to take all sorts of strange measurements. Lucy stood as still as she could while she was measured from her belly button to her elbow, from her nose to her fingertips, and from the tips of her ears to the centre of her back. Thomas, however, was getting more and more fidgety the longer he had to stand still.
Finally, when the measuring was finished, the children were led into a room that had a rail of fairy dresses on one side and a rail of smart suits on the other.
‘We thought you might want to change out of your nightclothes,’ Queen Eldora said. ‘So please choose whatever you would most like to wear.’
‘That’s easy,’ Thomas said, going over to the rail and picking the first pair of trousers and matching jacket that he came to. Thomas never spent much time fussing over clothes.
Neither did Lucy normally, but now she hovered by the dresses, unable to make up her mind. She never usually wore dresses at all but, if she was going to be a fairy for the night, she suddenly felt like she wanted to. In the end she chose a short turquoise dress that had sparkly sequins sewn all over it. When she stepped out of the fairy changing cubicle, Goldie and Bonnie beamed in delight and told her how pretty she looked.
‘There’s a pair of turquoise wings with silver stars on them that would look great with that dress,’ Goldie told her, sounding excited. ‘Let’s go into the Wing Chamber and see if we can find them.’
The Wing Chamber turned out to be a huge, bright room with a high domed ceiling where spare pairs of fairy wings were flying around everywhere.
‘We keep these here in case a fairy’s own wings get damaged and they can’t use them,’ Bonnie explained. ‘Or in case we get visitors like you!’ As she spoke, one of the fairy tailors was using a long pole with a hook on the end of it to try and catch a pair of large silver wings for Thomas. ‘Those are the turquoise ones up there – look!’ Bonnie pointed them out, and the second fairy tailor appeared with another pole and began to chase after them.
Eventually both pairs of wings had been brought down from the ceiling. The fairy tailors measured both sets and declared they ought to fit the children perfectly.
It was a weird process having the wings fitted. Lucy watched while Thomas’s were attached first. He had to have a special fairy ointment rubbed on to his back, then the wings were opened out and held against him. Lucy stared in amazement as tiny gold sparks appeared at the spot where the wings touched Thomas’s body – and by the time the sparks had fizzled out, Thomas and the wings were united.
Next, Lucy underwent the same procedure, feeling a strange ticklish feeling on her back as the magic reaction took place. She stared at herself in the mirror afterwards, hardly able to believe that she had been transformed into a fairy – or at least a girl who looked exactly like a fairy.
‘They feel weird.’ Thomas kept putting his hands behind his back to touch the wings. ‘I mean, I can feel them on my back, but when I try and touch them with my hands, it’s like I’m just touching air!’
‘False wings always feel a little strange until you get used to them,’ Queen Eldora explained.
‘Can we fly with them?’ Lucy asked.
‘Of course!’
‘How?’ Thomas asked.
‘The best way to start is to pretend to be flying,’ Queen Eldora advised them.
‘How do you mean?’ Thomas said.
‘Do you mean we should pretend the way Izzy does when she’s playing at being a fairy?’ Lucy asked.
‘Exactly!’
‘But all Izzy does is run around on tiptoe in those silly plastic wings and tell everyone she’s flying,’ Thomas pointed out.
‘Yes, but she also imagines that she’s flying,’ Queen Eldora said, smiling. ‘And the imagination is a very powerful thing – especially in Fairyland!’
Lucy closed her eyes and tried to imagine that she was a real fairy and she thought she felt her new wings flapping behind her just a little bit. She opened her eyes to glance across at her brother. Thomas never liked playing pretend games of any sort, and she was sure that he would never pretend to be a fairy.
But to Lucy’s surprise, Thomas’s wings were now starting to flap even more than hers. In fact they were flapping so much that he was now being lifted right off the ground.
‘I’m imagining I’m Peter Pan!’ Thomas said, waving to her as he went whizzing up into the air.
‘But Peter Pan wasn’t a fairy,’ Lucy shouted after him.
‘It doesn’t matter who he was, so long as he could fly,’ Goldie told her.
‘Come on, Lucy!’ Thomas yelled down to her. ‘Imagine you’re Tinkerbell – that should do it!’
Lucy closed her eyes again and found that it was much easier to imagine herself flying now that she had seen Thomas doing it for real. Seconds later she was being lifted up off the ground too and then they had a wonderful time, practising flying backwards and forwards and upwards and downwards, and how to fly through narrow spaces and how to land without too much of a bump, until they felt like they’d been able to fly forever.
But finally Queen Eldora made the children come down to the ground again so that she could go over her plan with them.
‘When you go back home, you will be your normal size again – apart from your wings. They will still be attached to you but they will remain fairy-sized. At six o’clock tomorrow morning, you must go out to meet Precious in the garden as planned. Once you give her Lucy’s teeth, she’ll tell you where Izzy is and one of you must go and fetch Izzy straight away. But the other one can follow Precious.’
‘So it doesn’t have to be Lucy who follows Precious?’ Thomas said quickly.
‘I don’t mind which of you it is – you can decide that between you.’
‘Before you leave, I will give you a bag of fairy shrinking dust. All you have to do is sprinkle it over whichever one of you decides to follow Precious. It will work almost instantly.’ She paused. ‘Now, remember, I don’t want you to try and catch Precious this time. All we need is for you to tell us where her hiding place is so that we can catch her!’
‘What will you do to her when you find her?’ Lucy wanted to know.
‘We’ll have to have a fairy meeting to decide that,’ Queen Eldora answered. ‘Now then, I want you to go back to bed and get some sleep before the morning, but remember to set your alarm clock for six o’clock, won’t you?’ As she spoke, she handed Lucy a little gold bag, which contained the shrinking dust the children were going to need the following morning. ‘Here you are and good luck!’
It was almost as if the words ‘good luck! ’ were magical, because as soon as the fairy queen uttered them, Lucy found that her wings were lifting her off the ground and carrying her upwards again – and that Thomas was right behind her.
‘Close your eyes and imagine you’re home and you’ll get there even quicker!’ Goldie called out after them.
So both children closed their eyes and, the next thing they knew, they were back in Lucy’s bedroom, human-sized again, still wearing their fairy clothes, which had become human-sized along with them. They still had their wings, but the children could hardly feel them now, because they had remained fairy-sized. They were both so tired and so desperate to get some sleep before they had to get up again in a few hours’ time that they fell straight into bed, completely forgetting to set Lucy’s alarm clock.
At six o’clock the next morning, Lucy and Thomas were still fast asleep – but somebody else in the house wasn’t. Grandpa had woken early and got up to use the bathroom. On his way back to bed he decided to have a look in the children’s bedrooms to see if he could find his missing dentures. He was sure that Thomas had stolen them, and that they would therefore be hidden somewhere in Lucy’s room.
He crept into the children’s bedroom, limping slightly because his bad hip was playing up, and once inside he looked around trying to spot likely hiding places for his teeth. It was difficult to see very well in the dim light that was coming in from the landing. He moved over to Lucy’s chest of drawers, taking care not to disturb Thomas, who was on the camp bed in the middle of the floor. He opened the top drawer and started to rummage about among the socks, and although he didn’t find his teeth, he did find a tiny key. He took it out and peered at it closely.
Right in front of him, on top of the chest of drawers, was Lucy’s jewellery box, which he judged was just about large enough to hold his dentures if the children had removed them from their container. He had just fitted the key into the lock when a noise at the window made him turn.
Something gold and red was flying in through the open window. He squinted to see better and as the object came closer he saw that it was a fairy in a gold dress and bright red boots.
‘Well I never!’ he exclaimed loudly – and his voice made Lucy and Thomas wake up with a start.
‘Grandpa!’ Lucy burst out, not seeing Precious straight away.
But her grandfather wasn’t even looking in her direction. He was still staring at Precious, who was now hovering in the air above the jewellery box.
Lucy leaped clumsily out of bed as she spotted the fairy herself. ‘Leave my teeth alone, Precious! You have to give Izzy back to us before you get them. Where is she? What have you done with her?’
‘I thought you were going to meet me in the garden,’ Precious replied curtly. ‘But since you didn’t bother to show up, I thought I’d better come and find you.’
Lucy looked at her alarm clock and saw that it was already ten past six. ‘Oh no!’
‘What’s all this about Izzy?’ Grandpa asked.
Lucy saw that although he was talking to her, his gaze was still fixed firmly on Precious. ‘Grandpa, can you see Precious too then?’ she asked him.
‘Of course I can! I may be short-sighted but I’m not blind!’
‘But that means . . . that means you must believe in fairies,’ Thomas said, rubbing his eyes as he got out of bed.
‘That’s right.’
‘But . . . but you’re a grown-up!’ And a very crotchety old grown-up at that, Thomas felt like adding.
Grandpa laughed. ‘Your grandmother got me believing in fairies. She was always seeing them, and once or twice when we were outside in the garden together, I’d see one too.’ He had turned to look at the children now, who were both still wearing their fairy clothes from the night before. ‘In fact, they looked a bit like you do in those clothes – wherever did you get them?’
‘This is all very interesting, I’m sure,’ Precious interrupted impatiently, ‘but I haven’t got all day – and neither has Izzy. I’m presuming you still want her back?’
‘Of course we want her back!’ Lucy and Thomas exclaimed.
‘What’s happened to Izzy?’ Grandpa asked again, looking worried.
‘Precious has kidnapped her,’ Thomas said.
‘And she’ll only give Izzy back if I give her all the baby teeth I’ve saved up,’ Lucy added, going over to open her jewellery box.
‘Kidnapped her?’ Grandpa looked amazed.
‘That’s right,’ Precious answered smugly, ‘and kidnapping her was a much nicer experience than kidnapping those nasty old fake teeth that were all stuck together, I can tell you! I can’t think who’d want to put those in their mouth.’
‘Are you referring to my dentures?’ Grandpa demanded, scowling.
‘She’s the one who took them, Grandpa,’ Thomas explained, as he quickly went over to the wardrobe to fetch them. ‘She only brought them back last night. We were going to give them to you in the morning.’
Grandpa took his teeth from Thomas and gave Precious a toothless glare. ‘I’ll need to give these a good scrub under the tap before I put them back in, now that you’ve had your grubby little hands on them,’ he told her.
‘Oh, I didn’t touch them!’ Precious said, wrinkling up her nose as if she found that thought quite disgusting.
Grandpa glared at Precious even more as he took his dentures off to the bathroom with him.
After he’d gone, Lucy handed Precious her pouch of baby teeth and asked, ‘So where’s our sister?’
‘I’ve tied her to the tree at the bottom of your garden. Don’t worry – she’s quite all right. We played together the whole time she was with me and we had lots of fun. She’s back to her normal size again now so you can’t miss her. The rope that she’s tied with is magic – you won’t be able to untie it, or cut it, until I’m safely away from here. That’s in case you’ve got any more ideas about trying to catch me in a butterfly net.’
‘It was a fishing net actually,’ Thomas told her.
‘A fishing net?’ Precious looked horrified, clearly seeing herself as perhaps a little like a butterfly, but certainly nothing like a fish.
‘Just hurry up and go, Precious,’ Lucy said impatiently. ‘The quicker you get away from here, the quicker we can untie Izzy.’
As Precious exited through the window and flew off to her right, Lucy bent down to pick up the little gold bag that Queen Eldora had given her and which she had hidden under her bed. Inside was the shrinking dust. Lucy opened the bag and tipped out the gold dust on to her hand. ‘Look out the window and see if you can still see her,’ she hissed at Thomas as she lifted up her arm, ready to sprinkle the handful of dust over her head. ‘We don’t want to lose her.’
‘Hey, I want to be the one who follows Precious,’ Thomas protested, stepping towards Lucy instead of going over to the window.
‘Queen Eldora gave the shrinking dust to me,’ Lucy told him.
‘No she didn’t. She gave it to both of us!’
&nbs
p; Grandpa came back into the room while the children were arguing. He looked like his normal self again now that he had his teeth in. ‘What’s going on?’ he demanded.
‘Precious has taken Lucy’s teeth and I’m going to follow her,’ Thomas said.
‘I am, you mean,’ Lucy snapped.
‘Don’t be stupid. If you try and follow Precious, you’ll only get scared or lost or something, because you’re a girl!’
‘Want a bet?’ And before Thomas could stop her, Lucy had released the dust all over herself.
As she stepped away from him, Lucy felt the same dizzy sensation as before, when she had been shrunk by Queen Eldora, and the same tingling all over her body. Just in time she remembered to close her eyes and when she opened them again, everything had changed. This time though she still recognized her room – apart from the fact that there were now two giants walking around in it.
Thomas was shouting down at her, ‘It’s not fair! You always get everything!’ And his voice was ten times louder now that she was fairy-sized.
Lucy forced herself to forget about everything else and to imagine that she was a real fairy. She soon felt her wings flapping behind her in response and almost immediately she was being lifted up off the ground and out through the window.
Grandpa was so shocked he had to sit down on Lucy’s bed. ‘Even your grandmother wouldn’t believe this,’ he mumbled as he stared at his miniature flying granddaughter.
As soon as she got outside, Lucy spotted Izzy tied to the tree in the garden just as Precious had described, but there was no time to go and speak to her. Since Precious had turned to her right after she had flown out of the window, Lucy did the same, straining her eyes to catch sight of the fairy in the distance. All those teeth would be heavy to carry, Lucy thought, so hopefully they would slow Precious down.
After Lucy had flown over four gardens, she saw something gold straight ahead of her, shimmering in the early-morning sun, and as she got closer she saw that it was Precious, who had stopped on top of a fence to rest. Precious had put down the bag, which Lucy now saw was the size of a large sack if you were a fairy instead of a human. Lucy slowed down, taking care not to be spotted. If Precious saw her too soon, the spell that was keeping Izzy tied to the tree might not be broken. Lucy decided to wait on a nearby tree branch, but, as she did so, a massive brown bird, the same size as Lucy, landed beside her, making a deafening chirping noise in her ear. The bird was holding a huge, pink, wriggly earthworm in its beak. As the end of the giant worm squirmed towards her, Lucy screamed and toppled right off the branch. Luckily her wings immediately started to flap so she didn’t fall far, and since Precious had already lifted up the sack of teeth and was flying on with it, Lucy hurriedly followed.