“This might be our chance to grab Lucky!” Lara whispered to Kirsty and Rachel.
But the other goblin was too quick for them. Leaving his friend stuck in the milk pail, he grabbed the little black cat from him and rushed toward the barn. But he didn’t notice a patch of grain that had been spilled near the barn door. As he slipped and landed on his bottom with a shriek, he accidentally let go of Lucky.
“The goblins are having lots of bad luck!” Rachel whispered. She, Lara, and Kirsty flew down toward the kitten. “Let’s grab Lucky and get out of here!”
Before they could reach the little cat, the first goblin finally pulled the milk pail from his head. He darted toward the barn, scooped up Lucky, and ran inside, slamming the heavy door shut behind him. Meanwhile, the other goblin was still sitting on the ground, groaning.
“Look out!” shouted the third goblin, who was chasing after Lara, Kirsty, and Rachel. “Pesky fairies!”
The goblin who had slipped glanced up and shrieked with rage. He jumped to his feet and began swatting at Lara and the girls as they hovered near the barn door.
“We have to find a way into the barn!” Lara yelled as both goblins jumped up and down, trying to knock the fairies out of the air.
“Let’s take a look around,” Kirsty suggested, dodging the goblins’ big, green hands.
Lara, Rachel, and Kirsty slowly circled the barn, keeping well out of reach of the two goblins below.
“Look, there’s a crack in the wall!” Rachel said eagerly. “Do you think it’s big enough for us to get through?”
“Sure it is!” Lara grinned. “Come on!”
She flew forward and slipped through the crack. Rachel and Kirsty followed.
The barn was full of sacks of animal feed and farmyard tools. Kirsty glanced around and noticed a big tabby cat sleeping peacefully at the back of the barn on a small pile of hay.
Meanwhile, the goblin was perched on a large sack of animal feed, still holding Lucky. He was stroking her head gently.
“Well, at least he’s being sweet to poor little Lucky,” Lara whispered to Rachel and Kirsty. “What should we do now, girls? We need a plan!”
Suddenly there was a loud knock at the barn door.
“Let us in!” screeched one of the goblins outside. “Three of those annoying fairies just flew into the barn. They want our magic cat!”
“Oh, no!” Rachel groaned under her breath.
The goblin holding Lucky looked up and scowled as he saw Lara and the girls fluttering overhead. Clutching the cat tightly, he rushed over to the door and let his friends into the barn.
“Ha, ha, ha!” chuckled the third goblin triumphantly. “Now it’s three against three!”
Lucky meowed anxiously, gazing helplessly at Lara and the girls with her big, emerald eyes.
“What are we going to do?” Rachel whispered.
Kirsty thought hard. How were they going to get Lucky away from the goblins and escape? She glanced around the barn for inspiration and noticed that the tabby cat had woken up and was watching them all with interest.
Suddenly, Kirsty had an idea!
“Lara!” Kirsty murmured quietly. “Could you turn the barn cat over there into a black cat, just like Lucky?”
“Of course!” Lara nodded.
“And can you please make me and Rachel our normal size again?” Kirsty added.
“In no time!” Lara replied, her eyes twinkling. Hovering behind the girls so that the goblins couldn’t see what she was doing, Lara pointed her wand at the tabby cat and sent a stream of fairy sparkles toward it. Rachel’s eyes widened as she saw the tabby’s coat turn a gleaming jet black, just like Lucky’s.
“Well, the cat doesn’t seem to mind!” she whispered to Kirsty as the cat busily began to groom herself. “I think I guessed what your plan is, Kirsty!”
“Let’s hope it works,” Kirsty said under her breath.
With another wave of Lara’s wand, the girls grew back to their human size. The goblin holding Lucky glared at them and took a step backward. Immediately, the other two rushed forward, shielding him from Lara and the girls.
Kirsty ignored them. She walked to the back of the barn and picked up the newly black cat. The cat was very friendly and nestled down in Kirsty’s arms, purring happily.
“Look, Rachel,” Kirsty said, “we found a new lucky cat!”
Rachel nodded. “Yes, and look how big it is,” she replied. “That means our cat is much luckier than that little cat the silly goblins have!”
The goblin holding Lucky and the haystack goblin looked at each other in dismay. Then they both stared at the barn cat in Kirsty’s arms, looking very envious.
“No, no, NO!” the third goblin announced loudly, hands on hips. “There’s no way we’re falling for that old trick again!”
Kirsty and Rachel exchanged a worried glance.
“We always end up swapping something magical for something useless,” the goblin went on. “We’re not swapping this time, so go away! We’re taking this magical animal straight back to Jack Frost!”
“Girls, we can’t let them leave!” Lara whispered.
Rachel and Kirsty ran forward to grab Lucky, but the goblins had already scooted away. Dodging the girls, they ducked under a ladder that was leaning against the wall and headed for the barn door.
At that moment, an idea popped into Rachel’s head.
“Oh!” She let out a loud gasp of horror. “I can’t believe you just did that! You ran under a ladder, holding a black cat!”
The goblins stopped, looking nervous.
“So?” the one holding Lucky said rudely. “What’s wrong with that?”
Rachel winked at Kirsty and Lara and then turned back to the goblins.
“Don’t you know that’s doubly unlucky?” she said, shaking her head. “You’ve really done it now!”
The goblins glanced at each other in dismay.
“Wh-what will happen now?” The third goblin gulped.
Kirsty shrugged. “Well, that’s the thing with bad luck,” she replied. “You never know what’s going to happen!”
The goblins looked absolutely terrified.
“We don’t want bad luck!” the one holding Lucky wailed. “How can we stop it?”
“Well, that’s easy,” Rachel said. “Just give us that black cat!”
“Yes, it’s the only way to break the bad luck,” Lara added. “And if you want to get some good luck back, there are lots of four-leaf clovers out in the field.”
The goblins all frowned and stood there in silence for a moment. Kirsty, Lara, and Rachel waited anxiously to see what they would decide.
Would they give Lucky back?
Finally, the three goblins nodded at one another.
“Let’s go and get ourselves some good luck, and some for Jack Frost, too!” the goblin holding Lucky shouted. He put the little cat down on the floor and raced out of the barn. The other two goblins were right on his heels.
“They’ll need all the good luck they can get when Jack Frost finds out they gave Lucky away!” Kirsty giggled.
“Yes, the goblins will need hundreds of lucky four-leaf clovers!” Rachel added with a grin.
Smiling from ear to ear, Lara held out her arms.
“Lucky!” she called.
The little cat’s ears perked up. She bounded into the air and trotted right to Lara, shrinking down to fairy size with each step.
“Oh, it’s so good to have you back, Lucky!” Lara exclaimed, gathering the cat into her arms and giving her a big hug.
“Meow!” Lucky agreed, purring as Rachel and Kirsty gently petted her tiny, silky head.
“Girls, this is all thanks to you,” Lara announced gratefully. “I can’t wait to get back to Fairyland and tell everyone
how wonderful you both are! But first . . .”
She waved her wand, and the cat in Kirsty’s arms became a tabby once again. It blinked its eyes sleepily and then began purring as it spotted Lucky.
“My magic has replaced the haystacks in the farmyard, too,” Lara told the girls. “Now Lucky and I need to return to Fairyland.”
“Oh, no!” Rachel glanced at her watch, and then looked anxiously at Kirsty. “It’s almost 12:30 and we haven’t even started on our orienteering expedition!”
“Don’t worry, girls,” Lara winked at them. “I have a feeling everything will work out just fine.”
She twirled her wand and a shower of fairy sparkles fell over herself and Lucky.
“Good-bye, girls, and thanks for everything!” Lara called as she and Lucky vanished.
“I was really worried that we weren’t going to get Lucky back at all,” Kirsty said, as she and Rachel hurried over to the barn door. “But we still managed to fool the goblins in the end!”
“Yes, we were lucky!” Rachel winked.
The girls walked out of the barn and then stopped in surprise. Outside stood Edward, their bunkmates, and all the other kids taking part in the orienteering expedition.
“Well, it looks like everyone found our final meeting place!” Edward remarked with a smile.
Kirsty and Rachel nodded, looking relieved.
“Lara said everything would work out fine — and it did!” Rachel whispered.
“We’ll be doing some more orienteering after lunch,” Edward said, “but first — the surprise!” He pointed at the pretty little farmhouse. “The farmer and his wife have invited us to lunch: fried chicken and corn on the cob, followed by fresh apple pie and ice cream! After that, they’ll introduce us to some of the farm animals.”
Everyone cheered, and Kirsty and Rachel grinned at each other.
“This is going to be great,” Kirsty said happily. “And we’ve already had lots of fun today with Lara and Lucky!”
“Yes, every day is exciting when we’re having fairy adventures!” Rachel agreed. “I wonder which amazing magical animal we’ll meet next?”
Lara the Black Cat Fairy has her magical animal back! Now Rachel and Kirsty need to help
Erin
the Phoenix Fairy!
Join their next adventure in this special sneak peek. . . .
Kirsty Tate held her breath, trying to keep her fingers steady on the camera. A little brown sparrow stood only a few steps away, pecking at something on the ground. The bird was crouched at the edge of a forest clearing, framed by leafy trees and bushes, with sunlight shining through. Kirsty pressed the button on top of the camera. Click! There — perfect.
“Fabulous,” said her best friend, Rachel Walker, who was crouching next to Kirsty. She took her pencil and checked off the sparrow’s picture on a list she held on a clipboard. “That makes five birds we’ve found and photographed,” she said, feeling good. “The sparrow, thrush, blackbird, robin, and magpie. We just need the chickadee now, and we’re done.”
The two girls were spending a week of their spring break at an outdoor adventure camp. Today was Nature Day! All the campers had been put in pairs and given a list of plants, animals, or insects to track down and photograph. At the end of the day, they were going to gather around the campfire and share their discoveries with everyone.
Rachel and Kirsty sat down on a fallen log to look at the birdwatcher’s guidebook they had been given. Rachel flipped through until she found a page about the chickadee. “Here we are,” she said, looking at the photograph. “So it has a black head and throat, a short bill, and a snowy white chest. Well, that should be easy enough to spot.”
“It says here that the chickadee is acrobatic and clever, and has a funny call: chicka dee, dee, dee,” Kirsty said, reading aloud. She tilted her head to one side. “I can’t hear anything like that,” she said after a moment.
“I’ll take a look with these,” Rachel said, picking up their binoculars and scanning the glade. She moved them around slowly, spotting clumps of primroses and nodding daffodils, but no chickadees. The only bird she could see was a robin perched on a tree stump. Rachel giggled to herself as a joke suddenly popped into her head.
“What’s so funny?” Kirsty asked.
“I just thought of a joke,” Rachel said. “Which bird steals from the rich to give to the poor?”
“I don’t know,” Kirsty replied.
“Robin Hood!” Rachel giggled.
Kirsty smiled. “I’ve got one, too,” she said. “Which bird tells the best jokes?”
Rachel shrugged. “I give up,” she answered.
“A comedi-HEN!” Kirsty replied. Both girls laughed. . . .
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e-ISBN 978-0-545-54916-5
Copyright © 2009 by Rainbow Magic Limited.
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First Scholastic printing, March 2012
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