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Finding Tinker Bell #4

Page 2

by Kiki Thorpe


  Fawn nodded, considering the idea. “I’ll try to talk to them. Maybe I can tell them what we need.”

  The fairy hopped closer to the nearest horse. She let out a long whinny. Lainey thought she sounded just like a horse.

  But the mist horse didn’t even glance in her direction.

  Fawn tried again. She snorted and whinnied. She tossed her head, letting her tiny braid whip like a mane.

  This time the mist horse flicked an ear toward her. It raised its head and whinnied back.

  “What did it say?” Lainey asked.

  “I…I’m not sure,” Fawn admitted.

  Lainey was startled. Fawn could talk to any animal—feathered, finned, or furred. What did it mean that she couldn’t talk to this one?

  As they were talking, a little foal broke away from the herd and came closer. He stood with his knobby legs splayed wide, looking at them with bright curiosity.

  Fawn chuckled. “Look at this bold fellow.”

  The foal had long silver eyelashes and a silky light-gray coat. His tail looked like a wisp of smoke. He raised his nose and snorted at them, as if to show how daring he was.

  Lainey longed to reach out and pet the foal. But she didn’t want to scare him. Better to let the foal come to her.

  The brave little horse took a step toward her, then another. His mother, a large silver mare with a snow-white mane, watched closely. Not far away, the stallion was watching, too.

  The foal was near enough to touch. Lainey’s heart pounded. Ever so slowly, she stretched out her hand.

  The foal snorted at Lainey’s fingers. Then, as if he had scared himself, he gave a little jump and danced away.

  Lainey and Fawn laughed. The sound rang out in the silent meadow.

  Suddenly, the stallion tensed. A second later, he spooked and bolted.

  When they saw the stallion run, the other horses panicked. They charged after him.

  Lainey gasped. They’d started a stampede!

  A horse brushed past Lainey, knocking her down. She cowered on the ground. She was going to be trampled!

  But the other horses passed right over her. They climbed into the air. Their hooves kicked up mist the way normal horses might stir dust.

  Seconds later, they had sailed out of sight.

  Lainey stayed huddled long after they were gone, waiting for her heart to slow. Gradually, the mist cleared. When she felt like she could breathe normally again, she stood up.

  “Phew, that was crazy,” she said. “Fawn, are you okay?”

  There was no answer. Lainey looked around. A few small patches of mist were the only sign the mist horses had ever been there.

  “Fawn?” Lainey called. “Fawn!”

  Lainey heard a rustle behind her. She spun around.

  Kate, Mia, and Gabby were walking toward her through the knee-deep grass. The other three fairies flew between them. The girls’ faces were still puffy with sleep. Their hair was full of bits of grass.

  Kate blinked in the morning light. “What did we miss?”

  Lainey sat on a rock in the meadow, trying to calm her shaking legs. Mia and Gabby sat on either side of her. Mia’s arm was around Lainey’s shoulders. Gabby kept patting her knee. The fairies hovered around her.

  Only Kate stood apart. Her arms were crossed. She frowned as she watched them comfort Lainey.

  “It’s okay, Lainey,” Iridessa said. “Just tell us what happened.”

  Lainey took a deep breath. “Fawn and I woke up early. We saw the mist horses land, so we went to get a closer look. But there was a stampede, and…” The lump in her throat seemed to swell. “When the mist cleared, Fawn was gone.”

  “Just like the old myth,” Silvermist whispered. “The one in the fairy books. The mist horses come and spirit their riders away.”

  “That’s just a dumb old story,” Kate huffed. “Cloud didn’t carry me off, did she?” Cloud was the name Kate had given her mist horse.

  Rosetta arched an eyebrow. “As I recall, she did.”

  “No one asked you, Rosetta,” Kate said, glaring.

  “Please don’t argue!” Gabby cried.

  “Gabby’s right,” Iridessa said. “We’re all on edge. Everyone is worried about Fawn. But we need to keep our heads on straight and work together. That goes for you, too, Silvermist,” she added, pointing a finger. “No more superstitious talk.”

  “Who’s arguing?” Kate turned to Lainey. “I just don’t understand why you didn’t come get me. I know mist horses. I could have helped.”

  “I couldn’t wake you up,” Lainey murmured.

  But she knew that wasn’t exactly true. She’d barely tried. The truth was, she hadn’t wanted Kate there. Kate was such a show-off. She would have bragged about the time she had tamed a mist horse and made it her friend. Maybe she would have tried to ride one again—and maybe the mist horses would have let her.

  The worse part was, Kate didn’t even like animals. At least, not as much as Lainey did.

  And now look what had happened. Fawn was gone. And it was Lainey’s fault.

  Iridessa placed a tiny hand on Lainey’s cheek. “Don’t worry,” she told Lainey. “There’s nothing you could have done. Fawn knows animals, and she’s as good a tracker as any scout fairy. She’ll come flying back to us in no time.”

  “But…” Lainey wrung her hands. “Fawn can’t fly.”

  Everyone stared at her.

  “What do you mean?” Rosetta asked.

  “She couldn’t get up in the air this morning. She was just hopping along the ground like…like a grasshopper,” Lainey said.

  The fairies exchanged looks.

  “So, it’s happened,” Silvermist said. “I didn’t think it would be so soon.”

  “What’s happened? What are you talking about?” Mia asked.

  “We’re down to the fairy dust on our wings,” Rosetta explained. “When it’s all used up, our magic will be gone, too. It seems Fawn’s magic was the first to go.”

  “This is even worse than I thought,” Iridessa said. “We need to find her before she ends up in big trouble.”

  Poor Fawn! Lainey looked up at the sky. It was streaked with wispy clouds, like tracks the mist horses had left behind. If they followed them, they might find her. But how could they get all the way up to the sky?

  Mia jumped to her feet. “Did you hear that?”

  A soft snort had come from behind a nearby boulder.

  “Something’s there.” Mia squeezed Lainey’s arm. “And it’s spying on us.”

  “Come on.” Kate squared her jaw. “Whatever it is, we’ll meet it together.”

  Holding one another’s hands, the girls crept toward the rock. The fairies flew alongside them.

  Just as they reached the boulder, they heard a high-pitched bleat. In a puff of mist, a spindly beast charged out from behind the rock.

  Lainey gasped. It was the silver foal!

  “A baby horse!” Gabby rushed forward, stretching out her arms as if to give him a hug.

  But Lainey held her back. “Don’t. You’ll scare him.”

  The foal had stopped as soon as he saw them. He didn’t look as bold as he had before. He shied away and let out another shrill whinny.

  Lainey didn’t speak Horse, but she could guess his meaning. Help me, he seemed to be saying. I’m alone and scared.

  Lainey lowered her voice. She tried to sound like Fawn when she spoke to a frightened animal. “What are you doing here? Where’s your mama?”

  The foal eyed her through his long silver eyelashes.

  “I don’t see her anywhere nearby,” Silvermist said. “I wonder if he got separated in the stampede.”

  “I’m sure his mother will be back to find him,” Iridessa said.

  “Maybe.” Lainey didn’t feel sure at all. The mist horses
were long gone.

  If Fawn were here, what would she do? Lainey asked herself. At once, she knew the answer. She would look after the foal. She would make sure he got back to his family.

  She turned to her friends. “We have to find the herd. This baby needs his mama—and we need Fawn. Besides, the mist horses may know the way back to Never Land. If we can get them to take us there, we’ll get the fairy dust we need.” For once, she was going to help the fairies, rather than the other way around.

  “But how will we reach them?” Mia asked. “We don’t have enough fairy dust to fly.”

  Lainey’s gaze traveled past Mia to the single mountain that rose above them. Clouds ringed its summit. The peak seemed to touch the sky.

  “We can’t fly,” Lainey said. “But we can climb.”

  High over Shadow Island, Fawn dangled from a mist horse’s tail. As the horse galloped through the air, its tail swung behind it, and Fawn swung with it. She was getting dizzy, but she couldn’t let go. The ground was too far away.

  Fawn had grabbed hold of the tail when the herd had stampeded. She thought it would be safer on a horse than under it. But she hadn’t counted on the horses taking off. Before she knew it, she’d been carried into the sky.

  The mist horse soared on, unaware of its fairy passenger.

  How far were they going? Would they land again on Shadow Island? Or would she be spirited away to some unknown place?

  If Fawn had had her magic, she could have let go and flown back to her friends. Without it, she was stuck like a burr.

  The mist horse picked up speed. It seemed to be racing toward something, moving faster and faster. Fawn’s eyes stung from the wind. The sky was just a blur.

  Then, when it didn’t seem the horse could go any faster—it vanished! One moment, it was there. The next, Fawn found herself clutching mist. The horse had simply evaporated.

  Fawn scrambled in the air for a second. Then she fell.

  Luckily, a fairy weighs no more than a handful of dandelion fluff. She didn’t fall very fast.

  Fawn spread her wings like a parachute. She glided down, down, down and landed with a bump that sent her head over heels.

  “Beetles and bugs!” Fawn yelped as she rolled to a stop. She dusted herself off and looked around. She had landed on the side of a cliff.

  Fawn sniffed the air. Now that her magic was gone, her other senses seemed sharper. She could see a ring of lichen a few feet below. She could hear water rushing somewhere far away. She could smell the fragile shoots of grass sprouting from crevices, and something else—the musky smell of a rodent.

  The scent was strong. Fawn knew the animal was close by.

  Maybe she could ask for help. But without her magic, would she be able to speak its language?

  She spotted a hole in the ground almost hidden between two rocks. Fawn flutter-hopped over to it and sniffed again. Yes, it was definitely a rodent’s home.

  “Hellooooo?” Fawn called into the hole.

  She heard scuffling, then silence.

  “Knock, knock!” called Fawn.

  No answer. Whoever was inside was clearly hoping she would go away.

  “You’re supposed to say ‘Who’s there?’ ” she hollered.

  Fawn picked up a tiny pebble. She hefted it to the edge of the hole and dropped it in.

  She heard a loud squeak. A moment later a pointed nose poked out of the hole. A beady-eyed rock rat came snuffling out.

  The rock rat glared at Fawn. His long whiskers quivered indignantly. Well?

  Fawn took a deep breath. She gave a long squeak in formal Rat that meant “Beloved brother, I am sorry to disturb you on this fine afternoon, but I am a traveler far from home—”

  The rat cut her off. “Fine afternoon? Fine nothing!” he shrilled. “You must be a maniac to be out at this hour!”

  Fawn gasped in delight. “You can understand me? I can understand you!”

  She didn’t need magic to talk to animals! Or maybe language was its own magic. Fawn was so happy, she danced around.

  The rat stared at her as if she had proved his point. “Stop that!” he snapped. “Are you insane? They’ll see us.”

  “Who will see us?” Fawn asked.

  “The hawk, of course!”

  Fawn looked around. Far in the distance, a single hawk wheeled in the air. “Him? He’s too far away to be any bother.”

  “He’ll send his spy.” The rat’s eyes darted left and right. “This is no time of day to be out. No time at all.”

  Spy? Fawn was starting to think the rat was the crazy one. She decided to get to the point. “I’ve lost my friends. I need to get back to them, but I don’t know where I am. Can you tell me?”

  “You’re at hole four hundred and forty-seven,” said the rat. “It’s right over the door, plain as day.”

  Fawn looked at the hole. She saw nothing there.

  “Well, what’s below us, then?” she asked.

  The rat huffed. “Four-forty-six, I suppose.”

  “And above us?” Fawn asked.

  “I really wouldn’t know,” said the rat. “Now, if you don’t mind, I must be—” He broke off, his face twisted in fear. He was staring at something behind Fawn.

  She turned. Nothing was there. Only a patch of darkness between the rocks.

  “It’s just a shadow,” she said, turning back to the rat.

  But he was already gone. She could see the tip of his tail disappearing down the hole.

  Fawn was now sure that the rat was crazy. “Poor fellow. Running from shadows,” she said to herself. She cupped her hands to her mouth and called down the hole. “Thanks any—”

  The blow came out of nowhere, so hard that it knocked the wind out of her. For a second, Fawn thought the sky had fallen on her.

  An instant later, she was pulled into the air, gripped in the hawk’s sharp talons.

  “It’s no use, Lainey,” Mia said. “He just won’t come.”

  Lainey pushed her glasses up. She studied the stubborn little mist horse. He stood with his long legs wide, eyeing her. The girls had tried and tried to catch the lost foal. But every time they got close, he darted away.

  Gabby pulled up a handful of grass. She shook it at the foal. “Come on, horsey. Here’s some yummy food for you.”

  The foal sniffed at the grass, then snorted.

  “He doesn’t eat grass,” Lainey told Gabby. “He eats dew.”

  “Kate, you’re the mist-horse expert,” Mia said. “Can’t you think of something?”

  Kate snapped her fingers at the foal. “Come on. Let’s go! Giddy-up!” She started to run, glancing back over her shoulder. “Follow me!”

  The foal just blinked.

  Kate shrugged and came back to stand with her friends. “He’s not like my Cloud. She was a really smart horse.” She chewed her lip. “If we had a lasso, we could pull him along.”

  “What could we use for a lasso?” Lainey asked. There wasn’t a rope, or even a vine, in sight.

  The fairies had been watching from a rock. Now Iridessa rose and fluttered over.

  “We’re going to have to leave him, Lainey,” she said. “I’m sorry. I know you want to help. But we can’t wait any longer or we may never find Fawn.”

  Lainey sighed. It broke her heart to leave the little lost horse behind.

  Suddenly, she had an idea. “Iridessa, you’re right! We have to leave him!”

  Gabby gaped at her in dismay. “You’re going to leave him? Just like that?”

  “No, Gabby,” Lainey whispered. “We’re going to make him think we’re leaving. Then maybe he’ll follow us.”

  “Oh, like a trick!” Gabby said.

  “That’s right. A trick.” Lainey took the younger girl’s hand. “Come on, start walking, and don’t look back. Pretend you don’t even see him.�
��

  Lainey and Gabby started walking toward the mountain. Kate and Mia fell in behind. The fairies flew after them. No one even glanced at the foal.

  Lainey counted one hundred paces. “Okay, Gabby,” she said. “What’s the foal doing now?”

  Gabby peeked over her shoulder. “He’s following us!”

  Lainey grinned. Her plan was working! They had only needed to give the foal the choice to come.

  The land began to rise. They had reached the base of the mountain. As they climbed, the foal got closer and closer. Soon he was walking just a few paces behind them.

  “Can we name him?” Gabby asked.

  Lainey thought about it. “He’s not really ours to name. But just the same, we should call him something.”

  “We could call him Smokey,” Kate suggested. “He’s the color of smoke.”

  “Or Rain,” Silvermist suggested. “Because he’s as soft as a spring shower.”

  “Or Thistle,” Rosetta said. “He reminds me of those silver flowers.”

  “Let’s call him Andrew,” said Gabby.

  They all looked at her. “There’s a boy at school named Andrew. He’s nice,” Gabby explained.

  Lainey watched the foal trot. His hoofs kicked up puffs of mist as he ran. “I think we should call him Dewdrop. Because he’s just a little thing the clouds left behind.”

  The foal raised his head. He flicked his ears forward.

  “I think he likes that name,” Mia said.

  “Dewdrop it is,” Kate agreed.

  They walked on. The ground began to rise more steeply. Soon the girls were breathing hard. Lainey’s throat ached with thirst.

  But she was more worried about the foal. His head hung low. His silver coat looked dull and dry.

  “We need to find some dew,” Lainey said. “Or mist.”

  “Wait.” Silvermist suddenly drew up short. Her head was cocked to one side, listening. “Do you hear that?”

 

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