by Gwyneth Rees
Maddie opened the back door immediately and said, ‘It’s all right, Mum. I’m quite safe. I just went for a walk.’
‘Maddie! Thank goodness!’ her mum cried out, rushing over to clutch Maddie in her arms. Her eyes were red and it was clear she had been crying.
‘Your grandfather’s out looking for you,’ Grandma told Maddie sharply. ‘You’ve scared your mother half to death!’
‘I’m sorry, Mum!’ Maddie burst out. ‘But you’ll never guess what’s happened . . .’ And she began to tell them all about the missing fairies.
Unfortunately neither Mum nor Grandma – nor Grandpa when he got home – believed her story, and her mother was horrified when she heard Maddie had gone into the woods all alone.
‘What if something had happened to you?’ Mum gasped.
‘But it didn’t,’ Maddie pointed out.
‘Yes, but it could have . . .’ Her voice cracked and she covered her face with her hands as if she couldn’t even bear to think about all the bad things that might have happened.
Maddie didn’t know what to say. For some reason she found herself thinking about the time that spring when she had woken up in hospital, feeling groggy but a lot better, and heard her mum and dad talking quietly as they sat by her bed.
‘If we’d lost her too . . .’ she’d heard Mum whisper, and Dad had whispered back that Maddie was strong and that they weren’t going to lose her.
‘I know. I just can’t help thinking about Charlotte,’ her mother had said.
Maddie had always known that she had originally been one of a set of twins who had been born very prematurely. Because they had been born too soon they were both so small and weak that they had had to be admitted to the babies’ intensive-care unit, where Maddie’s twin sister, Charlotte, had died when she was just three weeks old.
Maddie often thought about what it would be like if Charlotte hadn’t died, and now for the first time she wondered if losing Charlotte was one of the reasons Mum tended to be so overprotective. But she also knew that Mum wasn’t being particularly overprotective tonight and that any of her friends’ mothers would have reacted the same way if their child had disappeared from the house like that in the middle of the night. She ought to have left a note explaining where she had gone, she realized, only she wasn’t sure that would have done much good, since none of her family was very likely to believe that she had been invited to a fairy party.
‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ Maddie said in a small voice. ‘I know I shouldn’t have left the house without telling you, but I just really wanted to go to the party in the fairy grove, like you and Aunt Rachel did.’
Mum sniffed. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have told you about that.’
‘At least she took her inhaler with her,’ Grandpa said, spotting it poking out of Maddie’s pocket.
‘And a whole lot of sweets by the look of it,’ Grandma added, peering into the bag Maddie had put down on the table. ‘She certainly wouldn’t have starved if she’d got lost in the woods.’
‘They’re not for me. They’re for the fairies,’ Maddie said. ‘Fairies really like chocolate, you see.’
‘I think we’ve heard enough about fairies for one night,’ Grandma said, pushing back her chair and letting out a loud yawn. ‘I reckon it’s high time we all went back to bed, don’t you?’
The next morning Mum said she was going to walk to the village with Milo, and she asked Maddie if she wanted to come too. Maddie had already told Milo everything that had happened the previous night and he had listened with his ears pricked up. Now, as she agreed to go with Mum, she gave Milo a meaningful look to remind him that they must both keep a lookout for the missing fairies while they were outside.
The road to the village didn’t have a pavement so they had to walk on the grass verge. Luckily there were hardly any cars, although at one point they had to stand right back against the hedge to let a big open-backed truck pass them. It was heaped full of green plastic rubbish bags and Mum said it was collecting garden waste.
Mum clearly wanted to talk to Maddie again about the previous night. ‘Just because we’re in the country, it doesn’t mean you can behave differently to how you would at home,’ she told her firmly. ‘I’m sorry if I gave you the impression that what Rachel and I did as children was a bit of a joke. It was actually very wrong of us, and I want you to promise me you’ll never leave the house in the night like that ever again.’
Maddie sighed. ‘OK, I promise.’ Then she added, ‘But I wish you believed in fairies, Mum.’
When they reached the village, the truck that had passed them earlier was parked across the road from the post office while the driver collected some bags of garden refuse from one of the houses nearby. The people who lived in that house must have been doing a lot of gardening because there were lots of bags.
As they passed the truck Milo stopped abruptly and started barking.
‘Shh, Milo!’ Mum said sharply.
Maddie, who was holding his lead, gave it a little tug but Milo still refused to budge. He started to jump up as if he wanted to leap right into the back of the truck. ‘What is it, Milo?’ Maddie asked him.
‘He must have smelt something interesting in those sacks of rubbish,’ Mum said, taking the lead from Maddie to drag him away.
‘Help! Oh, please help me!’ a little voice suddenly called out. Then came the sound of tiny sobs, which seemed to be coming from the back of the truck.
‘Wait, Mum!’ Maddie stopped where she was as Mum crossed the road to the post office.
The truck driver was walking down the drive with the last few garden bags, which he hurled into the back along with the others.
‘WAIT!’ Maddie yelled out as he went to get in the front to drive off.
‘MADDIE!’ Mum was calling to her impatiently from across the road.
The driver turned to look at Maddie enquiringly, and suddenly she didn’t know what to say. He was going to think she was crazy if she told him she thought there was a fairy inside one of his rubbish bags.
‘Better move away from the truck, love!’ he told her loudly when she didn’t speak. ‘I’m about to pull off!’
Maddie froze as she watched him get inside and slam the door.
Immediately a muffled cry sounded again. ‘Help!’ It was definitely a fairy and Maddie was almost sure it was a fairy voice she had heard before. But before she could do anything else the truck’s engine had started and it was pulling away.
Mum had walked back across the road to fetch her by this time and Milo was straining at his lead and yapping madly as if he wanted to race after the truck.
‘Mum, there’s a fairy trapped inside one of those bags!’ Maddie cried out.
‘Maddie, will you please stop all this nonsense about fairies?’ Mum said sharply. ‘Or I’m going to get really cross!’
Maddie was the one who felt cross as she waited in the post office for Mum to buy some stamps. There had definitely been a fairy inside that truck and it might have been one of the ones who had gone missing. Maddie knew she had to rescue her – but how?
‘Mum, do you know where that truck takes all the garden rubbish when it’s been collected?’ she asked. But her mother was talking to the lady who ran the post office and didn’t reply.
An old lady who had come into the shop a few minutes after them looked up from the packets of envelopes she had been inspecting. ‘I expect they burn it,’ she told Maddie.
‘Burn it?’
‘Well, that’s what I do with my garden rubbish. But if you really want to know, why don’t you ask Jack? He’s the driver. He usually stops at the cafe round the corner to have his lunch about now. They sell nice ice creams in that cafe too. Maybe your mum’ll take you there – if she ever stops her chattering.’
That’s when Maddie realized the lady was only looking at the envelopes to fill her time while she waited for Mum to move away from the post-office counter.
‘Mum, you’re holding up the queue,’ she whispered,
tugging at her mum’s arm.
Mum turned and saw the old lady waiting behind them and immediately started to apologize.
As they left the shop together, Maddie asked, ‘Mum, please can we go and get an ice cream in the cafe before we go home?’
Mum looked at her watch. ‘I guess so. Come on then.’
When they turned the corner into the next street Maddie spotted the truck straight away, parked further up the road, where there was plenty of room for other cars to get by. The truck driver was sitting in the cafe at a table by the window, waiting for his food. Jack wasn’t too unfriendly-looking, Maddie thought, although he did have very bushy eyebrows.
While Mum was at the counter ordering an ice cream for Maddie and a cup of tea for herself, Maddie tied Milo to a table leg and watched the waitress take Jack a large fry-up. As soon as the waitress had gone, Maddie went over to Jack’s table and asked, ‘Excuse me, but what do you do with all that garden rubbish after you’ve collected it?’
‘Beg pardon,’ Jack said, cupping his ear.
Maddie had to repeat her question more loudly – which made her mum turn round and look at them.
‘I take it to the dump,’ Jack told her, through a mouthful of baked beans. ‘Then it gets recycled. Interested in waste disposal, are you?’
‘Maddie, sit down at our table and stop pestering people,’ Mum called over from the counter. She never liked it when Maddie was too friendly with strangers.
Luckily, at that moment Mum’s mobile phone rang. She fished it out of her bag and Maddie guessed that it was Dad and that he wanted to talk to Mum about Maddie’s birthday present. Maddie had asked for a bicycle, but Mum didn’t want her to have one because she thought riding bicycles, especially in the street, was too dangerous. Maddie had begged her dad to get Mum to change her mind – and judging from Mum’s side of the conversation that was what he was trying to do now. ‘But you know how I feel about that,’ Mum was saying into the phone as she came over and gave Maddie her ice-cream cone, then went back to pick up her cup of tea from the counter. ‘Look, she’s here with me now. I can’t really talk. Wait a moment while I take the phone outside.’
Maddie quickly saw her chance. ‘It’s OK, Mum. You sit down and drink your tea. I’ll take my ice cream outside.’
‘Are you sure?’
Maddie nodded.
‘Well, don’t go far. Stay on the pavement in front of the cafe.’
Maddie promised, as Mum sat down to continue her talk with Dad.
Jack seemed to be eating his lunch very quickly so Maddie knew she had to hurry. She left the cafe and ran along the pavement to reach the truck, climbing up on to the metal step at the back to see over the side. ‘Hello!’ she called out. ‘Is anyone in here?’
A muffled voice immediately came back to her. ‘Yes! I am! Oh, please help me!’
‘Are you a fairy?’
‘Yes. I’m trapped inside the green rubbish bag. Can you get me out? ’
Maddie looked at all the identical green bags and asked, ‘Which green rubbish bag?’
‘This one!’ The little voice was so muffled that Maddie guessed the fairy must be in one of the bags near the bottom of the pile.
She knew she would need to climb into the back of the truck to get to the bags, which meant unfastening the bolts that let the truck’s back section flip down. She had just managed to tug back the second bolt when an angry voice behind her made her jump.
‘Just what do you think you’re doing with my truck, young lady?’
The truck’s driver – Jack – had a dribble of egg yolk on his chin. Maddie did her best not to stare at it as she said in a small voice, ‘I’m sorry but I . . . I thought I heard someone shouting from inside your truck.’
‘Stop mumbling, can’t you?’ he grunted. ‘I can’t hear a word you’re saying. And get down from there before you do yourself an injury!’ He reached up to help her off the metal runner, but as she moved away the flap fell down and several bags of rubbish immediately toppled out after her.
‘Now look what you’ve done!’ Jack growled, pulling her out of the way of the tumbling bags.
As Jack started to lift the flap back into position Maddie saw her last chance to rescue the fairy slipping away. And for some reason she decided to blurt out the truth.
‘But there’s a fairy in one of those bags!’ she shouted (at the top of her voice so Jack couldn’t accuse her of mumbling).
To her surprise Jack instantly stopped what he was doing. ‘A fairy? Well, why didn’t you say so before?’
Maddie gaped at him.
‘Mind you, I’ve never known one end up in the garden rubbish,’ Jack continued, shaking his head. ‘Normally they’d fly away the second they saw a gardener coming. Oh well, I suppose we’d better find her then, hadn’t we?’
As he started to unload bags from his truck Maddie said, ‘I didn’t think you’d believe in fairies.’
‘Eh?’ He cupped his hand against his ear again.
‘I said, I didn’t think you’d believe in fairies!’ Maddie repeated at the top of her voice.
He chuckled. ‘Because I’m old enough to know better, you mean? It’s true that I’m a little bit deaf now, which makes it difficult for me to hear their tiny voices, but I still spot them in the woods from time to time.’
Maddie suddenly heard an indignant cry coming from the bag Jack had just pulled down from the truck. ‘Don’t bump me!’
‘She’s in that one!’ Maddie said, pointing at it.
Jack struggled to untie the bag – which had been fastened very tightly with a triple knot – and tipped the contents out on to the pavement. Just then Maddie heard Milo barking and she looked up to see her mother waving at her impatiently from along the road.
‘What are you doing there, Maddie?’ her mother yelled. ‘Come here at once!’
‘There she is!’ Jack said, glimpsing a red petal dress under a pile of leaves.
Maddie saw it too. ‘Poppy!’ she exclaimed excitedly.
‘You’d better help her out of there,’ Jack said. ‘I’ll go and speak to your mum.’
‘Mum doesn’t believe in fairies,’ Maddie warned him, but he didn’t seem to hear her.
As Jack walked off, Maddie helped Poppy out from all the leaves and grass cuttings.The fairy looked exhausted. One of the petals of her skirt had been ripped and another had come right off. There were bits of grass in her hair – which was horribly tangled – and her face was muddy and streaked with tears. Her single wing was flattened against her back.
‘What happened to you? Where are the others?’ Maddie burst out.
‘I don’t know,’ Poppy replied, starting to shiver as she saw Jack talking to Maddie’s mother in the distance. ‘I think that’s him – the man who captured us!’
‘Who? Jack?’ Maddie was surprised.
‘I don’t know his name, but you’ve got to hide me. Quick! Let me climb into your pocket.’ So Maddie quickly helped Poppy into the pocket of her cardigan.
Just then her mother came hurrying along the pavement towards her, with Jack following behind, shaking his head in an irritated manner. Milo started yapping again.
‘Maddie, I’m very cross with you,’ Mum said as soon as she reached her. ‘I’ve told you before not to speak to strangers – and that includes ones who tell you stories about fairies!’
‘But Jack’s not telling me stories,’ Maddie said. ‘I was the one who told him there was a fairy in his truck!’
‘Really?’ Mum turned to glare at Jack again. ‘Well, he’s gone a bit far in the way of humouring you, as far as I’m concerned!’
‘He’s not humouring me,’ Maddie protested. ‘Look!’ She pulled her pocket wide open for her mother to look inside, but of course it was hopeless. Mum didn’t believe in fairies so she couldn’t see anything except Maddie’s inhaler.
Jack leaned over to look in Maddie’s pocket and gave Poppy a little wave, which seemed to annoy Mum even more.
‘Come
on, Maddie. We’re going home,’ Mum said, giving Jack a disapproving glare as she took Maddie’s hand to march her away along the road.
Inside Maddie’s pocket, Poppy was starting to relax. ‘It wasn’t Jack who kidnapped me,’ she said. ‘That old man had a different face.’
Jack stood looking after them, shaking his head and tutting. In his opinion, it was a great shame that so few adults believed in fairies. Then he slowly began to load up his truck with all the bags that were on the pavement, ready to take them off to the local dump.
‘She’s completely obsessed with all this fairy nonsense,’ Maddie heard her mother telling her grandparents after they arrived home. Maddie was on her way up to her room, but she made sure she paused at the bottom of the stairs to listen to what the grown-ups were saying about her.
‘She’s at that age,’ Grandma said. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it. Our Rachel was just the same.’
‘You were probably the exception rather than the rule, not to ever believe in fairies,’ Grandpa added. There was a chuckle in his voice as he asked, ‘Did she really get Jack to unload his whole truck?’
‘She picked the right person there,’ Grandma said. ‘Jack’s whole family is completely eccentric. I told him the other day he should go to the doctor and get his hearing checked, but apparently his mother – who has to be ninety, at least – is brewing him up some ancient herbal remedy to improve his hearing instead. And it’s a remedy recommended by the little folk, no less.’
‘You shouldn’t knock the old remedies,’ Grandpa chided her. ‘Some of them are just the ticket – though I don’t know about the little folk having anything to do with them.’
‘Well, I reckon all he needs is to get his ears syringed,’ Grandma continued. ‘When you had yours done last year it was truly incredible the amount of wax that came out of them.’
Mum laughed and sounded much more relaxed, so Maddie left the grown-ups talking and continued up the stairs. Poppy was getting fidgety inside her pocket, and as soon as they reached her bedroom Maddie placed her on the bed. There the fairy flung herself down on her back, stretched her arms out behind her and gave a huge sigh of relief.
