by Gwyneth Rees
Maddie looked at Poppy, thinking she would be thrilled by Queen Eldora’s idea, but instead Poppy was looking alarmed. ‘A false wing doesn’t sound very nice,’ she said doubtfully.
‘Nonsense!’ Queen Eldora said briskly. ‘They work very nicely indeed if you spend some time learning how to use them.’
‘They’re probably not very pretty though, are they?’ Poppy mumbled under her breath.
‘It sounds like a marvellous idea to me, Poppy,’ Queen Flora said enthusiastically. ‘Though as I said just now, I had no idea that tooth fairies had such things!’ She said it a little accusingly, as if she was still feeling a bit miffed that the tooth-fairy queen hadn’t told her about her Wing Room before.
‘Everything in Tooth-fairy Land is a closely guarded secret,’ Queen Eldora said firmly, ‘but if you had told me before that you had a fairy with only one wing, then of course I would have offered to help her.’
‘Well, at least she can be helped now,’ Queen Mae put in quickly. ‘Can you take her to Tooth-fairy Land tonight and fit her with a false wing so that she can wear it tomorrow?’
‘Of course.’
But Poppy still looked worried. ‘I don’t know that I want a false wing,’ she said. ‘What will the other fairies say if I have a wing that’s different to theirs? They might laugh at me – especially if I can’t manage to fly very well with it.’
‘That sounds like a very silly argument to me,’ Queen Eldora replied impatiently. ‘Surely having only one wing makes you different from the others in any case?’
‘Yes, but everyone’s used to me being like this. And . . . and . . . I’m used to it.’ Poppy hung her head. ‘Anyway, I don’t want to go to Tooth-fairy Land tonight,’ she said stubbornly. ‘I want to stay here.’
Maddie thought she understood a bit of what Poppy was feeling. She remembered the first time she had used her inhaler in school – how worried she had been that people would stare at her.
‘Why don’t you give Poppy some time to think about it,’ she said. ‘And I’d really like it if she stayed here with me tonight. If she wants to, I mean.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Poppy responded, nodding enthusiastically.
‘Very well, but only if you both agree to go straight back to bed and get plenty of sleep,’ Queen Flora said. ‘You both have an important day ahead.’
‘You mean I am allowed to go with Maddie to catch the kidnapper?’ Poppy blurted.
‘Yes,’ Queen Flora replied. ‘Maddie is right – even though you can’t fly, you are still the best fairy for the job. But Opal must go with you. Once you have identified the kidnapper, Opal can follow him.’
‘We’ll go straight to bed now, I promise, though I think I’m too excited to fall asleep again!’ Maddie exclaimed.
‘Falling asleep is easy,’ Queen Amethyst told her briskly. ‘All you have to do is read the right book.’
‘The right book?’ Maddie stifled a yawn.
Opal giggled. ‘She means a boring one, of course!‘
‘Or if you prefer I can hum you to sleep with a dream-fairy lullaby,’ Queen Celeste suggested. ‘That is much pleasanter than reading a boring book.’
Queen Amethyst gave her a glare. ‘Reading a book is a far more natural method for humans to get to sleep,’ she said firmly.
‘Uh . . . I think I’d rather just get to sleep on my own, thanks,’ Maddie interrupted them quickly, beginning to see why different fairy types might not always get on. ‘Come on, Poppy.’ She crouched and lifted Poppy up on to her shoulder.
‘Sleep well, Maddie,’ Queen Flora told her. ‘And take good care of Poppy, won’t you?’
‘We’ll take care of each other,’ Maddie said firmly, and she waved goodnight to Opal and the fairy queens as she headed back inside the house with her friend.
Poppy told Maddie that she wanted to sleep on the inside window sill, with the curtains open so she could look up at the stars.
‘Aren’t you afraid you’ll roll over in the night and fall off?’ Maddie asked as she folded up a fluffy hand towel to make a soft mattress for Poppy to lie on.
‘No. Why? Are you afraid you’ll roll over in the night and fall off your bed?’
‘I suppose the window sill is as wide as a bed if you’re fairy-sized,’ Maddie agreed, seeing her point. But she put a pillow on the floor under the window just in case. After all, a window ledge was a lot higher than a bed if you happened to fall off it, especially if you were fairy-sized.
As Maddie and Poppy lay in their respective beds, Maddie plucked up the courage to ask the question she had wanted to ask Poppy for ages. ‘I’ve been wondering . . .’ she began. ‘How can a fairy be born with just one wing?’
Poppy sighed. ‘Queen Flora says that it’s very unusual and that it hardly ever happens, but something went wrong with me when I was in the process of being made. You see, fairies are made from bundles of joy that are brought to fairyland by special doves. The white doves deliver the bundles to the fairy nursery, where they grow into fairy babies.’
‘That’s amazing!’
‘Anyway, the white dove who was delivering my bundle of joy had an accident on the way,’ Poppy continued.
‘What sort of accident?’
‘We don’t know exactly, but Queen Flora says that when the dove arrived she was very upset and said that her bundle of joy had fallen to the ground during the flight and that she feared it was damaged.’
‘That’s terrible. But couldn’t the fairies use their magic to make you better?’
‘Queen Flora says that no magic is more powerful than the beginning magic. That’s the magic that creates a fairy in the first place, and if anything goes wrong with that, Queen Flora says you can’t do anything except take very good care of the baby fairy and just wait and see. And with me they soon saw that I was only ever going to grow one wing.’
‘There was a girl in the next bed to me in hospital,’ Maddie said slowly. ‘She only had one hand. I thought she’d been in an accident or something, but she said she had been born that way.’
‘Really?’ Poppy looked very interested now. ‘I didn’t realize that sort of thing could happen to children as well as to fairies.’
‘She was very brave about it,’ Maddie told her. ‘And she had an artificial hand that could do lots of things.’
‘An artificial hand? Really? What did it look like?’ Poppy was sitting up on the edge of the window ledge now. ‘Did it look like a real hand?’
‘Not exactly like a real one,’ Maddie answered truthfully, ‘but it looked fine. And she said it was much better than not having a hand at all.’
Poppy looked thoughtful. ‘I couldn’t believe it when Queen Eldora said she could give me a false wing. And when she offered to take me away with her to Tooth-fairy Land and completely change me overnight, I felt scared. Do you think that’s silly?’
‘Of course not,’ Maddie said. ‘It’s very scary, having to go to a place you’ve never been before and get a new wing that will change how you look and everything . . . even if there is a chance that you’ll be able to fly afterwards . . . which would be totally amazing of course . . .’
Poppy didn’t speak for a few moments. Then she said, ‘I guess it would be amazing to be able to fly, wouldn’t it?’
‘I think so,’ Maddie agreed.
‘I think maybe I will think a bit more about Queen Eldora’s offer,’ Poppy said, lying back down on her bed again. ‘But not now . . . maybe tomorrow . . .’
‘I suppose we ought to get some sleep now,’ Maddie said. But she had one more question before she closed her eyes. ‘You know how you were telling me about the white doves bringing bundles of joy to the fairies so they can turn them into fairy babies? Well, where do the doves get the bundles from exactly?’
Maddie waited, but Poppy didn’t reply.
‘Poppy?’ Maddie hissed into the dark. ‘You can’t have fallen asleep already!’
‘It’s a secret where the bundles of joy come from,’ Poppy whi
spered back – and with that she shut her eyes and wouldn’t say another word.
The following morning while they were having breakfast (Poppy was sitting next to Maddie’s plate eating little pieces of toast and jam that Maddie kept breaking off for her) the doorbell rang.
Grandma went to answer it and to everyone’s surprise it turned out to be Horace Hatter. ‘Horace has brought back Maddie’s library book,’ Grandma said.
Sure enough, tucked under his arm was the book on butterflies which Maddie had taken out of the library. She had forgotten all about it.
‘You left it on my hall table,’ Horace grunted.
‘Thank you,’ Maddie said, standing up to take it from him. He must know that she knew that the fairies had paid him a visit, she thought, but his expression wasn’t giving anything away. She noticed that Poppy had hidden behind the jam jar, despite knowing now that Horace wasn’t the kidnapper.
Horace turned to Grandpa next. ‘I’d like to apologize about your mother’s ornament. I never should have taken it.’
‘So why did you?’ Grandpa asked bluntly.
‘I was desperate to please my mother, I suppose,’ Horace said.
There was an awkward silence while Grandpa continued to scowl at Horace.
‘So did you please her?’ Maddie asked politely, when it seemed nobody else was going to speak.
Horace turned to her and slowly nodded. ‘I think so. She wasn’t an easy person to please, but she was happy that day, all right. I told her I’d found the ornament in a second-hand shop.’
‘She must have known where it really came from,’ Grandpa said sharply.
Horace nodded. ‘I suppose she just chose to turn a blind eye. She was very passionate about her ornament collection, you see. More interested in that than anything else really – that and her bird collection, of course. I always reckoned her collections mattered to her even more than I did!’ He gave a self-conscious little laugh.
‘Your whole family was obsessed with collecting things,’ Grandpa grunted. ‘Completely bonkers, the lot of you, if you ask me.’
Maddie thought that sounded quite rude and she was starting to feel sorry for Mr Hatter. She was imagining what he must have felt like when he was a boy, having a mother and father who were more interested in their various collections than in him. ‘I’m glad you let all the birds out of their cages after your mother died,’ she told him.
Horace looked surprised, and her mother and grandparents stared at her.
‘How do you know Mr Hatter did that, Maddie?’ Mum asked.
She realized then that she only knew because the fairies had told her. ‘Er . . .’
Luckily Horace started speaking again immediately. ‘The only problem with me doing that was that those birds wouldn’t be used to fending for themselves. Goodness knows what became of them all. I didn’t think about that when I let them go.’
‘Why did you let them go?’ Maddie asked curiously.
‘Oh, I don’t know. I just had this feeling that it was time they had their freedom, I suppose.’
‘Well, they were very grateful,’ Poppy piped up, stepping out from behind the pot of jam so that Horace could see her. ‘We fairies looked out for them and helped them find new homes in the woods. Most of them settled in very well, although two of the canaries decided they wanted to emigrate to a warmer country so I’m not sure what became of them.’
Horace was staring at Poppy. He seemed about to answer her so Maddie cut in quickly, ‘Mr Hatter, are you going into the village just now? If you are, I’d like to come with you.’
‘Maddie!’ Mum said sharply. ‘You know you can’t go off into the village on your own.’
‘I won’t be on my own. I’ll be with Mr Hatter.’
Maddie’s mother and grandparents looked at each other, clearly not considering Mr Hatter to be a suitable companion, but not liking to say so in front of him.
‘Why don’t you go too?’ Grandma said to Grandpa, giving him a nudge with her elbow. ‘It’s about time you and Horace made friends after all these years.’
Grandpa looked dubious, but Maddie had jumped out of her seat and was halfway to the door. Before anyone could say anything else, she had rushed upstairs to get her cardigan and her inhaler.
Poppy leaped on to her shoulder as soon as she came down to the kitchen again, and when Grandpa had finished his coffee they all set off. Milo, who had been let out into the garden while they were having breakfast, came too.
When they got outside they found Opal sitting on a wall waiting for them. ‘We stayed over with Queen Flora last night,’ she said. ‘The fairy queens made me go to bed as soon as we got back and then they stayed up talking for the rest of the night, so now they’re so tired they’ve had to go for morning naps. Here, Poppy.’ She handed Poppy a tiny gold bag. ‘Queen Flora sent you some fairy dust in case you need it.’
As they walked along the road Grandpa and Horace started talking about the old days, and Maddie hung back to talk to Poppy and Opal, who were now each sitting in one of her pockets. Poppy was sitting astride Maddie’s inhaler, complaining that it didn’t make a very comfortable seat, and Opal suggested she use her bag of fairy dust as a cushion.
‘What can you actually do with fairy dust?’ Maddie asked them curiously.
‘Oh, lots of things,’ Poppy replied. ‘But one of the things is that it stops bird-lime being sticky. We were always rescuing birds who were stuck to trees back in the old days when there were more trappers about.’
When they reached the village Grandpa stopped at the post office and tied Milo up outside, and Horace said he was going straight to the cafe to have his breakfast. Maddie guessed that it was time to do what she had come here to do, which was to tell as many people as possible about the fact that she had a fairy queen. But how was she going to do that in front of Grandpa without him thinking she had gone totally mad?
‘Opal, I think we’d better split up,’ she whispered. ‘You go with Horace and tell him to spread the news about my fairy queen in the cafe. Poppy and I will stay here with Grandpa.’
So Opal flew off after Horace, and Maddie followed Grandpa into the post office, where she was surprised to find Jack, the driver of the garden-refuse truck.
‘How’s your mother?’ Grandpa was asking him, speaking extra loudly.
‘I’m just about to pop in and see her now,’ Jack answered. ‘She’s not bad for ninety-four, though she’s being driven mad by my brother Ted at the moment. He came to visit nearly a month ago and he’s not showing any signs of leaving.’ Jack suddenly noticed Maddie and said, ‘Hello again, young lady.’ And he started to tell Grandpa how he had helped her rescue a fairy from the back of his truck.
Grandpa listened and nodded politely, even though Maddie knew he didn’t believe a word of it, finally cutting in with, ‘I saw Ted out in the woods last week, as a matter of fact. I said hello, but I don’t think he recognised me. It’s been years since we met.’
‘Too busy looking for fairies most likely – though I bet they don’t stick around for long if they see him first!’
Maddie’s ears immediately pricked up. ‘Why wouldn’t they want to stick around if they saw him?’
Jack grimaced. ‘Oh, our Ted’s always been a bit strange . . . a bit of a cold fish, if you like. All he’s ever been interested in is making money – he’s always got one money-making scheme or other on the go. He seems to be getting worse as he gets older. At the moment my mother says he’s been acting very secretive and spending a lot of time up in her attic. She’s sure he’s up to no good in there.’
‘Jack, is your brother an old man?’ Maddie asked, holding her breath.
Jack chuckled. ‘Well, I don’t reckon he’d think so, but he’ll be seventy-five next year. He’s ten years older than me.’
‘And do you collect garden rubbish from your mother’s garden as well as everybody else’s?’ Maddie asked excitedly.
‘What’s this, Maddie? Twenty questions?’ Grandpa put in
, but Jack answered her anyway.
‘Of course I do – if there is any. I always stop at my mother’s place for a cup of tea before I start work if I’m over this way.’
‘Will you tell your brother . . .’ Maddie began nervously, ‘. . . will you tell him that I’ve been looking for fairies in the woods too, and that I’ve . . . I’ve found a fairy queen and that she’s . . . she’s . . . staying with me at the moment.’
‘Is she indeed?’ Jack sounded impressed. ‘Is this special treatment you’re getting on account of rescuing that fairy the other day then?’
Grandpa was shaking his head in disbelief. ‘What will you think of next, Maddie?’
The lady who ran the post office had heard her too, and now she started asking Maddie to describe this fairy queen, though it didn’t sound to Maddie as if she really believed in fairies any more than Grandpa did.
They were still talking about it when the next customer walked into the shop, and straight away Maddie saw that he was an elderly man who looked very similar to Jack.
‘Ted,’ Jack said immediately, ‘I was just coming to see you and Mother.’
‘Where’s this girl who says she’s got a fairy queen?’ Ted demanded. ‘I’ve just been in the cafe and they’re all talking about it in there.’
As Poppy peered out over the side of Maddie’s pocket she let out a frightened gasp – and Maddie knew that they had finally found their kidnapper.
Ted did look very much like Jack, Maddie thought, only a lot older and not nearly as friendly. No wonder Poppy had mistaken Jack for her captor when she’d first seen him from behind.
‘I’m the one with the fairy queen,’ she said loudly – just in case Ted was hard of hearing like his brother.
But Grandpa intervened then, putting a protective hand on Maddie’s shoulder as Ted took a step towards her. ‘There’s no need to get all fired up now, Ted. Maddie’s got a very active imagination, that’s all. It’s just a game about fairies she’s been playing. She didn’t mean any harm.’
