Fairy Rescue

by Gwyneth Rees

  ‘A game?’ Ted was looking directly at her.

  ‘Grandpa just thinks that because he doesn’t believe in fairies,’ Maddie told Ted, trying not to sound as nervous as she felt.

  ‘Maddie . . .’ Grandpa was starting to sound impatient.

  Ted stood where he was, staring at Maddie for several moments before glancing again at Maddie’s grandfather and leaving abruptly.

  Horace had followed Ted from the cafe and was waiting just outside the door. As soon as Ted left the shop, Opal peered out from behind Horace’s shoulder and Milo started yapping loudly.

  ‘He’s the one, Opal,’ Poppy hissed at her. ‘You’d better follow him! But don’t let him see you!’

  ‘Where do you think he’s going?’ Maddie asked Jack.

  ‘Back home to my mother’s, I imagine.’

  Suddenly Maddie heard Horace asking, ‘Do you think your mother would mind if I paid her a visit? There’s a potion I need that I think she might have.’

  Grandpa, who was sceptical of all remedies that didn’t come via the chemist’s shop, let out a little snigger. ‘Got a wart you think the fairies might have a cure for, have you, Horace?’ he teased, but Horace ignored him.

  ‘Can Grandpa and I come too?’ Maddie asked quickly.

  ‘Of course! That would be grand!’ Jack replied enthusiastically. ‘Some fresh faces are just what she needs to take her mind off Ted.’

  ‘I’m not sure that Horace and I are all that fresh-faced . . .’ Grandpa began drily.

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ Horace retorted. And to Maddie’s surprise, he actually gave a little chuckle.

  ‘We can’t stay long,’ Grandpa said as Jack ushered them in through his mother’s front door. Milo was left in the front garden with the gate closed and he immediately rushed up to the window and started barking. But they soon saw that he was barking at the cat on the window ledge, rather than at any fairies.

  Jack’s mother’s house was dark with low ceilings and a strong smell of old cooking. As soon as the old lady had finished welcoming them, she turned to Jack and said in an anxious voice, ‘He came in just before you and went straight up to the attic. I keep asking him what he’s got up there but he won’t tell me. He knows I can’t get up there myself. I need you to go and see what he’s doing, Jack.’

  Jack sighed. ‘Do you want me to go now?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Can I go too?’ Maddie asked, but Grandpa immediately glared at her and told her not to be so nosey.

  As Maddie sat on the edge of her seat, certain that Jack was about to find the fairies up in the attic, Horace started to ask Jack’s mother if she had ever come across a recipe for bird-lime.

  ‘Well, it’s funny you should ask that . . .’ And she told them she had found one only a couple of weeks before, written on the back of another old recipe she was using.

  ‘Did Ted see it too?’ Maddie asked.

  ‘He was here when I found it, yes. The funny thing is that it disappeared that same day. I’d left it in the kitchen in the afternoon and when I went back in there that evening I couldn’t find it again. I know it’s a bad recipe and I meant to destroy it, but I couldn’t until I’d copied out the one on the other side of the paper.’

  Maddie looked at Horace. It was all fitting together now.

  Jack came back into the room then, looking frustrated. ‘He’s locked the attic door from the inside. I can’t get in.’

  ‘Oh, I dare say he’ll come down when he’s hungry,’ Jack’s mother said. ‘You may as well wait till then, I suppose. Go and put the kettle on, will you, Jack? I’ve a nice fruit cake in that tin on top of the fridge.’

  Maddie could feel Poppy fidgeting inside her pocket. Then she saw Opal out of the corner of her eye, waving to her from the doorway, taking care not to be spotted by any of the adults in the room who believed in fairies.

  ‘Can I use your bathroom, please?’ Maddie asked Jack’s mother politely.

  ‘Of course, dear. It’s upstairs, straight ahead across the landing.’

  Maddie left the room, hoping that the tea and cake would keep the grown-ups distracted for a while. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Jack and his mother to help her if she told them the truth, but she had a feeling it would be easier to trick Ted into letting her into the attic.

  As Maddie passed through the hall she glanced into the kitchen and saw some shelves with lots of different-coloured bottles lined up along them. Those must be all the potions and remedies that Jack’s mother made, Maddie thought. And on one side of the room Maddie saw a large white sink – just like the one Poppy had described her kidnapper using.

  Opal was hovering in the air beside the ladder that led up to the loft room, the door to which had been firmly closed. ‘I’m sure the kidnapped fairies must be up there,’ she whispered, ‘but that horrible old man is in there too.’

  ‘Ted!’ Maddie called out – as quietly as she could so that the adults downstairs wouldn’t hear. ‘Do you want to buy my fairy queen?’

  As Maddie had predicted, it didn’t take long for Ted to unlock the door and peer down at her. ‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ He had a greedy gleam in his eye as he asked, ‘Have you got her with you?’

  ‘No, but I can go and fetch her.’

  ‘How much do you want for her?’

  ‘I’ll tell you after I’ve seen your collection of fairies.’

  Ted looked wary. ‘You’re saying you just want to see them and then you’ll sell her to me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Wait a minute.’ Ted came down the ladder – taking care to shut the loft door behind him. ‘Empty out your pockets,’ he told her gruffly. ‘I don’t want you sneaking any fairy dust or other trickery into my loft.’

  Maddie lifted Poppy out of her cardigan pocket along with her inhaler, and turned the other pocket inside out to show it was empty.

  ‘You again!’ Ted exclaimed, staring at Poppy. ‘How did you get out of that sack?’

  ‘I found her!’ Maddie told him. Then she realized she couldn’t sound too much like a friend of the fairies if she was going to make Ted believe she was willing to hand over her fairy queen to him. ‘I’m trying to find someone to sell her to as well.’

  Ted sneered at her. ‘Well, I only want fairies with two wings, thanks! And she can stay down here when you come and look in my loft.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Maddie said. ‘She’s got to stay in my pocket. Otherwise she might run away.’

  ‘You bet I’ll run away!’ Poppy added obligingly. ‘Just because you rescued me from that rubbish bag doesn’t mean you own me now. I keep telling you that!’ She scowled at Maddie.

  ‘All right, you can bring her with you,’ Ted grunted, ‘but I’ll check her pockets too.’

  Maddie put back her inhaler and held Poppy up in the air so the fairy could empty out her pockets in front ofTed.Unfortunately Poppy had no time to conceal the bag of fairy dust and Ted grabbed it greedily.

  As he touched it, the gold bag started to glow.

  ‘What’s it doing?’ Ted demanded, starting to look worried.

  ‘Fairy dust self-destructs if it gets into the hands of a bad human,’ Poppy told him smugly.

  And as she spoke the tiny bag exploded into a mass of gold sparks which fizzed around Ted’s face like a swarm of wasps.

  ‘Get them away from me, you fairy minx!’ Ted spluttered.

  ‘Opal, go and tell Queen Flora where we are,’ Maddie called out as she started to climb up the ladder with Poppy on her shoulder.

  It was only then that Maddie remembered Queen Flora’s instruction that she wasn’t to chase after the kidnapper herself in case he was dangerous. But it was too late for that now. Ted was still busy trying to bat the prickly gold stars away from his eyes as she hauled herself up into the loft and closed the door behind her, quickly pulling the bolt across.

  She found herself in a large attic room which had two windows in the roof, both of which were shut. The room was almost bare except for fo
ur small birdcages sitting in a row on the floor. And unlike the birdcages in Mr Hatter’s house, these ones weren’t empty.

  Maddie spotted Daisy and Primrose straight away. They had been placed together in one of the cages and now they were standing rattling the bars to get out. Next to their cage was another one that held a pretty blonde fairy in a pale blue dress. Two fairies in white dresses were calling to her from the third cage, and in the cage next to them was a very frightened-looking fairy in a bright green dress who Maddie guessed must be Emerald, the missing book fairy.

  Poppy, who had remained on Maddie’s shoulder until now shouted, ‘Quick – put me down on the floor so I can go to them!’

  Maddie set Poppy down in front of the cages and as she examined the door of the first one, she found to her surprise that it only had a very simple locking mechanism. There was something sticky on the lock though, and Maddie immediately saw why the fairies had been unable to lift the catches on their cages to let themselves out. All of the catches were smeared with bird-lime.

  As she set to work undoing them, making her own hands sticky in the process, she heard Ted rapping on the other side of the loft door. He had obviously managed to escape from the explosion of fairy dust and had climbed up the ladder. ‘I’m going to fetch your grandfather if you don’t come out,’ he hissed at her. ‘Then you’ll be for it!’

  Maddie realized that Ted was probably right. She was going to be in big trouble, especially as Grandpa wasn’t going to believe her story that she had shut herself in the loft in order to rescue some fairies. But there was nothing she could do except hope for the best. Though if Ted kept making this much noise, the other grown-ups were bound to come upstairs to see what was happening sooner rather than later.

  ‘Help them out of the cages, Poppy. But make sure you don’t touch the bird-lime. I’ll undo the windows and they can fly away.’

  ‘They can’t fly,’ Poppy said. ‘Look!’

  Maddie turned to see that all the fairies’ wings were covered in the same sticky green substance that had been on the cage doors.

  ‘The old man put bird-lime on our wings so they’d stick together and we wouldn’t be able to escape,’ Daisy told them. ‘None of us can fly now.’

  Maddie immediately started to look around the loft for any sign of a sink or some water to wash off the bird-lime – but there was none.

  ‘Haven’t you brought any fairy dust with you?’ Primrose asked Poppy.

  ‘The old man found it, but don’t worry. I’ve never been able to fly and that’s never stopped me getting where I want to go. Maddie, open the window and lift me up.’

  Maddie opened one of the skylight windows and lifted Poppy up on the palm of her hand. She watched as the fairy stood balanced on the window frame, looking out into the afternoon sky. Almost immediately Poppy started whistling and waving her arms in the air as if she was trying to attract someone’s attention.

  ‘Are you hoping another fairy will see you?’ Maddie asked. ‘Opal will have gone to fetch the others, I expect, but I don’t suppose they’ll be able to get here for a while yet.’

  ‘I know,’ Poppy said. ‘I’m not looking for a fairy.’

  Suddenly a fat female starling landed on the roof beside the window, and Maddie realized at once what Poppy’s plan was. The starling chirped at her and Poppy chirped back urgently in her best bird language. Then the starling flew straight off again towards a nearby tree.

  ‘Don’t tell me she won’t help because she’s got to feed her babies,’ Maddie gasped in dismay.

  ‘No – don’t worry. She’s just gone to fetch some of her friends. Lift me back down to the floor again, will you, Maddie?’

  The other fairies gathered round Poppy as she told them what was going to happen.

  ‘The starlings will fly us straight to the fairy grove and we’ll soon wash the bird-lime off your wings. But we must make sure we keep your sticky wings away from the starlings’ feathers or they won’t be able to fly either.’

  ‘Poppy, you have to find Opal and Queen Flora and let them know that everyone is safe,’ Maddie said. ‘Otherwise they’ll come here looking for you and Ted might catch them instead.’

  ‘We’ll let them know straight away,’ Poppy said. ‘Don’t worry about that. But what about you? Won’t you be in trouble if you get found here?’

  ‘Probably, but there’s nothing I can do about that.’

  Just then they heard footsteps on the landing below. ‘Maddie? Are you up in that loft?’ This time it was Grandpa, not Ted.

  ‘Don’t answer him,’ Poppy whispered. ‘I’ve got an idea!’

  Suddenly there was a draught above them and a mad flapping of wings, as four starlings flew in through the open window to land on the loft floor.

  ‘Quick!’ Poppy cried out. ‘Everybody climb on to a bird and hold on tight!’

  Primrose and Daisy climbed on the back of the first bird and clutched its feathers very tightly as it took off. The two tooth fairies jumped on to the back of the next bird and did the same. The dream fairy climbed up on to the third bird but Emerald, the book fairy, seemed too scared to join her.

  ‘What if I fall off?’ she said nervously.

  ‘You won’t so long as you hold on tight,’ Poppy said firmly, and she shoved Emerald on to the back of the bird and told it to go.

  Just as it was flying up and out of the window, they heard Grandpa’s voice directly beneath them, sounding very stern now. ‘Maddie, if you’re up there—’

  ‘Of course she’s up there!’ Ted’s voice cut in angrily.

  Maddie sighed. ‘I guess it’s time for me to let them in.’

  ‘I don’t see why you should,’ Poppy replied. ‘Take some puffs of your inhaler instead.’

  ‘But I’m not breathless!’ Maddie said, though judging by the way her heart was beating she reckoned she soon would be.

  ‘No, but if you want Ted to look really stupid, and you don’t want to get into any trouble, you should do it!’

  And although Maddie still didn’t know what Poppy was talking about, something about the way she said it made her take out her inhaler and breathe in two puffs.

  ‘I used some of that fairy dust to make a shrinking spell while I was inside your pocket,’ Poppy told her. ‘I thought you might need one today, so I put it inside your inhaler. Normally we just sprinkle shrinking spells over children’s heads, but I reckoned it would work even faster if you actually breathed it in.’

  Even as she spoke Maddie started to feel dizzy. A weird tingling feeling was spreading across her body and her vision seemed to be going blurry.

  ‘Shut your eyes. It’s easier if you do,’ Poppy instructed.

  Ted and Grandpa were still shouting through the door at her as Maddie closed her eyes and felt her body tingling even more. It wasn’t an unpleasant feeling – just a very odd one – and when she opened her eyes again she could hardly believe it. The loft was so huge it was unrecognizable and Poppy was the same size as Maddie. Even more alarming was the fact that the starling was the size of a small pony and its beak seemed very large and sharp.

  ‘It’s made you shrink down to the same size as a fairy, that’s all,’ Poppy said. ‘Don’t worry. It will wear off in a few minutes.’

  Then Poppy was jumping on to the starling’s back and pulling Maddie up to sit behind her. And before Maddie knew what was happening, the bird took off with a chirp and flew up out of the loft and into the sky.

  Everything went a bit crazy in Jack’s mother’s house after that. Rather unexpectedly, Ted got into such a frenzy that he called the local police and told them that some valuable property was in the process of being stolen from him. As the policeman arrived in his car, Maddie appeared from the back garden where she told everyone she had gone to get some fresh air. (She was now her normal size again, having been delivered safely back to earth by the starling.)

  ‘You mean you weren’t up in the loft at all?’ Grandpa exclaimed.

  ‘Who said I was up
in the loft?’ Maddie asked, doing her best to sound surprised.

  Then Grandpa was turning on Ted and accusing him of lying, and Jack was explaining to the policeman that there had been a bit of a misunderstanding.

  ‘At least there’s no harm done,’ Horace said, looking like he was quite enjoying all the excitement.

  ‘Yes, there is,’ Ted shouted, glaring at Maddie. ‘She’s stolen all my fairies!’

  Everyone stared at him. ‘What fairies?’ Jack asked.

  ‘The fairies I was going to sell on the Internet of course!’ He sounded furious.

  The policeman and Grandpa exchanged looks.

  ‘Perhaps I should come in and have a word, sir,’ the policeman said to Ted. ‘Claiming you’ve got fairies to sell over the Internet sounds rather fraudulent to me.’ He gave Grandpa a wink as he guided Ted back into the house to question him some more.

  ‘Come on, Maddie. I think it’s time we went home,’ Grandpa said, and Horace asked if he could walk back with them.

  On the way Maddie slipped her hand into Grandpa’s and said, ‘I’m really sorry if I worried you, Grandpa.’

  ‘It’s my own fault, I suppose. I never even thought to check the garden. I just assumed you were in the loft like Ted said.’

  ‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Maddie told him firmly.

  ‘That policeman will have a fine story to tell his friends, in any case!’ Horace said.

  ‘He will that,’ Grandpa agreed.

  And after a moment or two, they all started to laugh.

  That evening Maddie was looking out of the kitchen window as she helped Grandma with the dishes when she saw something glowing at the bottom of the garden. She guessed straight away that it was a fairy and she quickly finished drying the last few plates and went outside to look.

  As she got closer she saw that the glow was rainbow-coloured and she found Queen Flora standing on the garden fence, waiting for her.

  ‘Did all the fairies get home all right?’ Maddie asked. ‘And did you manage to wash the bird-lime off their wings?’