by Gwyneth Rees
‘Buttercup!’ Grandma gasped. ‘How wonderful to see you! You haven’t changed a bit!’
Buttercup inspected Grandma closely and replied, ‘You have. Look at all those wrinkles.’
Evie thought that was a very rude thing for a fairy to say, but it seemed to make Grandma laugh. ‘Well, I’m twice the age I was when we first met. And humans do get wrinkly when they get old – unlike fairies!’
‘Is that daughter of yours wrinkly too? The one who lost all her fairy sense.’
Grandma laughed again. ‘I don’t think she’d like to be called wrinkly.’ She pointed to Evie. ‘This is her daughter, who has plenty of fairy sense. Evie has a present for you and the other flower fairies, don’t you, Evie?’
Evie couldn’t think what Grandma meant at first. Then she remembered her doll’s house, which she still hadn’t set up at the bottom of Grandma’s garden. She started to describe it to Buttercup but the fairy interrupted her.
‘I’ve already seen it. You left your window open one night so I flew in and had a look.’
‘That was you?’
‘I was going to come out and say hello but then your mother came downstairs. Did you really bring it for us?’
Evie nodded.
‘Evie, why don’t you put it at the bottom of my garden tomorrow?’ Grandma said. ‘Then Buttercup and her friends will have plenty of time to play in it before the summer ends and it gets too cold.’
Evie promised that she would.
As they all sat drinking tea and eating cake together, Evie knew that she was going to have to leave the fairy garden soon, but she didn’t know how she was going to be able to say goodbye to Grandma. To make matters worse, she was going to have to say goodbye to Star and Moonbeam and Queen Celeste as well. Now that Grandma’s brass bed was no longer magical, Evie wouldn’t be able to meet up with her dream-fairy friends again.
‘I think you’ll probably see us again, one day,’ Queen Celeste replied, when Evie said what she was thinking. ‘There are still a few magic beds about, you know. I’m sure if you don’t lose your fairy sense, then you’ll come across another one. And there’s a magic bed in hospital now, thanks to you. All the patients who believe in fairies are going to get a lovely surprise.’
‘Here,’ Star said, handing her a tiny star-shaped hair clip just like her own. ‘It’s not a real star, but it will remind you of me.’
‘And here’s one to remind you of me,’ Moonbeam said, giving her a second hair clip which was moon-shaped.
‘They’re beautiful. Thank you so much,’ Evie said. As she took the tiny hair clips in her hand they started to sparkle.
‘They do that because they’ve got fairy dust on them,’ Moonbeam explained. ‘When you get home they’ll become human-sized so you can actually wear them.’
‘I’ll wear them lots,’ Evie promised.
‘Let’s leave Evie to say goodbye to her grandmother now,’ Queen Celeste said.
After the fairies had gone, Evie turned to face Grandma. Now that she was on her own with her for the last time, she couldn’t think of anything to say.
‘I’m sorry, Evie,’ Grandma said softly. ‘I know it’s hard. Remember what I said, though. I’ll always be with you in here.’ She touched Evie’s head very gently.
‘But it won’t be the same.’
‘No, of course it won’t. And it’s going to hurt for a while. But then it will get easier, I promise.’ Grandma gave Evie one last kiss. ‘It’s nearly morning now, my darling, so it’s time for you to go.’
‘But what about you, Grandma?’
‘Oh, don’t you worry about me. I don’t have to go anywhere. I’m going to stay here and finish my tea.’
Evie saw that the fairies were all flying back into the garden now. The fairy who had played the lullaby in Queen Celeste’s palace was with them – and she had brought her harp.
Evie was woken by a knock on her door. She opened her eyes and found that she was back in the big brass bed in Harry’s house. It was morning.
The door opened and Mum and Dad came in.
‘Dad!’ She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed him.
As Dad sat with his arm around her, Mum gently told her that Grandma had died an hour ago. They had both been with her.
‘She died very peacefully, in her sleep,’ Dad added.
Mum looked like she was doing her best to put on a brave face for Evie’s sake, but Evie could tell that she had only just stopped crying. ‘Margaret’s making us some tea downstairs. Are you hungry? Do you want some breakfast?’
Evie shook her head. She still felt full from all the cake she had eaten in the middle of the night. As Evie thought of Grandma sitting drinking tea in the fairy dream garden, she wished that Mum had been able to see her like that too. Maybe then she wouldn’t feel quite so bad. Perhaps if she tried to tell her about it . . .
‘I had a lovely dream about Grandma,’ she began.
But before she could continue, Mum was saying, ‘I was just telling Dad about my dream. After you’d gone I dozed off again and I dreamt that Grandma was in a beautiful yellow garden drinking tea and eating cakes. She asked me to join her so I sat down beside her and we . . . well . . . we got to say all the things we wanted to say to each other.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Dreams really are amazing things.’
‘Was your head resting on Grandma’s bed while you were sleeping?’ Evie asked her.
‘Yes. Why?’
Evie didn’t reply. She couldn’t help smiling. Mum must have had a bit of fairy sense left after all, so that when she’d fallen asleep on the magic bed she’d been able to visit Grandma in the dream garden too.
Dad was pointing to something on Harry’s dressing table. ‘Look at those. Primroses – at this time of year. I wonder where they came from.’
Evie looked over at the dressing table and saw that the bunch of primroses Grandma had picked for her was lying there. The flowers were tied together with a yellow ribbon. ‘They’re mine,’ she said quickly.
‘They’re very pretty,’ Mum said. ‘I’ve always loved primroses. So did Grandma . . . Did Harry give them to you?’
Evie hesitated for a second. ‘Yes,’ she replied. It wasn’t really a lie. After all, if Harry hadn’t let her sleep in his magic bed then she couldn’t have gone to Dreamland to pick the primroses with Grandma, could she?
‘He’s been so kind,’ Mum said. ‘So has Margaret. We’d better go downstairs and thank them. We’ll leave you to get dressed, darling.’
Evie got dressed quickly, then went and picked up the bunch of primroses Grandma had given her. She half expected something magical to take place – for fairy dust to come shooting out of the flowers, or for each petal to suddenly start glowing in her hand. But that didn’t happen. Instead, the longer she held the flowers, the more she found herself thinking how happy Grandma had been when they’d walked through the primrose woods together.
Just then there was a knock on the door. She went across and opened it. Harry was standing there.
‘Well . . . ? Did you see her?’ he asked softly.
Evie nodded. Her eyes were filling up. ‘I can’t believe I won’t ever see her again, though.’
Harry sighed. ‘I know, Evie. But I’ll tell you what I can’t believe . . . I can’t believe your grandma actually got to visit fairyland. I bet that’s one dream even she thought could never come true. But it did – thanks to you.’
Evie carried her doll’s house down to the bottom of the garden that afternoon. Mum saw her doing it but she didn’t say anything.
She left the last violet cream on the kitchen table inside the doll’s house as a sort of house-warming gift for Buttercup.
A couple of days later, some of Grandma’s friends called on Mum. Everyone was talking and drinking tea in Grandma’s living room and Evie felt as if Grandma ought to be there too. She left the house and went down to the bottom of the garden where she could be on her own.
Her doll’s house was sti
ll there and from the outside it didn’t look any different. She didn’t really expect to find any fairies inside it, but she was curious to see if the violet cream she had left was still there.
She knelt down on the ground and slid open the back to look inside. What she saw made her gasp. All the old plastic furniture was gone and in its place were the sweetest little beds and tables and chairs, all carved out of bark. All the curtains and rugs and bedcovers were made out of flower petals and the walls had been painted yellow. Miniature fairy lights were attached to the ceiling of each room and when Evie looked in the kitchen she found that it was well stocked with tiny nuts and berries and pine kernels and other fairy titbits – along with Evie’s violet cream, which had been placed on a purple petal plate so that it looked like a very splendid cake.
A noise outside made her turn.
‘Buttercup!’ It was the first time Evie had ever seen a fairy in the daylight and she felt her heart beat quicker. Maybe she would see flower fairies quite a lot from now on. ‘The house is really beautiful!’
Buttercup looked pleased. ‘I’m glad you like it. I was just coming to find you. After you left the dream garden, your grandma suggested we throw a house-warming party here. She made me promise to invite you. We’re having it tonight at midnight. You will come, won’t you?’
Evie nodded. ‘I’d love to. Especially if that’s what Grandma wanted.’
‘Oh, it is. She said she wanted me to make sure you had a really good time. And you will have, because flower fairies throw even better parties than dream fairies!’ She laughed when she saw the doubtful look on Evie’s face. ‘We may not wear sparkly knickers like dream fairies do, but that doesn’t stop us having just as much fun!’
Evie smiled. ‘Would you like me to bring anything to the party?’
‘Just a bottle of bubbly dew. Oh . . . you won’t know where to find that. I tell you what – why don’t you bring along a really big bar of chocolate instead?’
And as Buttercup flew off into the bushes, Evie thought that there really wasn’t that much difference between dream fairies and flower fairies after all.
