“Our rooms are all set!” said Beck. She drew the other animal talents to her side. “Now what should we do?”
“We’ll have to wait it out!” Myka prodded a slow-moving Tinker Bell. “Everyone! To the root cellar. We’ll be safe there. Come on, come on!”
She herded fairies down through the trunk of the Home Tree. “Hurry! Over here!” She pointed into the dark, windowless space by the roots.
“There,” Myka said, finally satisfied. The fairies sat huddled together in row upon row. They were all fully awake. And most looked scared. “The only thing we can do is wait.”
So the fairies waited. Time passed, and they waited some more. Some fairies slumped against the bumpy walls and fell asleep again. A few talked quietly.
Myka paced back and forth. She kept one ear cocked, listening. Finally, a rumbling noise made everyone sit up straight.
“Oops!” Tink rubbed her stomach. “Just feeling a little hungry, I guess.”
Myka nodded. “We all are,” she said. “But we shouldn’t go anywhere. The storm will be here any second.”
Bess edged closer to Myka. Her face was pale. “You know,” she said, “Vidia is still out there.”
Vidia, a fast-flying fairy, lived by herself in a sour-plum tree. She liked it that way. And Myka had to admit, the other fairies did, too. Vidia could be sly—a little nasty, in fact. Still, Vidia shouldn’t be out there alone. Not with a dangerous thunderstorm on the way.
The news spread from fairy to sparrow man to fairy. “Vidia is outside!” “Vidia is in trouble!”
Everyone turned to Myka.
“I’ll go warn her!” Myka leaped through the door.
“Hooray for Myka!” shouted Tink.
Another scout talent, Trak, followed more slowly behind. “Wait, Myka!” he called. “I’ll come, too.”
But Myka didn’t hear him. She was so determined to find Vidia, she didn’t notice Trak—or anything else.
“Vidia!” she cried. “Vidia! There’s a thunderstorm! Stay calm! I’m coming!”
Kicking up a puff of dirt, Myka landed by Vidia’s sour-plum tree. She looked around, hands on hips. “Well,” she said, surprised. “What do you know!”
The sky was a dazzling blue. The sun shone brightly. There was no storm in sight.
And Vidia sat calmly on a branch outside her home.
“Why, what’s wrong, Myka?” Vidia asked in her fake-sweet voice. “You didn’t think there was any danger, did you?” She shook her head, as if in pity for the poor mistaken scout.
Myka didn’t say anything. Of course she had thought there was danger!
What was going on?
Vidia pointed toward the lagoon. Captain Hook’s pirate ship bobbed in the water. “It’s just some cannon practice, darling,” she said. “They’re about ready to fire again.”
Boom! Crash! An earsplitting noise filled the air. Sparks flew. Lights flashed as the cannon flared.
It had been the pirates—not thunder and lightning. Black smoke rose like a giant storm cloud from the ship.
Vidia was right. There’d been no danger. No danger at all.
Bess closed the door behind Rosetta. She felt extremely flattered—and still a little stunned. It was part of her role as an art talent to do paintings for her fellow fairies. Till that morning, they had always been for special occasions: an Arrival Day portrait, or a new painting for the Home Tree corridor. In between, she was as free as a bird to paint whatever she wanted.
But now, right out of the blue, two fairies wanted their pictures painted in one day! That was a record for any art-talent fairy, Bess was sure.
Bless my wings, she thought. Who knew that Never fairies had such great taste!
She’d been flying for a quarter of an hour when she looked down. Her heart sank. She was just crossing Havendish Stream.
At this rate, it will take me weeks to reach the Northern Shore! she thought.
But as luck would have it, the wind suddenly shifted in Tink’s direction. She felt the carrier bumping against her heels.
Tink climbed into the basket. She let the wind speed her along. In no time, she had reached the edge of Pixie Hollow. Never Land’s forest spread out below her like a great dark sea.
By now, other fairies had gathered around Silvermist. The ladybug sat perfectly still atop the water-talent fairy’s head.
“You know,” a garden-talent fairy named Rosetta mused, “there’s an old superstition about white ladybugs. They’re supposed to bring—”
“Bad luck!” Iris said, screeching to a stop in front of Silvermist.
A few fairies chuckled uncertainly. No one took Iris very seriously. But fairies were superstitious creatures. They believed in wishes, charms, and luck—both good and bad.
“The white ladybug!” Iris’s voice rose higher and higher. “It’s cursed!”
Disney Fairies: Queen Clarion's Secret Page 4
