by Foley, E. G.
“Of course not, but I’m telling you, this is no ordinary fairy. He or she is a menace.”
Gladwin furrowed her brow, then glanced over at Red. “What do you think?”
The Gryphon shrugged his scarlet wings.
Gladwin turned back to Jake with a thoughtful frown. “I’m sure it’s all just a big misunderstanding. The fairy probably just got scared and felt he had to defend himself. But very well. If one of my people is in there causing trouble, then, as an emissary of the Queen, I suppose I should at least step in and try to have a word with him. Maybe we just need to hear his side of the story.”
Jake was relieved that she had agreed to cooperate, but he still had his doubts. “Thanks, Gladwin. Knew I could count on you. All the same, I doubt this little fellow’s going to come out of that shop peacefully. More likely, we’re going to have to drag him out kicking and screaming. And there’s the problem. He’s too fast. We’re going to need some way to stop him or at least slow him down long enough to make him talk to us.”
She hesitated. “The fairy freeze spell would do it.”
“Great! You can teach it to me,” Jake said. “I’ll go get my wand.” He started to head for the hidden safe in the cellar, where Aunt Ramona insisted all magical equipment be stored away when not in use.
Wands were not toys, after all.
“Jake, come back!” Gladwin called. “You don’t need your wand. I cannot teach you this spell.”
“Why not?” He paused and turned around.
“It’s forbidden for any of us to teach it to the non-fey.” She squared her tiny shoulders. “If it comes down to it, I will use it on him myself so he can’t get away.”
At that moment, the grandfather clock beside the wall started bonging. Jake glanced at it. “Nine o’clock. I think that’s when the shop closes. That means we can go. C’mon, Arch.”
While the boys ran to get their coats, Red jumped to his feet and shook himself awake. He would provide their transportation—and keep a protective eye on them, too.
Before returning to the others, Jake snuck out to the stables that belonged to Everton House, the London mansion he had inherited from his parents, as opposed to Griffon Castle out in the country.
Inside the stable, Jake found an old gunnysack made of rough brown burlap. He shook the last few pieces of the horses’ sweet grain out of it. Then he folded it up small, tucked it into his coat, and hurried back to the house.
He was willing to give Gladwin a chance to talk to the trickster in the bakery, but privately, Jake had no intention of going in there unprepared.
If she could not persuade the troublemaker to leave Chez Marie by his own free will, then Jake would follow his simpler plan of catch and release. Namely, he would catch the fairy in the gunnysack, then set him free somewhere out in the country beyond the boundaries of London, where he could not bother anyone.
Once Jake returned to the house and Archie said he was ready, the boys climbed on the Gryphon’s back. They held on tight as Red pushed off from an upstairs balcony, lifting into the frigid night sky with his powerful wing beats.
Gladwin kept pace with them, flying alongside Jake’s shoulder.
It was the first time Archie had seen London at night from the air. True, he was an inventor of flying machines and other strange contraptions, but, as reckless as he was in the pursuit of science, not even the boy genius was mad enough to attempt flying the Mighty Pigeon at night.
He ooh’ed and ahh’ed in wonder at the rows of streetlamps like tiny golden beads lining the grand thoroughfares, like Regent Street and Pall Mall.
Big Ben glowed in the dark, while Westminster Abbey and Buckingham Palace were adorned with green wreaths and scarlet ribbons for the holiday. White wisps of smoke rose from all the chimneys, and groups of carolers below went singing door to door, collecting coins for some charity.
The boys smiled at the sight of tiny-looking ice skaters swirling along the Serpentine lake in Hyde Park.
But as charming as London was at this time of year, Jake was all business; he pointed to show Red the way.
At last, the Gryphon swooped down from the starry sky, landing on the roof of the building across from the bakery. That way, the boys could survey the area before going in, make sure the coast was clear.
“That’s the place?” Gladwin asked, fluttering in midair.
Jake nodded.
Archie scanned the dark street through the Vampire Monocle, one of his favorite devices they had unearthed on their last adventure. It provided the wearer with excellent night vision. “No sign of your friend, the bobby,” he reported.
“Good. Take us down, Red.”
The Gryphon waited for a carriage to pass below before plunging off the side of the roof and coasting down gracefully to the snowy street outside the double-bakery building. The boys got off the Gryphon’s back.
“Good luck, Jake!” Archie whispered, backing into the shadows to keep watch through the Vampire Monocle.
“Remember, three raps on the window if you see anyone coming.”
“Righty-ho.” Archie leaned against the wall, becoming almost invisible in the shadows.
Gladwin murmured that she would go in first. Jake watched her fly up to the bakery’s roof, then she disappeared, diving in through the chimney.
A few minutes later, he could see her sparkle-trail glowing through the shop’s bay window. She buzzed around inside, making sure that Mademoiselle Marie and her employees were not still in there working.
By now, ten o’clock, the fabulous pâtisserie was empty. The bakers had baked, the cake decorators had decorated, the clerk had counted the day’s money, and the cleaners had cleaned up.
All was quiet.
Jake waited with a tingle of nervous anticipation running across his skin. His heart pounded. Sneaking in after hours like this—why, it felt like old times. Good thing he had grown adept at sneaking around back in his thieving days. He steadied himself for the mission at hand when Gladwin appeared at the front door.
She unlocked it for him from the inside. It gave a low creak as Jake eased it open. Then he and Red slipped into the shop.
Time to hunt the fairy.
CHAPTER FOUR
A Bittersweet Feud
As soon as he stepped into the dark shop, Jake gagged a bit, nearly overcome by the sticky-sweet smell after having gorged himself on treats all day. He shook off the nausea with a will, turning as Gladwin flew nearer.
“You two look around out here,” she whispered. “I’ll go check the kitchen.”
Jake nodded and she zoomed away, trailing golden sparkles down the center aisle and back behind the bakery counters.
“Careful, Red! Mind your wings,” Jake scolded in a whisper as his big, lion-sized pet padded through the little, cluttered shop.
Jake shook his head and crept down the nearest aisle. He barely dared wonder who would take the blame this time if Red knocked over another of Marie’s creations.
Putting the earlier mishap out of his mind, he concentrated on finding the fairy, or whatever sort of creature was lurking in this shop. Red also listened keenly, his small, tufted ears pricked up, his eagle eyes shining with a faint golden glow in the darkness.
Suddenly, Jake thought he heard the tiniest murmur of voices coming from somewhere near the end of the aisle.
He moved in silence, placing one foot carefully after the other, just like in his pickpocket days.
Yes, he definitely heard someone calling from just around the corner of the aisle. A very small voice, possibly that of a fairy. He couldn’t be sure.
It sounded female. “Rollio, sweet Rollio! Wherefore art thou, Rollio?”
Jake furrowed his brow.
Holding his breath to avoid making even the slightest sound, he sidled up to the end of the aisle, where another Croquembouche stood proudly. (He moved extra careful around it.) Lowering himself to a crouched position beside it, he stole a stealthy glance around the corner of the aisle.
He kept his gaze up high, expecting to spot the mischievous fairy flying around in here somewhere. So the second little voice, and the flicker of motion down low on the floor, came as a surprise.
“Juniette! I am here!”
Jake lowered his gaze and looked straight at the speakers. He blinked rapidly, certain his eyes were playing tricks on him. But no.
The speakers were still there.
Down on the floor, mere inches high, two little gingerbread cookies ran to meet each other and shared a quick embrace.
“At last! Oh, Rollio!”
“My sweet Juniette!”
Jake’s eyebrows slowly lifted. Red appeared by his side, stared at the gingerbread couple for a moment, and then turned to him, as if to say, Explain.
Jake shook his head in bewilderment and shrugged.
“Hurry, my sweet!” Rollio said. “We must away!”
Noting the gingerbread boy’s smart icing helmet, Jake was sure he recognized British Bob’s style of decorating his ginger-soldiers.
As for Juniette, her pink-frosting hair certainly marked her as one of Mademoiselle Marie’s creations.
“Oh, how I’ve missed you!” the tiny girl cookie cried. “Together at last!”
“Come, my dainty crumb. We must not linger!” Rollio warned. “My brothers are climbing the battle ladders even now, and your father’s troops won’t be far off. We must hide before they find us!”
“If only our families did not forbid our love!” said Juniette.
“Hurry, take my hand.”
A gingerbread person doesn’t actually have a hand, per se, just a nice rounded arm. But that didn’t stop the cookie couple. They held on to each other as best they could and raced away with tiny, tapping footsteps as they fled across the shop.
Jake could do nothing but stare in lingering astonishment as Rollio and Juniette disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.
He had barely just recovered his wits after this impossible sight when a horrible thought gripped him.
Great Scott! The treats in this shop come to life? He blanched and clutched his stomach, wondering if he had murdered sentient beings by eating all those goodies today.
“Becaw?”
Jake ignored the Gryphon for the moment and wildly searched the nearest shelves to see if any of the other edibles were coming to life. Thank goodness, he quickly concluded in relief that only the gingerbread display seemed to be affected. But how?
He needed a closer look. That fairy must have something to do with it, he thought. Fairy magic could be very mysterious.
Red followed as Jake tiptoed toward Marie’s gingerbread Versailles. What he saw made him freeze with such astonishment that Red could have knocked him over with one of his feathers.
The gingerbread Versailles was in an uproar.
Preparations for a battle were underway—and just in time, too.
For, as Rollio had warned, British Bob’s ginger-soldiers presently invaded somehow from downstairs.
Marie’s ginger-courtiers received the first wave of the attack with typical French aplomb. The gingerbread folk rushed into battle, British Bob’s little knights charging, Marie’s frou-frou courtiers fencing with the gusto of the famous Musketeers to defend their homeland.
They launched a barrage of candy cannonballs from their cookie cannons. They dueled with swizzle sticks and hurled spurts of red icing at each other.
“How…can this…be happening?” Jake whispered in a daze.
Red shook his feathered head. “Caw…”
Jake glanced at the Gryphon. He had never seen the noble beast looking so confused before.
The only logical explanation he could think of was that the fairy he had detected here today had put some kind of magic spell on the gingerbread displays.
Maybe they only came to life at night, for Jake was certain the gingerbread folk had been motionless—normal, inanimate, baked goods—when they had visited earlier today.
All of a sudden, he and Red heard a frantic cry from the direction of the kitchen. “Help!”
Jake gasped, snapping back to awareness. “Gladwin!”
They ran, abandoning the mystery of the gingerbread war in progress, and rushed toward the kitchen.
As he ran to Gladwin’s aid, Jake took care to watch where he was going. He wasn’t sure where Rollio and Juniette were hiding, and he dreaded the thought of accidentally stepping on them.
He dodged around the shop counter and charged through the doorway into the bakery’s kitchen.
It was darker in the back, with only one window over the sink, but the smells changed from the cloying sweetness of baked goods to a hint of cleaning fluids in the air. Marie’s staff had left their work areas in ship-shape for the morning. But unfortunately, whatever sort of scuffle had gone on between Gladwin and the fairy hiding in the shop had caused a mess.
“Gladwin, where are you?” Jake whispered loudly, glancing around in the doorway, with Red right behind him.
He heard a little cough and splashing coming from a spot near the wall, and ran to where Gladwin was angrily pulling herself up out of a milk pail.
“Blimey. Are you all right?”
She sputtered, her wet wings sagging. “Yes, yes, I’m fine. Oh, that ungrateful brute!” she spluttered. “I don’t like him at all!”
“You met the fairy?”
“Don’t be absurd. A fairy would never behave in this barbaric fashion. He’s an elf,” she fairly spat as she climbed out of the bucket and squeezed the milk out of her wings. “But even so, I can’t imagine what’s got into him! He’s not normal. All I wanted was to ask him a few questions!”
“An elf?” Jake echoed as he handed her a little kitchen hand towel to dry herself off. “Then why has he got a sparkle-trail?”
“Oh, if you go back far enough, fairies, elves, and leprechauns are all different branches of the same family tree,” she said impatiently. “Archie’s Mr. Darwin would have a field day with that one.”
“Gladwin…” Jake waved off her news about the elf, for he had news of his own. “You won’t believe what just happened out there. The gingerbread men have come to life, and they’re fighting each other!”
She paused in drying herself and frowned at him like he was a loon-bat. “What?”
“The gingerbread display! There’s a whole battle going on between Mademoiselle Marie’s French courtier cookies and British Bob’s ginger-knights from his cookie castle downstairs! They’re at each other’s throats!”
She stared at him in confusion, then started laughing. “Oh, you almost got me there, you rascal.”
“I’m not joking!” But before he could tell her about the gingerbread sweethearts who were apparently eloping together, Jake caught a glimmer of red-and-green sparkles in a dark corner of the kitchen.
He thrust the matter of the gingerbread battle aside, homing in on their quarry. “There,” he murmured ever so discreetly to his companions. “I see him. In the corner.”
Red’s ears pricked up.
“He’s spying on us.” Jake sidled over to the kitchen door and closed it behind him. Then he locked it so the little miscreant couldn’t escape.
Nobody shoved their favorite fairy into a milk pail and got away with it.
Jake glanced at Gladwin. “I trust you have no further objections to me capturing him?”
“Hardly!” She let out another huff. “If he had nothing to hide, he would’ve answered my questions. Whatever he’s doing here, he’s obviously up to no good.” She tossed the towel aside and flew a few feet up into the air, a little unsteady on her still-drying wings.
Jake nodded at the Gryphon. “C’mon, Red. Let’s get him,” he whispered. “You grab him, I’ll bag him.”
Red’s golden eyes gleamed in the darkness as he nodded back firmly, eager for the hunt.
CHAPTER FIVE
To Catch an Elf
“You might as well give yourself up!” Jake warned the unseen creature lurking in the kitchen. “
We know you’re in here. We’ve got you cornered now. We can do this the easy way or the hard way.”
“Look out!” Gladwin cried as a cast-iron saucepan came flying out of the darkness at him.
Jake deflected it just in time with his telekinesis; otherwise, it would have hit him squarely in the noggin. He scowled as it clattered to the floor.
“Shh!” Gladwin scolded. “You’ll bring the constable running!”
Jake narrowed his eyes in annoyance, scanning the dark kitchen. “Nice try, elf! You missed.”
He heard a nasty snicker in response.
“You’re only making it worse for yourself!”
“Let’s hope he doesn’t try throwing any kitchen knives,” Gladwin mumbled, then suddenly pointed. “There!”
More red-and-green sparkles appeared, running along the kitchen’s top shelf.
By their glow, Jake could just make out a little figure about knee-high, eighteen inches tall or so. He had a pointy red hat with a white pompom on the end, a green coat, and candy-striped stockings above his curly-toed shoes.
But the Christmas elf was blazingly fast, dodging away, as if he could not decide whether it was more fun to torment them a bit more, or if he should just try to get away.
“We only want to talk to you!” Jake lied as he followed the fading sparkle-trail. Dash it, he had already lost sight of the elf. “What are you doing in this shop?” he asked into the darkness. “Shouldn’t you be at the North Pole making toys or something?”
“Santa will hear of this!” Gladwin warned. “This is not very Christmassy behavior!”
“I hate Christmas!” a small, angry voice retorted.
In that instant, Red homed in on the exact spot where the sound had come from and pounced.
Alas, the Gryphon came up empty and suddenly started coughing. Jake and Gladwin heard another mocking laugh.
