Fairy School Drop-out

by Meredith Badger

  She didn’t.

  Luckily for Elly, Saphie knew the answer to Mrs Clovercloud’s question.

  ‘Fairies must approach a corner at the lowest possible speed and should sound a warning with their wand,’ she recited.

  Mrs Clovercloud nodded. ‘Remember that next time, please. It’s quite a coincidence that this morning’s spelling test is on wand warning sounds, don’t you think, fairies?’

  Elly and Saphie reluctantly nodded. ‘Yes, Mrs Clovercloud.’

  ‘Now hurry up and get to class,’ said their teacher, shooing them away. ‘I’ll be there shortly.’

  Elly’s heart was beating rapidly as they flew off. This must be the spelling test Saphie tried to warn her about. Elly knew she was in trouble. She couldn’t remember anything about wand warning sounds. She didn’t even know her wand could make warning sounds. This was very bad – Elly couldn’t afford to fail any more tests. Out of the four tests she’d had since arriving at Mossy Blossom, she’d failed five. The last one had been about making rainbows and Elly had failed it so badly that Mrs Clovercloud actually failed her twice.

  ‘I’ve never seen an entirely black rainbow before,’ she had said, shaking her head in disbelief.

  ‘Quick, Saphie,’ Elly whispered urgently as they slipped into their seats. ‘How do I make warning sounds?’

  Saphie pointed to the diamond-shaped button on the handle of her wand.

  ‘Press this,’ she said. ‘Once for low level warnings, twice for medium and lots of times for an emergency. If you hold the button down, it sends out a wand-wide distress signal. Any wands nearby will immediately make the signal, too.’

  This seemed pretty straightforward. ‘Thanks, Saph,’ said Elly gratefully. ‘I owe you.’

  ‘There’s something else, though,’ said Saphie. ‘You need to –’

  But before she could finish, the door opened and Mrs Clovercloud appeared. ‘We’ll start straight away,’ the teacher said briskly. ‘Gabi Cruddleperry. Please demonstrate a low level warning sound.’

  Gabi stood up and pressed the purple button on the handle of her wand. A chime like a church bell rang out.

  ‘Very good,’ said Mrs Clovercloud. Gabi sat down, smiling smugly.

  Primrose Petals was next. She had two very long plaits which had a habit of wriggling around like two thick snakes. If something unexpected happened, they stood straight up in the air in alarm.

  Today, though, they hung sedately down her back. Primrose performed her wand sound without a hitch, as did Marabella Shimmerbliss.

  ‘Now you, Sapphire,’ said Mrs Clovercloud. ‘Please demonstrate the emergency signal.’ Saphie stood up. Her warning sound was a little wobbly but Mrs Clovercloud nodded.

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Just remember to hold the button down firmly.’ Then she turned to Elly.

  ‘Elinora,’ Mrs Clovercloud said. ‘Please demonstrate the fairy-wide distress signal.’

  Elly stood up. For once, she wasn’t nervous. She’d been watching the other fairies make their signals, and it looked easy.

  ‘The fairy-wide distress signal,’ she announced, and held down the blue diamond button.

  Her wand made a low, rumbling sound, like distant thunder or a purring cat. Elly was puzzled. Was it supposed to sound like that? The longer Elly pressed the button, the louder and higher the noise became. Then the wand began shaking and shuddering, like it was trying to wiggle out of Elly’s hand.

  Elly looked over at Saphie, who made desperate signals with her hands under the desk. Elly knew Saphie was trying to help her, but she had no idea what the hand signals meant. The noise was now like that of a giant, hungry mosquito – and a moment later, it sounded like a whole squadron of mosquitoes, because every other wand in the classroom had started making the noise, too.

  ‘Elly,’ said Mrs Clovercloud, alarmed.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Just what I’m meant to do,’ said Elly. ‘Holding down the blue diamond.’

  All the students now had their hands over their ears.

  ‘Did you install the sound crystal into the handle?’ said Mrs Clovercloud.

  Elly’s stomach dropped. This was the first she had heard about any sound crystal. She looked over at Saphie, who shrugged helplessly. The sound was becoming unbearable.

  ‘Turn it off, Elly!’ yelled Mrs Clovercloud.

  But Elly couldn’t. The blue diamond button seemed to be stuck. The wand continued shuddering until finally it jumped right out of her hand and started spinning around on the floor. A moment later, all the other wands flew from their owners’ hands and joined Elly’s wand on the floor.

  Surely, thought Elly unhappily as the noise screamed in her ears, it couldn’t get any louder than this?

  But it did. It was as loud as an aeroplane. Then as loud as two aeroplanes. The desks started vibrating and the windows rattled.

  ‘Do something!’ cried Primrose Petals. Her plaits were curled up very tightly around her ears, like earmuffs. ‘I can’t stand it!’

  Elly tried desperately to jump on her wand, but it kept slipping deftly away.

  Then, just when Elly thought her ears were about to peel off, there was an enormous bang followed by the sound of shattering glass. And finally, everything was quiet.

  Very, very, quiet.

  It stayed that way until Mrs Clovercloud’s voice broke the silence.

  ‘Elinora Knottleweed-Eversprightly!’ she boomed. ‘Just look what you’ve done!’

  Chapter Four

  The classroom suddenly felt cooler and Elly soon realised why. Every window in the classroom had shattered, and a breeze was blowing through where the panes used to be. The wands lay heaped on the floor, still and silent. Primrose Petals’ plaits were still curled around her ears as if they were scared the noise might come back.

  Now that it was all over, some of the fairies looked like they were trying not to laugh. But Mrs Clovercloud wasn’t smiling, not even a little. Elly suspected that she’d just failed another test.

  ‘Elly,’ said Mrs Clovercloud sternly. Elly knew from Mrs Clovercloud’s tone what was coming next.

  ‘I know, I know,’ she sighed, standing up. ‘Go straight to the Head-Fairy’s office.’

  Madame Silverwings’ office was so familiar to Elly that the door seemed to creak in a friendly way when it opened. Madame Silverwings was seated behind a desk which hovered above the ground. When she was calm, the desk stayed close to the floor, but when she was angry the desk began rising towards the ceiling. It’s bad enough being told off by someone who is looking straight at you, but it’s much worse if they’re yelling down at you from up high. Elly was glad to see that at the moment, the desk was quite low.

  ‘I’m sorry to see you in here again so soon, Elly,’ said Madame Silverwings as Elly sat down. ‘Do you know how many times you’ve been sent to see me since you arrived at Mossy Blossom?’

  Elly shook her head. ‘A lot?’ she said helpfully.

  ‘Twenty-seven times,’ stated Madame Silverwings. ‘Six times for creating a disturbance in class, four of which were of an explosive nature. Nine for being late. Ten times for riding your skateboard on schoolgrounds and twice for turning a staff member purple.’ Madame Silverwings looked disapproving. ‘Twice, Elly. One time might be dismissed as an unfortunate accident, but two times is inexcusable.’

  Elly thought this was unfair. After all, she hadn’t planned to turn Miss Flufferbuff, the synchronised flying instructor, purple. It was her stupid wand’s fault. It had puffed out a big cloud of sticky purple dust just as Miss Flufferbuff had flown by. Unfortunately, the purple dust stuck fast and poor Miss Flufferbuff had to be re-colourised.

  Elly had felt very bad about it. Recolourisation was a painful process that involved lying flat on your back in a recolourisation chamber while thousands of tiny brushes scoured your skin. On the day Miss Flufferbuff had finished being re-colourised, Elly had waited outside with some flowers. It was just a shame that her wand chose that mom
ent to malfunction again, and dye Miss Flufferbuff an even deeper shade of mauve.

  Fairies change colour very easily. Flying through a field of sunflower pollen can turn them yellow and going through a particularly dark rain cloud can turn them grey. This is useful if they wish to blend into the background, but getting back to normal can be difficult. It was for this reason that the re-colourisation chamber was invented.

  ‘I’m not sure what to do about you, Elly,’ Madame Silverwings sighed. ‘Your family is well-known for achieving great things. I feel sure that deep down you are a very talented fairy, but you don’t seem to be taking your studies seriously. I have the reputation of the school to consider. If I let you stay here I run the risk of letting Mossy Blossom become a laughing stock.’

  Madame Silverwings’ desk zoomed up close to Elly’s chair, and the Head-Fairy looked very intently at Elly.

  ‘What would you do,’ she asked, ‘with a fairy who’d rather be a human?’

  Elly didn’t know what to say and so, without thinking, she blurted out the first thing that came into her head.

  ‘I’d send her to a human school,’ she said. The moment she said it she realised that this was exactly what she wanted. Elly didn’t know much about human schools, but she guessed there would be no magic and no flying. That alone made them one hundred times better than fairy school.

  ‘Oh, Elly,’ said Madame Silverwings sadly. ‘That’s impossible. Only one or two exceptional students get sent to human schools per year. The cream of the crop.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Elly, disappointed. There was no way anyone would consider her to be the cream of the crop.

  Elly started to feel a bit worried. Her mum had said that Mossy Blossom was her last chance. If she got thrown out of here, no other school would take her.

  My last chance ...

  The words echoed in Elly’s head for a while, then made a sudden pinging sound. She’d just realised something. If no other fairy school would accept her, then surely that meant no more school! That meant sleeping in. It meant skateboarding all day. It meant no homework and no dumb school uniform. The more Elly thought about it, the more being expelled from Mossy Blossom Academy seemed like a good idea. A plan started to form in her head.

  Elly put on her saddest face.

  ‘You’re right,’ she sighed. ‘I’m a terrible student and I probably won’t get any better.’

  ‘It sounds like you don’t want to stay, Elly,’ frowned Madame Silverwings. Her desk started to rise.

  ‘Oh I really do,’ said Elly hastily. ‘I love Mossy Blossom.’

  ‘Good,’ said Madame Silverwings as the desk returned to the ground, ‘because I’ve decided to give you a week’s trial. If you make it through the next five days without making any mistakes I’ll let you stay.’

  ‘No mistakes at all?’ asked Elly.

  ‘None,’ said Madame Silverwings firmly. ‘If you make even one you’ll have to leave Mossy Blossom forever.’

  Elly was pleased. Her plan was working already. It would be dead easy to make a mistake in a week. After all, she made mistakes every day without even trying! Then she would be free of fairy school forever.

  Madame Silverwings, of course, had no idea what Elly was plotting.

  ‘You will have to be on your best behaviour,’ she warned. ‘No arriving late, no skateboarding and definitely no more turning teachers purple.’

  Elly nodded. ‘I’ll be perfect,’ she promised. Perfectly terrible, she thought silently to herself.

  Chapter Five

  The easiest way to be expelled, Elly decided, was to ride her skateboard around. Skateboards were strictly forbidden at school and it wouldn’t be long before someone caught her. But the next time she pulled her board out of her bag, all the wheels promptly fell off. Elly picked them up. They were completely worn out. This was bad news. Rainbow wheels were very expensive and very hard to come by. Her skateboard might be out of action for ages.

  So that afternoon Elly had to catch the Fairy Flock home and it was terrible. Someone’s wand kept jabbing into her back, and wings kept tickling her nose and making her sneeze. Elly was very relieved when she finally arrived at her stop. She quickly removed her cloud coat and tucked her wings out of view.

  Elly was very happy to finally be home today. She looked around her as she walked up towards her house. Raspberry Drive is very pretty, she thought to herself, but also very dull. As far as Elly could tell, there were no other fairies living on her street.

  How can you pick a fairy’s house? It’s easy,

  once you know what to look out for:

  1. The garden is always green, no matter what the weather has been like.

  2. All the flowers grow to exactly the same height.

  3. The house often has a fancy doorknob.

  4. The chimneys blow out multi-coloured smoke.

  5. Fairy houses always seem to look a bit different each time you look at them, although it’s hard to say why.

  There were hardly any human kids living in Elly’s street either, until a family moved in to the empty house next door to the Knottleweed-Eversprightlys. Elly had seen a boy in the backyard and she’d glimpsed a girl gazing out one of the windows who looked about her own age. Fairies were allowed to befriend humans so long as they never revealed their real identities. In fact, these friendships were actually encouraged, as it helped fairies discover more about humans. But there was no way Elly was going to make friends with one. She hated humans.

  As far as she could see, fairies were expected to be servants to humans – granting their wishes, fixing up their dumb mistakes. What did fairies get in return? Nothing! Elly didn’t see why she should be expected to help them out. Half the humans didn’t even believe in fairies. The other half loved fairies way too much. Elly had heard terrible stories about fairies nearly getting squeezed to death by mobs of excited little girls. No, in Elly’s opinion humans were best avoided altogether.

  When Elly arrived at her own house, she felt like a snack. Quietly she tiptoed to the kitchen and peeped around the corner. The fridge was humming away quietly. It looked like a perfectly normal fridge. But it wasn’t. Elly carefully put on a crash helmet. Then she took a deep breath and rushed into the room, head down. As she neared the fridge the door flung open and a large lump of moldy, smelly cheese flew out. It splattered against her crash helmet and oozed down the sides. Elly ignored it and kept running. A moment later the fridge opened again and flung out a handful of soggy lettuce leaves. Elly tried to dodge them, but they squished across her face.

  Elly sighed and peeled the leaves off. The fridge was one of her mum’s latest inventions: a self-cleaning model that ejected anything past its used-by date. Elly knew that a fridge like that might be useful but why did it have to be so violent about it?

  The Knottleweed-Eversprightly household was full of stuff like this, but luckily not all of it was as bad-tempered as the fridge. Elly’s favourite was the bath that kept the water at the perfect temperature for as long as you were in there. It also had an inbuilt bubblebath dispenser which offered 120 colours of bubble-bath – everything from red to purple or even gold with pink stripes. It was a singing bathtub too, with a rich, melodious voice. Sometimes Elly sang along with it, but other times she liked lying back in a lather of multi-coloured bubbles while the tub sang to her. The songs it sung depended on what mood it was in. One day it was pop songs, and the next it was country music. Elly and the bath had spent many happy hours together, and whenever she walked by it would try to convince her she needed washing.

  ‘You are looking diiiiiiiirty,’ it would warble. ‘Come and take a baaaaaaaaath!’

  Finally, Elly reached the fridge. She grabbed some biscuits and ran out of the kitchen as fast as she could, narrowly avoiding getting hit by a rotten tomato. Only when she was safely out of there did she look at the biscuits. Great. They were her dad’s healthy zucchini biscuits. Elly ate them anyway – there was no way she was dealing with that fridge again so soon.
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  Just as she finished, Elly’s dad appeared, holding Kara with one hand and a big net with the other.

  ‘Elly, look after Kara for me, please,’ he said. ‘Someone’s turned all our washing into birds. I’ll have to catch it all before it flies away.’

  Elly looked outside. The backyard was full of birds, some of which had pegs attached to their wings. Swans, parrots and crows were perched on the line while below, a couple of seagulls that looked distinctly like Elly’s underpants were squabbling over a worm. It was obvious to Elly who’d done it.

  ‘Bird!’ exclaimed Kara, looking very pleased with herself.

  Their dad handed Kara to Elly. Kara dribbled lovingly onto Elly’s shoulder and a puff of smoke rose up where the drops fell. Baby-fairy dribble is very strong stuff.

  ‘But I’ve got homework to do,’ Elly grumbled, quickly wiping up the drool with a special reinforced hankie that she kept just for this purpose.

  ‘Do it later,’ said her dad, heading outside. ‘I’m very busy.’

  What else is new? thought Elly. Her parents were always busy these days. Elly could remember when they had time to take her to the park and read her stories. But that was before Kara came along, and before her mum’s work became so important. Now it sometimes felt like they’d forgotten Elly even existed.

  Elly put her sister down in front of her blocks, and Kara stacked them into towers. This might not sound unusual, except that Kara didn’t use her hands to do it. The blocks obediently rose from the ground one by one to form the stack. When the tower got too high, it tumbled over and Kara gurgled with delight.

  Elly felt a tiny stab of jealousy. How did Kara get so good at magic without ever even going to fairy school?

  It was hard not to feel dumb around Kara. Elly’s parents kept saying, ‘You’re just a late bloomer,’ but Elly wasn’t so sure. She suspected she was one of those boring plants that never flowered at all.