Fairy Gold

by Gwyneth Rees

  Another cheer went up.

  ‘However, Precious would not be back with us,’ Queen Eldora continued, ‘if it wasn’t for the help we’ve had from the human children who are here with us tonight – and, in particular, Lucy. Lucy, please stand up so we may all applaud you.’

  Lucy remained seated, blushing with the sudden attention, and she only stood when Thomas and Precious pushed her to her feet. Queen Eldora was flourishing her golden toothbrush in the air again and calling out for everyone to listen carefully. ‘The reason I have called this meeting is to ask each of these children what they would like as a thank-you gift from us. Secretary fairies, get ready to note down their wishes!’

  Three fairies in purple dresses came flying into the middle of the table, where they hovered with notepads and sparkly pens in their hands.

  ‘You may have one wish each,’ Queen Eldora told the children, ‘so choose carefully.’

  Everyone turned to look at Lucy, who quickly sat down again, muttering, ‘I’m not sure I know what to ask for.’

  ‘Ask for a year’s supply of sweets,’ Thomas whispered in her ear.

  Lucy ignored him and asked if she could have some more time to think about it.

  Queen Eldora nodded and turned to Izzy, who was looking very excited. ‘Do you know what wish you would like granted, Izzy?’

  ‘I’d like some fairy wings, please, like the ones you gave Lucy and Thomas,’ Izzy said.

  The fairy secretaries wrote down Izzy’s request and Queen Eldora waved her toothbrush in the air and pronounced it done.

  ‘Goldie and Bonnie will take you to the Wing Rooms directly after the meeting,’ she told Izzy. She paused for a moment to look at Grandpa, who seemed a bit agitated about something. ‘I sense that the children’s grandfather would also like to borrow some fairy wings,’ she said. ‘Am I right?’

  Grandpa instantly nodded. ‘If it wouldn’t be too much trouble.’

  ‘Of course not. You can go to the Wing Rooms after the meeting along with Izzy. But this time you must all give back your wings before you leave Fairyland.’

  ‘Excuse me, Queen Eldora,’ Grandpa said before the fairy queen’s attention could move away from him. ‘There’s just one other thing I’d like to ask you, if I may.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I haven’t seen a fairy in my garden for a very long time and I was wondering if you knew why – and what I could do to make them come back again?’

  ‘I assume you are talking of flower fairies?’ the fairy queen said.

  ‘Well, I assume so, yes,’ Grandpa agreed, not liking to say that until recently he had thought that there was only one type of fairy.

  ‘And how long is it exactly since you saw a fairy in your garden?’

  ‘Not since my wife died and that was nearly eight years ago.’

  ‘And when your wife was alive, did she do anything to encourage these fairies to visit you?’ Queen Eldora asked.

  Grandpa was about to shake his head, when he remembered something. ‘Now I come to think of it, they did always seem to visit us whenever she’d just been baking.’

  ‘What did she bake?’

  ‘Well . . . all kinds of things really. Jam tarts sometimes. Crispy cakes. Scones. That sort of thing. She and I both had a bit of a sweet tooth, you see.’

  ‘I do see,’ Queen Eldora said, sighing. ‘And were the crispy cakes chocolate ones?’

  Grandpa nodded. ‘Yes.’

  Queen Eldora was looking around at her fairies now. ‘Shall we tell the children’s grandfather how he can get to see more flower fairies?’ she asked them.

  Immediately the fairies all started to grin as they shouted out the same word at once: ‘CHOCOLATE!’

  ‘Flower fairies don’t worry in the slightest about their teeth, so they don’t mind how much chocolate they eat,’ Queen Eldora told Grandpa. ‘The more the better, as far as they’re concerned. So leaving out chocolate is an excellent way to get them to visit you.’

  ‘I’ll leave some out on my bird table as soon as I get home,’ Grandpa said, looking pleased. ‘Chocolate, eh? I’d never have thought of that.’

  A lot of the fairies were talking excitedly about chocolate now and Queen Eldora had to wave her toothbrush to get everyone’s attention again.

  She turned to Thomas, who had been sitting very quietly through all of this. ‘Thomas, have you decided what wish you would like us to grant you?’ she asked him.

  Lucy fully expected her brother to ask for a year’s supply of sweets, or even two years’ supply, but instead he looked quite nervous as he stammered out his request. ‘There is something I wondered if you could do for me,’ he said. ‘You see, sometimes . . . when I come to stay at my dad’s house . . . it would be really nice . . . really special . . . if I could get to spend some time on my own with him.’

  Lucy, Izzy and Grandpa all looked at him in surprise.

  ‘Have you not asked your father for this?’ Queen Eldora was clearly also surprised by Thomas’s request.

  ‘Sort of. One time he told me he was going fishing and I asked if I could go with him because I thought it was just going to be the two of us. But then everyone else wanted to come too and he seemed to like that idea better. So I didn’t like to ask him again after that.’

  ‘But, Thomas,’ Lucy said, sounding dismayed, ‘I was the one who asked Dad if we could all go fishing. I never knew you wanted time on your own with him. Why didn’t you say something?’

  Thomas shrugged. ‘I didn’t like to. I mean, how do I know that Dad wants to spend time just with me? It’s not like he’s suggested it, is it?’

  ‘Well, he should have,’ Grandpa said briskly. ‘I’ll have a word with him if you like, Thomas. You don’t need to use up your fairy wish on this.’

  ‘I want this as my fairy wish,’ Thomas said. ‘That way I know it will really happen.’

  The fairy secretaries were writing furiously as Queen Eldora said, ‘We can certainly find something special for you and your father to do together, Thomas, but the decision about whether you actually do it will be yours and his. Do you understand that?’

  Thomas nodded that he did. ‘Oh, and I don’t really even like fishing,’ he added. ‘So if you could make it something else, that would be great.’

  Queen Eldora promised that she would try and find something special that Thomas and his father would both enjoy. ‘Now, Lucy,’ she said, ‘have you decided yet what your wish is to be?’

  ‘Can I wish for Grandpa’s hip to get better?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘Oh no, Lucy,’ Grandpa said immediately. ‘I’m going into hospital for a hip replacement next month. I’d prefer to have the doctors sort that out for me, thanks just the same. No offence to you fairies, of course,’ he added hastily.

  ‘No offence taken,’ Queen Eldora said, looking amused. ‘You will have to think of another wish, Lucy.’

  Lucy looked around the table, seeing that a lot of the fairies were getting fidgety now. She hoped they weren’t going to be cross with her for making the meeting drag on even longer, but she couldn’t help it. ‘I think I still need a bit more time to think of something else,’ she said apologetically.

  Thomas let out an impatient sigh and so did some of the less polite fairies.

  ‘In that case I suggest that we finish this meeting now, and Lucy can come and tell me her wish later on,’ Queen Eldora said. ‘Izzy and Grandpa, please go with Goldie and Bonnie to the Wing Rooms. Everyone else, please make your way immediately to our fairy party!’

  All the fairies started to chatter excitedly as the fairy queen waved her toothbrush over the proceedings and declared the meeting officially ended.

  As they flew outside, Lucy and Thomas began to ask Precious questions about the party.

  ‘It will certainly be the best party you’ve ever been to,’ Precious told them, ‘as long as you don’t expect ordinary food.’

  ‘Why? What sort of food are we having?’ Thomas asked.

  ‘Oh
. . . toothpaste sandwiches, toothpaste biscuits, toothpaste cakes and maybe even toothpaste ice cream if we’re lucky,’ Precious replied.

  ‘Yuck!’ Thomas pulled a disgusted face.

  ‘Well, we are tooth fairies,’ Precious said, grinning. ‘Come on.’ She led them away from the main crowd of fairies, who were all heading in the opposite direction. ‘I know a short cut to the party. Follow me!’

  Precious took them along a narrow path that wound round the backs of some tooth-shaped houses and then along a second path that seemed to be taking them back in the direction they’d come from. Finally they stopped at the gates of what seemed to be a park.

  ‘It’s very dark here,’ Lucy said as Precious led them inside. ‘You’re not playing some sort of trick on us, are you?’

  ‘A trick?’ Precious said, sounding offended. ‘As if I would!’

  And as she spoke, the area was suddenly lit up by hundreds of fairy lights all coming on at once. ‘SURPRISE! ’ lots of fairy voices all shouted together, and the children saw that they were in the middle of a huge outdoor party filled with excited tooth fairies in shiny, white party dresses and glowing white wings.

  ‘I took you the long way round so there was time for everyone else to get here first,’ Precious said, as some fairy dance-music started up. ‘And don’t worry, tooth fairies don’t really eat toothpaste! We just brush our teeth with it like everybody else!’ She led them over to a nearby table, where all the party food was laid out.

  ‘Wow!’ Lucy gasped.

  There were pink and purple sandwiches, fairy cakes with white icing that glowed in the dark, rainbow-coloured sausages, gold and silver biscuits and many other amazing things that the children had never seen before.

  ‘All the sweet stuff is made with a magic sugar that’s very good for your teeth,’ Precious told them, as she picked up a sparkly gold plate and began to load it with food.

  ‘Look, Lucy, here are Izzy and Grandpa,’ Thomas said, and Lucy looked up to see her sister and grandfather flying towards them with Goldie and Bonnie on either side. Izzy was beaming as she showed off her shimmery pink wings, which exactly matched her dress, and Grandpa was smiling too as he flapped his red-and-green-striped wings, which exactly matched his pyjamas.

  ‘This is the first party I’ve been to in a long time where I haven’t had to worry about putting too much weight on my hip,’ Grandpa said, holding out his hand to Izzy and dancing with her in mid-air.

  While Thomas went off to talk to some of the boy fairies – or winged boys as they preferred to call themselves – Lucy stayed to chat with Precious. ‘Did you get into trouble when you got home?’ she asked her. ‘For stealing all those teeth, I mean.’

  ‘Queen Eldora had a very stern talk with me, yes,’ Precious told her. ‘She said she was pleased I’d been able to come home but she also said I’d have to work really hard at being good from now on or the same thing might happen to me again. To tell you the truth, I’m a bit scared to leave Fairyland now in case it does!’

  Lucy frowned as she heard this and, since Bonnie was flying past at that moment, Lucy quickly stopped her and asked to be taken to see the fairy queen.

  Queen Eldora was sitting on a gold picnic rug, taking sips from a tall glass of pink bubbly liquid. She motioned for Lucy to sit down beside her and said, ‘I presume you’ve come to tell me that you have decided on your fairy wish?’

  Lucy nodded and took a deep breath. She might as well just say it – even though she was a little scared to, now that she was face to face with the fairy queen. ‘I’d like you to get rid of the Goodness curtain, please,’ she said in a rush.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Queen Eldora was looking at Lucy as if she had just said that she wanted fairies to get rid of their wings.

  ‘It just doesn’t seem like a very fairy . . . I mean a very fair thing,’ Lucy spluttered. ‘And it doesn’t work as a punishment either. I mean, look at Precious. She got even naughtier after she was banished from Fairyland – that’s why she started stealing all the teeth.’

  ‘Lucy, the Goodness curtain was invented for a reason,’ Queen Eldora told her firmly. ‘It was invented to stop any Badness entering Fairyland. It is there for our protection.’ Queen Eldora was looking at her as if she could hardly believe that a little human girl was questioning one of the most established features of Tooth-fairy Land.

  ‘But couldn’t you just . . . I don’t know . . . change it so that no tooth fairy ever gets stuck on the other side of it again?’ Lucy asked. ‘Couldn’t you at least have a special meeting to discuss changing it or something?’

  ‘A special meeting?’ Queen Eldora looked surprised. ‘We would need to have several meetings to discuss such an important subject, Lucy!’

  ‘That’s my wish then,’ Lucy put in swiftly. ‘That you have as many meetings as you need to at least discuss changing the Goodness curtain. Maybe you could all vote on it at the end or something.’

  Queen Eldora looked thoughtful. ‘Very well then,’ she finally agreed. ‘Your wish – strange though it is – will be granted.’

  As Lucy thanked her and lost no time in getting up to leave, the fairy queen added, ‘But because you have not asked for anything for yourself, Lucy, I am going to award you an extra fairy gift.’

  ‘What is it?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘Tomorrow, when you wake up, you will find your very own magic toothbrush under your pillow,’ the fairy queen told her. ‘Whenever you brush your teeth with it, you will find yourself believing in fairies.’

  ‘But I already believe in fairies!’

  ‘Now you do, yes,’ Queen Eldora said, ‘but this toothbrush will be yours to keep forever.’

  ‘But I’m never going to need it!’ Lucy protested. ‘I’m never going to stop believing in fairies.’

  ‘All children say that, Lucy, but one day you will be a grown-up and then you may have more use for this magic toothbrush than you think.’

  Lucy frowned because she still wasn’t convinced that she was going to get any use at all out of her fairy gift. Unless . . .

  ‘Is it all right to lend it to other people?’ She asked. ‘People who don’t believe in fairies – like my mum and dad, for instance?’

  ‘As long as you don’t lose it, you may lend it to whoever you wish,’ Queen Eldora said. ‘Though lending your toothbrush to others doesn’t sound very hygienic to me.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll wash it really well in between times,’ Lucy promised. And she began to feel quite excited as she saw how she could put her fairy toothbrush to good use after all. Grandpa had told her that it was only children and old folk who believed in fairies, but maybe he was wrong. Maybe Lucy’s mum and dad could believe in fairies too – if only they had a magic toothbrush to help them.