by Gwyneth Rees
Connie gulped. ‘Yes – if it’s possible.’
‘It is certainly possible, but it is up to me to decide if it is advisable.’ She peered at Connie sharply. ‘First, I must decide if I can trust you.’
‘I promise I’ll never tell anyone about the entry-book,’ Connie said quickly. ‘I’ll keep it a secret always.’
Queen Amethyst looked solemn. ‘I have interviewed children before who wanted to enter fairyland. I have not permitted it if I did not like their answers to my questions. It will be the same for you.’ She paused. ‘I have three questions to ask that will help me decide in your case – and they must be answered truthfully.’
Connie immediately felt even more nervous. She hadn’t realized that she was going to have to pass some sort of test in order to be allowed to help Ruby.
‘Question number one,’ Queen Amethyst began briskly. ‘Which do you prefer – watching television or reading books?’
Connie felt slightly sick. She knew which answer the queen of the book fairies would like best, but how could she say it when it wasn’t true? OK, so she had got a bit more interested in reading since she came to stay with her aunt and uncle, but only because they didn’t have a television set. She still liked to watch television much more. ‘Television,’ mumbled Connie, going bright red.
‘I beg your pardon? Speak up!’ Queen Amethyst looked very fierce, as if she had heard Connie’s answer but didn’t want to believe it.
‘Television,’ Connie repeated, so loudly that she made Ruby jump.
There was a long pause and Connie didn’t dare to look at Ruby, who had let out a little gasp of dismay as she spoke. Then the queen asked her second question. ‘You have promised never to tell anyone about the entry-book. But do you always keep your promises, Connie?’
Connie nearly replied ‘yes’, straight away. Then she remembered a promise she had made to Emma once. She had promised not to tell anybody that Emma was being bullied by this other girl at school. Emma hadn’t wanted her to tell but in the end Connie had broken her promise to Emma and told their teacher. Emma had been angry when she’d found out but, when the bullying had stopped, Emma had forgiven her.
‘Well . . .’ Connie began. ‘I usually keep my promises but sometimes—’
‘Yes or no?’ Queen Amethyst snapped impatiently. ‘Do you always keep your promises, or do you not?’
Connie gulped. ‘No,’ she said, ‘not always, but—’
The fairy queen held up her hand for silence. ‘My final question is this – who would you rather have as your best friend? A fairy or a human?’
Connie thought about that carefully. Ruby had become her best friend since Emma had left but, if she were given the choice to have Emma back again, what would she say? She thought about all the fun she’d been having with Ruby recently. Then she thought about her life back at home when Emma had been there. She’d gone to school with Emma, seen her nearly every weekend, and had lots of sleepovers at Emma’s house or hers when the two of them had stayed awake whispering to each other about all sorts of things late into the night. The thing was, she missed Emma really badly. Emma was like the sister she’d never had. She couldn’t imagine ever making another friend like her.
‘I’d want Emma,’ Connie whispered.
‘Then you would rather have a human,’ Queen Amethyst said crisply.
Connie bit her lip, glancing at Ruby. She felt terrible. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt her fairy friend’s feelings. The queen had ordered her to tell the truth and she had done that, but now she was starting to wish that she had lied. Surely it was better to lie sometimes, if it meant that you didn’t hurt anybody and you could get what you wanted – especially if the thing that you wanted was going to help somebody else and not just yourself? As it was, she was certain that her answers weren’t the ones that the fairy queen wanted to hear and, since Queen Amethyst had refused entry to other children because she hadn’t liked their answers, she was quite likely to do the same to her. Then what would happen to Ruby?
‘Well, Connie . . .’ Queen Amethyst sighed, flying off the window ledge and hovering in the air. ‘It is a shame that you are a strange child who prefers television to books and human friends to fairy friends.’
‘Does that mean she hasn’t passed the test?’ Ruby asked, sounding upset.
Connie, who was staring at her toes because she was too embarrassed to face the fairy queen’s piercing gaze, looked up.
Queen Amethyst was frowning. ‘I shall have to think very carefully about this. It can be dangerous to perform the shrinking spell on a human who is unsuitable. I will let you know at nine o’clock tomorrow morning.’
‘Shrinking spell?’ Connie queried, but the fairy queen was already beckoning to Emerald and Sapphire to accompany her back into the beam of light so that they could go home.
Connie watched, mesmerized, as the three fairies disappeared back along the light beam and into the book. Then the entry-book slammed itself shut and floated back to its place on the shelf. Connie stared at it, completely speechless.
She remembered an expression her mother sometimes used if she caught Connie daydreaming: ‘Is that you away wi’ the fairies again?’ It was a saying Connie’s mother had learnt from her Irish grandmother.
Well, tomorrow, if the fairy queen decided that she had passed the test, she definitely would be away with the fairies. Only this time it would be for real. She would be going away with them inside that magic book. But how could she have passed the test with the answers she had given?
‘Oh, Ruby, I’m so sorry,’ Connie burst out, as soon as they were alone together.
Ruby was looking very cross. ‘I told you, you should’ve worn sparkly shoes!’ she snapped. ‘You have no interview skills at all!’
‘Shall I come back here at nine o’clock tomorrow then?’
‘If you like. Though I don’t see that it’ll do much good now!’
And, after that, she flew back up to her top shelf and wouldn’t speak to Connie again.
Connie was dreaming that she had been shrunk down to the size of a mouse and that Uncle Maurice was about to tread on her. She could hear his heavy footsteps thudding towards her and, however loudly she shouted to tell him she was there, her voice would only come out as a whisper.
‘Connie!’ Her bedroom door was pushed open and Connie woke up with a start, realizing that the thudding sound had been her uncle knocking on her door. ‘Aunt Alice wants to know if you’d like to come with us to see Mrs Fitzpatrick’s library.’
‘What? Now?’ Connie looked at her bedside clock. It was already ten-past eight. At nine o’clock she was meeting Ruby and Queen Amethyst in the library. Her stomach felt queasy as she remembered the reason she was meeting them. If only her interview with the fairy queen had gone better.
‘Yes. I’m in between chapters and you know that’s the only time I can concentrate on anything else. Hurry up and get dressed and you can come with us.’
‘It’s OK. I want some breakfast first,’ Connie said quickly. ‘I might come over later.’ Maybe if her aunt and uncle went right now, they would have left the library by the time Queen Amethyst arrived.
As soon as she was left alone, Connie got washed and dressed and made herself some toast, although she was far too nervous to eat it. Then, when her aunt and uncle didn’t return after half an hour, she headed for the library herself. This time she entered Bluebell Hall through the front door, which had been left open for her. Mrs Fitzpatrick was right – the grand old hallway, with its Chinese rugs and stained-glass windows, was a very impressive sight indeed.
Connie spotted Ruby straight away, sliding down the curved wooden banister towards her. Ruby had been polishing it to make it more slippery and now she shouted out in delight as she shot off the end. Connie was relieved to see that Ruby seemed to have cheered up since last night, but she was still dreading how her friend would react if the fairy queen said Connie had failed the test. What if Ruby got so cross that she
never wanted to see her again? ‘Is that you, Connie?’ Uncle Maurice called out from the library, even though Connie hadn’t made any sound at all yet.
‘Do you think he heard me?’ whispered Ruby, fluttering to a halt in mid-air. ‘If he can hear me, he might be able to see me. I’d better keep out of his way. We don’t want to give him a fright.’
Somehow Connie didn’t think Uncle Maurice was the type of person to get a fright if he met a fairy – or even a dragon for that matter – but she didn’t say that to Ruby. She didn’t want to complicate things by letting Uncle Maurice in on their secret. Knowing him, he’d probably want to get shrunk down in size himself and come to fairyland with them.
Connie walked into the library, anxious to see how her aunt and uncle were getting on. Surely they couldn’t be going to spend much longer here. After all, unless you knew about the fairies, this was just a musty room full of boring old books. But, of course, she should have known that Aunt Alice and Uncle Maurice wouldn’t see it like that. Her aunt was in raptures over some huge old book of poems she had found and her uncle was balancing precariously on an antique wooden chair trying to reach the books on the top shelf. He was alarmingly near where Ruby kept all her things.
‘This is wonderful. I could stay here all day,’ Aunt Alice enthused.
Uncle Maurice grunted and pulled out a half-empty packet of chocolate buttons from behind one of the books. ‘How did these get here?’
Connie tried to distract him by pointing to a big red encyclopedia on the opposite wall. ‘Can you get that down for me, Uncle Maurice? I’d really like to have a look at it.’
Her uncle stayed put, spotting another title that interested him, and Aunt Alice, who was just tall enough to reach the encyclopedia, went over to fetch it for her instead. ‘I expect its got some interesting pictures in it, Connie. Oh, look,’ she gushed, pointing to a black and white drawing of a weird-looking contraption with a huge back wheel. ‘Here’s a penny-farthing bicycle.’
Connie pretended to be interested, but really she was looking round the shelves for the entry-book. At the moment she couldn’t see it. She was sure that Uncle Maurice – who was the only grown-up she knew who believed in fairies – would be able to see it if it started sparkling. Then he would get over-excited and ask lots of questions. What if he insisted on staying to meet the fairy queen himself? And what if Queen Amethyst didn’t like him? Lots of people didn’t like Uncle Maurice when they first met him because he tended to be quite rude and only want to have conversations about dragons or whatever other weird creature he was writing about at the time.
Connie slipped out into the hallway and found Ruby. ‘We’ve got to get rid of them,’ she whispered, looking at the grandfather clock in the corner that showed that it was fast approaching nine o’clock. ‘Can’t you do something by magic to make them leave?’
Ruby thought about it. ‘I could give them measles. Would that help?’
‘I don’t want you to make them ill,’ Connie protested. ‘Can’t you give them something nice to make them go away?’ She suddenly thought about Uncle Maurice being in between chapters and about Aunt Alice always getting writer’s block. ‘I know! Why don’t you give them some really good ideas!’
Ruby looked like she didn’t understand.
‘For their stories! Then they’ll have to rush off to write them down before they forget them, won’t they?’
‘Hmm . . . I suppose it might work.’ Ruby asked Connie what her aunt and uncle’s stories were about, then she flew into the library, taking care to sneak up behind Uncle Maurice to avoid being seen. She sprinkled a handful of fairy dust over his head, then went and did the same to Aunt Alice.
Connie watched from the doorway. It wasn’t long before her uncle stopped studying the book he was reading and began to look around the room as if he were searching for something. ‘You haven’t got any paper on you, have you, Alice?’
Aunt Alice had closed the encyclopedia now. ‘Funnily enough, I was just thinking that myself. I need to jot something down.’ She sounded excited. ‘I’ve been stuck at the same part of my book for ages now, and I’ve just thought how I can turn it around. If I make the children find a stolen painting of Saint George and the dragon behind the school blackboard, then—’
‘I’ve just thought of a brilliant way of starting my next chapter,’ Uncle Maurice interrupted her as he searched in his pockets for a pen. ‘That dragon of mine will be sent to boarding school. A boarding school for dragons! It’s perfect!’
‘I think you must have got their spells mixed up,’ Connie whispered to Ruby. ‘But it doesn’t matter. It’s working anyway.’
Her aunt and uncle were already putting back the books they had taken out and getting ready to leave.
‘I’d like to stay here for a bit longer,’ Connie told them. ‘I’ll be very careful.’
Ruby’s fairy dust must have done more to their thinking than Connie had realized because, instead of the argument she’d expected about how she was too young to be left on her own with all these valuable books, Aunt Alice just tossed her the front door key and told her to be sure to lock up properly. Her aunt and uncle looked bursting with ideas as they raced back to the flat.
‘Phew!’ said Connie. ‘Just in time!’
Not very long after that, the entry-book began to sparkle again and they knew that Queen Amethyst was about to arrive.
‘My decision has been difficult,’ the fairy queen announced solemnly. ‘I was disappointed with your answers to my questions at first, Connie, but on reflection I think the most important thing is that you had the courage to answer them truthfully. Because of that, I know I can trust you. My decision, therefore, is that you have passed the test.’
Ruby let out a triumphant cry and Connie found that she couldn’t swallow. There was a huge lump in her throat and she was far too full of emotion to be able to speak. She was being allowed into fairyland after all!
Ruby was flying in circles around the room now, laughing gleefully, and Sapphire and Emerald, who were hovering on either side of the fairy queen, were both grinning too.
Queen Amethyst clapped her hands to restore order. ‘We have no time to lose! We must perform the magic shrinking straight away!’
Connie felt herself starting to tremble as the fairy queen pointed a long thin finger at her and ordered her to stand still. She then instructed the three younger fairies to hold open a book for Connie to read. It was a book about a little girl who loved reading and wore sparkly shoes. Connie could tell that Queen Amethyst thought all little girls should be like that one.
‘Concentrate only on the words in the book,’ Queen Amethyst ordered, as she started to fly around Connie’s head sprinkling her with fairy dust. ‘Keep reading. Read out loud if you want to. But you musn’t stop until I tell you.’ As Connie read, she noticed something very strange. The words in the book seemed to be getting bigger and bigger. Then she realized that the whole book was getting bigger and so were the three fairies who were holding it. Soon she was having to move further back from the page in order to keep the words in focus.
‘Close your eyes now,’ Queen Amethyst told her, ‘but keep walking backwards.’
‘I’ll bump into the wall,’ Connie protested.
‘No, you won’t. It will take you a long time to reach the edge of the room now. Just do as I say. You must take twenty-six steps back – one for each letter of the alphabet. The fairy dust will turn them into magic steps.’
Connie kept her eyes tightly shut as she moved backwards, one step at a time. It was hard not to open them just a little bit to peek out, but she knew that she mustn’t.
‘Well done! You can open your eyes now,’ the fairy queen said, after she had counted to twenty-six.
Connie opened them and it was as if she were in an entirely different place. The room in which she was standing seemed to extend for miles around her. The other fairies were waving at her from the other side of a huge stretch of rug, still holding the book,
which was twice their height.
‘You’re the same size as us now,’ Ruby said, flying over to her. ‘You haven’t got any wings, but don’t worry. You can hold our hands and fly with us that way.’
She took Connie’s hand, gave it a little tug to pull her off the ground, and began to tow Connie through the air after her, back to where the other fairies were waiting.
‘Listen carefully,’ said Queen Amethyst, who was taller than Connie now and even more majestic-looking. ‘Sapphire and Emerald will take you through the entry-book into fairyland. From there, it is possible to visit any library in the world. They will show you which one you need to go to.’
‘Any library in the world?’ gasped Connie, whose head was still swimming with the shock of being reduced to fairy size.
‘So long as its entry-book hasn’t been lent out to anyone,’ Ruby put in. ‘They’re meant to be kept in the reference section so that people can’t take them out of the library, but sometimes—’
‘You must go now, Connie,’ the fairy queen interrupted impatiently. ‘The magic shrinking spell will only last for a few minutes if a person is outside fairyland. If you stay here much longer it will wear off. Once you reach the other library, you will return to your normal size.’
‘OK,’ Connie said. ‘But what about when I want to come back again?’
‘Emerald and Sapphire will see to that. A human who has been shrunk once is not as difficult to shrink a second time. They should be able to do it without my help. Now off you go.’
Sapphire flew up straight away to take Connie’s hand, but Emerald held back.
‘It’s all right,’ Connie told the blonde fairy, giving her what she hoped was a reassuring smile. ‘I promise I’m not the sort of human who throws tomato soup at fairies.’
Emerald gave her a nervous smile in return and flew over to her. The entry-book had opened again and, as they travelled together into the light beam, the brightness was so blinding that Connie couldn’t see anything.
