Fairy Treasure

by Gwyneth Rees

  ‘The fairies found it?’

  ‘That’s right – they left it for her in the fairy fountain.’

  ‘Wait,’ Connie said, getting out the notebook she’d brought with her. ‘What fairy fountain?’

  ‘The one in the middle of the lake. When it was found, the ring was gleaming so brightly that everyone said the fairies must have rescued it from the lake and polished it before leaving it there for my great-great-grandmother to find. Everyone in her family believed in fairies except her, so the story goes, but on that day, after her ring appeared again, she started to believe in them too. And after that, the family always called that fountain, the fairy fountain.’

  Connie was flushed with excitement as she jotted down what Eliza had said. Because surely this was the information she had been looking for? Surely this must have been the ring’s happiest moment?

  But even so, she made sure Eliza told her every other story she knew about the ring, just in case.

  Sapphire and Emerald took Connie back into fairyland where Queen Amethyst met them, looking worried. She said that Connie must return to Ruby’s library without delay and that there was no time for her to stop and speak to any of the Canadian fairies about Emma. She had just declared the Bluebell Hall library out of bounds to all other fairies.

  ‘Ruby will explain why when you get there,’ the fairy queen told her.

  Once she got back, Connie waited a few minutes for the shrinking spell to wear off, and when she was her normal size again – feeling a little dizzy from all the shrinking and unshrinking – the first thing she noticed was that the books on one side of the library were missing.

  ‘Ruby, where are you?’ she called out. ‘And what’s happened to the books?’ As Ruby flew into view, she added, ‘I think the ring is in the fountain! Come on! I’ll tell you everything on the way there – and you’d better tell me what’s been happening here!’

  ‘Connie, I’ve been so frightened,’ Ruby gushed, as soon as they got outside. ‘Mrs Fitzpatrick’s lawyer came with another man just after you’d gone this morning and they started packing the books up. They’re coming back again on Monday to do the rest. I thought they were going to take the entry-book away today. So did Queen Amethyst. That’s why she won’t let any of the other fairies come here any more. She says it’s too dangerous because they could get stuck here.’

  ‘That’s terrible!’ Connie calculated that, as it was now Friday, they had three more days to get Ruby safely back to fairyland. ‘But listen to what I found out.’ She told Ruby what Eliza had told her about the ring. ‘So if I’m right and we find the ring in the fountain and take it back to Mrs Fitzpatrick, you’ll be able to go home straight away, won’t you?’

  Ruby was beaming now. ‘Oh, Connie, that’s wonderful! I can’t wait!’

  Despite being pleased for Ruby, Connie couldn’t help feeling a little bit sad. She had been hoping that Ruby would say she would miss Connie when she went back to fairyland. Connie would certainly miss her, but maybe fairies didn’t miss people the way humans did.

  When Connie and Ruby got to the lake they found Uncle Maurice standing there with his back to them. Ruby quickly hid behind a bush.

  Uncle Maurice whirled round and narrowed his eyes when he saw Connie. ‘Where have you been?’ he demanded. ‘Your aunt is really worried about you! She’s gone to look for you in the village and she’s sent me to search the grounds.’

  ‘I was still in the big house,’ Connie mumbled.

  ‘We looked for you in the house. Didn’t you hear us calling you?’

  Connie shook her head, flushing. ‘I . . . I sort of got stuck in a book.’

  ‘Really?’ Uncle Maurice looked as if he thought that was most unlikely.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I haven’t had any peace since your aunt got it into her head that you were missing! I told her you’d show up, but she still wouldn’t calm down – too vivid an imagination, that’s her problem! We’d better go and find her straight away and let her know you’re safe.’

  ‘Do we have to go right now?’ Connie asked, looking out at the fountain in the middle of the lake. Various jets of water were spurting out of the stone statue of two cherubs clutching a fish, but Connie couldn’t see anything red and sparkly that might be a ruby ring.

  ‘Of course we do!’ Connie’s uncle looked quite cross and Connie knew that she had no choice but to go with him.

  As they headed away from the lake, Connie turned back to see Ruby flying out over the water towards the fountain. Hopefully, Ruby would find the ring by herself.

  Then she had a horrible thought. What if Ruby found the ring straight away, returned it to Mrs Fitzpatrick and went back to fairyland without waiting to say goodbye to her?

  The walk along the road to the village seemed to last for ever, and all the time Connie was thinking about Ruby and what she would do when she found the ring. Then, when they were halfway there, they met Aunt Alice in the car on her way back to Bluebell Hall. She screeched the car to a halt and threw open her door. ‘Where on earth have you been, Connie? I’ve been worried sick! I thought you might have gone to see Mrs Fitzpatrick again so I went there and she kept me talking for so long, I thought I’d never get away.’

  ‘I’m really sorry, Aunt Alice,’ Connie said quickly. ‘I didn’t mean to make you worry.’

  ‘She says she got her nose stuck in a book and didn’t hear us calling her,’ Uncle Maurice said, in a way that made it clear that, in his opinion, only a fool would believe that.

  ‘Well, thank goodness you’re back now!’ Aunt Alice looked like she felt relieved enough to believe anything. ‘Get in the car and we’ll go home and have some lunch.’

  It wasn’t until after lunch, when her aunt and uncle were both seated at their respective computers again, that Connie finally managed to make her way back to the lake. She called out Ruby’s name but there was no response, so she hurried back to the library and climbed inside the window. At first she thought that Ruby wasn’t there either but then she heard little fairy sobs.

  ‘Ruby, what’s the matter?’

  Ruby’s muffled voice sounded from behind a row of books. ‘It wasn’t there. I searched the whole fountain, but it wasn’t there.’

  Connie frowned. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I looked everywhere. Oh, Connie, what am I going to do? On Monday those men will come back and take all the books away and then I’ll be stuck here for ever.’

  Connie felt surprised that the ring hadn’t been in the fountain, but she was glad now that she had written down all the other places Eliza had mentioned.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she told Ruby. ‘There are some more places we can look. I’ll go and get my list and I’ll meet you back here in ten minutes. One place is the bluebell woods.’ Connie frowned suddenly, realizing that looking for a ring in the woods was going to be worse than looking for a needle in a haystack.

  But Ruby had already perked up. ‘I’ll ask the flower fairies to help us. They know those woods better than anyone. I’ll ask them to search the woods for the ring.’

  While Ruby flew off to speak to the flower fairies, Connie went back to her room to find the notepad she had used to jot everything down when she had been talking to Eliza. Connie could remember most of the places Eliza had mentioned without looking at her notes. There was the church in the village where all the ladies in Mrs Fitzpatrick’s family had got married. What if that was where the ring had experienced its happiest moment? Then there was the spot where Mrs Fitzpatrick’s mother had first met her father – on the platform at the railway station in the village. That must have been a happy moment in the life of the ring, so it was another place they could look.

  Connie and Ruby met up outside the library window half an hour later. The flower fairies had agreed to search the woods, which left Connie and Ruby to divide the other tasks between them. Ruby said that she would search the church if Connie looked in the railway station. Ruby reckoned the ring could well be in the churc
h, where the happy women in the family had all stood to take their marriage vows and been given wedding rings to go alongside their ruby one. She didn’t think it would be in the train station since rings didn’t like noise. ‘Where else is there to look?’ she asked, straining to read Connie’s list.

  ‘At the front gate of Bluebell Hall,’ Connie told her. ‘We can search there before we go to the village. That’s where Mrs Fitzpatrick’s great-grandmother was standing when she saw her first grandchild. She was so happy when the carriage drew up and she looked inside and saw the little baby, that she took off the ruby ring and gave it to her daughter right there and then as a thank-you gift.’

  So Connie and Ruby started by searching the whole area by the front gate of the house. When they couldn’t find the ring there, Connie went to ask her aunt if she could go into the village again. She wasn’t expecting there to be a problem, but she was wrong. Aunt Alice said that she didn’t want Connie walking into the village on her own, that she didn’t have time to take her there herself, and that surely Connie could amuse herself around the house until tea time.

  ‘Can’t you just sneak off anyway?’ Ruby suggested, when she heard what Connie’s aunt had said.

  Connie frowned. She didn’t want to do that, not just in case she was found out and got into trouble, but because she didn’t want to worry her aunt again after the worry she had already caused her that morning. She looked down at the rest of her list. ‘Why don’t you search the church and the railway station? I can search the last two places on the list because they’re both here at the house.’

  ‘The ring can’t be inside the house. I’ve already looked for it there,’ Ruby said impatiently.

  ‘I know, but Eliza told me another story about the lady who first owned the ring. She was wearing black because she was still in mourning for her dead sweetheart – the one who’d had the ring made especially for her – when she tripped on her long skirts and fell down the stairs in Bluebell Hall. A young man who was visiting them was in the hallway and he saw her fall and rushed forward to help. She wasn’t hurt, but the ring fell off and she couldn’t find it anywhere. While the young man was helping her look for it, he noticed a gap in the floorboards. He ordered the servants to lift them up in case the ring had fallen through it, and there it was safe and sound underneath – and very happy to be found, I bet!’

  Ruby was frowning as if she thought the story sounded a bit far-fetched. ‘Why would the ring fall off unless it was loose, and why would it be loose if it was made especially for her?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe her fingers had got thinner because she’d stopped eating after her sweetheart died or something. Anyway, we still ought to check to see if it’s there.’

  ‘What? Under the floorboards?’

  ‘Yes. And if it’s not there, I’ll look in the other place Eliza told me about. It’s the place where that young man – her second sweetheart – asked her to marry him. After he found the ring for her, they fell in love and he proposed to her beside the well in the garden. It was meant to be a wishing well so he made a wish that she would say yes – and she did!’

  ‘These stories just get soppier and soppier,’ Ruby complained. ‘Anyway, there isn’t a well in the garden.’

  ‘There’s the remains of one just behind the house. I found it when I first came here. I showed it to Uncle Maurice and he said there must have been a well there once that had been filled in.’

  ‘I still don’t think the ring is going to be under the floorboards or down a well,’ Ruby said stubbornly. ‘It would be too difficult for anyone to find it.’

  ‘Well, maybe it doesn’t want to be found!’

  ‘Oh, it wants to be found all right! Rings like to show off – especially ruby ones – and they can’t do that if there’s nobody to show off to, can they?’ Ruby frowned. ‘I still reckon it’s in the church. Rings like churches. That’s where they get to be the centre of attention at people’s weddings.’ And before Connie could reply, Ruby had flown off towards the church in the village.

  Connie returned to the main house and lifted up all the rugs in the hallway to check the floorboards for gaps. She couldn’t find one anywhere. All she found was a wobbly board across the far side of the hall from the stairs. She prised it up at its loose end and peered underneath, but it was so dark that she couldn’t see anything. She went to get a torch and came back to look again, but there was nothing underneath except dust. This probably wasn’t the right floorboard, she thought, as she carefully put it back. To look properly she would have to take them all up, and Ruby was right – that was impossible.

  She decided to go and search at the site of the old well instead. She found the spot easily enough. Some of the stones that had formed the upper part of the well still made a rough circle on the ground, even though the main part had been filled in long ago and grass now grew over the top of it. She spent a long time carefully searching the ground near where the well had been, but she couldn’t find any sign of Mrs Fitzpatrick’s ring.

  Feeling discouraged, she went back to the library to see if Ruby had returned. She waited for her there until six o’clock, then went back to the flat to have tea with her aunt and uncle.

  After a strange meal of peanut-butter sandwiches and chocolate (because that was what they all fancied to eat), Connie returned to the library and found Ruby flying round and round the room in an agitated state. The fairy stopped abruptly when she saw Connie.

  ‘Did you find it?’ they both asked each other at once.

  ‘No,’ Connie answered first. ‘I was hoping you had.’

  Ruby shook her head. She looked exhausted. ‘I looked in front of the altar and in all the pews and everywhere else in the church. Then I went to search in the station. I even flew down on to the railway tracks in case the ring had got kicked off the platform, but it wasn’t anywhere.’

  ‘What about the flower fairies?’ Connie asked anxiously. ‘Have you heard back from them?’

  ‘No, but they might not have finished searching the woods yet. They said it would take them the whole day.’

  Connie wondered if she should suggest that they start making some alternative plans for Ruby’s future, just in case the flower fairies couldn’t find the ring either. She wanted to let Ruby know that she could always come and live with her if she couldn’t go back to fairyland.

  ‘The flower fairies will find it,’ Ruby was repeating over and over, as if she were desperately trying to convince herself. ‘There must be a spot in the woods where it had its happiest moment . . .’

  Connie decided it was probably best not to mention any other plans just yet. ‘I can fetch you some chocolate, if you like,’ she offered, thinking that might help calm Ruby down.

  ‘I’m not hungry,’ Ruby replied miserably. ‘Anyway, I can have all the chocolate I want if I end up being stuck in your world, can’t I?’ She took herself off to the top shelf and curled up behind the books, and Connie could tell that she was feeling very sorry for herself indeed.

  When Connie woke up the next morning, she knew straight away that the ring must still be missing and that the flower fairies couldn’t have found it either. If they had, then Ruby had promised to come and tell her immediately, even if it meant waking her up. Connie could see the lake from her bedroom window and, as she drew back the curtains, she had an idea. What if the ring had been in the fountain after all, but had fallen off into the water? Maybe if she wore her goggles and put her head under the water and looked, she might find it. Anything was worth a try, wasn’t it?

  Her aunt came into her room just as she was putting on her swimming costume. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I thought I’d go for a swim in the lake.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Connie! The water might be dirty and we don’t know how deep it is. If you want to swim, you can go to the local swimming pool. We can go there this morning if you like!’

  Her aunt, who liked swimming – though not very energetically – wouldn’t take no f
or an answer. Half an hour later Connie found herself in the car with a very enthusiastic Aunt Alice, heading towards the local sports centre, which was a good twenty minutes drive away. Aunt Alice had put on her own swimsuit under her clothes and had promised to come in the pool with her.

  After their swim, Aunt Alice remembered that she needed some more things from the supermarket and, as swimming always made her hungry, she decided they would stop for lunch in the supermarket cafe. By the time they headed back towards Bluebell Hall, it was mid afternoon and Connie was starting to feel very guilty about Ruby who must be thinking Connie deserted her. Then, just as they were about to drive past Mrs Fitzpatrick’s nursing home, Aunt Alice remembered that there was something she needed to ask the old lady and she slowed the car to turn into the driveway.

  ‘Do we have to go and see her now?’ Connie burst out impatiently.

  Aunt Alice looked surprised. ‘I only want to ask about her book sale. I forgot about that yesterday because I was so worried about you. You can pop in and ask her for me, if you like. She’s less likely to keep you there talking, than me.’

  Connie wasn’t so sure that was true, but she agreed anyway. At least this would be a good opportunity to suggest that Mrs Fitzpatrick wrote a letter to her great-niece and sent it to the British Museum library.

  ‘Hello, Connie,’ the nurse who opened the door greeted her. ‘Here to see Mrs Fitzpatrick, are you? She’s the popular one today. She’s already got some visitors.’

  Connie followed the nurse through to the lounge where Mrs Fitzpatrick was sitting in a big armchair facing her. Her two visitors – a grey-haired man and a dark-haired woman – had their backs to Connie. The old lady was chattering away, looking much happier than Connie had seen her looking before. And when the female visitor turned round, Connie gasped in surprise – it was Eliza!

  Connie was very glad that her aunt wasn’t with her as Eliza greeted her like an old friend and asked how she had enjoyed the rest of her day out in London.