The Fairy Rebel

by Lynne Reid Banks

  A silence fell. And then the family noticed that standing in the middle beside the fallen Queen was a very tall, handsome elf wearing bright delphinium blue.

  “It’s my grand master-elf,” Tiki whispered to Jan.

  The grand master-elf made a long speech in Elfic. Tiki tried to translate, but gave up after a bit.

  “Elves love to hear themselves talk,” she whispered in Jan’s ear. “All it comes to is that with the help of you lot, and Wijic and me, of course, the Queen has lost her power. And would we like to choose a new ruler?” She giggled. “Guess who he’s got in mind?”

  “It ought to be you and Wijic,” whispered Jan.

  “Oh no, thanks! Think of the responsibility! No, it’s himself he means. Look, now he’s calling for a vote.”

  Thousands and thousands of minute hands shot up. Then there was a tiny, but mighty, cheer from the ranks of the watchers.

  “Let’s just hope he’s a good sort who won’t abuse his power,” said Charlie.

  “Do what?” asked Wijic.

  “Never mind,” said Charlie.

  But Bindi had another question, and she spoke it out loudly.

  “What’s going to happen to the Queen?”

  There was a hush over all the fairies.

  The Queen was obviously in pain. Despite everything, Jan couldn’t help feeling sorry for her.

  “Look, Charlie,” she said. “Her wings are broken.”

  “What’s going to happen to her?” asked Bindi again.

  “Who cares?” said Wijic heartlessly, and there was a murmur of agreement, especially from the gnomes.

  “As long as the blue hair-rings are touching her, she can do no harm,” said the grand master-elf. All the crowd giggled at the sound of him speaking in human language—it seemed comic to them, somehow.

  “Can’t she take them off?” asked Bindi.

  “No. They cling to her.”

  “Like that awful necklace clung to me!” said Bindi. And she looked down at her neck. A yellow smear of pollen dust was all that was left of the necklace. She rubbed it off in disgust and wiped her hand clean on the grass.

  “She can’t fly, anyway,” said the grand master-elf. “Her wings are broken.”

  Charlie was bending over the Queen, touching her wings with his gentle doctor’s fingers.

  “It’s a simple break in each case,” he announced. “I could mend it, I think, if a fairy would help me to fix the splints.”

  There was another murmur in the crowd. All the fairies, elves and gnomes turned to each other and began to chatter.

  “Shall we take another vote?” asked the grand master-elf after they’d talked it over.

  This time about a quarter of the crowd was against helping the queen, but the other three quarters voted to help her, as long as when her wings were healed she would be sent to some far-off place and made to stay there and never come back to trouble them.

  So some fairies helped Charlie to fix a tiny splint made of a toothpick to each wing and stick it on with little bits of adhesive tape. It may seem strange that they could not just magic her wings better, but none of them was willing to waste any of their magic on her. And her own magic had stopped.

  “Won’t it grow in again?” asked Jan.

  “Not as long as she’s wearing the hair-rings,” said Tiki. “You don’t know just how much power Bindi has in those blue hairs of hers! Hardly any humans have magic powers, but when they do, they are far more powerful than any fairy.”

  At last all the fairies, elves and gnomes went home (after offering a vote of thanks to Jan and her family). The grand master-elf actually kissed Jan’s and Bindi’s fingertips in a very courtly way—after all, he was now the Fairy King.

  Tiki and Wijic came into the house with the family. Jan made a lovely meal (savory for Wijic, sweet for Tiki, and a bit of both for Bindi). While they ate it, Tiki explained about the blue hairs.

  “I don’t know if they were an accident, or if the grand master-elf left them there on purpose,” she said. “Anyway, they are very, very powerful, and you can do almost any sort of magic with them that you like. But I must warn you. Once you’ve used one, it’s gone forever; it won’t grow again because you’re human. Now you’ve used five. The ones you have left must last you the rest of your life. So be very, very careful, and only pull one out and use it for a really important reason.”

  Bindi sat looking thoughtful.

  “Today,” said Tiki solemnly, “you have had a very nasty taste of what can happen if you use magic to get more. You see, fairy magic is meant to be good magic, not bad, but when it goes bad, it goes very bad, much worse than the ordinary black magic of bad fairies.”

  “Are there bad fairies?” asked Charlie.

  “Well, the Queen was one, wasn’t she?” said Wijic.

  “But I mean, lots of them, living together somewhere.”

  Tiki and Wijic looked at each other across a plate of chips. “I think we’d rather not talk about that,” said Tiki. She picked up a small chip and dipped it in some jam.

  The fairies stayed for a long time. They seemed quite happy and relaxed. One interesting thing was that they stayed visible even when they weren’t earthed.

  “It must be because Bindi’s one of us,” said Wijic. Bindi felt thrilled.

  After a while, Charlie said, “I think I’d better go up and look at Bindi’s room.” They all looked at each other anxiously, and Bindi began to shiver, but when Charlie came back he was smiling.

  “Everything’s back to normal,” he reported. “Except the door, of course—I’ll have to fix that. And the window.”

  Then Jan felt brave enough to go up to look. When she came down again, she wasn’t smiling at all.

  “How can you say it’s normal?” she asked Charlie. “The whole room is filthy! There are horrible black greasy marks all over everything, like soot.”

  Tiki and Wijic looked at each other, and then jumped up. They were both looking much more like their old selves. It seemed their magic must be growing back fast, because they both said, “We’ll clean it up; don’t you worry.” And they flew out through the kitchen door, hand in hand.

  “Those two seem to be very fond of each other,” said Charlie.

  “Maybe now the Queen’s lost her power, fairies will be able to fall in love,” said Jan.

  “And have babies?” asked Bindi.

  “Perhaps. It was only the Queen who used to send them in eggs.”

  Almost at once, Tiki and Wijic flew back.

  “It’s all nice and clean,” said Tiki smugly.

  “Already?” said Jan. “You were quick!”

  “And the door’s fixed,” added Wijic. “Hadn’t enough magic left for the window. Sorry.”

  “Leave me something to do,” said Charlie jokingly.

  Jan took the last charm off her bracelet—the little silver basket. In it she put bits of nuts for Wijic. And chips. He liked cheese and pickle flavor best. For Tiki there were crumbs of cake and cookies.

  “I wish I had some real candies,” said Jan. “A Snickers, for instance. You’d love Snickers, Tiki.”

  “Don’t tempt her,” said Wijic. “She’ll get fat again easily enough without Snickers.” But he was grinning at Tiki.

  Tiki was looking rather ashamed.

  “There was a Snickers up on Bindi’s bed,” she said. “I’m afraid I had a bit. Only a nibble! It was delicious.”

  Charlie looked at Bindi questioningly. He didn’t like her eating sweets. To everyone’s great surprise, Bindi burst into tears.

  “Darling! What on earth’s the matter?” asked Jan.

  So then of course Bindi told them all about the awful day she’d had at school, and about the necklace and how it had made her change. When she came to the part about stealing the sweets in the shop, Jan turned pale and Charlie’s jaw dropped. Bindi expected them to be very angry. If there was one thing they couldn’t stand, it was stealing. But instead, Jan took Bindi in her arms and hugged her.<
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  “Poor darling! It wasn’t your fault. But we must take the things back and pay for the ones you ate.”

  Bindi felt as if a great weight had been lifted off her. For the first time that day, she felt really, truly happy.

  She was nervous about going up to her room. After what had happened to her there that afternoon, she couldn’t believe she could ever feel comfortable in it again.

  But Jan and Charlie came with her, and as soon as she stepped inside the room she just felt it was all right. Better than that. It felt lovely. Safe. Friendly. Comforting. As if the room had been through a bad time with her and was now more her special place than ever.

  She went round it, just touching things. She kept glancing at the toy box sitting in the corner, looking so ordinary. At last she worked up courage and went over and touched it.

  “Open it,” said Charlie. “You must make sure that everything is the way it always was before.”

  Slowly and timidly, Bindi lifted the lid. Nothing happened. She opened it all the way. And then she gave a little gasp.

  There was the usual untidy heap of toys, looking just as they had last time she’d put them away. But there was something new. A tiny pink box, the shape of a rose, lying on the furry tummy of her old teddy bear.

  Carefully she picked it up. It was the size of her little fingernail. It had a minute fastening, which she could barely open. The lid flew up. Inside, just fitting the rose shape of the box, was yet another rose, made of gold, hanging on a gold chain so fine she almost couldn’t see it. She lifted it out.

  It was a necklace.

  “Your rose-present!” breathed Jan. “Isn’t it perfectly beautiful?”

  The chain had no clasp. It slipped over Bindi’s head. At once the last traces of the awfulness of that other necklace dropped out of Bindi’s mind. The little gold rose, warmed by her skin, winked in the sun from the broken window.

  “You really are a very lucky girl,” said Charlie. “It’s a wonder Tiki had enough magic left to fly, after making that for you.”

  “Maybe the grand master-elf—I mean the King—lent her some,” said Bindi.

  “No,” said Jan. “I think that was all her own.”

  “Hers and Wijic’s,” said Bindi. “I bet they’re going to share their magic from now on.”

  That’s almost the end of the story—that part of it, anyway.

  But I expect you want to know whether the gold rose-necklace could make magic. Well, it could, though none of them realized it for quite a long time. The magic it could do started that very night. I wonder if you can guess what it was. I’ll give you a hint.

  Bindi was lying in bed, her rose-necklace around her neck, thinking about all her adventures and wriggling excitedly when she thought of others that she might have. After all, she had about fifteen more magic blue hairs! And just as she was planning some wonderful things to do with them, she suddenly sat straight up in bed. She sat there, as still as a rock, for about three minutes. Then, slowly, she lay down again, her heart pounding. She had had a fantastic idea.

  She was tired, but she kept herself awake for hours. At last she heard Jan and Charlie going to bed. Still she didn’t let herself fall asleep. She lay there, waiting, trembling with excitement.

  About an hour passed—a long, long hour for Bindi.

  Then she quietly got out of bed and put the lights on. She unplaited her hair, and pulled it over one shoulder, and sorted through the brown hairs till she found the blue ones. She took one blue hair between finger and thumb, and tweaked it out.

  Then, holding it very carefully, she tiptoed out into the passage and into her parents’ room.

  Her mother was lying, as always, close to the open window. It was a warm night, and she had kicked the comforter aside. One leg—the bad one—was sticking out.

  Bindi crept up beside her, bent over and gently twisted the blue hair round Jan’s ankle. She kissed her lame foot. She had always loved it, poor foot.… Now it wouldn’t be a poor foot anymore.

  She looked at it for a moment in the summer moonlight, and then tucked it under the comforter and went back to bed.

  The gold rose round her neck seemed to be dancing.