In a Blink (Disney

by Kiki Thorpe

  “Come on! Come on!” The fairies they had been following beckoned to them.

  At the base of the great tree was a pebbled courtyard. A fairy stood in the center of it. She wore a long gown made of rose petals. A thin band of gold rested on her head.

  “She must be a queen,” Mia whispered.

  Kate had been leading the way. But now, for the first time, she hesitated. She had never met a queen before. She wasn’t sure what to do.

  To Kate’s astonishment, Gabby stepped in front of her. The little girl held the edges of her tutu and curtsied.

  The queen looked pleased. “I am Queen Clarion,” she said in a voice that seemed to belong to someone much bigger. “Tell me, why have you come here?”

  At last, Kate found her voice. “Your Majesty,” she said, stepping forward, “we don’t know why we’re here. We don’t even know where we are.”

  The crowd of fairies tittered. Even the queen seemed surprised. “Why, you’re in Pixie Hollow! On the island of Never Land. Are you saying you didn’t mean to come?”

  “It’s my fault.” A fairy fluttered forward. It was the one the girls had first seen on the beach.

  “Go ahead, Prilla,” the queen said.

  Prilla explained to the queen what had happened with her blink. “I didn’t mean to bring them. I’d fly backward if I could,” Prilla added. She was afraid the queen would be angry. No fairy had ever blinked Clumsies to Never Land before.

  The queen was quiet for a moment, thinking. “It seems these girls have come here by accident,” she said at last. “All the same, we must find a way to get them home. Until then, they will be our guests. Fairies of Pixie Hollow, treat these Clumsies kindly.”

  “I’m not clumsy.” Mia spoke up suddenly. “I’m Mia!”

  Everyone turned to look at her. Mia blushed, but continued, “That’s Kate, and that’s Lainey. And this is my little sister, Gabby. We’re not clumsy, and I wish you’d stop calling us that … er, Your Majesty.” She added the last part to be polite.

  Silence fell over the courtyard. The queen stared at Mia. Then she laughed. Her laugh was clear and bell-like. As soon as they heard it, the girls relaxed.

  “Clumsies are what we call the people of the mainland—your world,” Queen Clarion explained. “But you’re right. While you’re our guests, you should be called by your names. Mia, Kate, Lainey, and Gabby, welcome to Pixie Hollow.”

  The queen clapped her hands. A door in the side of the tree opened and dozens of fairies came out. They were all carrying food—whole strawberries, roasted walnuts, wheels of cheese the size of a penny, loaves of bread no bigger than your thumb … and last but not least, four beautiful cakes. It took two fairies each to carry them, although to the girls they were the size of cupcakes.

  More fairies unrolled banana leaves to be used as the girls’ place mats. Then Kate, Lainey, Mia, and Gabby sat down to their first fairy feast.

  Tinker Bell had been watching from the edge of the courtyard. When the girls began to eat, she rose into the air. Everything was settled. She could get back to her workshop now.

  But as she turned to leave, the queen called to her. Tink flew over. “Yes, Queen Clarion?”

  “We’ve never had so many Clumsies in Pixie Hollow,” Queen Clarion said.

  “No, we haven’t,” said Tink.

  “Taking care of four girls won’t be easy, will it?” the queen asked.

  “I suppose not,” Tink said absently. She was already thinking about her saucepan.

  But the queen’s next words got her attention. “I want you to help Prilla,” the queen told Tink. “For the time being, it will be your job to look after the girls.”

  Oh, the unfairness! As soon as she was alone, Tink stomped her tiny foot in the air. Somehow she’d gotten stuck with the Clumsies. Tink would rather have had her wings dipped in mud!

  “Why me?” she grumbled to herself. “Any other fairy would do just fine.” But what could she do? It was the queen’s command. So when Prilla decided to give the girls a tour, Tink had no choice but to follow along.

  Prilla started her tour with the Home Tree, as any fairy would. The Home Tree was the heart of the fairies’ world.

  Earlier, the girls had been too excited to examine the tree properly. But now they saw all the details they’d missed. They marveled at the great knothole door, the sea-glass windows, and the tiny steps that wound around the trunk.

  “Where do those go?” Gabby pointed to the different colored doors lining the tree’s great branches. Some had crystal doorknobs or dandelion doormats. Others had silver wind chimes or sea-fan awnings hung above them.

  “To the fairies’ rooms. Each room is decorated according to its fairy’s talent,” Prilla explained.

  “What kind of talent?” asked Lainey.

  “Every kind!” said Prilla. “Every fairy in Pixie Hollow has a talent. It’s the thing she does best and loves to do more than anything else. Look, there in the courtyard, that’s a sweeping-talent fairy. And the one over there, carrying that plum—that’s a harvest-talent fairy.”

  Kate giggled. What funny talents! she thought. “If I were a fairy, I’d have an exciting talent,” she whispered to Mia.

  Mia nodded. She was busy peering into the windows of the tearoom. Kate peeked over her shoulder. She saw a table made from the polished cross section of a tree trunk. It was set with plates and cups made from seashells. The napkins were folded flower petals.

  “Everything is so pretty! I wish I could shrink myself and go inside,” Mia said.

  “Over here is Tink’s workshop,” Prilla said, leading the girls around the side of the tree.

  Tink, who’d been sulking behind a tree root, looked up with a start. Her workshop was her pride and joy. She didn’t want Clumsies poking around in there! She hurried over to keep an eye on them.

  When Gabby saw Tink’s workshop, she squealed with delight. “It’s a teakettle!” she exclaimed. Sure enough, a real, human-sized teakettle had been squeezed between the Home Tree’s roots. Its spout made a little awning over the tiny door.

  “Tink’s a tinker-talent fairy,” Prilla explained. “The best in Pixie Hollow.”

  Normally, Tink would have been pleased by the compliment. But she was too busy watching Mia. The girl was down on her hands and knees, peeking in the window.

  “Oh, look!” Mia cried. “There’s a teeny-tiny workbench. And a bucket made from a thimble. Oh! And look at that chair made from an old bent spoon!”

  “Let me see! Let me see!” cried Gabby, tugging at Mia’s sleeve.

  The other girls took turns peeping inside. They were so enthusiastic that finally even Tink had to smile.

  “Isn’t it just the cutest thing you’ve ever seen?” Mia exclaimed.

  Tink’s smile faded. Prilla looked embarrassed.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Mia.

  “Fairies don’t like to be called cute,” Prilla said. “It’s insulting.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know. I’m sorry, Miss Tink,” Mia said. Tink just rolled her eyes.

  “Fairies don’t say ‘sorry,’ ” Prilla told Mia. “They say, ‘I’d fly backward if I could.’ ”

  Mia glanced at Tink and nodded, clearly afraid to say anything else at all.

  “It’s okay,” Prilla said kindly. “When I first got here, I didn’t understand all the rules, either.”

  “What other rules are there?” Lainey asked.

  “Well, for starters, fairies don’t say Mister or Miss,” Prilla explained. “And be careful who you tell secrets to. Fairies love to gossip! And another thing.” Prilla lowered her voice. “Watch out for Vidia, the fast-flying-talent fairy.…”

  Prilla kept talking, but Kate wasn’t listening anymore. Rules had always bored her.

  Kate looked around for something interesting. She spied a little building made of twigs. It had a straw roof and a wide door.

  “What’s this?” Kate asked, striding over to it. She bent down to open the door.

 
; “Don’t!” cried Tink. “That’s the—”

  Frightened squeaks drowned out the rest of her words. A dozen mice burst through the door. They ran off in every direction.

  “Oopsie,” said Kate.

  “That’s the dairy mouse barn,” Tink finished with a sigh.

  “I’ll help!” cried Lainey. She started to chase after the mice. But she only frightened them more.

  A fairy flew out of the barn. “You clumsy Clumsies!” she yelled.

  “Maybe we’d better move on,” Prilla said quickly, and hurried the girls away. When Kate glanced back over her shoulder, she saw the fairy herding the mice back into the barn.

  Prilla led the girls through Pixie Hollow. They saw garden fairies watering flowers and caterpillar-shearing-talent fairies herding woolly caterpillars. Two fairies riding on the backs of squirrels chased each other through the trees.

  “What are they doing?” asked Lainey.

  “Playing tag,” Prilla replied. “Those are animal-talent fairies.”

  Tink and Prilla took the girls to the orchard, where the harvest-talent fairies gave them just-picked peaches still warm from the sun. Next, they visited Havendish Stream. The girls watched the water-talent fairies sailing their leaf-boats.

  Nearby, Kate saw a funny round building. It was built from odd little rocks. Going closer, she saw that they weren’t rocks, but peach pits.

  “What’s this place?” she asked.

  “The mill,” Prilla said, flying over. “It’s where we keep the fairy dust.”

  “What’s fairy dust?” asked Lainey.

  “It’s what makes us sparkle,” said a voice nearby.

  A sparrow man flew around the side of the mill. He had floppy blond hair and a friendly smile. “The dust also helps us fly,” he told the girls. “Without it, we can’t fly more than a foot at a time.”

  “This is Terence,” Prilla told the girls. “He’s a dust talent.”

  “Would you like to see inside?” Terence asked them.

  The girls crowded around the double doors. In the dim light, they could see a dozen pumpkin-canisters.

  Terence lifted the lid off one of the pumpkins. The fairy dust was finer than flour. It shimmered with the colors of the rainbow.

  “That’s a lot of dust,” Mia said.

  “It’s just enough,” Terence replied. “In Pixie Hollow there’s just enough of everything. No more, no less.”

  Kate was thinking about something Terence had said. “Fairy dust helps you fly. Could it help us fly, too?” she asked.

  “Of course,” Terence said. “Anyone can fly with fairy dust. In fact, that’s how children usually get to Never Land. You’re the first ones I’ve met to come on a blink.”

  Kate was startled by this news. “You mean, other kids have been here, too?”

  “Oh, sure,” said Terence. “Not very often, mind you. And usually they end up in other parts of Never Land. We don’t see too many Clumsies in Pixie Hollow.”

  “So where are the kids now?” Mia wondered.

  “Home,” Tink said. The girls turned to her in surprise. It was the first time she’d spoken since the trouble at the mouse barn.

  “Clumsies go home,” Tink said again, matter-of-factly. “Unless they have no homes to go back to. Then they stay lost in Never Land forever.”

  The way she said “forever” sent a shiver down Kate’s spine. “But,” she said, “the ones who do go home, they come back to visit sometimes, don’t they?”

  “No, they don’t,” Tink said with a shrug. “They go home and grow up. And when they grow up, they forget. Never Land seems like something they once dreamed.”

  The girls were quiet, thinking about this. It was hard for them to imagine ever forgetting such a wonderful place.

  “It’s getting late,” Prilla said, glancing at the sun. “We can see more of Pixie Hollow tomorrow.”

  “Come visit anytime,” Terence told the girls as he shut the doors of the mill.

  The setting sun turned the meadow gold as they made their way back to the Home Tree. It looked even more beautiful than when they’d first arrived in Pixie Hollow. But Kate barely saw it. Tink’s words still troubled her.

  Was it true that they would go home and forget about Never Land … or else stay here forever? To Kate, the choice—if it was a choice at all—seemed deeply unfair.

  Well, I won’t think about it, Kate told herself. After all, they were here now. There was still so much to do and see and discover.

  Pushing the thought from her mind, Kate skipped ahead to join her friends.

  “I can show you your room now,” Prilla told the girls when they returned from the dust mill.

  “We have a room?” Kate asked, surprised.

  “Of course!” Prilla laughed. “Where did you think you’d sleep? On the ground?”

  Kate wouldn’t have minded. Sleeping outside, with nothing but the stars overhead, was something she’d always wanted to try.

  “Come on,” said Prilla, “the decorating-talent fairies are almost finished.”

  The last bit of light was draining from the sky. Kate, Mia, Lainey, and Gabby followed the fairies to a large weeping willow. Light shone beneath the willow’s leaves, as if the tree glowed from within.

  Tinker Bell parted the branches, and the girls stepped inside.

  Kate gasped. It was the perfect room. Four girl-sized hammocks hung from the tree’s branches. The willow’s leaves spilled down around them like curtains. The velvety grass had been raked into pretty spiral patterns. Soft light came from lanterns set into notches in the tree’s trunk.

  Gabby looked closer at one of the lanterns. Half a dozen fireflies circled inside. “Lightning-bug lights!” she cried.

  Mia sank down into one of the hammocks. It had been filled with moss and covered with silk sheets to make a sort of swinging bed. She lifted a pillow to her face and sniffed. “It smells like roses.”

  “It’s stuffed with rose petals,” Prilla said. “Do you like it?”

  “It’s the most beautiful room I’ve ever seen,” Mia replied.

  The girls noticed two tiny hammocks hanging next to theirs. “Do you live here, too?” Gabby asked the fairies hopefully.

  “Tink and I have our own rooms in the Home Tree,” Prilla explained. “But we thought we should stay with you, for now, anyway.”

  On another branch, Lainey discovered a basin made from tightly woven banana leaves. It was filled with cool springwater. The girls washed their faces, and cleaned their teeth with licorice twigs. The sewing-talent fairies had made nightgowns for them by stitching together flannel sheets. The girls slipped these over their heads, shivering at the softness.

  As they climbed into their beds, Tink went around tapping the lanterns to put the fireflies out.

  “Leave one on,” Mia said. “At home, Mami always leaves a light on for Gabby.”

  “Oh!” Lainey gasped and sat up. “Home!”

  Until that moment, the girls had not thought once of their parents. But now, as if waking from a dream, they realized how long they’d been gone.

  “Our moms and dads are going to be so worried!” said Mia.

  “They’re going to be so angry,” Kate added grimly.

  “If only there were a way we could send a message. Just to let them know we’re all right,” said Lainey.

  Tink, who was examining Gabby’s wings, looked up. “Prilla could take a note,” she said.

  “That’s right—I could blink there! Oh, Tink, you’re so clever,” said Prilla.

  Tink shrugged and turned back to the wings. She had been alarmed when Gabby took them off and hung them on a twig. But now she saw that they were made of cloth and wire. Not real fairy wings at all.

  The girls got busy preparing their message. Kate declared that Mia should write it, since she had the best handwriting. The fairies had no pens or paper. Mia wrote on a strip of birch bark using a twig dipped in berry ink.

  Mia fanned the wet ink. When it was dry, she
gave the note to Prilla. Prilla held the rolled-up bark in her arms. She pictured a tunnel with Mia and Gabby’s house at the end of it.

  She blinked.

  Prilla was in a dark room. She could hear soft snores. Looking down, she saw a sleeping boy holding a stuffed dinosaur.

  Wrong house! Prilla blinked again.

  She was sitting on the pages of an open book. A boy and a girl stared down at her. “Look, Mom! A fairy!” cried the girl.

  “No, it’s a picture of a bird. See?” Their mother’s finger landed on the page next to Prilla. She blinked away.

  On her third blink, Prilla found herself on the doorstep of a narrow brick house. It looked like Mia and Gabby’s house, as far as Prilla could remember. Prilla placed the note on the doorstep. Then she blinked away—too soon to see the wind pick up the note and carry it off.

  “I did it!” she exclaimed as she arrived back in the willow room.

  “Did what?” asked Kate.

  “I delivered the note,” Prilla said. “I didn’t mean to be gone so long. It took a while to find the right house.”

  “But you’ve been right here the whole time,” said Kate. To the girls, no more than an instant had passed. Prilla hadn’t even left the room.

  Prilla was surprised to hear this. She had never thought about what a blink looked like from the other side.

  “Do you think it might be like that for us?” Lainey asked after a moment. “Do you think back at home no time has passed since we left?”

  Prilla considered Lainey’s question. “Maybe so,” she said. “A blink is a blink, whichever way you go.”

  A sigh of relief went around the room. As soon as they were sure their parents wouldn’t be worried, the girls’ mood lifted.

  “This is like a sleepover!” said Lainey, snuggling under the covers.

  “It’s better,” Mia said. “We can stay up all night if we want!”