by Kiki Thorpe
But the snake took no notice of them. It seemed to be in a trance. Its head swayed a little, and its tongue flickered again.
Gabby couldn’t stand it. “Somebody do something!” she begged.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Kate’s hand creep into the air and twist an apple off the tree above them.
Kate’s wrist snapped forward, lightning quick.
The apple struck the ground right in front of the snake, startling it. The snake coiled in on itself.
The movement broke the spell in the orchard. Two scouts swooped in and whisked the petrified fairy away. Other fairies flew at the snake, shouting and clacking pebbles together.
The girls joined in making a racket. They stomped their feet and hollered. They banged sticks together.
The snake coiled tighter. It looked annoyed. There went its lunch, and now all the noise was making things worse.
As the clamor grew, the snake decided it had had enough. It uncoiled and slithered away.
The fairies and the girls cheered. Fairies swarmed around Kate. They pinched her cheeks and patted her head. The air rang with their praise.
Kate blushed beneath her freckles. “It was just a fastball,” she said.
The terror of watching the fairy, followed by the burst of relief, made Gabby feel fizzy with energy. As they followed the fairies back to the Home Tree, she couldn’t stop talking. “Kate, that was so neat. You threw that apple so fast. I want to learn to throw like that. Will you teach me? Promise?”
Kate laughed. “I’d be glad to teach you, Gabby.”
“And I helped scare away the snake, too! I stomped my feet really hard. I think that helped!”
“It definitely did,” Lainey agreed.
“That fairy was really scared,” Gabby babbled on. “I think we should do something nice for her. Like maybe we could pick some flowers for her. Or make something— I know! We can make her a card! It can say ‘We hope you feel better soon.’ I can even draw a picture on it!”
Mia grinned. “That’s a great idea, Gabby.”
They walked on, Gabby bursting with energy and ideas. She passed right by her great-grandfather’s little wooden boat without even noticing it.
Tink flew slowly back to her workshop. The rescue had gone well, but she felt gloomy. She thought about how small and vulnerable fairies were. A flying fairy wouldn’t make it far on her own. Seeing the petrified fairy in the orchard had only been a reminder of that.
I wish there were some other way, she thought.
Tink drew up short. She hovered in the air, staring.
A boat sat in a clump of flowers not two feet from her workshop door. It was a big, sturdy boat, with a sail made of cloth.
A Clumsy’s boat, Tink thought. Yet it was the perfect size for a fairy.
Tink turned to see who the boat belonged to, but there wasn’t a Clumsy in sight. The boat looked as if it had dropped straight out of the sky and landed there in her buttercups.
Tink fluttered over to it. The moment she stepped onto the deck, she sensed the boat was special. Tink knew about making things. She could tell when something was well crafted, and she knew when something had been made with love. This boat was both.
All of a sudden, Tink understood—her wish had been granted! She was sure Never Land had something to do with it. The magic of Never Land could never be underestimated.
Of course, when magic gives you a gift, you have to take it.
Getting the boat inside the teakettle was the hardest part. The doorway to Tink’s workshop was only three inches tall, and the boat was a good deal bigger. Tink managed it at last, though it took nearly a gallon of fairy dust to magically squeeze it through.
Once the boat was inside, Tink got to work. She sealed all the cracks with pine tar and waterproofed them with beeswax. She patched the sail. The lines were made of plain old cotton string, so she replaced them with good, fairy-made rope. She oiled the ship’s wheel and checked the rudder.
The cabin was musty, so she gave it a good airing, then moved her own bed in. She added a soft thistledown comforter and a pussy-willow pillow so she’d be cozy during cold nights at sea.
Last but not least, Tink tinkered a shiny new brass bell. She engraved the boat’s name on the side, changing just one letter so it read Tink’s Treasure.
When she rang the bell, its peal was deep and satisfying.
Tink worked for three days and nights, but at last the boat was ready. The sun was setting as she stepped back to admire it. She thought it was the finest boat she’d ever seen, even better than the grand ships anchored in Pirate Cove.
She had one more thing to do—she needed a map. Of course, she had the one under her desk. But it was a library map. She couldn’t just take it.
Tink sat down and spread out a piece of onionskin. She would trace the map and return the original to the library.
She had just started tracing the map onto the papery skin when she heard a knock on her door.
Tink opened it. Four of her friends stood on the doorstep—Iridessa, the light fairy; Fawn, the animal fairy; Rosetta, the garden fairy; and Silvermist, the water fairy. They looked at Tink gravely.
“All right, Tinker Bell. What’s going on?” Iridessa demanded.
“What do you mean?” Tink asked.
“We know you’re up to something,” Iridessa replied. “We haven’t seen you for days. You’ve missed every meal—”
“There are candles burning in your workshop all night long,” Rosetta added.
“The dust-keepers say you’ve used buckets of fairy dust,” Silvermist said.
“Yeah,” Fawn agreed. “Something stinks around here.”
There was a pause. Rosetta wrinkled her nose and whispered, “Er, Fawn, I think that might be you.”
“Me?” Fawn sniffed her shirt. “Oops. I ran into a stinkbug today. Boy, was he in a mood.”
Iridessa rolled her eyes. “Tink, what we’re trying to say is, we think you’re hiding something from us.”
“I’m not hiding anything,” Tink replied, stepping aside. “Come in and see for yourselves.”
Her friends crowded through the doorway, then stopped and stared. Tink had magically stretched the inside of her workshop to make room for the boat, but it still took up most of the room.
“It’s a boat,” Silvermist observed.
“A big boat,” Rosetta added.
“You’re not going to turn pirate on us, are you, Tink?” Fawn asked.
Tink laughed. “Of course not! I just want to sail it.”
“What?”
“Where?”
“When?”
“Why?” her friends asked all at once.
“On the Never Sea, of course,” Tink answered. “If the weather’s right, I’ll leave tomorrow. As for why—well, simply because I can.”
Her friends stared at her in amazement. Rosetta placed a gentle hand on her arm. “Tink, honey, are you feeling all right?”
“I feel fine,” Tink said. “Why does everyone keep asking me that?”
“It’s just…why a boat?” Silvermist asked. “You aren’t even a water fairy.”
“So?” Tink tugged on her bangs, which she did when she was annoyed. She hadn’t expected so many questions. “I know my way around a ship. I’ve been on plenty of pirate ships with Peter Pan.”
“Ah! So you’re going with Peter!” said Iridessa. The others nodded, as if they finally understood.
“No,” Tink said, tugging harder. “This has nothing to do with him.”
That was mostly true, but not completely. Journeys with Peter had given Tink her first real taste of adventure. And as any true adventurer knows, adventures are like chocolate ice cream or Never Berry pie. Once you’ve gotten a taste, you always crave more.
But this time, Tink didn’t need Peter. She could have an adventure on her own. “Haven’t you ever wanted to do something really big?” she asked her friends.
“Sure,” said Iridessa. “That’s when
I make a rainbow—”
“Or a waterfall—” said Silvermist.
“Or a tree grow—” added Rosetta.
“Or a lion roar,” said Fawn. “You don’t have to leave Never Land to do something big.”
“Well, maybe I want to be different. Maybe I want to be the first fairy to sail across the Never Sea,” Tink said. “I might even discover something new.” She was about to add like Shadow Island, but then she thought better of it. Instead, she said, “You’re my friends. Aren’t friends supposed to support one another’s dreams?”
Her friends looked abashed. “Of course I support you, Tink,” Silvermist said quickly.
“Me too.”
“So do I.”
“We all do,” said Iridessa. The fairies wrapped their arms around Tink and pulled her into a hug.
“But you have to promise to come back,” Rosetta added.
Tink laughed. “I promise.”
She said good-bye to her friends. After they left, she went back to tracing the map. The faint shadow lay offshore, to the east of Never Land, so that was where Tink decided to start. She used a hummingbird quill dipped in blackberry ink. The coast of Never Land was easy to trace—the line showed firmly through the onionskin. But the smudge, having no clear edges, was harder.
Tink turned up the lantern. As she bent over her work, the bright light cast her shadow on the rounded wall of her teakettle workshop.
Scritch, scritch, scritch.
Tink’s quill scratched across the page. On the wall, her shadow’s quill moved, too. She reached to dip the quill in the inkwell, and her shadow did the same.
It had been a long day. The workshop was warm and cozy. Soon, Tink’s eyelids grew heavy. The quill slipped from her hand.
And yet, from the corner of her eye Tink seemed to see her shadow still working. A dark island appeared on the map where before there had been none.
Ah, so that’s Shadow Island, Tink thought sleepily.
Huh?
Tink’s eyes flew open. She grabbed the map and held it up to the light.
Nothing was there.
“I’m imagining things,” she said with a laugh. She set down the map, then yawned and stretched her arms. On the wall, her shadow yawned and stretched, too.
“I’ll finish in the morning,” Tink said, reaching over and turning down the lantern. Then she started for the door.
In the dim light, she didn’t notice that her shadow remained where it was, bending over the map.
“Gabby,” Mr. Vasquez said, “where is the boat?”
Gabby was sitting at the kitchen table in her house, drawing a picture of Never Land. She paused while coloring a mermaid’s tail and looked up. “What boat, Papi?”
“Great-Grandpa’s boat, the one you found in the basement,” he said. “What did you do with it?”
“Ohhhh. That boat!” Gabby set down her crayon so she could think. She’d taken the boat to Pixie Hollow…and then what? Gabby searched her mind, but she couldn’t remember where she’d put it. “I know it’s…somewhere.”
“Did something happen to it?” her father asked with a frown.
“No!”
“Then where is it?”
“Um…,” said Gabby.
Her father looked at her for a long moment. Then he sat down at the table. “Mija, I know that boat looks like an old toy, but it’s important to me—”
“I know,” Gabby interrupted. “I was very careful. It’s just that—”
Her father held up a hand. “No, listen. I haven’t told you why it’s important. You see, your great-grandfather made it.”
“He made it?” said Gabby. No wonder the boat seemed so different from other toys!
“With his own hands,” her father said. “He was a wonderful craftsman. I loved watching him work. He made all kinds of things—wooden animals, dollhouse furniture—but the boat was always my favorite. I think he would have liked to sail a boat like that. When I was old enough, he gave it to me. It’s the only thing of his that I still have. And you’ve been careless with it.”
Gabby’s throat felt tight. She saw now that she had been careless. For the first time, her father had trusted her with something important, and she’d let him down. It was an awful feeling to have.
“I’ll find it, Papi,” she choked out. “I promise I won’t come back without it.”
Gabby ran from the kitchen up to her room. The boat was there somewhere. It had to be!
She dug through her toy box and looked in her closet. She pulled everything out from under her bed. She found three socks, seven barrettes, an old school art project, and thirty-seven cents—but no boat.
Gabby was digging through her dresser drawers when Mia passed by in the hall. She stopped in the doorway of Gabby’s room and stared. “What are you doing?”
“I can’t find the boat!” Gabby cried.
“What boat?” asked Mia.
“Great-Grandpa’s boat. From the basement,” Gabby said. “I think it’s lost.”
Mia sucked in her breath. “Uh-oh. Is Papi mad?”
“No…” Gabby shook her head tearfully. She almost wished her father were mad. Being disappointed in her was so much worse. “I have to find it.”
“We will.” Mia put her arm around her sister. “Let’s just retrace your steps. Where was the last place you saw it?”
“In Pixie Hollow,” Gabby said. “I was bringing it to show the fairies. I thought maybe I could give them a ride.”
“And then what happened?” asked Mia.
Gabby thought hard. “And then…and then…Oh! I know! I set it down when we all ran to help save that fairy from the snake. It must still be there.” She started for the door. “We have to go to Pixie Hollow right now!”
“I’ll get Kate and Lainey,” Mia said, heading for the phone. The four girls had a rule that they would never go to Never Land without one another.
Twenty minutes later, the friends had gathered by the loose fence board.
“I can’t stay for long,” Lainey said. “My mom says I have to be home in a half hour to help with dinner.”
“We’ll just find the boat and come back,” Mia told her. “Anyway, you know time never really passes when we’re all together in Never Land. You’ll be home in plenty of time.”
“Let’s go rescue that boat!” Kate patted Gabby’s shoulder.
Gabby gave her a weak smile. The achy feeling in her throat had gone away. She was glad Kate and Lainey were there. They would help her find the boat, and soon she’d be placing it back in her father’s hands. I’m proud of you for taking care of it, she imagined him saying.
“Come on,” Gabby said. She pushed the fence board aside and crawled through.
The first moments of stepping into Pixie Hollow were always the most magical. The ground changed from stubbly grass to soft, springy moss. The sounds of cars and lawn mowers were replaced by the jingle of fairy laughter. Even the air felt enchanted—it smelled like orange blossoms and sparkled with dust from the wings of passing fairies.
But this time, Gabby hardly noticed any of it. She crossed Havendish Stream in two bounds and raced up the hill to the Home Tree. Mia, Lainey, and Kate were right behind her.
Together, the girls searched by the tree. But the boat was nowhere around.
“Are you sure this is where you left it?” Lainey asked.
“Yes,” Gabby said. She pointed to a patch of flowers not far from Tink’s workshop. “I set it right there.”
“Maybe the fairies moved it,” Mia said. “Let’s ask someone. Excuse me!” She flagged down a passing fairy.
The fairy paused in midair. She was wearing the walnut-shell cap of a fruit harvester. A pair of cherries hung over her shoulder. “Yes?”
“I’m looking for my boat. I left it here. Maybe you’ve seen it? It’s green and about this big—”
The fairy shook her head. “Haven’t noticed any boats. Why not check the dock? That’s where I’d look.”
�
�Good idea!” said Kate. The girls returned to Havendish Stream and followed it down to the bend where the fairy boats were docked. They saw tiny birch-bark canoes, boats with leaf-sails, and rafts made of twigs. But Mia and Gabby’s great-grandfather’s boat wasn’t among them.
“What if I never find it?” Gabby asked.
“Don’t give up,” Kate told her. “Let’s ask Tink. The boat was right outside her workshop. Maybe she’ll know what happened to it.”
When they got to Tink’s teakettle, Gabby knelt down and gently tapped her finger on the metal door. No one answered. She tried to look in the windows, but the curtains were drawn.
Should she knock again? She knew Tink didn’t like to be bothered when she was working.
At that moment, Fawn flew by carrying an armload of sunflower seeds. She stopped when she saw the four girls crouched outside Tink’s workshop.
“Tink’s gone,” she said.
They all turned to look at her. “What do you mean, ‘gone’?” Mia asked.
“She found a boat, a nice big sturdy one,” Fawn explained. “She went out to sea in it this morning. You just missed her.”
Out at sea, Tinker Bell took a deep breath of ocean air. The sun was shining and the blue sky stretched wide above her. The strong south wind, which had been so bothersome in Pixie Hollow, was now at her back, speeding the Treasure along.
A wave rose in front of the boat. Tink gripped the wheel as the Treasure climbed it, then dove down the leeward side. The waves out here were bigger than she’d thought they would be. Flying above them, she’d always thought they looked so small. But Tink felt sure the boat was sturdy enough to ride them.
Still, to be on the safe side, she had sprinkled the sail with fairy dust so the Treasure could fly when needed. In case of emergency, a little magic never hurt.
Up and down the boat went, riding the swells. Skull Rock loomed ahead. Tink checked her onionskin map. She was right on course and making good time.
