Tink smiled and turned to go. “It’ll knock your sun hats off!” she said as she flew away.
It could have just been Lily’s imagination…but didn’t Tink look a tiny bit worried?
WHEN LILY OPENED HER EYES the next morning, the panglories were the first thing she saw. She had carried home a bunch of decorations the night before. The other fairies had been so impressed! Even Queen Clarion had given the flowers a second look. Lily’s glow had flared with pride.
She bent low over a centerpiece. “Well done!” she said to the flowers.
Then she caught a glimpse of something among the leaves. She wondered if this was the same bunch that had had faded leaves the night before.
Lily studied them more closely. Several leaves were looking worse than faded—they looked downright gray. She checked the other centerpieces. Nearly all of them had at least a couple of faded leaves. On the worst ones, entire stems were spotted gray.
Lily sat in her desk chair and looked out the window toward her garden. She felt an urge to check the panglories there. It probably wasn’t a big deal. Maybe it was how these seeds had been planted.
Or maybe the flowers didn’t like being indoors or planted in rocks. All the same, she wanted to look them over, just to make sure.
In her garden, Lily zipped from one patch of panglories to another. She started with the first ones she’d planted in the sandy soil. She ended up at the fourth batch growing on the shed. Each time she stopped, her heart sank a little bit more. All the panglories in the garden were as gray as the ones in the centerpieces. If anything, her garden panglories seemed worse.
Lily fretted over the plants. Were they sick? But nothing else about them had changed. That was the funny thing. None of them looked droopy or wilted.
They were just very, very pale.
Bumble buzzed over to Lily from a poppy he’d been nestled in. Lily looked at her friend and then back at the flowers. “What’s going on?” she muttered. “What happened to all the bright colors?”
Lily sighed. For a moment, she let herself slump against the gate. Everything had been going so well! But she didn’t let herself feel down for long. She straightened up and turned to the nearest panglory patch. “Well, we’ll figure it out. You’ll have your color back in no time!” she said cheerfully.
For the rest of the day, Lily took care of the panglories. She sprinkled them with big pinches of fairy dust. She tickled them under their petals. She even watered them an extra time before heading home for the evening.
The next morning, Lily entered the garden feeling hopeful. But when she saw the panglories, she stopped short. “Oh, no!” she cried.
The flowers were no better. In fact, many looked faded right through the petals.
Lily spent the whole day in her garden. She was so worried about her flowers, she no longer cared about Tink’s challenge. She just wanted to see the colorful blossoms growing strong again. She watered. She tended. She weeded. She even asked a light fairy to shine some extra light on the pansies.
“Let’s hope this works,” she said to Bumble as the sun was setting.
Despite all her hard work, the flowers were no better the next day. Now entire patches of panglories were gray. There was no sign of the bright shades of purple, yellow, or pink they’d once had.
Lily hovered in the middle of her garden. She looked around. She hated to say it. She hated to even think it. She loved all plants—even the bossiest weeds. But her panglories were becoming a problem.
Even so, Lily never thought about giving up on them. She flew to Rosetta’s garden for advice. She found her friend tending a bed of young snapdragons.
“Rosetta, I have a question for you. Are your panglories having any problems?” Lily asked.
“Oh,” replied Rosetta. “You mean the color loss?”
Lily was taken aback by Rosetta’s candid remark. Rosetta took her arm. “Here, I’ll show you,” she said.
She led Lily to her pond. All the panglories floating on it were different shades of gray. Some looked almost white.
Lily gasped. “Yours too?”
Rosetta nodded. Lily could see pity in her eyes. “And Aster’s and Bluebell’s and Fern’s and Iris’s,” Rosetta added.
“What?” Lily cried. “Since when? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It’s been happening slowly. I guess it started a couple of days ago,” said Rosetta. “No one had the heart to tell you. We thought maybe yours were still doing well. We didn’t want to worry you.”
Lily buried her head in her hands. Disappointment washed over her like a wave.
Rosetta touched Lily’s arm. “Don’t worry, Lily,” she said. “We’ll figure out what went wrong. Maybe we can fix it.”
Lily looked up and forced a smile. “I don’t care about the invention challenge. But I’ve spent a lot of time with those flowers now,” she said.
“You care about them,” Rosetta said.
Lily nodded. “I want them to be happy and healthy. And they seemed to be working so well. But without their color…” Lily sighed. “Maybe I need a break from the panglories. I’ve barely taken care of my other plants. I guess they could use more attention.”
Rosetta promised to drop in on Lily later. Then she went back to her garden.
Lily was halfway to the front gate when she heard Rosetta gasp. Lily turned.
Rosetta was staring at a snapdragon in disbelief. “Lily, look!” she cried.
Lily flew over. “Is it just me,” Rosetta said, “or do these leaves look like—”
“The fading leaves on the pan-glories!” Lily cried. “It can’t be.” She shook her head.
Rosetta gasped again. Now she was looking at some irises. “Look! Here, too!” she cried. Sure enough, the bottom halves of the stalks were strangely gray.
“And here,” said Lily. She had noticed a few buttercups, colorless up to their petals. “Oh, no,” she moaned. “What’s going on?”
There was only one explanation. But Lily forced it out of her mind. She didn’t want to think about it—not until she checked the other gardens.
Lily stopped off at each of the other garden fairies’ gardens. What she found was not good. She grew more and more concerned with each visit.
Fern was crazy with worry over her lavender plants. She had found grayish spots on their stems that morning.
Aster’s weeping willows looked very pale. Aster wasn’t looking much better herself.
Bluebell’s ivy plants were still climbing nicely. But it looked like the lower halves of the vines had been drained of all color.
And back in her own garden, Lily found many flowers that showed signs of fading.
Lily plopped down on a tree stump. She put her head in her hands. Her panglories weren’t perfect. And now it seemed that the rest of the garden plants might have the same problem.
Whatever was wrong with the pan-glories, could it be…contagious?
KNOCK, KNOCK.
Inside her garden shed, Lily jumped at the noise. She sat in the center of a circle of gray flowers. She’d been studying them for hours, but she still had no idea what was wrong with them.
The knock came again. Lily opened the door and poked her head out.
Standing there were Scarlett and Azure, two art-talent fairies.
“We know you’re hard at work,” said Azure. “Rosetta told me you’re figuring out what’s wrong with the flowers.”
Lily guessed that word had spread. It had been two days since she’d first seen the fading leaves on the other plants.
Scarlett cleared her throat. “It’s just that…well, we’re all out of orange paint,” she said. “We were wondering if you had any orange flowers.”
“So we could make more paint,” Azure added.
Lily stepped out of the shed. She looked around her garden and winced. It already seemed much worse than when she had left it just a few hours before.
Most of Lily’s garden looked like a black-and-white copy of itself. In a few
places, there were hints of pale green, washed-out pink, and light lavender. But there was no sign of orange.
Lily shrugged at the art-talent fairies. “All I have is what you see,” she said. “Are you sure you’re completely out?”
Azure nodded. “We haven’t gotten any new flowers for days,” she said.
Lily sighed. Without the colorful flowers from Pixie Hollow’s gardens, the art talents couldn’t make their paint.
“Have you tried the other garden fairies?” Lily asked hopefully.
“Yes, but their gardens all look pretty much like yours,” Scarlett said.
Lily’s wings drooped. Was it her fault? That was all she could think about since Rosetta had noticed the faded leaves on her snapdragon. Before she’d invented the panglories, all the other plants had been healthy. The panglories had been the first plants to lose their color. And now, days later, the rest of the garden had faded, too. There had to be a connection.
And it wasn’t just the garden fairies’ problem anymore. Scarlett and Azure’s visit proved that. The color loss was also hurting the other talents.
Suddenly, Lily lost her temper. Her glow flashed bright orange and she stomped her foot. “I wish I’d never made those seeds!” she cried.
Scarlett and Azure looked surprised.
They had never seen Lily so upset before. Normally, she was one of the calmest fairies in Pixie Hollow.
“Don’t worry, Lily,” Scarlett said. “It will be okay.”
Just as quickly as it had flared up, Lily’s temper died down. Another thought replaced it. This one sent a cold trickle of dread through her wings. She hadn’t known about the art talents running out of paint. Could other talents be having trouble, too?
There was only one way to find out. She hated to leave her sick flowers for even a second, but she needed to take a quick tour around Pixie Hollow.
“I’ll get you some orange flowers as soon as I figure out what happened,” Lily said to Scarlett and Azure. Then she flew off to see what other problems the panglories might have caused.
Lily began outside the Home Tree. She peeked through the kitchen window. The baking fairies were busy making cupcakes.
“What?” Dulcie was saying. “We’re out of colored icing? We can’t just make white cupcakes with plain white icing! That’s not very pretty!”
Oh, no! Lily pulled away from the window. Of course the baking talents would be out of dyes, too. The sick feeling of dread had moved to her stomach. She steeled herself to go on.
Lily flew around the Home Tree to a tearoom window. She watched the decorating fairies set up for that evening’s dinner. They looked unhappy as they put white and gray flowers into vases.
“It’s not very colorful,” one of them said. “But it’ll have to do. These are the brightest blooms Rosetta had.”
Two floors up, things weren’t any better in the sewing room. Through the window, Lily saw a couple of fairies piecing together a flower-petal dress.
“I guess the fashionable color this season will be gray,” Tack said.
Taylor laughed. “It’s not like we have any other choice!”
With a choked sob, Lily turned away. Everyone was making the best of it. No one was blaming her. But what was Pixie Hollow without bright flowers? No pretty dresses. No colorful tarts and cakes. No beautifully painted pictures or pottery.
Lily made herself fly on. She had to see how bad it really was with the art talents. At their sunny studio, the art fairies were trying hard to get by. Using dried flowers, they had made more paint.
But Bess, for one, wasn’t pleased with it. “Dried flowers just aren’t as good as fresh ones,” she said. She stepped back from her easel. “These colors are washed out.”
Lily’s heart felt heavy. She found a quiet spot on a top branch of the Home Tree. She sat down there, her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands.
She could see most of Pixie Hollow from here. Her eyes were drawn to the pockets of gray below. She knew they were the garden fairies’ nearly colorless gardens.
“How did this happen?” Lily asked herself. “I was trying to make Pixie Hollow more beautiful, not less!” So many fairies were worse off because of her mistake. But she didn’t know how to fix the problem.
Something fluttered in the breeze close by and caught Lily’s eye. She turned to it—and froze. It couldn’t possibly be what she thought it was.
Lily flew out to the end of the branch. She hovered over the leaves that had gotten her attention. Then she flew a little bit higher to get a better view. She tried telling herself they looked yellow or brown—anything but gray. But the closer she looked, the clearer it became.
Not the Home Tree! Not the most important plant in all of Pixie Hollow. But there was no way to deny it.
The Home Tree was losing its color.
LILY ROCKETED AWAY from the top branch of the graying Home Tree. It was time to ask for help—before all of Pixie Hollow turned gray! She knew the first fairy she needed to go to.
She flew past the courtyard and through the hallways of the Home Tree, until she came to a door.
She knocked and the door opened.
“I need to see the queen,” Lily said breathlessly.
Rhia, the queen’s helper, let Lily in. Within moments Lily was sitting by the queen’s side, pouring her heart out. Queen Clarion and Lily talked for more than hour. No one ever knew what they had discussed, but that evening, just after dinner, Queen Clarion asked all the fairies to gather in the courtyard.
Everyone filed outside, mumbling. Lily felt many eyes upon her. Her glow turned pink with embarrassment under their stares. But nothing could make her feel any worse than she already did.
When all the fairies were outside, the queen called for quiet.
“I’m sure many of you are aware of what’s been happening,” Queen Clarion began. “The flowers have been losing their color. No one knows why.”
The queen turned to Lily, who was standing at her side. “Lily wants to talk to all of you about this problem. Maybe together we can figure out what’s gone wrong.”
Queen Clarion gave Lily a quick, encouraging nod.
Lily took a deep breath. A knot tightened in her stomach. All the fairies and sparrow men were staring at her.
She closed her eyes and tried not to think about how she had let everyone down. When she opened them again, she told everyone about the panglories as quickly as she could. She started with her original idea for the seeds and explained everything that had happened, including how the other plants had faded as well.
Then it was time for the really hard part. Lily looked up at the sky. She couldn’t meet anyone’s stare.
“B-b-b-but I’ve got even more bad news,” she went on. She almost choked on the words.
She took another deep breath. She could feel tears filling the corners of her eyes. “Now it looks like the Home Tree is fading, too,” she said.
Cries of alarm rippled through the crowd. Lily’s head sank low.
The Home Tree wasn’t just the fairies’ home. It was the center of their world. It was the heart and soul of Pixie Hollow.
Lily just had to add one more thing. “I’ve been working to figure out what’s going on,” she called over the murmurs of worry and confusion. “I wish I could say that I know what the problem is. But I don’t. If any of you have any ideas…” She trailed off.
The crowd fell silent.
Lily flew quickly to a pebble and sat down. She wished someone would say something—anything. She’d rather hear what the other fairies were thinking, even if it wasn’t good.
Suddenly, a loud clatter, clatter, clank! broke the silence.
All eyes turned toward the noise. Fairies on one side of the courtyard looked behind them and moved aside to make room for Lympia and Breeze, another laundry-talent fairy. They were carrying a big metal washtub between them.
They landed awkwardly in the center of the courtyard and dropped the washtub with another clank. Both fair
ies were out of breath.
“Queen Clarion,” panted Lympia, “we didn’t mean to be late.”
“That’s all right, Lympia,” Queen Clarion said. “It looks as though something slowed you down.”
“What?” said Lympia. Then she realized the queen meant the washtub. “Oh, yes, there’s that,” she said. “But also, we were in the laundry room. And we…we have something to show everyone.” Lympia seemed excited. Breeze, too, was having trouble hovering in just one spot.
The two fairies bent over the washtub. “We were washing this blanket,” said Lympia. “All we used was water and some of my new laundry cleaner. And an amazing thing happened.”
Lympia and Breeze straightened up. They opened a dripping-wet blanket. Lympia held one corner and Breeze another.
A few gasps were heard throughout the crowd as all the fairies stared at the blanket.
There was something on the blanket. It looked like…like half the blanket was covered in little pansies!
“OOOH!” A CRY WENT UP from the fairies around the courtyard.
“Look at that bright purple,” Beck whispered to the other art talents.
Many fairies were delighted to see flowers growing on a blanket. A few clapped. But some of them—especially the garden fairies—looked confused.
Lily was the most confused garden talent of all. She knew what those flowers were. They were her panglories!
Lily flew to the front of the crowd. “Lympia, where did you get panglory seeds?” she asked.
Lympia shook her head. “No, Lily. It wasn’t your seeds,” she said. She held up a sea-glass bottle. “They grew from my laundry cleaner! I just opened this new bottle this morning.”
She turned to look at the queen. “I don’t know how it happened. But it seems my cleaner can get out stains and it can grow flowers on laundry!”
Lily took a corner of the blanket in her hands and carefully looked at the flowers. The bright purple, yellow, and pink blooms sprouted from the cloth. They looked as beautiful as they had that first day in Lily’s garden.
Lily in Full Bloom Page 3
