Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg, Page 3

  “Could Prilla be an animal talent?” Beck said. “We need help with the chipmunks.” She turned to Prilla. “Do you like chipmunks? They’re big and sometimes dangerous, but they’re honorable.”

  Prilla nodded. She didn’t know if she liked chipmunks, but she was desperate for a talent. And if she were an animal-talent fairy, perhaps she could be Mother Dove’s companion when Beck was busy.

  “She isn’t an animal talent, Beck,” Mother Dove said. “She doesn’t knock on the door of my thoughts, as a beginner would, or slip right in, as you do.”

  Prilla tried to knock on Mother Dove’s thoughts. But nothing happened.

  “Each talent is glorious, Prilla,” Mother Dove said. “When you find yours, you’ll be part of its glory. Would you like to see what Beck can do?”

  “Yes, please.” Prilla was curious, although she expected to be awfully jealous.

  Tink burst out, “I have a ladle to fix!” She hadn’t wasted this much time since her days with Peter.

  Mother Dove nodded agreeably. “Yes, dear.”

  Tink knew what that meant. It meant, Hush, Tink. It meant, Your ladle can wait.

  Beck shook a grain or two of fairy dust on a swarm of midges flying below the nest. She beckoned, and a midge flew to her.

  Beck held out her finger, and the midge landed on it.

  Prilla shrank back. Ugh!

  Beck said, “Midges love this. Watch. Bump. Ump.” At bump the midge flew straight up. On ump it came down to Beck’s finger. “Bump, ump.” Up, down. “Bump ump, bump ump.” Up, down, up down. Beck spoke faster. The midge upped and downed faster.

  Prilla found herself nodding in time with the midge. Tink kept thinking about her ladle. Mother Dove noticed the wind again. She’d been noticing it on and off all day.

  Beck spoke faster and faster. The midge became a frenzied blur. Beck’s words began to run together, and the midge stopped.

  “Thank you,” Beck said, laughing. She flicked her finger at Prilla.

  The midge flew to Prilla and landed on her nose. A midge on a fairy was as big as a bee on a Clumsy. Prilla stiffened. She crossed her eyes, trying to watch it, wishing it would go away but afraid to brush it off. It climbed up her nose and then back down, exploring with its antennae.

  “Thank you,” Beck said again. “We’re finished.”

  The midge flew away. Prilla relaxed, and realized she wasn’t jealous of Beck. Not a smidgen. She smiled inwardly. Not a s-midge-n.

  “Now you can go to your ladle, Tink,” Mother Dove said. “Show Prilla your workshop.”

  “Do you want to see it?” Tink would have liked to be rid of Prilla—except for the chance she might be a pots-and-pans fairy.

  Prilla nodded, although she would rather have stayed with Mother Dove.

  “Prilla could be a tinker,” Mother Dove said. “It’s possible.”

  Tink’s wingtips quivered. “Come, Prilla.”

  The wind was worse on the way back to the Home Tree. When they got there, Tink flew to the second story and pulled open a door under a steel awning.

  “This is it.” She always felt shy when someone saw the workshop for the first time.

  But Prilla wasn’t seeing it. She was in a mainland toy store, lying on a railroad track. Yeow! A locomotive was streaking toward her, smoke billowing. She flew straight up and then raced the train, laughing as she flew.

  “Look!” a Clumsy girl yelled. “A little fairy!”

  Prilla turned and flew backward, waving at the girl, half concealed by smoke.

  “Watch out!” Tink yelled.

  EIGHT

  PRILLA FLEW into a hanging basket. The basket rocked, spewing rivets. Tink was on the floor, picking up rivets, too angry to scold. She thought Prilla was as clumsy as a Clumsy. “Sorry!”

  “Nobody says sorry.”

  Prilla picked up rivets, too. The parquet floor was painted white, so they were easy to see. She peeked at the room around her.

  Oh! She sat back on her haunches, rivets forgotten. Oh! The workshop walls and ceiling were shiny steel. The room was circular, and the ceiling was domed.

  Prilla wondered, Am I? Could it be?

  Tink smiled at her astonishment.

  Prilla saw Tink’s smile and found the courage to ask, “Am I inside a big…pot?”

  Tink’s dimples came out again. “It was a Clumsy’s teakettle. I found it on the beach.”

  Tink had hammered out its dents and had cleaned and polished it inside and out. Then, with the power of a gallon of fairy dust and with Mother Dove’s advice on the magic, Tink had squeezed the kettle into the Home Tree and expanded it again. She’d turned the spout upside down to make the door awning, and she’d punched out openings for windows and doors.

  “We’re inside a teakettle?” Prilla spun around. “A teakettle! Oh, my! You’re so talented, Tink.” Talented. Now she was saying it.

  “Thank you.” Tink couldn’t help adding, “It’s the only inside-a-pot workshop on the island.”

  Prilla said, “Could I see something you’ve fixed?”

  Tink flew to a table by the door, where she kept jobs that hadn’t yet been picked up. She raised an iron frying pan, using a bit of levitation to lighten it. “I finished this one yesterday. A piece had broken off.”

  “I see it,” Prilla said, following a jagged outline with her finger. She didn’t think Tink could be very accomplished if her repair stood out so clearly.

  Tink started to laugh. “That’s a…” She was laughing too hard to finish the sentence. “It’s a…” A minute passed. Tink kept laughing.

  Prilla didn’t see anything the slightest bit funny.

  Finally, Tink’s laughter died down. “It’s a joke. That’s not where it broke. I just put that there…” Her laughter bubbled up again. “… to fool everyone.”

  Prilla smiled uneasily.

  Tink sobered. “Try to find the real place where it broke.” It was as good a test as any. If Prilla found it, she was in.

  Prilla’s glow vibrated with nervousness. She took the frying pan and inspected it. “Umm…” She brought the pan almost to her nose. She didn’t see anything. Except for the false crack, the inside of the frying pan was utterly smooth, utterly black.

  On the back of the handle was Tink’s talent mark, a drawing in red enamel paint of a tiny pot with squiggly lines for steam rising from it. Across the pot were the letters TB.

  Prilla saw the mark, but nothing else. She knew she’d failed. Tink hadn’t liked her much before, but she’d like her even less now. “I can’t find it.”

  Tink was surprised at how let down she felt. Now Prilla still needed fixing, and the pots and pans didn’t have a new fairy, and the ladle was still leaky.

  “This is the real break,” Tink said. She traced a crack that Prilla still couldn’t see. “Come, I’ll show you what I’m working on now.”

  Prilla forced a smile.

  Tink went to the pots and pans on her worktable, her wonderful pile, days and days of puzzles for her to solve. She took the leaky ladle from the top of the pile and held it up. “This is it.”

  The ladle was made of Never pewter, a smoky blue variety produced only on Never Land. “It doesn’t always leak, but when it does, it leaks mulberry juice, only mulberry juice, no matter what liquid it’s dipped in. It’s a fascinating case.”

  The ladle would be needed often tonight, and if it wasn’t fixed, the leak was sure to show up.

  “I don’t know,” Tink went on, “where the leak is or if it’s a pinprick leak or a squiggle leak.” She sat on a stool at the worktable and cupped her hand around the bowl of the ladle. Her glow in that hand intensified. She crooned, “Are you an instant or a gradual leak?”

  She forgot Prilla completely. She wasn’t trying to be unkind. But she wasn’t trying to be kind, either.

  Prilla hovered quietly, feeling lonelier than ever.

  Ten minutes passed. Tink selected jars and tubes of different sorts of adhesive. She mixed a little of thi
s and a little of that in a bowl.

  Prilla edged toward the door. Why did she have to stay here? Her talent—if she had one—was elsewhere. She should be looking for it.

  She reached the door and glanced back. Tink’s head was down, over the ladle.

  Prilla said, too softly for Tink to hear, “I’m leaving now. Thank you for showing me your workshop. Good-bye.” She pushed the door open and slipped out.

  NINE

  OUTSIDE, PRILLA found dozens of fairies, standing on branches or hovering, waiting for her. Word had traveled that the new fairy didn’t know what her talent was. Someone called out, “Do you think you’d like shearing caterpillars?” Someone else said, “Isn’t it fun to dry toadstools?”

  Prilla recognized Terence, the dust fairy, near the front of the crowd, and she thought another fairy looked familiar, too, maybe from the tearoom or the kitchen.

  A fairy cried, “Don’t you love washing wings?” And another, “How about weaving grass?”

  They all began shouting at once.

  “Sorting sand?”

  “Cricket whistling?”

  “Grading tree bark?”

  Prilla flattened herself against Tink’s door, frightened.

  Then she was in a Clumsy supermarket, wedged in with a bunch of broccoli, a rubber band tight around her waist. A Clumsy boy bounded toward her.

  The boy called over his shoulder, “Mom, can we get broccoli?”

  The woman hurried over. “Broccoli? Absolutely!” She reached for the bunch next to Prilla.

  “No, I want that bunch.”

  Laughing, Prilla said, “Don’t cook me!”

  A fairy jostled her. Prilla flinched.

  “Me first!” someone called out.

  “No, me!”

  “Stop pushing!” Terence said, his voice deep and resonant. “We’re frightening her.” He smiled at Prilla, the same winsome smile that Tink had failed to see. “I’m Terence.…”

  A voice in the crowd rang out, “Why should you go first?”

  Prilla thought, Terence glitters.

  “Because,” Terence said, “if Prilla’s a dust fairy, she has to get ready for the Molt.”

  That convinced them. The Molt was urgent.

  Terence did glitter. It was the fairy dust that clung to his oak-leaf frock coat and caught his glow light.

  “Prilla, would you like to visit the mill and see if you’re a dust fairy?”

  Prilla nodded, although she thought it was probably too much to hope for.

  They flew off. Terence shouted over the wind, “Did Tinker Bell mention me to you?”

  “No,” Prilla shouted back.

  “Oh. I see.”

  Prilla heard the disappointment in his voice. He likes Tink! she thought. She shouted, “Tink didn’t mention anyone.”

  “Ah.”

  They flew on without any more conversation. Prilla wondered what dust fairies did. If they only poured a cup of dust over everybody every day, she could do that. She wouldn’t mind waking up early.

  Terence began to descend. Soon they landed on the bank of Havendish Stream.

  “The mill is around the next bend,” Terence said. “But first…do you know what dust does?”

  Prilla had known as soon as she became a fairy. “Dust helps us fly. Without dust, we can fly a foot or so; but with it, we can fly any distance. Dust makes everything go. It powers the mill. It goes in the balloons for the balloon carriers. We can barely glow without it.” She smiled, feeling like a star pupil.

  “Do you know where dust comes from?”

  Prilla thought a moment. “From Mother Dove! After she molts we grind up her feathers. Dust is ground feathers.” Oh, Prilla thought, understanding. “That’s why we’re celebrating tonight. Mother Dove is about to molt. She molts every year, right?”

  “Right. What do we do?”

  “We?”

  “Dust fairies.”

  Prilla’s glow flared. Was Terence suggesting she might be one of them? One of we. “They—we—give out dust to every fairy every day.”

  “What else?”

  She thought hard, anxious to hold on to the we. “Um, we set aside a portion for Peter Pan and the lost boys.” There was probably more to it. “Um, we collect the feathers after the Molt and grind them.” Prilla pictured Mother Dove. “We sort the feathers into wings, back, neck, belly. Do we grind them in the mill in certain proportions?”

  Terence nodded, beginning to feel hope. “What else?”

  Prilla was thinking like mad. “We make sure nothing blows away, not the smallest grain. We make sure the dust doesn’t get wet. We store the dust in...in something big.” Prilla’s wings drooped. “I don’t know what we store it in.”

  But Terence was smiling. “Very good.” He thought she’d done well, better than a new fairy in another talent would have. “We store it in dried-pumpkin canisters. Come, I’ll take you to the mill.” He started flying.

  Prilla did a handstand and sprang into the air after him.

  But he came down again. “Watch out for Vidia,” he said.

  She landed next to him. “Vidia?”

  “Vidia! You met her outside the Home Tree when you arrived. She calls everyone darling and sweetheart.”

  Prilla nodded, remembering. “She sneered at Tink. Why do we watch out for her?”

  “She’s stolen dust more than once. She hurt Mother Dove, too.” Terence didn’t like speaking ill of anyone, but in Vidia’s case, he had a responsibility. “Vidia plucked living feathers from Mother Dove, and plucking hurts.”

  “Why did she do that?” Prilla asked, shocked.

  “To fly faster. Feathers that are fresh, that don’t come from the Molt, are supposed to make you fly faster. Vidia’s talent is fast flying, you know.”

  Prilla resolved that she’d never hurt anyone for the sake of her talent—if she turned out to have a talent.

  Terence added, “She got ten feathers before a scout caught her. Queen Ree has banned her from Mother Dove’s presence.” He flapped his wings, glad to be done with the subject of Vidia. “Ready for the mill?”

  Prilla followed him into the air, but he came down again, and so did she.

  “I have a saucepan,” he said. “I could dent it and bring it to Tink to fix. Do you think ... ” He trailed off.

  “Don’t just dent it,” Prilla said. “Squash it or put a hole in it. The worse it is, the better she’ll like it.”

  “Ah,” Terence said. “I’ll take your advice.” He jumped into the air, and this time he kept going.

  The mill, which was built of peach pits and mortar, spanned Havendish Stream. As he unlatched the big double doors, Terence said, “If you’re one of us, you’ll be spending a lot of your time here.”

  The wind pushed the doors open.

  He added, “The tree-pickers use the mill, too. But not today, because of the celebration.”

  The mill was empty and quiet. Daylight streamed in through the small windows just below the roof. Prilla saw the mill works—the grindstones, the wheel, the hopper—and across from them a dozen pumpkin canisters.

  She wasn’t feeling the joy other fairies felt from their talents, but she thought that might be because she hadn’t yet done anything with dust. She pointed at the grindstones. “You could squash your saucepan in there.”

  “In there?” Terence was horrified. “Where Mother Dove’s feathers go?”

  She’d said something wrong again. “I was just joking.”

  “Oh.” Terence didn’t think a saucepan in the mill was funny. He perched on the top of an open pumpkin canister. “Look, Prilla. This is all the dust we have left.” He flew into the canister.

  Prilla followed. The dust was only three inches deep. It sparkled faintly.

  “It looks so…so…so…” She sneezed. And sneezed five more rapid-fire sneezes.

  Luckily, she was too high up to blow any dust away, but still Terence frowned.

  She knew why he was frowning. You couldn’t be a
dust-talent fairy if three inches of dust made you sneeze.

  TEN

  ON THE WAY back to the Home Tree, Prilla hugged her Arrival Garment close to keep it from being dragged open by the wind. Her disappointment over the dust stayed with her, a lump in her throat that had grown with each talent failure.

  Terence left her in the lobby, after telling her that everyone would gather for the celebration in about an hour. He added, “Tonight is our busiest night. Once the Molt starts, we can’t stop. It’s marvelous.”

  Prilla smiled weakly, and Terence flew outside.

  She didn’t know what to do next. She could go to Tink, but Tink wouldn’t want her. She would have liked to find Rani, the water-talent fairy, but she didn’t know where to look. She wanted to leave the lobby before someone came along, asking her to try out another talent she wouldn’t have.

  She wondered if she had a room yet. She looked herself up on the directory, and there she was!

  Prilla .................... Room 7P, NNW Branch

  The dots in the middle were where her talent listing should have been.

  She flew up the spiral staircase. After the first floor, there were no more stairs. There were just holes in the ceiling, and ladders for fairies to climb if their wings were wet. On the seventh floor she followed signs through the northwest trunk quadrant and took the right fork for the north-northwest branch.

  By the time she reached her door, the corridor wasn’t much taller than she was. Her room wasn’t one of the better ones. Her tree-bark-side door was partially blocked by a cluster of leaves, and her window looked out on a twig.

  Decorating the room had posed a problem for the decor-talent fairies. The theme of every other fairy bedroom was the occupant’s talent.

  In Tink’s room, the bed frame was a pirate’s loaf pan. Her three lamps had colander lampshades. And the painting over the bed was a still life of a stockpot, a whisk, and a griddle. In Rani’s room, the ceiling had a permanent leak, which dripped into a thimble tub where a Never minnow swam. In Terence’s room, there were lots of knickknacks, so the room was always dusty.