The Fairy Rebel (11 page)

And Jan knew that her crazy idea was right.

“That’s not much to ask,” she said. “I’m sure your Queen won’t refuse. I’ll pluck out the hairs myself.” And she bent over Bindi, fumbling with her hair.

“Ow!” cried Bindi, and a second later, “Ow!” again.

Then Jan wrapped each hair quickly round her fingertip till it made a ring, and handed one ring to Tiki and one to Wijic.

“Let me look at those hairs,” the Queen said suddenly in a suspicious tone. “They are not the same color as—”

But it was too late.

Clinging to the ring of blue hair, Tiki cried out in her piercing little voice:

“Tilidiki! Tilidiki!”

And Wijic, suddenly understanding, waved his blue hair-ring in the air and shouted the same word.

8
The Great Gathering

There was one terrible moment when the very air around Jan’s head seemed to hold its breath. The Queen’s wings snapped forward and the fearsome masklike eyes glared, and Jan felt Bindi go limp in her arms. Her own blood began to chill in her veins. The Queen’s arms rose slowly—her face was twisted with fury—but Tiki and Wijic, with a lightning movement, threw their hair-rings over her arms like lassos, and they seemed to drag first her arms, and then the Queen herself, down, until she lay crumpled at the foot of her wasp throne.

The tower of wasps seemed to tremble, then totter. Then it began to break up. Tiki and Wijic spread their wings. Tiki was screeching with delight. She was looking pinker every minute. Her hair, standing up on end, was already its normal color, and as her wings beat the air in excitement, they seemed to get back all their lavender pink and their furry shine. As for Wijic, he was dancing up and down; he had changed into his favorite schoolboy clothes and was waving his red cap in circles above his head.

As the tall black wasp tower crumbled and broke up, the wasps half flying, half falling, fairy and elf took off, hovering in the air above the ruin.

The Queen crashed five feet to the ground and lay there, the blue hair-rings still circling her arms.

But she was not dust. The wasps’ bodies had partly broken her fall. She sat up slowly, trying to shake the rings from her arms. Her wings hung behind her like broken kites, and the eyes on them were hidden.

Jan crouched on the ground with Bindi in her arms. She could hear Charlie shouting somewhere behind her, and guessed that the evil magic toys in Bindi’s bedroom had somehow lost their power and that Charlie was free. She called him: “Charlie! We’re out here!” And she heard his footsteps pounding toward them.

Then she heard something else.

It wasn’t quite hearing. And it wasn’t seeing. She sensed it. It was as if the air around her and the ground under her were humming and trembling with the movement of a million pairs of wings and a million pairs of feet. They could not be the wings or feet of the dreaded wasps, because one glance around showed Jan that all the wasps were dead or had escaped. In any case, she felt no fear, but a wonderful feeling of excitement, a thrill all through her as that humming and trembling came closer and closer until she could sense it surrounding her.

Charlie, white-faced, bruised and panting, flung himself onto the grass beside her.

“Jan! Bindi—is she all right? Are
you
all right?”

Bindi was just sitting up, rubbing her eyes and shaking her head.

“What happened?”

“I think you fainted, darling,” said Jan. “It’s all right now. Just watch.”

Sitting there together in the garden, the three of them stared.

At first they couldn’t see anything. But Tiki flew onto Bindi’s shoulder—Bindi, who had never seen a fairy before, was absolutely pop-eyed at the sight of her—and said, “If you can spare three more of your magic blue hairs, one for each of you, you can see them.”

“See what?”

“Something no human has ever seen before.”

So there were three more “Ow”s from Bindi as Charlie tweaked three more of her blue hairs out, and they each made a ring round their fingers—and suddenly they could see them.

It was a fantastic sight, never to be forgotten. It was nothing less than a great gathering of fairies, elves and gnomes, coming together to witness the end of the wicked Queen.

The gnomes, who had no wings, marched on the ground—sturdy little people in drab-colored clothes, carrying spades and pitchforks and other tools and implements. They marched in from all sides, and looking farther away, Jan, Charlie and Bindi could see more and more of them—scrambling over the garden fence, or through holes in it, out from under the roots of the fruit trees, digging themselves out of the
ground itself. One came out from under Charlie’s shoe.

And the air was absolutely thick with fairies and elves. It was like being in the heart of a rainbow. There were all kinds and colors, some with clear wings like dragonflies, some with shaped, brilliant wings like butterflies, and others, like Tiki, with furry mothlike wings. Some of them were beautifully dressed. Others, like Tiki and Wijic, looked tattered and faded, as if they, too, had been in prison or had had their magic taken from them.

The beat of their wings fanned the air. The humans could feel it on their faces as the huge drifts of fairies and elves circled their heads. Some of the fairies hovered in front of them, staring at them, and when they realized that they could be
seen
, they shrieked and shot away with their wings a blur. But Tiki and Wijic flew among them, calling to them in their own language, telling them there was nothing to be afraid of, that Jan and Charlie and Bindi were their friends.

They must have told them, too, that Bindi was a fairy-child, because hundreds of fairies, elves and gnomes began to show an interest in her, flying around her head, touching her with their tiny hands and lifting her hair to look at the blue hairs. She could hear them chattering in their high voices and feel their tickling fairy touch.

She didn’t wriggle or giggle. She sat quite still, enchanted—knowing, even at the time, how terribly lucky she was to be a part of this very special happening.

But it was not for her that this great crowd of fairy people had come together. The cause was still lying on the ground among the dead wasps with two broken wings.

At last all the gnomes, elves and fairies settled down in a wide, deep circle around the fallen Queen. Many of them perched on Jan, Charlie and Bindi, as if they were grandstands. Charlie found about a thousand fairies sitting on the folds of his shirt, on his arms, his shoulders, even his nose until he politely asked them to move so he could see. Bindi just couldn’t believe it when a dozen gnomes scrambled onto each of her shoes and settled down cross-legged along the wrinkles in her socks.

Tiki fluttered to Jan’s shoulder and sat down there. She was not wearing her shabby brown dress anymore, but a beautiful pink dress like an Indian sari. Glancing at her, Jan knew she felt the occasion was too solemn for jeans. Or perhaps she’d grown up.

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.”