The Magic Book series, book 1 (7 page)

“Let’s start
there then,” the fairy offered, her demeanour softening on seeing
their distress. “My name is Queen Tara. Welcome to Serenia.” She
then signalled to the fairies at the table to stand and introduce
themselves; so one by one they said their names and sat back down
again.

“Harebell,”

“Yarrow,”

“Heather,”

“Campion,” said
a brave looking chap.

“Sorrel,” said
another boy.

“Rose,”

“Poppy.”

“Girls, please
be seated and I will explain,” said Queen Tara, indicating a couple
of empty chairs at the table. “Many, many years ago, as far back as
is known to us, we have had the honoured task of tending to all the
flowers, trees and plants in both our lands. Your world is a mirror
image of ours. Everything that happens here, affects your world. We
are like nature’s control centre. This is why our plight when
Nightshade stole The Book you now have, was so profound. We need it
for Serenia’s very existence. If he is allowed to continue
unchecked, he will ultimately devastate not just our world, but
your world too.”

“What makes The
Book so important?” probed Felicity.

“The Book
itself pens a fairy to the exact needs of our lands, and then she
or he shall have life. Each one of us is named after the plant we
are destined to tend.

Only somehow,
one seems to have turned out to have a bad heart; Nightshade.
No-one knows why this was so, but almost as soon as he was raised
from the page we could sense he had a restless soul. Never
contented and always wanting more. One day he started using his
magical abilities against us. He cast us out of our castle and is
slowly poisoning all of Serenia. Once all is dead and gone he plans
to rebuild it as he pleases, using The Book for black magic, to
create his own Kingdom. He will then surely rule over us, and not
kindly, of that I’m sure!”

“If that
happens to Serenia, what will become of our world?” Felicity asked,
afraid to find out the answer.

“We don’t know
for sure, but it will be vastly different to the place you know as
home.”

“How on earth
can we stop him?” fretted Sophie.

“There are only
a couple of weaknesses that all fairies have that can harm us -
human non-belief and now the poisonous intent of The Deadly
Nightshade fairy. We could have overpowered him with the help of
The Book, but he realised this and enchanted our poor fairy Ragwort
into stealing it. He must have then soon realised that it was
practically useless to him until he was ruler of the lands. Only
then would he have the right to use its magic. So he put it under a
holding spell which included its safe-guarder – me.”

“Okay, I can
see the problem now,” Felicity said, “but I don’t see how we came
to find it if Nightshade had it. Had he hidden it in our
world?”

Queen Tara
shook her head, “No, The Book always seeks a leader, and having
sensed danger and with me being out of action, it went in search of
a human with a belief in fairies so strong that when they
discovered its powers they would be able to break the spell. Until
now, we were unaware it could do this – and so was Nightshade,
luckily for us. Even luckier was that your belief broke that spell.
Your belief could save us all too. Now I am free and back with my
people, but - as you can see - Nightshade’s power has grown.”

“So now you
have The Book back, you can use it to overpower Nightshade, right?”
said Felicity.

“Even with the
book, I alone can’t overpower him now. He has been sapping strength
from every living thing he kills. We require an even greater source
of strength, and that source (or should I say sources) is the two
of you. The fact that you are identical twins is key. Your physical
sameness serves to double your belief strength. This will double
the strength of The Book’s magic. I can feel that from you. The
Book has chosen well.”

“I still don’t
see how we can help,” said Sophie.

“We need you
both to return to school and find all the non-believers you can.
Collect their signatures into The Book and it will harness the
negative energy from their writing,” Queen Tara explained. “We must
combine both The Book’s magic and human non-belief and use this
negative energy carefully to weaken Nightshade, so we can overpower
him. Under any other circumstances we would not use dark magic, but
we have no choice.”

“Oh, that
doesn’t seem so bad,” said Felicity with relief. “We can collect
signatures, no problem!”

“You must take
care. Nightshade will not stop searching for The Book. It’s his
ultimate prize with which he will become all powerful once he has
devastated every living thing here,” Queen Tara warned,” and if
that should happen, there won’t be anything any of us can do to
stop him.”

There was a
brief silence as the gravity of the situation sank in.

“I will give
each of you a special gift. The gifts will be disguised as buttons.
If they glow, Nightshade is close,” explained Queen Tara. “If this
happens I will also be alerted, and I will send help.” She reached
into a silk bag that had been tucked in an inside pocket of her
cloak and took out two golden buttons and presented them to the
girls. “Sewn on to your uniform, no one will look twice at them and
they can always be with you. You don’t have long to collect as many
names as possible; even as we speak our beautiful land is dying.”
She lifted her hand indicating out of the window and across the
meadow.

The darkness
was much closer, the thunder now audible as the storm seethed,
inching ever closer like an unstoppable, slow motion tsunami. When
lightning struck, there was no sign of the castle, now completely
engulfed by the clouds that seemed so heavy that even the very air
itself was unable to prevent them from sinking to the ground.

The animals
were growing increasingly restless. Birds sent up shrill alarm
calls warning of the impending danger, panicking many into chaotic
flight.

“I fear we may
only have a day left before it reaches us too. The storm is
gathering in strength and pace, an indication of Nightshade’s
growing magical powers.”

The Queen
turned abruptly to face them again. “Where are my manners? You must
be thirsty after all that has happened.” She nodded to Yarrow and
he stepped forward with two drinks and gave one each to the
grateful girls. “Drink, then you must be on your way,” she said
briskly, then pausing before she added gently; “I do apologise for
my abrupt manner when we first met. I’m sure you understand now why
I was so fractious… now you know of our plight.”

“Yes, we do,”
Sophie reassured her, “but I’m still puzzled as to how I knew to
draw you?” She’d finished her drink and was unable to suppress a
yawn. “Oh, I’m sorry. It’s just such a strange day.”

Queen Tara
smiled sympathetically. “If all goes well we will have plenty of
time for questions soon enough. But for now, just try and take a
little time to relax. You’re going to need your strength.”

Having finished
her drink first, Felicity placed her glass down on the long table.
It had left an unusual bitter taste in her mouth, but she was
feeling far more relaxed now. “How do we… get…. back….?” she
struggled to ask through a descending veil of fatigue, her voice
little more than a whisper. Her eyelids felt impossibly heavy as
she glanced over to her sister who had lolled sleepily back in her
chair.

“Shhh,” came
Queen Tara’s soothing reply.

Felicity woke
with a jump. She turned to Sophie and shook her. “Wake up!” she
urged.

“Mmmmm? Is it
morning already?” Sophie mumbled woozily.

“We’re back at
school, Sophie, under the oak tree.”

Sophie sat up.
“Oh! I had the strangest dream.” Then she felt her side. There was
the book, tucked into her blouse.

Felicity felt
something cold and hard touch her knee and turned the hem of her
skirt over to find the gold button Queen Tara had given them. It
had been sewn neatly into it, invisible from the outside. She
turned so Sophie could see it. Sophie felt for hers too.

A small group
of children were approaching, laughing, with a teacher running
behind and catching them up fast.

“You ran into
the tree and knocked yourselves silly!” giggled Nikki, one of the
older girls.

It was then
that Sophie and Felicity realised they were wet, but there was
absolutely no sign of the storm clouds now.

“Sophie,
Felicity, are you alright?” fretted Mrs Shaw, their classroom
assistant.

“Yes.”

“I think so,”
they answered in turn.

“Come on, let’s
get you up. Go and find some dry jumpers in the school office -
there should be some in the lost property box,” she said whilst
turning them on the spot by the shoulders one by one, checking them
over for any bumps and bruises.

As they made
their way to the office Sophie glanced at her watch, anxious to
find out how long they had been gone. It said 1pm still. She tapped
her watch, suspecting that it must have stopped, but the hour hand
remained stubbornly on the one. So no time had passed? She had read
of this happening in fairy books, but hadn’t really believed it
possible that time itself could stand still!

Having changed
out of their wet things they remembered they had a job to do; they
checked their gold buttons, - not glowing, good, and rushed back
out to start collecting signatures from non-believers.

Felicity
briskly walked over to the first person she saw and asked; “Excuse
me, we are doing a project on fairies called “Do they exist or
not?” and we want to do a survey to see what people think.” As the
boy shook his head “no”, she extended the book and pen out to him.
“If you could sign our book then, please?” Great, they were off to
a good start!

By the end of
the day they had collected about 50 names, but it left them with
mixed feelings; sad that so many didn’t believe, but hopeful that
it would give them enough energy to overpower Nightshade.

That night,
whilst they waited for their mother to come upstairs to read them a
bedtime story, Felicity whispered to Sophie;

“Do you think
we have enough signatures?”

“I hope so. We
could ask the book,” Sophie whispered back.

So, in the dim
light filtering in from the landing, they wrote the question…..but
nothing happened. By this time they were too worn out to wonder
why, and were already sound asleep moments later when their mother
came in to read.

“Funny little
things,” she said to herself, smiling as she watched them in their
sleep. “School must have been too exciting again. I don’t remember
it being that way in my time. In turn she bent down, smoothed their
hair away from their brows and gently placed a goodnight kiss on
each child, taking in their lovely sweet smell whilst whispering,
“Love you most,” into their ears. They didn’t even stir.