Ursula Vernon Read online

  Wendell had been poking one of the mushrooms with a stick. He was so surprised that Danny was yelling at him to stop doing something—generally it was the other way around—that he fell over, directly into the fairy ring.

  Danny had expected something slightly awful to happen when Wendell fell into the ring—a puff of smoke, more music, Wendell disappearing or possibly exploding—but nothing happened. The mushrooms just sat there, looking sinister. Wendell looked confused.

  “I thought something would happen,” said Danny. “I kinda hoped . . . I mean, I thought if nothing else, we’d be able to follow her.” This was very depressing. If the mushroom ring didn’t work, how would he go after his mom? How would he get her back?

  What was his dad going to say?

  “Maybe it only works at night,” said Wendell, patting his shoulder.

  “Maybe they’re just mushrooms and you dreamed the whole thing,” said Christiana. She crouched down and examined the nearest mushroom. “Looks like an Amanita to me. They’re really poisonous. Some of them make you hallucinate too.”

  Wendell stood up. “Look,” he said, “let’s assume for the sake of argument that maybe fairies exist and they did take Danny’s mother. I’ve seen some pretty weird things. What would we do next?”

  Christiana frowned. “Try to learn more about them, I suppose. Do we know any experts?”

  “There’s Danny’s great-grandfather,” said Wendell. “But I’m not going back to mythical Japan to talk to him. No way, no how. There were ninjas. And he called me Wanda.”

  “We don’t have to,” said Danny. “My mom bought him a phone after our last visit. The number’s on the fridge.”

  “Then we should consult with our expert,” said Christiana. She rolled her eyes a little. “But I still think we should call the police . . .”

  “If Great-Granddad doesn’t know anything, we will,” promised Danny. “But first we’re gonna try it the Dragonbreath way.”

  Great-Grandfather Dragonbreath grew deafer with each passing year, so it took about twenty rings before he picked up the phone. When he finally did, he said “Eh? What?” instead of hello.

  Danny was used to all that. “Great-Granddad! It’s Danny! It’s an emergency!”

  “Danny, is it? Speak up, boy, don’t mumble.” His great-grandfather punched a few buttons, trying to find the one that turned the volume up. Danny winced at the loud beeping in his ear, but waited for the old dragon to finish.

  “Danny . . . Danny . . . right, right. How’s your little reincarnated friend?”

  “I think Suki’s fine, Great-Granddad! That’s not why I’m calling!”

  “And Wanda, how’s Wanda?”

  “Wendell’s fine, Great-Granddad. This is important! Listen up! Fairies kidnapped my mom!”

  “Fairies—!” There was a crash as Great-Grandfather Dragonbreath dropped the phone. He picked it up again. “Should’ve known they wouldn’t stick to spoons,” he muttered. “Nasty thieving brutes.”

  “There’s got to be a way!” said Danny.

  “Of course there’s a way,” said Great-Grandfather Dragonbreath. “You’re brave and not very bright, which is the key to success, and you’ve got little Wanda with you. I’m confident you can get her back.”

  Danny felt a wave of relief crash over him. He let out a breath that felt like it came from the bottom of his toes.

  “The odds of you dying a painful, horrible death are hardly worth mentioning!” his great-grandfather said cheerfully. “I assume you can find a way into the fairy realm yourself, Danny? You got into mythical Japan just fine . . .”

  “I’ll check the bus schedule,” Danny promised.

  “Good, good. Now, there are a few rules to keep in mind once you’re there. First off, don’t eat anything you don’t bring yourself, or you’ll be trapped there forever. And don’t tell anyone your real name. Names have power over there. You’ll find a path. Don’t stray off it, no matter how tempted you are. If you’re on the path, you’ll be protected. Once you step off . . . well, things could get messy. And once you’ve found her . . .” There was a clicking noise as the old dragon drummed his claws on the handset of the phone. “Put Wanda on the phone, will you?”

  Christiana snickered. So did Danny.

  “Uh-huh,” said Wendell. “No, Wendell, not—oh, never mind. Uh-huh . . . no food, got it . . . uh-huh . . . uh-huh . . . let me get a pen.” He pulled the notepad off the counter and began writing quickly. Danny peered over his shoulder, and read Relinquish her of your own free will, and vow by ash and oak and rowan tree not to pursue nor harry us, nor cause a hand to be raised against us in our swift departure from this realm.

  “Uh-huh,” said Wendell again, and then held up the pad and read the words off.

  Apparently they met with Great-Grandfather Dragonbreath’s approval. Wendell listened for another minute, then said, “Yes, sir,” and handed the phone back to Danny.

  “Told Wanda the words,” said Great-Grandfather Dragonbreath. “When you find her, you’ll probably have to win her back or trade something for her. At that point, read those words to whoever’s holding her, and don’t change anything. Those words’ll bind them. Otherwise they’ll be chasing you the whole way back, and fairies are mean little cusses. Forget anything you think you know about ’em. They aren’t sweet, they don’t grant wishes, and they’ll as soon turn you into a frog as look at you.”

  “That doesn’t sound so bad . . .” said Danny cautiously.

  “The non-talking kind of frog! The animal kind!”

  “Anyway, my show’s on,” said Great-Grandfather Dragonbreath. “Give a call if you get your mom back. She’s my favorite granddaughter, you know . . .”

  Danny privately felt that this would have been a more touching tribute if his great-grandfather could remember any of his grandkids’ names from one day to the next, but promised to do so and hung up. He looked over to where Christiana and Wendell were conferring.

  “This is ridiculous,” said Christiana, rolling her eyes, “but if you want to make a fool of yourselves, far be it from me not to come along and watch.”

  “This way you’ll get to say I told you so,” said Wendell agreeably. Danny had a sneaking suspicion that Wendell was looking forward to finally proving something to the Junior Skeptic once and for all. The iguana pushed his glasses up on his snout again. “We’ll need food, I guess. And probably some other supplies.” He waved the sheet of paper with the ritual words on them. “I’ll hold on to these.”

  “Did he tell you anything else?” Danny asked.

  “He said we should bring something to bargain with,” said Wendell. The iguana frowned. “Although I’m not sure what fairies would want . . .”

  “I only know one thing,” said Danny, yanking open the silverware drawer. “And we’ll make sure we have plenty.”

  “You’ve lost your minds,” said Christiana.

  “A bus to fairyland,” said Christiana. “Now I’ve seen everything.”

  “Properly, it’s called Faerie,” said Wendell, looking up from his book. “And they don’t like to be called fairies. They’re ‘the fair folk’ or ‘the good neighbors.’”

  “I question the reliability of your source,” muttered Christiana, slouching down on the bus seat.

  Wendell held his book protectively to his chest. “It’s as good as anything. I brought it because you never know what’ll come in handy . . .”

  “It’s a book of fairy tales,” said the crested lizard scornfully.

  “Hey! I loved this book when I was little.” The iguana stroked the cover affectionately. “My grandmother got this for me. Mom didn’t want me to read it because she said it was politically incorrect and would give me nightmares.”

  Fortunately for Danny’s sanity, the b
us reached their stop. They got out and waited.

  “This doesn’t look like Faerie . . .” said Christiana. She sounded a bit puzzled. “I’m not actually sure where we are, though. I didn’t realize we’d reached such a rural area . . .”

  The road was made of a dull gold brick, and led through distant cornfields. Several hundred yards away, an enormous field of poppies reared their scarlet heads in the sun.

  “This isn’t our final stop,” said Danny. “We just need to transfer here.” Wendell, who was used to the way that the city bus system reached some very unusual destinations when Danny was involved, sat down to wait.

  Far off in the distance, a house appeared high in the sky and fell to the ground. Christiana’s jaw dropped.

  “I wouldn’t worry about it,” said a passing flying monkey, perching briefly on top of the bus sign. “It happens a lot around here.” It launched itself off the sign and flapped lazily away.

  “Did you see that?!” yelled Christiana, staring after the monkey. “Great Newton’s ghost! It talked! And it had four legs and wings!”

  “The bus is here,” said Danny, hiking up his backpack.

  “But—”

  “We can talk about it on the bus,” said Wendell. Danny noticed that the iguana was grinning broadly, and he couldn’t blame him.

  For the entire ride, Christiana did not shut up about the flying monkey.

  “A talking mammal!” she said, for about the hundredth time. “It’s unheard of! It must have been some kind of bat, like a flying fox, but the front legs—there simply aren’t any six-legged vertebrates—I wonder if the bones in the hand or forearm could have split to provide a vestigial hand . . . ?”

  “Like a panda’s thumb,” said Wendell absently, gazing out the window.

  “What about panda thumbs?” It was one of those buses that had a line of seats facing each other up front, and Danny was amusing himself by standing up and holding on to the metal pole, pretending to surf.

  “They look like they’ve got six fingers,” said Wendell. “But they don’t. Their thumb’s actually a bone in their wrist that got all mutated.”

  “Cool!” Danny swung around the pole, earning a grim look from the bus driver.

  “They aren’t very good thumbs, though,” said Wendell. “You wouldn’t want to make a hand that way. It’d be a lousy hand.”

  “We didn’t get a good look at its hands,” said Christiana defensively. “And anyway, that’s just a theory. We need to convince a monkey to come back with us and take X-rays to be sure.”

  Danny didn’t see what the big deal was about talking mammals. He’d talked with rats, and his cousin Spencer could talk to jackalopes . . . well, sort of talk. It wasn’t exactly words, but they could communicate, anyway, so obviously there were some pretty smart mammals out there.

  On the other hand, raving about the monkey was keeping Christiana from making cutting remarks about fairies, and that was fine by Danny.

  “Green Hills of Faerie,” said the bus driver, sounding bored. Danny reached up and pulled the cord.

  The sound penetrated Christiana’s reverie. She frowned. “Is this a cute name for a housing development or something?”

  The bus stopped, and the kids filed off and into the world of fairies.

  “It’s really . . . green,” said Wendell. Danny thought that was probably a bit of an understatement.

  Faerie was ridiculously green. It looked almost absurdly lush. Rolling green hills ran to the horizon in every direction, except directly ahead, where a thick forest sprang up in even more shades of green. The grass was as thick as a carpet, spangled with violets and tiny orchids.

  There were no buildings visible anywhere, just the road, which looped over a hill and out of sight, and the bus stop. Come to think of it, the bus stop didn’t look quite normal either . . .

  “I think it’s a tree,” said Wendell, puzzled.

  “Huh,” said Christiana.

  “C’mon,” said Danny. He hadn’t come to Faerie to stand around looking at bus stops. His mom needed rescuing! “I think that’s the path over there. We’re supposed to follow it, no matter what.”

  The path was also green, although it was a slightly different shade, and looked as if it had been mowed recently. A line of thin white pebbles ran along either side of it. Where it intersected the road, the pebbles seemed to be embedded in the asphalt, and the path picked up again on the other side.

  “Which way do we go?” asked Wendell.

  “Toward the forest,” said Danny, shouldering his backpack. He wasn’t sure how he knew, he just felt like his mother had to be somewhere in that direction. The others followed.

  “Pretty place,” said Christiana, after a few minutes. “I’m surprised it’s not mobbed with people having a picnic or something.”

  The path ran down the hill, then up another hill, then down the other side. On the far side of that hill, there was a thin stream with stepping-stones across it. It was easy enough to cross, although Wendell cringed before every jump, and stumbled in the grass on the far side.

  Danny and Christiana looked at him. “What?” Wendell said. “I don’t see all that well!”

  “That’s for sure, ye great oaf!” snapped a voice from the grass at his feet.

  Wendell froze.

  “Move, move!” said the voice. “Yer standin’ on me wing!”

  Wendell jumped backward, nearly landing in the stream again. From the grass, cursing bitterly, a tiny figure arose.

  It was a lizard, about six inches high. He had the brilliant iridescent wings of a butterfly and the grim expression of a Mafia enforcer, and he was wearing a small red fez.

  One wing was crumpled. The tiny lizard straightened it out, grumbling.

  “You’re a fairy!” said Danny, delighted.

  “And yer a dragon,” said the fairy, sounding less than pleased. “Nothin’ but trouble, dragons. Always stirrin’ things up and settin’ things on fire . . . but at least you don’t be steppin’ on people!” He folded his arms and glared up at Wendell.

  “Oh, jeez,” said Wendell, crouching down to the fairy’s eye level, or as close as he could get. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t see you there. My depth perception . . .”

  “Depth perception, is it?” The fairy spat on the ground.

  “Don’t be using magic words at me, kiddo, or I’ll be teaching you a few you won’t like at all.”

  “This is seriously not happening,” said Christiana to no one in particular.

  “They’re not magic words,” said Wendell helplessly. “They just mean I can’t see very well. I’m sorry.”

  “Quiet!” Danny tried to shush her. “Don’t make him mad . . .”

  “What a trio,” said the fairy, disgusted. “A blind klutz, a great fire-breathin’ oaf, and . . . whatever you’re supposed to be, kiddo.” He transferred his glare to Christiana.

  “Seriously, this is amazing.” Christiana crouched down in front of the fairy. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was real.”

  “Real!” Butterfly wings quivered in indignation. “And what do you be thinkin’ I am, if not real?”

  “No such—no such thing—NO SUCH THING!?”

  For being six inches tall, the fairy had quite a penetrating voice. After turning an alarming shade of puce with pure outrage, he stamped a tiny foot. Then, apparently feeling this was not quite enough, he tore his fez off and stomped savagely on it.

  Christiana grinned broadly in appreciation. Wendell cringed.

  The fairy leveled a shaking finger at Christiana. “For tellin’ such a lie—and to me own face!—it’s such a curse I’ll be layin’ on you! Thomas the Rhymer’s curse, no less!”r />
  “This is really amazing,” said Christiana, looking around for the projector or puppeteer or whatever could be generating such a realistic image of a fairy. “They even got the grass tromped down and everything. I don’t suppose it could be animatronic . . .”

  Danny put a hand over his eyes.

  The fairy stomped his left foot on the ground and muttered something, then stomped his right foot down and muttered something else. He caught up his tail, spun in a circle, then pointed at Christiana and narrowed his eyes.

  Christiana looked suddenly startled and put a hand to her throat. “Whah-huh-hut?” she said, and broke into a coughing fit.

  The fairy spun in another circle and drew in his breath to start again, when in a desperate attempt to be helpful, Wendell said, “You dropped your hat,” and held out the battered fez.

  The fairy stared at it, then let out a shriek like a wolverine with a toothache and snatched the hat from Wendell’s hand. He yanked it down on his head, shot Wendell a look of pure loathing, and vanished in a puff of blue smoke.

  “What did you do?” asked Danny, impressed.

  Christiana finished coughing, fished around in her backpack for a bottle of water and took a few sips.

  “You okay?” asked Danny.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “That was weird . . .”

  She stopped.

  A very strange expression spread over her face, and her mouth worked for a moment, and then she said, all in a rush, “But it wasn’t nearly so bad as I feared.”

  “Um,” said Danny. “Okay. That’s good . . . ?” He started to turn back to Wendell.

  Danny had always suspected that Christiana was too tightly wound, and if one day, word went around the school that she’d finally lost her mind and been carted off to the Home for People Who Think Too Much, he would have been sad but not surprised. He hadn’t expected her to lose her mind today, however, and he couldn’t help but feel that it was a little inconsiderate, when he had a missing mother to worry about.