Birdie's Book Read online

  One beautiful day the Agminium heard a loud crash. They looked up from beneath the water to see that a shimmering stone had hit the rocks and broken in two: One half fell to the ground, and the other half dropped to the edge of their pond. A walking human shadow picked up the stone from the ground and disappeared. Then the flowers hid their heads as a flying shadow dove from the sky. The shadow snatched the broken piece from the shallow water and disappeared into the sky. Ever since that day, the special tree of Aventurine has been slowly dying. The land near the tree is dark, and the plants near it are dying as the shadow spreads. The fairies do not know how or when it is to be stopped, for they cannot change something that has a human beginning. They can only wait, as do the Agminium.

  I pulled the Singing Stone from my pocket. It hummed in my hand. “Was this one half of the stone you saw?” I asked, holding it out for the flowers to see.

  “Yes,” they chorused. “We recognize its song and its light.”

  “Do you know where the other half is?” I asked.

  They sadly shook their pink heads. “It is gone, taken by the flying shadow.”

  “I think the other half is still here in Aventurine,” I told them. “This half was kept safe in my world.”

  Kerka nudged me. “The fairies? Remember?”

  “Oh, right!” I said. Then I asked the flowers as politely as I could, in Latin, how to find the fairies.

  The flowers swayed. “There is an apple tree that way,” they said, their pink petals dipping in one direction. Kerka and I turned to see where they were pointing. “Start there, and go through the Orchards of Allfruit. Just past there is the Lilac Wall that protects the home of the Willowood Fairies.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “But what is allfruit? How will we know the orchard?”

  “An orchard is an orchard and allfruit is allfruit,” the flowers added, ducking back under the water one by one. The pond sparkled and blurred where the flowers had gone down.

  “Come on, let’s get to the apple tree and find the orchard and the fairies,” said Kerka.

  The maidens had put Kerka’s pack and stick on the rocks, so she was all set to go. I wanted to stop and think about what the flowers had said, but Kerka just wasn’t made that way, so off we went at a quick pace. It took us all of two minutes to find the apple tree, whose branches were full of shiny red apples. I picked two of them while Kerka was looking around.

  “Here, Kerka,” I said, tossing her an apple.

  It didn’t surprise me one bit when she caught it easily in one hand.

  “Oh, cool!” I said, taking a crunchy bite. Sweet juice dripped down my chin. “Do you see that, Kerka?” I pointed to the marigolds and garlic that grew in neat circles around the apple tree.

  “I see flowers and some other plant,” Kerka replied, eating her apple. “What’s the big deal?”

  “It’s called companion planting. The flowers are marigolds, and they keep away beetles. The other plant is garlic, which keeps disease from the tree. My dad taught me that in our garden in Califa. He’s a bit of a botanist, too, like my granny Mo.”

  “Neat,” said Kerka. “Hey, Birdie, doesn’t your mom teach you anything?”

  I sighed. This girl was not going to let go of the mom thing. “Well, my mom isn’t the Mother Earth type. She’s all about business. Making money. Working long hours, you know? I guess she could teach me about that if I was interested.” I thought I’d turn the conversation over to her. “I’m really sorry about your mom,” I said gently. “Was she a gardener?”

  Kerka shot me a weird look. “You really don’t like her, do you, Birdie? Your mom, I mean.”

  Obviously, neither of us wanted to talk about her mother, so I changed the subject altogether. “So, where’re these Orchards of Allfruit, do you think?” I asked.

  “That way,” Kerka said, pointing across the grassy field that was beyond the apple tree we were under.

  “Oh yeah,” I said. “I see it, I think.” There were definitely trees, and they seemed to be laid out in rows, so Kerka was probably right.

  “Let’s go!” said Kerka.

  Boy, could that girl march along! It was as if she were going to battle, or maybe going to kick a ball really hard. I had a great time not marching but flitting about like a butterfly as I saw interesting little wildflowers hidden all the way across the field. Even the Agminium flowers’ words about things not being as they seemed didn’t matter here. After all, there were a lot of things in my life that weren’t as they seemed, right? Mo seemed kooky, but she was totally sane—obviously fairies and dream worlds were real. And my mom seemed sane to anyone but me, and I knew she was crazy. See what I mean?

  Anyway, we reached the orchard (it was definitely an orchard up close). “More apple trees!” I exclaimed. “I guess the allfruit must be farther in.” I peered into the orchard; it went on and on as far as I could see. I was standing there just goggling at what appeared to be miles of trees when Kerka walked past me.

  “What are you waiting for, Birdie?” she called back to me. “We’ve got places to go, fairies to see! Are you always this slow?”

  “I am always this slow!” I told Kerka when I had caught up with her. “At least when there are lots of plants around. Are you always this fast?”

  “Yes,” she answered as we began walking together, or rather, she strode and I kind of skipped. “At least when there’s somewhere to go. I guess I don’t like sitting still that much.”

  “And I love sitting, well, not sitting, but not marching all around like you,” I said. “Gardening is like being in action but all in one place. Unless you have to carry a lot of soil from one spot to another.”

  We kept chatting as we walked through the apple trees. Until I noticed that they weren’t apple trees anymore but pear trees. I pointed to a ripe pear. “The apple orchard just became a pear orchard,” I said.

  “At least we won’t go hungry,” said Kerka, picking a pear.

  I picked one, too. It was as delicious as the apple had been.

  The pear trees became peach trees, and a little bell went off in my head. “I bet this is what the Agminium meant by allfruit!” I said. “So the trees will be all different kinds of fruit. Cool!” I looked along the row of peach trees where we were walking, then back to where we had just been. I couldn’t see the field any longer, only fruit trees. “I wonder how many kinds of fruit there are,” I said.

  “If you wonder too long, all the fairies will be asleep and in their beds,” said Kerka. “Come on!”

  “Just so you know,” I added, “all these kinds of fruit trees together? Not normal.”

  Kerka rolled her eyes, but she smiled. We ate our way through peaches, apricots, oranges, mangoes, bananas, and olives. The sun was well past the midpoint, and my feet were starting to ache from walking when I smelled a sweet scent wafting toward us through the olive trees.

  “I smell flowers,” said Kerka, sounding surprised. (I guess she’s not one to stop and smell the roses too often! Ha-ha.)

  “That’s lilac,” I told her.

  “So we must be coming to the Lilac Wall,” said Kerka.

  We continued through the olive trees, the lilac scent growing stronger every moment. Finally, we came out of the Orchards of Allfruit. Right in front of us was a wall. It was the strangest wall I’d ever seen. It was eight or nine feet tall and looked like it was made of handblown glass—you know, the kind that’s not completely clear, with bubbles going through it? Right through the glass, we could see lilacs on the other side. So I guess that made it the Lilac Wall, right?

  Kerka and I both touched the wall. It was cool and smooth. Kerka rapped on the wall with her knuckle. It sounded hard. I rapped on it, too: totally solid.

  “Hmm,” I said. “How are we going to get through that?”

  “Not through,” said Kerka. “Over.”

  We turned back to the little olive trees. Kerka measured them with her eyes.

  “No way,” I said. “They aren’t close eno
ugh to the wall, plus they aren’t strong enough at the top even if we found one that was close to the wall.”

  “Then we just have to walk around the wall until we find a gate or something,” said Kerka.

  I groaned. “Can’t we take a break, pleeeeease?”

  “All right,” said Kerka. “But you wouldn’t survive if you lived with my sisters. Although you kind of remind me of Biba.”

  I leaned on the wall and let myself slide down its cool side. “Ah,” I said. “That feels great. My poor feet!” I took off my sneakers, which had never hurt my feet before in my whole life, and my socks. I wiggled my bare toes.

  Kerka put her backpack on the ground and got her Kalis stick out. She started doing the graceful dance with a few leaps thrown in. Where does she get the energy? I wondered.

  The smell of lilacs filled the air. Bees buzzed around innocently. I sighed and enjoyed the moment of peace. In the relative silence, I looked closely at Kerka’s backpack for the first time. It was pretty, kind of a thick, lineny cream-colored fabric with blue and yellow embroidery of stags and mountains on it. “I love your bag,” I said.

  “My mom made it for me,” said Kerka between leaps and stick swooshes. “I have it in the real world, too. But it didn’t have my usual stuff in it when I got to Aventurine, just my Kalis stick and the map.” She stopped the swooshing.

  We looked at each other.

  “The map!” we said at the same time.

  Kerka and I scrambled for her bag, but I got there first and pulled it open and took out the map.

  “Zally will know how to get in,” I said.

  “I bet she will,” said Kerka. “Here, let me help you.”

  Kerka got the red string off the map, and together we unrolled it. The sun was low, its light filtering through the glass wall. We watched the map take its time to show us Zally herself, and then it filled itself in. We both stepped back while we watched it, just in case a bunch of sparks flew out of the map again.

  The pictures that appeared on the map were different from the last time. Now there was a walled area surrounded by rivers and forests and ringed with mountains. The map zoomed in to the place we were now, complete with a little drawing of Kerka and me!

  “We already know where we are,” I told the map. “We need to get past the wall.”

  A shower of sparks flew up from the map. This time they were brilliant green with copper and purple bits. Slowly they formed the shape of a tree with a very long branch. The image hung there for a moment, then burst into another silent firework, showering down onto the map.

  “So there’s got to be a big tree along the wall,” Kerka said.

  “Well, it wasn’t an apple tree,” I said, thinking about the image. “The branch was too straight and too long to be a fruit-tree branch.”

  “It doesn’t really matter,” said Kerka. “As long as we can find it, climb it, and get over! At least we know it’s along the wall somewhere.” She rolled up the map and stowed it in her backpack along with the Kalis stick. “Did you learn tree stuff from your dad, too? What, was he a farmer in … what did you call it? Califa?”

  “Nuh-uh,” I said, putting my socks and sneakers back on. “We just had a big backyard. And I read a lot. You know, books about nature, botany, plants, that sort of thing.”

  Kerka shook her head. “Not something I’d ever read!”

  “We’re different, all right!” I said.

  “Yeah,” Kerka said. She glanced along the glass wall in either direction. “You have climbed trees before, haven’t you?” she asked, looking at me a little doubtfully.

  “I’m not, like, super sport girl,” I said. “But I can climb trees!”

  “Okay, tree lover, which direction should we look for this big tree that will get us over the wall?” Kerka asked with a grin.

  Now it was my turn to glance to the right and the left along the length of the wall. It curved away from us in either direction, and I couldn’t see any sign of a big tree. I closed my eyes and tried to feel a big tree. I turned my head from side to side. The smell of lilacs was stronger in one direction. I didn’t know if that meant anything, but it was better than nothing.

  I opened my eyes. “That way,” I said, pointing to the left.

  “All right, then,” said Kerka. “We’re off to find a tree!”

  As we walked, I told Kerka about all the kinds of trees I thought it might or might not be. I don’t usually talk so much, but Kerka seemed to be listening, and it was one of my favorite topics. The Orchards of Allfruit were on our left side (they really were big!), and the glass wall with the lilacs behind it was on our right side. Neither view changed, although the sun was sinking lower.

  “I don’t think that was a willow tree,” I was saying when we saw the tree we were looking for. It was a Hybrid Oak, a cross between a Quercus (like the Glimmer Tree) and a hawkinsi. I’d just seen one like it with my mom at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, one of the few places I really loved in New York City. I shared my knowledge with Kerka, who listened with good humor. (I think she was really getting used to me!)

  “That’s so cool, Birdie,” she said. “Now, can we climb it and get over the wall?”

  I grinned and nodded. “Let’s do it.” The branches of the oak hung along the wall and stretched over a sea of lilac bushes—just like the image out of the map. Kerka bowed and waved her hand for me to go first. So I did, scrambling up the bottom branches. Kerka came behind me, climbing like a cat.

  I got to the big branch that went out over the wall. I sat on it and inched myself forward bit by bit. It was a long way down! To give Kerka credit, she didn’t tell me to go faster. She walked along the branch behind me like a tightrope walker. The branch angled slightly down after it went over the glass wall, thankfully!

  “Hold on to the branch and lower yourself down from there,” Kerka suggested.

  So that’s what I did, a little clumsily and holding my breath. With a thump I dropped into the lilac bushes. Kerka landed beside me with no thump whatsoever.

  We pushed our way through the tall lilacs and came out in a blue flower garden. Seriously—every plant was blue! There were blue spires, wisteria, blue irises, bluebonnets, blue chrysanthemums, delphiniums, and bluebells. I had never seen so many shades of blue all in one place!

  “Is this the most beautiful, incredible, magical flower garden you’ve ever seen?” I said to Kerka. “It’s even more amazing than Mo’s garden.” I stood breathing in the scents. The sweet lilacs mixed with a cool smell of spearmint and hyacinth and blue rose.

  Kerka was actually impressed, too. She gazed around. “I’ve never seen anything like it!”

  Together we tiptoed through the flowers to a path of polished glass shards that twisted through the garden. I was suddenly hit by a memory of my mother—a good one.

  Years ago she had taken me to a playground. She wore jeans and slid down the curlicue slide with me, over and over, as many times as I wanted. Then we lay on a blanket in the grass and watched the clouds. My mother pointed to a flower-shaped cloud in the sky. “See the flower?” she asked me. “It’s a daisy, turning toward the sun.”

  “That cloud did look like a daisy, didn’t it?” said a voice.

  Kerka and I spun around. What was it about this place and voices coming out of nowhere? I almost laughed, but the sight of the woman gliding down the glass path through the blue garden stopped the sound from coming up. Instead, I gave a little gulp.

  Bees buzzed like banjo strings around the lady in the late-afternoon sunlight. Her dress was turquoise, and white spider lilies adorned the hem and dotted her upswept hair. “Put that away,” she said sternly.

  I gaped, not knowing what she was talking about but wanting to do whatever she asked. I thought she looked like the spider lilies on her dress—Amaryillidaceae lycoris.

  “Sorry, just a reflex,” Kerka said. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her slowly putting the Kalis stick back in her pack. She must have whipped it out in surprise at the w
oman’s voice. I almost giggled again to see Kerka look so meek.

  “You don’t need the Kalis stick here,” said the spider lily woman. “Not unless you are dancing.”

  I pressed my lips together tightly to keep the giggles down. This woman was like the coolest, strictest teacher in my old school—but definitely stranger!

  “When you visit the Willowood Fairies, you are under our protection,” the woman continued, with her sweet smile and steely tone. I finally looked past the buzzing bees and noticed her wings. How could I have missed them? They were huge, and the lightest iridescent blue.

  “Come with me, Birdie,” she said, the huge wings folding like a butterfly’s as she walked away from us. “Kerka, too!”

  “Okay, but who are you?” I asked, following, my eyes on her wings.

  The fairy queen turned to answer; her gossamer wings and glistening dress made a swishing sound. “I’m Patchouli, the Queen of the Willowood Fairies. Come quickly, now.”

  Queen Patchouli led us out of the blue garden onto a path of stones carved like leaves. This path went right into a weeping willow woods that I hadn’t even noticed because the blue garden was so awesome. We walked between the trees until the queen stopped and pulled aside layers of soft leaf-filled branches on a huge willow tree. She motioned for us to follow her inside.

  Under the tree’s shelter was a cozy room draped with white gauzy curtains that let in the light. Music traveled on the breeze and rustled the streaming willow branches. “It’s time for you both to choose proper attire,” Queen Patchouli said.

  I exchanged a look with Kerka, who did her usual shrug. Then I saw my very own suitcase sitting on the ground, but with one new detail. A shining gold A glistened on the front, in the same script as had been on Mo’s Aventurine violin case. I looked inquisitively at Queen Patchouli (who, in my head, I was now calling Queen P.).

  “What is my suitcase doing here?” I asked.

  “It has your clothes in it,” the fairy queen said. She flicked her hands toward the suitcase. Her fingers tinkled; she was wearing rings with tiny bells on them! “Go ahead. Open it!”