Fairy Gold

  Gwyneth Rees is half Welsh and half English and grew up in Scotland. She went to Glasgow University and qualified as a doctor in 1990. She is a child and adolescent psychiatrist but has now stopped practising so that she can write full-time. She is the author of Mermaid Magic, Fairy Dust, Fairy Treasure, Fairy Dreams, Cosmo and the Magic Sneeze, Cosmo and the Great Witch Escape and, for older readers, The Mum Hunt, The Mum Detective, My Mum’s from Planet Pluto and The Making of May. She lives in London with her two cats.

  Visit www.gwynethrees.com

  Other books by Gwyneth Rees

  Mermaid Magic

  Fairy Dust

  Fairy Treasure

  Fairy Dreams

  Cosmo and the Magic Sneeze

  Cosmo and the Great Witch Escape

  For older readers

  The Mum Hunt

  The Mum Detective

  The Mum Surprise (World Book Day 2006)

  My Mum’s from Planet Pluto

  The Making of May

  Look out for

  Fairy Rescue

  Illustrated by Emily Bannister

  MACMILLAN CHILDREN’S BOOKS

  First published 2006 by Macmillan Children’s Books

  This electronic edition published 2007 by Macmillan Children’s Books

  a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

  20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

  Basingstoke and Oxford

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-0-330-47084-1 in Adobe Reader format

  ISBN 978-0-330-47085-8 in Adobe Digital Editions format

  ISBN 978-0-330-47086-5 in Microsoft Reader format

  ISBN 978-0-330-47087-2 in Mobipocket format

  Copyright © Gwyneth Rees 2006

  The right of Gwyneth Rees to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Visit www.panmacmillan.com to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases.

  To my sister, Anna, with love

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Lucy lay in bed, listening to her parents saying goodnight to her little sister, Isobel, in the next room. ‘Leave your tooth where the fairies can find it easily, Izzy,’ her mother said.

  ‘I’ll leave it under my pillow,’ Izzy replied, sounding excited. Izzy was six and she believed in fairies, whereas Lucy, who was two years older, thought that believing in fairies was just silly.

  ‘Not too far under your pillow,’ Dad told Izzy. ‘You don’t want the poor tooth fairy to get squashed under there when she goes looking for it.’

  Izzy giggled.

  Lucy rolled her eyes. She didn’t believe in the tooth fairy and as a consequence she had all her baby teeth saved in a little pouch inside her jewellery box.

  The reason Lucy didn’t believe in fairies was that her half-brother, Thomas, who was eleven, had proved to her when she was Izzy’s age that it was your mum and dad who exchanged your teeth for coins when you left them under your pillow. Lucy and Izzy had the same dad as Thomas, but a different mum. Their dad had been married twice, first to Thomas’s mum and then to Lucy and Izzy’s. Thomas and his mother lived several hours’ drive away from them and Thomas only came to stay in the school holidays. He had told Lucy once that he didn’t think it was fair that he hadn’t lived in the same house as his dad since he was a baby, whereas Lucy and Izzy had lived with him all their lives. Lucy had felt sorry for Thomas when he said that, because she knew she’d probably feel the same if she was the one whose mum and dad had got divorced. But Thomas could behave pretty badly sometimes when he came to stay with them, and Lucy always felt a lot less sorry for him then.

  Thomas had been staying with them the night Lucy had lost her first tooth two years earlier, and when she had put it under her pillow for the tooth fairy, Thomas had told her she was being stupid. He had deliberately stayed awake after Lucy went to sleep and had shouted out when he’d heard Lucy’s mum creep into Lucy’s bedroom. Lucy had woken up just as her mum was putting her hand under Lucy’s pillow, and Lucy had stopped believing in fairies from that moment on, even though her mum had said she was only checking to see if the tooth fairy had been yet. Lucy’s mum and dad had both been really cross with Thomas about that, she remembered now.

  Izzy, however, still believed passionately in fairies, despite Thomas also telling her that the tooth fairy wasn’t real. Izzy said she didn’t believe Thomas because she had seen fairies on more than one occasion, with her own eyes. Thomas reckoned that Izzy couldn’t tell the difference between make-believe and reality and he was always teasing her about it, especially when Izzy put on her fairy outfit and pretended to be a fairy queen, which Thomas thought was very funny. Lucy was more of a tomboy than Izzy and she hated wearing girly clothes, so she tended to get on better with Thomas than Izzy did – though it was difficult to get on with Thomas for the whole time he was there, because sooner or later he always got into a bad temper about something.

  Tonight, after they had closed Izzy’s door, Lucy’s parents came into her bedroom. ‘I know you don’t think the tooth fairy is real, darling, but don’t go spoiling it for Izzy the way Thomas spoilt it for you, will you?’ her mother whispered as she leaned over to give Lucy a kiss goodnight.

  ‘Don’t worry. I won’t tell her it’s just you and Dad who take her tooth away and leave her the money, if that’s what you mean,’ Lucy whispered back.

  ‘How could you even think such a thing?’ her dad protested, reaching out to tickle her.

  ‘Because it’s true!’ Lucy retorted. But her mother was holding her finger over her lips to tell her to shush now, as she switched off her light.

  Lucy was lying awake in the darkness after her parents had gone downstairs, thinking about how Thomas was coming to stay with them in two days’ time because it was half-term. Dad was going to collect him in the car and, on the way back, they were stopping off to collect Grandpa too. Grandpa was Dad’s father, which meant he was Thomas’s grandfather as well. Their grandmother had died several years ago so Grandpa lived on his own now, which Dad said was the reason he tended to be quite grumpy. Having Thomas and Grandpa in the house at the same time should be interesting, Lucy thought.

  Lucy was just turning over to go to sleep when she heard a noise coming from her sister’s room. It sounded like Izzy was out of bed and walking around.

  Lucy got up and went into Izzy’s room to find that the window was open and Izzy was standing staring out of it, looking upset.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Lucy asked her.

  ‘The tooth fairy just came and took my tooth away, but she didn’t leave me anything,’ Izzy answered.

  ‘Don’t be silly!’ Lucy said, sh
utting the window. ‘There’s no such thing as—’ She broke off, remembering that she wasn’t meant to tell Izzy that there was no such thing as fairies. ‘Your tooth must still be under your pillow. Let me have a look.’

  ‘It’s NOT under my pillow,’ Izzy snapped angrily. ‘I told you! A fairy just came and took it away in a little sack. Fairies are meant to leave you a coin for your tooth, but this one didn’t.’

  As Lucy searched under her sister’s pillow, they heard footsteps on the stairs and their mother came into the room.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Mum asked.

  Izzy repeated the story to her mother, who knelt down to search under the bed for the missing tooth while Lucy continued to feel under the pillow and inside the pillow-slip in case the tooth had got stuck there.

  After the search had revealed nothing, Lucy couldn’t help laughing. ‘Maybe a fairy really did come and take her tooth after all!’ Though she didn’t truly believe that.

  Her mum was giving her a long look. ‘You wouldn’t know anything about this disappearing tooth, would you, Lucy?’

  ‘Hey, it wasn’t me!’ Lucy protested.

  ‘I just told you – it was a fairy,’ Izzy said crossly. ‘I saw her! She was wearing a gold sparkly dress and she had a little spoon that she used to scoop up my tooth.’

  ‘You must have been dreaming,’ Lucy said, grinning.

  ‘No, I wasn’t!’

  ‘How about you both go back to bed now and we’ll have another look for this tooth in the morning,’ Mum suggested.

  ‘Mummy, the tooth is GONE!’ Izzy screeched at the top of her voice. ‘You’re not even listening to me!’

  Izzy could get quite stroppy when she wanted – which always amused Lucy because most of the time Izzy was the one in the family who all the grown-ups seemed to think was a complete angel.

  ‘That’s enough shouting,’ Mum said firmly. ‘Back to bed now – both of you.’

  Lucy and Izzy went back to bed, but neither of them could sleep. After a while, Lucy could hear her sister talking to herself in her room and she decided to go and listen. Sometimes Izzy had long conversations with her dolls and her teddies, which Lucy thought were hilarious.

  This time, though, Izzy seemed to be talking to totally imaginary people. As Lucy stood in the doorway watching, Izzy was sitting up in bed talking very seriously to the air in front of her.

  ‘But that’s terrible! Does your fairy queen know? . . . Really? . . . Well, yes, I think I could give you a description . . .’ She suddenly stopped as she noticed Lucy. ‘Lucy,’ she whispered, ‘you’ll never guess what! That fairy who took my tooth was a bad fairy. Goldie and Bonnie were meant to collect it – not her.’

  ‘Goldie and Bonnie?’ Lucy moved closer to her sister. ‘Who are they?’

  ‘The proper tooth fairies, of course!’ Izzy pointed with one finger of each hand to two spots in the air directly in front of her. ‘They’re right here!’

  ‘I can’t see anything,’ Lucy said. ‘Stop making things up, Izzy.’

  ‘I’m not making things up!’ Izzy seemed to pause to listen, then she turned back to Lucy and frowned. ‘Goldie says you can’t see them because you don’t believe in fairies.’

  ‘Too right I don’t!’ Lucy said, noticing that the curtains were drawn back and Izzy’s window was open again. It was raining outside and the window sill was getting wet. ‘You’ve got to stop opening this, Izzy,’ she said as she went over to close it for a second time.

  ‘It’s not me that keeps opening it – it’s the fairies! Leave it or they won’t be able to get out.’ Izzy stopped to listen to her invisible friends again, before adding, ‘Oh, can you? That’s OK then.’

  ‘What’s OK?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘I wasn’t talking to you – I was talking to them. Bonnie says they can open the window themselves quite easily, so not to worry. Tooth fairies are very good at opening windows, she says. She says it’s one of their main areas of exper . . . exper . . .’ She paused for a moment as if she was listening again. ‘Expert-ise!’ she finished.

  Lucy was surprised that Izzy knew such a big word.

  ‘Bonnie says they have to practise opening and closing human windows a lot before they get sent on their first job,’ Izzy continued. She was looking towards the window now, saying, ‘Oh, please don’t go yet!’

  ‘I’ve got to go back to bed,’ Lucy said. ‘Izzy, are you just pretending that your tooth’s gone missing so you can play this silly—’ But she didn’t finish her sentence because, as she watched, the window latch was lifting up and the window was opening – all by itself.

  Izzy was waving now. ‘See you tomorrow!’ She turned to her sister and added, ‘They said they’re coming back tomorrow when you’re not here. They want to speak to me some more, but you’re putting them off.’

  ‘How am I putting them off?’ Lucy demanded.

  ‘Goldie says that children who don’t believe in fairies make fairies get goosebumps. She and Bonnie can’t stay in the same room as you for very long or they get all shivery.’

  ‘Your fairies sound silly to me,’ Lucy said crossly.

  ‘I thought you didn’t believe fairies were real.’

  ‘I don’t!’

  ‘Well, how can they be silly then?’ Izzy challenged.

  And from outside the window, Lucy was almost sure she heard the sound of a tiny high-pitched giggle.

  The following day, Lucy’s mum asked her again if she knew anything about Izzy’s missing tooth.

  ‘She’s playing some sort of pretend game to do with a fairy stealing it,’ Lucy said. ‘I reckon she’s probably hidden it somewhere herself.’

  ‘Well, just so long as Thomas didn’t put you up to taking it,’ Mum said. ‘I heard you giggling with him on the phone yesterday and it did occur to me that—’

  ‘It wasn’t me, Mum!’ Lucy protested. ‘And Thomas doesn’t even know about it.’

  That night, when it was time to go to bed, Lucy told Izzy what their mum had said. ‘She thought I might have taken your tooth!’

  ‘But that’s silly,’ Izzy said. ‘That bad fairy took my tooth. I told Mummy that.’ She looked thoughtful for a moment, then added, ‘Mummy says she believes in fairies, but sometimes I don’t think she really does at all.’

  Lucy was sure that their mum didn’t truly believe in fairies, but she didn’t say that. ‘Do you think that fairy will bring your tooth back?’ she asked instead. ‘Because if she doesn’t, you won’t get a coin for it, will you?’

  ‘That’s why I want to help Goldie and Bonnie catch her,’ Izzy said. ‘When they come back tonight I’m going to describe her to them.’

  Lucy couldn’t help being curious about what was going to happen in her sister’s room that night, even though she was still almost certain that this whole fairy business was just another of Izzy’s make-believe games. The only difference was that until last night she had been completely certain of it, whereas now . . .

  Soon after she’d gone to bed, Lucy heard Izzy talking to someone in her room. Their mum and dad were downstairs watching a film on the television so Lucy knew they wouldn’t be coming upstairs for a while yet. Lucy crept out of bed and quietly opened Izzy’s bedroom door. She was almost sure that fairies didn’t exist, but there was that thing that had happened with the window last night . . . After all, windows didn’t normally open all by themselves, did they? And what about the giggle she had heard? It had sounded just like the sort of giggle a fairy might make . . .

  This time, when she entered her sister’s room, Izzy wasn’t talking to thin air.

  There, hovering a little way above Izzy’s bed, were two fairies. Lucy gasped out loud when she saw them – and Izzy and the fairies turned to look at her.

  ‘She can see us now,’ one of the fairies said as Lucy moved closer.

  The fairy was dressed in a short, floaty yellow dress that had sparkly bits around the hem. She had a thick mop of long, curly, reddish-brown hair and bright green eyes. The oth
er fairy, whose face looked gentler, had a short neat blonde bob and blue eyes. She was wearing a simple white dress and she was holding a miniature notepad and a little gold pencil.

  ‘Hello,’ the fairy in the white dress said shyly. ‘I’m Bonnie.’

  ‘I’m Goldie,’ the other one put in quickly. ‘It’s amazing what a little bit of doubt can do, isn’t it?’ she added, grinning.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Lucy asked shakily.

  ‘Doubt about fairies! Last night you were certain we were make-believe, so you couldn’t see us. But tonight you’ve started to doubt your own judgement and here we are! Oh, well . . . I suppose we’d better interview you too, since you can see us now. Could you get into bed beside your sister, please?’

  Still dazed, Lucy did as she was told. As Izzy moved along a bit to make room for her, Izzy’s teddy fell out of bed with a bump.

  ‘He’ll have to come back. We haven’t finished interviewing him yet,’ Goldie said sharply. ‘He was in bed with you last night, Izzy, so he’s an important witness.’

  Izzy quickly reached out of bed and picked up her teddy bear.

  Lucy felt her mouth drop open. ‘I must be dreaming,’ she murmured.

  ‘Do we look like dream fairies to you? We’re tooth fairies and that means that in order to see us you have to be wide awake. Now pay attention, Teddy,’ Goldie added crossly to Izzy’s toy bear, who did have a very dopey look on his face.

  ‘I just can’t believe this!’ Lucy said in amazement. ‘I can’t believe there really is such a thing as the tooth fairy.’

  ‘Tooth fairies,’ Goldie corrected her. ‘There are a lot more of us than just one!’ Goldie quickly told Lucy what the two fairies had already told Izzy – that they had been sent by their fairy queen to find out what had happened the previous night. ‘We need to find the fairy who stole Izzy’s tooth,’ Goldie explained, ‘because she’s already stolen lots of other teeth from the children in our sector—’

  ‘Your sector?’ Lucy queried.