Fairy Dust Read online

  Upstairs in her bedroom, she opened her window and carefully placed the chocolate on the outside ledge with the little tartan sock tucked firmly under it. She left the window open and the curtains pulled back so she had a clear view of the night sky outside. The moon was shining brightly and Rosie reckoned it was just the sort of evening when she would want to go out and about exploring if she was a fairy.

  She heard her mother climb up the stairs and go into her bedroom across the landing. They had spent a lovely day together, walking over the fields down to the loch-side where they’d gone paddling. Rosie’s mum had showed her how to skim stones across the loch, and then she’d got very excited as she spotted a grey shiny head, which turned out to be a seal, bobbing about in the water. Rosie hadn’t seen her mum this happy in a long time and seeing her so excited made Rosie feel excited too. Maybe it would be fun here after all.

  But Rosie was tired from all the walking they’d done today. Her eyelids were feeling very heavy and soon it was all she could do to keep one eye open to watch the window ledge. She could make out the silver foil glittering in the moonlight and just hoped Snowdrop would spot it too. She started to think about the seal they had seen today. It had followed them in the water as they walked along the loch-side. Her mother had said that seals often did that because they were quite nosy and liked the sound of human voices.

  Rosie had looked out across the water at the seal whose smooth head could still be seen above the blue-grey water. ‘I wish he’d come closer. I’d like to stroke him!’

  ‘We might get closer if we went out in a boat,’ her mum said. ‘Miss MacPhee has a little rowing boat which she rents out to people who stay in the cottage. I could ask her about taking it out. Would you like that?’

  ‘Oh, yes!’ Rosie had nodded excitedly.

  Now, as she lay in bed with her eyes closed, she was imagining bobbing up and down in the water in a little boat with the seal bobbing up and down alongside her. And suddenly the seal was gone and her father was there swimming along beside the boat and Rosie was reaching out to grab his hand to pull him inside. In her dream, Rosie smiled as she sat in the boat with her mum and dad, eating chocolates.

  The next morning Snowdrop’s chocolate was gone and so was the little tartan sock. Rosie was furious with herself for falling asleep and missing the fairies. She flung on her clothes and ran downstairs to check outside the cottage, just to make sure that the chocolate and the little sock hadn’t somehow fallen off the ledge during the night. She was searching in the flower bed in front of the house when her mother called out to her. Her mother was sitting out in the garden painting and, judging from how much work she’d already done, she must have got up very early. Her mother had sold lots of paintings when they’d lived in London. There was a gallery there which often displayed them and Rosie knew that her mother had promised to send them some of the paintings she did here. Her mum also thought she might be able to sell some paintings to the tourists who came to Skye to visit and she was even talking about setting up her own little art gallery here on the island.

  ‘Rosie, it’s such a lovely day!’ her mother said, as Rosie stood behind her, admiring her painting of the loch. ‘Why don’t you go and ask Miss MacPhee if we can take her boat out? Ask her how much it is and tell her I’ll pay her later.’

  ‘Oh, Mum! Can’t you ask her?’ Rosie didn’t like the thought of having to go and face Miss MacPhee again.

  ‘I want to finish this. It would help me if you did it. Besides, it’s good for you to speak to people. I don’t want you becoming too shy.’

  Well, why did you bring me up here, where there aren’t any people, then? Rosie felt like asking. But just then she spotted something shiny on the ground. She bent down to see what it was and let out an excited gasp. It was the scrunched-up silver foil paper from Snowdrop’s chocolate!

  Miss MacPhee was sitting on the wooden bench outside her cottage, shelling peas. Rosie had never seen anyone shelling peas before. Everyone she knew bought their peas from the frozen food section in the supermarket. She couldn’t help staring as Flora popped open the big green pods and ran her finger along to push the peas out into the bowl she was balancing on her lap.

  ‘Hello,’ Flora greeted her, waving one of the long green pods at her. ‘Want something, do you?’

  Rosie quickly gave the old lady the message from her mother about the boat.

  Flora nodded. ‘Aye, she can take it out if she wants to, so long as you both wear life-jackets. Can she row all right?’

  ‘Yes – and so can I,’ Rosie replied proudly. In the summer, she and her mother had often taken out one of the rowing boats in the park near their house in London.

  Rosie was turning to leave when Flora called her back.

  ‘Find that Snowdrop, did you?’

  Rosie looked back, feeling her cheeks going red. ‘I left the chocolate for her like you said but I fell asleep. I think she must have come in the night, though, because the chocolate and the sock were both gone. I found this.’ She took the foil wrapper out of her pocket and showed it to Flora.

  ‘That little greedy guts! Had to eat it there and then, all by herself, instead of taking it back to share with the others. She’ll have a terrible belly ache this morning and it’ll serve her right!’

  Rosie’s mouth dropped open. ‘Do fairies get belly ache, then?’ she asked, hardly believing it.

  ‘Of course they do! They get colds too. There’s nothing like a fairy sneeze to give a person a fright. It’s the strangest thing you’ve ever heard. I had a wee man with a cold in my house last winter and I’m telling you – never again! Poor Angus was terrified. And the tissues that went missing.’

  ‘Did he get better?’ Rosie asked.

  ‘Och, yes. After I’d been up on that moor collecting sphagnum moss and spending all day boiling it up into a hot toddy for him. Now . . . there’s a thought . . .’ Miss MacPhee picked up another pea pod. ‘I’ve an idea how you can get to see the fairies. They collect the moss up on the moor because of its special healing properties. They use it for all sorts of things. They go up there very early in the morning just as it starts to get light, so that’s when you’re most likely to spot one. If you can wake up that early yourself, that is. I know what you city people are like!’

  ‘Of course I can wake up,’ Rosie exclaimed. ‘Anyway – I’m not a city person any more.’ She flushed. ‘Mum says to ask you how much it is to hire out your boat.’

  Miss MacPhee chuckled. ‘Well, if you’re not a city person then I can’t charge you anything. I only charge the holidaymakers for my boat.’ She winked at Rosie. ‘You tell your mother she can borrow it whenever she wants, for as long as she’s my neighbour.’

  Rosie was about to thank her when she spotted Angus sauntering down the path carrying something in his mouth. He was looking very pleased with himself.

  ‘What have you got there?’ Flora asked him. ‘Come and show me, then!’ Flora stood up slowly and shuffled nearer to him. Then she bent down and made some encouraging noises as if she thought he was the cleverest cat in the whole world and wanted to admire whatever it was he had caught.

  As soon as Angus came close enough, she reached out and grabbed him. ‘Rosie, see what he’s got in his mouth, will you? Be careful now! Watch he doesn’t bite you!’

  Rosie didn’t mind cats usually but she had to admit to being a bit afraid of Angus. But she could see the little bird trapped between his jaws and she really wanted to rescue it. So while Flora held his head still, she carefully prised open his mouth. Angus hissed angrily in protest as the little bird fell to the ground and stayed there, looking stunned.

  ‘Is it hurt?’ Rosie asked anxiously.

  ‘I don’t think so – just paralysed with fright.’ Flora was still clutching Angus. ‘Take it away somewhere where Angus won’t find it. I expect it’ll fly off again when it gets its strength back.’

  So Rosie walked carefully back to Thistle Cottage with the little bird balanced on the pal
m of her hand. Her mother was still in the garden, painting. She stopped as Rosie came towards her. ‘Why not put it on your window ledge? It’ll be safe there and you can see when it flies away,’ she suggested, after she had given the frightened bird a gentle stroke.

  So that’s what Rosie decided to do. Only, when she got upstairs and opened her window to place the little bird outside, she found something else on her window ledge. It was a bracelet made of flowers, just the right size to fit her wrist. She placed the bird down beside the ring of flowers and, almost immediately, the bird’s head gave a little twitch and it looked more alert.

  She picked up the bracelet. It was made of tiny flowers of different colours – purple and pink and blue and yellow – woven together in the same way daisies can be strung together to make a daisy chain. Only there was something about it that was different. It was sparkling in the sunshine as if someone had sprinkled it with some type of gold glitter. Rosie slipped the bracelet on to her wrist and ran downstairs.

  She could hardly hold in her excitement. She was almost sure the fairies had made the bracelet for her but there was one person who would know for sure.

  ‘I’m going back to see Miss MacPhee for a minute,’ she called out to her mother.

  ‘Look!’ her mum said, pointing upwards.

  And Rosie looked up and smiled as she spotted the bird Angus had caught fly off her window ledge and soar away towards the nearest tree tops.

  Rosie looked down at her wrist as, the following morning, she hurried up towards the gate that led on to the moor. When she had shown Flora the flower bracelet, the old lady had said that she was almost certain it was a fairy bracelet and that the gold sparkly bits were the fairy dust. ‘A fairy flower bracelet doesn’t wilt until all the fairy dust wears off,’ Flora explained. ‘So if that’s a fairy bracelet, the flowers will stay fresh for a good few weeks.’

  Today, the flowers in Rosie’s bracelet still looked as if they had only just been picked.

  Rosie reached the gate and jumped up on to the first rung. She was getting good at climbing over gates since they’d arrived here. She had set her alarm to make sure she woke up before sunrise this morning. It had been quite dark outside but she knew that if she wanted to see the fairies, she had to be on the moor just as the sun was coming up. It was getting lighter by the minute as she tramped over the bumpy tufts of grass and moss. Flora had said that the fairies lived in the forest, so to head for the mossy ground nearest the trees if she wanted to be sure of spotting one.

  It took Rosie longer than she’d thought to reach the edge of the forest. The sun had risen behind the trees by then and there were no fairies in sight. She was beginning to think they must have finished collecting their moss and gone home when she saw a speck of blue moving around in the grass. What was it? A butterfly maybe? Rosie crept closer and saw that the blue colour belonged to something much bigger than a butterfly. It was a huge blue petal and it was making up part of a fairy dress! Rosie held her breath. The fairy wearing the dress was bending over, searching for something in the grass. She had shiny black hair which swung prettily at her shoulders and her delicate wings were half folded behind her, fluttering slightly in the breeze.

  Rosie was so excited she couldn’t speak.

  The little blue fairy suddenly turned round, let out a frightened gasp when she saw Rosie, dropped the basket of moss she was holding and flew off at top speed into the woods.

  ‘Come back! I’m not going to hurt you!’ Rosie called after her in a shaky voice. But the fairy had gone.

  Rosie sat down on the ground and carefully picked up the fairy basket. It was made of bark and had a pretty handle woven out of ivy. The basket was full to the brim with fresh moss. The little fairy must have nearly finished collecting it. Perhaps she would come back for it if Rosie waited long enough. Rosie carried the basket of moss over to the edge of the forest and looked for a good place to leave it. There was a tree trunk with a ring of flowers growing round the bottom. The flowers were quite similar to the ones in her bracelet. Rosie left the basket on top of the tree trunk and sat down on the grass a short distance away. Maybe the little blue fairy would come back for the basket and Rosie could tell her that she only wanted to be her friend.

  But Rosie waited and waited and the fairy didn’t reappear. It was getting late and she knew her mother would be getting up soon. She had to go back to the cottage.

  Rosie paused as she was climbing over the rusty old farm gate back out on to the road. She sat on top of the gate, looking around at the green and brown countryside. Her mother had told her that soon the purple heather would be out and it would look even more beautiful. Her mother was always going on about how wonderful it was here and how there were no pollution smells like there were in London. But Rosie didn’t remember smelling fumes all the time in London. The smell she remembered best was the smell of the grass just after it had been cut in the park in the summer. For a moment or two she felt sad, remembering the park and the friends she had played with there. They would be playing without her now.

  Suddenly she noticed something moving in the long grass on the other side of the road. She saw Angus darting forward and thought he must be trying to catch a butterfly again, but then she heard a loud squeal and a frightened voice shouting, ‘Help!’

  Rosie leaped down off the gate and ran over. She gasped. Angus had a fairy in his mouth. Rosie couldn’t see her wings but she could see her mass of golden hair and her little pink arms and legs, which were struggling furiously.

  Angus growled, clamping his jaws shut even tighter as the little fairy grabbed hold of his whiskers and tugged at them. Rosie knew she had to do something fast, but she couldn’t think what. Then she remembered how Miss MacPhee had rescued the little bird the day before.

  Very slowly she crept closer to the cat, making cooing noises and telling him how clever he was. Angus looked at her suspiciously but Rosie kept on complimenting him in a soothing voice. Angus, who found it difficult to resist being praised, started to purr.

  ‘It must be so hard to catch a fairy,’ Rosie continued, close enough now to crouch down in front of Angus who looked as though he was very proud of himself indeed. ‘Please can I see?’

  Angus opened his mouth to miaow a reply and the fairy half flew, half tumbled out.

  ‘Go away, Angus!’ Rosie shouted, scooping up the fairy and giving the indignant cat a shove with the toe of her wellington boot.

  She looked down at the little person in her hand, recognizing her immediately. ‘Snowdrop!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Aye, that’s my name!’ Snowdrop was starting to recover. She sat herself upright in Rosie’s hand and dusted off her white petal skirt.

  Angus gave them both a disdainful glance and walked haughtily away, seeming more interested suddenly in the smell of fried bacon wafting up from Miss MacPhee’s open front door.

  ‘I hope all that fatty food gives you indigestion, you horrible cat!’ Snowdrop shouted after him. Then she turned and looked up at Rosie’s face. ‘You’re the little girl from the other night, aren’t you? The one who left me the chocolate? You must be because you’re wearing my bracelet.’ She suddenly smiled. She had pink cheeks and a little pointed chin and her blue eyes were sparkling. ‘Thank you for rescuing me!’

  ‘That’s . . . OK,’ Rosie stammered, suddenly feeling shy.

  ‘What’s the matter? You look like you’ve never seen a fairy before!’ Snowdrop grinned.

  ‘It’s not that . . .’ Rosie said quickly. ‘It’s just . . . I can’t really believe . . . I’m actually holding one in my hand.’

  Snowdrop laughed. ‘I bet you can’t even feel me sitting on your hand, can you?’

  ‘Well, you do feel ever so light!’

  ‘That’s because fairies don’t weigh anything,’ Snowdrop said. She stretched her wings ready to fly off Rosie’s hand, then shrieked in dismay.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Rosie asked. Then she saw that there was a big rip in one of Snowdrop’s wings whe
re Angus’s claw had caught it. ‘Oh, no. Can you fix it?’ she asked anxiously.

  Snowdrop explained that to mend her wing she first needed to make a special poultice. She had to collect some sphagnum moss from the moor to mix with some fairy dust, and if she put that on her broken wing it would mend in a day or two. ‘But I’ll never be able to fly as far as the moor to collect the moss with my wing like this.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll collect it for you,’ Rosie offered.

  Snowdrop looked at her gratefully. ‘There’s a special kind we have to find. If you carry me up there, I’ll show you. I’ll need somewhere to rest afterwards, though, while the poultice does its work.’ She paused. ‘I don’t suppose I could sleep in that lovely fairy bed in your room until I’m better, could I?’

  ‘Fairy bed?’ Rosie couldn’t think what she was talking about. Then she realized. ‘Oh, you mean my dolls’ cot?’ she said excitedly. ‘Of course you can sleep in it! You can stay as long as you like. Though you’ll have to watch my mum doesn’t see you. She doesn’t believe in fairies so she’d get a terrible fright.’

  ‘Oh, she won’t be able to see me,’ Snowdrop said dismissively. ‘Some people are just never in the right mind for seeing fairies.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Rosie was puzzled.

  ‘Well, to see a fairy, you have to be in the right place at the right time in the right mind,’ Snowdrop explained. ‘And lots of humans just never are.’

  Rosie still didn’t really understand. Right now, though, she was more interested in getting Snowdrop up to the moor and back before her mother woke up and wondered where she was. ‘Let’s go and get the moss straight away. Then we can go back to the cottage and have some breakfast,’ she said.

  ‘Good,’ Snowdrop beamed. ‘I’m starving! I don’t suppose you’ve got any more of those nice chocolates, have you?’