“Look!” I whispered. “I think she heard you!”
A faint glow had appeared around the fading queen. It wasn’t very bright, but it was a change.
“Keep going!” I told Acorn.
“Please forgive me!” he told the queen. “I should have wooed you while I had the chance. You were right to reject me when you did. I wasn’t ready for marriage and you knew it. Looking back on it, I can’t believe how much of my life I wasted when I could have been spending it with you. Please come back to me, Willow. I need you! We all need you!”
The light around the queen seemed to be getting brighter. She wasn’t quite as transparent and I thought her features looked more distinct. Something was happening; I just hoped it was enough.
“If you come back now, I really hope you’ll give me a chance to do what I should have done a long time ago,” Acorn told her. “I know you used to dream about what our wedding would be like. My greatest wish is that you would let me make your dream come true.”
“Isn’t that sweet!” said a voice. “It’s enough to make my stomach turn.” A pointy-faced vole had appeared under the trailing branches of the willow. It took me a moment to recognize his voice as Nightshade’s. When flying here as a raven hadn’t worked, he must have decided that it was time to try another form.
Two smaller voles crept under the branches. His friends had made it as well.
“She hasn’t faded away yet?” said Nightshade. “What a shame. I’d hoped she’d have it over with by now. When I was here before, she looked so close.”
“What are you saying?” Acorn said, turning to face Nightshade. “Had you already found her?”
“Weeks ago!” Nightshade said with a laugh. “I was on my way home from visiting friends when I came across her. She was so far gone she didn’t notice me, but she’d placed a powerful protection spell around herself that would keep working even while she faded away. It didn’t activate until I reached for the wand. There it is on the ground, boys. Grab it!”
When I realized that the stick on the ground had to be the wand he was talking about, I jumped and picked it up. “Why do you want this, Nightshade? Could it be that you want the queen’s power for yourself?”
“Give me that, Emma!” shouted Nightshade. “You have no use for it, and I need it. I’ll make a better ruler than that old fairy or any of the others who say they deserve it. Give me the wand and I’ll show the world what a fairy king can do.”
When the two smaller voles lunged, snapping at my hands, I jerked the stick out of their reach and hopped away from the Fairy Queen. If we were going to argue over an old stick, I didn’t want to put her in danger.
“If you knew where the queen was, why did you need me?” I asked Nightshade as he took a step toward me.
“Because when I reached for the wand when I was here before, her defenses blew me halfway across the kingdom. I was sure that the only one who could get close to her now had to be very powerful. The Green Witch with the power of a dragon was the best choice around. I was the one who told the fairies that the queen was fading away. I was the one who made them think about an election. I talked those three fools into campaigning, knowing that none of them could win. My friends put those campaign slogans in places that would upset fairies so that they would go to you for help. But you were too slow in coming! Eventually, I had my friends move on to a farmer’s crops, knowing that was sure to draw you in. You finally showed up, but then I had to cast a spell on Adara, turning her into a mouse, so you’d have a personal reason to find the queen. And then I had to lead you from place to place. You never would have come here if I hadn’t lied and said that a fairy had told me the queen planned to come to Soggy Molvinia.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! “So this entire thing was a ploy to make me help you get the wand!”
Nightshade shrugged. “I did what I had to do. And to think that I put all that effort into getting you here, when all I really needed to do was turn myself into a rodent! If I’d known that, I could have saved myself a lot of trouble.”
“You’re the reason I came along!” Acorn told Nightshade. “I knew you couldn’t be trusted, and I didn’t want you to be the one to find Willow!”
“I don’t know what you plan to do as king, but I’m not letting it happen,” I told Nightshade.
“Don’t be foolish, Emma. You have the wand, but I have something even more important to you.”
I realized my mistake as soon as the words left his mouth. Nightshade, the nasty little vole, was going to use Eadric against me. I cried out as he lunged at Eadric and bit down on his froggy arm only to drag him to the other side of the chrysalis.
Wrapping his front paw around Eadric’s neck, he let go of Eadric’s arm and shouted, “Give me the wand and you can have him back!”
“Don’t give the wand to him!” Eadric hollered. “Emma, remember the hawk!”
In an instant I knew what Eadric wanted me to do. Shoving the stick in my mouth so that it stuck out both sides, I turned and jumped at Nightshade, landing on his head. He cried out and dropped Eadric, but instead of trying to get away, the vole grabbed hold of the wand and pulled. While I wrestled with Nightshade, Eadric bopped him on the head, trying to keep him from taking the wand. There was a snap! and the wand broke in two.
Nightshade groaned and backed away. “You broke it!” he cried. “Now it’s no good to anyone! Do you know how much I could have helped fairies with that wand?”
“I know how much you could have helped yourself,” I told him, wiping a piece of bark from my tongue. “I don’t like being lied to or tricked. I won’t forget this, Nightshade.”
“Oh, I’m so scared!” cried the vole. “What are you going to do? You’re just a frog!”
A strange look came into his eyes, and the next moment he and his friends were full-sized fairies looming over the rest of us. “Step on her!” Nightshade ordered his friends. “Quick, before she can change. And when you’re done with her, step on old Queen Willow!”
I hopped away then, knowing how vulnerable I was as a frog. Oleander and Persimmon came after me, stomping and jumping as they tried to squash me. I made it harder for them by hopping between their legs. “Here I am!” I shouted. “No, I’m over here!”
I hopped back and forth so fast that they finally crashed into each other. While they untangled themselves, I hopped away from the chrysalis and the queen, knowing that I needed some space. I was going to change, but I wasn’t going to be a human. Few things make me angrier than being lied to, although threatening to hurt Eadric was also at the top of my list. If Nightshade wanted a dragon, that was exactly what he was going to get.
Ever since I first learned how to turn into a dragon, I had practiced so much that I no longer needed to recite a spell. I started the change even as Nightshade and his friends came after me. “Uh-oh!” Persimmon said when he saw what I was doing. Grabbing Oleander’s arm, he started to back away.
I was still close to the willow tree when Nightshade waved his own wand in my direction. While I completed the change, the willow branches whipped around me, pinning my limbs to my sides and tightening around my wings. I roared as I reached full size. Stretching my wings and arching my back, I snapped the willow branches as if they were the thinnest of threads.
“You never said we’d have to face an angry dragon, Nightshade!” cried Persimmon. “ Oleander and I are done here!”
Turning tiny, the two fairies darted off across the lake.
Not wanting to burn down the tree and the innocents still under it, I ran a few dozen yards and turned. Nightshade followed me, as I knew he would, but before I could take a deep breath, he turned the solid ground below me into quicksand just like the kind Eadric had helped him escape. I struggled, even though I knew that was the last thing I should do. The muck sucked me deeper, pulling me down until my legs and half my body was submerged.
Nightshade stood at the edge of the quicksand, laughing. “No one is going to be able to pull
you out of that!” he shouted.
“No one needs to,” I growled, and quit thrashing around. Taking a deep breath, I built up the fire in my belly and blew a long tongue of flame at the muck. Within seconds, the water in the quicksand began to boil.
Nightshade guessed what I was doing before I was half-done. When he raised his wand to point at me, I turned my flame in his direction. Yelping, he nearly tripped over his own feet trying to get away.
In less than a minute, I was able to climb out on the now dry sand. In his hurry to escape my flame, Nightshade had dropped his wand and was trying to sneak back to get it. “You don’t need that where you’re going,” I told him, and burned it to ash.
“No!” he cried, throwing his hands in front of his face as if he thought I was going to turn my flame on him.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt you,” I told him. “I’m taking you back to the fairies to tell them what you did. It’s up to them to decide what to do with you.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you!” Nightshade cried. A moment later, he was tiny and flying off in the same direction that his friends had gone.
“Huh!” I said, watching him go. “I guess he didn’t need his wand for that.”
Sixteen
The moment Nightshade was out of sight, I changed back into my human self and hurried to the tree. Eadric was still a frog, and I could see that he was holding the arm that the vole had bitten.
I cried out and fell to my knees beside him. “Are you all right?” I asked, reaching for his arm.
“I will be,” he said. “As soon as you turn me back to my normal self.”
I nodded and made up a spell as I went along:
The frog I see before me now
Is not his real form.
Make him human once again
Not cold-blooded, but warm.
By the time I got out of his way, he was already changing back. When he was human again, he flexed his arm. Smiling, he said, “Much better. It was a big bite when I was a frog, but now it’s almost nothing. I’m not sure about that spell, though. It wasn’t one of your best.”
“I was in a hurry,” I said, and kissed him.
“Emma, Eadric! Come quick!” called Adara. “Something is happening.”
The chrysalis was glowing bright green now, casting its light on the faces of the two mice standing close to it. Eadric and I hurried to join them and got there just as the chrysalis split down the middle and Queen Willow sat up. Before she could climb out, Acorn had turned back into a tiny fairy and was reaching in to help her.
Although she looked like the elderly fairy I remembered from when I went back in time, a change came over her as Acorn took her hands and pulled her from the chrysalis. The wrinkles that had lined her face, neck, and hands vanished, leaving her skin as smooth as my own. Her long hair took on a greenish tinge until it was the color of willow leaves in the spring, and the leaves of her gown now looked fresh and supple. Even her movements changed, becoming easier and more fluid.
“Will you ever forgive me?” Acorn asked as he pulled her close.
“I already have,” she whispered, and went into his arms. “I promised myself that I’d wait for you, but after the decades passed I finally gave up. I need you, too, Acorn! If you truly want the life you spoke of, I don’t think I’ll ever want to fade away.”
“It’s all I want now,” Acorn murmured. “As long as it’s with you.”
Eadric shuffled his feet and looked away as the two fairies kissed. Adara scurried over to me and tugged on my hem. “What about me?” she asked. “I’m still a mouse!”
“This isn’t the time,” I told her, and smiled when Acorn and the queen turned to face us.
“Queen Willow, I’d like you to meet some friends of mine,” said Acorn. “This is Princess Emeralda, the Green Witch, and her soon-to-be-husband, Prince Eadric of Upper Montevista.”
“And I’m Princess Adara of Lower Mucksworthy,” squeaked the mouse. “If you wouldn’t mind, Your Majesty, do you think you could—”
“This isn’t the right time,” Eadric told Adara.
“I’m quite familiar with the Green Witches,” Queen Willow said with a smile. “And I remember you, Emma.”
I curtsied, and it felt odd to bend down to someone no bigger than my thumb. “I wasn’t sure you would,” I said. “I first saw you so long ago.”
“I know,” said the queen. “It was at Hazel’s birthday party. I remember it as if it was just yesterday.”
“Fairies have excellent memories,” Acorn told me.
The queen nodded. “It’s both a curse and a blessing that we rarely forget anything.”
“I want to thank you for all you’ve done for my family,” I told her. “Having the hereditary title of Green Witch in the royal family has made a huge difference to Greater Greensward.”
“It is I who need to thank you,” said the queen. “I may not have looked it, but I was aware of everything that went on around me while I was in the chrysalis. I know what Nightshade tried to do, and I have all of you to thank for stopping him.”
“You did say that the Green Witch has to ensure the safety of Greater Greensward’s inhabitants, ‘whether human- or fairy-kind,’” I reminded her.
“I did, didn’t I?” she said with a laugh. “I guess fairies aren’t the only ones with good memories.”
“We should be getting back to the enchanted forest,” said Acorn. “Who knows what’s been going on there in our absence.”
“Indeed,” said the queen, and glanced at Eadric and me. “Are you able to fly?”
“We came on my magic carpet,” I told her. “It stopped working back in the marsh.”
“Then let me bring it to you,” she said, and waved her hand in the air. There was a whir and a whoosh and my carpet hurtled through the air, slowing as it approached us until it landed gently on the ground behind me.
“How could you do that without your wand?” asked Eadric. “I thought you needed it to do magic.”
Queen Willow laughed. “I haven’t needed a wand since I was a child. Only fairies with weaker magic need wands to focus it. I carried that stick because of its sentimental value. It had no magical power of its own. My one true love gave it to me many years ago, didn’t you?” she said glancing at Acorn.
“I found it and thought you’d like it,” he said.
They were kissing again when Eadric turned to me. “I need to go get Ferdy before we start back, and I think we should go soon. It’s getting dark and it will take us a while to reach your family’s castle.”
“I don’t think we can go to the castle just yet,” I told him. “There’s something I want to do first.”
When I glanced at Acorn and the queen, they were looking our way. “Would you like to join us on the carpet?” I asked them.
“We would love to go with you,” the queen said, smiling. “I’ve never ridden on a magic carpet before.”
“Good!” said Acorn. “That will give me time to tell you about the fairies who thought they could replace you. You won’t believe some of the changes they proposed!”
“Is now a good time?” Adara asked as I picked her up.
“Not yet,” I said, and tucked her in my pocket.
Darkness fell as we flew over Greater Greensward, and the stars made the perfect backdrop for everything we needed to discuss. Acorn and Willow had grown to full size, so we could hear them over the whistling of the wind. When Adara said that she was hungry, Queen Willow waved her hand to produce a loaf of bread and a large block of cheese. We all had our share, but Adara ate until her little belly was rounded and she fell asleep in the Fairy Queen’s lap.
It was just past dawn when we reached the clearing where Oculura and Dyspepsia lived. Smoke drifted from the chimney and I could smell the tempting aroma of something baking. As we landed outside their garden, we saw Oculura scattering feed for her chickens. Eadric and I stepped off the carpet and started toward the cottage while Willow and Acorn stay
ed behind to talk.
The moment Oculura saw us, she came running. “Emma! Eadric! Is that you? Is everything all right?” she cried.
“We’re fine,” I told her.
“Thank goodness! We were worried that something might have happened to you when you left after that rally. There has been so much fighting the last few days! Fairies fighting fairies, friends fighting friends, neighbors fighting neighbors. It’s been just awful. Why, yesterday two fairies started throwing rabbit pox pellets at each other right over our cottage. We had to chase them off and use the most powerful warding spell we had to keep from getting sick. They didn’t get you, did they? You and Eadric look like you have the pox.”
I reached up to touch my face. Somehow I’d forgotten the bites. They still itched, but not as much as they had at first. “No,” I said, shaking my head. “The bumps are just mosquito bites.”
“I have a cure for that! My special lotion will have them cleared up before you know it. Come inside and I’ll get you some. You and your friends can join us for breakfast, if you’re hungry,” she said, squinting when she glanced back at Willow and Acorn. Apparently she had nearsighted eyes in today. “We were just about to sit down to fried apple cakes.”
“The lotion would be great,” I said.
“And so would the apple cakes!” added Eadric.
“I’m sorry to hear about the fighting,” I told Oculura as we followed her to her cottage. “I might have a solution for that, but I’m going to need your help.”
“Is it a new spell?” asked Oculura. “I’m very good with spell development.”
“It’s not a spell,” I said, and glanced back at Willow and Acorn. “We’d like to call a meeting here at your cottage. All three candidates need to be here as well as any other fairies who would like to come.”