Fairy School Drop-out (9 page)

But Mrs Clovercloud had had enough. ‘Take all these trails outside immediately,' she said crossly.

‘Yes, Mrs Clovercloud,' said Gabi meekly. She fled from the room with the piglets, puppies and scissors trailing along behind her.

Mrs Clovercloud looked around fiercely. ‘Is there
anyone
here who can do this spell correctly?' she said.

There was a silence. No-one wanted to volunteer. Then a whisper went around the room. Someone must have put up their hand. Elly looked around to see who it was and realised it was her. ‘I think I know, Mrs Clovercloud,' Elly found herself saying.

‘Really?
You
?' asked Mrs Clovercloud dubiously. ‘I'm tired of having my time wasted.'

Elly nodded. ‘Yes, Mrs Clovercloud. I'm pretty sure,' she said, although inside she wasn't sure at all. She stood up. Everyone was watching and Elly knew they were waiting for something to go wrong.

‘I can't watch!' moaned Primrose, her plaits covering her eyes.

Elly took a deep breath and swished the wand through the air. A trail of perfect, silvery stars followed behind. They lingered for a moment, shimmering and twinkling, until they gently faded away.

‘Ooooh!' said the class in unison.

Elly pressed the button again, this time twirling the wand in a loop so that the stars curled out and floated in a spiral towards the roof.

‘Aaaah!' said the class.

Even Mrs Clovercloud seemed impressed.

‘Elly,' she said, ‘these are wonderful wandtrails. Show us again so that everyone else can learn.'

But the moment Elly waved her wand again she knew something was wrong. There was a twanging sound closely followed by a splintering sound. Suddenly the air was full of a weird blue mist, and all around her, fairies were shrieking and ducking under their tables.

Elly looked around in confusion. It was raining inside, and the rain was blue. And sticky. She looked at her hands and was shocked to see that they were totally blue. Her wand was blue too, and as Elly stared she realised that blue stuff was oozing out of a big crack in the handle. Finally it dawned on her what had happened. The pen Jess had put inside her wand must have broken. The blue rain was actually ink. Elly didn't have a good feeling about this.

Slowly, she turned to look at Mrs Clovercloud. She had learnt something about her teacher very early on. When she was cross her cheeks went bright pink. When she was furious, they went scarlet. Right now, though, it was hard to tell if Mrs Clovercloud was cross or furious because her cheeks were blue. Her nose was blue too. And her ears? All blue. In fact, Mrs Clovercloud was blue from head to toe. But even without being able to see the real colour of her cheeks, Elly had the feeling that she knew exactly what sort of a mood Mrs Clovercloud was in.

And it wasn't a good one.

Chapter twelve

I
f you had happened to look through a certain school window recently, you would've seen something that you can see through hundreds of school windows on any given day of the week, all around the world. A schoolgirl, nervously waiting outside the head-mistress's office. If you hadn't read this book you might've felt a little bit sorry for the girl, because everyone knows how long the wait outside a head-mistress's door can be. Then you probably would've thought nothing more about it.

But you have read this book, haven't you?

And if someone were to tell you that this particular school was none other than Mossy Blossom Academy for Fairies, you would probably guess that this was Elly and that she was feeling very, very uncertain about her future.

The chair that Elly was sitting on while she waited was known as the Chiding Chair. It had a particularly unpleasant habit of telling anyone who walked by the crimes of the person sitting on it, in a very loud, disapproving voice. Often sitting on the Chiding Chair was a worse punishment than actually seeing Madame Silverwings. Today the chair was saying, ‘Elly dyed her entire class blue!' to anyone who would listen.

Usually this would've made Elly squirm with embarrassment, but today she barely noticed. Her head was buzzing with thoughts.
One day I'm going to start my own fairy academy.
Everyone will ride skateboards and there'll be no
wands
.

She sighed. It was a nice dream but it'd be a long time before it could come true. And it didn't change the fact that she was about to get into a whole lot of trouble. She had dyed a teacher ...
again
. Of course, technically, Madame Silverwings had said she wasn't allowed to dye any more teachers
purple
and Mrs Clovercloud was actually
blue
. And a very attractive shade of blue, at that. But Elly had a feeling that this wouldn't make that much difference to the Head-Fairy.

What was she going to tell her parents? Getting expelled had seemed like such a good idea – until it looked like it might actually happen. Maybe she just wouldn't tell them. Maybe she could just pretend she was going to school every day until she figured out what to do.

But when Madame Silverwings finally opened the door Elly realised that this wouldn't work. Her mum and dad were already in Madame Silverwings' office, waiting. Elly gulped and then hurriedly tried to explain the situation. ‘It was an accident, Madame Silverwings,' she said. ‘My wand has been playing up and I ...'

But Madame Silverwings interrupted her. ‘Elly,' she said. ‘I have just received some very exciting news.'

Elly was suspicious. What was going on? Madame Silverwings was beaming and her parents were looking at her with the proud faces they usually only wore when Kara made some new kind of burping sound. It made Elly nervous.

Madame Silverwings handed her a piece of paper. ‘Read it aloud,' she said.

‘Successful application for transfer of student from Mossy Blossom Academy to South Street School,' read Elly.

Great. Some lucky student was going to do an exchange at a human school. And to make it worse, it was to Jess's school. Maybe reading the letter out was part of her punishment.

‘Isn't it exciting, Elly?' said Elly's mum, smiling. ‘It's a great honour, you know.' Elly thought everyone was being very weird.

‘I guess it's exciting for whoever it is who's going,' she said, ‘but I'd be more excited if it was me.'

Madame Silverwings laughed.

‘It
is
you who's going!' she said. ‘Why else would I tell you? I sent in an application for exchange on your behalf.'

Elly stared at the Head-Fairy in astonishment. ‘But I ... but you ...' she stuttered. Madame Silverwings had said that only top students got to go on these exchanges. No-one could possibly consider Elly a top student.

‘Your behaviour has vastly improved recently,' explained Madame Silverwings. ‘Everyone has commented on it. So it was decided that your, er,
unusual
skills would make you the perfect candidate for an exchange.'

‘We always knew your brilliance would shine through eventually,' said Elly's father fondly. ‘That's always been clear.'

But only one thing was clear to Elly: there was no way Madame Silverwings knew that she had dyed Mrs Clovercloud blue. If she did, she wouldn't be sending her on a school exchange.

Elly looked around at the adults. They all looked so delighted that suddenly Elly felt bad. She was not a brilliant student and there was no way she deserved the honour of going on exchange. Elly decided she had to tell them the truth. ‘Madame Silverwings,' she said sadly, ‘there's something you need to know. This morning I –'

But before she could finish there was a loud noise outside and Gabi Cruddleperry rushed past the window, followed by a trail of squealing piglets, yapping puppies, and clacking scissors.

‘Go away!' Gabi shrieked, swatting at them with her hands. But the wand-trails paid absolutely no attention.

‘What extraordinary behaviour!' said Madame Silverwings disapprovingly.

‘She's got a new wand,' explained Elly, trying not to laugh. She wondered if Gabi was going to get in trouble.

But Madame Silverwings seemed to have other things on her mind. ‘Congratulations, Elly,' she said, leading the Knottleweed Eversprightlys to the door. ‘I do hope you'll drop by one day.' She opened the door.

‘But Madame Silverwings,' protested Elly, ‘there's something important I have to tell you. Something that changes everything.'

But it was as if Madame Silverwings didn't want to hear what Elly had to say. ‘Oh, it can't be that important, surely!' she said, ushering the family out of the room. ‘It's been a pleasure knowing you, Elly. You are a very original fairy.'

Then she shook Elly's hand vigorously and closed the door – but just before she did, Elly glimpsed something lying on Madame Silverwings' desk. A silver rod, a star and some shards of plastic, all surrounded by a pool of blue ink. Elly was astonished. Was it possible that Madame Silverwings knew about what had happened in Mrs Clovercloud's class after all? She tried to take another look, but before she could, the Head-Fairy firmly closed the door.

‘Well, you've clearly made a very strong impression on her,' said Mrs Knottleweed Eversprightly proudly.

But Elly wasn't listening. She could've sworn she heard Madame Silverwings say, as if to herself, ‘A
very
original fairy indeed – but please don't come back!'