The Fairy Rebel (10 page)

“Are you speaking to me?”

Jan turned to look.

And there she was. Jan knew at once that this was the Queen.

She was sitting level with Jan’s face on a strange brown throne. It took Jan a second to realize it was made entirely of wasps, piled on top of one another, and that it stood on a tall wasp tower.

The Queen was bigger than Tiki. She was about the size of Jan’s middle finger. She wore a long dress the colors of oil when it’s floating on water—every color there is—glinting and gleaming and ever changing. She wore a glistening crown of wasps’ stings.

But it was her wings that fascinated Jan. They were enormous for her size, as dark and gleaming as polished metal, with shaped edges and long sharp points. They moved slowly, like a butterfly’s wings when it’s resting. Sometimes they were behind her, but sometimes they opened out on each side of her. When they did that, Jan could see a pattern on them, like two big, cold eyes. It was these eyes Jan looked at, not the Queen’s real, tiny eyes. When those false eyes were on her, Jan felt frozen. She couldn’t speak or move.

“Well?” said the Queen.

Jan tried to speak. She tried to think. Slowly the dark wings folded back. The big eyes weren’t looking at her anymore. Jan looked at the Queen’s face. She seemed to be smiling coldly.

“Why are you doing all this?” Jan whispered.

“Get down on your knees when you speak to me,” hissed the figure on the wasp throne.

Jan tried not to obey, but she couldn’t resist. She sank onto her knees. Now the Queen was much higher than her head.

“Look up,” she ordered.

Jan looked up. The wings opened, tilted. The eyes pinned her.

“Why am I doing all this?” asked the Queen. “I will tell you why. Eight and three-quarter years ago, a wretched little fairy dared to disobey my commands. She interfered where she had no right to interfere.
She gave life
. Only the Queen may give life. Or take it.”

“You haven’t killed Tiki!”

The Queen smiled again.

“I do not kill,” she said. “It would not be fitting for the Queen to kill.”

But she stroked the arms of her throne as she spoke. They moved under her hands. Each arm was a wasp’s back. It was as if she stroked pet tigers that would do whatever she ordered.

“Your wasps kill for you,” said Jan. “What’s the difference?”

The Queen’s wings snapped open, the false eyes stared. Jan felt her heart grow cold, her tongue freeze in her mouth. The Queen was not smiling now.

“You have seen a little of my power,” she said. “Just a little. What you do not know is that I have turned your dear, good little child—your fairy child, as you dare to call her—into a lazy liar and a greedy thief. What is happening to her up there”—the Queen
waved one hand toward the top of the house—“is only the result of theft and of greed. For humans, nothing is ever enough; they are never satisfied. That is why fairies are forbidden to make magic for them or give them gifts. They always want more—more—more!”

“Not Bindi!” cried Jan. “She’s not greedy—and she’s not a liar—and she’s not a thief! Never! I know her, I’ll never believe she would do anything really bad!”

“She will do whatever I wish her to do,” said the Queen.

“The way you made me kneel to you,” whispered Jan.

“What do you mean?” snapped the Queen.

“You forced me to do it. You made it happen.
We
have no magic power. If you used magic to make Bindi do bad things, that’s not her fault; it was nothing to do with her! You can’t be proud of that, any more than you can be proud that I’m kneeling on the ground!”

The wings opened again but now Jan closed her eyes and would not look at them. She made herself go on:

“You don’t think I respect you, do you? You don’t think your fairies and elves really love you?”

“How dare you!” The Queen’s voice was like the hiss of a snake. “Of course they love me! They say so every day, every hour! They love and respect and honor me. It is my first command that they love me!”

Jan opened her eyes and faced the wings, which were quivering strongly, their awful eyes glaring at her.

“They hate you,” she said.

The Queen rose to her feet. Her flowing gown shot
gleams of greenish light, like sparks. She quivered all over. The wasps that had been flying in the garden stayed still in the air, but the wasps that made the throne began a low, angry buzzing. The tall pillar they had formed seemed to sway as the wasps crawled over each other.

“They—what?” asked the Queen in a sharp, dangerous voice.

Jan found she could stand, and she did, though awkwardly because of her lame leg. When she stood up she was level with the Queen. She set her teeth and said, “They hate you. They’re frightened of you. You let them be killed. You make them cry. You shut them up and then you go away and forget them! They would all be much, much happier if you were—if you were
dust
!”

The Queen stood there on her tall, swaying wasp throne with a look of wild, unbelieving rage on her face.

“Punishment is necessary,” she hissed. “I do not forget! And I do not forgive! I will show you something before I punish
you
.”

She raised her arms and clapped her thin hands once above her crowned head.

Her wings opened. They were like the background of a stage. Two wasps—strange flying figures among all the ones still frozen in the air—flew down. They flew close together as if carrying something invisible between them. They settled at the feet of the queen. She pointed a commanding finger, and the next second a fairy appeared between the carrier wasps.

She was a poor, thin, ragged little fairy. Her hair
was the pale color of a dead rose petal. She wore a tattered brown dress. Her stumpy wings were shabby and gray, and drooped from her shoulders as if they hadn’t been used for flying for a long time. And she was terribly thin. As Jan peered closer, she could just see the white traces on her cheeks, where her sugary tears had dried.

It was Tiki. Changed, half-starved, faded and pitiful, but still, without a shadow of doubt, Tiki.

7
The Magic Rings

“Oh,” whispered Jan. “Tiki darling. What has she done to you?”

A flicker of a smile crossed poor Tiki’s thin, tear-crusted face.

“Nothing much,” she said carelessly. “I don’t care.” And her hands made their old movement, up and down her body, back and front, as if she was trying to change her clothes, to make herself less ragged and pathetic so Jan need not feel so sorry for her. But nothing happened.

So, thought Jan, the Queen, if she really wanted to,
could
stop a fairy changing clothes. She could stop her magic growing. She could fade her natural flower colors and turn her into this poor little creature. And she could stand there smiling at her cruel work.

But Tiki was smiling too. She was not beaten.

“I’m fine,” she whispered. “I’m just dressed like this because—because it’s winter and the roses are sleeping. And I always get thin in winter because there’s no honey.”

“But it’s summer, Tiki,” whispered Jan. “Yesterday was Bindi’s birthday.”

Tiki looked around her, as if waking up.

“Summer? It can’t be. Look at the roses; they’re all dead. And if it was Bindi’s birthday, I’d have made her a rose-present, wouldn’t I? I always make her a rose-present.…”

She looked fearfully over her shoulder and seemed to see the Queen for the first time. She gave a little cry of terror, dropped to her knees and buried her face in her hands.

“So! You make her magic gifts, do you?” hissed the Queen. “But not this year, eh? This year you had other things to think about than fancy clothes and wasting your magic on human children!”

Once again she reached above her head and clapped her hands, and once again two wasps buzzed down. Jan guessed whom they brought with them this time, and sure enough, when the Queen pointed, Wijic appeared. He, too, was a sorry sight. His red tunic was torn and dirty, his hair had turned brown, his green skin was pale and his shoes and cap were gone.

Yet he, too, when he saw Jan, grinned at her and raised his hand in half a wave. Then he spotted Tiki and his grin slipped.

They stared at each other. Wijic turned for a second and gave the Queen—standing there so fierce and proud—one look of fury and hate. Then he ran across the backs of the wasps and grabbed Tiki in his arms.

They clung together. Jan couldn’t bear it.

“You wicked, cruel creature!” she shouted at the Queen. “Look at them! Your own fairies! How can you, how can you treat them like this?”

“They disobeyed me, and they are disobeying again!” cried the Queen. “Get back, elf! What do you mean by it? Don’t you know that love between fairies is forbidden? You may love only your Queen!” A wasp heaved itself out of the mass under the fairies’ feet and thrust itself between Tiki and Wijic. Jan wrung her hands and bit back her tears.

“Now you will see what happens,” said the Queen, “when fairies meddle with human beings, and when humans accept their gifts. Look behind you!”

Jan turned. Through the dark mist she could see her house, with the shower of toys halfway down its wall and everything still. At the back of her mind she knew that up there in Bindi’s bedroom everything else was still. Time itself was standing still while the Queen sat there on her tower of wasps.

“I am going to call your child,” said the Queen.

“No!”

“Yes. I have only to snap my fingers and she dies under the weight of a thousand toys. As for
these …
” She pointed her forefingers at Tiki and Wijic. “They are as good as dust already!” Two huge wasps turned their stings upon the fairy and the elf, ready to strike as soon as the Queen ordered it.

The Queen clapped her hands once more.

At once everything started to move again. The dark mist went away. The holly bush snapped back into its place. The wasps that had been flying through the
dead roses flew again, though they didn’t attack Jan now. The shower of toys fell down the rest of the way with a clatter.

And suddenly, out through the broken window came Bindi.

Jan shrieked with fear. But then she saw that Bindi was sitting on a big blown-up rubber duck. It fell from the window with Bindi on its back, clinging round its neck. The duck bounced as it landed, and Bindi, unhurt, got up quickly.

She looked round and saw Jan at the bottom of the garden.

“Mummy!” she cried, and ran toward her.

Jan wanted to tell her to stop, to go back, but she couldn’t say a word. Bindi rushed up to her and clung to her.

“Mummy! It was awful—it was that rose twig—it made everything keep coming and coming.…”

Jan hugged her close. “It’s all right,” she said, though it wasn’t. There was nothing else she could do.

Then Jan caught sight of Tiki over Bindi’s shoulder. She was staring at Bindi’s back. A strange thing was happening—unless Jan was imagining it. A little color was creeping back into Tiki’s hair, and her wings seemed to be fluffing. She was whispering something—some one word.

Jan leaned closer, still holding Bindi tightly. Bindi’s ponytail had come loose and her brown hair was hanging down over her shoulders. Tiki was staring at it. And that was what she was whispering, as she had once sung it joyfully while she danced in her pink ballet dress:

“Hair—hair—hair!”

“What are you muttering to yourself, fairy?” demanded the Queen. “It’s useless trying to make spells. I’ve kept your magic well cropped. Nothing can save you now!” And she began to raise her arm.

“Wait!” cried Jan. A strange, crazy idea had begun to form in her mind. “Don’t you—don’t you have any—civilized customs?”

The Queen’s arm dropped.

“What are you talking about?” she asked coldly.

“Before they die, can’t they make a last request?”

“So you think my fairy realm is not civilized,” said the Queen. “We are far more civilized than humans!” She turned to Tiki and Wijic. “You may have a last request, both of you, before you are stung to dust.”

“I want—I want a hair off Bindi’s head,” whispered Tiki. And she looked at Wijic and nodded at him.

He looked quite puzzled, but he said, “That’s what I want too.”