A Fairy's Guide to Disaster (29 page)

“I elected to stay in case you returned. I was to search the forest for signs of you while I waited. That was what I was doing when you came.” Mrs. Zamora looked up at Sarah and Marie. “Thank you for bringing them.”

“Thank you,” said Marie. “This is a sight better than Sunday bingo.”

“Do you know where everyone is now?” I asked.

“They spread out. Each family took a different route in hopes of finding you.”

My shoulders drooped. They could be anywhere. The world outside Whipplethorn loomed huge and unfriendly.

Mrs. Zamora touched my cheek again. “We found out from the humans that a man named Jarvis Hornbuckle bought Whipplethorn and ordered it torn down. Each family is to find him when their route is exhausted. From there we will decide what to do.”

“How will they find him?” asked Iris. “One human in a world full of them.”

Horc slithered from under Mrs. Zamora’s arm. He toddled over the cotton batting and tumbled into my arms. “Your worries are over.”

“Oh, really, former spriggan,” I said, nestling him into my lap. “How do you know that?”

“Because Jarvis Hornbuckle owns the antique mall.”

Marie shifted in her seat and grinned at us. A manic gleam came into her eyes behind her glasses. Her right leg went down and a rumbling shudder went through the car.

“Hold on, everybody!” I yelled.

“To the antique mall,” said Marie, as the car shot down the road. Iris and I fell back on the soft batting, feeling the miles flow beneath us.

“How fast are we going, Miss Marie?” asked Judd.

“One hundred and gaining.”

“Can you do one hundred ten?”

“She cannot,” said Sarah. “Slow down, Marie!”

“Live fast, die young!”

“You’re ninety-four.”

“And never had an accident.”

“Yes, you have,” said Sarah.

“I was twelve and in a buggy. Buggies don’t count.”

Mrs. Zamora handed Easy to me and stood up. “We’re almost there I believe. I can hear my husband’s thoughts.”

“This far away?” asked Sarah.

“Tough luck,” said Marie. “I had five husbands and what they said out loud was bad enough.”

“You get used to it.” Mrs. Zamora smiled. “I’ll tell him we’re arriving at the antique mall, so that he may gather the others that are there.”

“No, don’t,” I said, jumping to my feet. “They’ll know what you are.”

She laid a soft hand on my shoulder. “I won’t keep them in agony for a moment longer than necessary just to protect myself.”

“You don’t know what they’ll do once they know you’re a mindbender,” said Iris. “They think mindbenders are dangerous.”

“We won’t let them do anything,” said Gerald.

“That’s right and maybe they’ll surprise us,” I said. “Maybe they won’t care.”

“In any case, it’s the right thing and it’s done,” said Mrs. Zamora.

“You don’t want to hide anymore,” I said.

“Perhaps you’ve got a little mindbender in you.”

“Just kindler.”

Mrs. Zamora raised an eyebrow at me.

“I don’t want to hide anymore either.”

The car took a sharp right, a left, and screeched to a halt in front of the antique mall.

“Look at that,” said Marie. “I slowed down.”

“You need your head examined,” said Sarah.

“You’re in the car with me.”

I looked past Sarah’s frowning face at the mall doors. To the left, a luminescent dot of light appeared out of a drainage pipe. Then another and another.

“It’s them,” said Tess. “I see them.”

They were there. My mother. My father. And the rest of Whipplethorn gathering for our arrival. I couldn’t move. I wanted them for so long, so badly it seemed a mirage that I might blink away.

Then climbing out of the pipe came a figure, taller than the rest and painted like the most exquisite maple. Soren joined my family and stood with his strong hands on my parents shoulders. It was right that he was there. He said that I would make it happen, using all my gifts we would be together. My world changed forever, but in exchange I’d received a bigger world filled with more of everything. It was, in the end, quite a gift. I squeezed Iris’s hand and decided, no matter what happened or where the mantel went, I would never change my name or pretend to be something other than exactly who I am. I would remain forever a Whipplethorn.

The End

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HERE'S AN EXCERPT from Fierce Creatures by A.W. Hartoin, the second in the thrilling Away From Whipplethorn Series.
 

Chapter One

Fire was a friend of mine. I loved how it formed in my palms, pooled, and overflowed, oozing through my fingers to drop down in tiny orange spirals into the basin my father had fashioned out of a metal button. I lay on my stomach, propped up on my elbows, watching my fire, an endlessly fascinating endeavor and a good thing, too. My father was hammering on a needle, trying to make it into hooks for my mother’s pots and pans. It wasn’t going well and I expected to be there for a long time, providing Dad with fire for his forge.

Dad tapped me on the head, and I looked up. “What?”

“I need more,” he said, frowning at me from behind the safety mask he’d fashioned out of an acorn shell and some stuff the humans called Plexiglas.

I formed a fireball the size of my head and dropped it in the basin. Sparks flew out in curlicues and menaced Dad. He jumped back and slipped on his pile of metal shavings.

“Matilda, you did that on purpose,” he said, narrowing his brown eyes at me.

“It was an accident.”

“When it comes to fire, you don’t have accidents.”

A human face came down beside my dad and grinned at me. Judd was one of the few humans that could see us. It was very unusual for a human to see fairies, but Judd had turned out to be remarkable in many ways. As was his sister, Tess, who’d been the first to see me. The two of them surprised me on a daily basis.

“You can’t get away with that accident stuff anymore.” Judd pushed back the safety goggles he wore and, in a rare moment, all his long brown hair was held back and I could see his face. The sprinkling of freckles over his nose softened the effect of his square jaw and strong cheekbones, making him seem younger than he would’ve otherwise. Judd was fourteen, like me, and had beautiful eyes when you could see them.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.

They both looked at me and I feigned innocence. I could’ve gotten away with it six months ago or even three, but Dad was on to me now and so was everyone else. I’d known I was a kindler since I was eight. Everyone else found out when humans came and ripped our home, the fireplace mantel, off the wall of Whipplethorn Manor. I’d been babysitting on that day and, through circumstances, had to reveal my fire. Even though being thrust into the world of humans with two kids and a baby to look after was terrifying, it was also the best thing that ever happened to me. It was exhausting to hide who I really was all the time and my family took it pretty well, considering we were wood fairies and fire wasn’t exactly our favorite thing.

Actually, my dad took it better than well. He’d always wanted to get into metalworking, but had no way to heat the metal. But now he had me, his personal forge.
 
And since Miss Penrose was homeschooling me because none of the other parents wanted me in class with their children, I was always available.

“Matilda, how long do you want to be here today?” Dad asked.

“I wanted to leave an hour ago.” That wasn’t true. I never wanted to come out in the first place, but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. He was totally crazy about metalworking and he got all sad when I didn’t want to help him.

“Mr. Whipplethorn,” said Judd, “did I do this right?”

Judd picked up a piece of cherrywood from beside my adopted brother. Horc was a spriggan. Picture a mossy boulder with stumpy legs and you’ve got him. Horc wasn’t so much adopted as he was inescapable. I’d ended up with him after the fireplace mantel we lived in got taken out of Whipplethorn Manor and put on sale in an antique mall. The spriggans were thieves whose favorite merchandise was children. It was our bad luck that they were the first species to discover us. They immediately stole the baby I was taking care of and replaced Easy with Horc. I managed to get Easy back and we’d had Horc ever since.

Dad pulled off his gloves and flew up to take a closer look at Judd’s work. It looked like a giant pencil to me, but Dad seemed impressed. Of course, Dad would’ve been impressed if Judd had shown him a splinter. He was thrilled when we moved into the human’s house, and Judd showed an interest in woodworking. My sister, Iris, and I never did. We were wood fairies and we were supposed to want to carve, but we didn’t. Horc had taken up woodworking when Judd did. He’d decided after being with us for a while that he was no longer a spriggan. He wanted to be a wood fairy and wood fairy meant woodworking. Dad was thrilled. Horc turned out to be a natural carver, which would’ve been great except Horc was still teething and none of his work survived it.

“What do you think, Matilda?” asked Judd.

“Looks great,” I said. “Very...smooth.”

Judd beamed at me and put down his goggles. He went back to making whatever it was that he was making. Behind him, Horc examined the elegant swan he’d been carving and chomped on its head. Dad sighed at Horc and then scowled at me.

“What? I said it was great.”

“But you didn’t mean it. You could be more supportive.”

“That was supportive. I don’t even know what it is.”

“At least he’s trying.”

I dropped a huge ball of fire in the basin and Dad had to fly out of the way of the heat blast.

“Matilda!”

“I was trying!”

Dad ignored that one and went back to work on his needle. It looked like a dead worm on a sidewalk. I settled back in and practiced forming flame spirals until Dad stopped work and flipped up his mask. He turned around and looked at the garage door. It took me a second to realize someone was coming because, unlike Dad, I couldn’t hear it. Snail pox took most of my hearing when I was two and I got by with lipreading, a skill my grandmother taught me.

A cool wind blew my long black hair out of my face as the garage door opened. Judd’s mom’s minivan backed up to the door, and his dad, Evan, hopped out.

“Judd! Come help me,” he said in his booming human voice that even I could hear.

“With what?” asked Judd.

“I got the new dishwasher.”

Evan opened the van’s backdoor and they lifted a large grey metal box onto the floor.
 

“I got a great deal,” said Evan. “It’s a floor model.”

“Cool,” said Judd as he turned back to the workbench.

“What are you up to over there?”

“I’m carving a pen for Mom’s birthday.”

“I’ll never understand where this sudden interest in woodworking came from.”

Judd looked at me and Dad. I exploded a huge fireball over our heads into a million sparkly flames. Judd whistled and looked at his dad for a sign he’d seen my handiwork.

“What are you whistling for?” asked Evan, looking at his son like he might need a doctor’s evaluation.

“Nothing, Dad,” said Judd. “I just can’t believe how much I got done today.”

“Good. Then you can stop and give me a hand.” Evan turned back to the dishwasher.

My dad shrugged at me. “It just isn’t going to happen, Matilda. Evan’s not going to see us. We’ve tried everything.”

I knew Dad was right. We had tried everything we could think of since we arrived inside our mantel six months ago after the humans purchased it. We’d sung to Evan, flocked around his head, poking his ears and nose. And it wasn’t just our size; the average wood fairy was well under a centimeter and Evan just wasn’t capable of seeing us.

Judd took off his goggles. The two of them bent over the back of the dishwasher and studied the tubes and wires coming out of it.

Dad gave me a look. I dropped another fireball into his basin and he went back to hammering the needle to death. I rolled on my side and watched Judd and Evan poke at various tubes.

“We could hire someone,” said Judd.

“It’s a dishwasher. How hard can it be?” asked Evan.

“Where are the directions?”

“The store lost them.”

They went on, discussing supply lines and waste lines until my eyelids drooped. Dad poked me and I dropped another fireball for him, and as I did I saw something inside a hole on the back of the dishwasher. I blinked and there was more movement.

Horc waddled over on his little legs, his sharp eyes trained on the dishwasher. “Very interesting.”

“Can you tell what it is?” I asked.

“I cannot,” said Horc with another chomp on the remains of his swan. He spat out a wad of splinters, hitting my foot.

“Would you stop doing that?”

“I can’t. I’m teething.”

“You’ve been teething for as long as I’ve known you.”

“That is because I only have one row in.” Horc open his wide mouth and showed me his jagged yellow teeth. A second row was emerging behind the first.

“Come on,” I said with a shudder. “How many rows are you going to get?”

“Three with proper gnawing.”

“You want three rows of teeth?”

“Naturally. Better for biting,” said Horc.