Philippa Fisher and the Fairy's Promise (11 page)

I stared hard at Chara, wondering if at some point someone was going to jump out and tell me this whole thing was one big joke.

“I still don’t see how we fit in,” Daisy said.

“Since this portal was made to connect the fairy and human worlds, in order to protect it from anyone who may not have good intentions, only a fairy and human pair with a strong bond can travel together freely to and from this special place. The human and fairy have to have a friendship worthy of the portal’s magic,” Chara replied. “A type of friendship that was once commonplace, but which is now virtually nonexistent.”

“A friendship that could pass the highest loyalty test,” Alya continued. Then she paused and looked slowly from Daisy to me and back again.

“A friendship like ours,” Daisy said.

“Without this friendship, a human or a fairy can get
into
the place of safety, but cannot get out again,” Alya went on. “This rule was sealed into the magic of the stones — so that if a day ever came when either fairy or human tried to steal the portal’s magic, they could not get far. As soon as the stone fairy is taken outside of the circle, she is transported to this place, and her captor is transported there too. They will both remain trapped there until the human and fairy pair retrieve them. Then the stone fairy will be brought back to the circle to fulfill her assignment. And the person who has stolen her has a choice — come back with her and face punishment for the crime —”

“Or be stuck wandering around forever in a place where everything except for them is frozen in time,” I finished.

Alya smiled at me. “You are a quick learner,” she said.

Chara continued. “The commitment of friendship was part of the magic,” she said. “If the day came when the stone fairy was removed and such friendships no longer existed, it would be impossible to get her back. Humans and fairies agreed that if this day ever came, the portals would no longer
need
to work; they figured the two worlds could part company forever if that were the case. But they failed to see what the long-term implications of that would be.”

“So the stone fairy would be trapped in that place?” Daisy asked.

Chara looked at Daisy. “As you know, all fairy godmothers take their assignments very seriously,” she said. “And none more than the stone fairies,” she went on. “When a stone fairy is appointed, she makes a solemn promise of commitment to the stone circle — and to the fairy godmother world. She is given one of the most important tasks there is, to maintain the link between the two worlds, and in exchange she agrees to give her power to the portal.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “What power does she give the portal?”

“The power to transport,” Chara said. “In order to permit the fairies, or humans, to move between the two worlds, the stone fairy gives up her power to do the same.”

“A fairy can do that?”

“Absolutely,” Chara said. “Any fairy who is willing to make such a sacrifice is special and powerful enough to do this. By promising to give the circle her power, her magic and the circle’s become one and the same.”

“And even with all this, you would still agree to abandon her to the land of frozen time if things went wrong? After everything she’d sacrificed?” I asked.

Chara looked at me. “You must remember, the portals were built in very different times from these. No one imagined that such a day would
ever
come.”

I let out a breath that I felt I’d been holding for the whole conversation. It was just so much to take in. “And you’re absolutely sure about all this?” I asked.

Alya clicked her fingers and the room went dark. Behind her, a bright white wall appeared with a slight crackling sound, like an old movie was running. And then the pictures appeared on the wall.

“These are the latest image predictions from EDD,” she said.

“What’s EDD?” I whispered to Daisy.

“You don’t want to know!” she whispered back.

“Daisy!” I whispered again, more insistently. “Tell me!”

“Emergencies, Disasters, and Doom,” she said reluctantly. “You
don’t
ignore a prediction from them.”

“As you can see,” Alya was saying over hundreds of images of stone circles losing their color, then crumbling and becoming circles of dust in the ground, “the first thing that happens is that the portal’s breakdown spreads to all the other portals.” The picture changed to an image of a rainbow, then another, and another, until the screen was filled with rainbows. Then in between the rainbows came pictures of rays of sun and shooting stars — and then every single one disappeared, turned to gray, dissolved into dust like the stone circles.

“The breakdown will soon spread to all other methods of transportation and communication until fairies have no interaction at all with the human world,” Alya said. “Initially, the consequences would be relatively minor. A little less color in the world, a little less light. A few tears falling without being caught, a few wishes unanswered. And of course — no more dreams. Do you know how much people value their dreams?”

I shook my head.

“Enough to make them desperate for sleep. EDD has shown us that people’s sleeping patterns can go haywire just so they can have a dream! The tiredness alone will lead to many accidents.” She snapped her fingers, and a new screen came up. People slumped over desks, falling asleep in their cars, on buses, out walking their dogs. There was even one of a pilot falling asleep while flying a plane!

“There will be many accidents, more and more all the time. And with no MTB to determine which disasters can be prevented, and no SRB to help people cope with the terrible things that are unavoidable, the world will soon be in complete disarray.”

She showed more pictures: scenes of disaster, each one more devastating than the last. Multiple car pileups, houses on fire, fights in the streets — all set against a world that became grayer and duller with every picture.

“And of course, there is nature itself,” Alya said somberly. “If fairies are unable to visit Earth, everything that lives and grows will eventually die out completely.” She snapped her fingers once more. “This is EDD’s prediction for the world in just a hundred years.”

The last picture was the most shocking of them all. There were no trees. No plants. Hardly an animal. The shot scanned the face of the planet and found nothing but desert.

Alya snapped her fingers, and the screen went black. The four of us sat in the darkness in silence.

I cleared my throat. “So let me get this right,” I said shakily. “Daisy and I have to go to the portal, somehow get through a hole in time, find the stone fairy, and bring her back.”

“Correct,” Alya said.

“And we have to do this before the next new moon, because the portal can only keep working for the rest of this moon’s cycle.”

“That’s right.”

“And if we don’t succeed, this”— I pointed to the now blank screen —“is EDD’s prediction for the future?”

The fairy nodded.

“And what about us?” I asked. “If we get in there, but don’t get back out in time, what happens to us?”

Alya cleared her throat. Chara looked away.

“What?” Daisy asked.

“When the new moon rises, the hole in time is sealed,” she said.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means . . .” Chara began. Then she stopped.

Alya continued for her. “It means . . .” She paused. Then she looked slowly from Daisy to me and back again. “It means you would be stuck there forever.”

I stared at her. Could she really be asking this of us? Was there
honestly
any way in the world we could possibly take on such a task when the stakes were so high? Then I thought about the pictures. Could we really
not
do it?

“When is the next new moon due to rise?” Daisy asked.

“Just after midnight on New Year’s Eve.”

“New Year’s Eve!” I blurted out. “You’re kidding! That’s tonight!”

“Exactly,” Alya said. “Now you understand the urgency and the importance of this task.”

I tried to take in what they were saying. It was impossible! It was crazy! There was no
way
we could take on such an enormous task.

I was about to open my mouth to say so, but Daisy spoke first. “We do understand,” she said, “and we are honored that you’ve asked us.” And then, with a brief look at me, and clearly misunderstanding my stunned silence for agreement, she added, “We’ll do it.”

“Let’s get to work,” Alya said.

I opened my mouth to protest. Did they realize what they were asking of us? But each time I was about to say something, to tell them they’d made a mistake and I wasn’t going to do it, I thought of those images they’d shown us. It was so hard to believe. But it was true. Those things
would
happen — and only Daisy and I could stop them.

I shut my mouth again and listened.

“You have to go to the portal, but one of you needs to be on each side of the divide for it to work. Daisy here, Philippa back on Earth. Then you —”

“I get to go back to Earth?” I broke in. “Really?”

“You have to approach the hole in time from both sides of the divide at the same time — one from the human world and one from the fairy side,” Chara said. “It’s the only way.”

“But — I mean, that’s great!” I said. “I can go back to Earth!”

Alya shifted awkwardly in her seat.

“What?” I asked.

“Philippa, you realize that you are going back to Earth for one reason only: to get through the hole in time, fetch the stone fairy, and bring her back to her place in the portal.”

“I know, but . . .”

My voice trailed away. Again, those horrible images came into my head. Set against the kind of things EDD had predicted, my personal traumas seemed petty, and saying out loud how much I wanted to see my parents and Robyn would only sound selfish.

Alya smiled. “At the end of all this, you can go back to Earth for good. For now you have a job to do. But if we’re right about all of this, it should go smoothly. Now that we’ve found you, we can all relax a bit.”

Relax a bit?
Did she
really
just say that? They were about to send Daisy and me on a mission where we could end up being stuck forever in a place where time had frozen, while the world turned into a big desert, and she was talking about
relaxing
?

Alya must have read my thoughts because she quickly went on. “Obviously, when I say ‘relax,’ I don’t mean it in the traditional sense. But it
should
be straightforward enough. All you have to do is get through the hole, grab the stone fairy, and bring her back. She should be waiting for you on the other side, in her stone form, a piece of amber.”

“What makes you so sure of this?” I asked.

“We’ve tried to contact her via her MagiCell, but haven’t managed to get through. We’re fairly sure this means that she hasn’t transformed.” Alya shuffled uncomfortably.

“What aren’t you telling us?” Daisy asked.

“We’re not positive about this,” Alya said. “It could mean that it’s impossible to make MagiCell contact within the hole in time.”

“We have never had the occasion to try it before,” Chara added. “That’s why we need you. But remember — she’s a fairy godmother, and she has an important job, so we can safely assume that she will be waiting to get back to it.”

“But what if she isn’t?” I asked. “I mean, we still don’t know how she got there. If someone stole her, they won’t
want
her to be returned or maybe they’ve taken her somewhere else.” A shiver of fear slithered through me as I imagined armed gangs on the other side, refusing to give us the stone fairy and willing to fight us for her.

“You’re right,” Alya said calmly. “We don’t know how she got there. And yes, we must assume that somebody stole her.”

“So what about them — the person, or people, who took her?” I asked. “Do we leave them there?”

“Our concern is the stone fairy,” Alya replied. “She will be waiting for you on the other side of the hole, and you
must
bring her back. But if you find the thief, he or she should be brought back too. If necessary, the thief will be punished.”

“Punished?” I asked. “What kind of punishment?”

“We will determine that at the time, when we know all the circumstances,” Chara said. “You don’t need to worry about that now. All you need to do is hold the stone fairy in between the two of you — and the thief, if appropriate — and bring them back through the hole in time with you.”

I let out a breath. This really wasn’t the kind of thing you imagined getting caught up in when you went to visit your friend for a relaxing vacation. My friend, Robyn — who knew nothing about any of this — was probably down there on Earth worried sick about us both.

“I want to see my parents and Robyn,” I said.

“There’s no time,” Alya said. “You have to go through the hole at the exact same time of day that it first opened up.”

“What time was that?” I asked.

“Four minutes and seventeen seconds past five in the evening,” Alya replied.

Wow, she wasn’t joking when she said exact. I checked my watch. “We’ve got four hours,” I said.

“We have to get you both prepared, make all the necessary arrangements. It simply can’t be —”

“I at least need to see Robyn,” I said. “She’s in this with us. I’m not going to just abandon her — especially if there’s a chance that I’m never coming back from this!”

The fairies exchanged a glance. “Philippa, this isn’t good-bye. It will all be fine,” Chara said.

“You can’t guarantee that,” I said.
“Please.”

Alya let out a breath and shook her head. “OK. Here’s how it’ll work,” she said. “You can see Robyn on two conditions.”

“What are the conditions?”

“One, you have to be quick. You see her, say what you have to say, and then come straight to the portal to begin the assignment.”

“OK,” I said. “What’s the other?”

“Under no circumstances do you tell her
anything
about what you’re doing for us. This assignment must be kept absolutely between us. It has been given the highest level of confidentiality.”

“Why?” Daisy asked.

“Can you imagine what would happen if word got out?” Chara said. “The panic at ATC alone could destroy everything, never mind if anyone on Earth heard about it. The rumors would be devastating. So you can see your friend for a few minutes, but not a word about your assignment. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” I said.

“Good. And when this is all over,” Chara went on, “you will be returned to Earth and can get back to your normal life.”

And then, before I even had the chance to jump in the air and scream “Woohoo,” we were dismissed.

“Go, now,” Chara said. “Our assistants will help you prepare for your assignment. And girls — be careful.”

“We will,” Daisy said. “You can trust us.”

“We know that,” Alya said with a smile. “It’s why we chose you.”

What was that?

I was in my bedroom, sitting beside the radiator on my beanbag chair reading a magazine when something hit the window behind me.

I jumped up and looked out the window. Nothing there. I snuggled back into the beanbag and had just started reading my magazine again when I heard it once more.

Tap.

Something was hitting the window. I got up and peered outside again, looking all over to see what it was. That was when I saw her. She was hiding behind a row of garbage cans across the road. Philippa!

Or was it Daisy, transformed as Philippa? Either way, she was beckoning me to come outside.

I ran down the stairs and through the shop. “Just going out for a minute,” I said to Dad, and was out of the door before he had a chance to reply.

“Daisy?” I said uncertainly as I crept around the back of the cans.

She stepped out and grinned at me. “It’s me — Philippa!” she said.

“Philippa! It’s actually, really you?”

She laughed. “Yes, it’s me!”

“I can’t believe it,” I said. “I’m so glad to see you!” I glanced around at the trash cans in the alley. “Why here?” I asked. “Why didn’t you just come in?”

“I can’t let anyone else see me. I don’t have very long,” she said. “I begged them to let me see you before —” She stopped and blushed.

“Before what?” I asked.

Philippa shook her head. “I can’t tell you. It’s one of the conditions of ATC letting me see you. I wanted to know how you’re doing.”

“How are
you
doing?” I asked. “And Daisy. Is she OK? Did she get into terrible trouble? Have they found you out yet? How come you’re here, anyway?”

Philippa laughed. “Too many questions. I haven’t got time to answer them all now.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well, can I at least ask where you’re going?”

Philippa looked at me seriously. “Listen, I’ve just got to do something with Daisy, but it’ll all be over by tonight.”

I bit my tongue to stop asking more questions. They were only stupid, jealous questions anyway. Like whether she preferred doing things with Daisy, and if Daisy was more fun, being a fairy godsister and all that. How could I ever compete with her?

“I can’t wait to celebrate New Year’s with you tonight,” Philippa said, reading my mind so perfectly that I felt instantly guilty for all my silly worries. “No matter what happens, I’ll be back in time for the fireworks.”

“Promise?” I asked.

“Promise,” Philippa said, although the way she wouldn’t meet my eyes made me wonder how sure she was that she’d get back safely from whatever she had to do. “All you need to know is that I’m OK, Daisy’s OK, no one’s been punished, and as long as everything goes according to plan, life will be back to normal again by tonight.”

I smiled. “OK,” I said, forcing myself not to focus on the “as long as everything goes according to plan” part.

Philippa glanced at her watch. “Listen, I have to go,” she said.

“Is there any way I can keep in touch with you?” I asked. “Any way of sending me a message, just to let me know you’re OK?”

Philippa shook her head. But then she stopped. “Wait!” She reached into her pocket. “Take this.”

She handed me something that looked kind of like a cell phone. “Is that a phone?” I asked. “But I’ve already got —”

“It’s not a normal phone; it’s a MagiCell,” she said. “They gave it to me at ALD.”

“They what?”

Philippa shook her head. “Look, it doesn’t matter. Just keep it. We’ll have Daisy’s. I don’t know if it’ll work on the other —” She stopped and clapped a hand over her mouth. “In the place we’re going,” she said quietly. “But if it does, we’ll try to contact you.”

I held the MagiCell tightly in my hand. “I won’t let it out of my sight,” I said.