Philippa Fisher and the Fairy's Promise (12 page)

Philippa smiled. “Good. We’ll contact you if we can,” she said. “I’d better go. See you later.”

“Yeah, see you later,” I replied. And only when she’d run to the end of the street and rounded the corner did I whisper, “Good luck.”

It was nearly five o’clock. I made my way to the stone circle, making sure to follow the path. I couldn’t risk any mistakes at this stage!

By this time, the light of day had all but gone — the colors were shutting down, replaced by various combinations of gray.

At the right moment, I had to stand in the center of the circle and turn around three times.

I looked around to make sure no one else was here. Thankfully, the place was deserted. I checked my watch. Three minutes past five. I waited in the center of the circle. Four minutes past. My heart thudded hard in my chest. Ten seconds, fifteen, seventeen. This was it. I stretched out my arms and turned slowly around, praying that Daisy was doing exactly the same on the other side.

Around once, around twice. A third time, and then —

The stone circle disappeared. I was enveloped in a pitch-black void. There was nothing here — nothing in the whole of space except me, spinning slowly around, waiting for something to come and take me to the place of frozen time.

Daisy! Daisy! Where are you?

Something was emerging out of the darkness.

“Daisy?” I called uncertainly.

The something emerged into a person. It was her!

“Philippa! You made it!” she said, smiling at me across the darkness.

“So did you!” I said, letting out a huge breath of relief.

“You ready?” she asked.

“I think so.”

“Come on, let’s go,” she said.

I held out my arms and crossed them over, as High Command had told us. Daisy did the same, and we took hold of each other’s hands.

“OK?” Daisy asked. I went over the rhyme in my head. The one the fairies had told us to memorize — the one that would only work if our bond was strong enough. This was the point where we would find out the true value of our friendship.

I nodded, and we recited the rhyme together.

“Cross your arms and link your hands
And say aloud this rhyme.
Then travel through the portal
To the place of frozen time.”

We finished the rhyme and looked at each other. And then, a moment later, I looked up and saw a streak of light heading toward us like a dart. The light flew right at us, hitting us both and lighting up a bright white circle that enclosed us.

It had worked!

The circle turned from white into every color you could imagine, until it felt as if we were in the center of a circular rainbow.

I turned around, staring at the colors dancing and popping around us, spinning and growing from the rainbow’s circle into a ball, enveloping us almost completely. It felt as though the colors were spinning a web — with us enclosed on the inside.

The colors kept growing and extending and multiplying until — suddenly — they stopped. They had joined at every point. We were completely contained in a dancing, flashing ball of colors.

I had to shield my eyes from the brightness. “Is this supposed to happen?” I asked nervously.

“I imagine so,” Daisy replied. Then she pointed behind me. “Look!” She gasped.

I turned around. Among the dancing lights and colors, a tiny black hole was opening up. It started about as large as my eye, but grew and grew until it was the size of a basketball.

“That’s it,” Daisy said, pulling me over to the hole. “We have to go through there.”

The hole was probably
just
big enough to crawl though. I suddenly remembered I’d always been a little afraid of small spaces. It didn’t seem like a good time to mention this to Daisy, so I did the only thing I could do. I took the biggest breath I could — and followed her into the hole.

We crawled along the tunnel for a few minutes, and then it started going upward, getting steeper and steeper, until eventually we had to grip the sides and pull ourselves on.

“Daisy, look!” I pointed above us. There was a grayish light ahead. Only slightly lighter than the blackness of the hole, but it looked different.

We clambered and heaved and pulled ourselves up higher and higher until, finally, the grayish light was directly above us. Daisy was ahead of me. She dragged herself up through the top of the hole and reached down to help me through. I held on to her hand and pulled myself up. The second I was through it, the hole started to shrink. Smaller and smaller, down to the size of a quarter, a penny, a dot. And then it disappeared altogether. It was as though it had never been there.

Standing next to Daisy, I tore my eyes away from the ground and looked around. I could hardly believe what I was seeing.

“The stone circle,” Daisy breathed.

“On the evening the stone fairy disappeared,” I added. The sky was gray, just as it had been when I left, the fading light of a winter’s afternoon. I looked at my watch. It had frozen on the time I’d come through the hole. From now on, only Daisy’s MagiCell would give us the right time. Here, it would be just after five o’clock all day.

I looked into the sky and gasped. “Daisy, look,” I said in a whisper, pointing at a bird that was hovering absolutely stock-still, directly above us. It had stopped in the middle of flapping its wings upward.

“Whoa, that is weird,” Daisy said. The more I looked around, the more birds I saw, caught like a photograph, midflight.

It was eerie. There was no movement at all. No wind. No sounds. Everything was completely, utterly, totally still.

“Frozen solid, all of it,” I said. “At least we know we’re in the right place!”

Daisy nodded and looked around. “Now all we need to do is find the stone fairy.”

We walked around the stone circle, assuming she would be somewhere just on the outside of it, like the High Command fairies had told us. They’d said she should still be in stone form as a piece of amber. But there was a small possibility she could have transformed. If so, she could be anything! All we knew for sure was that the stone fairy would be the only thing around here that wasn’t frozen in time.

Well, the stone fairy and whoever had stolen her.

I shuddered and walked around the circle again.

“She’s not here,” I said as I met up with Daisy on the other side.

“I think you’re right,” she said. “But that’s . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“That’s what?” I asked, but Daisy just shook her head.

“Should we look farther afield?” I asked, glancing at the miles and miles of forest surrounding us and wondering where on earth to start.

Daisy was pressing buttons on her MagiCell. “Give me a minute,” she said. “I’ve had a thought.”

I waited a minute while Daisy pressed more buttons. “I don’t understand,” she said. “It should be working.”

“Daisy, what are you trying to do?” I asked.

She turned to me. “Look, all fairies have MagiCells for their assignments, right?”

“Right,” I agreed.

“When you’re in Nature Mode it doesn’t materialize with you.”

“Nature Mode?” I asked.

“You know. The form that you take for your assignment. Like I was a daisy when I gave you three wishes, and then I was a butterfly when I was working with Dream Delivery Department. I only had my MagiCell when I transformed back to a fairy or a human.”

“OK,” I said. “So when the stone fairy is a piece of amber, she won’t have her MagiCell, but if she transformed when she got here, she should have it?”

“Exactly,” Daisy said. “And she must have transformed, or else we’d see the amber lying around nearby.”

“So what are you trying to do?” I asked.

“Well, if she
has
transformed, her MagiCell will have materialized, and I should be able to get a reading of where she is.”

“High Command couldn’t get through to her, though, remember?”

“I know,” Daisy said distractedly. “They thought it was because she hadn’t transformed, but perhaps it was because they couldn’t communicate across the divide. In which case, we should be able to contact her from here.”

“And?” I asked hopefully. “Have you got anything yet?”

Daisy shook her head. “Nothing — except this.” Daisy held out her MagiCell. “Listen.”

I held it to my ear. Screeching and crackling sounds whirred away through the speaker. “Ouch,” I said, holding the MagiCell away from my ear.

“I just don’t get it. It should work. Unless . . .”

“Unless her MagiCell hasn’t materialized and she’s still a piece of amber,” I said.

“Exactly.”

“But then she should be here.” I looked helplessly around again.

“Unless the thief has taken her somewhere,” Daisy said.

“Oh,” I said. “In which case she could be absolutely anywhere!” Now what? This was starting to feel like a whole different assignment from the apparently quick and simple one the fairies at High Command had described.

Daisy had taken the MagiCell back and was pressing buttons again.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m going to contact High Command,” she said. “We’ll have to tell them what’s going on.”

“What, tell them we’ve failed already? How’s that going to look when they’ve put their faith in us to do this? You heard what they said. We’re the best hope they’ve got — their
only
hope! We can’t tell them we’ve let them down — not yet. They’ll panic if they know their only option has failed.”

Daisy stopped punching buttons. “Have you got any better ideas?”

I opened my mouth to reply. I was about to say no. Of
course
I didn’t have any ideas. If Daisy didn’t know how to get us out of this, there wasn’t much chance that
I
did!

But then I had a thought. “Wait! Actually, yes, I have got an idea,” I said. “Why don’t we go down to the village and see if we can find a local paper or something, or get online? We know exactly when the stone fairy disappeared, and we’re pretty sure someone stole her. Maybe there’ll be something in the news or on the Internet about someone disappearing?”

Daisy stared at me. “Philippa, aren’t you forgetting something?” she asked in the kind of voice that you use when you’re talking to someone very slow on the uptake, but you’re trying to be kind about it.

I stared back at her. What had I forgotten?

“The second the stone fairy came here, time stood still,” Daisy said. “There won’t be anything in any newspapers, because no newspapers have come out here since it happened! And the computers will be frozen in time, just like those birds. Over here, it’s the exact same moment as it was when the stone fairy disappeared!”

Oh, yes.
That
was what I’d forgotten.

“And anyway, there’s not much chance of the newspapers reporting that a piece of amber no one knew existed has disappeared from a group of stones that hardly anyone ever visits!”

“No! But the thief will have disappeared, too. And somebody must have noticed
that
! Think about it — someone must be missing their mom or dad or brother or sister. They might be trying to find them.”

Daisy rubbed her lip. “You’re right. But we’ve still got no way of getting that information. We’re going to be really limited in what we can find here. The only things with any life in them around here are going to be the stone fairy herself, the person who stole her, and you and me.”

“And the MagiCell!” I said, suddenly brightening up as I had a new thought. Of course! “Daisy, you know how you’re trying to contact the stone fairy’s MagiCell?”

“Er, yes,” Daisy said uncertainly. “And it’s not working.”

“But you think you can still contact other MagiCells from yours, right?” I asked.

“Yes, but I thought you didn’t want to get in touch with ATC yet.”

“I’m not talking about contacting ATC,” I said.

“Well, what are you —”

“Contact me!” I burst out. “Contact my MagiCell! The one your supervisor gave me!”

Daisy looked at me as though I’d gone crazy. “Philippa, you’re right here, beside me. What’s the point of me contacting
you
?”

“I don’t have it!” I said. “Robyn does!”

Daisy frowned, pursing her lips together and squinting at me as she tried to catch up with my thinking. Was she angry?

“I gave it to her so we could keep in touch. She might be able to help us,” I said.