The Fairy Rebel Read Online Free PDF Page A

their invisibility. It comes to the same thing, because then birds, or fish, or cats, or—or—or …” He swallowed. “Or some
other creature
usually gets them.”
    “Your Queen,” said Charlie after a long moment, “sounds a bit of a tyrant to me.”
    “What’s that?” asked Wijic uneasily.
    “A ruler with too much power and not enough kindness,” said Charlie.
    Wijic’s face turned from leaf green to whitish green and he dropped the baked bean he was holding. “Oh no!” he said very loudly. “We
love
her. We love the Queen. We all love her, all the time!”
    “Oh,” said Charlie, surprised, and he looked at Jan, whose face had also gone very pale. Wijic grew restless.
    “I think I ought to go now,” he said.
    “But you haven’t told us what’s going to happen about Tiki,” said Jan.
    “How do I know what’ll happen?” asked Wijic. “Maybe she’ll turn up again in the spring. And maybe she won’t. All I wanted to say to you is that I couldn’t give her your message. Thanks for the food.” His wings whirred and he was about to take off when Charlie clapped his other hand down, trapping Wijic between his two hands.
    “What are you doing? Let me out!” shouted Wijic from inside the dark cave of Charlie’s hands.
    “Let him out, Charlie!” cried Jan.
    “Do you want a baby with blue hair?” asked Charlie. His face was grim.
    Jan sat down very suddenly. She felt sick. Charlie lifted his closed hands level with his face.
    “Now, listen to me, Wijic,” said Charlie sternly. “You must find Tiki.”
    “How can I?” wailed Wijic from inside the hands.
    “If the Queen wanted to punish Tiki for breaking a rule, how else might she do it?”
    There was a silence.
    “She might … she might put her in a wasps’ nest,” said Wijic in a tiny, scared voice.
    “What do you mean?”
    “If a fairy is very bad,” whispered Wijic, “the Queen sometimes shuts her up in an empty wasps’ nest, after taking away her magic. Then she just has to live in all those little dark tunnels, eating scraps of old wasp food—”
    “Oh, Charlie!” cried Jan. “Not Tiki! Not for helping us! It would be too awful—I couldn’t bear it!”
    “For how long?”
    “Well, that’s the really bad part,” said Wijic. “Because sometimes the Queen forgets all about it, and then when spring comes, the wasps can come back and open the nest and want to live in it again … and
then …
”
    Jan put her face into her hands with a little cry.
    “Oh no! It’s too cruel!”
    “Wijic,” said Charlie, more sternly than ever, “I want you to do us another favor.”
    “I won’t,” said Wijic. “I daren’t.”
    “It’s more for Tiki. Aren’t you her friend?”
    After a long time, Wijic said, “Well. What is it?”
    “You must go looking for wasps’ nests.”
    “Look for them? Why should I look for them? I know where they are. I know every wasps’ nest for miles.”
    “You do? Why?”
    “What a stupid question. If there were a lot of wild tigers living around London, wouldn’t you make sure you knew where they lived so as not to go near them?”
    Charlie lifted his upper hand a bit. Wijic put his face out.
    “Are you scared of wasps then?”
    “Scared of wasps? SCARED OF WASPS? Of course I’m scared of wasps. Wasps have special eyes. They can see us. So can bees, but they’re not so bad. They’re clever. You can reason with a bee. You know, you can say,
I’ll
drink from this flower,
you
take that one. Because a bee knows, if he stings you, he’s done for too, so he’s careful. Wasps are just crazy. They’ll chase you and sting you for the fun of it. And one sting, and you’re
dust
.”
    Charlie stood up, still holding Wijic.
    “Wijic. You’re going to show us all the wasps’ nests you know, and we’re going to find out if Tiki is in any one of them.”
    “Oh no I’m not!” said Wijic—and before Charlie could bring his upper hand down, Wijic had dived straight off into space and