Suki the Pixie

‘So what do you want me to do about this sunflower?’ I asked Suki.  ‘I suppose we could dig it up.’

Suki turned pale.  ‘That would make me a murderer!’ she gasped.  ‘It was unkind to us when we were leaving, but it doesn’t deserve to die!’

‘Okay,’ I said quickly.  ‘We won’t dig it up.’  I couldn’t help thinking about all the weeds I dug out of the garden and threw in the council’s green bin.  I hoped the pixies hadn’t seen, and what did they think of me if they had?

‘If you don’t want to dig it up, do you want to do anything about it?’ I asked, once a bit of time had passed and Suki’s glow was back to normal.

Suki thought for a moment.  ‘We need to know if it’s meeting anyone,’ she said.  ‘It’s harmless enough on its own, but it might be here as a spy.  I don’t think it will meet anyone while we’re watching, though.’

Now, the pixies have always been confused by electronic gadgets.  (Electronic gadgets are also confused by pixies, and tend to stop working after the pixies play with them.)  I thought it would probably work the same way with sunflowers, and this gave me an idea.

I put my camcorder on its tripod and pointed it at the sunflower.  I switched it to record at night and started it running.  After a moment’s thought, I folded the screen away.  If the screen was out, I knew I would end up with a recording of pixies watching themselves pulling funny faces.  I then left the camcorder until the following morning.

The next day I scanned through the recording.  At three o’clock in the morning, I saw Siôn arrive.  I scratched my head.  I had been wondering who or what the sunflower would meet, but why Siôn?  The sunflower swivelled round until it was facing him.  ‘How many pixies do we have in this house?’ it asked quietly.

‘Only one.  I’ve lost the others, curse it.  They moved out when they found they couldn’t eat trimmed thistle leaves.’

‘One will be enough for starters,’ said the sunflower silkily.  ‘In two days time it will be full moon, and the witch’s power will be at its height.  She can snatch your pixie then, for starters.  For main course, she can come back at the next full moon.’  The sunflower sniggered quietly at its bad pun.

‘I’ve known Siôn ever since he was two inches tall,’ said Ithric.  ‘I remember the day he first walked, and the day he first flew.  I’m sure he’d never sell us to the witch on purpose.  Someone must have put a spell on him.’

As the pixie family had watched my video, they had been baffled to see Siôn talking to the sunflower.  Why he would give away his own family was beyond any of them.

‘He’ll have to be watched,’ said Lily quietly.  ‘We don’t know why he’s doing this, so we’ll just have to make sure he doesn’t do too much harm.’

‘We should ask the rabbits to keep an eye on him,’ said Ithric.  ‘They won’t mind, and they’re everywhere, so he won’t have much chance to do something without being seen.’

‘What about the night of full moon,’ I asked Suki.  ‘Apparently they are going to try and kidnap you.  What do you think they will try to do?’

Suki shuddered.  ‘Probably a few ghouls or spectres will be sent.  The witch could send other things too, but I don’t think she will.  She won’t see any need, not for one pixie who she expects to take by surprise.’

‘So can you throw sunlight at them again?’

‘It won’t work if they’re serious about taking me.  They would have to back off if I threw a cup of sunlight, but then it would be dark again, and they could come back and try again.’

I suddenly understood the horror of Suki’s last experience at the hands of the ghouls and spectres.  It was one thing to throw the sunlight and see them scatter, but then she had been left alone in the dark, not knowing whether they would come back.

‘What if there was a light that would last until morning, if necessary?’ I asked.  I explained that I had a miniature torch, and the light was generated by something called a battery, which wouldn’t run down until the next day.

Suki found that she could lift the torch and press the button that turned it on, with a bit of a struggle.

The night of full moon, Suki pretended to go to sleep as normal, curled up on a patch of clover with one wing covering her face.  The pixies had made me promise to stay safely in bed, but of course I broke the promise straight away.  I sat watching the patch of clover from an upstairs window.

The wait was long and boring, but I didn’t dare stop looking, even for a moment.  I wondered what a ghoul or a spectre would look like, if they did indeed come.  I had a torch of my own, too.  I wasn’t sure if they would be a threat to a person, but I wasn’t going to take any chances.

After I had waited for a couple of hours, I was startled by the noise of something large, moving against the garden fence.  Moments later, an animal jumped into the garden.  It wasn’t a ghoul or a spectre, that was for sure.  In the moonlight, it took me several seconds to realise that it was a wolf.  Meanwhile, Suki had turned the torch on, but the wolf was not interested.  It grabbed her in its jaws and leapt the garden gate, before running towards the road.

I dived down the stairs and fumbled with the front door.  I didn’t have a clear idea what I was going to do, but I didn’t want to lose sight of the wolf.  As I stepped outside, disappointment and relief mingled in my mind: the wolf was nowhere to be seen.  I stopped and thought for a moment.  The wolf had run towards the road.  If it was still near the road I might just catch up with it by using the car.  I would never catch it on foot, that was certain.

I backed the car out and started driving round some of the roads near my house.  I wished I had some kind of weapon, but there hadn’t been any time.  (Also, I didn’t fancy explaining to a policeman that I needed a weapon because I was searching for a kidnapped pixie.)

I was almost ready to give up when I looked out over a field, and saw a wolf running away, silhouetted against the moon.  I had run out of options.  The wolf was well away from the road, and obviously it was far too fast for there to be any point in running after it.

I did the only thing I could do.  I went home, got into bed, and tried to sleep—but I couldn’t stop worrying about Suki.  I wondered if I would see the other pixies the next day, and if so, how they would try to rescue her.

The next day, the pixie cousins arrived at my house in a sombre mood.  They had already found out, somehow, about Suki’s kidnapping.  As usual when they were upset, they had hardly any inner glow, and their wings drooped about their feet.

Ithric seemed to have become the spokesman.  ‘We are very grateful to you for trying to solve our problems, and for chasing after the wolf,’ he said.  I could see his wings moving uncomfortably as he fidgeted, and I sensed something unwelcome was coming.  ‘The thing is, humans aren’t supposed to get involved with magic.  It is lucky for you that you didn’t catch up with the wolf.’

‘Humans have done magic before,’ said Lily dreamily.

‘No they haven’t,’ said Ithric.  ‘Humans have used magic wands to do magic, but that’s different.  Saying humans can do magic is like saying humans can fly, just because they build aeroplanes.’  He turned back to me.  ‘What I’m trying to say is that we must leave you out of this.  We would never forgive ourselves if you involved yourself in our struggle, and something happened to you.’

Ithric paused for a moment, then carried on.  ‘We will stay away from you, so you don’t come to the witch’s attention.  And don’t even think of messing around with magic wands.  You can only take a magic wand from a tree with the permission of the woodland spirits, and they will want something in return.  Usually they would ask to blend themselves with your soul.  You would gain magical abilities, but stop being fully human.’

‘I won’t,’ I said.  ‘It would be nice to be able to do magic, I suppose, but that price would be far too high.’

‘Humans love having power over other people,’ said Lily, still looking distracted and upset.  ‘They go to the woodland spirits in the hope of getting that power, and they lose everything, even themselves.’

‘Is the witch human?’ I asked.  I had always assumed she was, but now it didn’t seem to make sense.

‘That is a very curious thing,’ said Ithric.  ‘Yes she is, and clearly she has magic.  I don’t know if she has a magic wand, but she would not behave the way she does if she was blended with the woodland spirits.  For one thing, she has ordered the destruction of trees, and the spirits would never do that.’

‘Yes,’ said Lily.  ‘And yet, she is the sort of person who would go to the spirits, blinded by greed.  The spirits would offer a bad deal, as they always do, and yet her greed would compel her to accept it.’

‘Perhaps she took the wand without the spirits’ permission,’ I suggested.

‘No, you don’t understand,’ said Ithric.  ‘Any fool can break a branch off a tree, but they won’t be able to do magic with it.  To do magic, you must take a branch from the tree with the tree’s permission.  That is what a magic wand is: a branch given to you willingly by a tree.’

The pixies looked at each other uncomfortably.  ‘Anyway, as I was saying,’ said Ithric.  ‘We must leave you.  We are very grateful for your help, and the best thing we can do for you in return is to keep you out of danger.’

Ithric held out his hand for me to shake.  After thinking for a second, I held out a finger.  He took it in both hands, and we shook.  Lily suddenly flew to my shoulder and kissed me on the cheek.

A moment later, both pixies were gone, and mundane humanity descended on the house.  There was no pixie laughter, just the sound of a derelict bus pulling away from a stop outside.  There were no unexpected sparkles as the pixies flew, just the glare of the television.

Try as I might, I couldn’t forget the pixies, or the possibility of doing magic with the help of the woodland spirits.  I reasoned that I could always ask the woodland spirits for help.  If they would only help in return for my soul, I would just tell them that the price was too high and I wasn’t interested.  There was only one problem; I didn’t know how to contact the woodland spirits!  I took to walking in the woods near my home, which was pleasant, but there was nothing there that I could talk to.

This went on for several weeks.  My walks in the woods began to replace the time I had spent talking with the pixies, though I was still worried about Suki.  One hot day I was walking in the woods, when I began to feel too warm and rather tired.  I sat down in a clearing, fell into a doze, and began dreaming of the woodland spirits.

‘The pixies are our friends,’ said the spirits.  ‘If you want to help them, we will help you.  Usually it is greedy people who want to do magic, and we ask to take over half their souls.  But as you want it to help our friends, we will ask only to replace ten percent of yours.’

I couldn’t help thinking that losing ten percent of my soul was rather like someone taking a pound of flesh.  It might not be a large proportion of the whole, but I was still likely to feel the loss of it.  I also wondered if the spirits asked everyone for ten percent, while convincing them that they were getting a good deal by telling them that they usually took fifty.

I said I wouldn’t do a deal like that, and immediately I woke up.  I now felt alert, no longer hot or tired.

I thought carefully about what I could offer the spirits.  Perhaps I could have a magic wand for long enough to help the pixies, but on the condition that I would give it back afterwards.  Returning to the clearing, I lay down and dozed, making contact with the spirits again.

‘We cannot lend you power,’ said the spirits.  ‘If we gave you a wand, you would have power forever.’

‘You would have my promise,’ I said.  ‘Once the pixies are safe, I will return the wand or break it; whatever I have to do.’

‘You would have to break it.  But we know how easily tempted humans are.  Once you have the wand, you would see how easy it is to do selfish acts, and you would keep it.  We don’t want to take over ten percent of your soul as a way of hurting you.  We want to do that because, by being with you, we can make sure you don’t succumb to temptation and so do great harm.’

I could see the spirits’ point, but I was repelled by the idea of having something alien mixed with my innermost thoughts.  Again I refused and woke up.

I thought about this for several days, but I could see no way round it.  If I had been trading part of myself for the wand, I might convince the spirits to offer a better deal: a smaller share of my soul, or something else entirely.  Now it seemed, though, that the spirits were just afraid to trust me—and what could I say to that?  I couldn’t guarantee that I would never be tempted.

Eventually I decided I would go back one last time.  There seemed no point in asking about the wand again, but perhaps the spirits could give me some news about the pixies.  However, to my surprise, I found the spirits upset.  Even in the dream, I couldn’t see them, but this time their voices sounded as though they were crying.

‘Suki was the light of our lives,’ sobbed the spirits, ‘and we don’t know where she is.  Or where any of the others are.  We haven’t seen any of the pixies since the kidnapping.’  For a long moment there was silence, then the spirits continued.  ‘We are afraid that great evil may result from this, but we feel unable to abandon our friend.  We have decided to give you the powers you need to follow Suki.  We cannot leave the forest, but if you are willing to help rescue our friend, we will help you.  All we ask in return is your solemn promise to break the wand, once the pixies are safe.’

‘I promise.’

‘Before you wake up and take the wand, there are two things you must know.  First of all, we do not know where the witch’s power comes from, but we do know that it is very great.  Even with the wand, you will not have the strength to fight her directly.

‘Secondly, we assume that Suki has been taken back to her home world, since the witch lives there too.  When you are ready to follow, you must take a magic carpet from this clearing.  The magic carpet will go to Ice Falls, Twilight Forest, and then to Suki’s homeland.  Be careful not to get off at the wrong stop.’

I woke, and saw that the tree in front of me now had a straight branch about a foot long, which had not been there before.

I reached out and took the wand.  It came away easily in my hand, and the bark brushed away, leaking me with clean polished wood.  I wondered how it was used, but I found that actually it was very straightforward.  I held the wand, wished for a stone to rise off the ground, and it did.

Clearly I needed to think about this.  Although the wand might give me a way of rescuing Suki, it was far from clear how it might work.  I suspected that I could wish for a magic carpet, too, but I didn’t dare do that until I’d worked out some kind of plan.  I stashed the wand in my bag along with the remains of my lunch, and set off for home.

Walking back into the village I saw Arabella walking her collie.  Arabella and her boyfriend had bought the biggest house in the village, so they were assumed to be very rich.  They were also committed environmentalists.  We knew this because Arabella called on their neighbours, shortly after they arrived, to ask if anyone minded them putting a solar panel on their roof.  None of the single men would have denied Arabella anything, and no one else raised any serious objection, so the solar panel was duly installed.

On impulse I decided to try an experiment with the wand.  It wasn’t quite what the woodland spirits had in mind when they gave it to me, but (I told myself) I had to practice using it.  ‘Make me irresistibly attractive,’ I thought as determinedly as possible, and touched the wand in my bag.

As I approached, Arabella looked round.  ‘Hello,’ she said, as though she had noticed me for the first time.

Apparently the spell had worked, but there was a snag I hadn’t foreseen.  I had to think of something clever that I could say to someone I didn’t really know.  ‘Hello.  I, um, err, like your solar panel,’ I said.

‘Come and see it,’ said Arabella, leading the way.  ‘On very sunny days we can even sell the electricity, it generates far more than we need.’  The spell must have been working overtime.

We were already in the village, so it was only a short time before I saw the big house and the solar panel.  I then remembered something that had always puzzled me.  The solar panel was a muddy brown colour, and that didn’t make sense.  ‘Aren’t solar panels usually black?  I mean don’t you want them to absorb as much light as possible?’

‘Would you buy muddy brown electricity?’ asked Arabella, looking up at the panel.  ‘No, no one will buy electricity that colour, so it’s much better that we just reflect that part of the light.’

It didn’t make much sense, but who was I to complain when I had a magic wand in my bag?  That didn’t make sense either.

‘Oh, there’s our picture, you must see that,’ said Arabella pointing through the window.  ‘That’s John the Apostle, the last picture Rembrandt ever painted.  We love his work; we’ve got lots of prints but we’ve recently bought that original.’

I assumed she was pulling my leg, but I realised that I had an easy way to find out.  I touched the wand and thought, ‘Is the picture genuine?’  I immediately sensed that it was.  I’m no art expert, but obviously a painting like that must have cost millions.  I realised that Arabella and her boyfriend must be richer than anyone had suspected.

Arabella was trying to lead me in the front door, but I was feeling uncomfortable, for all sorts of reasons.  I didn’t want to be disloyal to my girlfriend, and I felt responsible for making sure Arabella wasn’t disloyal to her boyfriend; the spell seemed to have had a dramatic effect and I wasn’t sure if she was in control of her actions.  I also remembered the woodland spirits saying that I would be tempted to misuse the wand, and here I was, misusing it.  Also, what were the ethics of a love spell?  Was it just a way of making yourself more attractive, or was it more like drugging someone and then taking advantage of them?

Too many questions.  I mumbled an excuse and left, quickly, before I changed my mind.

(PS: although this story is told in the first person, the humans I meet are entirely imaginary.)

I realised I’d better try and rescue Suki before I thought of any other things to use the wand for.  I hurried back to the clearing and wished as firmly as possible for a magic carpet.

I don’t know what I expected; an ornate handmade rug, perhaps.  What actually arrived, floating a foot off the floor and weaving its way around the trees, was a long line of carpets tied together with ropes.  First came the ornate rug I would have expected.   Tied to the first carpet was a second similar one.  Next came a much bigger one, that looked as though it had been cut off a roll of fitted carpet.  Finally there were three doormats.

Sitting on the front was someone who looked like the driver.  At first I thought he was a pixie, but he was taller and with two wings instead of four.  I realised that he must be a fairy.  The only other person sitting on the carpets was a leprechaun, sitting on the very last doormat.  Trying to get over the shock, I rushed up to get on the first carpet.  I thought I might need to talk to the driver, if the fairy was in fact in control of the carpets in some way.

I climbed onto the carpet and it sank down slightly, as it took my weight.  Immediately, the leprechaun was at my side.  ‘You’re getting on the wrong carpet,’ he said anxiously.  ‘This carpet is going to the witch’s world.’

The fairy turned round.  ‘That is true,’ he said gravely.  ‘Over the past few months, all the magical creatures have left, most of them taken into exile by me, on this carpet.  We had to tie all those extra carpets onto the back, or we could never have carried them all.  Now there is no one left, apart from a few fairies who operate the carpets.  Tomorrow we will make a last trip, to take them into exile also.’

‘My friend has been taken there by the witch,’ I said.  ‘She is a pixie, called Suki.’

‘If you go there, I wish you luck,’ said the fairy.  ‘However, you will be trapped if you remain there after tomorrow at noon.’

‘Will you not come back for me?’

‘It is not won’t,’ said the fairy sadly, ‘but can’t.  That world is too badly damaged for us to reach it easily by carpet.  If we delay, we risk being trapped there ourselves.’

I felt I was being stupid, but I said that my mind was made up.  The fairy pointed straight ahead, and the line of carpets began to move again.  We wove through the trees for a while, until I was in a part of the forest that I didn’t know.  It got colder, and soon the trees were all pines.  There was snow on the ground.  Eventually we emerged from the forest, and I saw a totally unfamiliar landscape.  There was snow as far as the eye could see, and in front of us there was a frozen river, with a frozen waterfall.

‘This is Ice Falls,’ said the fairy.  The carpets came to a standstill, but no one got on.  Presently we moved off again, just the fairy and I, gliding gently over the empty frozen landscape.

We moved into coniferous forest again.  Gradually it got warmer, the snow disappeared, and we started seeing trees with deep purple leaves.  These trees got larger as we went on, until we were gliding through a deep shade, far below the forest canopy.  Eventually the carpets stopped.  ‘This is Twilight Forest,’ said the fairy.  Again, no one got on.

Now we were gliding through light, open woodland.  I could have been in the woods near my home, but all too soon the carpets came to a stop again.  I got off and stood up.  Looking around, I saw that there were only a handful of trees surrounding the small clearing where the carpets had stopped.  Whatever route the carpets had taken to reach this world, I could no longer see it.

There was a small group of fairies standing around the clearing, and I had to explain all over again why I was there.  I promised to be back for noon the next day, and I stepped through the trees into the witch’s world—Suki’s home.  I was horrified.  Once I was away from the space looked after by the fairies, there was not a living thing to be seen.  Someone had turned the whole world into a giant open cast mine.  Earth moving machines gradually ploughed up more of the subsoil.  I noticed also that the machines had no drivers.  Someone had mixed machinery and magic.

Looking down at my feet, I realised that I was wrong about there being no living things.  A single buttercup had managed to hang on.  ‘Help!’ it said in a small voice, so I picked it up together with some soil and put it in my pocket.  I could plant it when I got home.  If I got home.

Looking around the featureless landscape that used to be Suki’s world, I noticed a brick building about a mile away.  It was the only sign of civilisation, so I started walking towards it, picking my way over the rock that the machinery had turned over.

When I got to the building, I was surprised to see that it was a house, not some kind of office for the mine.  Perhaps the people here would be able to tell me what was going on.  I rang the doorbell.  I waited a short while and then the door was opened.  I stared at the person on the doorstep, and she stared back.

‘You!’ I said.

‘Well well.  It’s Pete and he’s forgotten his gorgeousness spell this time,’ said Arabella.  ‘Of course I never forget mine.  If you’d asked the wand about me, it would have said that there was a spell affecting my appearance, and then you would have realised that I was the witch.’

‘I had too much to think about with my own spell,’ I said slowly.

‘Anyway, don’t stand on the doorstep or make another boring excuse.  Come in!’

I followed Arabella inside.  I knew it was dangerous, but I didn’t think I would be any safer standing on the doorstep.  I was also kicking myself.  How could I have been so stupid as to walk up to the front door and ring the bell?

‘Of course I already had an idea you were involved with magic,’ Arabella called to me as she led the way inside.  ‘I looked out of my window one day, and I saw you filming my sunflower.  You wouldn’t have done that unless you knew what it was doing.’

‘So why did we see Siôn?  Was he betraying his family?’

We were now in the lounge.  The furnishing was luxurious to the point where it lacked common sense.  I realised that mud from my walking boots was contaminating a carpet that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a museum.

‘Have a seat,’ said Arabella, gesturing towards an antique armchair.  ‘Yes, that one, then you can look at our other original Rembrandt while we talk.  That one is called “My Mum” and it is the first picture Rembrandt ever painted.’

I stared in disbelief.  It was just a childish squiggle, in an ornate frame.  However Rembrandt got his talents, clearly he wasn’t born with them.  I wondered how much this one had cost.

‘Even though I knew you’d put that spell on yourself,’ said Arabella thoughtfully, ‘I must have been affected by it.  I remembered you as being quite cute, but as I said, I must have been affected by the spell…  Um, where was I?  Oh yes.  Siôn didn’t betray his family, that was just the spell I put on the camcorder.’

I could feel myself starting to panic.  Clearly I had been out-thought all the way through, and now I was trapped on a deserted world with the nutcase who had killed half the original population.  I knew I had to start thinking, but right now all I could think of was the salesman’s last resort: Keep Talking.

‘So is Suki here?’ I asked.

‘Guards!’ called Arabella.

Two strange creatures entered.  One was slightly smaller than a human, and entirely covered by a dirty green cloak.  The other was a dense patch of shadow that moved.

‘You see,’ Arabella said to me with a self-satisfied smile, ‘I keep a ghoul and a spectre for my personal use.’  She turned to the guards.  ‘Bring Suki in.’

When the ghoul returned, it was carrying a cage, and a defeated-looking Suki was slumped in the corner.  ‘You shouldn’t have come,’ she said faintly.  ‘Now you will be processed too.’

‘Processed?’ I said.

‘Let’s begin at the beginning,’ said Arabella smiling smugly.  ‘Guards!  Take the pixie away.  And bring us each a cup of tea and a fruit scone.  I’ll have low fat margarine, but no one I catch lives long enough to put on weight.  Do Pete’s with clotted cream.’

I took a sip of sugary tea and nibbled the scone.

‘Five years ago, I was going out with a trader from a hedge fund.  He’d got some bonus, a paltry few million, but he wanted to celebrate.  So we sat in his stupid flat in Docklands doing lines of coke.

‘This was no life, I thought.  And then the solution hit me.  I needed more money, beautiful works of art, lovely houses—and most of all I needed to upgrade my boyfriend.  What is more, I knew how I was going to do it.  I was working as a scientist, and my team had found a way of visiting another world; this one.  In the lab we had lots of chemicals, so it was easy to get some arsenic and put it in the teapot.

I put my cup down quickly.

‘Relax, I wouldn’t put anything in your tea, you’re too cute.  Anyway, the whole team visited this world with flasks of tea.  Everyone except me.  I stayed behind to operate the equipment, and of course there was a small problem.  One of the computers went wrong, and it took several days to fix it.  When this was done, the team were nowhere to be found.  Presumably they are dead from the arsenic, but there was no chance of finding the bodies unless I showed the police how to visit this world.  It was the first perfect murder!

I realised that I had one weapon.  Arabella needed to talk about how clever she was, and while she could do that, perhaps I would stay alive.

‘Then I got my boyfriend to buy the house in your village.  Our research showed that travel between the worlds was easiest if it started from that place.  The fairies had noticed that too.  That’s why they land the magic carpets there, but I didn’t find out about that until later.’

‘So I was right!  Your solar panel isn’t a solar panel.  It’s part of your equipment.  If it was a solar panel it really would be black.’

‘Yes.  I couldn’t believe you swallowed that nonsense about muddy brown electricity.  Anyway, I started extracting oil and minerals from this world, and selling them at home.  That made enough money to buy the Rembrandts.  Then I realised it would be much more fun if I was a billionaire, but that would mean doing the same with other worlds.  By now I was tapping into magic too, and I knew the fairies could go to other places, but unless I had more power, I couldn’t.’

‘But why did you care?  What is the point of having that Rembrandt, which was obviously painted before he learnt to paint?’

‘That’s just envy,’ said Arabella smugly.  ‘You wouldn’t be saying that if you could afford a Rembrandt too.  I found I could get the power I needed by processing magical creatures, but annoyingly I had chased them all away.  I sent the ghouls and spectres—and the wolves—to round up as many of them as possible.  All I want is Suki’s power, it’s nothing personal.’

‘Nothing personal!  You’re going to kill her, right?’

‘I think we’re wasting too much time.  Have you finished your scone?’

‘Not quite.’

Arabella took the last bit of scone from my plate and ate it, then drained the last few drops of tea from my cup.  ‘Guards!’ she called.  ‘Kill him!’

Again the ghoul and the spectre came into the room.  I wished I had a cup of sunlight, but then I realised that I did have a wand.  I wished for light, and a bright cold light began shining from the end of the wand.  The ghoul and spectre backed off.  Apparently the dim light coming through the net curtains was tolerable, but light of this intensity was not.

Arabella had picked up something that looked like a TV remote control.  She pressed a button, and I found that producing the light was requiring more mental effort.  I could see what was happening: Arabella had access to this power through technology, not through the woodland spirits.  That realisation didn’t help me, though.  I struggled to keep the light shining as Arabella pressed a second button.  This time the effort was too much and the light went out.

I found myself surrounded by absolute darkness, and it became oppressive and suffocating.  I felt dizzy and was no longer sure which way was up or down.  I struggled to get the wand to shine again and failed.  I was vaguely aware of falling down, and of the wand falling from my grasp.

The next thing I knew, I was lying on a cold concrete floor.  I lay there for a few minutes, just relieved to be alive.  I could feel something half in my pocket and half out.  I moved slightly, so I could touch it and see what it was.  It was the wand!  I couldn’t believe my luck.

‘He’s awake,’ said a thin, dry voice behind me.

I sat up slowly and turned round.  I saw now that I was in a metal shed with a concrete floor.  Sitting on a plastic chair was the ghoul, and hovering in mid air as always was the spectre.

‘I thought you were going to kill me,’ I said, confused.

A voice came from the middle of the shadow that was the spectre.  ‘The witch came to us creatures of the dark, and offered us power over the pixies, the fairies, the flowers, the creatures of the light.  But she tricked us.’

‘How?’

‘We helped her establish her reign over this world.  We helped her chase out the creatures of the light.  But then she needed more power, power that she could only get by feeding magical creatures to her machine.  She used fairies when she could get them, which wasn’t often because they have powerful magic of their own.  When she couldn’t get fairies, she used pixies.  When she couldn’t get pixies, she used our kind.’

‘We are the only ones left,’ said the ghoul with unexpected sadness.  ‘She has kept us as her slaves, but we know what she will do when we are no longer useful.’

‘We must make a plan, then,’ I said.  I suddenly remembered what the fairies had said about the last magic carpet leaving at noon.  I looked at my watch.  It was eleven o’clock.  I must have been out for longer than I had realised.  ‘We’ve only got an hour, though, or we will all be trapped here!’

‘You have only got an hour,’ said the spectre.  ‘We have all the time in the world.  The fairies would never take us, not after we chased them all out in the first place.  But if we can trap the witch here with us, we will have made amends, in a way.’

I was going to argue, but there just wasn’t time.  Every second we wasted made it more likely that I would get trapped too, more likely that Suki would die, and more likely that Arabella would get the power she needed to destroy other worlds.

We talked for a few more minutes, then I grasped the wand and wished for invisibility.  I looked down and I could no longer see my body.  I knew that if Arabella searched specifically for invisible people, she would see me—but I hoped she wouldn’t be doing that, as she thought I was dead.

Standing next to the ghoul, I rang Arabella’s doorbell again.  A few seconds later, Arabella opened the door and I slipped inside.  ‘Why didn’t you let yourself in?’ asked Arabella angrily.

‘Door didn’t open,’ whispered the ghoul.

I couldn’t stop to listen, but I smiled to myself as the argument at the front door became more heated.  Arabella was getting angry, and the ghoul was replying in a nasty whisper.  It could sound very nasty when it wanted to, and right now it did want to, because it was getting Arabella too angry to think clearly.

I had found a room which was full of electronic apparatus.  In the middle of the room was an archway that looked like an airport security scanner, and I wondered if you walked through that to get to another world.  There was also a desk with a laptop on it, which I assumed controlled everything.  Also on the table was the cage with Suki in it!  I quickly released her, though of course she couldn’t see me.

‘What’s going on?’ she asked, staring around her.

‘It’s me,’ I whispered.  I guided her to my shoulder, and she perched there, apparently sitting on nothing.  She gripped my ear rather tightly, which was uncomfortable, but there was no time to arrange things better.

Before we did anything else, we had to stop Arabella’s equipment working.  I gripped the wand and wished: ‘Disable this equipment, so it can’t be fixed with the technology available on this world.’

A virus warning message appeared on the laptop’s screen.

I grinned to myself in spite of everything.  There was something clever and minimalist about that.  It made sense, though.  The other equipment might well be useless without the laptop, and it might well be impossible to fix the laptop if all the install disks were at home.

I slipped out of the front door and looked at my watch.  Of course I couldn’t see it.  I cancelled the invisibility and tried again.  I had less than ten minutes to meet the fairies!  For many years, I’ve kept fit by running, and I’ve never been as glad as I was at that moment.  I set off for the trees at a run.  I could feel Suki flapping her wings.  Of course she was scared and wanting to help, but she was too small to make much difference.

Behind me, Arabella had come out of the house, and because I was now visible she had seen me.  She pulled the remote control out of her pocket and pressed buttons madly, but it seemed not to be working.  That was something, I thought.  Presumably the laptop had crashed and she had lost her powers.  Of course she then realised that she was in danger of being trapped, and she set off at a run after us.  I don’t know if she’d done any training, but if not, her fear was allowing her to keep up a good pace.

I held the wand and wished to be able to run faster.  It didn’t work.  Instead, in my mind, I saw the fairies packing up their belongings.  I never found out for sure why it worked that way, but as the fairies packed up, I think perhaps it broke this world’s link with magic.  As I ran, I sensed the fairies untying the doormats and the extra carpets, packing them in bags and stowing them on the front carpet for the journey.  They then shrank the trees, put them in plant pots, and put them on the carpet too.  Finally, when I was nearly there, I saw the fairies climb on the carpet and I watched it begin to move.  I was close but it looked as though it was still too late.

Then everything got confusing.  The ghoul jumped out, grabbed a plant pot from the carpet, and ran off.  The fairies swung the carpet round and set off in pursuit.  This gave me a chance to jump on.  Arabella tried to do the same, but the carpet did a tight turn, and she found herself grabbing at empty air.  The ghoul had put the plant pot down and disappeared again, so I lent off the side of the carpet and grabbed it as we sailed past.  Now we were ready to leave, but we had another problem.  Arabella was running along behind us, and the carpet seemed to be running out of steam; it wasn’t fast enough to shake her off.

‘We can’t leave this world until no one is watching,’ said the oldest fairy.  ‘But this world’s magic is disintegrating fast.  If we can’t leave soon, we will be stuck.’

We looked at each other.  If someone got off the carpet, they could probably delay her, but then they would be stuck too.

The carpet had circled back on itself, and we were now quite close to Arabella’s house.  As we went past, I saw a familiar metal shed, and the next moment, Arabella found herself surrounded by shadow.  I saw her fall down, struggling with the spectre.

‘Hold tight,’ said the fairy.  ‘This won’t be as comfortable as the journey here.’  At that moment, the carpet reached the top of a small hill—and there was nothing on the other side.  We found ourselves falling into a black void.  I had hold of something that turned out to be a fairy’s foot, but I didn’t dare let go.

I shut my eyes as we fell.  After a long time, the carpet abruptly slowed down, then stopped.  I opened my eyes.  I knew this place!  We were in the car park at the Bar Hill Tesco’s.  There were people everywhere, but we were in a quiet corner and no one seemed to have noticed us yet.  The fairies, though, immediately panicked.  ‘We’ll be seen,’ said the older fairy as they grabbed all the paraphernalia and started hauling it out of sight behind the bottle bank.

There was only one thing for it.  I went into Tesco’s, bought a few things, and picked up as many carrier bags as I reasonably could.  I then hid one fairy in each carrier bag, while Suki squeezed into the middle of a rolled up doormat.  With everything magical out of sight, I phoned for a taxi to take us home.

‘I thought people went to Hogwarts on the train,’ grinned the taxi driver.

I was sure I’d hidden all the magical things in the Tesco bags, but then I looked down.  I was still holding the magic wand!  ‘Oh, it’s an, um, Chrismas present, for my, err, son.’

Of course the trouble with lies is that you have to tell bigger and bigger ones, just to keep the pretence going.  All the way home I had to chat to the taxi driver about the son I don’t have.  Eventually, though, I could bring the Tesco bags into the house and let the fairies out.  I also went into the garden and carefully planted the buttercup.

Only minutes later, the party started.  Fairies and pixies came from all around, but I managed to steer Suki’s family into a corner, to explain what happened.  ‘I was too late,’ I said.  ‘Your world was destroyed before I got there.’  I also told them how the ghoul and the spectre sacrificed themselves.  There was now nothing to be done for them, but I felt they should be remembered, at least.

Before I could talk to them further, I was grabbed by the party again.  The leprechaun came towards me, beaming.  ‘Of course we lost most of our pots when we had to flee our home,’ he said with a big smile, ‘but we still have one or two.  I think you should have one.’

‘Pots?’ I asked.

‘You know.  Pots of gold.’  The leprechaun produced an earthenware jar the size of a bucket, and passed it to me.  I almost dropped it, it was so heavy.  When I lifted the lid, I saw that it was full of unfamiliar gold coins, each one stamped with the image of a jester’s cap.  I knew that much gold must be worth a small fortune, and I stammered my thanks.

Before things got too embarrassing, I was distracted by the sound of fire engines.  Looking towards Arabella’s house, I saw that a column of black smoke was rising into the cold blue autumn sky.  When I looked back, the leprechaun had gone, but Ithric was there, fluttering in mid air.

‘When the connection between the worlds was broken,’ he said, ‘a great deal of energy was released.  That energy seems to have started a fire, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it has done the same thing at the other end too.’

‘I wonder what’s going on there,’ I mused, staring at the column of smoke.

‘Don’t wonder—watch!’ I looked round and it was Suki, also fluttering in mid air.  She darted down like a dragonfly, and touched the surface of a puddle, like she had done once before.  Again the surface turned silver and then transparent, but now I was watching things that were happening only a few streets away.

For a moment I saw the firemen trying to get into the house, which seemed to be well ablaze.  Then I saw Arabella’s boyfriend, wandering around like a loose end.  ‘He must think Arabella is in there,’ I murmured, aghast.  Then the scene changed again, and I saw two more fire engines arriving and several police cars.  I wondered why the fire was so difficult to put out, and the scene changed again, showing us the inside of the house.  The house appeared to be built on two floors, but I could see now that it had been hollowed out underneath.  It went down much further than it went up, and the deeper we explored, the hotter it seemed to get.  Just as it seemed we were about to see the lowest basement, the puddle boiled, and we could no longer see anything.  Eventually the boiling stopped, but the water was all gone and we could still see nothing.

All afternoon we could tell that the fire was getting worse.  More fire engines arrived, and the police helicopter hovered overhead.  In the middle of this, though, the fairies and pixies were still celebrating their escape.  I was also feeling more pleased about my escape than sorry about the fire!  Suki seemed to be having a serious conversation with the buttercup I had brought home, and presently she came to me.

‘Do you have a cup that would be small enough for us to lift?’

I thought for a moment, then went inside and dug an eggcup out of a cupboard.  To a pixie it was the size of a goblet, but at least they could lift it.  Suki placed it carefully on the ground, then cupped her hands above it like a funnel.  For a moment nothing happened, then I saw that the sunlight shining on her hands was getting stronger.  Eventually it was a bright glowing yellow, and then it began to drip into the eggcup.

‘I thought so,’ said Suki.  ‘This is rich sunlight, like we used to drink at home.  It’s not that this world’s sunlight is too weak, it’s that the witch was taking all its power.  Now the spell is broken, we can live here!  We don’t need to eat thistles any more.’

Looking round, I saw Siôn for the first time.  ‘Looks like you’re stuck with us, then,’ he laughed.  Of course I was very happy for the pixies to stay, and I said so.

Eventually the day came to an end.  The fire had been put out.  The fairies had flown away on the carpet, and the pixies were sleeping on their bed of clover.  ‘Goodnight,’ whispered the buttercup.

I took the leprechaun’s pot and the wand inside.  I would have to do something with all that gold, I couldn’t just leave it around the house in case I got burgled.  What about the wand, though?  I remembered promising to break the wand when everything was resolved, but there was a small snag.  There might come a time when I was sorely tempted to use the wand, and then I would feel like a real numpty if I’d broken it.  I decided that I would put it right at the back of a cupboard, and only get it out if the temptation was unbelievably bad.

I decided to put the leprechaun’s pot out of sight in the cupboard too, until morning.  I couldn’t take it to a bank or anything now, they were all shut.  When I picked up the pot, though, I found that it was oddly light.  Lifting the lid, I found that all the jester’s cap gold coins had disappeared.  For a moment I was angry, but then I couldn’t help laughing.  How could I ever have taken the leprechaun gold seriously?  I stopped thinking about myself as a lottery winner, and started thinking about getting up for work the next day.