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.