Newbie Fairy

Chapter One

In Blackberry Bog, the breeze hummed with excitement and the moonlight sparkled like glitter. It was the most important night of the year—the annual Fairy Awards. All the fairies were sitting inside the Grand Fairy Theater. Well, almost all.

Oona Bramblegoop, Slug Fairy, hadn’t been invited.

Again.

But she wasn’t going to pout. Instead, she decided this would also be the night of the very first Slug Awards. She flapped her tiny wings double time as she flitted around the creek bed, taking care of last—minute touches.

“Looking great so far, Oona!” she peptalked herself. “Slug slip and slide—check. Creek water punch—check. Tiki torch lighting—not check. We can’t have a show without party lighting!”
Oona yelled to her little cousin. “Horace!”

Horace was bent over the food table. He’d already eaten half the algae appetizers. Horace liked eating. When he heard his name, he jumped to attention. He also liked helping Oona.

“Horace, I need something to burn for the magic torches,” Oona said as she placed torch poles around the stage. Then she saw his face. The tip of his nose was green. “Ugh—are you eating the algae?”

“No! I mean, can I?” He wiped his face. Oona put her hands on her hips.

“Okay, I’ll get the kindling!” he said. “But, um, isn’t magic flame against the rules for Newbies?”

Oona frowned. She hated the term newbie. She didn’t like rules much, either. Horace sure could be annoying. Had anyone asked for a review of the rule book? She waved his words away like bugs in her face.

“I’ve got it covered, Horace. Besides, everyone is at the Fairy Awards. No one has to know. Now get going!”

Her cousin hustled off. Soft music drifted down from the theater, perched high on a hill.

Oona wished she could magic herself up there. Last year, she had still been just a Boggin, no wings and no magic. She hadn’t even dreamed of being invited then. But when her wings started to sprout and magic started to whisper in her ear, her hopes had sprouted, too.

Then, when she got her Slug Fairy assignment, she was sure she’d get to go. Slug slime was, after all, essential to the survival of the entire fairy world. But here she was, sitting in a creek bed, while fairies above wore silver dresses and ate whipped cream sandwiches . . . or something. Oona didn’t know what they actually ate at the awards, but it had to be fancy.


FUN FAIRY FACT: A fairy’s life has four stages:
#1: Boggins, who are very cute but have no wings or magic.
#2: Newbies, who have little wings and magic so small they have to say it out loud for it to work.
#3: Advanced Fairies, who have turbo-speed wings and whose magic happens as automatically as breathing.
#4: The Grands, whose wings beat as slowly as an elephant’s heart. They weave magic into cloth, bake it into bread, and write it into books.


Oof. It hurt her wings to think about what she was missing. Time to focus on something else—­his slugfest! Oona looked around. The invitations she’d made said the party wasn’t starting for another ten minutes, but it turns out slugs don’t have good manners.They were already sliding all over the “Dig Through the Dirt” salad bar.

Well, at least they were distracted. It was a great time to strap on their tiaras and top hats for the ceremony. They normally didn’t like that kind of thing, but Oona was determined to make this night special.

She struggled with the bow ties because slugs don’t have necks. They ended up lookingmore like belts. Oh well. Still fancy.

“There. You look very glamorous now.” Oona sat back and admired her work.

Just then, Oona heard a loud crash in the woods. Oh, Horace. He was always breaking things, including himself. Her very first magic had been designed to give him protection. Had it stopped working?

“Did you fall?” she called.

“No! I mean, a little,” he replied, coming through the trees with leaves sticking out from his mop of curly hair. “But look! I’ve got tons of stuff to burn.”

Horace strapped bunches of weeds to each torch while Oona rehearsed the fire magic in her mind. More complicated magic was hard. She was almost positive she had it right, but there was a reason it was against the rules. She could set her own socks on fire. Or worse.

Oona’s magic was a sideways sort of magic. When most fairies magicked up a cake, a cake justappeared, easy-­peasy. But for Oona, a little pine tree would transform into a baker, who would then turn pine needles and sap into velvety cake batter.

When Oona tried good luck magic, a lucky clothespin appeared. Oona wished she could have good luck without wearing a pinchy clothespin on her ear, but that just wasn’t how her magic worked. It was that way for her entire family. Their magic was just a little . . . different.

Oona heard clapping from the theater and wondered who was getting all the applause. She scrunched up her rosy face and peptalked again. “Focus, little fairy. You’ve got a show to put on!”

Oona closed her eyes and lifted her wand.

“Are you sure we can’t just use regular matches?” asked Horace.

Oona opened her eyes and glared. “This is a magical awards show, Horace.Of course it needs magical lighting.”

Before Horace could interrupt her again, she pointed her wand at the sky and said:

“Apple, peaches, pumpkin pie,
Firelight of firefly,
Show me how you got your name,
And bring to me a perfect flame.”

Three fireflies suddenly hovered above her. But instead of their usual glow, they had flames burning from their rear ends like their bodies were matchsticks. They zipped around the stage, lighting each torch. Then she blew on them, andpoof! They disappeared.

She couldn’t believe it. She, Newbie Oona, had just made fire. Horace cheered.

Finally, it was time to start the show. Oona pulled out her note cards. “A-­hem. Slugs and . . . gentleman.” She winked at Horace, and he grinned. “We have a slime pool’s worth of excitement for you tonight! Our first award is for Slimiest Slug, who will be remembered long after they go because of all the stickiness they leave behind. And the winner is . . . ah, a-­hem . . . and the winner is . . .”

Oona had to stop her speech. She fanned her note cards in front of her face as she choked on the air. What was that terrible smell?

The slugs seemed as surprised as she was.They tried to cover up the part of their body where a nose would be if slugs had noses.

Horace was sniffing his armpits to see if it was coming from him. Or maybe because his armpits smelled better than this other terrible thing.

Then she saw it. A trail of oozy green smoke was rising out of each torch. High above their heads, these smoke fingers were clasping together into a thick, mean-­looking cloud. And—­oh no.

The cloud was headed straight for the Grand Fairy Theater.

Chapter Two

Oona didn’t have much time. She had to move quickly. Why had the torches created such a terrible funk? Hold on—­she knew why.

“Horace, what in fairydom did you put in those torches?” She grabbed her wand in one hand, Horace in the other, and started huffing up the winding path to the theater.

“Um, just regular weeds. You know, toadwillow. Maybe some skunkweed.”

Toadwillow and skunkweed?!? This was a smell disaster. She had to do something. She pointed her wand at the cloud.

“Roses are red, Violets are blue,
Flowers smell good, And so do you!”

The flags waving over the theater’s entrance turned into daisies. But their little bit of perfume wasn’t going to stop this smell storm. She needed more.

She pulled down on her earlobes, trying to hear the magic around her. Then Oona bit her lip and raised her wand again.

“Hey, big cloud, Please don’t be mean.
Take that smell And wash it clean!”

There was a thunderclap and then—­BLOOP, BLOOP, BLOOP!

Green soapsuds formed on the cloud. The bubbles floated down and popped soapy skunkweed smelliness onto the towers of the theater. Oona groaned. She had just made a bad situation worse. Sideways magic wasn’t helping her AT ALL today.

The cloud looked like it was laughing at her. Then it squeezed its way into the theater. She started to hear coughing and yelling. They were too late.

Oh, why had she tried to do fire before she was ready? They could have had party lights with regular old fireflies or matches like Horace had suggested. She could be handing out the award for Slug of the Year right now. And why had she let Horace help her, anyway? Oona stomped her foot. Yeah! This was all Horace’s fault!

Suddenly, the drawbridge crashed open, and a river of fairies came pouring out. Oona backtracked down the hill as fast as she could. Horace stumbled along behind her. She was just skimming the ground, but Horace hadn’t grown wings yet, so he was slower.

“Hurry up, Horace! If we don’t get out of here, they’ll know it was us—­I mean, you,” Oona said.

“But don’t you think we should just tell everyone the tru—­”

Oona pulled him off the path. “Come on!” she whispered, and they huddled under an old willow tree to catch their breath.

All at once, the fairies were rushing past their hiding spot.

“Blech, I feel like I was inside a skunk’s dirty sock!” said one.

“More like a toad was setting its burps on fire,” said another.

“I’m pretty sure I smelled slug sweat,” said a third. Oona winced.

They waited until all the fairies were gone. Finally, Oona and Horace crawled into the open.

“Phew, that was close,” Oona said. “Now go home and stay there. I have to figure out how long I’m going to be mad at you.”

“But I was just trying to help.”

“You can help by giving me space,” she said. Drooping, Horace shuffled away.

Oona watched him closely to make sure he wouldn’t circle back with more excuses.

She was so distracted she didn’t realize the one fairy she worshipped most was right behind her.
As Oona turned toward home, she ran smack into the Tooth Fairy.