Authors: Edrei Cullen
Clearheart
Clearheart
a flitterwig tale
by Edrei Cullen
illustrated by Gregory Rogers
For Maureen, Nigel, Kirsteen, Luisa & Geoffrey E.C.
chapter 1: flight & frustration
chapter 2: clouds & conspiracies
chapter 5: lessons & livewires
chapter 7: thwarted & thoughtful
chapter 10: prophecies & possibilities
chapter 11: stories & sniggers
chapter 14: giants & gum trees
chapter 16: whispers & whatnots
chapter 20: honking & halitosis
chapter 21: penguins & puppies
chapter 24: friendship & flight
chapter 25: domes & destinations
chapter 26: pixies & persuasion
chapter 28: clearhearts & confrontation
chapter 29: promises & poppycock
chapter 30: sacrifices & shame
chapter 31: mysteries & meanings
flight & frustration
âDon't jump, Ella! Don't jump, you silly lump!' The pixie kicked his way through the undergrowth, past the invisible oak tree in the red poppy field, across the vegetable gardens and towards the abandoned outhouse, far beyond the main building of Hedgeberry School of Flitterwiggery. His big, blue, watery eyes streamed as his striped red top and green hat bounced up and down through the grass like a pepper pot in fancy dress.
As the pixie came in sight of the outhouse, he spotted her. He stopped still and smacked his hands across his face.
âOh no! Blow. Hellooo,' he squealed, wrestling himself to the ground. For there was Ella, her green eyes flashing, her long, honey-coloured hair flaring wildly about her pale face to reveal her perfectly sculpted and finely pointed ears. She had her scruffy dungarees hitched up to free her feet and her T-shirt pulled back to leave room for her yet-to-be-unfurled wings. As he had expected, she was dangling over the edge of the roof of the abandoned building, preparing to jump.
Ella was a Flitterwig, you see, a human being with Magical
blood. In her case, elf blood. The trouble was, unlike other Elven Flitterwigs her age, Ella couldn't remember how to fly. She had done it once, in very special circumstances, but now she had no idea how to even get her wings to appear!
Had the Troggle near the invisible oak been paying attention, he would have seen the pixie bounding across the grounds. Instead the Troggle muttered to himself as he struggled to unhook the hood of his black cloak from a small, protruding, unseeable branch. He had once been a pixie himself, but he had eaten so much sugar that he had Trogglified into a stinky, greasy-haired, moulding slime ball of a creature.
The pixie grabbed himself by the throat and flung himself about as hard as he could. It was something the pixie did quite often. Attack himself, that is. When he got stuff wrong. Pointless, of course. But rather typical of this particular pixie.
He couldn't believe he'd let himself get distracted, AGAIN, instead of keeping an eye on Ella! Especially since he knew that Ella was determined to remember how to get her wings to unfurl before the Skateboarding Championships at the end of term, which was only a couple of weeks away.
Hearing the sounds of a struggle in the grass, Ella's new
friend Samantha Wallow stopped instructing Ella and turned her face, its delicate features and slanting turquoise eyes framed by a halo of tight blond curls, to the noise.
âHello?' Samantha called, tripping backwards over her spindly feet and landing flat on the ground.
The Troggle, hearing the voice, froze and tried to blend into the shadows of the undergrowth.
âDid you say GO?' called Ella, unable to make out her friend's words from her precarious spot on the top of the outhouse.
Neither Samantha nor the pixie had time to right themselves before Ella launched herself into the air.
âNooooooo,' they called in unison as she threw her waifish body over the side and dropped, like a hacky sack, into the bushes below.
The Troggle, believing himself to have been spotted spying on Ella, panicked. Tearing the hood of his cloak from the invisible something he was stuck to, the Troggle took off across the grounds of Hedgeberry as fast as his short legs in their hobnailed boots could carry him. The Grand Duke's instructions had been to keep a vigilant eye on Ella at all times, but most importantly to not get caught.
Ella was not just a Flitterwig, you see. She was much, much
more than that. She was the most important Flitterwig alive. The Clearheart. A Flitterwig so pure of thought and action that she could perform and command magic in a way that no other Flitterwig could. And it was precisely these qualities that the exiled Grand Elf Duke of the Magical Kingdom of Magus was after.
The pixie, too perturbed by his friend's fall to notice the Troggle, stood up, detached his hands from his throat, and ran in the direction of the bushes that had broken Ella's fall.
By the time he reached her, Samantha was already by her side, rubbing a bump on Ella's forehead with her fine fingers. The bump began to disappear. Being a Sprite Flitterwig meant that Samantha was particularly adept at healing. Ella touched her friend's hand gratefully.
Flinging himself up onto her chest, the pixie looked down at Ella, his eyes so wide with concern that they almost overtook his green visage entirely.
âAre you all right? Fright. Rhymes with flight?' he asked gently.
Ella's eyes had gone all fuzzy with the fall and she could feel an asthma attack coming on. She lifted her head out of the bushes.
âHello, Dixon,' she mumbled to the pixie peering at her. âDid my wings appear?' she asked Samantha, before her head lolled back and she collapsed in a faint.
Dixon put his hands on his hips and frowned at Samantha as ferociously as he could, which wasn't very ferociously at all, being a pixie and all.
Samantha peered at him guiltily and set about examining Ella's body, in order to heal her. She whispered magical words as she tweaked her ear with one slim hand and laid the other upon Ella.
âHow many times have I told you she can't remember how to fly? Fly. Fly. Rhymes with eye,' the pixie remonstrated. âCan't even make her wings appear. Dear.'
âI know,' said Samantha, her voice humming with guilt. âBut the Skateboarding Championships are only two weeks away, and without her wings she doesn't have a chance.'
Dixon looked about for Charlie Snoppit. Charlie knew very well that, as Ella's Goblin Flitterwig Protector, it was his job in life to protect the Elven Flitterwig from danger at all times but, as usual, the boy was nowhere to be seen. Dillydallying
about with his froggy friend, no doubt. How in Magic's name was Dixon ever going to get back to work, if no-one on Earth seemed to know how to behave?
As Ella came to, Dixon smiled at her indulgently, unable to hide his affection for her.
âWell, at least you're okay,' he said, spreading his body across her face in a pixie embrace. âPhew, phew. Rhymes with flew,' he sighed as his friend rolled her eyes and plopped her head back into the soft mattress of the bushes in defeat.
Bells rang in the distance. Bluebells, as a matter of fact. It was time for class.
âBetter get off to Transportics,' said Samantha, grateful for the distraction. Smiling as ingratiatingly as she could at the pixie, she hauled Ella up out of the bushes, trying hard not to trip over. Dixon clung tight to the straps of Ella's dungarees and tucked himself into her front pocket.
It was always the same, Dixon thought as the three of them crossed the lawn and made their way to class. If he left her for a moment, Ella would try to fly. It frustrated the pixie no end. When would she realise that she was
the most important
Flitterwig on Earth? The one who had bridged the divide between pure Magicals like himself (real, tiny pixies, elves, sylphs, sprites, brownies and the like) and human-sized Flitterwigs. It was
because of her, after all, that the Queen of Magus had lifted the Ban on contact between Magicals and Flitterwigs. They both knew this was a secret they were bound to keep now that Ella was at school with other Flitterwigs. So why, oh why did the child think that being able to enter the Skateboarding Championships was so much more important than keeping herself safe?
Gloria Ulnus, Hedgeberry Lower School's reigning Skateboarding Champion, watched from the shadows of the invisible oak, leaning against it, for it was visible to her. Her dark eyes peered snootily down her pointy-up nose as Samantha helped Ella hobble back across the grounds. She sniggered to herself.
âShe doesn't have a chance,' said Gloria to the tree, for she was a Dryad Flitterwig and therefore had a deep affinity with all things treelike. âWhat was that nasty little black creature that just got caught on you?' she asked the tree. The leaves of the tree whispered their rustling answer to the child, obliged as it was to always tell Dryad Flitterwigs the truth.
âA Troggle?' said Gloria. âWhat on Earth is that?'