Lily's Pesky Plant (4 page)

B
Y AFTERNOON, PINK
pollen covered Pixie Hollow. It floated in the fairies’ chestnut soup at lunch. It stuck in their hair. It gummed up their wings. And, of course, it made everyone sneeze.

Iris made
tsk-tsk
noises from her spot on the toadstool. “I told you not to plant that seed without knowing anything about it,” she said. She sneezed twice and blew her nose, then looked thoughtfully at the plant. “Still,” she added, “it
is
a most extraordinary plant.”

Lily frowned at her, but Iris didn’t notice. She had already gone back to scribbling in her book.

Just then, a fairy bolted into the garden. She screeched to a stop right in front of Lily. It was Vidia. And she looked furious.

“You should have uprooted that…that
thing
when it was a sprout,” Vidia snarled. As she spoke, she tried to shake the sticky pollen from her wings. Vidia despised anything that kept her from flying fast. She was so angry, she hadn’t even bothered to call Lily dear or darling.

“Here, let me wash your wings, Vidia,” Lily said. It was a special kindness to offer to wash another fairy’s wings. Lily felt sorry that Vidia was so upset, and it was her way of saying so.

“
I’m
the only fairy who touches my wings,” Vidia snapped. She turned and pointed at the tree. “If
you
won’t cut it down, I
will
. I’m sure one of the carpenter-talent fairies would be happy to loan me an axe.”

And for what might have been the first time in the history of Pixie Hollow, many of the fairies agreed with Vidia. All afternoon, fairies came to Lily to complain about the plant.

“
Ah-choo!
I’ve had to throw out three acorn puffs,” Dulcie told Lily. “Every time I…I…I—
ah-choo!
—sneeze, the puffs collapse! If there’s nothing to eat at dinner tonight, you can blame that plant of yours.”

Even Terence, a normally cheerful dust-talent sparrow man, was troubled. “That pink stuff has gotten mixed in with the fairy dust,” he told Lily. “It’s messing up everyone’s magic. The music-talent fairies’ instruments will only play in the key of B minor. And the laundry fairies haven’t been able to do the wash. Their soap went haywire and the washroom is eight inches deep in bubbles! Before you know it,” he added grimly, “we won’t even be able to fly.”

Later, Lily found a quiet patch of clover and sat down alone. All day, not a single fairy had come to smell the roses or walk among the flowers of her garden. They had come only to complain.

Bumble saw Lily’s slumped shoulders and sad expression. He flew over to her and gently bumped her arm.

When Lily didn’t respond, Bumble flew in crazy loops and zigzags. He was pretending he’d had too much pollen. Usually that made Lily laugh.

But Lily didn’t even smile. “Not now, Bumble,” she said with a sigh.

Lily saw Iris flying toward her. Lily wished she would go away. She didn’t need to hear another “I told you so.”

“What a day, huh?” Iris said as she landed in front of Lily.

Lily shrugged.

“Look on the bright side, Lily,” Iris said. She sat down beside her in the clover. “Everyone’s nose is so stuffed up, no one can
smell
those stinky flowers anymore.”

Lily laughed. But a second later her smile faded.

“All the other fairies want me to fix the plant,” she told Iris. “But what can I do? Can you stop the clouds from raining? Can you stop the wind from blowing? The plant is just doing what it normally does.”

She glanced over at the plant. Despite its ugliness, awful smell, and itchy pollen, there was something special about it.

“The thing is,” Lily added, “I think there’s more to it than just what we’ve seen.”

Iris nodded. “I feel the same way.” A look of alarm crossed her face as another thought occurred to her. “Do you think it could be something bad?” she asked. “After all, it’s already caused so much trouble.…”

Lily shook her head. “I don’t think so. I always know when there’s real trouble, because the plants in my garden tell me,” she explained. “When they’re tense, I know a big storm is coming. If there’s a fire anywhere in the forest, my flowers let me know even before I can smell smoke. But since I planted that strange seed in my garden, the other plants seem as happy and healthy as ever.”

Iris looked around. It was true. The garden was bursting with color. Even the leaves of the clover they were sitting in seemed greener and fuller than usual.

“If the plant were really bad, my garden wouldn’t look so good.” Lily sighed. “But all the other fairies are so angry with me. I don’t know what to do. I want the plants in my garden to make other fairies happy, not miserable.”

“They make me happy,” Iris said quietly. She looked down and plucked at a cloverleaf. Then she said, “I should have stood up for our plant that day when the wasps came. It was wrong that I didn’t.”

Lily looked at her and knew that she meant it.

“It’s okay,” she said.

“I like gardening with you,” Iris went on. “None of the other garden fairies like to have me in their gardens. I know what they say behind my back, you know. They say I’m incomplete.”

Lily swallowed hard. Before fairies became fairies, they were laughs. But sometimes a bit of laugh broke off and the fairy ended up with something missing. A fairy like that was called “incomplete.”

Lily had heard other garden fairies say that about Iris. She hadn’t realized that Iris had heard it as well. Suddenly, she felt sorry about the times when she’d wished Iris would go away.

“You’re not incomplete,” Lily told her.

“Maybe I am,” Iris said. “I love plants as much as any garden fairy. But growing them doesn’t come naturally to me the way it does to you. You know, I fibbed about the buttercups in my garden. They weren’t as big as soup pots. In fact, they weren’t very big at all.”

Lily looked surprised. Iris had always made a big deal about her garden.

Iris nodded, ashamed. “I could never keep things straight in my head. Which plants need shade, which like more sun. Which plants like to be watered in the morning, and which like water at night. That’s why I started to write things down. Then I got carried away. I started to write down everything I’d ever heard about all the plants in Never Land.” She shook her head. “But I guess it’s not the same as having a garden.”

Lily thought about this for a moment. Then she smiled. “You do have a garden,” she said.

Iris looked confused.

“Right here.” Lily tapped the cover of Iris’s plant book. “Your garden is on these pages. I’ll bet it has more plants than any garden in Pixie Hollow.”

Now Iris smiled. For a while, the two fairies sat quietly with their arms hooked around their knees. They looked up at the strange, ugly plant.

“There
is
something special about that plant,” Iris said at last.

“What is that?” asked Lily.

“It made us friends,” Iris replied.

That night after dinner, Lily went once more to her garden. She stood for a long time looking at the mysterious plant.

“Where did you come from?” she murmured. “What are you? Why are you causing so many problems?”

A breeze blew. A few more grains of pollen drifted down from the flower. Lily sneezed three times in a row.
Ah-choo! Ah-choo! Ah-choo!

The wind shifted, and suddenly Lily sensed a change in the garden. The buttercups, the grass, the lavender, even the mysterious plant all seemed alert. It was as if they were waiting for something.

A raindrop fell from the sky. It landed on Lily’s head, soaking her hair. More raindrops splashed on the ground around her.

Rain! Around Lily, the plants began to perk up. This was what they had been waiting for.

The rain came down harder. Lily stretched out her arms and let herself get drenched. The rain washed the pink pollen out of her hair and off her skin.

By the time Lily left the garden, her wings were too wet to fly. She had to walk all the way back to the Home Tree. But she didn’t mind.

That night, she stayed up late. She watched the rain from the window of her room. For the first time in days, Lily felt happy. The rain was scrubbing Pixie Hollow clean, washing all the pollen away.

L
ILY STARTED AWAKE
. Was it morning? No, her room was still dark. Glancing out her window, she could see that the sky was starting to turn gray. It was just before dawn.

Why did I wake up?
Lily wondered.

THUMP!
Something banged against her window.

Startled, Lily climbed out of bed. She crept over to her window and cautiously peered out.

THUMP!
A yellow and black shape threw itself against the window.

Lily quickly undid the latch. “Bumble!” she cried as the bee flew into the room. “What are you doing here? What’s wrong?”

Bumble buzzed urgently around her head. Then Lily heard a faint cry come through the open window.

“HEEEEEELP!”

Someone was in trouble! Without changing out of her nightclothes, Lily raced out of the Home Tree. Bumble followed on her heels.

Outside, she met up with Tinker Bell and Rani. They, too, had heard the cry.

“HEEEEEEELP!”

“It’s coming from over there,” said Tinker Bell. Tink’s hair, which normally she wore in a ponytail, was loose around her shoulders. Both Tink and Rani were still wearing their pajamas. Like Lily, they had come straight from their beds.

Bumble shot off in the direction Tink had pointed. The fairies followed him. The cries were coming from Lily’s garden.

When they got there, they saw Pell and Pluck, two harvest-talent fairies. They were dangling from the branches of the mysterious plant.

Pell and Pluck saw them, too. “Help us!” they cried.

Tink flew over and grabbed Pell’s hands. She tried to pull her away from the tree. But Pell’s wings seemed to be glued to the branch.

Tink looked closer. “They’re stuck in sap!” she cried. “We’ll need hot water to unstick them!”

Lily grabbed a watering can and ran over to the little stream. She filled it with water, then brought it to Rani. Rani sprinkled a pinch of fairy dust on the water and waved her hand over it. It began to steam.

Holding the watering can between them, Lily and Tink flew to Pell. Carefully, they poured the hot water over Pell’s wings. Slowly, the sap began to loosen. Tink grabbed Pell’s wrists.

Snap!
Pell’s wings came free and she dropped. Only Tink’s grip on her wrists kept her from falling. Carefully, Tink lowered her to the ground.

Then Tink and Lily flew to Pluck and freed her wings, too.

When both harvest-talent fairies were on the ground, Lily and Rani used more hot water to wash the rest of the sap from their wings. The sap was hard to scrub away, but luckily neither of the fairies’ wings had been hurt.

As Lily and Rani worked, Pell and Pluck talked over one another, explaining what had happened. “We woke up early—”

Pell began. “Like we always do—” Pluck added. “And came down to the garden to pick raspberries—”

“For breakfast, you know. The cooking fairies were going to make raspberry jam.”

“We were flying through the garden—”

“It was still dark out—”

“So we couldn’t see anything. And I accidentally bumped against that plant.”

“She got stuck!”

“I got stuck! And when Pluck tried to help me, she got stuck, too!”

“And then we heard an owl!”

“We couldn’t move.”

“We thought he’d catch us for sure!”

“We called and called. We were afraid no one would ever hear us.”

“It was so scary.”

Pell and Pluck stretched out their wet wings to dry. By now the sun was up. Still, they were shivering in the cool morning air.

“Rani,” said Lily, “will you go back to the Home Tree and get some hot tea and—”

“—blankets?” Rani nodded. She put her fingers to her lips and whistled for Brother Dove, who acted as Rani’s wings. When he came, Rani climbed on his back and they flew off.

Tink looked at Lily. “The other fairies are going to be upset,” she said.

Lily nodded. “I know.”

Tink gave Lily’s hand a squeeze.

Lily’s heart sank. She knew Tink meant to be comforting. But Lily knew what that little squeeze meant.

The worst was still to come.