9781416998136

The third in a series of books about Willow's adventures as she masters her secret fairy powers, navigates sprite training, tries to ignore her perfect older sister, and maintains a friendship with Katie, the most un-normal of humans. Willow Avery seems to be advancing in her fairy training with alarming speed. In addition to being able to talk to animals (a very unusual power), she can also fly! But it isn't all good news. Willow's human bff, Katie, has discovered that fairies exist and that's put the Averys in a difficult position. They're under review from the Fairy Council as to what humans' knowledge of fairies could mean. Meanwhile, Willow is entering the school science fair and she's vowed not to use her magic to help her win. So she tests different methods of watering plants the old fashioned way: trial and error. However, a vindictive garden gnome, Jakob DeGroot, is appalled at her plant abuse and does everything in his power to thwart her science project. Of course, drama continues with Bethany and Katie, and new crush Nathan at school. And it looks like Jakob might be meddling with her human classmates' projects too! Can Willow stop the meddling gnome and still be able to compete--all without magic?

Eileen Cook spent most of her teen years wishing she were someone else or somewhere else, which is great training for a writer. She is the author of The Almost Truth, Unraveling Isobel, The Education of Hailey Kendrick, Getting Revenge on Lauren Wood, and What Would Emma Do? as well as the Fourth Grade Fairy series. She lives in Vancouver with her husband and dogs. Visit her at EileenCook.com.

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one

Being able to shrink down and fly:

It’s a fact well-known by little sisters everywhere, that if you sister doesn’t want you around, it is because she is either a) doing something really cool and thinks you’ll ruin it, or b) doing something she shouldn’t. My sister, Lucinda, had made this big deal about how she couldn’t be disturbed because she was working on a school project, but it didn’t seem to me that homework was her focus. She just didn’t want me around.

My sister had invited over Evan, who was a year ahead of her in school, to help with a project. Of course it wasn’t any type of normal school project. My family are fairies, fairy godmothers to be exact. I didn’t always fit in because I’m more interested in humdrums—aka humans—than magic. I’d even convinced my parents to send me to Riverside Elementary School where I made a humdrum best friend. I might not be as interested in magic as my sister, but even I knew Lucinda wasn’t that interested in getting an A in her potions class. Evan might be good with potions, but I was pretty sure the real reason my sister wanted him to come over was because he was the cutest fairy at Cottingley Fairy Academy. He had dark curly hair that always seemed just a little too long, so he always had to push it out of his eyes. He had this way of smiling where his mouth curved up on one side and his left eye closed a bit like he was winking at you. As soon as he arrived, Lucinda had dragged him into the living room and made my mom promise that Katie and I wouldn’t be allowed in because they had to work to do.

This was totally unfair because you could tell that Evan wanted to talk to Katie and me. Almost everyone in the fairy community was fascinated to find out I had a real, live, humdrum friend. For centuries fairies have lived secretly among humdrums. I was supposed to keep the fact I was a fairy a secret in my humdrum school, but my friend Katie had figured it out. Katie wants to be a detective. And an astronaut. And to win an Olympic gold medal for gymnastics. My best friend is very talented.

She’s also nosy. Katie had noticed there were a lot of things about my family and me that didn’t make sense. Like the fact I had conversations with my dog. Of course she could only hear my side, but Winston and I had full conversations, although sometimes he did a lot more talking at me than with me. She thought we might be spies, but when she found out the truth about us being magical she decided that was even cooler. Some fairies were worried that humdrums wouldn’t be able to cope with knowing that fairies really existed, but Katie jumped right in and helped me grant my first wish. She wasn’t even freaked out by the Tooth Fairy, and trust me, a tooth fairy can be a bit intimidating.

There was something else special about having Katie as a best friend. Once Katie knew that I was a fairy, things started to change. I started to change. My grandma thought it had something to do with having humdrums believe in magic again. She thought maybe we need someone to believe in us in order to keep our magical abilities strong. Fairies can do all kinds of magic spells, but we each have only one special magic talent. Mine is talking to animals, which—I don’t want to brag or anything, but—is pretty cool.

The weird thing was that once Katie knew I was a fairy I got a second magical ability. I could fly. To be technical about it, I floated first, and I didn’t have any control over it. It just happened—and in the middle of a humdrum wedding, too. I quickly learned how to control it, because shrinking down to the size of a bug and flying around like a giant bumblebee isn’t something you want to do willy-nilly. If I wanted to fly all I had to do was concentrate on the idea and think light thoughts. It felt funny, sort of tingly, but shrinking down didn’t hurt, and being able to stretch out the tiny wings hidden under my shoulder blades felt great. (If you don’t stretch them every so often they can cramp.) I couldn’t keep the fact that I was flying secret from my parents. They might not have realized I was floating as long as I stayed pretty close to the ground, but when I started shrinking down like a sparkling, glowing firefly they were bound to notice.

Once my parents knew I could fly, they wanted to know how I came to be the first fairy who had two magical powers. I had to tell them about Katie. This past week my parents and grandma had been going to meetings with the Fairy Council. Everyone was trying to figure out what it meant that our secret was out. There was now a humdrum who knew there were fairies. My sister didn’t spend her time worrying about how our whole society might change. She spent the past week talking about how it wasn’t fair that I could fly since that was her thing. (As if she invented flying!) I spent my week trying to figure out the tricks of flying, like how to keep from bumping into the walls. Once I sneezed midflight and shot all the way across the room like a rocket. Turns out flying is more complicated than it looks.

So even though my sister said Evan came by to help with her homework, I knew it was likely he came to see Katie and me. After all, knowing a humdrum is a pretty big deal. My mom caught us staring out through the railing of the staircase into the living room trying to get a view of Evan. She shooed us back to my room, saying they needed their privacy. I tried pointing out that we weren’t in the living room, or bothering them, but she still made us leave.

Katie flopped across my bed, nearly landing on my dog, Winston, who had been sleeping under the covers. “I want to visit the Fairy Academy if there are boys who look like that!”

“You should see Evan play draolo. He’s amazing,” I said.