26

Books can teach you only so much. Ophelia had been subjected to endless tocks of training, reading manual after manual and poring over pictures, but sometimes you can learn about a thing only by experiencing it firsthand.

And sometimes you had to get those hands dirty.

No one had ever bothered to teach Ophelia that there was treasure to be had in trash cans (outside of broken turkey bones, of course). She wasn’t trained to be a Scavenger. They certainly hadn’t told her that it was possible to find doughnuts in the garbage. Such a ludicrous thought. Who would throw away doughnuts?

And yet, here they were. A whole box of them sitting near the top of the plastic bin, beckoning with sugary promises that made her mouth water. Granted, it hadn’t been easy getting up there. Ophelia wasn’t at all ready to risk flying and further injuring her wing, so instead she carefully perched on Sam’s nose and he leapt up, putting his front paws as high as possible.

“Excuse me,” Ophelia said to the circle of bees who were dutifully fulfilling their own mission: Operation Feed the Queen. “Do you mind sharing?”

The bees, perhaps noting some distant kinship with another winged creature, simply nodded. Not much for conversation, bees. Great dancers, though. Ophelia stared greedily at the box that had come open when it was dumped. Its contents appeared untouched, though she was certain the bees had put their hairy mitts all over them. Half of the doughnuts glistened with glaze, and the other half were coated in white frosting like a crust of hard-packed snow on a mountain’s peak. Ophelia carefully lowered herself over the lip of the bin onto the box and took a deep breath. Garbage never smelled so good.

“Regular or frosted?” she called out to Sam.

“I don’t know. Which one is better?” he barked, the tip of his nose just peeking out over the edge.

“You really can’t go wrong.”

In the end she tossed over one of each for him, getting sugar flakes all over the front of her uniform, which was annoying but would be worth it. Then she took another white frosted for herself, heaving it up over the side before climbing back onto Sam’s snout and hanging on tight as he lowered her down. Both of the frosted doughnuts had hit the asphalt frosting side down and all three were covered in grit, but that didn’t stop Sam, and it wouldn’t stop her either.

“Oh,” he said, woofing down his first in three bites. “Oh. Yes. You were right. This is so much better than dead stuff.”

“Told you so,” Ophelia said, carefully picking out the tiny rocks and bits of dirt from the top of hers and then daintily tearing off handfuls with only her fingertips, already sticky. The doughnuts were stale—there had to be some reason they were thrown out—but even an old doughnut with enough frosting is better than most other things she could imagine. Ophelia broke off another piece and let it slowly dissolve on her tongue, the glaze going straight to her head, making her dizzy. “How did you know these would even be back here?” she asked.

Sam had moved on to his second now and was devouring it with as little chewing as possible. Ophelia wondered why nature bothered giving dogs so many teeth when they didn’t seem at all interested in using them. “Trash is sometimes all there is to eat,” Sam replied.

Ophelia paused mid-bite and looked hard at the mutt, wondering just how long he’d been out here on his own. Long enough to learn to check behind the backs of restaurants and bakeries for food. Ophelia had been beyond the borders of the Haven for only less than a day, and it had nearly killed her. Twice. The dog might not be the brightest star in the sky, but he was a survivor.

“What happened to you, Sam?” Ophelia asked. “Where’s your master? The one you told me about?”

“Master? Oh. Yes. That is a sad story. Do you want to hear it?” Ophelia nodded. Sam licked his chops. “It was many days ago. We were going Out in Truck. We’d gone Out lots of times before. Master always let me stick my head through Truck’s window. This time was different though. He kept Truck all closed up. And I could tell we were going someplace really far away. Then Truck stopped and Master told me, ‘Get out,’ so I did. Then Truck went away and I lost him,” he concluded. “Or he lost me.”

Ophelia nodded. So that was it. He had been abandoned. She reached out and stroked behind his ear with her sticky hand. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Oh, don’t be sorry,” Sam barked brightly. “If I hadn’t lost Master, I might not have found you. And we might not have found doughnuts.”

Ophelia looked down at the last half of doughnut in her lap. “I think I’m full,” she said. “You want the rest?”

The tongue eagerly flopping out of Sam’s mouth was answer enough.

While he scarfed down her other half, Ophelia twisted to inspect her busted wing. The pain had subsided somewhat—provided she didn’t try to move it too much—but it was still a mess. Fairies were notoriously quick healers, but not that quick. Not matter-of-hours quick. She needed to bandage it and brace it, make a splint of some sort to make sure it healed right. She didn’t want to go through the rest of her life with a bent wing. She’d fly sideways or do barrel rolls the whole time she was skybound.

Sam must have noticed her looking, because he whimpered and nuzzled her torn wing gently. For a second she worried he was going to try to lick her again, but he’d learned his lesson the first time. “You are sad,” he said.

Ophelia sighed. “I’m not sad. I’m worried. There’s a difference.”

“You are worried about your wing.”

“I’m worried about my wish. I’ve got to find it, Sam. I’m a Granter. It’s my job. If I don’t find it, then I might not be able to stay a Granter any longer.” And that is only the half of it, she thought. The whole Haven was counting on her, but she didn’t feel like explaining it all.

“Oh,” Sam said. He seemed to consider this a moment, then swished his tail along the ground. “What’s a wish again?”

“A wish is something you want really badly but is often too difficult for you to get yourself,” she explained. “It’s a magical thing. A rare thing. And somehow I lost one.” My first one, no less.

Sam looked confused. “What does it look like?”

Ophelia shook her head. “You can’t see it. Besides, it’s not really the wish we are looking for. The wish is embedded.”

“It’s sleeping?”

“Not in bed. Embedded. It’s attached to something. An object. This particular wish was made on a coin,” she explained. “I need the coin if I’m going to make the wish come true. That’s just how it works. Unfortunately the coin was taken before I could finish the granting.”

Sam nodded as if he understood completely. “Like the bone,” he said.

“The bone?”

“Oh yes. It was a big bone. Master’s friend gave it to me. Master’s friend was nice. I chewed and I chewed and I chewed, but I couldn’t finish it, so I buried it by a tree. But when I went back the next day the hole was empty and the bone was gone. Like your wish.”

“Yeah, something like that,” Ophelia said.

“Empty holes are the worst,” Sam added. He licked his jowls, making sure he got every last flake of hardened glaze. “So what is it for?”

“What?”

“The wish. Is it yours? Did you make it?”

“Fairies can’t make wishes,” Ophelia said. “We’re not allowed.” And what could we possibly want? Everything she needed, the Haven provided—minus an unlimited supply of magic, of course. But you can’t use magic to produce more magic; no such thing as wishing for more wishes. “It’s for a girl. Her name is Kasarah. She wants a bike. A purple one.”

“Oh. I see.” Sam nodded. “What’s a bike?”

Ophelia shrugged. “It’s like Truck, I guess,” she said. “Except with only two wheels. You ride it.” Sort of like what I’ve been doing with you, she thought, picturing what she must look like astride Sam’s back, arms flung around his neck, though thankfully she didn’t have to pedal to make him move. Just scratch behind his ears.

“Is she your friend?” Sam asked.

He meant Kasarah. Ophelia shook her head. “No. She’s just a name picked at random out of a tree.”

“Oh,” Sam said, sounding even more confused and uncertain than before. She could guess what he was thinking: This is a long way to go for a name picked out of a tree. Or maybe that was just her. So much trouble already for someone she didn’t even know, had never even met and probably never would.

It will be worth it, she reminded herself. And it’s not as if she had a choice. She thought of the sign in the lobby of Grant Tower. Every wish granted. Every promise fulfilled. The leaves fall, the Granters fulfill, the magic keeps flowing, and the Haven endures. That’s how it had been for over a hundred years, and she would rather break both her wings than be the first fairy to let her people down.

Ophelia stood up and looked around, trying to get her bearings again. She had a sense of what direction the wish had been traveling when she and Sam took their detour, but the whisper was weak—impossible to get a proper fix on. There were too many other noises down here. The buzz of the swarm of bees by the trash can, the hum of the metal box by the building, the sound of the cars driving by, the steady thwap thwap thwap of Sam’s tail against the pavement. She couldn’t concentrate.

She spotted a line of trees not too far from where they sat, a small woods that had somehow resisted being chopped down to make room for banks and coffee shops. One in particular, an old white oak that topped out over the others, looked promising. If she could get to the top of it, maybe she could focus and pick up on the wish’s trace. Up among the trees, the magic might speak stronger.

Except what would normally be an easy flight, barely a jump to the top, now looked like an arduous task. She pointed it out to Sam. “I’m going to climb to the top of that big tree and see what I can see,” she said.

“Then I will pee on a different one,” Sam declared, which was more information than she needed. He bent down so she could saddle up again, then carried her toward the little woods, dropping her off by the old oak before finding another one for his business.

Ophelia looked up. She had never climbed a tree before—why climb when you can fly—but how hard could it be? Cats could do it. And monkeys. Ants. Spiders. Even snails could make it up—albeit slowly, and only because they were so repulsively sticky.

Sticky.

Ophelia glanced down at her still slightly sugary fingers—not nearly tacky enough for gripping tree bark. But she knew what might be. She opened her mostly empty pack and found her roll of Super Silver Sticky Strips, peeling them off and attaching them, one by one, sticky side out, to her boots. She secured them along the side with even more strips until the she had used up the whole roll, but by the end her boots had practically changed color, shining bright in the sunlight.

“What are you doing?” Sam asked, returning after having found three or four different trees that suited him.

“Believe it or not, I’m making something,” she said. “It’s not really a talent of mine. I’m no Builder. But I think this might just work.” She finished attaching the tape to her second boot, then tested them out by standing up. She wouldn’t be able to hang upside down from a branch by her feet or anything, but the newly modded boots should provide some additional traction. “Just wait here and watch over my bag,” she said, setting her satchel by Sam’s paw. Then she started up.

It really wasn’t as hard as she expected—the advantage of small hands and nimble fingers, capable of digging into the fissures of the tree’s thick bark. Her sticky feet found more purchase than they would have otherwise, but she still found that most of her progress came from pulling herself up, finding twigs and branches that she could use as ladder rungs. Once she got high enough, the branches became much more plentiful. Her left shoulder was starting to throb again, and she wondered if this would even be worth it. What did she expect to find up there? Did she really think she was close enough to spot the coin? That she could catch the glimmer of its halo or even hear Kasarah’s wistful voice from this far away? But she had to try. Branch by branch, hand over hand, she scrabbled her way up to the top of the white oak, finally breaking free of its tufted top growth, crawling on her hands and knees along one of its flimsy upper branches to get the best possible view.

Ophelia sighed.

There wasn’t much to see. Mostly grays and beiges and blacks. Houses and towers and roads. Far off she could make out a line of rectangles that was probably an even bigger city.

Back in the Haven, in the Tree Tops where she lived, you could look out and see the mountains. Endless, undulating waves of green and the wispy smoke of fog settled over everything like cotton stretched thin. In the fall you could see the sunset captured by the tree leaves, rust-colored oranges blending with lemony yellows and crackling reds. It was a breath-hitching moment, every time.

This was mostly buildings and streets. Nowhere did she catch the sparkle, the faint glow of Kasarah’s nickel pulsing with promised magic. But maybe, just maybe, she could hear it.

She closed her eyes and let the wind whip around her, rifling through the leaves whose stems she held on to, feeling the branch sway and bend. What she wanted, what she wanted more than anything right now? Just a sign. Anything. She bit down hard on her lip again, tasting coppery blood, probably from the same spot as before.

Then she heard it. Coming from far off to her right.

I wish.

Her heart leapt. That was it. She’d found it. It was still within reach.

I wish.

And then another sound.

A piercing caw.

Followed by the beat of wings.

And Ophelia felt her breath squeezed out of her.