THREE

A BREEZE WHIPPED by Prilla’s ears, and a fairy flew into the courtyard. She was Vidia, the fastest of the fast-flying-talent fairies. She landed before Prilla, and smiled. Prilla didn’t like that sugary smile. Tink said, “Go away, Vidia.” Vidia said to Prilla, “Fly with you, dear child.”

“P-pleased to meet you.”

“Mmm. Incomplete, are we?” She leaned in close. “Dear child, if fast-flying is your talent, I have something that—”

“Vidia!” Tink said. She’d have to tell the queen about this. “You’d better—”

“Tink, darling…”

Prilla thought the darling sounded like a sneer.

“...you have no idea—”

A sparrow man shot straight up into the air. “Hawk! Hawk from the west!”

Tink shoved Prilla through the knothole door to the Home Tree. The other fairies flew into the lower branches.

Prilla and Tink watched the shadow of a bird cross the courtyard.

“That was a hawk?” Prilla said.

Tink nodded.

“Would it have eaten us?”

“If it was hungry.”

Hawks kill several fairies every year. Tink had had some close calls with them. She told Prilla, “Always keep a sharp eye out for hawks.”

Prilla shuddered. “When it’s safe, I’d like to thank that sparrow man. He saved us all.”

Tink tugged her bangs, irritated. Something was wrong with Prilla, and when something was wrong, Tink wanted to fix it. That’s why she loved repairing pots and pans. But she didn’t know how to fix Prilla. It was like having an itch she couldn’t reach. “Don’t thank him. He’s a scout.”

Prilla looked blank.

Tink thought, I’m going to pull every hair out of my head. “Scouting is his talent. Saving us was his joy.”

“I see,” said Prilla. But she didn’t.

Tink believed Prilla really had a talent but just didn’t know what it was. She looked down at Prilla’s hands. They were on the large side, but not too large. The child could be a pots-and-pans fairy. The strangest one ever.

Prilla was on the mainland again. She was on a breakfast table, next to a container of milk, eye-level with the words Dietary fiber 0g on the container.

A man stood at the stove, pouring coffee. A boy was eating a muffin. Prilla flew in front of the boy’s face, fascinated by his chewing.

“Look!” Crumbs and saliva shot out of his mouth. He lunged at Prilla. She retreated. He knocked over the milk.

She winked at him and was gone. Laughing, she told Tink, “I just saw a Clumsy spit out half a muffin.”

Tink pulled her bangs. “What Clumsy?”

“The one...” Prilla realized she’d said something wrong again. Didn’t Tink blink over to the mainland sometimes?

Of course Tink didn’t. Most fairies had no contact with Clumsy children (other than the lost boys), unless a fellow fairy was dying of disbelief.

Prilla changed the subject. “Are we inside the Home Tree?”

“This is the lobby,” Tink said, glad to talk about something reasonable.

The walls were golden brown, so highly buffed you could almost see your reflection.

Tink added proudly, “The walls are polished weekly, and it takes two dozen polishing-talent fairies to do it.”

Prilla wondered if polishing might be her talent.

Next to the knothole door was a brass directory that listed each fairy, along with her talent, her room, and her workshop, if she had a workshop.

“Your name will be up there, too,” Tink said, “in an hour or so, when the decor-talent fairies are through with your room.”

Prilla nodded. She’d be the only one without a talent next to her name.

The lobby floor was tiled in pearly mica. A spiral staircase rose to the second story, although the fairies used it only when their wings were wet and they couldn’t fly.

Four oval windows faced the courtyard.

“The windowpanes are reground pirate glass,” Tink said. She thought longingly of her leaky ladle.

A clatter and a bang and raised voices came from the corridor beyond the lobby.

Prilla turned to Tink for an explanation.

Tink’s heart raced. Something might have broken that she could fix. “Would you like to see the kitchen?”

“Can I?” Maybe she would have a talent for something there.

Tink had the same thought. Maybe she could leave Prilla in the kitchen and get back to her workshop. Or, if a pot really had broken, Tink could find out right there if Prilla had any talent for fixing it.

“Come,” Tink said.

Prilla followed her into the corridor, which was lined with paintings of the symbols for each talent—a feather for the fairy-dust talent, a dented stew pot for the pots-and-pans talent, the sun for the light talent. Prilla wondered what the painting of a nose and half a mustache stood for.

Tink patted the gilded frame of the stew-pot painting as she flew by. Then she turned in to the first doorway they came to. Prilla followed and smelled nutmeg. Her stomach rumbled. It had never done that before, and she wondered what it meant.

“This is the tearoom,” Tink said. “It’s Queen Ree’s favorite room.” Ree was the fairies’ nickname for Queen Clarion. “You’ll meet Ree at the celebration tonight.”

Meet the queen! Prilla’s glow flared. The queen!

Prilla studied the tearoom, looking for clues to Queen Ree in her favorite room. The mood was serene, the colors muted. The narrow windows stretched from a few inches above the floral carpet to the lofty ceiling, fifteen inches away. The daylight, filtered through maple leaves outside and Queen-Anne’s-lace curtains inside, was the same green as the Never pale-grass wallpaper.

Tink added, “It’s nice, but I like more metal in a room.”

Most everyone took their tea later in the day. Now, only a few fairies sipped from the periwinkle teacups or ate crustless sandwiches on cockleshell plates. They watched Prilla with interest.

Prilla thought, I could take the crusts off the sandwich bread. I wouldn’t need much talent to have a talent for that.

Tink led her past a serving table holding a platter of star-shaped butter cookies, each point perfect and not a single one broken. Prilla would have liked to stop for a cookie, but Tink was hurrying ahead, so she decided she’d better not.

Tink pointed to an empty table under a silver chandelier. “I sit there with the rest of my talent.”

“The talents sit together?”

Tink nodded.

“So who…” Prilla trailed off. She’d been about to ask who sat with you if you didn’t have a talent. But she knew the answer. Nobody. You sat alone.