T W E L V E

THEY THOUGHT the wand had fallen out of the carrier when they’d gone for Terence. Rani dived into the sea and spent half an hour looking for it without success.

There was nothing to do but turn the carrier back toward the mainland. Rani wondered if Tutupia would make them all disappear when she found out they’d lost a wand. Terence checked their supply of fairy dust. He doubted they had enough to go to the castle and then reach home.

Ree discovered her tiara was missing, too. She almost felt worse about it than about the wand. It was as though half her head had come off, or as if she no longer had a name.

One more thing was gone: wand madness.

At first they were too taken up with the lost wand to notice the change in themselves. But soon Tink remembered what she’d done to Peter. It was meaner than putting a dent in a pot on purpose, and a permanent dent at that.

Rani was still glad Soop was her friend, and she was still thrilled to fly again, but she felt with renewed force how disappointed in her Mother Dove was going to be. Ree wondered how she could have shrunk the hawks. What if they were all dead? What if everything inside them hadn’t fit into a quarter of an inch and they’d burst? And she’d wanted to be empress! She’d deserved to lose her tiara.

“If Tutupia gives us another wand,” Ree said, “let’s ask her to lock it in a box that only a mermaid can—”

“—open.” Rani wondered what a mermaid with wand madness would do.

After that, everyone quizzed Terence about the flood, but he’d been at the mill the whole time and had little information for them.

They pulled him in the balloon carrier until his wings dried. Then he sprinkled himself with fairy dust and joined them at the cord.

After that they should have made good progress, with four fairies pulling, but the wind was against them again.

Mother Dove’s nest was only nine inches above the water. Beck and Prilla and twelve more fairies came to move it to a higher branch. While they were airborne, Mother Dove cooed, “We’re going up, my love. Up!” Her voice caught. “You’re flying, dear.”

This was the closest her egg would ever come to flight.

Naturally, Vidia had the wand. She’d arrived while the questers were saving Terence. She’d viewed the unguarded carrier as a stroke of luck and hadn’t cared why.

Waving the wand, she’d said, “Wand, sweetheart, make me able to fly as fast as I want, as far as I want, as long as I want.”

Of course, she should have put the wand back, but she held on to it in case she needed to adjust her wish.

She felt a surge of strength in her shoulder blades. She began to fly and was easily able to achieve her ordinary top speed, then faster, smoothly faster.

Far above, a petrel crossed a cloud.

Catch it!

The bird squawked as she flashed by. She laughed at its surprise.

Faster!

The air stung her face and roared in her ears. This was what she’d always dreamed of.

Faster!

She raced toward the setting sun. Her ears smarted. She touched one and looked at her hand. Blood on her fingers.

Didn’t matter.

Faster!

There was the mainland. So soon. She zoomed over lakes, cities, deserts, mountains, canyons, plains, and back over the open sea.

Faster!

As she flew, she stroked the wand. “Dear wand. Sweet wand. Kind wand.”

She circled the world—three times. The sun rose and set thrice, although to the questers only half an hour had crawled by.

Vidia wasn’t breathing hard. Her lungs weren’t threatening to explode. Her heart wasn’t about to burst from her chest. This was heaven. She flew straight up toward the transparent daytime moon. When her hair and lips froze, she turned and dived back to earth.

There was nothing to it. She could fly infinitely fast. Infinitely! And there’d still be nothing to it.

The elation drained out of her. The strain of trying to fly faster was gone now, but so was the triumph of beating her own record, of eking another scintilla of speed out of her tired wings.

This effortless speed was boring.

She hovered in the midst of a high cloud. “I’m grateful, love,” she told the wand. “But now I need my old flying back. Wand, darling, make me fly as I used to, before my first command.” She waved it.

She felt no change. She flew and found there had been no change.

Maybe she’d phrased her wish incorrectly. “Dear Wand, I command you to make me fly no faster than the natural strength of my wings and my talent and fairy dust let me.” She waved it.

Nothing changed.

Vidia thought she might not be waving the wand hard enough. She waved it harder and longer.

Nothing changed.

“Wand, cutie pie, make me earn my speed.”

It wriggled, deep in a wandish dream.

What did the wriggle mean? “Are you listening, Wand?” She shook it. If it had had a neck, she would have strangled it.

She tried yet another wording. And another. And another.

She tried flicking the wand, flipping it, flapping it, wagging it, jiggling it.

She screamed. She wept.

Through the night she tried to reverse her wish. Her fairy dust ran out, but she no longer needed fairy dust to fly.

At dawn she admitted defeat.

She remembered Mother Dove’s warning—that her wish would break her heart.