The sun had set when we finished eating the amazing meal. (I wished that I hadn’t had all that fruit on the way there!) I had never eaten so much in my life and was feeling a little sleepy. Kerka and I talked to the fairy queen about our families … well, mostly I talked, for once.
When the last of the glass plates was cleared, the queen rang the little bell again, and silence fell. From beneath the blossoms of a lone magnolia tree to one side of the fairy ring, a fairy all dressed in spring green approached, holding something bulky—it was The Book of Dreams! Rose and lilac petals fell like snow as she headed toward us and handed the book to Queen Patchouli. The book was as yellowed and tattered and mysterious as it had been when it appeared on my mom’s old bed.
“Let us begin, shall we?” said Patchouli, laying both hands on the book. “Everyone close your eyes, except Birdie. You too, Kerka.” Patchouli lifted her hands from the front cover, and the book opened by itself, flipping page after page until it stopped. “Here we are. Emma’s dream,” she said as she slid the book over to me.
My mother? I thought in amazement.
“She wrote this many years ago,” said the fairy queen, as if she’d heard my question. “It will begin your understanding of why you are here and what you must do.”
Queen P. rang the glass bell, and as the sound rang out, a shimmering lavender mist gathered over Kerka and the fairies. I smelled lilacs.
I looked down to see my mother’s own handwriting on the page of the book, but it was curlier, more artistic, as if she had been experimenting with calligraphy and enjoying the shape of every letter.
“Read, Birdie,” Queen Patchouli said.
And I did.
My heart ached for the girl who was now my mother. I actually understood what she’d been feeling. “What did she decide?” I asked in a whisper. “What did she do?”
The queen shook her head sadly at me and then rang the glass bell. The shimmering mist melted away. The fairies opened their eyes, nodding to each other as if they knew something now.
I looked at Kerka. She was blinking dreamily.
“I saw a page from The Book of Dreams in my head,” Kerka said. “A girl named Emma wrote it.”
“That’s my mother,” I said.
“Each girl who comes to Aventurine has the opportunity to make a difference here … and in what you call the real world,” said Queen Patchouli as she gently closed the book. “Now, Birdie, you have come on your own quest.”
“What exactly am I supposed to do?” I asked.
“You must find the other half of the Singing Stone, Birdie,” said the fairy queen.
“Okay, I guess I can do that. Do you know where the other half of the stone is?” I asked. “The flowers said that a flying shadow took it. And what does it have to do with my mother?”
“Fairies cannot follow shadows,” said Patchouli. “All we know is that the stone piece is somewhere in Aventurine. Your mother’s dream shows part of why this quest falls to you—it is your quest to find the other half of the stone and reclaim it for your family.”
“And if I find it, what will happen?” I asked.
All the fairies whispered excitedly as Queen Patchouli answered, “Harmony will be restored to a part of Aventurine that has been suffering, and harmony will be restored to your family.”
“And if I don’t find it?” I asked.
All the fairies went quiet. Then Queen Patchouli said, “Then you will not have fulfilled your destiny or your family’s, and it will mean terrible things for a special part of Aventurine. Terrible things for your grandmother’s garden, as well. And the bonds of your family will slowly wither away.”
“What?” I cried.
The fairy queen nodded, her eyes grave. “What has begun will be finished.” She shook the glass bell once more.
My eyes closed heavily. Images rushed before me: the rotted spot on the Glimmer Tree, the notes dancing around on Mo’s sheet music and floors and walls, my mother’s journal entry.
“How did the stone break?” I asked, my eyes still closed, hoping for a glimpse of the stone’s past. I knew exactly where in Aventurine it had been broken, from the Agminiums’ story, but I didn’t know if someone had thrown it, or dropped it, or … ?
“How does not matter,” said the queen. “What matters is that you are the only hope for the healing of the Singing Stone, the gardens, the Glimmer Tree, and your family.”
“I’m the only hope?” I asked, pulling my velvet cloak tight.
“It is time now for you to sleep and dream,” said the fairy queen. “The dreaming may help you. Or it may not. You do have some power to choose your dream as you add it to the Book.”
My eyes shot open. Had I been sleeping? I sat up, pushing back light cotton sheets. I was wearing a spring green nightgown embroidered with daisies. This wasn’t mine! I looked at the bed: It was carved with leaves and flowers and the same old woman’s face that had been on the wardrobe. She smiled at me and nodded from out of the bed frame.
Clearly, I was still in Aventurine but maybe sleeping or dreaming? The fairies must have put me to bed and made bedroom walls from white curtains that hung from nothing that I could see. Above, the sky was dark as midnight, and the moon had a ring around it.
I was alone.
But something bright was flitting around my head. A firefly. It reminded me of the firefly in Dora’s journal entry.
“Hello,” I said. “Is this a dream now?”
The firefly stopped circling and hovered in front of my face. I gently cupped it in my hands. Its wings glistened with silvery flecks, and its little light was a phosphorescent gold.
“How am I supposed to find the other half of the stone?” I whispered. “Why am I the only hope for the Arbor Lineage to heal the green world?”
I looked around my little bedroom. A small table and chair were at the foot of the bed. On the table lay The Book of Dreams, the silver lettering on its cover shimmering in the moonlight.
Suddenly I felt a tingling in the center of my palm, where the firefly was. Then the golden glow from the firefly grew brighter and brighter, until it had thrown a halo around me. I got up from the carved bed and sat at the table, bathed in the firefly’s light.
Now I saw that beside the book there was a peacock feather with a pointed tip—a fancy quill pen. Next to the peacock quill was a shell with a silver lid. I took off the lid and saw that the shell was filled with silver ink.
The Book of Dreams opened all by itself to a blank page.
The fairies had given me a pen and ink, a blank page, and privacy. It was my turn to write. I picked up the feather.
I wondered if Emma had sat in this very spot when she had written in the book. And perhaps Dora and Mo had, too. How far back did my family go? Had all my ancestresses sat here and written their dreams? I tried to flip through the book to check, but the pages wouldn’t budge.
I sighed, and dipped the tip of the feather into the shell. I brought the tip out, and the silver ink shimmered in the moonlight. I wrote the date. It was going to be hard to write something, knowing that someday my own daughter—or granddaughter!—might read it.
I heard the breeze whoosh-whooshing through the gauze curtains. I heard whir-whirring in the willows and the firefly buzz-buzzing in front of me. My mind wandered into memory.
I remembered the tree house that Mom and I built when I was little. We hammered planks onto the thick oak tree branches to make a sturdy floor that wouldn’t fly off when the Santa Ana winds blew.
“Sorry, tree,” we said every time we hit a nail.
“Is it okay, tree?” we’d ask, for permission.
My mom said that as long as we didn’t nail too deep and we only put in the few nails that were needed, the tree would be okay. I was so happy to be in a world of our own, just me and Mom and the big oak tree. I dreaded having to come down out of that tree house to go to school, to go to bed, to go back to regular life. I wanted to stay in that tree with my mom forever.
I found myself writing, images rising unbidden to my mind. And I described them. I didn’t mind that I had to dip the pen into the ink a lot. It left beautiful thick lines and slender curves, so my writing looked ancient and important. I put the pen down at the edge of the book, feeling a little strange. I closed my eyes to think. Where were these images coming from? Was I really dreaming, or was this some fairy magic?
I thought of how it felt as if Mom was deserting me when she first went back to work. Somehow her job had felt wrong to me, like she wasn’t being herself. I wouldn’t have minded her being away if she had been a gardener or a landscape architect. I had a vague recollection of my parents arguing about my mom’s job, but I can’t remember who was unhappy. Maybe they both were.
I opened my eyes. The firefly was hovering again. I picked up the feather pen and wrote.
Finally, I signed my name and set down the feather pen. I didn’t want to see any more. And I thought I understood now what the dream was saying—I hoped I understood. I looked around for the fairies or the fairy queen. The firefly whirred around the book.
I looked down at the page I had just written. My writing was now illustrated with drawings of the tree and the shadow! Not only that, pressed flowers were embedded in the paper, glitter made sparkling stars among the words, and bits of satin, lace, and ribbon bordered the pages. It was beautiful.
I pressed my hand on my page. The firefly’s glow faded. The moon was gone, and the sky was light purple.
It was time to go.
I found the opening in the curtains and walked into the fairy ring. It was empty: no tables, no fairies, nobody at all. I looked down, and I was wearing the clothes I’d chosen from the wardrobe again. I looked back. My fairy bedroom had been on the raised grassy circle where the queen’s table had been. I’d sat writing all night, or at least all of a fairy night. As I watched, the white curtains disappeared into the bright rays of the rising sun that shot through the willow trees. My firefly had disappeared as well.
I thought for a moment. What did I have to do?
I had to find Kerka. Then I needed to find the Shadow Tree. I walked to the edge of the circle and was trying to figure out which of the paths to take when Queen P. came down one of them. She was wearing a bathrobe (at least, I think it was a bathrobe) of flowered velvet tied with a white satin sash; her wings somehow came out of the robe, and her hair streamed to her knees.
The fairy queen smiled and nodded at me. “It went well, I see,” she said.
“I guess so,” I said, not really knowing how to describe the experience I’d just had. “Do you know where Kerka is?”
“Right here,” said the fairy queen, waving her hand behind her.
“Birdie!” called Kerka, striding into the fairy ring. She was licking what looked like an ice cream cone and holding another one. “Breakfast!” she explained, waving a cone. “Granola cone, mango yogurt ice. I have one for you. How’d you sleep? The fairies gave me the most incredible bed—”
“Kerka!” I interrupted her. “We have to go!”
“My mother used to say that breakfast was a must,” said Kerka with no sense of urgency at all. “Especially for girls who have things to do!” She held out the breakfast ice cream cone.
“She’s right, breakfast is a good idea,” said the fairy queen. “Plus, I need to give you something, Birdie.”
The firefly was flitting around me again, shining like a jewel. “There you are, sweet gift,” said Queen P., pointing to her right shoulder, where the firefly landed obediently. “Give me your hand,” said the queen. “And take the light.”
The fairy queen took my hand and moved it to her shoulder where the firefly sat. At once, the firefly landed on my finger. Its light moved into my finger and spread to my whole hand. The light, which glowed through my clothes, changed from pale yellow to gold as it traveled up my arm. I watched in wonder as it crept up my shoulder, turned a fiery copper, and then dropped to surround my heart.
“It’s called a heart gift,” the fairy queen explained. “A piece of magic from all the past fairy godmothers in your lineage is in it.”
I looked over at Kerka. She had finished her breakfast while the queen had done her magic. Kerka held the other cone out to me, only dripping a little.
“Oh, all right,” I said, taking it from her and smiling despite myself. Did it bother Kerka that I had gotten this amazing gift? “But we’re leaving as soon as I finish it.”
Luckily, Kerka didn’t seem bothered or jealous at all. “Where are we going?” she asked as I licked the ice cream cone.
“To find the tree that the Agminium flowers talked about: the Shadow Tree,” I said. I turned to the fairy queen. “You can point us in the right direction, can’t you?”
The fairy queen nodded. “Follow me.”
Kerka was like a classic heroine, striding boldly behind the queen, her bag with the Kalis stick and the map on her back. And me? I slurped on my ice cream, and I am sure I looked worried. Heart gift or no, fighting shadows, healing stones, and saving my family were not things that came easily to me.
We entered the willow woods again, walking on another glass-shard path through the trees. Then the queen led us through a garden of all orange flowers and plants over a path of crushed shells. From there we took a green moss path that went through a jungle of lilac bushes.
While we walked, Kerka told me that her pack was filled with fairy food for the journey ahead of us. I imagined that meant pastries filled with amazing fruit, or maybe some with edible flowers, like zucchini blossoms stuffed with rose petal jam. Well, that was something good to look forward to!
Of course, the lilacs were at the edge of the glass wall, which is where the moss path ended—although this was a different spot from where we’d come in. Not only lilacs pressed against the wall here, but also tall rosebushes.
The fairy queen stopped and pulled a red satin bag from her bodice. She opened the bag and pulled out two small red feathers. Then she gave one to Kerka and one to me.
I touched mine; it was like downy silk. “What are these for?” I asked.
“These are your last gift from me,” said the queen with a smile.
“Thank you,” I said.
Kerka smiled. “Will we be flying?” she asked.
“Something like that,” said the fairy queen. “With these magic redbird feathers, you can ride the Redbird Wind.”
“Is that good?” I asked.
“It will be faster than walking to the Shadow Garden,” said the queen, “but it will pose challenges.”
I sighed. “And I bet you won’t tell us what those challenges are.”
“That’s right,” said the queen, raising one eyebrow. “But I can tell you not to drop the feathers while you are on the wind, for their magic only works while you hold them.”
I didn’t say that that seemed kind of obvious to me, but Kerka and I looked at each other, and I could tell she was thinking the same thing.
As Kerka and I put our feathers into our pockets, the queen continued, “I have given you three things now: the map for direction, the heart gift for strength, and the feathers for flight. Now, here is something to remember.” She reached to gently close my eyelids, and a vision from The Book of Dreams rose in my mind.
Don’t give me diamonds
I don’t need gold
Just leaves and sunlight
And a gentle wind to blow
Green
Surround and cradle me
Green
me breathe and sing
I can see a patch of blue
Breaking through
I can feel a little smile
Coming to me
Green
Surround and cradle me
Green
Let me breathe and sing
