fourteen

Clara, Rosy, Goldie, and Sylva looked all over their fairy house for baby Squeak. They did not find her. Anywhere.

“She must be hiding somewhere to play a trick on us. Squeak, come on now. It’s not funny anymore. Where are you?”

“She’s not here, Clara,” said Rosy. “I can feel it. She’s gone. I don’t know how or what has happened, but she has gone.”

“If she’s gone, she can’t have gone far. She’s too tiny. She must have crawled under one of the beds. Sylva, go check again.”

Sylva flew upstairs to the bedrooms, but Rosy felt in her fairy wingtips that something was not right. Squeak had been acting so strangely for the past few weeks. “I should have known something was the matter with her. What did she want me to know?” Rosy’s wings kept quivering. “She was trying to tell me something. But what?”

Some instinct made Rosy go to the back door of the fairy house. “Clara, look. It’s open a crack. She went outside for some reason. Oh, it’s freezing out there.” Clara took one step out the door and knew Rosy was right. It was freezing outside. In fact, the temperature had been dropping all evening. “We have to find her!” said Clara. She, Rosy, Goldie, and Sylva gathered what hats and coats they could find and rushed out the back door, Goldie with a lantern in hand.

“Follow her tracks in the snow!” said Sylva. “Look! I see them! We’ll find her in no time now!”

None of the sisters wanted to say what they were all thinking. It was bitterly cold out on Sheepskerry Island, with the wind whipping and the snow swirling. A little baby fairy could not get far.

“Here are more of her little footprints!” said Sylva. “They’re heading straight out our front garden to—”

Sylva stopped short. The tracks disappeared. “There’s nothing else here,” she said. “It’s as if . . . she disappeared.”

Goldie, Clara, and Rosy rushed over to where Sylva stood. “Those are her footprints,” said Goldie. “But where did she go from here?”

“Did someone come fetch her?” asked Clara.

“No, they would have brought her back home,” said Rosy.

“Did she fall and hurt herself?” Sylva asked.

“There’s no sign of that,” said Clara.

“Then where oh where can she be?” Rosy cried.

Sylva leaned down and looked carefully at the footprints in the snow. “Look, everybody,” she said. “They get closer together right here.”

“And then . . . nothing,” said Rosy. She was on the verge of panicky tears. “It’s almost like someone snatched her away.”

“Or . . . ,” said Clara, “as if she flew.”