“No, Annie, we’re not. We’re real people, just like you, and we have to live by the laws of nature, just as humans do.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Fidget?” Jazzberry said.
“Not yet,” the dragon said, shaking his head so hard that his ears flopped around.
Annie was getting frustrated. “Will you show me your fairy ring?”
Fidget leaned over to peer at Jazzberry’s hands. “She’s not wearing any jewelry,” he said.
“Fidget,” Jazzberry said, “shut up.” She flew up so she was floating in front of Annie’s face. “I can’t explain everything right now,” she said. “But we want you to come see us again, and eventually we will tell you everything. I promise.”
“When?” Annie said. “When can I see you again?”
“Tomorrow. After school.”
Tomorrow was Friday. She wouldn’t have as much time because her parents always came home a little early on Friday, but she said she would come.
“One more question,” she said. “Do you know any werewolves?”
“There are no werewolves,” Jazzberry said. “No witches, no vampires, no walking mummies, no bigfoot or abominable snowmen, no leprechauns or trolls or elves. Only fairies and dragons and very gullible humans.”
“Except for the Christmas elves,” Annie said.
“Of course,” Fidget said. “She wasn’t talking about Santa Claus and his elves.” He looked at Jazzberry fiercely. “Were you?”
“Of course not,” Jazzberry sighed.
“I have an idea,” Fidget said. “Let’s play hide and seek.”
They had an advantage because they could fly, but Annie got them to promise that they wouldn’t fly higher than her head. Even so, she only found Fidget once, and Jazzberry not at all, but they found her every time, even when she climbed up into the crotch of a big oak tree and huddled down in the mossy hollow there.
“You’re very good at this,” she told Fidget.
“Thanks. I’ve had years of practice.”
“Really? How old are you?”
“I’ll be three hundred and six next month.”
Annie gaped in surprise. She’d thought Fidget was a kid like her. “Three hundred?”
“Don’t let him fool you,” Jazzberry said. “He’s just a kid.”
“Well, how old do dragons get?” Annie said.
“Five thousand or so,” Fidget said proudly.
“How old are you?” Annie asked the fairy.
“I’m twenty.”
“But fairies only live to three hundred,” Fidget said. “I’m already older than the oldest fairy who ever was.”
“That doesn’t mean you’re not just a kid,” Jazzberry said. “A spoiled, scaly, snotty, undisciplined kid.”
“But strong,” Fidget said happily, spreading his wings and flexing his arm muscles.
“You like math, Annie,” Jazzberry said. “Work out the arithmetic. You’re older than either one of us.”
Annie sat down on the soft ground under a big hickory tree. “I don’t understand. You’re twenty and he’s three hundred and six. I’m only eight.”
“You’ll probably live to be ninety,” she said. “What percent of your life have you lived so far?”
Annie picked up a twig and scratched in the dirt. “About nine percent.”
“And what percent have we lived?”
It took her a minute to work it out. “You’re seven, Fidget’s six.”
“So you’re older than we are. You’ve lived more of your life, you’ve learned more of what you will eventually know than either of us.”
She had never thought of things that way before. That meant that a one-year old puppy was about the same percent age as Fidget. No wonder he seemed so much like Aunt Helen’s poodle.
“It’s starting to get dark,” Fidget said. “You’d better go home.”
“I don’t want to go home.”
“Your parents will worry about you,” Jazzberry said. “Come back tomorrow. We’ll be here.”
Annie reluctantly got up and said goodbye. By the time she got to the edge of the Haunted Woods, it was almost too dark to see the path. The sky was purple when she ran into her house. Her parents were already home.
“Where were you?” her mother said. “We were starting to get worried.”
“I was riding my bike,” Annie said.
Her mother brushed leaves off the back of her shirt. “And playing in the woods?”
“Uh huh. What’s for dinner?”
Her mother shook her head and turned back to the sink.
All through the lasagna and salad, then during the peach ice cream, Annie was bursting to tell her parents about her new friends. But she knew they wouldn’t believe her, and she had promised not to tell.
She went to bed impatient for tomorrow to come, wishing it could be Friday afternoon so she could go back to the Haunted Woods. It wasn’t until breakfast the next morning that she realized she had completely forgotten to do her homework.
* * *
“Annie, can you tell us what body of water the Nile River empties into?”
Annie looked up from the picture she was making of Jazzberry. She was having trouble drawing the wings. Jazzberry’s wings were almost like a butterfly’s, but no matter how Annie drew them they looked like cucumbers.
Mrs. Longsnout was smiling at her pleasantly, waiting. June Newman, her friend that sat right in front of her, turned around and mouthed something that looked like “Betty Geranium.” Several of the other kids started to snicker.
“The Nile River?” Annie said. “That’s in Africa. So...” She thought furiously. Africa was the one that looked like the head of a horse that was eating oats. She wondered what dragons ate. Maybe bugs. Maybe she should take some food with her when she went to the Haunted Woods this afternoon.
“Annie?” her teacher said.
She remembered that Egypt was in Africa. Moses had parted the Dead Sea when he led his people on that long hike out of Egypt.
“The Dead Sea?” she said.
Half the kids laughed out loud. The other half looked embarrassed and some of her friends dropped their heads to their arms.
“I believe you’re thinking of the Red Sea, dear,” Mrs. Longsnout said. “Who can show us where the Dead Sea is?”
Hands flailed in the air. She picked know-it-all Jerry Hacking, who strutted up to the world map at the front of the room and pointed at a small blue patch. Annie had no idea where it was he was pointing.
“The Dead Sea is on the eastern edge of Israel,” Jerry said. “The Red Sea lies between Africa and the Arabian peninsula. And the Nile empties into the Mediterranean Sea.” He smirked and sat down again.
Annie looked at the clock in despair. It was only eleven thirty.
* * *
What would fairies eat? Annie settled on Twinkies: if Jazzberry didn’t like them, Annie could eat them. But what about dragons? She decided Fidget would probably like cheese. She found a shrink-wrapped ball of mozzarella in the refrigerator.
The phone rang as she was about to run out the door. It might be her parents, so she had to answer it.
“Hello?” she said.
“Annie, you have got to study harder,” June said.
“Who cares about the Bile River?”
“You mean the Nile. Look, my mom just went out shopping. I’ll come over and help you study.”
“On Friday afternoon?” Annie said. “Are you crazy? Studying’s for Sunday night.”
“I’ll come over anyway.”
“I can’t, June. I have to go.”
“Go where?” she said, but Annie hung up and ran out to her bike.
Otto was riding circles outside his house again, but when he saw Annie coming toward him he jumped off his bike and ran inside. The front tire was still revolving slowly as she went past.
She left her bike at the edge of the woods and put on her backpack. The food and her camera were inside. She had o
nly taken a few steps into the trees when Fidget fell off a branch and plopped onto the leafy path.
“Good afternoon,” he said with his head tilted back almost vertical so he could look up at her. He rubbed his throat with the tip of his tail. It sounded like someone using sandpaper on rough metal.
“Where’s Jazzberry?”
“Right here,” the fairy said from her shoulder. She had landed so softly that Annie hadn’t felt it. “We’ve been watching you,” Jazzberry said.
“What?”
“We’ve been watching you for several days.”
“Why?”
“To see if we can trust you,” Fidget said.
“Trust me with what?”
“We’re not supposed to reveal ourselves to humans,” Jazzberry said.
“We’re going to get in big trouble,” Fidget agreed.
“But we need you. We have a big problem, and you’re the only person in the world who can help us.”
“Why?”
“Fidget?” the fairy said.
The dragon unfurled his wings and shot into the sky. He zoomed back down a minute later and landed right in front of Annie.
“All clear,” he said.
“Let’s walk to the sign,” Jazzberry said.
“What sign?” Annie said.
They didn’t answer, but Fidget led her out into the sunshine. It was a pretty day in the middle of May, not too warm, with only a few clouds in the sky. Bugs flew around her head and she noticed that Fidget ignored them: he was busy trying to walk and scratch his back with one wing tip at the same time. So he probably didn’t eat bugs.
“I brought you a snack,” she said.
Fidget stopped instantly. “Snack?”
Annie took off her pack and held out the mozzarella ball. Fidget took it with a clawed hand, sniffed it once delicately, and popped the whole thing in his mouth without unwrapping it.
“You’re not supposed to eat the plastic!” she said.
“Really?” he mumbled around the cheese. “Sorry.”
His jaws worked for a moment, as if he were trying to get something unstuck from a back tooth. Then he opened his mouth and spit out the plastic wrapper—still intact, completely clean, and empty of cheese.
“How did you do that?” Annie said.
“He has a prehensile soft palate,” Jazzberry said.
“What?”
“Never mind. Fidget, let’s go.”
“I brought you a snack, too,” Annie said.
“Thank you. I’ll eat it later, if you don’t mind.”
Annie put her pack back on and followed the little dragon, who scampered from one side of the path to the other like a puppy, sniffing flowers and poking his snout under bushes. Annie’s feet crunched on the gravel road. Fidget stopped when they reached the big sign in the field.
“We’ve been watching you, even before we came to visit you that night,” Jazzberry said. “We needed to be sure you wouldn’t tell anyone about us. We needed to know if you’re a good person.”
“And you are,” Fidget said. “But you’re not very good at geography or history. And you’re a little rude to your friends.”
“I am not.”
“Let’s not argue,” Jazzberry said. “You had chances to tell your parents and your friends about us, but you kept your promise, even though you thought it was just a dream promise. Now I’m sure. Do you see that sign?”
Annie really looked at the sign for the first time in a year. “Coming Soon Enchanted Woods A Modern Subdivision.” There was a diagram at the bottom with thin wedges like slices of pie radiating away from an open circle at the middle. Every wedge had a number. At the bottom of the sign was small print that she couldn’t make any sense of.
“What does it mean?” she said.
“Your Uncle Dennis is going to build some houses here.” Jazzberry said.
“He is?” All the times she’d passed this sign she’d had no idea. She looked closer. “It doesn’t say Uncle Dennis.”
“No,” Fidget said. “It says, ‘Enchanted Woods Development Group.’ That’s your uncle.”
“It is?”
“Yes, it is,” Jazzberry said. “Do you know what a Modern Subdivision is?”
“Houses?” she guessed.
“Right,” Fidget said. “Lots of houses.”
“Forty of them in the first phase,” Jazzberry said. “With three or four phases after. How many more houses is that?”
Annie multiplied in her head. “A hundred twenty or a hundred sixty.”
“Very good. Do you know where he’s going to build the houses?”
Annie looked around. It would be easy to build houses on the flat part where they were standing. “Here?”
“No, Annie.” Jazzberry lifted off her shoulder and hovered in the air, pointing at the Haunted Woods. “He’s going to cut down the woods and build the houses on the hill.”
“Why?”
“For the view,” Fidget said sadly.
“And when they cut down our woods,” Jazzberry said, “all of us will die.”
Chapter 3: Dilemma
The bad news didn’t sink in right away. Annie waited for Jazzberry to say that she was joking, or that she hadn’t meant die. But Jazzberry looked perfectly serious, and Fidget was as somber as someone can be when he has two fingers jiggling in his ear.
“I don’t understand,” Annie said.
“It’s very complicated,” the fairy said. “But the result is simple. If they cut down these woods, all the fairies and all the dragons, everywhere in this world, will die.”
“No!” Annie shouted.
“I’m sorry, it’s true. But you can stop it.”
“How? What can I do?”
“You can convince your uncle not to build those houses.”
Annie looked at the big, official sign. She hadn’t even known that Uncle Dennis built houses. She thought he was a computer salesman. Her mother had bought her computer from him. How could she possibly convince him not to kill the fairies?
“How can I do that?”
“I don’t know,” Jazzberry said. “If we knew how to stop him, we’d have done it ourselves. We need you to think of a way.”
Annie felt just like she did before a big test that she hadn’t studied for. She’d just met Jazzberry and Fidget; now they were going to die because she couldn’t even imagine the hint of a clue how she might be able to talk Uncle Dennis into giving up his houses.
“You don’t need to figure it out right now,” Fidget said.
“What?”
“We have some time. They’re not going to start digging until June.”
A month. She had only one month to save them. She felt like crying.
“Why don’t you just move?” she asked. “Can’t you find another woods to live in?”
“It’s not that simple,” Jazzberry said. “Even those who don’t live in the woods are in danger. Our—”
“Careful,” Fidget said.
“I know, Fidget.”
“What?” Annie said.
“I’m sorry?” Jazzberry said.
“What are you hiding?”
“I can’t tell you everything, Annie. You wouldn’t understand it. Sometimes I don’t understand it. I’m just a kid, too, you know.”
“You were going to explain why we can’t move,” Fidget said. He was sitting up with his hips tucked under and his tail standing straight up in the air in front of him, rubbing his rear end on the ground.
“This place is special to us,” the fairy said. “We’ve been here for a long time. We...” She paused. “We grow our food here. It’s special food, and it won’t grow anywhere else. If they cut down the woods, we won’t be able to grow it anymore, and all of us will starve.”
“But Fidget can eat cheese. Why do you need special food?”
“It’s like vitamins,” Fidget said. Now he was using his wings to wipe the dust off his rump. “Cheese is nice, but we need our vitamins, too.”
“My mom has a lot of vitamins—a whole drawer full. I can get you all the vitamins you need.”
“Those are human vitamins,” Jazzberry said. “We need fairy vitamins and dragon vitamins. No one knows how to grow them but us.”
Annie stomped her foot and couldn’t hold the tears back any longer. “Why? It’s not fair. I don’t know how to help you. How can I stop Uncle Dennis? Why can’t you just come live with me?”
Jazzberry flew up to of Annie’s face and wiped away a tear. The teardrop completely engulfed her tiny hand, like a shimmery catcher’s mitt.
“Annie, we would love to live with you. But we’d have to leave our parents behind, and that would make them very sad. And without our vitamins, we’d die.”
“We have to stop the houses,” Fidget said.
“You have to stop them,” Jazzberry said.
* * *
Annie got home about five minutes before her parents did. She just had time to wash her face and flop onto the couch with a comic book before the front door flew open and her father strode in hollering, “Weekend!”
Her mother ordered a pizza and, while they were waiting for it to be delivered, she decided to torture her daughter. She sat down beside Annie and said, “How was school today?”
“Mom!”
“What? What did I say? Should I not care about your life?”
“School isn’t my life, Mom. School is punishment for something I did in a previous life.”
“My God, Laura,” her father said as he dropped into his favorite chair, “our daughter’s become a Buddhist.”
“Do you really think of school as punishment?” her mother said.
“My teacher called on me in geography again. Why does she do that? She knows I don’t know the answer.”
“I think she hopes that this time you studied. She’s probably waiting patiently for the day when Annie Rust will know her lessons, and her life’s work is complete.”
“Then the old marmot can retire,” her father said.
“Raymond!” her mother said.
“Sorry. That was rude. Forget I said that,” he said to Annie. “Everyone knows Mrs. Longsnout’s not a marmot.” He waited until her mother turned away before saying, “She’s a badger.”
Without looking, her mother picked up a throw pillow off the couch and flung it directly into her father’s face.
“Score,” he said in a muffled voice.
All during her ride home, and all during dinner, Annie had been trying to think of how to help Jazzberry. As she and her father were negotiating who would eat the last slice of pepperoni and mushroom, she suddenly realized that she needed something to work with. She needed information.