I looked around and all I could see was Daisy, spinning and hovering above the world beside me as we both rose higher and higher into the huge, great, black nothingness of space.
I walked around the stones in a daze. “Philippa?” I called out to the empty sapce where she’d been standing a moment ago. What had happened to her? How had she disappeared like that? It was impossible — but it had definitely happened. Philippa and that weird woman had disappeared, right in front of my eyes!
What had Philippa shouted? I’d seen her follow the woman and heard her shout something, but I couldn’t hear what it was. I’d heard the woman’s reply, though. She’d called Philippa’s name! How did she know her? Who was she?
A thought was starting to form in my head. I bent down behind the stone to read the poem again. Follow a fairy ’round the stones, amongst a hundred trees. Call her name and catch her eye, and join her world with ease.
Was it possible? Could the weird woman have been a fairy? Could she even have been . . .
No. It was ridiculous. Impossible!
But the more I thought about it, the stronger my conviction became. It was the only answer that made sense. Not that it actually did make sense. Not the kind of sense that most people would understand, anyway.
But it was the only explanation that fit. Philippa had been trying to tell me something about the woman. Something she’d just figured out.
And we already knew that Daisy was meant to be meeting someone at the stones. However impossible, I was more and more convinced it was true: the weird woman was Daisy!
Which just left one question: what had happened to them both?
“Philippa, take my hand. Hold on to me!”
Daisy was calling to me across the blackness. “It’s OK,” she said as I reached out to her. “It’ll pass soon. Just hold on another minute.”
I shut my eyes and concentrated all my efforts into trying not to be sick. “Please stop now,” I whispered under my breath. “Please make the spinning feeling go away.”
And then it did. Just as Daisy had said it would.
I opened my eyes and looked around me. We were in a corridor that seemed to stretch on and on as far as I could see. All around me were bright white walls, long and clean and clinical, like a hospital. Daisy was beside me.
“Is it really you?” I asked.
Daisy smiled. “Of course it is!” she said. Then she threw her arms around me in a happy hug. “How did you find me? And how have you managed to follow me here?”
“I’m not really sure!” I said. “We heard something on Robyn’s computer and it sounded like you, so we went up to the stones and —” My words were coming out in a jumble. Everything was suddenly so confusing. “Oh, Daisy — I have no idea how this happened, really!” I confessed. “But I’m so happy to see you! I’ve really missed you!”
“Me, too.” But she wasn’t smiling anymore. She suddenly looked as serious as I’d ever seen her.
“Daisy, what is it?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
“I’ve been trying to contact you for days,” she said.
“I know. I didn’t realize at the time. But then it clicked at the stone circle — you were that odd woman, weren’t you?”
“Among other things.”
“Other things?” Then I made another connection. The green eyes! “Daisy, were you the mouse as well?”
She nodded.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know! I just didn’t expect it.”
Daisy waved a hand. “It’s fine. Listen, I have to tell you something. It’s really important — but I’m not supposed to tell you. I could get into serious trouble.”
“What is it?” I asked, a knot of anxiety starting to form in my stomach.
Daisy opened her mouth to reply, but just then, something beeped in her pocket.
“Hang on.” She pulled out her MagiCell — that’s a fairy’s electronic device, which gives her all the information she needs for her assignments and keeps her in touch with ATC. Then I realized, of course! The funny woman — Daisy — hadn’t been talking on a cell phone at the stone circle; she’d been talking to someone from ATC on her MagiCell.
“I understand,” Daisy was saying. “Yes, of course. Yes, I will. Immediately.” Then she clicked off her MagiCell and put it back in her pocket. “I’ve got to go — now,” she said to me. Her face had turned pale.
“What is it?” I asked.
Daisy shook her head. “I have to get back, before I’m in even more trouble.”
“Back where? What kind of trouble? Daisy, what’s going on?”
“Come on,” she said tightly. “I’ll explain everything on the way.”
And with that, she turned and led the way down the bright, white, never-ending corridor.
“I’ll start at the beginning,” Daisy said as we walked briskly along the corridor. “I’ve been working in a new department since I finished my last assignment. It’s called ALD — Admin and Liaison Department. My job is to match fairies with clients. And that’s all I’m allowed to do. Not get involved or interfere in any way. That’s strictly against the Fairy Godmother Code.”
“OK,” I said, trying to take in what she was saying. I mean, I know I’ve had Daisy in my life for a while now, and I know she’s a fairy godsister and all that — but it still felt amazing to hear her casually talk about fairy godmothers and their jobs and clients and things.
Daisy turned to look at me as she walked. “And then while I was working I saw a name that I recognized,” she went on. The look in her eyes turned me cold inside. “It was your mom, Philippa.”
“OK,” I said, a little less confidently this time.
“And I wouldn’t normally worry too much,” she went on. “I mean, people get fairy godmother assignments for lots of reasons. It might not have been serious.”
“But it was?” I asked, the anxious feeling spreading into my throat.
Daisy nodded. “Your mom’s down for a fairy from the SRB department,” she said solemnly.
“SRB?” I asked. “What is that?”
Daisy stopped walking and looked me in the eyes. “Something Really Bad,” she said. “It’s when a fairy godmother steps in to help when something really bad happens to someone.”
“So they stop it from happening?” I asked hopefully.
Daisy pursed her lips and turned to continue walking. “Not exactly.”
“Not exactly? What do you mean? What does SRB do, then?”
“It’s complicated,” she said. “And it varies. Sometimes the bad thing can be prevented. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do. If it’s meant to happen, it’s meant to happen.”
“Like fate?”
Daisy grimaced. “You can call it that if you like. It’s dealt with by the MTB department.”
“MTB?”
“Meant to Be,” Daisy replied. “That’s who figures out if it’s something we have to let happen, or something we have to try and prevent. If they decide it’s meant to be, the human will get someone from SRB to help them deal with it.”
“What happens to the others?” I asked.
“They get a fairy from S&C.” She glanced at me before adding, “That’s Stop and Change. They are really high-level fairy godmothers. You don’t mess with them.”
My head was starting to swim from all the information. “So my mom was supposed to get a fairy from SRB to help her deal with something bad that was going to happen to her,” I said. “But you wanted to warn me, so we could stop it from happening?”
“Correct.”
“But whatever the bad thing is, it’s meant to happen, and not meant to be stopped?”
“That’s it exactly.”
“Which means that you’re not only breaking one of the most important rules of the Fairy Godmother Code, you’re also meddling with some of the most powerful fairies at ATC.”
Daisy nodded. “That’s about the long and short of it, yes.”
I let out a breath. “OK, now I see why you?
??re looking so nervous.”
We fell silent for a moment, each wrapped up in our own thoughts as we walked.
Then something occurred to me. “Daisy, what was it — the SRB? What’s going to happen to my mom?”
“That’s just it,” Daisy said. “The file doesn’t say.”
My throat felt like it was full of sharp icicles. “At least you tried,” I said, desperately trying to think of something positive to say. She sounded as wretched as I felt. “I know how much you wanted to help.”
“I’m not giving up, Philippa. I’m not going to let something terrible happen to your mom. We’ll work something out — no matter what ATC does to me.” She let out a heavy sigh. “Even though now on top of whatever punishment I’m going to get, you’re somehow stuck up here, and I have no idea how to get you back!”
“Daisy,” I said, suddenly realizing there was something I still didn’t understand.
She looked at me.
“What do you mean by ‘up here’? Where are we?” I asked, half of my brain knowing what she was going to say and the other half knowing I couldn’t be right. It was impossible!
Daisy met my eyes. “We’re Above the Clouds,” she said. “Philippa, you’re at ATC!”
We turned a corner, and the corridor opened out into a large circular room. Above us, an enormous domed ceiling of colored glass sprinkled rainbows over the walls and floor. Around us, doors led off in every direction. We walked over to one on the opposite side and Daisy took her MagiCell out of her pocket.
“I’ll do the talking,” she said as she held her MagiCell against a panel in the middle of the door. “Whatever happens, we can’t let them know you’re a human, OK?”
“Surely they’ll be able to tell! I haven’t got wings!”
Daisy laughed. “You don’t need them up here. Most fairies look just like you and me when they’re at ATC. Look — haven’t you noticed I’m the same Daisy you see on Earth?” She spun around. “No wings!”
“But don’t you fly around and do . . . fairylike things up here?” I asked, feeling stupid, like someone who’s just arrived somewhere for the first time where everyone else knows how it works except them. That’s exactly what I was!
“Of course we do,” Daisy replied. “But you can do that anyway. This is ATC. You can do virtually anything you like up here — if you know how.”
“How do you fly, then?”
Daisy shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “You just kind of know that you can do it — and then you can!”
She made it sound easy, and I’m sure it was — for a fairy!
Daisy pressed a few buttons on the door. A moment later, it slowly swung open.
“Remember, act like a fairy, OK?” Daisy whispered. “Humans at ATC are strictly against Fairy Godmother Code. We don’t want to get into even more trouble than we’re already in.”
I nodded — even though all I could think was: how the heck do I act like a fairy?
“Afternoon, afternoon — hi there. Hey, how are you?”
Daisy was all smiles as we walked through her office. At first glance it looked like any other kind of office. Lots of people busy bustling around, sitting at desks in front of their screens, making calls.
The only difference was — well, for one thing, there was no floor below us. Secondly, things kept appearing out of nowhere.
“How do they do that?” I asked as we walked past a fairy sitting at a desk tapping away at her computer and reaching out to drink tea from a cup that materialized out of thin air in front of her.
“It’s like everything here. You think it — it happens.”
I didn’t have time to wonder about it for too long, because Daisy suddenly elbowed me in the ribs. “That’s my supervisor.”
At the far end of the room, a small woman was walking through a door that hadn’t existed a moment ago. As it closed behind her it promptly disappeared again, and she looked around the room. Her eyes fell on the fairies before her; each one quickly looked up and smiled, then got straight back to his or her work. She responded with a sharp nod and walked briskly down the aisle that ran along the center of the room. Well, the sort of aisle. Like everything else, it didn’t have a floor. I concentrated on not looking down. When I did, my insides seemed to slip away down into the nothingness below.
She seemed to hold the whole room in her power, even though she was quite small. She was probably only a little taller than me, with a very round, small face, pinched-in cheeks, gray hair cut short and neat. She wore a cotton suit with the jacket buttoned all the way up to her neck and huge gold bangles on both wrists that jangled as she made her way toward us.
As she reached us, I heard Daisy take a sharp breath. “Good afternoon, FGRaincl —”
“Come with me,” the woman said tightly. She was about to turn on her heel when she spotted me. “Who is this?” she asked, scornfully looking me up and down as though I’d blown in like a piece of trash off the street.
“I’m her cousin!” I burst out without thinking.
“She’s new to the department!” Daisy said at the exact same moment.
The woman narrowed her eyes and turned them first on Daisy, and then on me. Without saying a word, she slowly raised one eyebrow so high it looked like a question mark.
“Cousin?” the woman said eventually.
Daisy forced out a heavy laugh. “That was just a little joke, FGRaincloud,” she said. “She’s spent a bit too much time on Earth. She likes to call everyone her cousin. Don’t you . . . Tulip?” she asked, staring at me fiercely and quickly nodding her head behind her supervisor’s back.
I flashed the woman what I hoped was a broad, relaxed smile. I think it probably looked like someone who had been asked to bare her teeth while being tortured.
“I’m sorry, Effigy Raincloud,” I said, wondering why she had such a strange name but trying to say it with confidence anyway. “I should have known better than to make such a silly joke. Daisy’s right. I have obviously spent far too much time on Earth.”
Daisy’s supervisor gave me a strange look, before Daisy quickly went on. “Tulip”— I guessed that was me —“is new to ALD. Her previous supervisor’s just left. She asked me to look after her,” she said so boldly and smoothly, I almost believed her myself.
Her supervisor gave me another look. “Right. Well, we’ll see about that,” she said briskly. “Now then, there’s the matter of your unauthorized Earth visit.”
“I know,” Daisy replied. “I’m so sorry I forgot to ask, but I wanted to do some background research on my current client list — so I can work more efficiently.”
Daisy’s supervisor stared at her again. “Oh,” she said in the same clipped way she seemed to say everything. “I see. And you can prove this, can you?”
“Oh, yes, absolutely,” Daisy replied, reaching for her MagiCell. “I’ll get it all printed out and show you right now. . . .”
Her supervisor waved a hand in a kind of resigned dismissal. “That won’t be necessary,” she said. “But don’t let me catch you going off on any more research trips without getting my permission first.”
“No, I won’t,” Daisy said, relief through her words. “I really am sorry.”
Her supervisor waved a hand again. “Right, enough of that,” she said. “Now, you can get back to work. You’ve plenty to catch up on.” She looked at me. “And I want Tulip’s documents please, preferably with an explanation as to why I haven’t heard about the transfer.”
“Yes, FGRaincloud,” Daisy said. “I’ll do it right away.”
A moment later, her supervisor had turned and disappeared back down the aisle. At the end of the room, she clicked her fingers and a door once again appeared out of nowhere. She opened the door, walked through it, closed it behind her, and was gone.
“How did she do that?” I asked, staring into the blankness that had been a door seconds earlier.
“What?” Daisy asked.
“That thing with the door.”
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“What thing?”
“What thing?” I repeated incredulously. “The door — it wasn’t there, and then it was, and now it’s gone again!”
Daisy shrugged. “That’s how things work up here,” she said. “You don’t think too hard about things like that; you just do them.”
“But how? I mean, could I do them too?”
Daisy pointed at the space below us, the nothingness we were hovering above. “It’s like that,” she said. “You’re not thinking about it; you’re just doing it. It’s easy!”
I looked down, took in the huge complete emptiness underneath me — and promised myself I definitely wouldn’t think about it.
“I’d say you got off quite lightly there,” I said to change the subject.
“I know! I can’t believe it. FGRaincloud must have other things on her mind. She often does, which is a good thing. She comes across as totally efficient, but luckily she’s the complete opposite. As long as there’s something more important preoccupying her, she usually forgets why she’s even mad at you!”
“So — what are we going to do about my documents?” I asked.
Daisy shook her head. “We should get away with it for now. She’s moved on to the next thing and will forget about us for a day or so. We’ll easily have time to figure out how to get you back to Earth by the time she remembers about that.”
“Oh, well, that’s good,” I said, not sure I meant it. I mean, of course I wanted to get back to Earth. I didn’t want to be stuck up here forever. But — well, I wouldn’t mind spending a bit of time here. I was at ATC! I was actually in the middle of Fairy Godmother headquarters!
Except that I couldn’t enjoy it. Not when my mom was in trouble. Somehow we had to try to get more details about the really bad thing that was going to happen to her. We had to stop it!
“Come on,” Daisy said, breaking into my thoughts and knowing exactly what I was thinking. “Let’s get to my desk. We’ve got work to do.”
We sat in front of Daisy’s computer. The computer looked similar to our computer at home. The weird thing was how you got it to work. You had to speak to it, and it would respond with pictures and patterns and lines and lines of text.