The Fairy Rebel Read Free Page A

except that instead of jeans she was wearing a frilly skirt. It made her look like a tiny chrysanthemum, round and petally.
    Before Jan could even say hello, the fairy said, “Did you say brown eyes and blue hair, or blue eyes and brown hair?”
    Jan blinked. “I didn’t say blue anything. I said brown hair and browny-green eyes like Charlie’s.”
    “Oh!” said the fairy. She looked very cross. “What a nuisance!”
    “Why?” asked Jan.
    “Oh, nothing,” said the fairy in a “tossy” little voice, and started to buzz her wings.
    “Wait a minute!” cried Jan. “Why aren’t you wearing your jeans?”
    The fairy looked crosser than ever.
    “Someone noticed. And told
her
. And she sent me a message. Told me to change. So I had to.” She tugged at her skirt. “Look at me—just look! I’m as round as a puffball. I look horrible! Even Wijic says I looked nicer in jeans.
Now
he says they were very slimming.”
    “Who makes fairies’ clothes?” asked Jan.
    “Makes them? We do.”
    “Do you sew them?”
    “What’s ‘sew’? We just
make
them,” said the fairy. She looked round in all directions and then beckoned Jan closer. “Watch!” she whispered.
    She closed her eyes and drew her hands down herself, back and front. At once the skirt was changed into jeans. The fairy opened her eyes and gave Jan a naughty grin. Then she looked around guiltily and quickly drew her hands up again the other way, and the jeans changed back into the balloony petal-skirt.
    “As easy as that?” said Jan. “So why don’t you make yourself a lovely slim skirt, or a dress? It’s all those bunchy frills that make you look fat.”
    The fairy seemed puzzled. “I can’t,” she said. “I haven’t got a picture in my head of any other kind of skirt.”
    “I’ll draw you one if you like,” said Jan, “or find one in a magazine.”
    The fairy looked amazed. “Could you really? When?”
    “Tomorrow. I’ll see you by the pear tree.”
    “Oh, not tomorrow, I can’t. I’ve got to fix it about …” She stopped and looked mysterious. “The next day.”
    “Right,” said Jan. The fairy grinned and buzzed and was gone.
    Two days later, Jan took some fashion magazines she’d found and went and sat under the pear tree. It was nearly winter. All the leaves had turned red and fallen off the tree. Jan was wearing a warm cardigan, but she shivered as she sat waiting. What had the fairy meant about brown eyes and
blue hair
? It was worrying her.
    She sat there for a long time. The fairy didn’t come.
    That evening at supper Charlie said, “You’re looking sad again.”
    “No!” said Jan, and smiled brightly. “I’m just a little bit worried, that’s all.”
    “What about?” asked Charlie.
    “I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you,” said Jan.
    “Try me,” said Charlie, putting down his knife and fork.
    Jan looked at him, took a deep breath and said, “Well. You know I told you I’d seen a fairy.”
    “Oh. That!” said Charlie. “I thought you’d got over all that rubbish.”
    “Well, I haven’t,” said Jan. “In fact I saw her again, twice. We had long talks. I told her about … you know, how much we wanted a baby, and she … she asked me what kind of one we wanted. So I told her. But I think she may have got it wrong.”
    “Jan,” said Charlie impatiently, “what are you talking about?”
    “I know it sounds silly,” said Jan, “but ever since we had our second talk—I and the fairy, I mean—I’ve had the oddest feeling that … well, that I might be going to have a baby after all.”
    Charlie’s face changed.
    “How long ago was it?” he asked.
    “Oh, two or three months now.”
    “Tell me about these feelings you’ve had, and never mind about the fairy part of it,” said Charlie, getting up and fetching his doctor’s case.
    After a short time Charlie was looking very, very excited.
    “I do believe you’re right!” he nearly shouted.
    That night he made Jan go