Birdie's Book - Andrea Burden [31]
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