Beck and the Great Berry Battle Read online

  Beck loved the spot where the animal-talent fairies had their table, right next to one of the windows. She was gazing outside when Fawn sat down next to her. There was a bright purple stain on one shoulder of her dress.

  Beck giggled. “What happened to you?” she asked Fawn.

  Fawn reached for the teapot in the center of the table. She poured herself a cup of tea. “A berry fell on me,” she explained. “After you took that raccoon home, I went to talk to this chameleon I know. He was feeling a little blue today.” Fawn couldn’t help smiling at her own silly joke. “Then I headed back here, and just as I landed in the courtyard—splat!” Fawn shrugged. “Just bad luck, I guess.”

  Beck shrugged, too. Never fairies were used to dodging all sorts of things falling from above. Raindrops falling from the sky. Leaves or branches falling from trees. Berries falling from shrubs. They had to be careful. But these things were just a bother—not a big danger. Not like hawks, which could swoop out of the sky and carry away a Never fairy in a split second. That was why the fairies had scouts to watch for hawks. As for berries, they could make a big mess. But they hardly ever fell directly on a fairy.

  Terra, Madge, and Finn were the next animal-talent fairies to come to the table. They helped themselves to tea. Dulcie flew over with a plate of star-shaped butter cookies. Everyone reached for one at the same time.

  “Easy, easy!” Dulcie cried as she flew away. “There’s plenty more where those came from.”

  “That’s good,” said Finn. She nodded toward the tearoom door. “Because here comes Cora. And it looks like she could use a pick-me-up.”

  Cora flopped into the last empty seat with a frustrated sigh. It was plain to see what was the matter. Bright purple juice soaked the top of her head. It dripped down her forehead. It dripped off the ends of her long, blond hair. It was smeared on the sides of her face, where she had tried to wipe it away.

  “You, too, Cora?” Fawn asked. She pointed to the big purple splotch on her own dress.

  Cora squinted at Fawn through the purple liquid. “Berry?” she said.

  Fawn nodded.

  “Yup,” said Cora. “It came out of nowhere. Another one almost hit me, too.”

  Beck wrinkled her brow. “What a strange coincidence,” she said. “Two fairies hit by berries in the same day. That doesn’t happen very often.”

  On the other side of the table, Finn stared at something over Beck’s shoulder. “Make that three fairies,” said Finn.

  “Huh?” said Beck. She turned to look.

  Sure enough, a sparrow man at the art-talent table had a big purple stain on his left leg.

  “I count four,” said Madge. Across the room a decoration-talent fairy was wiping purple juice from the back of her neck.

  “Uh…no,” said Fawn. “Five.” She nodded in the direction of the tearoom door. Lympia, a laundry fairy, had just flown in. Two purple splotches—one on her right arm and one on her left wing—showed where she had been hit.

  What in the world was going on?

  “This is no coincidence,” said Beck. “Five fairies hit by berries in the same day? In the same afternoon?”

  Just then, a loud tap-tapping sound made all six animal talents jump in their seats. They turned toward the window. Outside, hovering, peeking in at them, was Twitter. He tapped again at the window with his long, thin beak.

  Madge reached over and swung open the window. Twitter landed on the sill.

  “B-B-Beck!” he chirped, short of breath. “Come qu-qu-quick! It’s an emergency!”

  All the animal-talent fairies smiled at Beck. They knew as well as she did how overexcited Twitter could get.

  Madge patted Twitter gently on the head. “There, there, Twitter,” she said in Bird. “It can’t be all that bad.”

  Finn offered Twitter a cookie. “Here, try one of these,” she said. “It’ll make everything better.”

  But the animal talents knew that Beck was the only fairy with the patience to calm the little bird.

  Twitter didn’t take the cookie. “You don’t understand!” he cried. Twitter hopped off the windowsill. He darted nervously from side to side. “A battle has broken out! B-B-Beck, you’ve got to do something! You’ve g-g-got to stop it!”

  Beck squinted at the little bird. “A battle?” she said doubtfully. Even for Twitter, it sounded like a huge exaggeration—like something blown way out of proportion.

  But the next thing Twitter said got the animal-talent fairies’ attention.

  “Yes, a battle!” he exclaimed. “A berry battle!”

  BECK HURRIED OUT of the tearoom. She zipped through the Home Tree lobby and out the front door. She met Twitter outside the tearoom window.

  “Twitter,” Beck called to him, “what do you m—” Out of the corner of her eye, she spied a berry falling toward her. She dodged to her right. The berry just missed her left shoulder. “What do you mean, a berry battle?” she asked.

  Twitter launched excitedly into a long explanation. But he was chirping almost as quickly as his wings were flapping. Beck could only understand bits and pieces.

  “The chipmunks stole the nest!” cried Twitter. Then Beck caught something about the hummingbirds’ deciding to fight back and “launching berries” and “defending our shrubs” and “keeping the chipmunks away.” But the more Twitter explained, the more confused Beck got.

  “Okay, okay, Twitter,” Beck calmly interrupted him. “Let’s do this: why don’t you show me what you’re talking about? Lead the way. I’ll follow. And we’ll get to the bottom of this together.”

  Without another word, Twitter turned and flew away. Beck hurried after him. At times, it was hard to keep up. He was fast. So was Beck. But unlike the smooth, graceful flight pattern of a Never fairy, the moves of a hummingbird are unpredictable.

  Twitter would be headed straight for a tree trunk. Then, at the last possible moment, he would zigzag around it. He dodged branches—sailing over some, ducking under others. Beck followed Twitter’s crazy path as they headed northeast from the Home Tree.

  Before long, Twitter stopped and perched on the branch of a blackberry bush. Beck landed next to him. She looked around. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. All around them, the forest was perfectly quiet.

  Twitter sat silently, staring in front of him. Beck’s curiosity bubbled over. “Twitter—” she began.

  But Twitter shushed her. He pointed a wing toward the clearing at the foot of the blackberry bush. “Watch,” he whispered.

  So Beck sat quietly. She watched and waited. Sure enough, in a few moments, a chipmunk scampered out from behind a hawthorn tree. He looked to his left. He looked to his right. He looked up into the trees. Then he scampered across the clearing toward the blackberry bush. In the center of the clearing, the chipmunk stopped. He sat up on his hind legs. He sniffed the air. Beck could sense his nervousness—and his eagerness. He was determined to get his paws on some of those blackberries.

  Suddenly, the blackberry bush seemed to spring to life. It was full of humming-birds—young ones, old ones, male and female. Beck hadn’t even noticed they were there, scattered throughout the bush, high and low.

  Beck watched as the hummingbirds worked in pairs. One hummingbird bent back a branch. Another bird balanced a blackberry at the very tip of the branch.

  Then, all at once, the hummingbirds let go of the branches. A storm of blackberries went flying in the direction of the clearing. A few went astray. Some hooked to the left, to the right, or backward. Some flew straight up into the air. Those came plummeting back down toward the blackberry bush. Beck saw one of them hit a hummingbird on the head.

  But most of them flew directly at the chipmunk. He flinched as he saw the wave of berries headed right for him. He barely had time to turn away before they hit: one on his tail, one on the back of his head, and three more on his back. Several others were near misses.

  Then, dripping berry juice, the chipmunk scampered out of the clearing—back behind the hawthorn tree.
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  “Hooray!” A round of cheerful hummingbird chirps rose from the blackberry bush.

  It had all happened so fast that Beck hadn’t had time to move. But now, shocked by what she had seen, she leaped off the branch. For once, Twitter was right. This was an emergency! Hummingbirds attacking a chipmunk with berries? What was going on here? She flew out in front of the blackberry bush. She turned to face the bush and hovered over the clearing.

  “Stop! Stop!” she called in Bird. She held her hands up in front of her. “What are you doing? Why would you do that to that chipmunk?”

  “Oh, good day to you, Beck,” came a voice from the blackberry bush. Beck peered into the bush to see where—and who—it was coming from. Suddenly, from a low branch, out flew Birdie, one of the oldest hummingbirds in Pixie Hollow. Beck had known her for a long, long time. She was a no-nonsense, plainspoken old bird. “I see you’ve heard about our…problem,” Birdie said, hovering next to Beck.

  Beck shrugged. “Well, yes and no,” she said. “I’ve heard that there is a problem. But I don’t understand. What’s going on?”

  Birdie sighed a big sigh. “We have to be able to defend ourselves. Don’t we?”

  Now Beck was even more confused. “Defend yourselves?” she asked. “Defend yourselves from whom?”

  “From the chipmunks, of course,” Birdie replied. “They stole one of our nests! One minute it was here—right on one of these very branches.” Birdie waved a wing at the blackberry bush. “The next minute it was gone! And a chipmunk was seen sniffing around that branch, just about that same time. All the hummingbirds nearby noticed him.”

  Beck thought over what Birdie had said. “Did anyone actually see the chipmunk take the nest?” she asked.

  “Well,” said Birdie, “no. But you know what chipmunks are like, Beck. They hoard. They stockpile. They hide away everything in sight. I’m sure they took it. They’re very well-made nests, you know.”

  Birdie’s chest puffed out with pride.

  “Those chipmunks probably want to use it in one of their underground rooms—for padding or something. But they can’t do that to us! They can’t just steal one of our nests. And until they give it back or say they’re sorry, they’re not welcome in our shrubs. They can’t help themselves to these berries. And if they get too close…well…just let them try!”

  BECK DIDN’T GET very far with Birdie. She tried. She pointed out that there was probably an innocent explanation. Surely they could work it out, Beck said. Surely talking it over would work better than launching berries at them. But Birdie wouldn’t listen. She was certain the chipmunks were thieves.

  As for the chipmunks, they were just as certain of something else: that the hummingbirds were being mean. Beck had decided to get their side of the story. When she found them, the chipmunks were plotting their revenge against the birds. Uncle Munk, one of the chipmunk elders, and five others were gathered near the entrance to Uncle Munk’s underground home.

  Beck tried to get them to calm down. She told them what the hummingbirds had said.

  “Of course we didn’t take their nest!” insisted Uncle Munk in excited chipmunk chatter. “What would we want with one of their nests?”

  “Great!” Beck replied. “Then it’s just a misunderstanding. It can all be settled peacefully.”

  But the chipmunks were mad. Already, too many of them had gotten berried.

  “Everywhere we go in Pixie Hollow, we get hit with berries,” Uncle Munk said to Beck. “We have to gather the food we need. Otherwise, we’ll starve. We have to be able to defend ourselves. Don’t we?”

  With that, the chipmunks went back to their planning. Uncle Munk gave the instructions.

  “Here’s what we do,” he said. The other chipmunks leaned in to hear the plan. “We fan out in all directions. Keeping our distance, we circle the blackberry bush. Then we each start tunneling underground toward the bush. Oh, it’ll be slow going. It could take days, even weeks. But when we get to the roots, we pop up from underground.

  And we take the berries by force! Let’s see them try to stop us!”

  Beck couldn’t believe what she was hearing. She had to put an end to this before it got entirely out of hand. She knew there had to be a way. But what was it? She couldn’t help feeling very uneasy about the whole thing. If she didn’t figure it out soon, this little quarrel was going to get much, much bigger!

  Just then, a young chipmunk named Nan came running full speed around a tree trunk.

  “Waaaaah!” screamed Nan as she ran. “Take cover! Take cover!”

  Behind her, a shower of berries splattered on the forest floor, just missing her. Nan made a beeline for Uncle Munk’s home. She dove headfirst down the entrance. As more berries landed closer and closer to them, the other six chipmunks followed Nan’s lead. One by one, they dove for cover inside Uncle Munk’s home. Beck was left alone, hovering over the entrance. She dodged one berry, then another. They both fell harmlessly on the forest floor.

  But a third berry sailed high over her head. Beck watched it as it flew. It carved a wide, high arc in the air, then began its fall back to earth. At the same moment, an old mole came strolling around a tree trunk, directly into the berry’s path.

  It was Grandfather Mole. The berry dropped right on his head. Splat!

  Grandfather Mole stopped in his tracks. He reached up to feel his head. Finding it dripping wet, he turned and squinted in Beck’s direction.

  “Good day, sir,” said the nearsighted old mole. “Awfully large raindrops we’re having today, aren’t we?”

  GRANDFATHER MOLE’S STATEMENT was not so far off. Because within a few days, it seemed to be raining berries—all over Pixie Hollow, all the time.

  Some Never fairies started carrying their flower-petal umbrellas whenever they went outside. But, as every fairy soon found out, dainty flower-petal umbrellas didn’t hold up very well to constant berry bombardment.

  “Phooey!” said Silvermist, a water fairy, as she flew into the Home Tree lobby. Her water-lily umbrella was covered in berry juice. It also had been knocked inside out by the force of some direct hits. Silvermist shook the umbrella as she tried to close it. “This is the fourth umbrella I’ve gone through in two days!”

  Beck overheard Silvermist and flew over to invite her to the umbrella exchange table. “Right this way,” Beck said. She led Silvermist across the lobby. There Rosetta and three other garden fairies sat behind a tree-bark table. “You can drop off your ruined umbrella,” Beck explained. “And you can pick up a new umbrella. The garden fairies will use your old one for seeds. So everyone wins!”

  The umbrella exchange table had been Beck’s idea. The Berry Battle was making big trouble for all the Never fairies, and she felt bad about that. She and the other animal-talent fairies were working as hard as they could to end the war. Over the past few days, between visits to Mother Dove, they had gone to see the hummingbirds and the chipmunks many times. They had tried to talk sense into them. But neither side was budging.

  In the meantime, Beck wanted to do something to make things easier for the fairies. So she asked her garden-talent friends for help. They were experts at making flower-petal umbrellas. They were more than happy to pitch in. And now the idea of the umbrella exchange table seemed to be taking off. They had only been set up for an hour, but already they had collected ten broken umbrellas.

  One of the garden fairies helped Silvermist with her umbrella. Meanwhile, Rosetta noticed Beck glancing out the lobby window.

  “Beck, we’ve got this under control,” she said kindly. “I mean, if there’s somewhere else you need to be…” She thought that Beck looked distracted.

  She was right. Beck wanted to get outside. She wanted to check in with the animals. Maybe something had changed. Maybe they had called a truce. Or maybe today was the day Beck would think of some way to get them to stop fighting.

  “Thanks, Rosetta,” Beck replied. She smiled and waved good-bye to her friend as she flew toward the front door of
the Home Tree. Then, at the door, she turned and flew back. She took a daisy-petal umbrella from the new-umbrella pile. “Mind if I borrow this?” she asked Rosetta.

  Rosetta giggled. “Of course not,” she replied.

  And so, armed with the umbrella, Beck ventured outside. Almost right away, she heard a berry splatter on her open umbrella. Beck flew quickly through the berry shower. She dodged berries whenever she could. She only had to go a short distance out in the open—just as far as the big oak tree with the split trunk. From there, she could continue her trip underground by using the tunnels that were part of the animal-talent domain.

  Long, long ago—so long ago that Mother Dove was the only one who could remember—the animal-talent fairies had built a huge system of tunnels stretching across Never Land. The fairies used them to get anywhere they wanted—without being seen and without setting foot outdoors.

  Like all animal-talent fairies, Beck knew every inch of the tunnels like the back of her hand. But to other fairies, the tunnel system was a baffling maze. It wound through burrows, tree hollows, nests, and dens. A few had been abandoned, but many of them were home to families of animals.

  Beck had decided that using the tunnels was the best way to travel while the Berry Battle raged. That way, she could stay dry and free of berry stains.

  Beck set out first for the chipmunk camp. Diving through a small hole at the base of the big oak tree, she zipped down an underground tunnel that led toward Havendish Stream. She went aboveground to cross the stream, flying up a hollowed-out section of a maple tree, then down through the center of a dead limb that spanned the water. Then, back underground at a tunnel crossroads, she turned and headed due north through a series of empty fox dens.

  On her way through the first den, she met Fawn coming in the opposite direction.

  “Fawn!” Beck cried. Her face lit up at the sight of her friend. “I was on my way to see the chipmunks. Is there any news about the Berry Battle?”