Disney Fairies: Fawn and the Mysterious Trickster Read online

  “What?” said Beck.

  Fawn swallowed hard. “That’s no fairy.”

  THE MYSTERIOUS SHAPE disappeared behind another cluster of leaves.

  “Let’s get a closer look!” Fawn whispered.

  They inched forward, moving as quietly as they could. Fawn strained to see. Over the rustling of leaves she noticed another sound—a pounding. It took her a moment to realize it was her heart beating.

  Before they could reach the spot, the shape darted away. It moved almost too fast for Fawn to track it. The mysterious figure landed on a nearby branch. Another slight rustle of leaves gave it away. Again, Fawn and Beck inched toward it. And again, it darted to the next branch just as they got close.

  On the third try, they closed in. They paused in front of the leaves shielding the mystery wailer. Fawn reached out and grasped a leaf stem. Slowly, slowly, she pulled the curtain of leaves aside.

  A small, feathered head with a long, thin beak poked out at them.

  “Twitter?” Beck cried in surprise.

  Fawn was shocked speechless for several moments. She couldn’t believe that the source of that awful wail was her and Beck’s hummingbird friend.

  Twitter and Beck had been close since Twitter was a chick. As long as Beck had known him, Twitter had always been a little high-strung. He tended to get overexcited about the smallest things. When he did, he often came looking for Beck.

  “Twitter,” said Beck in Hummingbird, “what are you doing up at this time of night? And why are you making that awful noise? Are you all right?”

  Unlike Beck, Fawn was still in prankster-hunting mode. She couldn’t help eyeing Twitter suspiciously.

  “Wait!” Fawn cried in Hummingbird. “I’ve got it now. You’re the mystery prankster!”

  Beck looked shocked. Twitter himself looked positively bewildered. “What p-p-prankster? N-n-no!” He flitted around excitedly as he twittered. He darted inches to the right and hovered. He darted inches to the left and hovered.

  Fawn made other fairies dizzy, but Twitter made Fawn dizzy. She understood why she’d thought the dark shape was wingless. Twitter’s wings flapped so fast she couldn’t see them!

  And sometimes Twitter’s brain worked so fast his mouth had a hard time keeping up. “I j-j-just have a little c-c-cold,” Twitter stuttered. “I couldn’t sleep. I just d-d-didn’t know what to do with myself. So I came out here to p-ppractice my new hummingbird song. Like this.”

  Twitter tipped his head back. Out came the noise that had woken Fawn and Beck. Only, now it didn’t sound much like a wail. It sounded like a hummingbird with a cold trying to sing.

  “Aaaaaaaaooooooooooooeeeeeeeee!” Twitter moaned.

  Fawn’s and Beck’s eyes met. They couldn’t help smiling. To think they had mistaken a singing bird for a wailing ghost!

  Twitter stopped singing. “Do you like it?” he asked. “I made it up myself. I especially like the high part that goes like this. Erreeeeeeeeeeeee!”

  Beck cleared her throat. “It’s a very good song, Twitter. But you must be tired. Maybe you should try to get some sleep, and finish practicing your song in the morning.”

  The fairies flew Twitter back to his nest and tucked him in. Then they laughed over their silliness all the way back to the Home Tree.

  “I think we’re a little wound up over this ghost idea,” Beck said.

  “Yes,” Fawn replied. “I guess we really let our imaginations run wild.”

  By the time they flew back into Fawn’s room, they could barely keep their eyes open.

  Fawn fell into her bed. There was nothing standing between her and sleep.

  “Ieee!”

  Fawn cringed in her sleep. She thought she heard seagulls. But why would there be seagulls in the Home Tree?

  Fawn rolled over. She shielded her still-closed eyes from the morning sunshine. Her eyelids felt heavy. She struggled to get them open. But what she saw woke her up fast.

  There weren’t any seagulls—only Dulcie, a baking-talent fairy. She was looking down at Fawn, her eyes wide and her mouth open in surprise.

  “Aaaah!” Fawn cried, startled.

  Fawn looked over Dulcie’s head. That’s funny, she thought. Who moved that pot rack from the kitchen to my room?

  Fawn sat bolt upright. She was in the kitchen. She looked down. This wasn’t her bed—she’d been lying on a table.

  This wasn’t her blanket on top of her—it was a tablecloth.

  Fawn knew she had fallen asleep in her bedroom. So how had she gotten down to the kitchen? There seemed to be only one explanation, and Fawn could hardly believe it.

  The mystery prankster had moved her as she slept!

  POOR DULCIE. HER glow was still trembling a little as she told Fawn how she had found her.

  As everyone knew, Dulcie was the first baking talent in the kitchen each morning. She churned out a dozen batches of poppy puff rolls before the kitchen got too busy.

  “I was going to get all my ingredients from the pantry,” Dulcie told Fawn. “I came over to put them on this table. You were completely covered by the tablecloth.” Dulcie held up Fawn’s “blanket.” “I didn’t have any idea you were there until I moved it and…well, you can imagine my surprise!”

  Fawn didn’t have to imagine. She had seen—and heard—it for herself!

  “But I don’t understand,” Dulcie went on. “You say someone moved you from your bed? While you slept? As a joke?” She crossed her arms. “It doesn’t seem very funny to me.”

  Fawn put an arm around Dulcie. “Really? Because I think it’s hilarious! And get this—a mystery prankster has gotten Beck and me before.” She told Dulcie about Beck’s upside-down room and the kiwifruit jam pranks. “See?” Fawn said. She pointed at her feet. “There’s still some dried jam on my slippers.”

  Dulcie giggled. “That is kind of funny. But who do you think is behind it?” she asked.

  “I have no idea!” Fawn exclaimed in frustration. Was the same prankster behind all the tricks, she wondered, or were there different ones? Or maybe it was a team of pranksters?

  After she left the kitchen, Fawn raced upstairs to wake Beck. She had to tell her what had happened!

  Fawn flew past her own door on her way to Beck’s before she remembered—Beck was sleeping in Fawn’s room. Fawn backtracked and burst through the door.

  “Beck! Beck!” she cried. “You’ve got to hear this!” Fawn lifted the sheet that Beck had pulled over her face while she slept.

  “Huh?” Beck grunted sleepily. But she woke up in a hurry when Fawn launched into her tale.

  “The kitchen?” Beck repeated in disbelief after Fawn was done. “You mean someone moved you down there while you slept? Without even waking you up? How?”

  “Well,” Fawn said, “I am a very sound sleeper.”

  Beck snorted. “I know! Who’s the one who always has to get you up for midnight visits with the bats? You could sleep through a jackrabbit migration.”

  Then Beck frowned. “But…how did the prankster even get in here?” she asked. “The place was booby-trapped.”

  Fawn shook her head. “Not quite. Remember, we tripped the trap on the door last night?”

  “Oh, right,” Beck said. “When we came back to bed, we didn’t set it up again.”

  “I guess the prankster came right in through the door,” said Fawn. “Ooo! We were so close! If only we had reset the trap, we’d have caught the culprit!”

  Fawn flew slowly to one side of the room while staring at the floor. Then she turned and flew slowly to the other side. Beck watched her. After crossing the room a dozen times, Fawn stopped.

  “Okay. I say we go all out,” Fawn said. “Tonight. We set up booby traps again, only this time, we set up more! And not just here, but all over the Home Tree! We’ll put one outside each fairy and sparrow man’s door! Then, when the prankster comes out to start pranking, boom! We’ve got ’em!”

  Fawn glanced at Beck for a reaction. Beck gave her a doubtful look.


  “You’re right, you’re right.” Fawn sighed. “That’s a little crazy. Okay. How about this—we set a couple of traps in each main corridor. That’s bound to catch anyone who’s flying around and up to no good.”

  Now Beck looked more convinced. “Let’s do it,” she said. “There’s just one thing. What if a fairy is just flying down to grab a snack or something? What if we catch someone who’s not the prankster?”

  Fawn waved the question away.

  “We can worry about that when we catch someone!”

  Getting the trap ready took most of the day. Fawn got rolls and rolls of spiderweb from the weaving talents. She was itching to tell them what it was for. But she knew she had to keep the plan a secret.

  Fawn was already unrolling the webs in her room when Beck came in with the bells. As they tied the bells to the webs, they worked out the plan. They would wait to set up the traps until everyone was asleep. Otherwise, fairies would be tripping the traps left and right.

  “And this time, I’m not going to sleep,” said Fawn. “I want to stay alert—no mistakes like last time.”

  Beck wanted to stay up, too. “But if we’re not going to sleep, what will we do?” she asked.

  Fawn smiled. “We should find a good spot out in the hallway. Somewhere we can see anyone coming. Then we’ll hide…we’ll watch…and we’ll wait.”

  “DO YOU SEE anyone?” Beck whispered.

  “No, no not yet,” Fawn whispered back.

  The two fairies were squished into a tiny space behind a plant stand. The stand stood at a bend in the hallway where this branch of the Home Tree shot off in a different direction.

  Beck peeked out from behind one side of the plant stand. Fawn peeked out the other side. By the faint light of the firefly lanterns on the wall, Beck could see the door of her room. And Fawn could see the door of her room. Together they could keep an eye on both corridors that led to their corner.

  In each of the Home Tree’s main corridors, they had set two traps. Fawn squinted, trying to make out the traps in her corridor. There was one about halfway down, and one at the far end. But it was too dark to see any of the superfine webs.

  “Do you see anyone now?” Beck whispered.

  “No,” Fawn whispered. “No one.”

  Fawn and Beck sat pressed back to back. Fawn shifted slightly, trying to get more comfortable. There was little room to move. Fawn hated sitting still. This was practically torture!

  Time inched by. Fawn stared down the corridor. She studied every detail. She noticed weird shadows under each lantern, and she tried to guess what was making them. An image of a scary face sprang into her mind. Fawn decided she didn’t like that game.

  She heard the trees outside rustle in the wind. A cold breeze ran down the corridor. Fawn shivered.

  Crrrrrreeeeeeeeak. The two fairies jumped at the noise. Fawn laughed nervously. “Just the Home Tree bending in the wind,” she whispered.

  They were both silent for several moments, listening. Then Beck whispered, “Fawn, what if…what if we don’t catch anyone and we’re still pranked?”

  “What?” Fawn whispered. “You mean, what if someone gets by all our traps?” She couldn’t see how. There were so many. They were everywhere. They were secret, and next to invisible. “If someone did that and still pranked us? Then I guess…that would prove that our prankster is…a ghost.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Fawn saw something. A stone’s throw away, a small, dark shape moved across the floor. It was coming toward Fawn!

  “Aaaah!” Fawn cried, startling Beck behind her.

  “What?” Beck cried, turning to see.

  Fawn stammered, “It’s a…a…”

  The dark shape skittered away down the corridor. Fawn exhaled. It was just a beetle, passing through the Home Tree.

  It took a while for Fawn’s heart to stop racing. Waiting for…something in the near-dark in the middle of the night was spookier than she had expected.

  She took some deep breaths. She leaned her head against the plant stand. Behind her, Beck started humming very softly. Fawn guessed she was doing it out of nervousness. Or boredom. Either way, it was nice, and quiet enough that only she and Beck could hear.

  Fawn listened to Beck’s song. “Fairy Dust Melody”—that was what Beck was humming. The music talents had played it at the last Full Moon Dance.

  Fawn smiled as she remembered. She hated the dressing-up part of twilight dances. But she loved the dancing part. She never understood why fairies like Rosetta bothered with delicate pine-needle-heeled slippers. Everyone just wound up kicking off their shoes when the music started!

  Fawn closed her eyes just for a second. She could see the courtyard as it had looked that evening. The light-talent fairies had made lovely colored lanterns. The decoration talents had hung ribbon streamers from the low branches. The cooking and baking talents had filled tables with special treats. And, once the dance was in full swing, there had been all those fairies and sparrow men dancing. All the different colors of the fairies’ dresses mingled together, swirling around, and around, and around….

  Just then, a loud ringing filled the hallway.

  BRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIINNNG!

  The trap!

  Fawn snapped awake. She scanned the dark corridor. “Who is it?” she cried. “Where are they? Beck? Beck?”

  Beck was standing nearby. She stared at Fawn with wide eyes.

  “Beck, why are you just standing there? The trap! It’s been tripped!” said Fawn.

  Beck said nothing.

  “Beck, who’s the prankster?” Fawn asked.

  Beck opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again. She raised an arm slowly and pointed.

  Fawn looked down. Wrapped all around her body were superfine spiderwebs tied with bells. Only then did she also notice that she wasn’t crouched behind the plant stand. She was standing in the middle of the hallway. How had she gotten there? She had no memory of moving.

  “Beck, I don’t understand,” Fawn said. “What’s going on? Where’s the mystery trickster?”

  “Fawn,” Beck said breathlessly, “the trickster is…you!”

  “YES, YES,” Fawn replied impatiently. “I am a trickster. But who is the trickster? The mystery trickster!” She was trying to get airborne, but the spiderwebs kept her wings from moving freely. “Could you give me a hand with this?”

  Beck stretched the sticky webs so that Fawn could wriggle out. “What I mean is that you are the mystery trickster!” Beck said.

  Fawn couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “That’s ridiculous!” she replied. “Wouldn’t I know if I were?”

  Beck shook her head. “Not if you were sleeping.”

  Fawn stopped wriggling. “Sleeping?” she cried. “Sleeping while I turned your room upside down? Sleeping while I spread jam all over the Home Tree? Sleeping while I went downstairs to nap on a kitchen table?” She looked at Beck doubtfully. “Beck, come on. You’ve got to admit it sounds very unlikely.”

  Beck nodded. “I agree. It does,” she said. “Does dancing in your sleep sound just as unlikely?”

  “Yes,” Fawn replied. “Why?”

  “Because I just watched you dance in your sleep,” Beck said. “You danced right into that booby trap.”

  It took a moment for that to sink in.

  Beck went on. “Just now, before you tripped the trap, you got up from behind the plant stand. I asked what you were doing. But you didn’t answer. Then you started twirling around the hallway.” Beck closed her eyes and demonstrated.

  “I called your name over and over. Your eyes were shut and you didn’t seem to hear me. Before I knew it, you had danced right into the trap. And when the bells went off…you woke up.” Beck stopped dancing and shrugged. “Fawn, I think you were sleepflying!”

  Fawn was quiet. She was taking it all in. She wanted to laugh it off. But a voice inside was telling her that Beck was on to something. She had just been thinking—okay, dreaming—about the twilight da
nce. That would explain the dancing part of the sleepflight.

  But what about the unexplained pranks?

  Fawn thought back to the night Beck’s room was turned upside down. “I had a dream the night of the first mystery prank,” Fawn recalled. “I was turning a bucket of water over, again and again.”

  Beck thought about that. “Maybe you were acting that out in my room?” she suggested. “Did you have a dream the night of the jam prank?”

  Fawn shook her head. “I don’t remember one. But I do love kiwifruit jam,” she said. “Maybe I was hungry for a midnight snack!”

  Beck held up a finger. “And maybe you were going back for more the night you wound up on the kitchen table!”

  Fawn shrugged. Who knew what a sleepflying fairy wanted or why she did it? But the sleepflying prankster theory was starting to add up.

  “I think you might be right, Beck!” Fawn exclaimed. “I am the mystery prankster!” A huge grin spread slowly across her face. “And I’m such a good prankster, I can do it in my sleep!”

  Beck crossed her arms. “No fair!” she cried. “I’m really going to have to watch out now. You’re pranking day and night!”

  Fawn still had trouble believing it. But she knew it had to be true. She and Beck had gotten so carried away with their pranking that it had taken over every part of their lives—even Fawn’s sleep.

  Suddenly, Fawn felt very tired. She yawned a huge yawn. She hadn’t been sleeping well lately, and now she knew why. But she had a feeling that tonight she was going to sleep like a sloth. She didn’t have to worry about ghosts or mystery pranksters anymore.

  As Fawn went back to her own bed, she made a decision. She’d set up a booby trap in her door and one in her window every night before she went to bed. It would make her feel better. She didn’t really want to be pranking other fairies in her sleep.

  Of course, Fawn’s pranking days weren’t over.