The Book Fairy

Henry hates reading.

Unfortunately for him, it is all everyone talks about in this pathetic town. In his twelve years of living, he has yet to find someone besides his best friend Chester who is not addicted to their book the morning after a full moon.

Every full moon, the town gets a special visit from the Book Fairy. When the moon is at its peak, she flies to every person in the town, young or old, and puts a very special book under their pillow. It can be new, old, big, small, have pictures, have history, philosophy, or any other boring, time-sucking topic out there. The following day, everyone stops what they are doing to read the book that was specifically chosen for them. Everyone just sits around all day and does nothing. It would not be so terrible if Henry wasn’t forced to do the same. Not that he actually does it—he has become a master at skimming and pretending. Tonight is the full moon, so she’s coming.

And Henry is going to capture her.

***

“Here,” Chester says as he drops more wood at Henry’s feet. “This is all I had left in my room.”

“Thanks,” Henry mumbles as he hammers in a screw. His bedroom is littered with wood pieces that he has tried to use.

“Oh wow, here it is!” Chester marvels at his contraption. “How will it work?”

“Simple,” Henry says, pointing at the little net he made from cotton string. “This will go down by my pillow. This long string here will go off my bed and onto this.” He points to the wooden “tree” that he had built from previous scraps that Chester had brought him.

“You built a small net trap?” Chester asks.

“Yes! I’ve gone hunting with my father enough times to learn how he builds it.” Henry grabs one of Chester’s wood pieces. It looks like a promising piece for his final touch.

“How will you know if the Book Fairy has already visited some people with the books before she gets to you?” Chester asks.

“It won’t matter,” Henry says, feeling the texture of the wood. “People will go bonkers when they have no book, and it won’t matter that other people have it. The frantic behavior will be enough to stop everyone from reading calmly. Like I said, our goal is to wreak enough havoc to where we can continue having our own adventures without stopping to read like dimwits.”

Chester nods, as if that answer satisfies him enough. “Where did you get the string?”

“Edith’s room,” Henry replies. “Duh. It was simply sitting on her bed, almost like she was asking me to steal it.”

“Lovely.” Chester clearly approves of stealing from one’s sister.

Henry tries to bend the wood piece, but it snaps in half. “Hmm. Thanks, but this won’t do. It must be flexible enough to spring up but not too flexible where it could break. It will be the key to my contraption working.”

Chester rolls his eyes. “Well, of course it will break if you tug on it like that. That was one of my best finds!”

“Whatever,” Henry says. “We must go into town anyway. I need more screws. Are you coming or not?”

Chester is on his feet in an instant. “Am I coming to town with you the day before the full moon to play and have more adventures before it all ends tomorrow? Of course!”

Henry claps Chester’s hand in a friendly handshake. “You clearly don’t think highly of me. Now, let’s go.” ***

Henry and Chester crouch down behind a fruit stand and watch the old guard of the jewelry shop sleeping out front. Everyone is going about their day at the market, conversations buzzing with excitement about the Book Fairy. Henry already has the perfect wood piece he needs in his bag, but he still needs screws. They had decided to make the best of their errand and take a minor detour.

“Why have a guard if he’s just going to sleep?” Chester whispers in Henry’s ear.

“So we can have some fun.” Henry holds out his hand. “Knife.”

Chester places a knife in his hand, and they sneak up to the guard. Very carefully, Henry pulls the end of the guard’s mustache and slices the right side clean off, making it ridiculously uneven with the other side. He wakes up with a start, but Henry and Chester have already taken off, running and laughing.

“That was a good one!” Chester shouts as they run.

Henry is just about to respond when he accidentally crashes into the cattle stand. He reaches his hands out to steady himself on the cow, producing a loud moo. Some chickens surround his feet and start squawking. He quickly stows the knife in his bag, grateful he had not accidently stabbed the cow. “Hey, kid, watch where you’re going!” the farmer yells. “Shut up,” Henry says to Chester, who is doubled over laughing. Henry gathers himself and picks straw out of his hair and trousers when he sees his twin-sister Edith and her friend Mary come out of the sewing store across the street. Henry and Chester look at each other, both with the same idea. Easy targets! They sneak up behind them as they talk.

“... don’t worry, I’ll have the bonnet ready in no time,” Edith is saying to Mary. “The only thing holding me back is my darn cotton string. I seem to have misplaced it.”

“It’s alright,” Mary says. She’s blind, so she walks with a wooden stick in front of her. “It is not an immediate need. After all, you will all be reading tomorrow.”

“That’s right!” Edith squeals. “I really hope to get one of Lewis Carroll’s works!”

“Oh, I don’t believe I have heard of him.”

“Well, he hasn’t published much yet, but word on the street is that he has a very unique and exciting book that just came out this year! I hope the Book Fairy is good to me tonight.”

“She always is.”

“Right. Did you hear about Charlotte’s cousin Edward? He got released from prison, and the next full moon, the Book Fairy left him the Bible.”

“Hmm. That sure is convicting.”

“And Mrs. Lancaster got a copy of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë last month! I wonder if she would teach it in class!”

As they are talking, Henry and Chester slowly add hay pieces to Edith’s hair. They even pull a few grass pieces that have gotten stuck to Chester’s shoes and stick them on. It takes everything in them to stifle their giggles.

Mary sniffs rather loudly. “Edith, have we passed the animals yet?”

“We passed them a few minutes ago,” Edith responds.

Henry and Chester share a look, and Chester bursts out laughing. Edith and Mary jump, startled from Chester’s outburst.

“Henry!” Edith angrily claws at the hay in her hair. “My goodness, you smell terrible! That isn’t going away for days!”

“Whatcha got there?” Henry reaches for the fabric in Edith’s arms, to which she whips them away faster than he would have thought her capable of.

“I swear, if you get your grimy hands on this lovely fabric, I’ll tell Mother, and she’ll have you scrubbing the floors for days!” she shouts. “This is for a bonnet I will make for Mary.”

“Yes,” Mary chimes in, not quite making eye contact with Henry. He waves his hand in front of her face, and she does not flinch. He waves it closer and faster, and she still does not flinch.

“You really can’t see this?” Henry says. To be completely honest, he says it more in shock and awe than with the intention of being mean, but Edith doesn't see it that way. Of course she doesn’t. She slaps his hand away (which really hurt, although he would never tell her that) as Chester laughs out loud.

“How dare you.” Edith shakes her head, wearing the same disappointed look on her face that Mother always has whenever she looks at Henry. “I will tell Mother and Father about this, I promise you that! Come, Mary.”

The two of them walk off, and Edith throws her arm around Mary’s shoulders.

“Come on, Chester!” Henry takes off towards his house. “I need to finish building this.”

“Wait, Henry! The screws!”

***

After hammering and arranging to perfection, the contraption is finally ready. Henry carefully lays the net just against my pillow. He feels a surge of excitement as he gets into bed.

I am capturing the Book Fairy tonight, Henry thinks. I am capturing the Book Fairy tonight.

Henry tosses and turns in his bed, impatiently awaiting her arrival. He begins to doubt if she is real and wonders if she is something parents tell their children to manipulate them into thinking reading is fun

—

but he remembers adults receive books as well, so the point is squashed.

He looks at his pocket watch

—

12:15.

That meant she is already on the move. He wonders if she will get to Edith before him.

Henry lays there for two more hours before he hears the faintest sound of bells. His heart immediately starts pounding. If he stirs, she will know he is awake and come back later, so he freezes. He is on his side, so his back is to the window. He opens his

eyes to slits, and a faint glow illuminates his room.

The Book Fairy is here.

Henry hears the sound of dainty feet landing on his mattress, and he holds his breath.

This is it. He can feel her slowly approaching his pillow, and he knows the cotton-stringed net trap is right there. In a few seconds he will see his hunting skills come

in handy and his net

—

SSSSHHHHHIINNGGGGG!!!

He sits up so fast that he misses her tiny cry of shock. He caught her! Dangling from the net trap he made is the little fairy, fighting with all of her might to escape. And she is angry.

Henry can’t help but laugh a giddy laugh. Chester is going to be so

impressed!

“Hello, little Book Fairy,” Henry whispers up against the trap.

She crosses her arms and blows him a raspberry. Her mousy brown hair hangs in two braids on the sides of her tiny head, and her itty-bitty eyes are magnified at least twice their size because of her enormous glasses. She wears a purple dress made from a small piece of leather, but the most interesting part of her is her wings. Instead of two standard fairy wings like Henry would have imagined, she has at least four square-shaped wings on each side, all of them stacked on top of each other like pages in a book. As she flies around her little trap, he sees her wings flapping around in a way that looks like flipping through a book. She wears no shoes.

“Wow, I can’t believe I caught the Book Fairy!” he says. “How many people have tried?”

She holds up a zero with her tiny hand, and Henry is shocked. He finds it hard to believe that no one else in the town had ever tried to capture her.

Henry leans in really close to her. “So, how many homes have you visited?” She folds her

arms and turns her back to him, indignant.

“You refuse to answer me?” he taunts. “Can you even talk?”

She is still for a long time before he sees her head shake.

“Interesting,” he says. “Well, now that I know I won, I will sleep as peacefully as ever. And since you are unable to talk, I guess you will be keeping this to yourself.”

She begins grabbing at the net again and tries to yank the strings open, but she isn't strong enough to break the cotton string. Henry goes back to his bed, and he notices she had dropped her bag by the pillow. When he picks it up, she bounces and yanks the net even harder.

“So, the famous bag of books, huh?” he says. The strap of the bag hangs on his finger as he jiggles it. She really doesn't like that. “How do the books get to be our size?”

The fairy isn’t answering him in any rational way. All she keeps doing is fidgeting restlessly, so Henry takes it upon himself and sticks his pinky finger in the bag, catching a tiny book. Once it is out of the bag and on his finger, it slowly grows to human size. Within seconds, he is holding a book titled Hans Brinker; or, The Silver Skates by Mary Mapes Dodge.

Henry admits to himself that he finds it fascinating. Just because he finds reading dull doesn't mean he finds the magical concept of holding something that grew before his eyes to be dull. He opens the cover and sees in her standard Book Fairy-writing a name: Chester Banks.

Henry snorts.

“Chester will not want to read this,” he tells her. “Believe me.”

The fairy puts her hands on her hips and raises her eyebrows at Henry as if she actually thinks she knows more about what Chester would want to read than he does. She makes a hand gesture that looks like putting something inside something else. She does it

over and over again, looking irritated that he is too slow to catch on.

“Oh, you want me to put it back in the bag?”

She nods with an eye roll, as if it was an obvious thought to stick an entire book back in a bag that can fit in his palm. Henry shrugs and touches the book to the bag, and it instantly shrinks and goes back in the bag.

“No way,” Henry whispers to himself.

She keeps pointing at him over and over again. He has no idea what she wants from him.

“What about me?” he asks. She opens her hands as if she is reading and then points to Henry. Over and over again.

“You want me to find my book?” he asks, and when she nods, he says, “How?”

She gestures big from her mouth and points to him over and over again.

“What, do I have to say my name?” he asks, and she nods vigorously. “Okay, here it goes. Henry Brown.”

Henry digs his pinkie in while he says his name, and to his surprise, he pulls out a newspaper clipping of a short story instead of a book. It is titled “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog” by Mark Twain. Huh. Well, he can’t complain. It’s a short story. Short.

“Well, I can just give this to Edith to read,” Henry says. “I’m sure she likes this author.”

Henry has never heard her mention his name, but then again, he doesn't listen to what she says anyway. But the Book Fairy shakes her head, points at the story, then holds up one finger.

“Oh, is this his first published work?” he asks, and she nods. That’s kind of cool. He

wonders why she had decided to give him a short story instead of a full book like everyone else.

Henry stifles a yawn and realizes what time it is. He makes sure the net is secure before getting back in bed, trying his best to ignore the flickering glow and jingling bell sound coming from the net. Even though he is extremely tired, falling asleep is difficult. In the back of his mind, he has trouble grasping what he has done. He successfully accomplished exactly what he had been working towards for an entire full moon. So,why is he not happier about it?

***

The morning is a lot less chaotic than Henry had hoped. He goes to town to walk around and observe how the day unfolds. Half the town is nestled either under trees, on benches, near fountains, on the grass, or anywhere else people like to read. Reverend Miller pours over what appears to be a new hymnal. Mr. Potts—the tax collector—is engrossed in a copy of Great Expectations. The baker hustles over to the bakery with a smile on his face and a new cookbook in hand. The other half wanders around aimlessly, all consulting each other with confusion.

Mother and Father got their books, so they have been reading in the house this morning so intently that Henry was able to slip out without being interrogated. He is smug in knowing he saved Chester from this fate. Chester will be so thrilled. Henry had woken up to find the Book Fairy sound asleep in her makeshift cage, but she had left him a note saying, “Go to the theater first thing. There, you will find your answers.”

Henry had been confused because he did not have any questions, but he decided to go because ironically, going to the theater had been his plan for that morning. Edith often likes to read her book in the backstage of the theater when there are no shows. Henry has no idea why she does that every month, but since the theater owner is nice and it is a large space where many children in the town come and go as they please, it seems like a decent choice. It hardly seems like a place for peace and quiet, and isn't that what people want when they read?

Henry has to see if the Book Fairy visited Edith before him. He knows she would be losing her mind if not, but she wasn’t in the house when he woke up. He enters the theater and finds it to be completely empty of people, which is strange. He approaches a large tree prop backstage, and he is just about to go around when he hears Edith’s voice, causing him to freeze.

“‘... there was nothing so very remarkable in that; nor did Alice think it so very much out of the way to hear the Rabbit say to itself, ‘Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!’” Edith reads.

“‘When she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural; but when the Rabbit actually took a watch out of its waistcoat-pocket, and looked at it, and then hurried on, Alice started to her feet, for it flashed across her mind that she had never before seen a rabbit with either a waistcoat-pocket, or a watch to take out of it, and burning with curiosity, she ran across the field after it, and was just in time to see it pop down a large rabbit-hole under the hedge.’”

Henry frowned. A rabbit with a waistcoat-pocket and a watch? What an interesting visual.

“‘In another moment down went Alice after it, never once considering how in the world she was to get out again. The rabbit-hole went straight on like a tunnel for some way, and then dipped suddenly down, so suddenly that Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself

before she found herself falling down what seemed to be a very deep well!’”

Henry hears two gasps, and his ears perk. There are people with Edith. He crouches down and peers out from behind the tree. Sitting with her are Mary and Chester, both of them engrossed in Edith’s story. It occurs to him that he has never heard Edith read any of her books out loud. It is almost like a performance.

What happened when Alice went down the well?

he wonders.

“‘... either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her, and to wonder what was going to happen next. First, she tried

to look down and make out what she was coming to, but it was too dark to see anything...’”

Henry can’t help but listen. He hears all about Alice falling down a rabbit hole, seeing objects along the way, talking to herself about missing her cat, and finally, discovering a table. He hears about Alice looking at flowers through a tiny door, drinking potions that made her large and small, eating various things, and eventually going inside that door. He finds himself desperate to know what is through the door.

“‘...this is what generally happens when one eats cake, but Alice had got so much into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the-way things to happen, that it seemed quite dull and stupid for life to go on in the common way.

So, she set to work, and very soon finished off the cake.’”

Edith closes the book, and Henry hears a groan.

“Won’t you read more?” Mary asked. “That was only one chapter!”

“Yes, and we have many days until the next full moon,” Edith says. “It is more fun to stretch it out. Chester, thank you for joining us this time. It is a shame you did not receive a book this full moon! I wonder what happened to the Book Fairy!”

Chester has a guilty look on his face, and Henry’s heart begins to pound.

No, Henry silently wills.

Please don’t give me away.

“I, um...I need to find Henry.” Chester stands up abruptly and charges out, walking right past Henry without noticing.

Traitor.

Henry looks over at Edith, holding his breath. Her mouth hangs open and eyes are glued to Chester as he leaves. Henry can see her eyes shifting around, and he knows. Wow, nothing gets past her. Edith sets her book down and runs after Chester. She also doesn’t notice Henry. Henry peers over at Mary, sitting quietly, staring straight ahead, and he doesn't move. He has no idea how long they are there. At one point, she stands up and walks around, dragging her hands along the rack of costumes. Henry takes that as an opportunity to get Edith’s book. He carefully crawls to where Edith left her book, looking back and forth to Mary as he goes. It is so strange knowing that he is right in front of her and that she can’t even see him. Finally, after what feels like hours of slow sneaking and avoiding creaks on the stage, he reaches Edith’s book. He just has to know what happened when Alice went through that door. The book is called

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. This must be the book Edith wanted. He flips the page with the lightest touch he could muster.

“Hello, Henry.”

Henry jumps so violently that he throws the book up in the air.

“Careful,” Mary giggles. “If you ruin the spine or bend the pages,

Edith will kill you with her bare hands.”

“How did you know I was here?” he asks, dumbfounded.

Mary lets out an indignant laugh. “I’ve known you were hiding behind the prop this entire time. You reek of cow from yesterday afternoon. I do have other senses, believe it or not.”

He sniffs himself, and she clearly senses that because she giggles again.

“Why are you here?” she asks, her tone gradually becoming much more serious as she

speaks. “Have you come to ruin my splendid time with Edith as she reads to me? You know, it is

the only way I can read. I have tried to learn braille, but hearing her voice and the adventure in it

is an entirely different experience.”

“I know,” he mutters. He can believe it. He finds that he is actually curious to see what

happens next with Alice. Knowing that the small door might lead to a place called Wonderland

(the title was a bit of a giveaway) made him that much more interested.

“I know you think low of reading because you find it boring,” she continues. “You’re

forced to sit in one spot and stare at paper. You want adventure, which to you means making

everyone else’s life more miserable for a laugh. Well, guess what? Because of Edith and her books, I have had more adventures than you'll ever have! I’ve been to Italy, Greece, India, Egypt,

Spain, fantasy worlds, worlds you can’t even fathom! And I’ve done all of it from the comfort of

this very theater. It just takes a little imagination and belief, and you’ll be transported to another

world. I have, and I can’t even see my own hands. Just think what you can imagine with sight!

That’s what reading can do to you, Henry. Learn it now, or you’ll just continue to make

everyone’s lives in this town miserable, including your own.”

Wow. Henry immediately feels a crashing sense of guilt for all he has done. He hasn’t

thought about Mary’s life in that way at all. Knowing she can’t read on her own the way she

wants is quite sad. Maybe he has not been putting his eyes to good use.

“Um... thank you,” he mumbles after a long time of silence. “I, uh...I have to go. I

apologize for ruining your time.”

Henry bolts before she can say anything. He pulls his knife out and feels the blade as he

runs, wondering if it would be sharp enough to cut through cotton string. He might as well get

started on his short story. At least it isn't an entire book.

Maybe Henry doesn't hate reading after all.

by Amanda Garabedian