The Night Fairy by Laura Amy Schlitz Page B

day fairy.”
    Being a day fairy was not easy. Flory had never met a day fairy, and she knew little about their lives. Day fairies are afraid of giants, and they live in the wild places in the world. Night fairies, on the other hand, have a daredevil streak; they like to see how close they can come to giants without being seen. Even the boldest fairy would not choose to live in a giant’s garden, but Flory had no choice. Without wings, she couldn’t escape, and she needed the shelter of the cedar house.
    She soon found that her body did not like the day. Her skin liked to be cool and moist, not hot and dry. When the shadows fell, her whole body itched with alertness, and she found it hard to sleep. Sunshine made her eyes water, which made her irritable. It is always prettier when fairies are not irritable, but Flory could not help herself. She missed her wings, and she had to make a whole new life for herself, with no one to show her how.
    She hauled the twigs out of the wren house and covered the floor with cherry blossoms, casting a spell over them so they wouldn’t wilt. She gathered thin blades of grass and wove them into baskets for the storage of fresh greens. With unskilled hands, she knotted together a dress of cherry blossom so that she could blend in with the flowers on the tree. The day after she finished it, a strong rain came and tore the blossoms away, which made Flory shake her fist at the sky.

    She spent a great deal of time sitting on the peg outside her door hole, watching the garden. She noticed that the oak tree drew more birds than any tree in the garden. First one bird, then another, swooped at the tree and darted happily away. When she looked closely, she saw that there was a metal hook in the tree. Dangling from the hook was a clear tube full of seeds. It was this tube that drew the birds. They came to eat the seeds.
    Flory shook her head, baffled. Fairies are born knowing certain things, and one of the things she knew was that seeds come from plants, not from round tubes. All the same, the seeds smelled as if they might be good to eat. Just as she was thinking about the best way to climb down the tree, the door of the great house opened, and the giantess came out.
    She was — if Flory had known it — a rather small giantess, but she was the largest creature Flory had ever seen. She had white braids that crisscrossed over her head, and woolly slippers on her feet. She lumbered over to the oak tree and filled the tube with fresh seeds.
    Flory watched, holding her breath.
    The giantess wandered over to the fishpond. She opened a tall can that had pictures of fish on the side, and sprinkled little sticks on the water. The fish came to the surface, gulping and flicking their tails. The giantess watched them, making cheerful noises. After five minutes or so, she waddled back into the house.
    Flory thought about the giantess for a long time. She knew that giants were supposed to be very terrible, but it was hard to be afraid of anything so old and so slow. She reached behind her back to scratch the scabs on her left wing. She had never been taught to be afraid of bats. The bat people and the night fairies had been at peace for a thousand years.
    And yet it was a bat, not a giant, who had taken her wings.
    “I’m not afraid of giants,” Flory boasted aloud. It sounded so daring that she said it again, swinging her feet. “I’m not a bit afraid of giants. But I hate bats.”
    It was quite safe to say so, because the bats were all asleep.
    “I hate bats,” Flory repeated, “I hate, hate, hate bats, and I’m always going to hate them.”
    It seemed like a good decision. Flory lolled back against the side of the house, enjoying the fragrance of onion grass and grape hyacinths. She wondered if the grape hyacinths tasted as good as they smelled. Tomorrow she would climb down the tree and find out. It would be a long trip, but she was quick and agile, and she didn’t have a lazy bone in her body.
    She