Four Clues for Rani

IF YOU HEAD toward the second star on your right and fly straight on till morning, you’ll come to Never Land, a magical island where mermaids play and children never grow up.

When you arrive, you might hear something like the tinkling of little bells. Follow that sound and you’ll find Pixie Hollow, the secret heart of Never Land.

A great old maple tree grows in Pixie Hollow, and in it live hundreds of fairies and sparrow men. Some of them can do water magic, others can fly like the wind, and still others can speak to animals. You see, Pixie Hollow is the Never fairies’ kingdom, and each fairy who lives there has a special, extraordinary talent.

Not far from the Home Tree, nestled in the branches of a hawthorn, is Mother Dove, the most magical creature of all. She sits on her egg, watching over the fairies, who in turn watch over her. For as long as Mother Dove’s egg stays well and whole, no one in Never Land will ever grow old.

Once, Mother Dove’s egg was broken. But we are not telling the story of the egg here. Now it is time for Rani’s tale.…





“OH, COCKLESHELLS!” The cry startled a black-capped chickadee. The bird burst out of the brush and into the air right in front of Rani. She gave a little cry of her own.

What in Never Land is going on? thought Rani. She stepped forward and parted a tall clump of Nevergrass. And there, next to Havendish Stream, she saw her fellow water-talent fairy Silvermist.

Silvermist was staring into the water. Her hands were on her hips and she had an annoyed look on her face. Tally, another water talent, was at her side.

“Is everything okay?” asked Rani.

Silvermist looked up. Her long, black hair rippled down on either side of her heart-shaped face. “Oh, Rani. What a disaster! It all started when Tally and I came here to check the stream’s water level,” she began to explain.

Rani nodded. There had been a dry spell in Pixie Hollow for the past two weeks. Havendish Stream had slowed to a trickle. The stream powered the fairy-dust mill, which was where the fairies kept their grains. They also made fairy dust there.

Each and every water talent had been working round the clock to keep the stream at its usual level. They pulled raindrops out of clouds. They changed the path of underground streams to meet up with Havendish.

The water talents had worked especially hard, but many of the other fairies had helped out as well. Every fairy who needed water for work—the cooking, dyeing, garden, wing-washing, and dish-washing talents, to name a few—had felt the dry spell’s impact. It had been a busy two weeks. Exhausting, in fact.

“Luckily, the rains came last night,” Silvermist went on. “It looks like—”



“—everything is back in order,” Rani finished for her.

Silvermist nodded and returned to the current problem. “So here I was, checking out the water level. Then the clasp of my mother-of-pearl belt came loose and it fell into the stream!”

Rani looked into the water. The belt winked in the sunlight. It seemed right at home in the golden sand at the bottom of the stream.

Tally leaned forward and took a closer look over Silvermist’s shoulder. “Your mother-of-pearl belt?” she cried. “That’s my mother-of-pearl belt!”

Silvermist’s glow, like every fairy’s, was generally lemon yellow with a hint of gold. Suddenly, it became bright orange with embarrassment. “I’d fly backward if I could,” she said to Tally, uttering the usual fairy apology. “I meant to return it right away, but it’s so pretty, and I thought I’d wear it one more time.…” Her voice trailed off.

The water was too deep to reach the belt with a stick. And Silvermist and Tally couldn’t go into the stream. Never fairies, even water-talent ones, can’t get their wings too wet. When wings get waterlogged, they can drag a fairy underwater. So although Silvermist was desperate to get the belt back for her friend, going in after it was out of the question. Tally, on the other hand, looked as if she wouldn’t mind, at that moment, giving Silvermist a quick shove into the water.

But Rani wasn’t like other fairies. Without saying a word, she dove into the stream so cleanly, she hardly made a splash.

Silvermist gasped, but Tally just laughed. “That’s right!” she said. “I keep forgetting!”

Rani, you see, had no wings to drag her under. By nature a very generous fairy, she was also rather impulsive. Not so long ago, she had, without a second thought, cut off her wings to help save Never Land from certain destruction.

It was terrible to be without wings, but it did have one advantage. Rani was the only fairy in all of Pixie Hollow who could safely swim.

Rani opened her eyes underwater and saw the belt right away. Still, she waited before picking it up. She playfully chased a little minnow. She sifted some pale sand between her fingers. She moved her head from side to side and watched her golden hair float around her like a shaft of sunlight.