Midnight Read online

  She was my first successful fairy. I’d tried copying Casper Dream’s illustration right from when I got my first fairy book, but my funny little felt creations looked nothing like his beautiful artwork. They were too fat and lumpy, with button eyes and wool hair.

  Then Miss Lang, the old lady who lived next door, taught me how to sew properly, showing me all the different stitches. She gave me a special sewing kit for Christmas, a little rag doll with a matching outfit of clothes. I wasn’t very interested in making a rag doll but I used the basic pattern to fashion my own fairy. I pored over the picture of the Moonbeam Fairy in my book, doing my best to copy her properly.

  I made her out of white silk, though it was very slippery to work with, and I sewed little pearls all round the hem of her dress. I gave her cream feathery wings and long white curly cotton hair way past her knees. She didn’t look exactly like the Casper Dream illustration but she was much better than her lumpy felt fairy sisters.

  Will liked my Moonbeam Fairy – and the Rose and the Bluebell and the Autumn Leaf fairy. He particularly liked the Crow Fairy. She crouched on the back of a black crow. I hoped it wasn’t a real stuffed crow. I’d found it on an old hat in a junk shop. It seemed a simple replica, but there was something frighteningly real about its sharp orange beak and beady black eyes. I was never too sure about the Crow Fairy, especially when Will made her sweep through the air, casting evil spells.

  He used to play all sorts of magical games with me and my fairies until Dad caught us at it.

  ‘A lad of your age playing with fairies?’ said Dad, his lip curling.

  Will hadn’t gone near them since. But now he reached up and touched them all, making them dance up and down on their elastic threads. He pulled the Crow Fairy by her tiny black toes so that she and her crow bounced up and down as if they were bungee jumping.

  ‘Don’t, Will.’

  He took no notice. He pulled the other fairies in quick succession as if he was bell-ringing. Their wings flapped dementedly as the elastic pinged.

  ‘Stop it!’ I said, pushing him.

  I pushed harder than I meant to. He lost his balance. He tripped, still hanging onto the Crow Fairy. Her elastic snapped and she flew across the room and landed in the corner, slipping right off her crow, breaking one of her feathery wings.

  ‘Now look what you’ve done!’ I said, kneeling down and examining her. ‘Oh no, you’ve ripped her dress, look, and I haven’t got any more black lace.’

  ‘It was your fault, shoving me like that, you stupid girl,’ said Will, but he kneeled down beside me. He cradled the Crow Fairy and her bird in his hands. Her flimsy net dress had caught on the crow’s sharp beak and had ripped beyond repair. Will poked his finger through the hole.

  ‘Poor little ruined Crow Fairy,’ he said. He flew the crow through the air, aiming it straight at me. ‘Vicious beast. Watch out, Vi, it’ll peck you to death.’

  Will saw I wasn’t in the mood for fooling around. He stopped larking, pulled a feather out of the crow’s wing and stuck it into the Crow Fairy’s soft back.

  ‘There. She can fly again now. And you can make her a new dress, can’t you? Haven’t you got anything black? Look, I’ve got black socks, you can have them.’

  ‘You don’t put fairies in black wool. She’ll look like she’s in winter woollies, little cardie and mittens and bobble hat. It wouldn’t work.’

  ‘I know! My black velvet waistcoat,’ said Will.

  It was another junk shop find, a hippy-type waistcoat straight from the seventies, but it somehow looked amazingly cool on Will. It was his all-time favourite garment.

  ‘We can’t use your special waistcoat!’

  ‘Sure we can,’ said Will, taking it off. He thrust it at me. ‘There. Get snipping.’

  ‘I can’t spoil your waistcoat.’

  Will snatched the scissors out of my sewing box and cut right up the back of the waistcoat. ‘There. I’ve spoilt it for you. Now get sewing. Have you got any black sequins? Black ribbon?’

  I started cutting out a tiny black dress for the Crow Fairy. Will sat cross-legged beside me, watching. He dug in my sewing basket and found another pair of scissors. He started cutting something out himself from the ruined waistcoat.

  ‘Are you going to sew, Will?’

  ‘Boys don’t sew,’ he said, imitating Dad’s voice so accurately I had to check his lips.

  He went on cutting out a long soft strand of velvet with an hour-glass shape in the middle.

  ‘What’s that you’re making? It won’t fit her.’

  ‘It’s not for your little Crow Fairy. This is for you,’ said Will.

  He tied the shaped part over my eyes and knotted it behind my head. ‘You too shall go to the masked ball, Cinderella,’ he said.

  ‘What are you now, a fairy godmother?’ I said, pretending we were still larking about, though my heart was pounding.

  I knew what was coming now.

  Dear C.D.,

  Are you ever frightened?

  Did you ever play games when you were young – really scary games?

  There’s a page in your Midnight book that really haunts me. At first glance it looks as if it’s a completely black illustration, glossy and opaque. But then you see these eyes gleaming in the dark, amber and orange and green, and if you look very carefully you can see these strange twisted shapes. They could just be gnarled old trees – or they could be creatures waiting to get you.

  I can’t look at that page without my heart thudding.

  With love from

  Violet

  XXX

  From The Book of Flower Fairies by Casper Dream

  The Violet Fairy

  A small shy fairy, purplish blue, easily trampled upon.

  Two

  WILL AND I had played the Mask Game for years. We started when we were very young. Will was maybe six, me four. Dad forced us to go to a children’s Christmas party at the police social club. We both loathed these parties. Will didn’t want to charge round playing football and fighting with the other boys. I was much too shy to compare party dresses and disco dance with the girls. We both disliked the conjuring clown. Will was simply bored, and I was such a little wimp I was frightened.

  I did quite enjoy the old-fashioned party games after we’d eaten our fill of sausage rolls and crisps and ice cream. I was good at playing Statues even though I was one of the youngest, and I won a pink brush and comb and hairslide set in a game of Pass the Parcel.

  The only game I didn’t like was Blind Man’s Buff. I hated the way some big policeman ‘uncle’ tied a sash too tightly round my eyes so that I couldn’t even blink. I didn’t like being spun round and round in the sudden dark. I hated stumbling about with outstretched hands while the other children rushed past me giggling.

  I kept running this way and then that way, grabbing thin air again and again. Some of the boys started poking me in the back and trying to trip me. I tried to pull the mask off but the uncle said, ‘Hey, no peeking!’ and brushed my hands away.

  I felt as if I was stuck in this awful whirling black world for ever. I started to cry behind the sash. Then my hands suddenly clasped strong skinny arms.

  ‘You’ve caught me,’ said Will. ‘OK, it’s my go now.’

  He’d stood right in front of me and deliberately let himself be caught. But I didn’t realize that then. I wasn’t grateful enough. Another little girl suggested we go off into a corner and play hairdressers with my new brush and comb and hairslides. She was at least a year older than me and very pretty, with long fair curly hair. I was immensely flattered that she wanted to play with me.

  I brushed and combed her long curls and then carefully clipped each pink sparkly slide into place, one above the other. They kept slipping sideways but I tried again and again, breathing heavily, until they were perfect. The curly girl fingered them complacently.

  ‘Now it’s your turn to be the hairdresser,’ I said.

  She didn’t want to swap roles. She tried comb