Читать книгу Magic Ballerina 7-12 - Darcey Bussell - Страница 19

The fairy threw her head back and laughed triumphantly. “I told you that you couldn’t stop me!” And with that, she disappeared in a flash of green smoke.

Rosa ran into the clearing, her heart pounding.

“Nutmeg?” Rosa whispered, touching her friend’s cold grey hand. “Nutmeg, are you OK?” But Nutmeg’s face was frozen in a shocked expression.

Tears welled up in Rosa’s eyes. She couldn’t believe what had just happened. Nutmeg had been turned to stone! Who was the horrid fairy? What had everyone been arguing with her about?

There’s something going on in Enchantia and the shoes must have brought me here to help, thought Rosa.

“I’ll go to the palace straight away,” Rosa told Nutmeg, in case the fairy could still hear her. She squeezed Nutmeg’s stone fingers. “Don’t worry. I’ll try and sort this out. I promise!”

Running through the trees as fast as she could, she set off towards the Royal Palace. She headed down the main forest path until the trees came to an end. The palace was close by now. She raced towards the gates.

“Rosa!” the guard called. “The King and Queen were hoping you would come!”

He quickly let her in and showed her up to the royal parlour.

“Oh, Rosa! We’re so glad to see you!” Queen Isabella exclaimed. She was sitting on the edge of the sofa, wringing her hands while King Tristan paced up and down.

“Enchantia is in desperate trouble,” said the King.

“I saw a horrible fairy in the wood!” gasped Rosa. “She turned people to stone. Including Nutmeg!” She told the King and Queen what she had seen.

“That was the Wicked Fairy,” said the King. “The same Wicked Fairy who once made our daughter, Princess Aurelia, prick her finger on a spinning wheel and fall asleep. Delphie helped to save her.”

“The Wicked Fairy is horrible,” said the Queen. “All the trouble at the moment is down to her.”

“Why? What’s going on?” burst out Rosa.

“The Wicked Fairy wants her palace to be the most talked about castle in the whole of Enchantia,” King Tristan explained. “So she’s been hanging cages filled with birds all around it. She sets traps and captures as many of them as she can – finches, robins, bluebirds, thrushes…”

“But the birds refused to sing in captivity,” the Queen put in. “The Wicked Fairy got very angry and said that if they wouldn’t sing for her then no one else would hear any birds anywhere. So she captured the Firebird. He’s part of the magic here. As long as he is free, the birds can sing and music can be played but when he is imprisoned, his magic fades so all the song and music in the land fades too.”