Читать книгу The Fairy Bell Sisters: Hearts and Flowers for Clara - Margaret McNamara - Страница 7

Valentine’s Day for fairies is a lovely affair, for fairies like to send and receive valentines more than anything else. (Anything else in February, that is.) And Valentine’s Week on Sheepskerry Island is better than anywhere else, because Queen Mab enchants Lady’s Slipper Field and turns the dark of winter into the fresh breath of summer. All the Sheepskerry fairies gather in the meadow to exchange gifts and cards. They smell the orange blossoms and the roses. They throw off their heavy coats and scarves and mittens and wear their light summer dresses. They kick off their shoes and turn their faces to the warm sun.

Also, gnomes come.

Gnomes?

You didn’t think there were only trolls in the world of the fairies, did you? (Trolls hibernate through the winter, by the way.) Gnomes are terribly different from trolls. Gnomes don’t have warts, for one thing. They’re not smelly. And they can talk properly, though they have a bit of a lilt to their speech as a result of living on the faraway Outer Islands. I know you may have seen garden gnomes with long beards and fishing poles, still as statues at the bottom of a garden. That’s what gnomes look like when they get old and grumpy. But when they’re young …

“When they’re young, gnomes are lots of fun,” said Clara Bell as she knotted a warm purple scarf round her neck. It was a very cold February day and all the Sheepskerry fairies were bundled up tightly, especially Tinker Bell’s little sisters.