The Fairy Rebel by Lynne Reid Banks

Author:Lynne Reid Banks [Banks, Lynne Reid]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-307-78681-4
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2011-04-06T04:00:00+00:00

Part Two

1

The Blue Tuft

One warm evening the following June, Jan strolled all round the garden in her nightgown looking at the rosebushes. She had a feeling the baby might be born the next day, and she thought, “How lovely if only all the roses in the garden were in bloom to welcome her!” But they were all still tight little buds.

Early next morning, Bindi was born. And by eight o’clock, Jan was sitting up in bed with the baby in her arms. Looking out of the window, she saw that the whole garden looked like a sea of pink roses. Every single rose was in flower. The scent came floating up to her bedroom.

To make things even nicer, Charlie rushed down into the garden, chose the most perfect pink rose he could find and brought it up in a little vase and stood it by Jan’s bed.

They were so happy. They looked at every inch of the baby from her toes upward and decided she was exactly what they’d wanted. She had fat little feet, and rose-petal skin, and almond-shaped fingernails, and as for her hair—

“Isn’t Tiki clever?” Jan was saying. “She’s got everything just right!”

But Charlie, who was holding the baby and gently stroking her little brown-bird’s-feather hair, said nothing.

“Is anything the matter, Charlie?” asked Jan, suddenly worried.

“Have you noticed this?” Charlie said quietly.

Jan leaned forward and looked. Charlie had lifted some of the baby’s hair on the crown of her head. Underneath the brown was a tuft of hair of a different color.

Blue.

It was only a tiny tuft. Perhaps twenty fine hairs in all. Even with the baby’s very short hair, you wouldn’t have seen it if you hadn’t been looking carefully. But it was there all right. Jan and Charlie looked at each other.

“It’s her fairy part,” whispered Jan. “Should we do anything … dye it perhaps?”

“We could,” said Charlie doubtfully, “when she gets a bit older. I don’t think dye is very good for babies’ hair.”

But in the end they didn’t bother. As Bindi’s hair grew, the blue hairs were easily hidden in the rest of it, and as soon as it was long enough, they made a little ponytail with the blue hairs buried in the middle. But that all came much later.

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