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For Louisa and Laura
Contents
Sheepskerry Island is a fairy’s paradise in autumn and winter and spring, but not in summer. That’s when the cottages are taken over by the Summer People. Tinker Bell’s little sisters must spend the long sunny days in hiding. But this year Rosie can’t help making a secret friend…
All the fairies in the Wide World love summer – except the Fairy Bell sisters and their friends on Sheepskerry Island. Sheepskerry is a fairies’ paradise in autumn and winter and spring, and summer should be the best season of all. And for a while, it is.
In June, fairies start doing the things they’ve been meaning to do all the rest of the year: the Stitch sisters sew costumes for dress-up games; the Cobwebs crochet delicate fairy shawls; the Flower sisters take out their watercolours and paint under the pale-blue sky.
In July, it’s time to throw off fairy wings and jump in Lupine Pond and splash in the cool water.
Then there are berries for the picking, all over the island – pinkberries first and most delicate; then raspberries, blueberries, mulberries, boysenberries and finally blackberries when the days are hottest. The Bakewell sisters make pies and muffins with the freshest of the pick, and the older Jellicoe sisters swiftly store up jams and jellies for the winter months if the berry bushes are especially bountiful.
At the end of the day, the fireflies light up and the summer sun goes down; the fairies are ready to lay their heads on thistledown pillows and dream fairy dreams. But first they watch the sunset on West Shore, which every night paints the sky lavender, purple, gold and scarlet, and needs no fairy magic to be beautiful.
Summer on Sheepskerry Island would be perfect, except for the month of August. In August, the Summer People come.
Summer People are just that. They’re people. Human beings. Mothers and fathers. Girls and boys. Most of them mean well, of course, but still they are immense, bumbling creatures who trample fairy gardens and unleash barking dogs and circle the island in stinky boats and altogether make a fairy paradise into a dreadful place. So fairies stay in their houses under the Cathedral Pines and only come out safely at night.
The Fairy Bell sisters love the summer weather and the fruits and flowers of the garden, but they don’t love hiding from the Summer People. Yet hide they must.
Don’t tell me you are one of the very few children who don’t know about the Fairy Bell sisters! You are in for a treat, for you can meet them now. Allow me to introduce you to:
(They are Tinker Bell’s little sisters, by the way.)
If you are anything like me, you’d never suspect that one of the Fairy Bell sisters would end up keeping a secret from her sisters – a very big secret indeed. But just last summer, Rosie Bell did something that she hoped her sisters would never find out. It was an act of kindness, of course, an act of very great and courageous kindness, but it led Rosie into trouble and the fairies of Sheepskerry Island into danger – perhaps the gravest danger those fairies had ever known.
I’d better get this said right now: if your idea of a good book is one where everyone does everything right all the time, then you’re not going to enjoy this one very much.