Free The Fairy Rebel by Lynne Reid Banks

parts tumbled everywhere like pebbles among rocks—only the rocks were dolls, and bricks, and trains, and balls, and jump ropes, and puzzles, and computer games. Everything a child might dream of, only it wasn’t a dream. It wasmore like a nightmare, except that it was real. They were real, solid toys. And somewhere in that bedroom which was flooding with toys was Bindi. She wasn’t screaming anymore. And Charlie, when he scrambled to his feet, knew at once why she wasn’t. She couldn’t scream because the toys were burying her.
    Like two mad people, Charlie and Jan began to tear at the toy-mountain. They burrowed into it, throwing toys everywhere. All the time they were shouting, “Bindi! Bindi!” Soon they’d dug a kind of cave in the toys, but the toys kept tumbling down on them. They were both bruised from the sharp edges of the boxes of games, the handles of rackets, the wheels of toy trucks, the hard little heads of dolls.
    “It’s too much!” Charlie ground out between his teeth. “There’s too much of it! We can’t—”
    But Jan wasn’t digging and struggling anymore. She had suddenly turned in the breaking-up cave and was half crawling back to the door.
    “Keep digging, Charlie!” she cried. “I’m going to get help!”
    She didn’t try to run downstairs. She leaned on the banister, lifted her feet and slid all the way down on her stomach. She was going to call the police—the fire engine—the ambulance—anything, everything! But when she got downstairs she didn’t do that after all. Instead she ran out into the back garden and yelled, “Tiki! Wijic! Help! Help! Help!”

6
The Tyrant Queen
    The day before, on Bindi’s birthday, the roses in full bloom had made the garden bright and scented. Now the whole place had gone dark, because they were all dying. The ground was thick with pink petals. All that was left on the bushes were the hearts of the roses, the green and yellow stars. And buzzing thickly around these bare, sad remains were clouds of wasps.
    As Jan stood there, staring round in dismay, a wasp left the heart of a dying rose and flew straight at her. It flew against her face, buzzed harshly and swerved away. Like a warning. She turned her head sharply and hit out at it with her hand. Another wasp did the same thing, and then another. The eighth wasp stung her on the cheek.
    Jan cried out. But it wasn’t because of the pain. It was because she suddenly understood.
    For eight years the wicked Fairy Queen had been biding her time. Or perhaps it had taken her this long to find the child that Tiki had helped to be born. And now she was taking her revenge—she, and the wasps. Jan knew now why the rose twig had not been therethis morning when she had gone out to look for it. She even guessed where it was. Bindi had it. It was with Bindi, up there, in her bedroom.
    Ignoring the wasps that were now buzzing furiously round her, Jan ran right into the midst of them, down the garden path. Halfway, she turned and looked back up at the house. The window of Bindi’s room was blocked with toys. As Jan gazed, there was the crash of glass. The window panes had burst. A shower of glass and toys rained down the wall of the house and smashed on the patio. Only a moment before, Jan had been standing on that spot.
    She ran to the bottom of the garden with the wasps buzzing after her. Without stopping to think, she headed for the one thing—the single link she had with the Fairy Queen who was doing all this. The holly bush. She grabbed it with both hands, ignoring the prickles, and shook it, shouting into thin air:
    “All right, you Queen! That’s enough! Stop it! Stop it now. What more do you want? Do you want to kill us all? Are you so cruel? Do you hear me, Queen of the Fairies? Stop!”
    And it stopped. All of it. Everything stopped.
    The wasps stopped in midair. Turning her head, Jan saw another shower of toys falling from Bindi’s window. They stopped halfway down. Just stopped, as if someone