Free One Wish by Michelle Harrison

warm. Kicking the sheets off, she squeezed her eyes shut, wishing for sleep and morning to come. When she finally began to doze off again, it was not peaceful, for she dreamed her eyelids were still twitching and could smell that giveaway, leaf-mulch smell of fairies. Somehow, she pushed these things to the back of her mind, allowing sleep to pull her further in until she was aware of nothing.
    It was not the clattering of the breakfast things that woke her, or even the sound of Oberon scratching at the bedroom door. Nor was it the sunshine streaming in on her face, the promise of another fine, scorching day ahead. Instead, Tanya woke to the unpleasant feeling of a drip sliding down her cheek. Her eyes snapped open.
    Sweat. She was covered in it. At some point during the night she must have pulled the covers back over herself, but now she was unbearably hot. She turned to look at the clock on the bedside table and squealed. An ugly china doll with a chipped face and a green velvet dress stared back at her. It looked very old and there was a yellowed piece of paper pinned to it which said: EMILLIES DOLL.
    Tanya frowned. Emily’s doll? Who was Emily? A little girl who’d lived here once? Where had the doll come from?
    She tried to throw the bedclothes off – but found she couldn’t.
    ‘What—?’ she whispered.
    Her arms and legs were pinned tightly to her sides, unable to move. For a moment, she thought she must have rolled herself into a cocoon of sheets, but they held fast, not giving an inch. Not only that, but her pyjamas felt . . . odd, like her hands and feet were trapped. She wriggled a hand out from under the bedclothes, then froze in shock.
    Her pale blue pyjama sleeve had been sewn together at the cuff, trapping her hand inside. The stitches had been made in horrid brown wool and were ugly and frenzied, like a mad dressmaker had been sewing as if their life depended on it. She wriggled her toes and her other hand. All of them had been tightly sewn in.
    In despair, she remembered the twitching in her eyelids as she had fallen back to sleep. She hadn’t been dreaming it. This had to be the work of the fairies – though normally they stayed to watch her reaction to their punishments. Yet that didn’t make sense; not after they’d made a point of telling her she wouldn’t be punished this time. By now, however, Tanya knew better than to question why they treated her the way they did. It was a mystery, especially if what Ratty had said about them being guardians was true.
    For now, it didn’t matter why they had done it. The important thing was to get out of this mess before her mother came in and saw her. She tried again to pull the covers back, but again they would not budge. Only then did Tanya realise that things were much worse than she’d originally thought. She twisted her head to the side to find more crazed brown stitches, this time securing the blankets to the sheet underneath her. Not only had she been sewn into her nightclothes, she’d been completely sewn into the bed.
    A panicky feeling rose in her chest. She forced it down, fighting to stay calm and think. Her hands – she had to get her hands free first. Luckily, her pyjamas were made of thin material and she could still grip things through it easily enough. She attempted to lift the pyjamas off over her head, only now there was another problem. They were stuck, too, because the top had been sewn to the trousers. She gave a low growl of frustration. There was only one thing for it. She brought her sleeve to her mouth and bit into the brown wool.
    She gagged instantly. It tasted disgusting: damp and mildewy, like it had been forgotten in a cupboard for about a hundred years. The rough texture of it scratching against her teeth was almost as bad, but she had no choice except to gnaw and nibble at it until it broke. Eventually, it did and she was able to pull at the wool with her teeth until the stitches unravelled and her hand was