Free Emily Feather and the Enchanted Door by Holly Webb

to be here,” Emily said awkwardly, looking at the girl’s pointed ears, her jewelled hair, anywhere but her dark, sparkling eyes. “It was an accident.”
    â€œOh, I’m sure you should be here,” the fairy disagreed. “Nothing ever really happens by accident, does it?” She ran delicate, soft fingers down the side of Emily’s cheek. “So pretty. So alive! It only amazes me, Emily, that you haven’t found your way here before.”
    There was a chorus of pretty, jingling laughter at this, and Emily realized that she and the fairy weren’t alone in the room. Somehow she hadn’t been able to see past her until now. But it was as if the laughter broke a spell, and Emily could see that there was a cluster of other beautiful girls around the bed, their hair woven into different elaborate styles, and their dresses just as fine.
    Two more of them, one in a rose pink dress, the other wearing a dark crimson-red that picked up the purplish lights in her black hair, came to sit on the bed next to Emily.
    â€œWe’ve been longing to meet you,” the dark-haired girl whispered. “We’ve seen glimpses of you, through the doors. We’ve wanted to meet you properly for so long…”
    Emily blinked at her. “I don’t understand…” she murmured. “Which doors? I don’t know you, I’m sure I don’t. How do you know my name?”
    â€œOhhh, she looks exhausted, poor little thing,” the girl in pink murmured, her gauzy dragonfly wings shimmering excitedly. “We should be more hospitable, don’t you think?”
    â€œOf course, how rude we are…” The fairy girl in green laughed again. “You must be hungry, Emily.” She waved a hand, a sharp commanding movement that didn’t seem to sit well with her graceful air.
    Emily swallowed, her eyes widening. It was as if the fairy’s gesture suddenly made the rest of the room appear. Until then, Emily had only seen the bed she was lying on, and the fairies gathered close to it. The bed was strange enough, a careless bundle of grand fabrics and coverlets slung over a gilded frame. The bedposts were clearly metal, but so delicately twisted into the shapes of flowers and birds and tiny mice that they could have been alive. Perhaps they had been, once. That little golden frog’s look of wide-eyed surprise could well be real.
    But now Emily gazed out across the room, as a tiny creature wrapped in brown approached her with a plate. It was the largest bedroom she’d ever been in, even bigger than Rachel’s gorgeous room. It looked like a room in the castle they’d been to last year on their school trip, with a polished stone floor and bright tapestries hanging on the walls.
    Waiting by the door of the room was a little cluster of smaller creatures, like the one who was holding out the plate to her now. Servants, Emily thought, from their clothes and their bowed heads. She looked curiously at the fairy offering her the food, wondering if they were all children, or if they were just some smaller sort of fairy. Gnomes, maybe, she wondered, remembering what she’d said to Robin. Or perhaps brownies. Brownies made her smile, and think of Rachel again – Rach had been a Brownie, and she’d loved it. Emily had never gone, mostly because Lark and Lory hadn’t, and when she’d been smaller, she’d wanted to be just like them.
    That was never going to happen now, Emily thought, blinded by sudden tears again as she remembered. She wrapped her arms around her knees and hugged them tight.
    The brownie, or whatever it was, stared up at her in horror, as though it thought it might be blamed for her unhappiness. It was a girl, Emily decided. Something about the wide, golden-brown face made her sure, though it was hard to tell. The snub nose and dark, dark eyes could be either a boy’s or a girl’s, and so could the tousled hair. She