Chicory Up: The Pixie Chronicles by Irene Radford Read Free Book Online Page A

door. He easily loped the three blocks to Mrs. Spencer’s. This trip reminded him of the day last summer when he’d been summoned to a break-in at the stubborn old lady’s house. The seemingly indestructible teacher had mistaken the furnace control for the fan and nearly died from heatstroke. Chase had found Thistle administering rudimentary first aid before she, too, collapsed from the heat. As she crumbled to the floor, he’d seen a shimmering outline of Pixie wings in the shape of double Thistle leaves.
    That was the first day in his journey toward believing in the tiny creatures. Now he wondered if he was on the way to becoming their champion or their nemesis.

    Thistle sat defiantly, in the hard straight chair in a tiny conference room just beyond the gate Mabel zealously guarded. She crossed her arms, keeping her bandaged hand hidden. Dusty sat across from her at the long table in an equally uncomfortable chair.
    They stared at each other, trying to out-stubborn the friend across the table. Dusty had dragged Thistle away from the edge of The Ten Acre Wood on the east side, at the end of the gravel road. Thistle had spent nearly an hour calming her mind, seeking the center of the magic she used to command with a flick of a Pixie finger. Her meditative trance had allowed her to feel the itch between her shoulder blades where her wings used to lift her above the tug of the Earth with a thought.
    She almost,
almost
, shrank back to her normal Pixie size.
    Almost. Then Dusty had interrupted with her demands to attend this meeting at the police station. The trance was gone. The will to return to Pixie mixed with her need to stay with Dick and her friends as a human.
    Which was right for her?
    Chicory stretched out on the table to his full length of four inches. He clutched his left arm so that anyone who could see him noticed the white sling, but not his tousled blue hair that was no longer covered by his cap of darker blue flower petals. He moaned as if the world was about to end.
    Thistle was afraid he might be right. If Pixies battled each other across tribal lines, then the balance of nature had twisted and toppled.
    Mabel bustled in, followed by Chase. “Now that we have a bit of privacy, we can get to the bottom of this,” she said,fixing each person with a stern gaze. But her eyes wandered a bit and lost focus. She looked paler than usual. Her police auxiliary uniform had lost its crispness and hung on her as if two sizes too big. If she’d been one of Thistle’s elderly friends, the ones who paid her to check on them twice a day to make sure they ate, let the dogs out, and didn’t leave the stove on, Thistle would have reported her to the free clinic.
    Thistle turned sideways so she wouldn’t have to subject herself to Mabel’s strange gaze. She had a way of worming information out of reluctant witnesses, belligerent drunks, and mischievous teenagers.
    “First order of business,” Chase said, fishing a much folded piece of paper out of his thigh pocket. He placed it on the table so that both she and Chicory could see the face in the photograph. “Have any of you seen this girl around town?”
    Chicory stared at it cross-eyed. “Maybe. Not sure. My attention was elsewhere when I caught a glimpse of girl that might look like her if her hair was longer and dirtier, and she was damp and bedraggled all over.”
    Thistle nodded agreement. “She asked me for directions to your house, Mabel.”
    Chase and Mabel exchanged a look that could have meant many things. None of them good by the frown on the old lady’s face.
    “Next we need to know why Pixies are stealing hawthorn spikes from Mrs. Spencer’s tree.”
    “Hawthorns are shrubs, not trees,” Chicory said. “Their berries are sweet to Pixies but not to humans.”
    “What is going on, Thistle?” Dusty asked gently. She reached her hands across the table like she wanted to touch her.
    Thistle squirmed and pushed her chair back a few inches until it