Read One Wish for Free Online

hedgehog—’
    Ratty nodded in agreement and pointed to his hair. ‘That’s why I don’t bother combing mine very often.’
    ‘They change my homework answers to ones that are wrong,’ Tanya continued. ‘That’s one of their favourites – I have to check everything twice or even three times. What else . . .? They put a spell on a jam tart that I ate so that all I could say afterwards was “jam tart”, until all the other jam tarts had been eaten, which was a whole day later. My father was so cross. And don’t even get me started on the ones that live at my grandmother’s house.’ She sighed, her mood worsening. ‘Which reminds me, there’s something lurking under the floorboards at the holiday cottage we’re staying in. I couldn’t get a proper look at it, but, from what I saw, it’s a really nasty one – it threatened to stamp out my eyes while I was asleep.’
    Ratty frowned. ‘What did you do to it?’
    ‘Nothing,’ said Tanya. ‘We’d only just arrived at the cottage. We hadn’t had time to do anything to upset it, but it was complaining about humans coming every summer with their noise and their mess. I don’t think it would matter who we were, but the fact that I can see it definitely hasn’t helped.’
    ‘You didn’t argue with it, did you?’ Ratty asked.
    Tanya felt sheepish. ‘I might have threatened to stamp on it . . . but only after it was horrible to me first.’
    ‘That wasn’t a good idea.’ Ratty scratched his chin. ‘All the other things you’ve said, about the homework and the hairbrush . . . those sorts of things are just mischief really. Fairly harmless compared to what some fairies are willing to do to humans. I’d be careful with that one.’
    ‘How am I supposed to be careful?’ she grumbled. ‘When it’s there, taunting me for no reason?’
    ‘I’ll get to that in a minute,’ Ratty replied. ‘I want to talk about the other fairies first. Are they always the same ones you see or different?’
    ‘The same,’ said Tanya. ‘I mean, I see others sometimes, too, outside of the house, but we live in London and there don’t seem to be many fairies in the city. Except the ones that come to my house.’
    ‘So the ones in your house, the ones that cause the mischief . . . do they do it for no reason?’
    ‘No,’ said Tanya. ‘It’s always a punishment for something I’ve done, like writing in my diary about them, or trying to tell my parents that they do exist, not that they’ve ever believed me. Once, when I collected frogspawn in a jar for a project at school, they turned it all into frogs overnight. They were hopping about all over the classroom, in bags and lunch boxes – it was awful. Another time I picked some bluebells from the garden and for some reason they got angry about that, too. They turned my face and hands bright blue. Said I had no business stealing them. Stealing! When they were in my garden.’
    Ratty nodded seriously. ‘They can be protective over plants and wildlife. Some plants are known as fairy plants: primroses, foxgloves, bluebells, elder. Stay away from them. Fairies don’t like humans meddling with nature, or telling other humans about their existence.’
    ‘There are four of them,’ said Tanya. ‘They’ve visited me ever since I was little, as far back as I can remember.’
    ‘Four?’ Ratty’s eyebrows shot up into his messy hair. ‘Most people only get one, like me with Turpin here.’ He shrugged. ‘Still, it’s not unheard of to have more than one. Some fairies work in clans.’
    ‘What do you mean, most people only get one?’ Tanya asked. ‘One what?’
    ‘One guardian,’ said Ratty. ‘Everyone born with the second sight gets one. They’re supposed to protect us.’
    ‘Protect us?’ Tanya snorted. ‘All they seem to want to do is torment me. What exactly are they supposed to be protecting us from?’
    ‘I’m not really sure. Other fairies, I suppose. My pa knows a lot about them. More than he tells