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her eyes at Ella as if she thought the girl was a total moron. Olive and Annie looked about blindly. Not being Dryad Flitterwigs, they couldn’t see what Gloria was talking about. For the tree Ella and Gloria could see was a Spirit Tree, supposedly visible only to those of dryad heritage. Olive and Annie rolled up their tongues under their bottom lips and squinted their eyes anyway, for effect. Dixon, who had overcome his shock, started jumping up and down on Ella’s lap, yelling whatever rude words he could think of.
    â€˜Go away you pee, poo, farty, moos you,’ he hollered. ‘Leave us alone, old groany, moany, smelly ponies,’ he yelled. Gloria pulled her skateboard from under her arm and swatted the pixie away with a great swipe of it. Dixon was sent flying.
    â€˜How dare you!’ said Ella, jumping up, her hair flaring about her and her eyes shining sharply.
    â€˜I don’t even know what you’re doing with a Magical here at school anyway. Wasn’t even legal until about a minute ago. Stay away from my tree, or I’ll tell the teachers about the pixie,’ Gloria threatened.
    â€˜But why would you do such a thing?’ asked Ella. She gathered Dixon up in her hands and tucked the moaning pixie into her hoodie pocket for protection. It was quite beyond her that a Flitterwig could be so mean.
    â€˜Just stay away from my tree,’ hissed Gloria, picking up Ella’s skateboard and flinging it into the bushes for no good reason at all. Olive and Annie clapped their hands with glee and, hearing the bluebells ring, gave Ella a smirk and followed Gloria back up to the school. Ella could not for the life of her understand what would make people behave so stupidly. She watched them skate away, laughing uproariously to themselves, as though something funny had happened. She shook her head.
    â€˜Are you okay, Dixon?’ she asked, pulling her friend out of her pocket. Tiny birds circled around his head.
    â€˜I am if you are?’ he answered, his voice woozy. Then he collapsed back into her pocket in a swoon.

chapter 4
water & wanderings
    Gloria Ulnus stood shivering in the crisp autumn air, waiting in line with the rest of the Portality class. In spite of the cold, they stood on the edge of a stream near a small waterfall, wearing their swimming costumes. Flitterwigs have a fair resistance to the cold, but even so, it was pretty chilly. She was trying to figure out what had happened to her yesterday in the cloud during Aeronortics.
    Gloria Ulnus hated Ella. Of course she did. And it was of the utmost importance to Gloria that Ella not make it to the Skateboarding finals. Of course it was. For Ella Montgomery, who had only started at Hedgeberry this term, was far too swift on a skateboard for a Flitterwig who couldn’t fly. She was elf, for Magic’s sake. Elven Flitterwigs are not supposed to be as swift on a skateboard as she was without her wings. But Ella’s affinity with nature in general was confounding. She seemed to flow with the wind and catch the breeze in the trees in a way that was quite unusual for her kind. So it was of utmostimportance that Ella not find her wings, or she would be at a distinct advantage.
    But that did not explain why Gloria had pushed Ella off the cloud yesterday. She had meant simply to frighten her. What had happened after that was a mystery, even to her. It was as if she hadn’t been herself, as if she had lost all her senses, as if there had been someone else around her, maybe even inside her. It made Gloria very uncomfortable indeed.
    A few hundred metres away, a skinny little student popped up out of the stream in his swimming trunks, forcing Gloria from her ruminations. His entire body was covered in freckles and his ears stuck out like funnels. He was wearing a big pair of red spectacles on his snubby little nose and a shock of white hair stuck out from his head as if he had just been electrocuted. A small frog