Nutmeg in Jewel Forest Read online

  Thanks fairy much Sally Morgan!

  Welcome to the world of the fashion fairy princesses! Join Nutmeg and friends on their magical adventures in fairyland.

  They can’t wait to explore

  Can you?

  Contents

  Cover

  Half Title Page

  Dedication

  Title Page

  Map

  Jewel Forest

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Fashion Fairy Princess Website

  Sneak Peek of Willa in Jewel Forest

  Fun Facts about Nutmeg

  Back Ads

  Copyright

  “Just one week to go until you’re crowned Forest Fairy Princess, Nutmeg,” said Willa, fluttering her pretty pink wings. “You must be so excited!”

  “I know!” said Nutmeg, her fiery orange wings shaking as she giggled. “I can’t believe I’m going to be a real princess, just like Primrose.”

  The two forest fairies were sitting in Nutmeg’s bedroom right at the top of the Tree Palace, which stood in the heart of Jewel Forest. The forest was the biggest in fairyland. It was filled with magical trees of all shapes and sizes, which were covered in glittering jewels in every colour of the rainbow. The sparkliest of all the trees was the Tree Palace, an ancient pink diamond-nut tree, where Nutmeg and her big sister Princess Primrose lived with the rest of the royal family.

  “What do you think?” said Willa, sliding a sapphire clip into her friend’s hair.

  Nutmeg inspected herself in the leaf-shaped crystal mirror and frowned. The fairy smiling back at her didn’t look like her. Willa had smoothed her normally messy nut-brown hair into a shiny updo.

  “Hmm, I don’t know,” said Nutmeg, wrinkling her freckled nose. “I look all tidy.”

  “That’s the point,” said Willa, smiling at her friend. “You need to look your fairy best for the ceremony.”

  “It definitely needs something. Let me think,” said Nutmeg, leaping up and fluttering over to an untidy stack of magazines next to her lovely but unmade four-poster bed. “I know it’s here somewhere,” she muttered as she examined each magazine and tossed it aside.

  “Ah yes, Sparkle Magazine!” she exclaimed at last, pulling a twinkling packet off a bright pink magazine with a smiling fairy on the front. “I really wanted to try this! I think it’ll look great.”

  “Glimmerberry jewel gel?” said Willa, reading the small packet. “I don’t know, Nutmeg. Don’t you think jewel gel is a bit funky for the ceremony?”

  “Perhaps,” said Nutmeg, her eyes twinkling with fun, “but let’s give it a try anyway.”

  Willa squeezed the sparkly gel into her tiny hands and spread it evenly through Nutmeg’s hair.

  “Let me have a go,” said Nutmeg, pushing her fingers through her hair until it was all standing up straight. “There,” she said when she had finished. “What do you think?”

  Willa laughed. “Nutmeg! That’s brilliant,” she said, touching Nutmeg’s hair, which was now styled into shimmering spikes. “I can’t imagine what everyone would say if you wore it like that for the ceremony.”

  “I know,” said Nutmeg, “it would be very funny, but I wouldn’t dare.”

  “What is it you have to do for the ceremony?” asked Willa, more seriously. “Don’t you have to recite a pledge?”

  “Yes, but that’s not all!” said Nutmeg excitedly. “First I need to look like a princess, which is what you’re helping me with now,” she said, giggling at her hair in the mirror. “I recite the princess pledge after I perform a special dance. Then everyone sings the forest fairy sacred song and Father puts the crown on my head. After that I’ll be a real-life princess.”

  “Wow!” said Willa, “that sounds like an awful lot of work. Do you know the pledge by heart?”

  “Oh yes!” said Nutmeg confidently. “Well, almost. I’ll recite it for you.”

  Nutmeg stood up, gave a tiny cough to clear her throat, then began:

  “All forest fairies and creatures who live

  Among deep roots to branches high

  I swear to … something, something … home

  And sing loudly at the, um, something sky.”

  “Are you sure that’s how it goes?” asked Willa, frowning. “Perhaps it just sounded different when Primrose said it at her crowning ceremony.”

  “Well,” said Nutmeg quickly, “I’ve still got loads of time to learn it properly. Would you like to see my dance?”

  “Oh, yes!” said Willa, fluttering on to the bed to give her friend some room. “Primrose’s dance was so beautiful. Will you do the same one?”

  “Er … not exactly the same, no,” said Nutmeg as she fluttered over to her enchanted wooden music box and chose the song she wanted to play.

  Nutmeg took her position in the centre of the room and began to dance. She started well, twirling and fluttering in time to the music, but then she forgot what she was supposed to do next.

  “Do I leap or twirl here?” she asked herself, swaying on the spot for a moment. “Well, I have to do something.” She grinned, then began to scamper across the room just like one of the candy-tufted tree squirrels that lived in Jewel Forest.

  Willa burst out laughing.

  Nutmeg stopped and started fluttering and pecking around the room like a little bird.

  “Oh, Nutmeg! Stop!” Willa howled with laughter until her sides ached. “Please! I … hahaha … can’t … breathe.”

  Nutmeg smiled. She loved having fun with her fairy friends.

  And I’ve got plenty of time to get ready for the ceremony, she thought, before slipping on the packet of glimmerberry jewel gel and tumbling to the floor with a crash.

  At that moment, the door to Nutmeg’s room swung open and there stood Princess Primrose who, unlike Willa and Nutmeg, wasn’t smiling or laughing.

  “Nutmeg!” said Primrose. “What are you doing?”

  “Oh! Hi, Primrose,” said Nutmeg, looking up at her sister from the floor. “I was just rehearsing for the ceremony.”

  “Really?” said Primrose. “It didn’t sound like you were rehearsing. It sounded like you were having a party.”

  “A party?” Nutmeg giggled. “I promise it wasn’t a party. Willa just came over to give me a princess makeover.”

  “Actually, Nutmeg,” said Willa quickly, “I have to pick up a cake from Blossom’s bakery before it closes.”

  “Ooh! Lucky you!” said Nutmeg. “Thanks so much for coming over to help!”

  “Any time,” said Willa, giving a small wave before swiftly fluttering through one of the room’s leaf-shaped windows and out into the gleaming forest.

  “How do you like my hair?” Nutmeg asked her sister, grinning.

  “It’s very spiky and sparkly,” said Primrose, staring at her little sister’s hedgehog hairdo with knitted brows.

  “We were just having a bit of fun,” Nutmeg said lightly, walking over to her bed to tidy the scattered magazines. “I’m not really going to wear it like this on the big day.”

  “I know,” said Primrose as she fluttered over to help, “but the ceremony is next week and you still have so much to do. You don’t know your pledge or your dance and you haven’t decided on what you are going to wear yet.”

  Primrose reached out to smooth down one of Nutmeg’s shiny spikes of hair, smiling softly.

 
; “It won’t take long to learn the dance,” said Nutmeg, “or the pledge. I almost know all the words now!”

  “The ceremony is about more than just learning the words, Nutmeg. You know that,” said Primrose, gently taking Nutmeg’s hand and leading her back to the little chair in front of the mirror. She looked at her sister’s reflection as she started to comb out her hair.

  “In the pledge you promise to serve Jewel Forest, and the dance shows everyone how you will serve. The ceremony is about proving that you are a true forest fairy princess.”

  “But what if I’m not a true princess?” said Nutmeg, staring down at her tiny feet.

  “Of course you are, Nutmeg! You’re my sister,” said Primrose, puzzled.

  “I know, but that doesn’t make me a princess,” said Nutmeg. She looked at her graceful sister with her long shining braid that hung so tidily between her yellow wings.

  “I’m nothing like you,” said Nutmeg. “I’m messy, I’m clumsy, and I’m always laughing when I’m not supposed to be.”

  Primrose gave Nutmeg a hug and looked into her sister’s worried hazel eyes.

  “Nutmeg, it’s true you are nothing like me, but that doesn’t mean you’re not a princess,” Primrose said firmly. “Jewel Forest already has a Princess Primrose. They don’t need another one. What they need is a Princess Nutmeg. That’s why you need to work hard to give them the best Nutmeg you can be.”

  Nutmeg nodded, but deep down she wasn’t so sure.

  Princesses are graceful and elegant, not careless and giggly, she thought to herself. What if Primrose is wrong?

  Primrose kept working on Nutmeg’s hair, combing out all the sparkle and then styling it. When she had finished, she stood back and frowned a little.

  “Hmm…” she said, thinking hard. “It needs something else. Wait right there! I’ll be back in two ticks of a dandelion clock.”

  Primrose quickly fluttered out of Nutmeg’s bedroom and into her own room next door. She was back in a flash and set to work, adding her finishing touches to Nutmeg’s new look. When she was done, she smiled broadly.

  “See what you think,” said Primrose, waving her delicate hand towards Nutmeg’s mirror.

  Nutmeg looked and then looked again. Her hair was as she always wore it but glossy and shiny, and on top was Primrose’s beautiful diamond-nut tiara.

  “Well?” Primrose prompted, smiling at her silent sister. “What do you think?”

  “I looks like me … only better,” said Nutmeg, suddenly smiling and giving her sister a big hug. “Maybe I can be a princess after all!”

  “Of course you can,” said Primrose, returning the hug.

  “Never mind the princess pledge,” said Nutmeg, “I’m going to make a pledge to myself right now to work as hard as I can until the ceremony.”

  The next morning, Nutmeg hopped out of bed extra early to start work. She picked up her pledge from the pink wooden dressing table, put on her leaf-patterned dressing gown and fluttered down to breakfast, reading as she flew. As she entered the breakfast room, she was concentrating so hard she didn’t see Primrose walking towards her with a plate piled high with sapphire-berry muffins.

  “Nutmeg, look out!” cried Primrose as Nutmeg bumped into her, knocking the plate out of her hand and sending it clattering to the floor.

  “Oh! I am so sorry, Primrose!” Nutmeg said, helping her sister pick up the muffins. “I didn’t see you. I was practising my pledge.”

  “I can see that,” said Primrose, smiling, “but even a princess is allowed breakfast.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” said Nutmeg, eyeing up the yummy sapphire-blue muffin in her hand. “Having a good breakfast will give me lots of energy for rehearsing my dance!”

  Primrose laughed. “I don’t think anybody in Jewel Forest would say you were short on energy, Nutmeg!”

  Nutmeg fluttered quickly over to the long buffet table at the end of the dining room. Breakfast was Nutmeg’s favourite meal of the day. The Tree Palace kitchen made the most delicious pastries and muffins, and stacks of scrumptious emerald-berry pancakes. All the delicious treats were laid out on pink wooden platters on a twinkling tablecloth.

  The little fairy helped herself to a jewel-berry jam scone and a goblet of sparkling red juice and then went to sit next to her sister beneath the stained crystal window.

  “I’m glad to see you are working so hard, Nutmeg,” said Primrose as Nutmeg took a big bite from her scone. “I guess you must be getting excited now.”

  “So excited,” said Nutmeg, with her mouth full of jam. “I’ve been practising my pledge since I woke up and I rehearsed my dance until ever so late last night. Would you like to see it?”

  Before Primrose could answer her eager little sister, Nutmeg had put down her scone and fluttered to the centre of the room.

  “I haven’t brought the music, but you should get the idea,” she said, taking a moment to compose herself before starting to dance.

  Nutmeg smiled as she twirled and swayed in the morning light pouring through the brightly coloured stained crystal window. I know it so well I don’t even need the music, she thought.

  Suddenly, crash!

  Nutmeg had been so lost in her routine and in the rays of light streaming through the window that she’d fluttered into the buffet table, knocking over a jug of forest-fruit juice and a pot of diamond-nut tea.

  “Oh, Nutmeg!” cried Primrose, running to help her sister who was sitting in a puddle of forest-fruit juice. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, I’m OK,” said Nutmeg, reaching for some napkins to clean up the mess. “But what if I fall over in the ceremony and ruin everything? You’re all going to be so disappointed.”

  “I could never be disappointed in you, Nutmeg,” said Primrose, dabbing at her sister’s wet dressing gown. “Especially now that I can see that you are putting your heart into it.”

  “I really am,” said Nutmeg. “I so want to be a lovely princess to Jewel Forest.”

  “And you will be,” said Primrose, “but perhaps you could use a bit of help.”

  “There’s so little time though,” said Nutmeg. “Who could we find to help me before next week?”

  “I know just the person!” said Primrose. “Do you remember when Catkin and I used to go to dance lessons at that academy not far from Toadstool Town Hall?”

  “Ooh, yes!” said Nutmeg. “I remember I used to come and watch you in shows. You had that scary teacher. What was her name?”

  “Madame Garnet,” Primrose replied, “and she wasn’t scary. Well, not if you tried your hardest. I just know she could bring out the best in you, Nutmeg. If you gave her the chance.”

  “Do you honestly think so?” said Nutmeg, staring up at her sister.

  “I do,” said Primrose, smiling. “Let’s have a nice breakfast and then get dressed so you can go and see her this morning. I’ll write you a note to take with you.”

  “No time for that,” said Nutmeg, hopping up and fluttering out of the breakfast room, then dashing back to grab the rest of her scone and take her sister by the hand. “What are you waiting for, Primrose? I’m going to need that note right away.”

  With Primrose’s note tucked safely in her clementine-coloured dance tote, Nutmeg zoomed out of the Tree Palace.

  Primrose is such a wonderful dancer, she thought to herself. Perhaps with Madame’s help, I could be, too.

  Nutmeg was soon flying along the forest fairy skyway, a network of leafy bridges that connected the Tree Palace to all the houses and shops in Jewel Forest. The dappled morning sunlight danced and played among the twinkling leaves and branches, but Nutmeg didn’t notice. Instead, she was picturing herself at her ceremony. She was in her own world as she fluttered past the little fairy homes carved deep into the trees. Caught up in her daydream, Nutmeg almost flew right by a tall sapphire tree with two large door
s cut into its trunk. Above the doors, in tall golden letters, was written:

  Madame Garnet’s Academy of Dance and Drama

  Nutmeg pushed open the heavy doors, now feeling very nervous. Inside the tree she found a long corridor lined with doors. The corridor was completely empty, but Nutmeg listened very carefully and could just make out the faint sound of a piano.

  The forest fairy fluttered along, looking through the windows in each of the doors to find where the music was coming from. Along the way she passed photographs of the many famous fairies who had trained at the academy, including a photograph of Madame Garnet herself, in a polished golden frame.

  As Nutmeg reached the end of the corridor, she peered through the window in the very last door and saw twenty fairies moving gracefully to music coming from a jewelled piano. A grinning centipede was playing the piano, his many feet tripping lightly over the keys. At the front of the class stood a tall fairy with pointed features and a pair of red jewelled spectacles perched on the end of her sharp-looking nose. She was watching the dancers and did not look impressed. Nutmeg gasped. It was Madame Garnet!

  Nutmeg crept into the studio and hid at the back to watch. The fairies looked so wonderful moving together in time to the music. Suddenly Madame Garnet clapped her hands together and brought the music to a stop.

  “That’s enough for this morning, fairies,” she declared. “I can see you are all tired. Off you go to your next class.”

  With this, the students curtseyed to Madame Garnet and started to gather their things.

  As Nutmeg watched them leave, she knew she didn’t have the courage to walk up to Madame Garnet and ask her to teach her. She was just about to creep out of the room when she heard a stern voice coming from the front of the studio.

  “Can I help you?” said Madame Garnet.