Dewberry and the Lost Chest of Paraqon Read online

  Dewberry

  and

  the Lost Chest of Paraqon

  J. H. Sweet

  Illustrated by Holly Sierra

  © 2008 by J. H. Sweet

  Cover and internal design © 2008 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover illustration by Tara Larsen Chang

  Internal illustrations by Holly Sierra

  Internal photos © Dreamstime and JupiterImages

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  What follows is the original, unaltered manuscript. It is the author’s vision in its purest form.

  Published by Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Sweet, J. H.

  Dewberry and the Lost Chest of Paragon / J.H. Sweet.

  p. cm. -- (The fairy chronicles ; bk. 11)

  Summary: When Dewberry and her fairy friends go in search of the Lost

  Chest of Paragon, which is rumored to contain a great gift of knowledge for all of mankind, the results of their discovery are far from what they expected.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4022-1329-8 (alk. paper)

  ISBN-10: 1-4022-1329-8 (alk. paper)

  [1. Fairies--Fiction. 2. Magic--Fiction. 3. Conduct of life--Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.S9547De 2008

  [Fic]--dc22

  2008002328

  Printed and bound in China.

  IM 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  To those who learn from their mistakes,

  and to second chances

  Inside you is the power to do anything

  The Fairy Chronicles

  Marigold and the Feather of Hope, the Journey Begins

  Dragonfly and the Web of Dreams

  Thistle and the Shell of Laughter

  Firefly and the Quest of the Black Squirrel

  Spiderwort and the Princess of Haiku

  Periwinkle and the Cave of Courage

  Cinnabar and the Island of Shadows

  Mimosa and the River of Wisdom

  Primrose and the Magic Snowglobe

  Luna and the Well of Secrets

  Dewberry and the Lost Chest of Paragon

  Moonflower and the Pearl of Paramour

  Snapdragon and the Odyssey of Élan

  Harlequin and the Pebble of Spree

  Come visit us at fairychronicles.com

  Contents

  Chapter One: Dewberry and Her Research

  Chapter Two: The Map of Apotheosis

  Chapter Three: Criterion’s Obelisk

  Chapter Four: The Chest of Paragon

  Chapter Five: Pundit Periphery and the Real Legend

  Chapter Six: The Mentors’ Council

  Chapter Seven: Mother Nature’s Decision

  Chapter Eight: Dewberry’s Fate

  Fairy Fun

  Fairy Facts

  Chapter One

  Dewberry and Her Research

  The back yard of Lauren Kelley’s house was perfect for adventures. With lots of trees, bushes, ground cover, and other dense foliage, there were plenty of places to hide, play, camp, and pretend. Like a lot of young girls, one of Lauren’s favorite things to do was pretend. Today, she was wearing a striped beach towel for a cape and a cut-off bottom of a round fabric softener bottle for a crown.

  The cape was pinned to the shoulders of her jacket, and the crown was perched slantways across her forehead over her short, curly black hair. Crouching between the crepe myrtle and the sage bushes, Lauren was awaiting a very special visitor. She backed up a bit to sit majestically on her throne—a flat chunk of limestone rock.

  Lauren often sat on the limestone rock to read, write, and rule over her many queendoms. However, this morning she was not in the mood to sit idle and wait. She jumped up from her limestone throne and ran to the fence separating her yard from her grandmother’s yard next door.

  The special visitor was approaching, flying low over the distant treetops. Lauren waited patiently for her expected friend who was none other than Pegasus, the famous winged horse of mythology.

  As the Muse of Scholarship, Lauren herself was endeared to Pegasus, and he frequently flew in to take her for long rides. Lauren climbed up onto the two-foot high garden retaining wall to mount the

  beautiful white horse. She tripped a little on the rather long beach-towel cape, but managed to clamber onto his back nonetheless.

  Off they went, soaring over houses and treetops (which were really dwarf holly bushes, backyard toys, and garden tools) on their way to the River of Wisdom.

  Lauren was now the Queen of Knowledge, Sorceress of Wisdom, and Muse of Information. As overseer of the River of Wisdom, the Queen-Sorceress-Muse often made visits to the banks of the magical river, which had been created long ago by Pegasus’ giant hooves gashing into the side of a mountain and releasing a flood of knowledge with the gush of fresh spring water.

  Out of breath after running for nearly ten minutes, Lauren bid farewell to Pegasus, who rose slowly and gracefully over the neighborhood, departing for his home in the distant hills. Lauren then made her way up to the porch to have a drink from a glass of juice on the outdoor table. She waved at her grandmother who was visible through her kitchen window next door.

  Lauren’s grandmother often looked after her when her parents were out or busy. Today, her parents were visiting her aunt across town and running errands, so Lauren had the back yard all to herself. As long as she stayed visible to her grandmother’s windows, she didn’t have to check in very often.

  The pretend play of Queen-Sorceress-Muse and riding on Pegasus was one of Lauren’s favorite activities for a very special reason. In addition to being just like a lot of other girls, she was also a fairy and had been blessed with a dewberry fairy spirit.

  In the standard fairy form of six inches high, Dewberry wore a soft green dress of creeping vines with tiny black dewberries nestled amongst the crinkled leaves. She also had small, misty green wings and wore soft slippers to match. On her belt, Dewberry carried a little pouch of pixie dust, the fairy handbook, and her wand, which was a single strand of braided unicorn tail hair. It glistened brilliant white and often made soft neighing, snorting, and whooshing sounds just like a unicorn.

  Each young fairy was assigned a fairy mentor as a supervisor and teacher. The purpose of fairies was to protect nature and fix problems, so it was a tremendous responsibility to be a fairy. No fairy was ever allowed to use magic improperly. Fairy magic could not be used for trivial things. And young fairies were not supposed to use magic at all without permission from their mentors.

  Dewberry’s mentor was none other than her next-door grandmother, Beverly Kelley, who had been given a goldenrod fairy spirit. She was called Madam Goldenrod by most of the young fairies in the Southwest region, but Dewberry usually just called her Grandma. Sometimes, Dewberry and Madam Goldenrod attended special gatherings of fairies called Fairy Circles.

  Lauren’s parents did not know their daughter was a fairy, and fairy activities were
kept secret from non-magical people. In fact, regular people could not even recognize fairies when they saw them because fairies in fairy form were only visible as their fairy spirits.

  Madam Goldenrod was a very regal fairy, and rather stern. She wore a gleaming dress made of tiny golden flower petals that came almost to her ankles. Madam Goldenrod also had tall, autumn gold wings, and her wand was a tiny hummingbird feather. It was the smallest wand of

  any of the fairies and was a shimmering, greenish-blue color with a bit of purple tinge. Madam Goldenrod had short, silverywhite hair and wore oval gold-rimmed spectacles.

  Each fairy was given a gift that was sort of like a strength or specialty. Madam Goldenrod’s fairy gift was the ability to sense danger and deception. She had a heightened sense of caution and pre caution, and could also make others tell the truth, if necessary. For this reason, she was slightly feared, and often avoided, by younger fairies. But Dewberry knew her Grandma would never use the gift of truth-telling lightly, so she didn’t fear her at all.

  Dewberry’s special fairy gift involved great knowledge and wisdom, and she was dubbed the Fairy of Knowledge by other fairies. She could process information very quickly and knew legend as well as fact. Dewberry was very much like a walking, talking set of encyclopedias.

  Even at a young age, she was able to do research and learn things on her own. This helped tremendously in school. Due to her wealth of knowledge, she was at the top of her class. It was very likely that Dewberry would someday be valedictorian of her high school and would also probably graduate with honors from college. And she was already thinking about becoming a doctor when she grew up.

  Unfortunately, there was a small glitch with Dewberry’s fairy gift. The development of her wisdom had not quite started. True, she was full of knowledge. But she did not yet have the ability to make good decisions of exactly how to use the information properly. Madam Goldenrod recognized this in her granddaughter, but Dewberry herself chose to ignore it. To be blissfully unaware of one’s own faults made life much easier.

  As a hobby, all during free time and playtime, Dewberry studied, researched, memorized, and puzzled over things. Then she studied some more, storing up massive amounts of knowledge. She was so hungry for information that she did little else.

  However, she rarely used her fairy handbook because, quite frankly, it disappointed her. The handbook only gave her small bits of information. She could often find much more detailed explanations from other sources.

  In truth, the handbook was doing exactly what it was supposed to do— limiting information for young fairies to just what was needed. The handbook took its job very seriously, and was forever trying to keep Dewberry out of trouble. However, Dewberry didn’t think her conservative handbook was being helpful at all, so she usually ignored it and sought information elsewhere.

  The previous summer, Dewberry had gone on a fairy adventure to the River of Wisdom, where she was introduced to the Library of the Ages floating above the river. With several fairy friends, she had helped to rescue the librarian, a nymph named Sage, from the Spirit of Ignorance. Unfortunately, Dewberry did not know the location of the River of Wisdom because they had traveled to and from the river in a magic golden elevator.

  It was actually a good thing that Dewberry couldn’t make her way to the river. If she had been able to find it, she likely would have been so drawn to the immense cache of knowledge that she would have probably never returned home. And, of course, a nine-year-old girl could not be permitted to endlessly camp out on the banks of a magical river far from home.

  However, Dewberry had figured out how to access materials from the Library of the Ages. During their visit, the fairies had learned that bits and pieces of know ledge are delivered to mankind by way of swifts, who carry the library materials to and from the river. So it was a simple thing for Dewberry to befriend a large family of swifts in her neighborhood and request the frequent delivery of select information needed for her study.

  Most birds were happy to help fairies, and they often delivered fairy messages in the form of notes and letters secreted inside of hollowed-out nuts. This was called nut messaging and was the primary form of fairy communication, the secondary method being the telephone.

  Dewberry had already achieved a claim to fame among her fellow fairies, and had been highly praised by Madam Toad, the leader of fairies for the Southwest region. For decades, it had been a great mystery as to why fairies were afraid of jigsaw puzzles. Fairies could not stand to do jigsaw puzzles, and if faced with one, they were often bewitched by the puzzle, becoming trapped in it. Inside the puzzle, fairies would follow the curving lines, tracing them over and over again, often never making their way out unless helped out by a witch, elf, or some other magical creature. Occasionally, another fairy could help, but only if quick enough and brave enough to bear the effects of the puzzle for as long as it took to pull out the trapped fairy.

  The answer to this mystery lay in a goblin curse. Dewberry had discovered the legend in a musty old book called Sixty-Three-and-a-Half Goblin Tales. The jigsaw puzzle tale was number forty-two, and told of the anger of a lady goblin toward a dandelion fairy who had tricked the goblin into releasing two captured boy fairies, also known as brownies.

  Dandelion had been carrying a jigsaw puzzle with her on her way to a friend’s home to play, when she stumbled across the goblin and brownies. Dandelion helped the brownies get free, making the goblin very angry. The goblin had noticed that the fairy was carrying a puzzle and had performed the clever Fairy-Puzzle-Trapping-Curse, just as the brownies and fairy escaped from her.

  The fairy and brownies were unaware of the curse. When Dandelion tried to piece together her jigsaw puzzle that afternoon while visiting a fairy friend, both fairies became trapped in the puzzle. Fortunately, a garden gnome noticed the trouble and brought a witch to help them.

  Since then, the warning had been passed down from generation to generation for fairies to avoid jigsaw puzzles. However, the story of the brownies, goblin, and curse had been forgotten or left out of the telling for many years. Thus, the mystery had begun, unraveled only by Dewberry.

  This was a cold Saturday morning in mid-January, and it was a three-day weekend due to the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday.

  After reciting the “I Have a Dream” speech earlier for her grandmother, Dewberry gave herself permission to play Queen-Sorceress-Muse for a while. Later in the morning, two of her fairy friends, Primrose and Snapdragon, were coming for a visit.

  For almost a year, Dewberry had been researching the Legend of Paragon. This had been a particularly difficult story to piece together. In fact, there were still huge chunks of it missing. However, Dewberry had gathered enough information to guess at the blanks and make up things to fill in the holes so that the story made sense to her. Since she now had what she thought was enough information, Dewberry was planning to ask Primrose and Snapdragon for their help in seeking the Lost Chest of Paragon, rumored to contain a great gift of knowledge for all of mankind.

  Paragon was an ancient ruler and a great scholar. The information Dewberry had gathered involved a legend recorded by Exemplar, one of three marshals working for Paragon. Exemplar’s job involved researching, advising, and recording information.

  Paragon’s kingdom had been at war with a neighboring land. A legendary gift of knowledge had just been unearthed by Paragon’s other two marshals—Apotheosis and Criterion. Paragon feared that the knowledge might fall into the hands of his enemy, to be used against him, or for ill purposes, so he ordered his marshals to lock the knowledge away in a chest and hide it for safety.

  This was done, and the means to find the chest was kept secret to make it difficult for anyone to locate it. Paragon intended to seek the chest later to put the knowledge to good use for the betterment of mankind. However, the neighboring army killed Paragon and his three marshals. Thus, no one knew where the chest was hidden or how to find it.

  Dewberry had read bits and pieces, her
e and there, about Paragon, his marshals, and the chest. She desired very much to locate this gift for mankind and achieve even greater fame among the fairies. Also, if she could contribute something to the world with the discovery of hidden and valuable knowledge, she would finally feel that her fairy gift was truly being put to good use.

  She had discovered the latest part of the legend two days before, when a swift delivered a parchment scroll to her. Finally, Dewberry had enough information to act, so she immediately sent nut messages to Primrose and Snapdragon, asking them to come over on Saturday for an adventure.

  Chapter Two

  The Map of Apotheosis

  While waiting for her friends to arrive, Dewberry searched the back yard for Mr. Ruble, the garden gnome, who usually came on Saturdays to tend to the plants, shrubs, and trees. Gnomes were responsible for helping to make things grow and adding colors to nature.

  Regular people couldn’t see gnomes because gnomes used disguise magic to prevent detection so they could go about their business undisturbed. To non-magical people, Mr. Ruble would simply look like a watermelon, a rolled-up water hose, a soccer

  ball, a pumpkin, a sandbox toy, or some other object that didn’t look out of place in a particular yard or garden.

  Mr. Ruble had wisely decided to bypass the Kelley yard today when he noticed Dewberry playing Queen-Sorceress-Muse. He often avoided her, returning late at night, or at different times, when Dewberry was otherwise occupied. Mr. Ruble was a wise and knowledgeable garden gnome, extremely skilled in his craft. In fact, he was considered an expert in coloring various squashes and fruits. So it was very tiring for him to listen to long lectures from the know-it-all fairy, advising him on his job techniques. It was much nicer to work in peace. Mr. Ruble had nicknamed the Kelley property his “midnight yard” since that was the time when he most often visited it these days.