Lily's Pesky Plant Read Online Free

one had been harmed.
    “Come on, Iris,” Beck said. “Let’s go back to the Home Tree. A cup of tea with honey will make you feel better.”
    “And in the meantime, someone ought to do something about that plant,” Fawn added.
    “What do you mean ‘do something’?” Lily asked.
    “Well, chop it down or pull it up. You know, get rid of it,” Fawn said.
    Lily drew back as if she’d been slapped. Chop down a plant? Just hearing the words made her legs ache. She had never chopped down a plant in her life. She couldn’t even pull weeds from her garden—instead, she encouraged them to grow elsewhere.
    “The wasps liked those flowers,” Fawn explained. “They could come back at any moment.”
    Lily looked at Iris. She hoped Iris would say something good about the plant. After all, Iris loved it as much as Lily did.
    Iris’s eyes were wide and her face was pale. But she didn’t say anything.
    Lily turned back to Beck and Fawn. “The plant is growing in my garden,” she said. “I will take responsibility for it.” She looked at Dulcie and the other fairies from the kitchen. “Tell the others in the tearoom. You have my word that no one will be endangered here again.”
    There was a long pause. “All right,” Dulcie said at last. “I’ll tell the queen you’ll take care of the smell.”
    The little band of fairies headed back to the Home Tree.
    As Beck led her away, Iris glanced back at Lily. Lily thought she looked sorry. But she couldn’t say for sure.

    For the next few days, Lily was very busy. Every morning she picked armloads of lavender to hand out to the fairies of Pixie Hollow. Her leafkerchief masks were a good way to cover up the smell of the stinky flowers. But it took a lot of lavender to keep everyone happy. Lily’s lavender plants were starting to look bare. What would happen when she ran out?
    She also worried that the wasps would come back. Every day, she searched the sky for signs of a buzzing black cloud. But the sky remained blue. The only clouds she saw were fluffy and white.
    Then one morning, Lily woke with a stuffy nose. Her eyes watered and her throat itched. Her whole head felt as if it were filled with cotton.
    “What a terrible time to catch a cold,” Lily said as she climbed out of bed. She dressed slowly. She was already thinking of the work that lay ahead of her. She had to hand out more lavender, and she was behind in her gardening.
    When she got to the tearoom, Lily noticed something strange. None of the fairies had on a leafkerchief mask. Instead, they were using their leafkerchiefs to blow their noses. Everyone in the Home Tree seemed to be sick.

    “Hi, Lily,” the other garden fairies said as she sat down at their table. Lily looked around. All the fairies had watery eyes and runny noses. Some had dandelion-fluff scarves wrapped around their throats. Only Iris looked the same as usual—maybe because she always looked as if she had a cold.
    “What an awful cold everyone’s got,” Lily remarked as she filled her teacup.
    “Oh, it’s no cold,” Rosetta replied stuffily. She dabbed at her nose with a rose petal. “It’s that pink dust.”
    “Pink dust?” asked Lily.
    Rosetta nodded. “It’s everywhere. The cleaning-talent fairies can’t get rid of it. It makes them sneeze so much, they can’t get any work done.”
    A bleary-eyed serving-talent fairy came to the table to serve their tea. All the teacups were covered with a strange, sticky pink dust.
    Suddenly, Lily had a bad feeling. “I’ll be right back,” she said. She hurried off to her garden.
    Sure enough, her entire garden looked as if it had been covered in pink snow. When a slight breeze blew, more pink dust floated down from the flowers on the mysterious plant.
    It wasn’t dust, Lily realized. It was pollen. And everyone in Pixie Hollow was allergic to it!

B Y AFTERNOON, PINK pollen covered Pixie Hollow. It floated in the fairies’ chestnut soup at lunch. It stuck in their hair. It gummed