Book Three: Finding Fairyland 3

Finding Fairyland: book three

An excerpt from Finding Fairyland 3, by Barry Poupard:

Julia hurried along the sidewalk. Though it was the middle of March and the sun was bright, the wind still blew cold. She had left her hat in their van and the breeze tried to undo the French braid her mother had put into her brown hair. To protect her ears from the cold, Julia hunched her shoulders and pushed her chin down inside the collar. She walked as fast as she could, taking big steps and striding straight along the sidewalk.
Though she didn’t pause to look inside, she noted each store or office she passed. The coffee shop her mother liked to go to, the barbershop that always gave off a funny smell in the summer, the “Tax Accountant”, whatever that was. She’d seen the businesses nearly every day and she could almost name them off in her head. And each one that she named meant she was that much closer to where she wanted to be, where she was headed.
And that much further away from where she was supposed to be going.
Julia had seen it from the window as her mother drove them to her office. She squealed in excitement and her mother nearly stopped the van and asked what was wrong. Julia at first only begged her mother to pull over. But her mother wouldn’t — she said they were cutting it close for the first appointment. They had dropped Julia’s sister Laura off at softball practice and then stayed to watch the girls warm up. Her mother smiled when Julia told her what she saw and said they would go look at it after she had seen all of her patients.
Now Julia turned the corner with the drugstore on it and nearly bumped into a man coming out. She was thinking about where she was headed and not paying attention to anything around her. She had asked her mother if she could leave the office and was supposed to simply go across the street and around the block to the bookstore. Julia knew her mother would be disappointed with her for disobeying and not heading right to the bookman’s shop.
But she had to see it. That’s what Julia kept thinking as she strode quickly past the tanning salon, the photography studio, and the wine shop. It was only a short bit out of the way and wouldn’t take very long. She’d be back and in the book store and her mother wouldn’t even know. And anyway, she had her cell phone in her pocket in case anything happened.
Julia stopped at the corner. The Do Not Walk flashed orange. Julia peered across the street. She could see it from where she was standing.
A fairy ring. In the middle of the lawn in front of City Hall. Right in the center of town where everyone could see, where hundreds of people drove by it all day, every day. She could hardly believe it. A perfect circle of white-topped mushrooms. The first one of the season.

Click here to download the first chapter of Finding Fairyland 3: Spring Beauties