First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2020
Published in this ebook edition in 2020
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Text copyright © Lindsey Kelk 2020
Illustrations copyright © Pippa Curnick 2020
Cover design copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020
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Source ISBN: 9780008292171
Ebook Edition © February 2020 ISBN: 9780008292188
Version: 2020-01-24
For Princess Penny.
If you could wish for anything,
what would it be?
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Books by Lindsey Kelk
About the Publisher
Cinders was a girl with a lot on her mind. Here she was, trotting through a forest on a horse that used to be a mouse, with her best friend, who just so happened to be a talking dog, and a boy in a green hat named Hansel. But she wasn’t thinking about any of them. She was thinking about her mum, her dad and a little bit about where they were going to get their lunch.
‘You’re very quiet,’ Hansel said from the back of Mouse the horse.
‘Am I?’ Cinders replied.
‘I don’t like it when you’re quiet,’ Hansel said. ‘It’s weird.’
‘Don’t get used to it,’ Sparks piped up from his spot in front of Cinders, his head nestled in Mouse’s mane. ‘I think this is the longest she’s gone without
speaking since she learned to talk.’
‘What if Hansel is right?’ Cinders began. ‘What if my mum was the princess who went missing from Fairyland all those years ago?’
Sparks sighed. There goes my peace and quiet, he thought to himself.
The four friends were on a quest. Cinders had recently found that she could do magic and it turned out it was because her mother had been a fairy. Unfortunately, she couldn’t ask her mother about that because she had died soon after Cinders was born, and she couldn’t ask her father because he was back at home in the kingdom. The kingdom was the one place Cinders definitely could not return to because the king hated magic, and would throw her in the dungeons for sure. Mostly because of an accidental wish-granting incident that saw King Picklebottom bitten on the bottom by a roast pig Cinders had not-at-all-on-purpose brought back to life.
The king hated magic, which meant the king hated Cinders. It was all quite a mess.
‘It was just an idea,’ Hansel said, scratching his hair underneath his hat. ‘Although I am very often right about things.’
(He wasn’t.)
Hansel had joined the quest after helping himself to one too many delicious tiles from the roof of his neighbour’s gingerbread house. Mouse had joined the quest after Cinders turned him into a horse and he found he quite liked it. Sparks had joined the quest because Cinders was his best friend and, even if she was quite loud, occasionally annoying and never packed enough sausages, he loved her more than anything.
‘Besides,’ Hansel said, ‘surely you’d know if your mum was a fairy princess. Wouldn’t you have extra-extra-special powers or something?’
‘You mean something like magical, sparkly fingers that make wishes come true?’ Cinders suggested. ‘And let’s not forget that time I flew.’
‘I’m not sure floating thirty centimetres off the ground counts as flying,’ Sparks said with a gruffly yawn. ‘I’ve got an idea – why don’t you wish up some lunch? I’m getting hungry.’
That was hardly a surprise. Sparks was almost always starving.
‘I don’t think I’ll have to,’ Cinders said. She gave the air a big sniff. ‘Can you smell that?’