Sample Story

The Case of the Missing Fairy Dust

©Butterfly Tree Books 2026

The trouble began on a perfectly ordinary morning which, as everyone knows, is often how the most extraordinary problems begin.

Grammy reached into the high kitchen cabinet for a can of oatmeal. She paused.  Then she froze.

The small glass jar tied with the faded purple ribbon—the one given to her by the Fairy Queen—was gone from its shelf above the oatmeal and cereal boxes.

For a moment, Grammy simply stared.

It was not panic she felt first, but recognition.

She rose onto her tiptoes and stretched as far as she could, peering into the back corner of the cabinet. Nothing. She dragged a chair across the floor, climbed up, and checked again.

The shelf where the fairy dust always rested was completely empty.

“Oh no,” she whispered.

As she climbed down, a memory fluttered through her mind—unwanted but familiar.

A Gremlin named Nibbit.

Nibbit lived near the eastern edge of Fairyland, where rules thinned and curiosity thickened. He had been small and quick, with clever fingers and an unshakable belief that shiny things were clearly meant to be collected.

Nibbit never stole out of meanness.

He borrowed out of delight.

Grammy shook her head slightly.  There is simply no way that Nibbit escaped from Fairyland’s boundaries.  No way!

She checked the cabinet beside the one where she kept the magical jar. Then the one below. Then every cabinet in the entire kitchen. Her steps grew quicker. Her brow furrowed. Her hands trembled just a little.

“Thomas!” she called.

Pops appeared from the back room, wiping his hands on a towel.
“What’s wrong, Lillian?”

“My fairy dust,” Grammy said, her voice barely steady. “It has vanished.”

Pops blinked. “Vanished?”

Grammy folded her arms and gave him a very serious look.
“You’re not playing a trick on me, are you, Thomas Harper?”

Pops chuckled. “Now why would I do a thing like that?”

Grammy marched through the living room, then the bedroom, then the pantry. When she spotted Peter Pan sprawled across the floor and Captain Hook perched on the windowsill, she planted her hands firmly on her hips.

“You two wouldn’t know anything about this, would you?”

Peter Pan thumped his tail enthusiastically. Captain Hook yawned and cleaned one paw.

Grammy sighed. “Even if you wanted to, neither of you could reach a cabinet that high.”

Still, the jar was nowhere to be found.

Nibbit, she remembered, had once climbed an entire moonbeam just to retrieve a glittering spoon from a Fairy Council table.

That afternoon, their daughter, Liora, dropped Austin and Autumn off for the weekend. The moment they stepped inside the pink house, they all felt it.

The air was heavier somehow—less sparkly.

“My fairy dust is missing,” Grammy told them quietly.

Liora and the twins gasped.

Together, they searched everywhere. Under beds. Behind curtains. Inside drawers and baskets. They checked the porch steps, the garden shed, and even beneath the Butterfly Tree, where fairies were known to linger. Pops kept searching long after anyone else would have given up.

Nothing.

As the sun dipped low, Grammy stepped onto the front porch and sank onto the old wooden swing. It creaked softly as it rocked back and forth. Tears slipped down her cheeks.

Liora, Autumn, and Austin sat close beside her. Pops paced the yard, still unwilling to surrender.

“That fairy dust,” Grammy said at last, “is all I have left of my Fairyland life. The Fairy Queen entrusted me with it because she knew I’d still need to spread a little magic here on Earth.”

She wiped her eyes.

“It helped you when you were small, Liora. And now I use it for the twins whenever they are sick, worried, or afraid. What will I do without it?”

Austin thought for a moment. “You can pray, Grammy,” he said.

“Yes,” Autumn added quickly. “Prayers work better than any old fairy dust.”

Grammy smiled faintly. “Oh, I know that.”

“The fairy dust wouldn’t work at all without God,” Liora said seriously. “He’s the magic inside it. He made everything—humans, fairies, angels, and even elves.”

“And raccoons,” Pops said suddenly, appearing at the edge of the porch.

“Raccoons?!”  Everyone exclaimed at once.

“What?” Pops grinned. “You don’t believe God made raccoons?”

“Of course He did,” Autumn said. “They just don’t seem to fit in with the other things we mentioned.”.”

Grammy chuckled softly. “Oh, they fit in better than you think.”

She remembered Nibbit again—how he had once built an entire nest of borrowed spoons, buttons, and broken stars, convinced he was improving Fairyland’s organization.

“Come on,” Pops said. “I want to show you something.”

He led them across the yard to an old hollow log near a grouping of trees.

“Look inside.”

They leaned in.

Beneath a pile of dry brown leaves lay bits of tin foil, one of Grammy’s shiny silver spoons, and—the small glass jar tied with the purple ribbon!

Grammy’s fairy dust!

“Well, well,” Grammy laughed, her face glowing through her tears. “Bandit has been at it again!”

Bandit—the big, round raccoon who lived nearby—peeked out from behind the log, his black eyes bright with innocent pride.

Just like Nibbit had done.

Not stealing. Not plotting. Just collecting joy.

“But how did he get inside the house?” Grammy wondered.

“Doggie door,” Pops said. “Raccoons are excellent climbers. And that sparkle must’ve called to him louder than a dinner bell.”

Austin looked relieved. “So, he wasn’t being bad?”

“No,” Grammy said warmly. “He was just being curious.”

“How did he get the jar down without breaking it?” Autumn asked curiously.

“Because it is made from glass impossible to break,” Liora said.  “Nothing ever breaks in Fairyland.”

“Not ever,” Grammy said with a big smile, so very proud that her daughter still remembered an important Fairyland fact from her childhood.

As they walked back toward the house, the fireflies blinked on—twinkling in the yard as if they were laughing too.

And for the first time all day, the hill felt magical once again.

Not because the fairy dust had returned—but because some creatures, whether Gremlins or raccoons, were simply wired to love what shines.

And sometimes, love just needs gentle boundaries.