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from behind her.
    She turned her head and saw something like a small, dark cloud hanging over a clump of trees near the road. As she watched, the cloud grew quickly bigger and bigger. And the whining, humming noise grew louder.
    Suddenly, she knew what it was. It couldn’t be—not in the middle of winter—but it was.
Wasps
. A huge, deadly swarm of them, sent by the Fairy Queen herself to attack them and stop them rescuing her prisoner.
    “Charlie!” screamed Jan. “Charlie! Look out!”
    He turned in the tree and looked toward where she was pointing. A less brave man would have leapt straight out of the tree and started running. But Charlie didn’t. He put his foot one branch higher, reached the nest with his hand and tore it away from a clinging cluster of twigs.
    “Jan! Catch!”
    He threw it as hard as he could. It flew through the air across the blackberry bushes. Their snakelike briars swayed upward as if to trap it in its flight, but Charlie had thrown it too high for them to reach. As the shrill, furious buzzing of the wasps drew nearer, Jan made a little jump into the air.
    She couldn’t jump high because of her lame leg. But it was high enough. She felt the cold, papery thing land safely in her hands. She saw Charlie jump down from the tree and start to push his way back through the clinging, clawing brambles, his arms in front of his face.
    Then the wasps were overhead and diving down at them.
    Jan didn’t waste time trying to run. She tore open the nest, scattering bits of it on the frozen ground, calling all the time, “Tiki! Tiki! Come out; it’s me, Jan!”
    As the first wasps landed on her head and hands and covered Charlie like a black and yellow cloth, Tikisuddenly appeared between two huge wasps on Jan’s fingers and screamed out, “Filimizi! Filimizi!”
    Her little voice cut like a sharp silver needle through the heavy, angry buzzing of the wasps. Andsuddenly their noise changed. They didn’t vanish or fly away. It was as if they suddenly felt the icy cold for the first time. Their shrill whining turned dull and slow, like the buzzing of a fly after you’ve sprayed itwith poison. The wasps on Jan’s hands, which had been just about to sting her, started to blunder around in circles, and then to fall to the ground. Those still in the air began to fly in circles, too, bumping into each other in a sleepy, drunken sort of way. Some of them dropped and lay on their backs, waving their legs among the frosty blades of grass.

    Jan looked fearfully for Charlie. He was standing on her side of the blackberry bushes, looking white and shaken. The black blanket of wasps was falling away from him.
    “Charlie, did they sting you? Are you all right?” Jan cried anxiously, hobbling to him as fast as she could.
    He put his arms around her.
    “I’m okay, what about you?”
    “I’m—I’m fine,” she said shakily. “Tiki saved us.”
    They both looked at Tiki, standing on Jan’s hand. She looked pretty shaky, too. She was wearing a bright pink tank top, fur-lined boots, stripy leg warmers over her jeans and a woolly hat pulled down over her ears.
    “Tiki, what happened?” said Charlie. “How did you do that? I thought you’d lost your magic.”
    “I didn’t use any magic,” she said.
    “So how did you stop the wasps?”
    “Oh, that. All I did was take away the magic that
they
had. Wasps can’t fly about in this weather without some magic, you know. It’s not natural for them. I just took it away, and the cold did the rest.”
    “I’m glad to see the Queen let you dress warmly, anyway,” said Jan, “before she put you in prison.”
    “Let me? She didn’t let me. Nobody can stop afairy making her own clothes. About all I had to do in there was to change clothes. What do you think?” she asked, turning round in Jan’s hand. “Do you like my new gear?”
    “Very smart indeed,” said Charlie. “But now let’s be getting home. Jan shouldn’t be out in this.…” He looked around