“Miranda McDonagal, don’t you brush your hair before bedtime like you’re supposed to?” Daddy nearly always says at breakfast. “Your mother will be angry with you if you don’t. Go on and brush it now and I won’t tell her.”

He doesn’t get it though, he doesn’t understand. “But Daddy, I’ve brushed it, I promise!” I say. “There were… oh never mind.” They never listened. Or they told me to stop making up stories, which was worse. I went upstairs to brush my hair again. Momma likes my hair long but sometimes I just want to cut it all off, all the way up to my ears. Then maybe they wouldn’t bother me so much.

See, every night after the lights are turned off and I’ve brushed my stupid hair I lie in bed and stare at the ceiling. I can’t sleep because I know they’re coming. After I can hear Daddy storing in the other room, the air in the room changes and I really do think that I hear little bells or tinkling music. Then they come. They fly in my room from the door that Momma won’t let me close at night and land on my pillow with great big plops. They giggle in my ears and pull on my hair. They say they are weaving but they are only tying knots with their little spider-leg fingers! They just laugh more when I tell them to stop. They sit on my pillow and gossip like my two grandmas, only about things that I don’t understand. I don’t know if I just fall asleep or if they go most of the time but when I wake up in the morning it looks like my hair’s been through a thunderstorm. I hate it. I always get in trouble.

Momma says my knots are the worse she’s ever seen and I guess that they must be. Who else’s hair gets all knotted up by silly little fairies? Don’t tell anybody though, I don’t want to get in any more trouble!