56 pages • 1 hour read
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Ophelia hides in a tree, upset about humans causing problems for her. She thinks about using the distress acorn, but she decides she can still make the wish come true. Ophelia sees the customer with the newspaper leave the diner and hears Kasarah’s wish from his pocket. She follows him to his car, ready to use knockout gas on him, but the spray mechanism jams. Ophelia hits the car’s windshield to get the driver’s attention, but he sprays water on her and turns on the wipers, which knocks Ophelia off the car. Still focused on following the car, Ophelia flies alongside it and does not see the truck headed for her.
At the last minute, Ophelia attempts to avoid the truck but ends up hitting its side. She lands in a heap of garbage bags and realizes her left wing is broken when she tries to stand up. Anna, the girl from the diner, notices the injured “bird” and tells her mother, but Anna’s mother pulls her away. Ophelia looks for the distress acorn in her satchel, but it is missing—she has lost it in the accident. Frustrated, Ophelia yells all the fairy curses she knows and then bursts into tears.
A dog interrupts Ophelia’s weeping. He wants to eat her, and she threatens him with a knife. The dog is initially confused by this, and then he realizes that Ophelia is not a bird and tries to make friends with her. He licks her wing, trying to heal her. Ophelia takes off her slobber-covered flight suit. The dog asks Ophelia for her name and tells her the many insulting names people call him. Ophelia decides to call him Sam. Ophelia tells Sam about her mission, and he offers to help her. Ophelia tells him he cannot, but he follows her regardless. Ophelia cements their friendship by scratching his itch, and he tries to carry her in his mouth. This gives Ophelia an idea, and she has Sam lie down so she can climb onto his back.
Ophelia hitches a ride on Sam, directing him toward the sound of Kasarah’s wish. They try to stay out of sight of humans. However, they take a break when they catch a whiff of donuts. Ophelia advises Sam against taking donuts from people, and in return, Sam gives Ophelia a lesson on dumpster diving.
Sam assists Ophelia as she climbs into the dumpster, and she finds some slightly stale donuts. They enjoy the donuts together, and Ophelia asks about Sam’s owner. Sam says that his owner drove him far away from home and abandoned him. Ophelia then explains her mission to Sam. They walk awhile, and then Ophelia climbs a tree to determine their location. Focusing intently, she hears Kasarah’s wish just as talons grab her from the sky.
Ophelia attempts to persuade the red-tailed hawk that grabbed her to let her go, but the hawk is determined to feed its hatchlings. Ophelia taps into ancient fairy magic, using singing to achieve her goal. Unlike most fairies who enchant with their music, Ophelia annoys. She sings Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train,” irritating the bird to the point where it releases her.
Ophelia tries to slow down her fall with her one good wing, aiming to land in a pond. The problem is that she cannot swim. When she lands in the water, she tries kicking to reach the surface, but she sinks deeper. Ophelia realizes that she is probably going to die. Just then, something pulls her out of the water.
Ophelia wakes up to Sam licking her. He explains that he followed the hawk and swam across the pond to rescue her. Ophelia hugs the dog and asks him if he wants to help her with her mission. Sam asks if they are friends, and Ophelia assures him that they are indeed friends.
Ophelia hears Kasarah’s wish and leads Sam toward the coin—it is in a place called Super Pets. She instructs Sam to stand guard by the door but tells him to run if there is danger. Ophelia gets frustrated with the automatic doors but eventually enters the shop. She looks around and finally spots the man with Kasarah’s coin. Ophelia plans to use her last can of knockout spray on him, but suddenly, she hears Sam barking.
Ophelia leaves the man with the coin to go scold Sam. Sam explains that he came to rescue her but got upset by seeing the caged dogs in the shop. He tells Ophelia that she has to save them because that is the dogs’ wish. Just then, a store employee shouts that someone needs to put Sam on a leash, and at Ophelia’s suggestion, Sam jumps on the employee. Chaos ensues, and Ophelia manages to release the three dogs from their kennels. Ophelia, Sam, and the dogs head toward the door, but the employees block their way. The other dogs distract the employees, and Sam and Ophelia manage to escape, only to find the man with Kasarah’s coin driving away.
Above Squint’s office, there is a sign: “Expect Nothing, Anticipate Everything” (37). Ophelia is famous for anticipating everything. She creates detailed lists of the gear required for every possible mission in every possible environment. She likes to flaunt her over-preparedness for every situation, saying, “The only way to stay one step ahead [is] to think two ahead” (178). However, despite Ophelia’s forethought and planning, things go very wrong for her in this section, which shows that Excessive Rigidity Results in Chaos. Ophelia’s planning makes her feel overconfident about her success and blinds her to the fact that planning cannot make up for a lack of experience. The stress and pressure of real-life scenarios is very different from training exercises; though she graduated at the top of her class while she trained as a Granter, Ophelia has never experienced the outside world before. She has studied about cars, planes, and hawks, but having never seen them before, she struggles when she encounters them in real life. This also shows the disadvantages of fairies being isolated in the Havens; though the rules to separate them from the outside world were put in place for their protection, Ophelia struggles as a result of being too sheltered.
While Ophelia prides herself on being prepared for every situation, her experiences prove the opposite. She thinks she knows everything there is to know about human technologies, but she is shocked when she collides with a car windshield and is hit by a blast of fluid; she is even more flabbergasted when a “black metal arm that [springs] out of nowhere” knocks her out of the way (134). The quote shows that Ophelia lacks even the words for this object—which is a windshield wiper—implying that she is certainly not as prepared for the outside world as she thinks she is. While she believes that the worst possible outcome for a fairy is to have a human catch them, she does not consider humans or their technologies to be much of a threat. Back in the Haven, after she gets her mission, Ophelia goes to the archive to investigate predators rather than human dangers. However, knowing that her mission is based in a city, researching humans and technology may have been a smarter choice. Ophelia clings onto the notion that she is very prepared to face any challenge, and these events show that she must let go of this idea in order to move forward.
Despite her many near-death experiences, it is only after she gets hit by a truck and breaks her wing that Ophelia confronts the reality that she may very well die on this mission. However, rescue comes in the form of Sam, a dog. Ophelia lets go of her old ideas about how dogs are predators, and this newfound flexibility saves her. Sam turns out to be a faithful friend who even saves her from drowning. Ophelia further lets go of some of her old rigidity when she temporarily gives up on her quest of following the coin in order to help Sam rescue some dogs because this is important to him. Ophelia’s struggles and vulnerabilities make her more flexible to new paths, ideas, and friends.
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By John David Anderson