The Wish That Went the Wrong Way

When you blow out your birthday candles and make a wish, the wish does not just disappear. It rises with the little curl of smoke, slips out through the nearest window, and floats all the way to the Department of Birthdays. There it lands in the Wish Receiving Room, under the Hall of Candles, with a tiny ping on a brass bell.

The Wish Receiving Room is run by Mr Tobias Sprinkle. He is a careful man with a spotted bow tie and a soft cloth for polishing the bell. Each time it pings, he catches the wish in a small envelope, writes the child’s name on the front, and files it in a pigeonhole. He never opens them, and neither does anybody else. That is the most important rule at the Department.

On Saturday, at eighteen minutes to seven, a boy called Oscar blew out seven candles in one go. Mr Sprinkle knew it was coming. The pigeonhole marked Oscar had been dusted and was ready. He held up his envelope and waited for the ping.

There was no ping.

Mr Sprinkle waited one minute. Then he waited five. He polished the bell, in case it was feeling shy. He shone a torch up the wish chute and found nothing but a feather and one pink cake sprinkle that must have been there since spring. Then he put on his coat and hurried upstairs to see the Keeper of Candles.

Keeper Wick listened carefully. She did not panic, because she never panicked. “Wishes do not get lost,” she said. “They only get delayed. Let us look in the Breeze Book.”

The Breeze Book is a long ledger in which every breeze is written down, with its time and its direction. Keeper Wick ran her finger down the page. “Here,” she said. “Saturday, eighteen minutes to seven. One small sideways breeze over Oscar’s street, heading east.”

Mr Sprinkle unrolled the big map. East of that street there were some houses, a duck pond, a great deal of sky and then, high up and very white, Cloud Nine. And on Cloud Nine, at No. 1 Enamel Way, was the Molar Intake Division of the Department of Teeth.

“Oh dear,” said Mr Sprinkle. “The Tooth Fairy’s office.” But before he could even pick up the telephone, there was a soft tapping at the window. Outside, hovering in the evening air, was the Tooth Fairy herself, with a clipboard under one arm and a little velvet pouch in her hand.

“Good evening,” she said. “I believe this is yours. It arrived in our intake tray at seventeen minutes to seven. It is about the size of a tooth, and white, and a little sparkly, so my clerk measured it with the tooth ruler and filled in half a receipt before anybody noticed.”

She handed over the pouch, with a note pinned to it. The note said: Not a tooth. Smells of chocolate cake. Hums a little when held. Returned with compliments.

Mr Sprinkle held the pouch very carefully over his envelope. The wish slid out, and the brass bell went ping, so clearly that the Keeper’s teacup rang too.

He did not open the envelope. He only wrote Oscar on the front in his neatest letters and slid it into the waiting pigeonhole, where it settled in with a small sigh, like someone getting into a warm bed. Then he stamped the card on the front: Received. Being Looked After.

The Tooth Fairy flew home to Cloud Nine, and Keeper Wick went back upstairs to her candles. Mr Sprinkle gave the bell one last polish and turned down his lamp. The pigeonholes sat in rows in the quiet room, hundreds and hundreds of them, each with its own small wish inside.

And far away, in a house with seven used candles in the kitchen bin and the last of the cake under a tea towel, a seven-year-old boy was asleep. He did not know that his wish had gone the long way round. He only knew that he had made it, and that it was out there somewhere, being looked after. Which it was.