Chapter 7

Chapter SEVEN Five minutes later, Mum came running back out of the house. 'Alvin!' she shouted. 'Mirabelle's not in her bedroom!' 'What do you mean?' I heard Dad say. 'You know what she's like, Seraphina. She's probably hiding or has snuck up to your potion turret.'

'NO!' said Mum. 'I've searched the whole house and I can't find her!' 'What?' said Wilbur, running out of the sprinkler with Oswald and almost squashing me as he passed. 'Has Mirabelle gone missing? I was a bit mean to her earlier, what if she ran away...' I was shocked to see that he looked genuinely sorry.

'I lost my temper with her too!' said Mum, worriedly. 'I'm here! I'm here!' I squeaked in my tiny voice, jumping up and down in the grass and waving the little cocktail umbrella in the air. But of course, no one paid me any attention.

'Bat wings and frog legs!' shrieked Mum. 'What are we going to do?!' 'We'll help you look!' said Frederick. 'Yes, of course!' said Felice, standing up, still with her glass in her hand. I stared at the chaos I had caused, feeling really guilty. I needed to get big again as soon as possible! Now that Wilbur and Oswald were no longer playing in the sprinkler, the path was clear. I ran towards it, using the umbrella to bat away bugs and blades of grass. I could feel droplets of water starting to patter down around me, but they only lasted for a second before the

sprinkler moved away again. It wasn't enough to clean the wings properly, so I kept running, as fast as I could, towards the centre of the sprinkler where the jets were. If I washed my wings in those then they would get clean in no time! Still holding the umbrella, I leapt backwards into the jets.

WOOOOSHHH! WOAHHHH! The sprinkler did more than just clean my wings!