4. A Sticky Situation

"Come on," Rachel said. "Let's go inside." The girls and Pearl rushed over to the door. But their hearts sank when they saw the big, heavy padlock. "Of course, it's Saturday. The factory's closed." Kirsty said, looking disappointed. "What are we going to do?" They stood and thought for a minute. Then Rachel glanced up, and a smile spread across her face. "Look!" she said, pointing. "There's an air vent near the roof. We have our magic fairy dust. Let's turn ourselves into fairies. Then we can all fly in through the air vent." The Fairy Queen had given Kirsty and Rachel gold lockets full of fairy dust, which they could use to turn themselves into fairies

whenever they needed to. "Good idea!" Pearl laughed, clapping her hands happily. Quickly, Rachel and Kirsty opened their lockets and sprinkled some fairy dust over themselves. Almost immediately, they began to shrink, and beautiful shimmering fairy wings grew from their backs.

"Come on," Pearl cried, zooming back and forth impatiently. "Up we go!" And she flew up to the air vent in the wall. Kirsty and Rachel flew after her. Pearl slipped through the vent first, and the two girls followed. They all stopped inside and gazed around the factory. "Wow!" Kirsty gasped, her eyes wide. Lots of big silver machines were busy making all kinds of different candy, Peppermints poured out of one machine, while long strings of

strawberry licorice came out of another. Soft ice cream fizzed into paper cups, and pink and white marshmallows bounced along a moving conveyor belt. Chocolate bars were being wrapped in gold foil, while a different machine wrapped caramel candies in shiny silver paper. There were large sticky lollipops and striped candy canes in every color and flavor. "Isn't this amazing?" asked Rachel. "Look at all the different kinds of candy!" Kirsty looked confused. "But the people who work here wouldn't have left all the machines on, would they?" she pointed out. Pearl grinned. "I bet they turned them off, but somebody else has turned them on again." "The goblin!" Kirsty exclaimed. "Where is he?" "Let's split up and see if we can find him," Pearl replied. They flew off to different parts of the factory. Rachel flew toward a machine that was mixing fluffy pink cotton candy in a huge silver tub. She looked at the machine for a minute and was about to fly on, but then she heard the sound of someone loudly smacking his lips. Rachel flew down to take a closer look. There, lying with his back to her, on a huge, fluffy pink cloud, was the goblin! He was greedily scooping up sticky handfuls of cotton candy and munching them happily. He was quite chubby— probably from stuffing himself with so

much cotton candy, Rachel thought. She flew a little closer and peeked over the goblin's shoulder to see if she could spot the magic Cloud Feather. There it was, in his hand! Tiny pink and white clouds drifted from it as the goblin waved it in the air.

I have to tell Kirsty and Pearl, Rachel thought. She turned to fly away, but as she did, one wing brushed the goblin's shoulder. With a yelp of surprise, the goblin reached up and grabbed Rachel with one hand. "You're not getting my feather!" he shouted, and stuffed Rachel inside one of the pink clouds that was drifting by. Poor Rachel was trapped! She tried to push her way out of the cloud, but she couldn't make a hole in it. The cloud drifted farther and farther away from the goblin.