Imagine a door. A teeny-tiny fairy door. Now imagine it is magic. Open the door. Chapter one In Which a Door Is OpenedEliza stepped off of School Bus Number Six and ran. She ran down the hill. She ran past the empty swing set. She ran past the red rowboat. She ran past a pot of purple flowers. She ran past the old dock until she reached the end of Salt Pond Lane.
She stopped to pick some wild daisies, poking their happy heads among the goldenrod and sneezeweeds.
She ran up the hill. At the top sat five crooked beach cottages, all in a row. Wind chimes made of clamshells rang as Eliza flew up the steps of Cottage Number Two and pushed open the screen door.
“Hi, Mom! Hi, Bee!” she yelled to her mother and her little sister. She didn’t wait for an answer. In fact, Eliza was in her room by the time the screen door banged shut behind her.
Eliza peeled off her school uniform and put on her play clothes. She clipped her dragonfly pin to her overalls.
Then she ducked inside the low, curved door in the bedroom wall. Cherry-pink light streamed through the half-moon window of the crawl space.
The door to the Land of UnderStair closed behind Eliza with a soft click. Magic is not loud. It is soft, like the fur on a rabbit. Or a whisper.
It was pin-drop quiet in her secret space under the stairs. No Mom insisting on chores. No Bee pestering her to play horsies.
She braided the daisies into a garland, placed it on her head, and lifted up
The Daisy Chain Book of Fairies. It was old, so old she felt the flip of a page might turn it to dust. The book contained all there was to know about fairies, elves, hobs, trolls, pixies, brownies, and every other kind of fae folk. She stroked its purple leather cover like she was petting a rabbit.
Eliza pulled her stuffed animals close. She cracked open
The Daisy Chain Book of Fairies. “What shall we read today?” she asked Raccoon, Chipmunk, and Hedgehog.
Eliza thought she heard the animals whisper, “The flower fairies.”
“Once upon a time,” she started, “in a land as yellow as buttercups . . .”
When she was done, she closed the book and looked out the half-moon window.
“A rainbow!” she told her animals. “If I were a fairy, I’d wear skirts made of poppy petals and drink beads of dew from spiderwebs and fly over rainbows.”
When she looked outside again, her breath quickened. “A double rainbow!” It was a sign. Magic!
Eliza touched the dragonfly pin clipped to her overalls.
All was still.
All was quiet.
Not a creature was stirring, not even a hobgoblin.
She opened her new diary. It squeaked of possibility. On the first page she wrote:
This Book belongs to Eliza of the Elves She crawled over to the teeny-tiny fairy door that she’d made of sticks and star moss. A movement bothered the stillness. A flicker as small as the blink of an eyelash.
A wing! Eliza’s dragonfly pin lifted a wing right off of her overalls.
Haiku! Her dragonfly familiar. Haiku was Eliza’s friend and protector in the Land of the Fairies.
It was certain now.
She felt a draft. A good breeze. On the floor was a wisp of fine dust, the color of sea-green glitter.
All of a sudden, the teeny-tiny door flew open.
Copyright © 2025 by Megan McDonald; illustrated by Lenny Wen. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
