Corey sighed. “Magic isn’t real, either,” he said.
Cressida smiled mysteriously. “That’s what you think,” she replied, not bothering to look up. When her grandmother had visited for Corey’s birthday, she’d given Cressida a set of permanent markers in metallic shades. Now, Cressida used the gold one to color in Sunbeam’s hooves and horn.
“Things that are real can be pretty amazing,” Corey said, looking down at his open book. “Did you know that the biggest kind of bats have a wingspan of up to six feet? Can you imagine a bat that big?”
“That’s pretty neat,” Cressida said, pausing to imagine a bat with a wingspan that was just as long as her father was tall.
“Maybe I’ll make a gigantic bat kite after I finish this book,” Corey said.
“I’ll help you with it,” Cressida said.
Then, as Corey continued to read, Cressida drew a rainbow that arched over the unicorn princesses.
Now the only thing left to do before she could fly her kite was to make it a tail. Cressida stood up and skipped across the living room, down the hall, and into her bedroom. She pulled her art supply bin off her shelves. And just as she began to rummage through a mess of paints, markers, crayons, yarn, stickers, glue, tape, sequins, and beads, she heard a high, tinkling noise.
Cressida grinned and leaped across the room to her bedside table. She opened the drawer and pulled out an old-fashioned key with a crystal ball handle. The ball glowed bright pink as the key continued to make the tinkling noise. It was the special signal the unicorns used to invite her to visit them in the Rainbow Realm!
Cressida, who was still wearing her green unicorn pajamas, changed into a pair of jeans, a teal T-shirt with a picture of a kite with a rainbow tail, and her favorite shoes: a pair of silver unicorn sneakers. She especially loved them because they had pink lights that blinked whenever she walked, ran, or jumped.
With the key safely stowed in the back pocket of her jeans, Cressida dashed out of her room and sprinted to the back door.
“Where are you going in such a hurry?” Corey called out. “And aren’t you going to take your kite?”
“I’ll be right back,” Cressida said as she stepped outside. “I’m just going for a quick walk in the woods before I try to fly it.”
“Have fun,” Cressida’s father called from the kitchen.
Fortunately, time in the human world froze while Cressida was in the Rainbow Realm, so even if she spent hours with the unicorns, Corey and her parents would think she’d been gone only a few minutes.
Cressida ran through her backyard and turned onto her favorite path in the woods behind her house. When she came to the giant oak, she kneeled down and found the tiny hole in the base of the tree. Her heart thundered with excitement as she pushed the key into the hole. The forest began to spin, turning into a whirl of brown and green, and then everything turned pitch black. Suddenly Cressida felt as though she were falling through space. Then, with a gentle thud, she landed on something soft. For a moment, all she could see was a blur of white, pink, and purple. But when the room stopped spinning, Cressida found herself sitting on a lavender armchair in the front hall of Spiral Palace, the unicorns’ white, sparkling, horn-shaped home.
Crystal chandeliers shimmered from the ceiling. Light poured in through the windows, as pink, purple, and silver curtains fluttered in the breeze. Cressida looked all around the room for her unicorn friends, but the unicorn-size velvet couches and chairs were empty.
“Hello?” Cressida called out, standing up and walking to the center of the room. “Is anyone here?”
Then she heard a clattering of hooves in the hallway. In a few seconds, all seven unicorn princesses trotted up to Cressida.
Breeze danced over to Cressida and sang out, “Yippee! You’re here! We were trying to sneak into the palace kitchen to see what the dragons are cooking, but they caught us!” Her magic gemstone—an aquamarine—hung from an orange ribbon around her neck and glittered in the light of the chandeliers. From her other trips to the Rainbow Realm, Cressida knew Breeze’s magic power was to create gusts of blue wind.
“My human girl is back!” Sunbeam sang out, clicking her gold hooves together.
“We’re so glad you could come,” Flash said, swishing her silver tail.
Bloom and Prism reared up with excitement. And Firefly winked at Cressida.
The only unicorn who didn’t look happy was Moon, who stood apart from her sisters and stared worriedly at her shiny black hooves.
Cressida wanted to ask Moon what was wrong, but before she could, Breeze gushed, “We invited you here for our annual Windy Meadows Blast. It’s my favorite day of the year, and I’m so excited I can’t stand still.” Breeze trotted backward in circles around Cressida. “You’re just in time to come to the Windy Meadows to help me prepare for the Blast. Will you join me? Please!”
Cressida giggled. “Of course I will,” she said. “But what is the Blast?”
“It’s a special day when all my sisters and I ride huge kites up into the clouds,” Breeze explained. “Afterwards, the dragons cook us a fantastic feast. We want you to be the first human girl to ride up into the clouds with us.”
“I’d love that,” Cressida said. Flying into the clouds on a kite with seven unicorns sounded like more fun than almost anything else Cressida could imagine doing that morning.
Moon frowned and sighed loudly. Cressida opened her mouth to ask Moon what was wrong, but before she could speak, a red dragon wearing a puffy white hat and apron appeared. He whistled as he carried two enormous metal vats through the palace’s front room and down a hallway that led to the kitchen. Cressida knew from her first visit to the Rainbow Realm that the dragons were chefs who
