Ginger had always believed there were things in the world that only appeared if you weren't looking too hard. A shooting star. A fox slipping between the trees. The first firefly of summer.  And, apparently, fairies.

She discovered this one on an ordinary afternoon while following a trail she had never noticed before. It wasn't much of a trail. Just a narrow opening between the grasses where something small had passed often enough to bend the stems. Ginger followed it. The trail wound around a clump of wildflowers, beneath the crooked branch of a juniper,  

That was where Ginger heard the crying. It was very quiet. Not the sort of crying meant to bring someone running. It was the sort meant not to be heard at all.

Ginger crouched beside the stone. "Hello?" The crying stopped. Ginger waited. Nothing. She leaned closer. "I know you're there."

A tiny voice answered. "No, you don't." Ginger smiled. "All right. I don't know you're there. But if someone were there, I'd tell them they don't have to hide."

There was a long silence. Then something moved behind the stone.First came a tumble of  golden hair. Then two pointed ears. Then a very small face. And finally, a fairy stepped into view.

She was no taller than Ginger's hand. Her dress looked as though it had been sewn from flower petals, and on her back were two beautiful wings, pale and almost transparent.

Ginger stared. The fairy crossed her arms. "It's rude to stare." “ Sorry." "You've never seen a fairy before." "No." "I can tell."

Ginger sat down in the grass. "My name is Ginger." The fairy hesitated. "Mine is Lila."

"Why were you crying, Lila?" "I wasn't." Ginger looked at the wet streaks on Lila's cheeks. "Oh." Lila sighed. "Fine. I was."

She climbed onto the gray stone and sat with her knees tucked beneath her chin. Ginger waited. She had learned that sometimes people told you things if you gave them enough quiet. Eventually, Lila whispered, "I can't fly."

Ginger looked at the wings on her back. They seemed perfectly good as fairy wings went, although Ginger admitted she didn't know much about fairy wings.

"Have you tried?" Lila gave her an irritated look. "Of course I've tried." She stood. "I flap and flap and flap." She demonstrated. Her wings fluttered so quickly they almost disappeared.

But Lila remained firmly on the stone.

"Everyone else can fly," she said. "My sisters can. My cousins can. Even my baby brother can, and he still puts his shoes on the wrong feet." "Maybe you just haven't learned yet."

"I'm su pposed to know already." "Who says?" "Everyone."

Ginger knew something about everyone. Everyone sometimes had a great many opinions about things that weren't their business.

"Maybe your wings work differently," Ginger said. "They don't work at all."

Lila sat again. "When the fairies go gathering moonflowers, I stay behind. When they dance above the meadow, I watch from the ground. Yesterday they flew over the creek." Her voice became very small. "I couldn't go."

Ginger looked toward the creek. "I can take you."

Lila blinked. "What?" "I can't fly either. I still get places." That was how Ginger and Lila became friends.

Ginger carried Lila across the creek in her shirt pocket, although Lila insisted on keeping her head out so she could see. They explored beneath fallen logs and climbed the hill where the wind bent the grasses almost flat. Ginger showed Lila how to skip stones. Lila showed Ginger which mushrooms glowed faintly beneath the moon. They found a bird's nest that had fallen from a tree and carefully tucked it into the fork of a low branch. And because Lila couldn't simply fly over everything, she noticed things other fairies missed.

She knew where the rabbits made their tunnels. She knew which stones became warmest in the afternoon sun. She knew where beetles hid when it rained. She had even discovered a patch of tiny blue flowers growing beneath a thorny bush where no flying fairy had ever bothered to look.

"They're beautiful," Ginger said. Lila smiled. "They only grow here."

One afternoon, Ginger returned to the meadow and heard frantic voices. Fairies darted everywhere. Something had happened. A young fairy named Pip had disappeared. "He was gathering berries," Lila explained. "Nobody can find him."

Fairies flew over the meadow. They searched the treetops. They followed the creek from above. But Lila stayed close to the ground.

Then she noticed something. A broken stem. A crushed clover blossom. And beside it, the faintest little footprint in the dust. "This way!" she called. No one heard her. So Lila ran. Ginger ran behind her. The tiny tracks disappeared beneath the thorny bush. The same thorny bush where Lila had found the blue flowers.

Lila dropped to her knees.

"Pip?" A frightened voice answered from somewhere beneath the branches. "Lila?"

He had crawled beneath the bush to pick a flower and become trapped between two roots. The flying fairies had passed overhead again and again. But they hadn't seen him. Lila had.

She crawled beneath the branches and helped Pip squeeze free. When they returned to the meadow, everyone cheered.

"You found him!" cried Lila's sister. "How?" Lila looked toward the ground. "I knew where to look."

That evening the fairies danced above the meadow. They swooped through the warm air, leaving trails of shimmering light behind them. Lila watched.

For a moment, Ginger wondered if she was sad. Then Lila began dancing too. Not in the sky. On the earth. She spun between the wildflowers, her little feet moving so quickly that petals lifted around her.

Soon Pip landed beside her. Then another fairy did. And another. Before long, half the fairies were dancing on the ground.

Ginger danced with them. She wasn't particularly good at fairy dancing. But nobody seemed to care.

Later, Ginger and Lila sat together on the gray stone while the first stars appeared. "Do you still wish you could fly?" Ginger asked. Lila thought about it. "Sometimes."

Ginger understood. "But," Lila added, "I think there are things you can only find when your feet are on the ground."

Ginger looked at the meadow. At the grasses bending in the evening wind. At the tiny blue flowers hidden beneath the thorny bush. At all the small things that could easily be missed if someone were always hurrying above them.

"I think you're right." Lila leaned against Ginger's finger.  And Ginger realized something she would remember long after that day.

There are many ways to move through the world. Some creatures soar. Some run. Some wander. And some keep their feet close to the earth, where they discover things the rest of us might never see.

Lila never did learn to fly.But eventually, she stopped believing that meant she was less of a  fairy.

And whenever Ginger passed the gray stone beside the meadow, she would sometimes see a tiny golden-haired figure waiting there.

Ready for another adventure. On foot.