The great fairy robbery

Matilda was fed up.
"Mum," she bellowed as she thumped down the stairs in her night dress. She stormed into the kitchen holding a coin aloft in front of her mother. "Look what the cheapskate fairy left me last night. Fifty pence. Fifty pence. That's all I got for one of my biggest teeth," she grumbled.
Matilda's mother sighed and she poured milk on Matilda's bowl of cereal. "Perhaps that's all the fairy could afford, Matilda. Money is tight for everyone at the moment."
"That's no excuse," Matilda snapped. "I'm going to have words with it the next time. I can already feel a tooth at the front coming loose."
A week later after painstakingly working it free with her tongue, Matilda's front tooth fell out. Remembering her vow to confront the tooth fairy she stayed awake all night with her head under the pillow-eyes fixed on her tooth. As the hours ticked by Matilda wondered whether the fairy would actually materialise until there was a flash of shimmering silver light beneath her duvet covers. Matilda felt her heart start to race with excitement. A moment later, from underneath the folds of white cotton, there appeared a tiny person, a fairy.
Matilda was instantly shocked. The fairy wasn't at all what she expected. She was so old her skin was wrinkly.
Matilda wasn't the only one shocked.
"Oh my," said the fairy when she noticed Matilda's round face staring back at her from the pillow. "You're supposed ta be asleep."
"And you're supposed to be young, and pretty and," Matilda ran her eyes over the fairy's tattered silver dress and her bare feet, "glamourous."
"Yeah, well, we don all fit in wiv the way you 'umans perceive us ta be," the fairy said brusquely as she dusted herself off and straightened herself up.
"And what's that stuff in your hair?" Matilda asked.
The fairy ran a hand through her frizzy curls and shook balls of white fluff from them. "Clouds," she said, matter-of-factly.
The white puffs hung in the air around her head before gradually dissolving.
"So wot 're you doin' awake for anyway, Matilda?" asked the fairy.
"How do you know my name?"
"How else would I know where to come? You 'ave lost a tooth, 'aven't you?"
Matilda nodded.
"Well, ven," the fairy said, as she rummaged into a large pack on her back and pulled out a twenty pence piece. She placed it on the pillow and reached across to claim the tooth. Matilda covered it with her fingers.
"Hey, dats mine, dat is. Give it ta me," shouted the fairy as she tried to lift up Matilda's pinky finger.
"Not until I get paid a descent amount for it. I'm sick of you fairies giving me pennies for my teeth. I made these teeth, they're in perfect condition, they're worth a lot more."
"Tough, you ain't gettin' any more. This is all I 'ave."
Matilda felt her face flush crimson with anger. "What's your name?"
"Pauline," huffed the fairy as she dropped Matilda's finger and rested against it puffing and panting. "Why da you want ta know?"
"Because I want to complain to the head fairy about you. You're mean."
"An you're greedy. Do you have any idea how tough it is bein' a toof fairy at the moment? We ain't exactly rich you know. Not since you 'umans stopped writing books and films and myths and plays about us," Pauline began. "We had a great deal on royalties ya know. We got twenty percent of da money wot you 'umans made on stories about us, twenty percent . We were once so rich we started makin' clouds out of money. Now, we make diddly-squat. All you 'umans want are stories cuddly, talkin' animals."
"And that's my problem because?"
"Because no-one wants to hear about fairies any more! And because no-one wants to 'ear about fairies, you lot are goin' to have to get used to gettin' smaller cuts for your pearly whites. Alright?"
"I could hold you to ransom you know. I could grab hold of you," Matilda said, swiftly lifting her hand from the tooth to clasp Pauline round the waist.
"'ey, let me go."
"Not until you give me at least a pound for that tooth."
"It ain't worf a pound. It's only an incisor."
"A what?"
"A pointy toof," Pauline spat. "Anyway I can disappear even wiv your hand round me. I'm wearing fairy dust which means I can disapparate at any moment."
"Go on them," Matilda challenged.
With that Pauline shut her eyes and whistled. A second later Matilda found she was no longer in her warm bed. She was hovering an inch above white smoke. Above her was a deep blue sky. Deeper than the deepest summer sky she'd ever seen. It was peaceful and tranquil, but cold, bitterly cold. A brisk breeze whipped round her. She throw her arms around her body, still dressed in her cherry blossom pyjamas, and tried to warm herself up. It was only when the smoke cleared a little in front of her that she realised where she was. Through the clearing she could see a patchwork of green and brown below with streams of shimmering silvery blue that meandered through them.
"I'm in a cloud," she muttered, as she clutched at her chest in horror. "That fairy dust must have rubbed off on me. But where is she?"
Matilda scanned the fairyworld around her but as far as her eye could see there was nothing but undulating puffs of white, like freshly whipped meringue. Pauline had disappeared.
Before Matilda had a moment to consider how she was going to get back down to earth she heard a voice call out. She whipped round and in the distance two queues of silvery fairies appeared in a spot where before there was nothingness. At the head of each queue were two fairies dressed in silvery black clothes, as tattered and unkempt looking as Pauline's. Behind them Matilda saw a sight that made her eyes light up and her stomach flutter with excitement-piles and piles of silver coins. Matilda watched as the black clad fairies read names and addresses from a sheet of paper so long it trailed round their feet and disappeared into the cloud. As each name was called a fairy approached. They collected a certain value of coin, struggling under the sheer weight and size of it as the coins were almost as big as they were, then they disappeared down into the smoke.
Matilda ducked down behind a hump in the clouds and watched. When all the tooth fairies were gone there was still a sizable stack of coins waiting to be used. Matilda calculated there was probably about fifteen pounds worth there. Her mind buzzed with ideas as to what she could spend that money on: a new dress, that pair of red, sparkly shoes she she'd seen, the latest ballroom dancing Zindy doll.
"Well if no-one is going to take it, I will," she said. She walked towards the heaps, with surprise and delight that her feet didn't even touch the clouds. But when she reached them she found the coins were as big as she was.
"Wow, giant coins," she said with glee. "These will be worth much more than the ones I have in my piggy bank."
Matilda began to pull coins from the tops of the piles and stuff them under her arms, determined to carry as many as she could: fifty pence pieces, twenty pence pieces, ten pence pieces.
"Then I'll just close my eyes and whistle, like Pauline did, and I'll be home," she said.
"Not quite so fast," said a deep, booming voice behind her.
Matilda spun round, dropping armfuls of coins on the cloud with a clatter.
Standing next to the familiar old, pale form of Pauline was a slightly taller, stouter fairy who wore a tarnished, silver crown on his head.
"What do you think you are doing? Stealing? From your own kind?" he said.
"I'm not one of your kind. I'm a human and I'm taking what I rightfully deserve."
"Deluded fairy, you are. "
"I'm not deluded at all. I am a human. My name is Matilda, and that fairy tried to fudge me off with a measly twenty pence for a tooth," whinged Matilda as she pointed at Pauline. "So now that I'm here I'm taking my compensation and I'll be off."
The stout fairy turned to Pauline.
"Is this true? Do you know this...this...being?"
Matilda stared at Pauline, fully expecting the dishevelled fairy to acknowledge Matilda. Instead the fairy eyed her up with suspicion and said, "No. I don know wot on earth she's talkin' about."
"What?" Matilda spat. "She's lying. That crusty, old, tattered, crabby-faced stink fairy is lying."
"Fairies don't lie. And they don't steal either," said the fairy king. "You have committed the worst sin against our kind and for that you shall be imprisoned for eternity. Guards take her away."
A moment later two fairies dressed in silvery green uniforms appeared at either side of Matilda and grabbed her arms.
"No. Let me go," yelled Matilda as she tried to kick and punch the fairies. "I'll get you all for this. I'll escape and take all you're money away from you and no kid in the world will every get any money for their teeth."
Pauline smiled to herself as the guards led Matilda away. She then picked up the scattered coins on the clouds, piled them back where they were meant to be and welcomed he next two queues of fairies ready and waiting to deliver a little surprise to the thousands of expectant children below.