Finn and the Very Busy Tooth Fairy

8 pages · 6 min · ages 5+

Wiggle. Wiggle. Finn pushed his front tooth with his tongue. It wobbled like a loose shell on a rock. “Mum!” shouted Finn, so loudly that a crab fell off the wall. “My tooth is wiggly!” “Then tonight,” said Mum, smiling, “the tooth fairy will come.” Finn had never met a tooth fairy. Octavia said the tooth fairy was tiny and pink and sparkly, and she swapped your tooth for a real pearl while you slept. Octavia had met her twice. Finn wanted to meet her more than anything in the whole wide sea.

At lunch, Finn bit into a crunchy sea biscuit. Plink! Out came the tooth, small and white and shiny. That night, Finn put it under his sponge pillow, closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep. His eyes were shut. Mostly. Then something glowed. A tiny fairy with bubblegum-pink hair swam in through the window, wearing a round glass bubble on her head. Behind her, a little brass beetle in gold glasses pulled a cart. The fairy slid the tooth out, popped a pearl in, and whooshed away again before Finn could even say hello.

The next morning, Finn found a pearl under his pillow. He also found three more wiggly teeth. Sharks are like that. A shark has rows and rows of teeth, one behind the other, and when a tooth falls out, a new one slides forward to take its place, like a conveyor belt. By teatime, all three were out. That night the fairy came back. She was puffing a little bit. She swapped three teeth for three pearls, gave a big yawn, and zoomed off. “Wait!” said Finn. But she was gone.

Finn was so excited about meeting the tooth fairy that he got nervous. And when Finn got nervous, he chomped. He chomped his seaweed. He chomped his pillow. He chomped a very hard sea biscuit. Clink, clink, clink. “Big shark, brave shark,” he told himself, but it was too late. By bedtime, there were ten teeth in a pile on his pillow. That night, the fairy arrived with a much bigger cart. She stopped. She looked at the pile. “Ten?” she whispered. “TEN?”

The next night, there were thirty. The tooth fairy came with a wheelbarrow and a sack, and the little beetle pulled so hard that his gold glasses steamed up. She filled the sack. She tied the sack. She sat down on the sack to catch her breath, just for a moment. And she fell fast asleep, right there on Finn's pillow. Finn opened his eyes. There she was. He had finally, finally met the tooth fairy. And she was snoring.

The tooth fairy woke up with a jump. “Oh! Hello. You're awake.” She straightened her bubble. “I'm Pip. And this is Bolt. Finn, do you know how many teeth a shark loses? Thousands. THOUSANDS! Every night I come here, and then I'm too tired for all the other children.” Her wings drooped. Bolt nodded sadly. Finn felt a wobble in his tummy, and it wasn't a tooth. He didn't want Pip to be tired. He wanted Pip to be his friend. “Big shark, brave shark,” Finn whispered. “Think wide.”

Finn had an idea. The next morning, he found the biggest clam shell on the whole reef and set it outside his cave door, wide open like a mouth. Every time he lost a tooth, he popped it into the clam. Plink. Plink. Plink. And he didn't wait up for Pip any more. Instead, every Sunday, Pip came just once, with Bolt and the cart, and emptied the clam in one go. Then she stayed for seaweed pancakes. And sometimes, when she was very tired, she had a little nap on Finn's pillow.

By the end of the month, Finn had a great big shining pile of pearls. Mum swam into his room and stopped. “Finn!” she said. “Where did you get all those pearls?” “From the tooth fairy,” said Finn proudly. Mum looked at the pearls. Then she touched the pearls on her own necklace, the ones she had worn for as long as Finn could remember. She smiled a slow shark smile. And she winked. “Where do you think I got mine?”