Nattie Boggs and the Toothless Tooth Fairy

By Tracy L W Shepherd

It's been a while since Nattie Boggs, half fairy, half angel, saved the kingdom, but mystery is never far away. In this third instalment of the famous fairy detective series, after recovering from a rather shockingly colourful cold and being healed by the local Doctor Merlin, the Siamese cat doctor, Nattie stumbles upon another mystery in Merry

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tracy Shepherd
• Release date: Sep 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781739536527

Book preview

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This book is dedicated to Elizabeth Jane Clayton O’Byrne on her 18th birthday

A kindred spirit of Nattie Boggs navigating the world of difference, bringing her power into the light to blind them all with her brilliance.

and to her mother Jane Hunter O’Byrne West, my lifelong friend, since we were eleven years old, who wholeheartedly embraced my weirdness with her own and is still not put off by it. Long may we show the world that friendship can last.

A continued thanks to Victoria Rodgers for bringing to life, in

illustration, my descriptions of my characters and a special thanks to Georgina O’Byrne who redressed Nattie for me in the final purple

perfection picture.

A special remembrance to my Merlin Siamese cat who was the inspiration for Dr Merlin in MerryBent Row. May you wait patiently for me on the rainbow bridge.

Chapter 1 – Strange Things are Afoot in the Mouth

Nattie Boggs was a faerilim.

Half-fairy, half-angel.

She stood as big as a daffodil and as wide as a bollyboom, which was indeed quite wide, and a little bit wider than what people might call a hedgehog.

She had big blue eyes and long curly red hair that fell in ringlets. Her skin had a slightly yellow tinge and was sprinkled with orange freckles. Between you and me, she did not look like a fairy or an angel. She often wondered if there had been a mistake and she’d had a great aunt who was more marsh troll than faerilim. The gene could have skipped a few generations and landed full square bang onto her rotund bounciness.

Angels and fairies with their blonde hair and beauty were ten-a-penny in MerryBent Row, so she felt quite content to be different. In fact, she loved it.

Her bollyboom cuddliness meant she could make lots of cheeky jokes and get away with them. She loved to wear clashing colours and did not care what anyone thought as she was very happy with herself.

Nattie Boggs was very cheeky (she gave the thousand-year-old elves a little bit too much conversation sometimes), but she was also quite special.

She had a cockeyed wing, which meant she could not fly in a straight line.

It must have happened when she was a tiny baby before she arrived in MerryBent Row. The West Wind, Lord Zephyr, had blown gently into MerryBent Row the day Nattie arrived, and he always followed her progress with much interest.

He had felt a little sorry for her, and so he endowed upon her a gift; he blew into her ear and made her so intelligent she could solve any type of puzzle presented to her. Nattie had been housebound for a few days with a terrible cold. She had been sneezing so hard that she had blown herself across the room a few times and Mr and Mrs Boggs had had to anchor themselves to several pieces of furniture. Norman the Thoughtweasel had not slept much in the top drawer of the chest of drawers in her room either due to all the coughing.

Her sneezing had been quite informative, however, as if she got caught out and could not cover her mouth, it sprayed out multi-coloured jets of snot with a gold-tinged outline on the wall spelling out her favourite songs of the moment.