The Fairy with Turquoise Hair (; often simply referred to as The Blue Fairy, La Fata Turchina) is a fictional character in the 1883 Italian book The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, repeatedly appearing at critical moments in Pinocchio's wanderings to admonish the little wooden puppet to avoid bad or risky behavior.
Although the naïvely willful marionette initially resists her good advice, he later comes to follow her instruction. She in turn protects him, and later enables his assumption of human form, contrary to the prior wooden form.
In the novel
The Fairy with Turquoise Hair makes her first appearance in chapter XV, where she is portrayed as a young girl living in a house in the middle of a forest. Pinocchio, who is being chased by The Fox and the Cat (Il Gatto e la Volpe), pleads with the Fairy to allow him entrance. The Fairy cryptically responds that all inhabitants of the house, including herself, are dead, and that she is waiting for her coffin to arrive. The pair catches and hangs Pinocchio from a tree. In the following chapter, it is established that the girl is a fairy who has lived in the forest for more than a thousand years. She takes pity on Pinocchio, and sends a falcon to take him down from the tree and for her poodle servant Medoro to prep her stagecoach.
After a visit from three doctors consisting of an Owl, a Crow, and the Talking Cricket (Il Grillo Parlante), the Fairy attempts to give Pinocchio medicine in order to heal his injuries. Pinocchio refuses to take the medicine on account of its sour taste, prompting the Fairy to summon a group of coffin-bearing undertaker rabbits. Frightened by this display, Pinocchio drinks the medicine, and later tells the Fairy of his previous adventures. When he includes untruths, his nose begins to lengthen, which the Fairy explains is due to his lies. She summons a group of woodpeckers to shorten the disproportionate nose, and after forgiving Pinocchio, informs him that he is free to consider her an elder sister, and that his father Mister Geppetto is on his way to fetch him. In his impatience, Pinocchio leaves the house in an way, but instead of finding it he went to the field of miracles with the fox and the cat.
After spending some time in the Catchfools prison, Pinocchio returns to the Fairy's house only to find a tombstone declaring that the Fairy died believing that Pinocchio had abandoned her. In the following chapter, Pinocchio is transported to the Island of Busy Bees (Isola delle Api Industriose), where he meets the Fairy, now older, disguised as an ordinary woman. Unaware of the deception, Pinocchio offers to carry buckets of water to her house in exchange for a meal. After eating, Pinocchio recognizes the Fairy's turquoise hair.
The Fairy agrees to adopt him as her son, and promises to turn him into a real boy, provided he earns it through hard study and obedience for one year. Later, she reveals to Pinocchio that his days of puppethood are almost over, and that she will organize a celebration in his honour; but Pinocchio is convinced by his friend, Candlewick (Lucignolo) to go for Land of Toys (Paese dei Balocchi) a place who the boys don't have anything besides play. In the midnight they are taken on a wagon by The Coachman.
Five months later, Pinocchio is transformed into a donkey and be sold to a circus ringleader to jump, dance and bow. In the middle of the show he sees the fairy in the audience, she wore a long gold chain, from which hung a large medallion with an image of a puppet. Pinocchio became lame and was sold to a musician to make a drum and later thrown into the sea by his handler.
Where upon the Fairy sends a shoal of fish to consume his donkey's appearance until he is returned to his puppet form. Taking the form of a blue-furred mountain goat, the Fairy warns Pinocchio of the impending arrival of The Terrible Dogfish, but is unsuccessful. It is revealed in chapter XXXVI that she gives a house to the Talking Cricket (who offers to accommodate both Pinocchio and the sickly Geppetto) while she was in the form of the blue-furred mountain goat. The Fairy becomes ill too, so Pinocchio gives some of the money he's earned to her snail to give to her.
She finally appears to Pinocchio in a dream, gives the boy a kiss, and commends him for having taken care of his ailing father and herself. Upon awakening, Pinocchio has become human, and all his copper coins have turned to gold, accompanied by a note from the Fairy professing her responsibility.