‘Phredde!’ I yelled. ‘Help!’
PING! Suddenly I was back in my tracksuit pants and T-shirt. They were even dry—a bit tomatoey, but not too bad.
‘Sorry,’ I said to Prince Peanut, ‘I’m not really a fair princess. You don’t want to marry someone in a tracksuit, do you?’
Prince Peanut hauled himself up, then sat down
plunk
on one of the kitchen chairs. ‘I don’t
think
so,’ he said confusedly. ‘The teacher didn’t tell us anything about this in Prince Charming School.’
For a moment I wondered if I should tell him where Snow White really was. But then he’d insist on marrying her, and it seemed a bit hard on Snow White to lumber her with this dope.
‘Er, how about you go fight a dragon instead?’ I suggested.
Prince Peanut shook his head. ‘I’m against all forms of killing,’ he said. ‘Besides, we had a dragon when I was a kid. I
like
dragons.’
‘Look,’ I said, ‘are you really sure you want to get married?’
The baby blue eyes blinked again. His lashes were long and dark too. ‘Um, what else is there to do?’ he asked.
‘How about you jump in the lake,’ muttered Bruce. He seemed to really be against Prince Peanut, for some reason.
‘Tech college!’ said Mordred eagerly. ‘I’m doing this really cool special effects course, and…’
Prince Peanut shook his head. ‘I’m not much good at technical stuff,’ he admitted.
‘Figures,’ said Bruce.
‘What do you like, then?’ demanded Phredde.
‘Um…computer games. Football. Food,’ said Prince Peanut.
The Phaery Daffodil’s eyes gleamed. She sat down on the chair next to him—really close next to him. ‘How fascinating!’ she breathed. ‘We have so much in common! I’m interested in food too! Stewed brains, finger pâté, pickled toes with ginger…’
Prince Peanut shook his head. ‘I’m vegetarian,’ he said.
‘Oh, so am I!’ said The Phaery Daffodil hurriedly. ‘I meant lady finger pâtémd;bananas, you know—and…and…celery brains and…’
‘I didn’t know celery had brains,’ said Phredde.
I nudged her. ‘Neither do you sometimes,’ I whispered. ‘This is
good
. Anything that stops The Phaery Daffodil from trapping humans with houses made of slices and cakes and biscuits is a really good thing. Not to mention keeping Prince Peanut occupied so he forgets about marrying me…’
The Phaery Daffodil laid her hand on Prince Peanut’s. ‘You know something?’ she cooed. ‘You
have
rescued a phaery princess!’
Prince Peanut blinked. ‘I have?’
‘Yes! Me! You have rescued me from a life of crime!’
‘Oh, yuk!’ groaned Phredde.
‘Shhh,’ I said. ‘And that goes for you too, Bruce!’
‘I didn’t say anything!’ protested Bruce.
‘No, but you giggled. Let them get on with it!’
Well, anyway, that was the end of that adventure. I got Phredde to PING! up a few pizzas (tomato and black olive, and cheese and pineapple with walnuts, onion and banana), just to show The Phaery Daffodil how delicious food without humans in it could be, and Mordred got out his tech college course list, and Prince
Peanut got really interested in a course on cake decorating, and The Phaery Daffodil thought that sounded fascinating too.
‘You know, I’ve never really
considered
cooking with other ingredients,’ she admitted, ‘just humans, humans, humans…I might really have been missing something.’
‘Lentil burgers, carrot soup, stuffed vine leaves,’ said Phredde helpfully.
‘Flies, mosquitoes, juicy moths…’ added Bruce, slightly less helpfully.
Prince Peanut blinked. ‘I don’t think those are vegetarian,’ he said.
‘They’re not,’ said Phredde. ‘They’re yuk.’
Which reminded me: ‘Hey!’ I said. ‘It’ll be dinner time soon! Everyone will be wondering where we are!’
Prince Peanut stood up politely. ‘It was very nice meeting you,’ he said graciously. ‘I hope you don’t mind my not wanting to marry you.’
‘Think nothing of it,’ I said.
The Phaery Daffodil looked at me a bit wistfully. ‘You would have made such a delicious casserole,’ she murmured. ‘Ah, well, never mind.’ She slipped her arm into Prince Peanut’s and gave him a long, even hungrier look.
‘Er…’ said Mordred. He fiddled with his cap nervously and looked at Phredde and blushed. ‘Er…if you don’t happen to be doing anything at the end of term…er…all the special effects projects will be on display down at the tech if…er…you’d like to see my Temple of Gloom.’
‘I’d love to,’ said Phredde kindly, ‘but I think I might have a lot of homework just then.’
And then we left.
I glanced back as we wandered up the path. It wasn’t a gingerbread cottage now, or a chocolate and walnut slice cottage, or a lamington cottage or even a Temple of Gloom. It was just a perfectly ordinary smallish castle with a great fat giant mosquito zooming down at us with its blood-sucking thingummy all ready to…
‘Hey, Mordred!’ yelled Phredde. ‘One of your giant mosquitoes is outside!’
‘Sorry!’ came Mordred’s voice. ‘I must have left the program running!’
Suddenly the mosquito was gone.
‘Bother,’ said Bruce, hopping along beside us. ‘That looked really succulent. I wonder what’s for dinner?’
So that was the end of that.
We wandered down the yellow brick road—well, Phredde and I wandered, and Bruce hopped. The birds were going
tweet, tweet, tweet
again, and the lollipop trees were rustling in the wind and Phaeryland smelt of late afternoon sunlight and lollies.
‘I still don’t understand why you didn’t warn me,’ I complained.
Phredde sighed. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s just—well, it’s hard being different from everyone else.’
‘No more secrets,’ promised Bruce. ‘Not between the three of us, anyway.’
‘Great!’ I said, then reconsidered. ‘Well, no more important secrets, anyway.’ I’d just remembered the hairy green thing the leftover pizza under my bed had turned into in the six weeks since I forgot to clean it out. I mean,
some
things even your best friends don’t have to know.
The sun shone down and the birds sang and finally
there was the Sweet Pea Guesthouse in front of us, and the tinkling stream and the bridge. Phredde and Bruce started to head down to the stream. I stopped.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Phredde.
‘You said “No more secrets”, didn’t you?’
‘Yep,’ said Bruce.
‘Well, what I want to know is, how come you don’t want to cross that bridge?’
Phredde and Bruce looked at each other. Then Bruce said, ‘Because there’s a troll under there, of course.’
‘I thought you might have guessed,’ said Phredde. ‘Trolls hide under bridges, then they kidnap you and hold you for ransom, and if your family doesn’t pay it then they eat you.’
‘What!’ Suddenly I’d had enough. ‘No no-good Phaeryland troll is going to eat me!’ I yelled. ‘I’m sick of being casseroled…or fried…or roasted with lemon stuffing.’
‘But Pru…’ began Phredde.
‘Hey, look…’ started Bruce.
‘NO WAY!’ I roared. ‘I’m going to cross that fruitcake bridge and I dare that stupid troll to stop me!’ And with that I stomped across the road and stepped onto the wooden planks above the water.
I was a quarter of the way along when suddenly it struck me that maybe…just maybe…this wasn’t a
really
good idea. Mum says I don’t look before I leap sometimes…or think before I go galloping over troll bridges.
I looked down. It was such a sweet little stream, even if it did sound like a mob of preschoolers tinkling their triangles. I could easily have waded through it…
Still, I was a quarter of the way across the bridge now…a third of the way…halfway. Maybe the troll was asleep, or had gone on holidays to Surfers, or just didn’t fancy the taste of Prudences…
‘Who are that trit trottings ons my bridge?!’ roared a voice below me.
Well, that was enough to make me see red again!
‘My name is Prudence and if you don’t like it you can lump it!’ I yelled. I mean, I was really getting fed up with Phaeryland bad guys.
‘Oh, me do likes it!’ roared the voice happily. ‘Me really
likes
little girls!’
‘And I am NOT a “little girl”!’ I shouted. ‘You can call me “kid” if you like, but anyone who calls me a little girl is going to get my joggers stuffed down their gizzards.’ Now I was really getting mad.
‘Yummies! Me likes joggers too! They is so chewy!’ Suddenly the troll was in front of me.
It was big.
It was green.
It was hairy, with a long tail with a tuft of greenish hair on that, too.
It had horns on its head and great big hairy nostrils—I bet that troll picked its nose with its elbows!
It smelt like the bottom of the school rubbish bins after they haven’t been cleaned all weekend. And it grinned at me with long, yellow teeth.
‘Look mate,’ I said angrily. ‘You can just take a flying fruitcake off this bridge! It’s no use kidnapping me because my parents don’t have enough money to pay a ransom. We only live in a castle because Phredde’s mum magicked one up for us. And you don’t
really
want to eat me because…because…because…’
All at once I noticed how very long the troll’s teeth were, and how round and hairy its tummy was too. ‘Because…’ I stuttered.
‘Because me’d rather haves a cheese and pickled onion salad,’ said the troll dreamily. ‘With cucumbers and lots of beetroots and salad dressings and lettuces, them nice crunchy kinds…’
I blinked, ‘You’d
rather
eat salad than me?’
‘Sures,’ said the troll. It leant on the railing of the bridge. ‘Me loves salads. Human beings is so fattenings. So bad for the cholestrololols.’ He rubbed his bare hairy belly sadly. ‘Salads is so crisps! They is so crunchy! That’s what me does with all the ransoms. Me buys us salads,’ it sighed.
Suddenly a small head popped up from under the bridge. It had long, yellow fangs as well, but this troll had little pink bows on its head and the hair on its tummy and even the hair under its armpits was plaited with tiny pink ribbons too. ‘Daddy?’ it bleated. ‘Daddy, have you caughts us someones?’
‘Me haves,’ boomed the troll. ‘How would you likes a nice yummy humans for din dins!’
‘But me don’t wants to eats a human!’ wailed the tiny troll. ‘Me is sick of humans! Me wants a salad! Me wants a salad NOW!!!!’
‘Oh, for fruitcake’s sake,’ said Phredde.
PING!
A giant bowl of salad—with pickled onions and chunks of cheese and lots of beetroot and really crunchy lettuce—appeared on the bridge in front of us. ‘There’s your salad!’
‘Salad!’ screeched the tiny troll.
‘Salad!’ boomed the bigger one. ‘Oh, you nice nice girlses! We hasn’ts hads a salad for weekses and weekses!’
‘Look,’ said Phredde, ‘I’ll make a deal with you. You stop leaping out on people and we’ll make sure you get lots of salad. Okay?’
‘But how’s you goings to…’ began the troll.
‘You watch,’ said Phredde.
PING! There were two large wooden notice boards, one on each end of the bridge.
PING! There were three pots of black paint and three paintbrushes next to each noticeboard.
PING! There was a hammer, nails and a long wooden stake next to them too.
Well, it didn’t take us long. In three minutes Phredde and Bruce had painted ‘Troll—sorry, Toll Bridge. Fee for crossing: one large salad (with pickles, cheese and beetroot)’, and I’d hammered the stake into the ground (Bruce’s tongue isn’t much good with a hammer, but he’s not bad with a paintbrush) and nailed the notice board onto the stake.
‘Oh!’ said the tiny troll still slurping up the lettuce. ‘It are just beautifuls! Aren’t it beautifuls, Daddy?’
The father troll nodded with his mouth full of beetroot.
And after that we really did go home.
Not really home, of course, but over the bridge and through the garden (where the elves were sawing madly on their violins) and into the Sweet Pea Guesthouse.
‘Better get changed for dinner!’ panted Phredde. ‘They’ll all have a fit if they see us like this!’
I glanced down at my T-shirt covered with tomato, garlic and bits of carrot. My tracksuit pants weren’t much better. ‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘Bruce, you go into the dining room and apologise for us and say we won’t be long.’
‘Hey, how come I have to be the one who apologises?’ complained Bruce.
‘Because you’re a frog and don’t have to get changed!’ I said.
‘Well, if you’d
all
like to be frogs…’ began Bruce hopefully, but Phredde and I didn’t wait. We dashed up the stairs and into our bedroom.
A quick dip in the waterfall and an even quicker PING! and there we were all neat again in our ball dresses and tiaras and glass slippers. (I found a bit of celery in mine later but I managed to get it out under the table without Mum noticing.)
Everyone was eating when we finally made it downstairs—the three fat hogs and Mum and Dad and Phredde’s mum and dad and Bruce’s mum and dad too. (They’re really nice, by the way, and hardly nag him at all about being a frog.)
There was no sign of Prince Peanut. I supposed he was still getting stuck into pizza at The Phaery Daffodil’s.
‘Sorry we’re late!’ yelled Phredde, sliding into her seat.
‘Yeah!’ I added. ‘I hope you weren’t worried about us!’
Mum just smiled over her mushroom and moonbeam soufflé. ‘No, of course we weren’t worried! After all, what could happen to you in Phaeryland?’
I looked at Phredde and Bruce and they looked at me, and Phredde’s mum and dad and Bruce’s mum and dad looked at each other too. But no one said anything. After all, we were back safely. And why stress Mum out when we didn’t have to?
So we had dinner instead.
It was a great dinner. There was mushroom and moonbeam soufflé, which was big and fluffy and creamy and mushroomy, and stuffed pumpkins, and dewdrop ice cream, and nothing that even
looked
like human brains or roast armpits.
There was a giant lamington cake with cream for dessert too, but somehow neither Phredde nor I really
felt like it. (Bruce offered us some of his chocolate-covered moths, but luckily by then we were full.)
Mum and Dad and the rest of them sat up listening to the elf musicians, but for some reason Phredde and Bruce and I were a bit tired, so we went straight up to bed…
‘Phredde?’
‘Mmmm,’ said Phredde sleepily from the other bed.
‘You know those secrets you and Bruce aren’t going to keep from me any more?’
‘Mmm,’ said Phredde.
‘Well, how do I know what they are? I mean, if they’re secrets then I don’t know what to ask you to find out what they are now they’re not secrets any more.’
Phredde thought about that for awhile. ‘I don’t think that makes sense,’ she said.
‘Yeah, I know. I’m tired. It’s just, well…’
‘How about we promise to answer any of your questions from now on?’ said Phredde. ‘I mean
really
answer them.’
‘
Any
questions?’ I said hopefully. ‘Like, what’s the answer to question number 63 in our maths homework?’
But there was no answer. Phredde was asleep.
I have no idea if the wolf came back that night or not. He could have huffed and puffed all night for all I cared. Next thing I knew it was morning, and the gnome was delivering our early morning rose petal tea (yuk) and sweetmeats (actually, they’re not bad) and it was time to get ready for the Phaery Queen’s wedding.