Not that there was time to do anything much about Mark’s problem that morning, because I had to get to school on time. Our class was going on an excursion to the Big Koala Wildlife Park, which even if koalas don’t do much except sit there and digest is better than being cramped up in a classroom all day. I mean why can’t we have school on a pirate ship or somewhere interesting for a change?
Anyway, by the time I’d grabbed my bag and kissed Mum and kissed Dad and avoided the giant-sloth dribble on his cheek and run down the corridor and down the stairs and along the Grand Terrace and down the
next
lot of stairs and across the courtyard and through the Big Hall and the Little Hall and the Sort of In Between Hall and over the drawbridge and down the rainbow that led to the street,
8
I was late. (I’m going to
ask for an electric scooter for my next birthday.)
I was just galloping along the footpath, trying to avoid the doggy doo (our street has the biggest dogs in the neighbourhood, plus the biggest you-know-whats—though of course there
had
been a werewolf birthday party last night, which probably added to the doo doo problem), when…
PING!
It was Phredde, all 30 centimetres of her,
and
she was sitting on her mum’s flying carpet. Well, it’s a rug actually, but who ever heard of a magic rug?
Phredde is my best friend
and
a phaery. It’s pretty cool having a phaery best friend, especially if you want to duck out of class for a few minutes for an iced-watermelon break. Phredde can just PING up a magic Pru and Phredde to take our places…but sometimes, well, I can’t help being a
bit
jealous and wishing I could PING things too.
But don’t tell Phredde that. EVER.
‘Hop on!’ yelled Phredde.
I gazed at the carpet warily. It had fringes at both ends and was about as long as a short car, but a car is solid and flying carpets sort of sag in the middle, even if the only thing on them is a flying phaery. ‘Er, Phredde…do you know how to fly that thing?’
‘Sure. I’ve watched Mum fly a carpet lots of times. You just go zooooom!’
‘Have you got your driver’s licence?’ I knew she hadn’t. Phredde is the same age as me.
‘You don’t need a driver’s licence for a flying carpet,’ declared Phredde, ‘’cause it doesn’t have an engine and it doesn’t go on the road.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yep. I rang up the motor registry and said, ‘“Do I need a licence to drive my carpet?” And the guy just laughed and said,“Get off the phone, kid.”’
Adults never take kids seriously. ‘Er, pilot’s licence?’ I asked.
‘Nope. Come on, hop on,’ yelled Phredde impatiently, as the carpet hovered over the footpath. ‘We’ll be late!’
‘How? You’re up there and I’m down here!’
‘Oh,’ said Phredde. The flying carpet descended till it was just above the footpath. ‘Hop on!’ said Phredde again.
I plonked myself down warily. The flying carpet gave a sort of shiver and rose up in the air.
‘Thanks for the lift,’ I said, grabbing hold of the edges. I wished flying carpets came with seatbelts. ‘Er, does your mum know you’ve borrowed the carpet?’
‘Nope,’ said Phredde. ‘She’s a bit ratty in the mornings till she has her third cup of honeydew nectar. I thought I wouldn’t bother her.’
‘Are you sure she won’t mind?’ The magic carpet was jiggling a bit unsteadily already.
‘Of course not,’ said Phredde airily. ‘She’ll think it was a great idea, on account of you getting bus sick. This way you won’t get bus sick on the excursion.’
‘But I get flying-carpet sick too!’ I pointed out.
‘Yeah, but if you get sick on a carpet the sick goes
down,
’ Phredde pointed out. ‘If you get sick in a bus it stinks everyone out.’
See what I mean? It’s really great to have someone like Phredde as a best friend sometimes.
‘Hold on!’ yelled Phredde.
I just had time to shout, ‘Hold on to what?’ when PING! We were zooming…
The footpath—and the doggy doo—dissolved into a long grey blur. ‘Phredde!’ I shrieked.
‘Fun, isn’t it!’ yelled Phredde. ‘I worked out that if you add a bit of magic, flying carpets go even faster!’
‘Yeah…’ I began to say a bit nervously, then yelled, ‘Watch out for that tree!’ instead.
‘What tree?’ shouted Phredde.
‘The one that doesn’t have a top branch any more,’ I said, picking leaves out of my hair. ‘Gloop…’ I batted a stunned pigeon off my school bag. ‘Hey, Phredde!’
‘Yeah?’ yelled Phredde.
‘Don’t you think we’re going a bit fast?’
‘We don’t want to be late for school!’
‘School is a couple of streets back that way. No, make that a couple of suburbs back that way. Look out for the power pole!’
The magic carpet swerved just in time.
‘Slow down!’ I shrieked.
The flying carpet—make that the zooming carpet—slowed down to a measly 200 ks an hour.
‘Sorry!’ shouted Phredde over the noise of the wind and startled pigeons. ‘I haven’t quite worked out the controls yet!’
‘I thought it just went zoom?’
‘Yeah. But there’s zoom and ZOOM and ZOOOOM and ZOOOOMMMMM!!! and…’
I picked a sparrow out of my hair. ‘Twit?’ it said.
‘Anyway,’ called Phredde happily, ‘you haven’t got carpet sick yet.’
‘I can’t get carpet sick,’ I screamed. ‘I left my tummy back on the footpath. Phredde, turn this thing around and let’s get to school, fast…I mean,
not
so fast.’
The carpet did a loop the loop (and I discovered my tummy all over again), the sparrow said ‘Squark!’ and floated upwards before returning to my shoulder with a small jolt, and the carpet swooped back towards school.
We landed on the netball court, just as the lines of kids were moving towards the two buses.
‘Gloop,’ I said. I checked that everything was there: my bag, my eyeballs, the sparrow in my left ear. I tossed the sparrow towards the garbage bin—it gave a startled tweet and woke up halfway there, but I think it was just stunned, well, so was I, a bit—and tried to pat my hair into place.
I glanced at Phredde. It was alright for her, phaeries
always
look okay. I suppose it’s sort of PINGed into them.
‘Hey, Pru!’ yelled Bruce. ‘Hurry up!’
Bruce is my other best friend. He’s a frog. Well, he’s really a phaery prince but he’d rather be a frog.
I wobbled over to him. He peered at me. ‘You look sort of green,’ he said.
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘You look brown and slimy and…’
‘Well, I
am
a frog,’ Bruce pointed out reasonably.
‘Uh-huh.’ Actually I’d seen Bruce when he wasn’t being a frog, but a handsome prince instead.
9
He looked okay. I mean not really
handsome,
which is sort of yuk, just well…you know…okay.
‘Hi, Bruce!’ Amelia gave him a big cheesy smile. ‘I’ll save you a seat in the bus if you like.’
I glared at her. ‘He’s coming with us!’ I said. Amelia is always coming on to Bruce.
‘I am?’ said Bruce. He looked around. ‘Hey, cool, I always wanted to ride one of those things. Mum says I can’t have one till I’m seventeen.’
‘It’s Phredde’s mum’s,’ I said. ‘Phredde borrowed it on account of…’ I hesitated. It’s not exactly attractive to say you get bus sick. Not that I wanted to be attractive to Bruce exactly. Well, I did, but…
Amelia looked at the carpet dubiously. ‘It doesn’t have seatbelts,’ she pointed out.
‘Gee, thanks, Amelia,’ I said. ‘That’s because it doesn’t have any seats.’
‘
Or
any luggage racks.’
‘We’ll hold onto the bags.’
‘What happens if you crash into birds or flies or…’
‘Impossible,’ I said, crossing my fingers behind my back and brushing the bird doings off my shoulder.
‘Hey, cool!’ said Bruce again. ‘Maybe if I stick my tongue out a whole heap of flies will land on it. We frogs have sticky tongues you know…’ He leapt off towards the carpet.
I gave Amelia a ‘Heh, heh, so much for you’ smirk and trotted after him.
Phredde sat in front so she could steer and I sat in the middle so I could yell at her when she forgot to and Bruce sat behind me so he would be able to let his sticky tongue trail through the air and maybe pick up some morning tea. We were just about to set off when Mrs Olsen galloped over.
Mrs Olsen is our teacher. She’s okay. I mean, for a teacher, she’s pretty good. She’s also a vampire but that’s alright, because she and her family have this really cool arrangement with the abattoir—the abattoir sells the meat and the Olsens get the bl…, er, red stuff.
Because she’s a vampire she was dressed in long sleeves and a hat with a dark veil and even gloves, because sunlight is deadly for a vampire. I mean
really
deadly, not just the ‘Oh, dear, you didn’t wear your hat at lunchtime, you’ll get skin cancer by the time you’re an antique fossil at forty-five’ sort of deadly that Mum is always going on about.
‘Come along now, everyone else is on the bus already…’ she began.
‘We don’t need the bus!’ said Phredde. ‘We’ve got a carpet! But thank you any way.’
‘Carpet! What’s a carpet got to do with…? Oh,’ said Mrs Olsen. Mrs Olsen has had a lot to get used to in the past year, what with having a phaery in her class, not to mention a giant frog, and then there were the dragon and the ogre too.
10
‘I see. It’s a flying carpet.’
‘Well, it will be when it gets off the ground,’ said Phredde. ‘At the moment it’s a lying-here-on-the-netball-court carpet.’
‘It’s actually more a zooming carpet,’ I muttered, but no-one heard me.
‘Yes, well,’ said Mrs Olsen, straightening her sunglasses. ‘But I still think you’d better get on the bus…’
‘But we can’t!’ Phredde pointed out. ‘’Cause Pru gets bus sick! You remember what happened on the science excursion last year?’
I glared at Phredde. There was no need to bring
that
up. In fact, I’d only brought it all up on the science excursion because I’d had triple helpings of ham and cheese croissants for breakfast plus a superwhopper mango milkshake with extra cream and ice-cream for morning tea, and it wasn’t my fault if it all went…
‘Ah, yes,’ said Mrs Olsen thoughtfully. I could see that she remembered the last resting place of that superwhopper mango shake with extra cream and ice-cream really well. ‘Maybe it would be best if Prudence travelled outside the bus this time. But I really can’t let you go without a teacher…’ She gazed at the magic
carpet—a bit longingly, I thought. ‘How fast does it go?’
‘Not fast at all!’ said Phredde virtuously, crossing her fingers behind her back.
‘Oh, good,’ said Mrs Olsen, though she looked a bit disappointed. She shrugged. ‘Well, I’d just better get on with you anyway. We can follow the buses. Do you think you can keep up with them?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Phredde assured her.
‘I’ll just go and tell the drivers. If you wouldn’t mind holding this for me.’ Mrs Olsen handed me her lunch—a big Thermos, which I didn’t suppose held a superwhopper mango milkshake
11
—and trotted off to the buses.
It was a bit crowded on the carpet, to tell the truth, what with me and Phredde and Bruce and Mrs Olsen, plus our bags and Mrs Olsen’s Thermos. Phredde gave a PING! to give the carpet extra power, and the carpet rose above the netball court, gave a sort of shiver and sped along the road behind the buses.
‘Errk,’ I coughed, ‘can’t you go a bit higher? I just got a lungful of exhaust!’
‘Sure,’ said Phredde.
PING!
We hovered above the school. The road stretched in front of us, with all the cars like tiny beetles and buses like longer beetles bumbling away.
‘Maybe just a
little
faster too,’ said Mrs Olsen wistfully. ‘Oh my, there’s such a lovely view from here.’
‘Erp,’ I burped, and tried not to look down.
‘Okay,’ said Phredde happily. ‘Just a bit faster…’
PING!
‘Phredde!’ I shrieked. ‘Slow down!’
‘Okay!’ agreed Phredde. PING!
The carpet zoomed even faster. ‘Phredde!’
‘Sorry!’ called Phredde. ‘I PINGed the wrong way!’ PING!
The world below was just a blur.
‘Don’t worry!’ yelled Phredde. ‘I think I have a handle on it now!’
Icicles were beginning to form on my nose. Even the sky was blurry.
‘No, really!’ cried Phredde. ‘I think this should do it!’
PING! BANG!!!!!!!!
The world shuddered around us. ‘Helllpp!’ I screamed. ‘It’s okay! It’s okay! I know how to stop it! I just…’
PING!
We stopped.
The magic carpet hovered in mid-air. ‘Er, Phredde,’ I said. ‘Yes?’ said Phredde. ‘Can you see the buses any more?’ ‘No,’ said Phredde. ‘Or the school grounds?’
‘No,’ said Phredde, peering down at the greenery below us. It was the greenest greenery I’d ever seen, and sort of squishy looking too. ‘Maybe we’re at the Big Koala Park already.’
‘Maybe,’ I said dubiously.
‘Yeah, that’s it,’ said Phredde; she sounded a bit nervous now. ‘We just got to the Big Koala Park ahead of everyone.’
Mrs Olsen swallowed behind me. ‘Well, girls, I think we’d better—aaarrrkkk!’
The aaarrrkkk! was because a giant head…actually a very tiny head but a
really
long neck had popped up in front of us. RIGHT in front of us.
‘Er, Mrs Olsen,’ I said. ‘How high do you think we are?’
Mrs Olsen peered down. ‘About ten metres,’ she judged.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘if we’re ten metres up then that beast has to be ten metres high.’
‘Hey, cool!’ said Bruce. ‘They’ve got pretty cool stuff at the Big Koala Wildlife Park.’
‘Huh,’ said Phredde. ‘It’s not real! It’s just a plastic model. Maybe it’s radio-controlled.’
The beast opened its mouth. It was a pretty small mouth, compared to the rest of it, about, oh, the size of our school hall doors. Big enough to fit a magic carpet with three kids—okay, one kid, one phaery, a magic frog and a vampire teacher—in it. Its teeth were about as long as a cricket bat but there were
lots
of them, and I don’t think they had ever been brushed either.
‘Graaaahhhhh,’ said the beast, its mouth hovering towards us.
‘Um, Phredde,’ I said. ‘Yeah?’ said Phredde.
‘That doesn’t smell like a plastic model. In fact it smells like…’
The pongy teeth drew closer.
‘Help!’ I shrieked. ‘Phredde, do something!’
‘Like what?’ yelled Phredde, staring at the fangs.
‘Like…like…get us out of here!’
‘Hurry,’ screamed Mrs Olsen.
PING
! went Phredde.
Nothing happened. Well, when I say ‘nothing’ I mean the giant mouth came closer and closer till I could see its tonsils or maybe it was just the rhinoceros-sized snack it had had for breakfast, which still left a lot of room for us.
‘Phredde!’ I yelled.
‘I don’t know what’s wrong,’ shouted Phredde worriedly.
PING
!
‘Put some ooomph into that PING!’ I screamed.
‘I’m trying!’ shouted Phredde. ‘I’m PINGing as hard as I can!’
‘Well that beast is trying to have us for morning tea!’
I could feel its warm breath now too. And smell it—even worse. That beast had obviously never heard of dental hygiene
or
dental floss. I mean, there were at least two crates of gunk between each tooth. And that tongue looked pretty putrid too.
PING
!
Just as I was imagining our long, slow slide down past its tonsils and into its belly, to join all the munched, crunched and half digested bits of beastly breakfast…
PINGGG! The beast vanished.
‘Thanks, Phredde!’ I yelled.
‘That wasn’t Phredde!’ Bruce shouted from behind. ‘That was me! Now let’s get down from here!’