The Phredde Collection (43 page)
(If you are interested in
all
Aussie animals, alive or prehistoric, the Australian Museum’s magazine
Nature Australia
is a great place to start! Ask your librarian for a look at that too!)
P.S. Miss Richards was a whiz at survival skills, but five of you really
can
build a wattle-and-daub hut in six hours (I’ve done it). And once you know what to look for, finding all sorts of bush tucker to stuff your face with doesn’t take long either—and it’s much more fun than shopping in a supermarket!
All the ‘bush tucker’ in
Phredde and the Leopard-skin Librarian
grows on our place (except for the fish—pity, I like fish!) and an hour’s foraging gives me heaps to eat.
P.P.S. You can milk modern echidnas, but I don’t recommend it. The echidnas don’t like it, you don’t get much milk, and it tastes peculiar!
22
If you’re lucky she (or he) will be wearing fake leopard skin.
Jackie French
Chapter 1 The Trouble with Frogs—and Giant Hairy Gorillas
Chapter 3 FLOINGGGGGGGGGgg!…Again
Chapter 4 Pru Tries to Work it Out
Chapter 6 The Strange Mr Ploppy Bottom
Chapter 8 Vampires! (and Cuddles tries to eat the boys’ toilets…again)
Chapter 11 Preparing for the Bloodsuckers!
Chapter 12 Mr Ploppy Bottom’s Secret
Chapter 13 The Bloodsuckers Arrive
Chapter 15 Feeding with a Vampire
Chapter 18 Will the Bloodsuckers Win?
Chapter 20 The Deadly Creatures from Beyond the Gates of Reality
Chapter 21 The Headless Horse-person and the Lhiannan-shee
Chapter 22 The Really Big, Bad Wolf
Chapter 24 The Phaery Godmother Arrives!
Chapter 25 Mr Ploppy Bottom Confesses
For those who came in late…
Prudence: A normal schoolgirl who lives in a magic castle and has a fairy, sorry, phaery, as her best friend. She likes feeding her piranhas, sailing her pirate ship and making sure her mum doesn’t find out what she and Phredde get up to.
Phredde: A 30-cm-high phaery. Her real name is The Phaery Ethereal but unless you want your kneecaps kicked by a furious phaery, DON’T call her this unless you’re a teacher, parent or someone even Phredde acknowledges it’s not a good idea to kneecap! Likes any adventure that doesn’t involve wearing glass slippers or handsome princes.
P.S.
That’s PHAERY, buster, not fairy. Don’t call Phredde a ‘fairy’ if you value your kneecaps.
Bruce: A handsome phaery prince. Or he might be if he
hadn’t decided to be a giant frog instead of a kid. (A
Crinea signifera
, if you want to be precise. Ask Bruce if you want to know more about
Crinea signifera
—or better still, look it up in the library, because Bruce will tell you EVERYTHING.) Bruce likes catching flies and collecting recipes for mosquito pizza. Holds the interschool record for the long jump
and
the high jump at the Athletics Carnival.
P.S. Don’t called Bruce a fairy either. He won’t kneecap you but you might find dried flies in your muesli.
Mrs Olsen: Pru, Phredde and Bruce’s teacher. Also a vampire, but don’t worry, she and her family have a friendly arrangement with the abattoir—the butchers get the meat and the vampires get the bloo…, er, red stuff. Keeps her coffin with the art supplies in the storeroom.
Mark: Pru’s older brother. Also a werewolf every full moon, a trait inherited from his father’s side of the family. (Great Uncle Ron is also a werewolf.) Answers to ‘Dog’s Breath’ but don’t try it if you can’t run fast. Likes chasing cars, football. His favourite snack food is corn chips and corgis.
The Phaery Splendifera: Phredde’s mum. Loves crosswords, honeydew nectar and racing magic carpets. Wants her darling baby Ethereal to marry a nice handsome prince when she grows up. DO NOT mention this to Phredde.
Amelia: In Pru’s, Phredde’s and Bruce’s class at school. You don’t really want to know anything more about her.
Edwin: The same goes for Edwin.
Mr Ploppy Bottom: Oops, sorry,
Plothiebotham.
Relief principal while Mrs Allen is recovering from the volcano exploding and Cuddles eating the boys’ toilets. He’s sooo nice—or is he?
Cuddles: Pru’s Demon Duck of Doom, or
Dromornis stirtoni.
She’s three metres high. Cuddles followed Pru home from 100,000 BC (see
Phredde and the Leopard-skin Librarian
). Eats footballs, goalposts, video players, and the boys’ toilets.
Shaun the vampire: Also a kid and star footy player from Batrock Central School. He has…um…
old-fashioned
habits! And he eats his prey…live…
Saturday
First day of school holidays.
Sat on lily pad.
Ate flies. Hopped around a bit.
Bored.
Ate mosquito pizza for dinner.
Sunday
Second day of school holidays.
Ate flies.
Swam in fish pond. Hopped around a bit.
Bored.
Ate stir-fried beetles for dinner.
Watched a video on South-American frogs. Wasn’t as fascinating as I thought it would be. Tried using dead flies instead of popcorn in the popcorn popper. Mum upset about the mess.
Monday
Third day of school holidays.
Bored.
Sat on lily pad. Zapped flies. Decided fresh flies are juicier than popped ones. Hopped around a bit. Tried a cockroach for dessert but didn’t like it much.
Tuesday
Fourth day of school holidays.
Mum yelled at me, just because I said I was bored again. Told me to go and spend the day with Pru and Phredde. Then I told Mum I never, ever,
ever
want to see Pru again. And that goes for Phredde, too!
Mum said I should visit Aunt Gladioli in Phaeryland. Stormed off to my room. Well, hopped, anyway. It’s hard to storm off when you’re a frog. Am never going to Phaeryland again! Phaeryland reminds me of Pru! How could she have done THAT to me…
The Trouble with Frogs—and Giant Hairy Gorillas
‘The trouble is,’ I said, ‘that he’s a frog.’
‘He’s a really nice frog,’ said Phredde.
‘He’s still a frog.’
‘He’s tall and kind and good at football.’
‘For a frog,’ I said.
Phredde and I were sitting on an iceberg in Phredde’s back yard. You never know what you’re going to find in a phaery’s back yard. Worn-out volcanoes. Unicorn horns. Troll teeth or a snot mountain, which means the troll has blown his nose.
The iceberg was left over from the time the three of us decided to build an igloo. (Magic icebergs never melt.) Phredde PING!ed up the snow and Bruce and I…
I stopped that memory in its tracks. I was NEVER going to think about Bruce again.
Not much, anyway.
‘But Bruce has always been a frog,’ Phredde pointed out.
‘No, he hasn’t! He was born a phaery, just like you. He just LIKES being a frog.’
‘Well, he’s been a frog ever since you’ve known him,’ said Phredde reasonably.
‘I don’t care,’ I said. ‘All I asked was, could he please stop being a frog for my birthday party. And then he hops in…’ I gulped. ‘He didn’t even bring me a birthday present.’
‘You didn’t give him a chance to,’ Phredde pointed out. ‘You just yelled at him and then you did THAT to him.’
‘He’s lucky I just did THAT!’ I said and stood up. ‘My bum’s getting cold. Come on, let’s go.’
‘Where to?’ asked Phredde, fluttering up above my left ear, her hair going zing, zang, zongle in the sunlight. When you’re a 30-centimetre phaery it takes a lot to really stand out, but with Phredde’s hair all glowing silver, gold and purple
and
her hot-pink joggers with silver laces, well, fireworks don’t have half the zing that Phredde does.
‘Don’t know,’ I said glumly. ‘Anywhere.’
‘We could go on your pirate ship and hunt ogres.’
‘No.’
‘Would you like to PING! over to Italy and see if Mount Vesuvius is erupting?’
‘No.’
‘I could PING! us back to Ancient Egypt and we could visit King Narmer
1
.’
‘Did that last week.’
‘We could…we could…’ Phredde sounded stumped. Phaeries don’t have much imagination, which is a good thing as they could PING! up all sorts of things if they did. But mostly they don’t think of them.
‘Let’s just walk,’ I said. So we did.
It was okay in Phredde’s garden. Phredde’s mum had got cousin Pinkerbelle and her boyfriend, Mr Prince the landscape gardener, to design it. So there were pink flowers everywhere AND pink rose bushes—the nice, well-behaved sort not the clambering, blood-sucking sort that had attacked us way back when Phredde and I met Bruce for the first time
2
.
But I wasn’t going to think about Bruce, I told myself. I wasn’t going to think about him at ALL.
Of course, being a magic garden it never ended. After the flower beds there were trees that had pink flowers too. There were even pink flowers in the grass.
Every now and then there were things that Phredde’s mum didn’t want in the house—well, castle—any more, or that Phredde had grown out of, like Phredde’s old teddy bear (it waved to us from the sandpit). We caught a glimpse of Phredde’s old rocking horse galloping among the trees (I nearly stood on a pile of tiny rocking-horse droppings), and a giant gorilla with blood-red eyes heading straight towards us…
‘Phredde!’ I squeaked.
‘What?’ Phredde had fluttered up to one of the trees and had her nose in one of the big pink flowers. Anyone else would have thought she was sniffing its scent but Mrs Olsen had given us a lesson about the
birds and the bees last term and it had got Phredde REALLY interested in what bees got up to in their spare time…
‘There’s a giant gorilla with blood-red eyes heading straight towards us!’
Phredde froze.
‘How big a gorilla?’
I calculated. ‘Oh, about the size of a three-storey building.’
‘Oh,’ said Phredde flatly, hovering just above my nose. ‘
That
gorilla!’
‘What do you mean, THAT gorilla? Tell me it isn’t dangerous,’ I pleaded. ‘Tell me the gorilla is just a joke you PING!ed up and let loose when you were finished with it. It’s really a sweet, kind, three-storey gorilla and…’
‘Well,’ said Phredde slowly. ‘I did PING! it up.’
‘Yes?’ I encouraged her.
Phredde gulped. ‘It used to be a toy. You know, cute and cuddly. It was the first thing I ever really PING!ed all by myself. You see there was this movie on TV…’
‘Let me guess.
King Kong
?’
‘That was it. And…’
‘You PING!ed up KING KONG and now he’s loose in your garden!’
‘Yes,’ said Phredde in a small voice. ‘I tried to PING! him away before Mum saw him but I was only a little kid and it mustn’t have worked. I must have only PING!ed him away sort of temporarily.’
‘GROAAAAR!’
That was the gorilla, not me.
‘Um, Phredde,’ I said.
‘Yes?’
‘I think you’d better PING! him away for good now.’
‘Well, I would,’ whispered Phredde. ‘But…’
I groaned. ‘How is it I can guess what you are going to say? You can’t PING! him away because…because…’
‘Because I can’t remember what spell I used to magic him up!’ wailed Phredde. ‘It was my first ever PING! you know!’
‘Phredde,’ I said.
‘Yes?’ said Phredde.
‘Run!’
So we ran.
Well I ran. Phredde fluttered like she was in the butterfly Olympics and the gorilla lumbered behind us. I could hear his footsteps—clump, clump, clump—and his great snuffly snorts too.
I was terrified! But not
too
terrified, if you know what I mean. When you’ve been pounded on by dinosaurs, faced a murderous Ancient Egyptian princess, pits of vipers and giant boa constrictors, you get a pretty good feeling that things will turn out okay in the end. You still run of course—I’m not that dumb. But any moment now something was going to save us.
Maybe a hero in a helicopter would swoop down from the sky!
Maybe a giant gorilla-eating slug was oozing along the path right this second!
Maybe there’d be a PING! and it would be Br…
Swat! The gorilla grabbed Phredde mid-flutter. Phredde screamed. It was a real scream, too, not a ‘Hey, this is terrifying but fun!’ sort of scream.
I don’t think I’d ever heard Phredde as terrified as that before.
I tried to work out whether I should stop and kick
the gorilla’s big toe to make him drop Phredde, or just keep running to get help or maybe just dissolve into a small Prudence puddle because I was REALLY terrified now, when…
Zap!
Have you ever been picked up by a giant leathery toy gorilla hand? I bet you haven’t, because you’d probably be crunched, just like that gorilla was going to crunch me and Phredde. And once you’ve been crunched down a gorilla’s gullet you don’t do much reading.
(Mrs Olsen told us in first term about how gorillas were quiet vegetarians, but this was a giant PING!ed toy gorilla boy. And if you are wondering how I knew that the gorilla was a boy, well, he wasn’t wearing boxers, if you get my drift.)
It’s hard to breathe when massive gorilla fingers are squeezing the breath out of you, and the small gasp of air I managed to breathe in was pretty yuck. That gorilla never cleaned his teeth. I didn’t like to think what he’d been eating. Or who…
I didn’t like to think of that at all!
‘Phredde!’ I managed to squeak out the words.
‘Yes?’
‘I forgive you!’
‘For what?’ Phredde’s voice was pretty tremulous too.
‘For PING!ing up a giant, girl-eating toy gorilla when you were little.’
‘Why are you telling me that NOW?’
‘I don’t want your last thought being,
How can Pru ever forgive me for this?
’
‘My last thought is going to be,
How do I get us out
of this?
’ shrieked Phredde.
‘Hey, that could be my last thought too!’ I called back. I know it sounds like we were being very brave, but I could see Phredde was terrified. I was nearly wetting myself…but it really does help things if you try to sound brave.
Well, it helps a bit. A very little bit.
Not much at all, actually.
For a second I wondered maybe if I
did
wet myself (or even do something worse) perhaps I’d be less appetising to a girl-eating giant toy gorilla. Or maybe he’d think kid doo-doo was like salt on a potato chip, and a doo-dooed Pru was really delicious.
And then I stopped thinking altogether, because the gorilla was holding us right up close to his beady black eyes, one in each hand. He was obviously trying to decide which one of us to eat first.
What do you think at times like this? Let it be me, so my best friend has another two seconds to enjoy the sight of HER best friend going down a gorilla throat!
There wasn’t time to think, much less decide. When it’s a choice between a 30-centimetre phaery with crunchy wings, or a nicely rounded girl with really good muscles from all that footy practice
plus
delicious watermelon stains down her T-shirt (Phredde had PING!ed up iced watermelon for a snack a half hour before)—well, there isn’t much of a choice.
The gorilla’s mouth came nearer, and nearer still. I could see his lips, black like shiny tyres. And then they opened. I could see his teeth. Long, yellow teeth—I was sure real gorillas didn’t have teeth like that—and a dark leathery looking tongue, too.
Then suddenly…Glump! I was inside, lying all
crumpled on the gorilla’s tongue.
It was a wet tongue, sort of hard and squishy at the same time, a bit like bubble wrap made from sandpaper. I tried to sit up, but my head went bang against the roof of the gorilla’s mouth. It was pink and sort of ridged. Then the gorilla’s mouth began to close. I was forced down, down, down…
I didn’t even have time to say goodbye to Phredde, I thought, as I was crushed in that giant squishy mouth.
It wasn’t fair! Every other adventure had lasted DAYS, with plenty of time for rescue and last thoughts. This one had been just too quick!
Goodbye world, I thought. Goodbye, Phredde, Goodbye, B…
FLOINGGGGGGGGGGG!