The Phredde Collection (44 page)

‘Phredde?’

‘Pru!’

I blinked. That wasn’t gorilla gums up above me. It wasn’t even the inside of a gorilla tummy. It looked like an ordinary blue sky, with a few marshmallow clouds and Phredde hovering above me.

I sat up and checked myself. I seemed to be all there. No arms missing, all my toes. I hadn’t even lost a thong. And I was dry, not sodden with gorilla spit!

‘Phredde! How did you save us?’

‘I didn’t!’ cried Phredde. ‘One second the gorilla had crunched you up, then…’

‘He didn’t actually crunch me. He’d just glopped me and was about to crunch…’

‘There was this FLOINGGGGGGGGGGG! sound. And I was out of his fist and you were out of his mouth and we were here. Then you said
Phredde?
and I said,
Pru!
and…and here we are!’

‘You didn’t rescue us? Not even accidentally?’

Phredde shook her head. ‘You can’t PING! accidentally. Trust me. You know when you PING!. It’s…it’s like a sneeze all over you!’

‘Could your mum have fixed something up? You know, a Protect My Little Darling Phredde sort of spell that would be activated whenever you’re in danger?’

Phredde fluttered down beside me. ‘It can’t have been Mum. Or Dad either. That was a FLOINGGGGGGGGGGG!, not a PING! Phaeries PING!’

‘Well, who FLOINGGGGGGGGGGG!s then?’

‘I don’t know!’

I looked around, in case there were any FLOINGGGGGGGGGGG!-type rescuers nearby. But there was only a little toy gorilla, lying in the flowery grass. I picked it up and handed it to Phredde. She took it gingerly.

‘I don’t think I want it now.’

‘Look,’ I said. ‘It’s YOUR toy gorilla. Take it home and lock it up where it won’t go eating people.’

Phredde nodded.

PING!

The toy gorilla vanished.

I looked at Phredde suspiciously. ‘It’s not going to come back and try to eat us again is it?’

‘No way,’ Phredde assured me. ‘I PING!ed it back inside my toy box.’

FLOINGGGGGGGGGGG!

Suddenly there was a blanket in front of us where the gorilla had been lying. On the blanket there was a plate of sliced watermelon, iced, just the way I like it, chocolate cake, cut into BIG hunks just the way I like them too, sausage and pineapple pizza and tomato and olive foccacia with extra olives, and frozen bananas
rolled in chopped peanuts, and a giant passionfruit sorbet and…

Well, just about all of my favourite foods. Plus pineapple crush to drink. I LOVE pineapple crush.

‘Phredde?’

Phredde shook her head wonderingly. ‘I didn’t do that either.’

‘You mean someone saved us from a giant gorilla
and
magiced up a perfect picnic and you have no idea who did it?’

Phredde nodded. ‘Yep.’

‘Oh,’ I said. I stared at the picnic.

This was weird! But, hey, whoever had put it there had saved us from the gorilla, hadn’t they? So I was pretty certain the picnic was safe to eat.

Wasn’t it?

So we ate it, just to find out.

Phredde’s mum swooped me home on their magic carpet. I burped gently all the way—that picnic had been good.

I trotted across our drawbridge, through the courtyard, along the Great Hall, into the Lesser Hall, across the Really Quite Small Hall, up the Grand Staircase and the Not-So-Grand Staircase and the Really Steep and Inconvenient Staircase that led to the Very Green Sitting Room where Mum did her crosswords.

‘Hi, Mum,’ I puffed. (You try jogging up three staircases after a giant picnic. I must remember to ask Phredde to ask her mum to PING! us some escalators.)

‘Hi, Pru,’ said Mum vaguely. ‘What’s a seven-letter word meaning
big foot
?’

‘Macropod,’ I told her. (Years of Mum’s crosswords mean I have a GREAT vocabulary.) ‘Where is everyone?’

‘Your father’s feeding the piranhas the leftover tomato salad, Gark is making triple-decker hamburgers with beetroot, lettuce and tomato for dinner and Mark is rolling in something foul up in the tower,’ said Mum, shuddering. My brother Mark is a werewolf—well, at full moon he is. I was guessing he had a hot date with his girlfriend tonight.

‘Yum,’ I said. (I meant the hamburger, not the stuff Mark was rolling in. Okay, I was full of picnic, but I’m always ready to go that extra meal.)

Mum glanced at her watch. ‘Go tell Mark dinner is ready, will you? And what’s a sixteen-letter word for slob?’

‘Slubberdegullion. Sure thing,’ I said. I galloped along the corridor and up the stairs, then up the tower stairs and along the battlements. (For those of you who don’t live in a magic castle, battlements are those great big high bits way up on the castle walls.)

And then I stopped, because I could see why Mum had shuddered. I mean triple yuck with sweet potatoes! It was FOUL! It looked like a big puddle of what looked like sheep guts mixed with chicken brains and garnished with troll’s boogies that someone had eaten then chucked up again. But it
smelt
a zillion times worse than even that.

I could see why Mark wanted to roll on it. Any werewolf smelling that bad was going to be HOT.

Except it wasn’t so hot for human-type sisters. So I edged my way along the battlements, keeping right to the edge so I wouldn’t step in the yuck. I still don’t know how it happened, but suddenly I slipped on something green and soft and slimy and…

‘HELLLLLLLLLLP!’

I was falling down, down the castle wall! And there was the moat below me full of piranhas! Even if they were full of tomato salad they’d still try to eat me, because I’d be squished and tomato like too by then and irresistible to a piranha and…

FLOINGGGGGGGGGGG!

I blinked, and sat up. I wasn’t flying down the castle walls. I wasn’t being gulped by piranhas either. (Did you know it only takes piranhas ten minutes to skeletonise a cow? And three minutes to eat a sausage and pineapple pizza. I timed them.) I was back on the battlements lying in erk and…

FLOINGGGGGGGGGGG!

Except it wasn’t erk. It was a bed of rose petals. My clothes weren’t erky either. They smelt like flowers.

‘Hey!’ Something hairy with long drooling fangs bent over me. ‘What have you done with my rotten corgi guts?’ it demanded.

‘Stop dribbling in my face, Dog’s Breath, or I’ll tell Mum who lifted his leg
and
did a you-know-what on the mat in the Great Hall.’ I sat up. ‘Is that what that stuff was? Corgi guts?’

‘I’d been keeping those guts specially for tonight!’ said Mark indignantly, sitting back and scratching his ear with his hind leg. ‘And now look at them. Rose petals! How can I go out smelling of rose petals?’

‘Look,’ I said, ‘it wasn’t me! I slipped in your blasted corgi guts and fell off the battlements! The next thing I knew I was back here, and your corgi guts were gone!’

Mark looked at me suspiciously. ‘Your mate Phredde PING!ed them away then.’

‘She isn’t here!’ I told him earnestly. There are times when it’s a good idea not to get on the wrong side of
your big brother, especially when he’s a werewolf.

‘It was Bruce then!’

Well, to be honest, I’d wondered that myself. Maybe…maybe, I thought hopefully, Bruce had PING!ed himself invisible. Perhaps he was watching over me to keep me safe.

But Bruce goes PING!, I’ve never ever heard Bruce go FLOINGGGGGGGGGGG! I’d heard Bruce PING! a thousand times and he’d never FLOINGGGGGGGGGGG!ed once.

And, anyway, I told myself sourly, Bruce would be happily hopping about zapping flies on a lily pond somewhere. Maybe he’d even found this cute phaery princess who really LIKED frogs, and they were both feasting on mosquitoes and dreaming of tadpoles.

‘No, it wasn’t Bruce,’ I said sadly, hauling myself to my feet. ‘Look, don’t fuss. I’ll give Phredde a ring and ask her to PING! over something really stinky. How about some million-year-old dinosaur guts? They’d be a zillion times stinkier than corgi guts.’

Mark brightened. ‘Hey, would you, Prune-face? Tracey will just love that. Thanks.’

‘Don’t mention it,’ I said bitterly. My big brother was going to be all happy with his girlfriend, but I was just…

I sniffed, and wiped a few rose petals off my nose. ‘By the way,’ I said. ‘Mum said to say that dinner’s ready.’

I lay awake in bed a long time that night. I couldn’t sleep, and it wasn’t just because Mark and Tracey were howling on the battlements together. My big brother has
no
sense of music, and it isn’t any better when he’s a werewolf.

Who had rescued me? What sort of magic goes FLOINGGGGGGGGGGG!?

And why was I worrying? It had saved me, hadn’t it? It must be a friendly FLOINGGGGGGGGGGG! if it had saved me.

But I just had this strange feeling that something was wrong. Something bad was going to happen. And soon.

Maybe, I thought, I was just feeling bad because I wasn’t talking to Bruce. Bruce and Phredde and I had been through a lot together. Flesh-eating rose bushes, deadly dinosaurs, mysterious tunnels back to Ancient Egypt. Well, one mysterious tunnel anyway. And maybe part of me was just a bit ashamed I’d done THAT to him at my birthday party.

But he deserved it!

Didn’t he?

Somehow I knew that something else bad was coming. Something even worse than not talking to one of my best friends.

So it was a really good thing I had a FLOINGGGGGGGGGGG! to protect me.

Wasn’t it?

Finally I fell asleep.

That was the last day of the school holidays. Huh! Some holidays!

I suppose I should say ‘groan’ when I talk about school. But as a matter of fact school isn’t that bad. It’s pretty hot having a vampire as a teacher, especially when the relief teacher last term was snotty about phaeries and vampires and other ‘peculiars’ and Mrs Olsen let her fangs down and…

Oops. We all promised we wouldn’t say anything about that. And besides, the bloodstains came right out.

Anyway, I wasn’t exactly down in the glumps about school because if school gets boring Phredde can always PING! us away for a week or two. Then she can PING! us back again the same instant we left, just like the time Phredde and me and Bruce…

But I wasn’t going to think about Bruce, I told myself. I wouldn’t even LOOK at him, which is a bit difficult as he sits in front of me. And when Bruce zaps
his tongue out for a fly it’s hard not to look.

I sat down hard on that thought. No B-type thoughts AT ALL, Prudence, I told myself.

Gark had cooked a special ‘first day of term’ breakfast—blueberry pancakes with yoghurt and raspberries for me and two-week old stinking fish heads with chilli sauce for Mark. Even if Mark was a human teenager again he always felt a bit werewolfish after a big night in the moonlight. He also stank a bit too—well, a lot actually.

It’s a sister’s duty to tell her brother things like that. So I did. Tactfully.

‘Phew!’ I yelled, holding my nose and racing for the door. ‘You pong!’

‘Tracey didn’t think so last night,’ said Mark smugly, pouring more chilli sauce on his fish heads.

‘But she was a werewolf too last night!’ I reminded him. ‘I bet she won’t be as keen on that stink when she sees you on the school bus this morning.’

Mark hesitated, a half-eaten fish head dripping in his fingers. ‘You think it’s too much?’

‘WAAAAAY too much,’ I assured him.

Mark sighed, spitting out a hot gust of dead dinosaur and fish heads. ‘I’ll go have a shower.’

‘
And
clean your teeth,’ I yelled after him, as I plunked myself back at the table.

Which left just me and Gark—who never talks as he was once a magpie and magpies don’t talk much—and fifteen blueberry pancakes with extra yoghurt and raspberries, just the way I liked them.

Mum staggered down halfway through breakfast, but she only has coffee in the morning till she wakes up a bit, which takes till about mid-morning. Then Dad
bounded in after his morning jog, but he just has muesli and pineapple juice. That still left all the pancakes for me.

And Cuddles, of course. Did I tell you about Cuddles? She’s my
Dromornis stirtoni
, or Demon Duck of Doom because you try saying,
This is my pet Dromornis stirtoni
a few times and see what it sounds like by the third time.

Cuddles was just a cute little baby when me, Phredde and B…Phredde and I found her last term and 100,000 years ago. (We were trying to go on a school excursion to the Big Koala Wildlife Park but sort of lost our way—and time.) Cuddles has grown a bit since then. Last time I tried to measure her I THINK she was about three-metres high. I never actually found out her exact height because she ate the tape measure before I could be sure.

But Cuddles didn’t want any pancakes because she was happily eating the CD player—I think she likes the crunch. She just quacked a bit sadly when I hugged her goodbye. She’d got used to having me around during the holidays. We’d played catch-the-ball every day, which meant we’d gone through a lot of balls as Cuddles thinks balls are delicious.

Anyway, I went down the stairs and the NEXT lots of stairs and along the—well, you can fill in the rest, it takes TIME when you live in a castle—to the front door, er, front drawbridge.

And there was Phredde waiting for me on her Mum’s magic carpet.

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Hop on!’

I checked behind me to make sure Cuddles hadn’t tried to follow me to school again. Mrs Allen, our
Principal, got upset last time just because Cuddles ate the boys’ toilets. Cuddles
said
she was sorry—well, she burped really sorrowfully. (And that burp STANK. What do boys get up to in there? No, don’t tell me!)

So now Phredde comes to pick me up on the carpet, because even Demon Ducks of Doom can’t keep up with a magic carpet.

Not the way Phredde drives.

Phredde doesn’t have her driver’s licence yet. But you don’t NEED a driver’s licence for a magic carpet—she rang the traffic authority to check and the guy on the phone just said,
Huh
?. And she’s a much better driver nowadays. We hardly ever hit pigeons, and the cat we brushed by yesterday calmed down once it realised most of its tail was still there.

‘Phredde?’

‘Mmm,’ said Phredde, negotiating round a flock of sparrows. (You don’t want to scare sparrows on a magic carpet, not unless your mum wants sparrow doo-doo on her roses.)

‘I’ve been thinking.’

‘You banana-brained baboon!’ yelled Phredde, but that was at a cyclist who hadn’t seen her coming. ‘Try looking up above you now and again!’

‘Well, you see…’ I began. I told her all about the corgi guts, and me slipping off the castle battlements.

‘You think someone has put a bad luck spell on you?’ asked Phredde at last.

‘No! That giant toy gorilla thing could have happened to anyone, and the corgi guts were just an accident. No, I think someone is…is…I don’t know! I just wondered…’

‘Wondered what?’

‘Well, am I going to be rescued every time I get into trouble?’

Phredde grinned. I’d seen that grin before.

‘Only one way to find out!’ she yelled.

‘Phredde, no-o-o!!!’

‘Bonsai!’ yelled Phredde, which I
think
is what the dive bombers in World War II used to yell before they crashed. Suddenly the magic carpet was zooming up…up…up…

‘Phredde, take us back down!’ I shrieked, gripping the edges of the carpet to try to stay on.

‘No! We have to test this thing!’

‘But Phredde!’

‘Clap your hands!’ yelled Phredde.

‘Why!’

‘Don’t argue! Clap!’

When you’re flying 10,000 metres from the ground on a magic carpet and the driver yells at you to clap your hands—you clap!

‘Is this loud enough?’ I called, clapping my hands madly. ‘Phredde? Phredde? Phredde!!!’ I wailed.

But it was too late. Phredde—and the magic carpet—were metres ahead of me, accelerating wildly while I hung mid-air, for what seemed like a lifetime.

But it was only half a second.

‘Phreeeeeeeeeeeedde!!!’

It is a
long
way down from 10,000 metres (about 10,000 metres, actually). And it’s cold.

Down…down…down…I tried to keep a firm grip on my school bag. It had my onion and tomato foccacia in it, after all. But then I thought, if I’m crushed I can’t eat my foccacia. So I let it go and…

I looked down. That was a mistake. I could see the
highway, roofs of houses, and the footpaths, and they all looked hard. They were getting closer and closer.

I looked up, hoping I would be PING!ed up to the clouds. But the clouds were getting further and further away. So were Phredde and the magic carpet.

‘PING! me up!’ I screamed. ‘Phredde, PING!’

A sparrow blinked at me as I shot past. I must have startled it, because I felt a splat on my nose. But sparrow doo-doo facials were the least of my worries now.

I stopped yelling ‘Phredde!’ and screamed, ‘HEEEEEEEEEELP!’

FLOINGGGGGGGGGGG!

Suddenly I was back on the magic carpet. I wiped the sparrow doo-doo off my nose and glared at Phredde.

‘I heard it! I heard it!’ yelled Phredde gleefully.

‘Heard what? You could have killed me back there!’

‘Heard the FLOINGGGGGGGGGGG! And it was quite safe.’

‘It wasn’t safe!’ I yelled. ‘I was falling 10,000 metres to my death!’

‘You’d only fallen 8,453 metres,’ said Phredde calmly. ‘When you got to 9,947 I was going to PING! you back up.’

‘How do you know you can PING! that fast?’ I asked grumpily. ‘You could have warned me!’

‘If I had warned you then you wouldn’t have been scared and it wouldn’t have been a test!’ Phredde pointed out. ‘But now we know!’

‘Know what?’

‘That someone—or something—is looking after you.’