The Phredde Collection (61 page)

Where was I? Oh yes, hugging a houseful of ghosts. I’d sort of had enough after that. Mum and Dad drove me home to our castle, with Willie on my lap.

I was too tired even to check what the piranhas in the moat were skeletonising—which just shows you how exhausted I was, because that’s one of the first things I do every day when I come home from school. (You’d be AMAZED at the things that fall in our moat. I’d swear one of those skeletons was a diprotodont.)

So I went to bed, with Willie curled up at my feet—at least I think he was, because it’s a bit hard to tell with a ghost. I even slept a bit, because, after all, I hadn’t had much sleep the last two nights. Then I had unpacked my bag and put away my underpants (Annie had made me seven new pairs, with enough frills and lace to keep
me scratching all week), and had lunch, and showed Willie around the castle and…well, nothing much.

I was feeling a bit flat, to be honest. All that adventure had keyed me up, and even though I was glad it was over, it just didn’t feel right doing nothing after so much had happened. I missed Phredde and Bruce too. I wondered what they were doing, and that got me thinking.

What WAS going to happen when the three of us grew up? Grown-ups ask you that ALL the time—‘Have you thought what you want to do after school? What are you going to study at uni?’ And I’d thought of lots of things, but I’d never once thought that my friends mightn’t be with me.

What DID I want to do when I left school? I knew you were supposed to work out what it is you really enjoy. Well, I liked rescuing Ancient Egyptian princes
⁶
and exploring the world 100,000 years ago
⁷
and reforming cannibal phaeries.
⁸
But none of those added up to the sort of job you see advertised in the paper.

I couldn’t even get into adventures like that without my friends to PING! them up.

Or could I, I wondered. I’d managed the adventure of the haunted mansion all by myself.

‘Wuff,’ said Willie confidently as he peed near a potted palm, as though to say, ‘You’re my mistress and I think you can do anything.’

What did a ghost puppy know? But I felt better for the bark of confidence. ‘Come on, Willie,’ I said. ‘Let’s go for a walk.’

We went up onto the castle battlements and wandered around them. I stared down at the world below. It was a pretty good world, I thought. And even if I wasn’t magic, maybe I could do something to make it even better. Maybe, when I was a ghost, I’d be able to touch the whole world, not just underpants and food, because I loved it all.

PING!

‘Hi!’ It was Phredde.

There was another PING! and Bruce plopped down beside her.

I stared at them. They looked just the same—Phredde in her usual silver and purple shorts and T-shirt and Bruce all googly and frog-like. Of course there was no reason why they shouldn’t have looked just the same. But I’d been through such a lot that I felt different, so I thought they should look different too somehow.

‘How did last night go?’ asked Bruce, gazing round for any passing flies. (Mark leaves his bones up on the battlements and they bring lots of flies.)

‘It was okay,’ I said.

I wasn’t keeping secrets from them, honest. Well, okay, I was, but only so they didn’t feel bad about leaving me to face Mr Nahsti on my own.

‘So the mansion’s yours?’ asked Phredde casually. A bit too casually, I thought. I mean, when your best friend inherits a mansion you should be a bit excited for her! Phredde looked like her mind was on something else entirely.

‘Sort of,’ I said. I looked at them curiously. Maybe there WAS something different about them, I thought. An excited something. A ‘we’re trying to be polite but
there’s something really GREAT going on that you don’t know about’ sort of excited.

‘What have you two been doing?’ I asked sharply.

‘Us? Well…’ began Bruce.

PING!

A grandfather clock hovered in the air above us. (Phaeries don’t bother with watches). Phredde glanced at it. ‘It’s nearly four o’clock! Bruce, we’re going to be late!’

‘Late for what?’ I demanded. ‘And don’t give me any of that bumph about homework! What are you two—’

PING!

I was speaking to thin air. Bruce and Phredde had vanished again.

…

I felt tears starting to make a freeway down my nose. I’d saved the ghosts, I’d survived a runaway ghost train, and I sort of had my very own mansion, with lake and graveyard, not to mention a doodle pup called Willie and the coolest new underpants in the universe. But I still wanted my friends!

Not to get me into adventures—and out of them. But because they
were
my friends!

They HAD been keeping something from me. Just because I was a human, not a phaery. And…

PING!

Suddenly Phredde was back. But the purple pants and T-shirt had gone. So had her green and silver hair. This Phredde wore a gold ball gown, all lace and velvet. Her hair was done up like in those old movies about French kings. She even had glass slippers on her feet.

Phredde hates glass slippers!

‘Phredde!’ I demanded. ‘What’s this all about?’

‘Well,’ began Phredde.

PING!

Bruce popped into the space beside us.

I stared. He was wearing red knee breeches, which looked weird on a frog—though, come to think of it, they’d look pretty weird on anyone. And a red velvet hat with a feather and a gold shirt open at the front to show a red silk scarf thing.

‘Come on!’ he ordered. ‘We’ll be late!’

‘Look, what’s going on?’ I insisted.

‘No time for all that now!’ cried Phredde.

PING!

Suddenly I was in a ball dress too, but mine was pink and silver, and even though I hate pink—well, mostly—this was so super gorgeously wonderful it wasn’t really pink at all.

I touched my head. Yep. Another late-night TV sort of hairstyle, which I suspected looked a lot better with the long blonde hair Jack had given me than it would have done with my own short brown stuff.

I lifted my skirt a couple of centimetres. Glass slippers too! Magic ones, the sort you can walk in without them cracking, so your toes aren’t amputated and left bleeding behind you. And gloves, for Pete’s sake! Elbow-length gloves!

‘Look, you two,’ I squawked. ‘Tell me what this is about at once or I’ll—’

PING!

Suddenly we were in Phaeryland.

⁶
See
Phredde and the Purple Pyramid.

⁷
See
Phredde and the Leopard-skin Librarian.

⁸
See
Phredde and the Temple of Gloom.

It smelled like fairy bread and lemonade. There were green hills—really green, like a little kid had coloured them in—and flowers everywhere, pink and blue and purple and red and yellow. Lollipops hung from the trees and a few lamingtons as well, pink ones and chocolate. There was a road made of yellow bricks, all higgledy-piggledy (they’ve never heard of bitumen in Phaeryland). And in front of us was the palace of the Phaery Queen.

I’d been there before, of course, when Phredde let off the stink bomb
⁹
and at the Phaery Queen’s wedding.
¹⁰
Just in case you haven’t taken one of the Phaeryland tours yet (the Phaery Queen is really into tourism these days) just imagine every fairytale castle you’ve ever seen in a book or a movie. Now multiply by 100. And add a ‘Why not visit our souvenir shop’ signpost.

But why had we come here now?

‘Phredde, Bruce…’ I began. But they ignored me.

‘Come on!’ yelled Phredde. ‘We were supposed to be there, like, five minutes ago!’ She raced up the stairs to the palace.

‘WHERE are we supposed to be?’ I roared, clumping after her. (Glass slippers, even magic ones, take some getting used to.)

They continued to ignore me.

Up the stairs we ran. They were magic stairs, so even though we went higher and higher it wasn’t like climbing at all. Which was a good thing as I didn’t think I could have managed the stairs AND my slippers.

Tan-tan-tarraaaaa!

At the top of the steps a row of trumpeters lifted their thingummies (long thin trumpets with sort of tea towels hanging down—you must have seen them in movies) and blew these long blasts, like they’d never heard of playing a tune or something you could dance to.

We kept on running.

Through more doorways, and more thingummy players making even more of a din. Then Phredde stopped and so did Bruce, so suddenly I bumped into them.

‘Bug—’ I began, then hiccuped, because you can’t say rude words in Phaeryland. They’ve got filters that any software company would die for.

We were in the Great Hall, with its ceiling as high as the sky but in colours the sky never dreamed of, even when it felt in a sunrise mood. There was carpet underfoot, as thick as grass, with embroidery of unicorns and deer and…I blinked. Was that Bart Simpson peering round from behind a gryphon? Phaeryland must finally have got TV.

And there was the Phaery Queen, on her giant pearl and diamond throne, with her husband, Dwayne, beside her, reading the paper.

I glanced around the hall and my jaw dropped open.

EVERYONE was there. I mean EVERYONE! There was Mum in a lime-green ball dress with the Phaery Splendifera, Phredde’s mum, and Bruce’s mum too, and Dad in a pair of blue velvet knee breeches! (He looked a bit embarrassed, to be honest.) There was Mark with his fur brushed and fangs gleaming, and Bruce’s dad and Mrs Olsen in her best vampire cloak and Amelia looking sour (because her ball dress wasn’t half as sparkly as mine), Edwin picking his nose and Alexandra and Claudia and Annabelle and Emma from the Elf Orchestra with Jessica the Bogey person hiding behind them. There was even Miss Richards, our librarian in a really tight leopardskin evening dress, and Snow White and her seven quite short software engineers all around her…

…and there were the ghosts, looking more solid than I had ever seen them, even though it was still day, and Prince Peanut and the Phaery Daffodil and King Menes…

‘Wuff,’ said a voice and I looked round to see Willie peeing near a pillar. But he didn’t leave a puddle because things like that don’t happen in Phaeryland.

Everyone I’d ever met was there!

Phredde grinned at me. ‘That’s why we had to vanish,’ she said. ‘It took AGES to get everyone here.’

‘And we couldn’t invite them too early,’ added Bruce. ‘Or someone might have let the cat out of the bag.’

‘What cat? What’s this all—’ I began. But the Phaery Queen was beckoning to us.

‘Shh,’ Phredde whispered. She curtseyed way down low and Bruce bowed.

‘Curtsey, dumdum,’ hissed Phredde over her shoulder at me. So I curtseyed as well. It didn’t quite work, to be honest—I wasn’t sure which foot went where. But it must have looked all right because the Phaery Queen smiled at me. Or maybe she was laughing. It was a friendly sort of a laugh, anyway.

‘Welcome,’ she said. ‘Ethereal, Filbert, Prudence.’

‘Filbert?’ I hissed.

‘Shut up,’ muttered Bruce.

Prince Dwayne put down his newspaper. ‘Hi,’ he said kindly.

‘Er, hiya, Your Majesties,’ I said.

Phredde and Bruce stepped back into the watching crowd. I was about to follow them when the Queen beckoned. ‘Come forward, Prudence,’ she said.

So I did.

It was the longest walk I’ve ever taken, clumping towards the throne in those glass slippers, afraid I was going to trip in front of everyone. I could just imagine Amelia’s delight, and Phredde and Bruce would be embarrassed by their clumsy human friend and wish they’d never brought me.

Why HAD they brought me?

And suddenly I was there.

‘Kneel,’ said the Phaery Queen.

For a moment I thought she’d said ‘Neil’ and was looking round for a Neil-looking kind of a guy. But then I realised. So I kneeled, and my skirts sort of billowed round me, and I thought,
Heck! What now?

‘Since time began,’ said the Phaery Queen, her voice echoing all around as if she was speaking into a
microphone, but I suppose you don’t need a microphone if you’re the Phaery Queen, ‘humans have envied phaeries, envied their power, envied their magic.

‘Magic is difficult for humans to understand. The most dangerous person in all the world would be someone who only wanted magic for its power to do good for others. If you can’t use magic to create joy in your own life, you are likely to make a mess when you try to make happiness for other people.’

The Great Hall was so quiet you could have heard an emu drop. I bet Edwin had even stopped picking his nose.

‘Despite the differences between humans and phaeries, many of our subjects have chosen to live in what humans call “the real world” rather than our Land of Phaery. As all here know, I’m sure, most choose to live in Ruritania, a land not unlike Phaeryland in many ways. But Ruritania is no longer safe for those of our kind. People have always hated others who are different. Hatred breeds more hatred, especially when there is fear as well.’

I remembered when I’d first seen Phredde sitting on that fence and angry at the world. She and her parents had only just arrived in Australia. I’d been as strange to her as she was to me. Had it really only been a year ago?

‘It isn’t easy to begin a new life with new friends,’ said the Phaery Queen. Her quiet voice echoed everywhere and suddenly she sounded like a real queen. The sort who leads people into battle, I mean. ‘It isn’t always easy for the friends either. But there is one human who has been a true and steadfast friend to all the phaery people she has met. Phaeries, frogs,’ the Phaery Queen smiled at Bruce, ‘zombies, vampires. A
person without prejudice, who opens her heart to all the world.’

Wow
, I thought,
this person sounds COOL! I wonder who she can be talking about.

And then the Phaery Queen said, ‘Prudence, please rise’, and I realised she was talking about me!

Something sparkled in the air above me. It was a wand, like one of those long sticks with a star on the end that little kids play with, but a million billion times more beautiful. And the star came down onto my head and I could hardly see for sparkles.

And something changed.

I didn’t know what it was at first. Just a feeling about the shoulder blades and a sort of…power…behind my eyes. Then I reached back over my shoulder and I had WINGS! And somehow I knew that if I looked a certain way the world would go PING! and things would happen just the way I wished…

The Phaery Queen smiled at me. Forget about any movie star you’ve ever seen. When the Phaery Queen smiles at you, you stay smiled!

‘Your friends, the Princess Ethereal and Prince Filbert, both earnestly beseeched me to grant this boon,’ she said. ‘They even offered a third of their own magic to make up enough for you. But I said no. Phaeryland has magic enough to share with its friends. Only once in 50 years does a human become a phaery, and only a human who has shown that they can use phaery power as well as any phaery. Welcome, Prudence.’

‘Wow,’ I said. Then felt totally dumb because all I could think to say next was, ‘Hey, is this okay with Mum and Dad?’

Prince Dwayne grinned. ‘Don’t worry, kid,’ he said. ‘The Phaery Queen cleared it with your mum and dad first.’

‘Oh, Prudence,’ said Mum tearfully behind me. There was a flash as Dad took a photo.

And then it was over.