And then I shut my eyes.
Come on Tooth Phaery, I willed. Come on! Come on! Come on!
The minutes ticked by, except of course they didn’t, because I didn’t have my watch with me and, anyway, it’s digital and it doesn’t tick.
At any moment, I expected to hear a PING! as the three phaeries returned, with or without crocodiles. Unless the Snot Phaery had thought of some other way
to bump me off, I thought desperately, like boiling me in snot or smothering me in dandruff (but I thought the Dandruff Phaery might object to that) or throwing me in a pit of leeches to suck out all my blood…
Something tugged at my finger.
‘Well,’ declared someone right next to me. ‘This is a nice state of affairs!’
I opened my eyes.
A phaery was fluttering just above my beanbags. She was tiny and delicate and businesslike in an off-white linen suit with big brown buttons and matching shoes, a big fashionable pair of glasses, and she was carrying the sort of handbag that holds a laptop computer.
‘You didn’t PING!’ I said accusingly.
‘Well, of course, I didn’t PING!, child,’ she declared. ‘If I went round PING!ing all the time, I’d wake everyone up. And I’d like to see how THAT would go down with the parents, waking their children up in the middle of the night.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Now if you don’t mind, I’ve got a schedule to meet. So if you could just tell me what you think you’re doing with that…’
She gestured to the string running from my finger to my tooth.
‘I had to attract your attention!’ I cried. ‘I’ve been kidnapped by a fake Tooth Phaery who wants me to polish his teeth and there’s a fake Snot Phaery who wants to feed me to the crocodiles and a Dandruff Phaery who wants me to be his Snow White and there’s a whole bathtub of teeth just down the corridor and…’
The real Tooth Phaery looked at me carefully. ‘Perhaps,’ she said after a while, ‘it might be best if I
take notes.’ She pulled her laptop out of her handbag (I’d been right) and began to tap away while I kept on explaining.
Well, it took a while to sort it all out.
‘And at no time did this so-called Tooth Phaery offer to show you any credentials?’ demanded the real Tooth Phaery, tapping away.
‘Well, no,’ I said.
She glanced at me over her glasses. ‘My dear, let this be a lesson to you,’ she stated. ‘If anyone ever appears in your bedroom at two in the morning and claims to be the Tooth Phaery, have a very close look at his or her credentials.’
‘Er, do you have credentials?’ I asked timidly.
‘Naturally,’ she assured me crisply. She rummaged in her handbag again and handed a small folder over to me.
I peered at it. ‘By Royal Appointment,’ it declared at the top in big, gold, scrawly letters. Then underneath it said: ‘I hereby appoint The Phaery Dainty Foot as Tooth Phaery, by order, signed The Phaery Calendula, secretary, for The Phaery Queen.’
‘Are you the Phaery Dainty Foot?’ I asked.
The Tooth Phaery gave me a cold look. ‘I prefer simply to be known as the Tooth Phaery,’ she stated. ‘It’s a matter of professional etiquette.’ She bent down to her laptop again. ‘Now, there is one final matter I’d like cleared up. When you first arrived here, did this individual—’
There was a sudden PING! over by the fridge and there was the individual in question, in his fringed shirt and trousers with his bulging carry bag slung over his shoulder. Two more PINGS! and there were the Snot Phaery and the Dandruff Phaery.
The false Tooth Phaery took one look at me and the real Tooth Phaery and turned pale.
‘Oh #&%@!’ said the false Tooth Phaery. (I can’t write those words down because Mum would ground me for the next two decades if she even thought I knew what they meant!)
The false Tooth Phaery lifted up his arms and began to PING!…
‘Oh, no you don’t, my lad,’ said the real Tooth Phaery. Before the fake Tooth Phaery could finish his PING!, she swooped over to him like a wasp on steroids and grabbed his elbow.
‘Let me go!’ yelled the false Tooth Phaery, pulling his arm away. He lifted his heavy carry bag over her head.
Zam! Bang! Whop!
went the real Tooth Phaery, as she gave him a karate chop to both wrists, followed by a kick to the back of his knees that sent him sprawling across the seagrass matting.
The real Tooth Phaery glanced over at the Snot Phaery and the Dandruff Phaery. (By this stage they were cowering over by the fridge.) ‘Either of you lads like to add anything?’ she demanded.
The Snot Phaery shook his head.
‘Um,’ muttered the Dandruff Phaery dolefully. ‘Does this mean she won’t be my Snow White no more?’ he said, nodding towards me.
I shoved the real Tooth Phaery’s computer out of my line of sight. (She’d left it hovering in mid-air when she dashed over to the fake Tooth Phaery.) ‘That’s right,’ I said.
The Dandruff Phaery looked crestfallen. ‘Oh,’ he said sadly. ‘And I brung you an apple too.’ He rummaged in
his pocket. ‘It’s here somewhere…Snow Whites like apples. It isn’t poisoned or anything,’ he assured me.
Well, he was sort of sweet, in an Elvis Presley lookalike way. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said kindly. ‘I don’t think Mum will let me be anyone’s Snow White until I’ve finished school.’
The real Tooth Phaery glanced at her watch. ‘Well, I don’t know about you,’ she said to me. ‘But I have appointments. So if you’ll excuse me I’ll just PING! you back to your bedroom and…’
‘Hey, wait!’ I yelled. ‘I want to know what’s going to happen to my kidnappers!’
The real Tooth Phaery shook her head (she had a really cool haircut, sort of short at the sides and all streaked blonde on top). ‘This one,’ she said, gesturing at the false Tooth Phaery, ‘…will be charged with impersonating a duly appointed officer of the Phaery Queen, namely the Tooth Phaery. I would imagine he’ll get a long sentence.’ The real Tooth Phaery’s eyes gleamed behind her glasses. ‘Probably involving cleaning up the dragon droppings in the royal castle dungeons,’ she added.
‘Will I have to be a witness at his trial?’ I asked hopefully. (I’d heard that trials sometimes went on for months, which meant I’d get out of school.)
‘That won’t be necessary, dear,’ said the Tooth Phaery efficiently. ‘Phaery judges can PING! up the whole incident and see for themselves. But thank you for offering.’
‘What about the others?’ I asked.
‘Yeah, what about us?’ whined the Snot Phaery.
The real Tooth Phaery quelled him with a glance. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘as it happens, there is no official Snot
Phaery, so this…person…isn’t impersonating anybody.’
‘Told you so!’ whined the Snot Phaery triumphantly.
‘But, of course, he did assist in kidnapping you, plus the threats to your person.’
‘Which included feeding me to the crocodiles and giving me concrete Ugh boots,’ I put in.
‘So I imagine he’ll be helping with the dragon droppings.’
‘Hey!’ yelled the Snot Phaery. ‘That’s not fair! It was all his fault! I didn’t do—’
‘Oh, be quiet,’ snapped the real Tooth Phaery. There was a piercing PING! and the fake Tooth Phaery and the Snot Phaery were gone.
‘What about him?’ I asked, nodding at the Dandruff Phaery, who was still standing there blinking, as though he was trying to work out what was happening. ‘It wasn’t his fault, really. He was quite nice, sort of.’
The Tooth Phaery sighed. ‘As a matter of fact, he is the real Dandruff Phaery,’ she admitted. ‘I know his family slightly.’ She fluttered over to me. ‘A good heart,’ she whispered in my ear, ‘but not…well, not the brightest phaery around. He just got into bad company. I’m sure the judge will be lenient.’
She straightened up and glanced over at the dejected Dandruff Phaery. ‘After all, he is very dedicated to his profession.’ She gave a little shudder. ‘No one else would collect dandruff with quite the same enthusiasm.’
The Dandruff Phaery brightened.
‘And if no one collected the dandruff,’ added the real Tooth Phaery, ‘we’d all be knee deep in it by next Tuesday.’
‘Then—’ I began, but the Tooth Phaery shook her head.
‘I’m sorry dear,’ she said, ‘but I really have to get you home now. I still have several collections to do before dawn.’
Before I could say anything, there was another PING!
And this time I woke up in bed.
Well, after I’d thought things through a bit, I decided not to tell Mum any of my adventures. She’d either have a stress attack or decide I’d been dreaming. I didn’t even tell Phredde, not for a few days anyway.
I think I must have been a bit upset about it, to tell you the truth—I mean, you try being kidnapped in the middle of the night by a homicidal Tooth Phaery and see what you feel like next morning.
But anyway, I felt a lot better after I’d told Phredde. Things always feel better after you’ve shared them with someone.
Phredde sighed after I’d finished my story. ‘It’s always sad when phaeries go bad,’ she said.
‘How long do you think they’ll get in prison?’ I asked.
‘I don’t know,’ said Phredde vaguely. ‘A few thousand years, I suppose.’
And that was the end of it.
Except…
February the fourteenth was a Saturday this year. I hauled myself out of bed about lunchtime, as usual, and staggered down to the kitchen. I’d quite forgotten it was St Valentine’s Day until Mum yelled at me as I was passing the Ballroom (that’s where we keep the
computer and the TV and stuff like that). ‘Prudence? There’s a letter for you on the kitchen table.’
So I staggered a bit faster and grabbed the letter before Mark saw it (big brothers give you no privacy at all about things like that), and opened it fast, just in case it was from…well, never mind about that now.
There was a card inside. It was a great, big, white one. I opened it up and there, in great gold letters, it said: ‘Will you be my Snow White? Thinking of you always…’
It wasn’t signed. But as I stood there staring, something floated to the floor.
It was big and thin and white and almost transparent. It looked a bit like a snowflake that someone had stuck in a flower press and forgotten about it until it was almost dried out.
It was the biggest flake of dandruff I’d ever seen in my life.
So I picked it up, carefully put it in the bin, then I washed my hands very, very thoroughly. And I haven’t even told Phredde about THAT yet, and if you breathe a word to her I’ll…I’ll…well, I’m not sure what I’ll do, but it’ll make the Snot Phaery’s crocodiles seem like little bunny rabbits, believe me.
And that was absolutely all that happened for ages, until Phredde and I decided we were bored with being attacked by giant squid or chased by ogres, and decided to…
But that’s another story.
It was an ordinary sort of lunchtime in the library—peaceful, with that rich smell of books all around. There was the
ping ping pong pang ping
of modems as kids checked their e-mails, and the occasional burp from the vampire books, and Miss Richards yelling, ‘Oh, no, you don’t! Take THAT!’ when they tried to bite her as she fed them bones for their lunch.
In fact, it was so peaceful that I was drifting off into a really cool daydream about me and Phredde and our pirate ship and this evil band of bad guys who were trying to steal the world’s fish, so I didn’t even notice the book I was holding until I was putting it back on the shelf.
‘Hey!’ I yelled to Phredde. ‘Have a look at this!’
Phredde fluttered over to me. ‘Shh,’ she ordered.
I looked guiltily over my shoulder, in case Miss Richards had noticed, but she was struggling with one of the vampire books, which was trying to gnaw her
arm for lunch instead of its bones, so she was too busy to frown at me for making a noise.
‘What’s up?’ asked Phredde softly, landing on my shoulder.
‘Look at this!’ I held the book up so she could see.
‘Animals of South America,’
read Phredde. ‘So what? I thought your dad wasn’t keen on South American things anymore.’
‘Yeah, but look at the cover!’ I insisted.
Phredde peered down from my shoulder. ‘It looks like a snake,’ she said.
‘Not just a snake!’ I yelled, then lowered my voice in case Miss Richards heard, but all I could see of her were her legs, which were kicking wildly at the bookshelf, so that was taken care of. I mean, I bet it’s hard to hear anything when your head and shoulders are being swallowed by a vampire book.
‘What is it then?’ demanded Phredde.
‘It’s a twenty-metre long, giant boa constrictor! It can swallow a whole horse in one gulp.’
‘Wow!’ said Phredde. We stared at each other.
‘That’s even better than piranhas,’ said Phredde at last. ‘It takes piranhas ten whole minutes to skeletonise a cow.’
I nodded. ‘How could Dad resist something like that?’ I demanded.
‘Yeah,’ said Phredde. ‘It’s pretty cool. But it’s not his birthday for ages, is it?’
‘Nup,’ I said. Then I brightened. ‘I could give him an un-birthday present! I mean, he’s a pretty good dad. He helps me with my homework and everything.’
Actually, Dad is hopeless at homework, especially maths. What did they teach kids back in the stone age
before they had videos and Space Invaders? Poor old Dad probably had a set of dinosaur teeth instead of a calculator. But at least he tries.
‘Could you magic up a boa constrictor for me?’ I asked.
‘Sure,’ said Phredde. Then her face fell. ‘I’ve run out of magic till Friday,’ she admitted.
I blinked. ‘How can you run out of magic?’
‘Well, you know those fifty spaceships full of aliens I PING!ed up on Tuesday afternoon?’
‘Yeah. So what?’ I asked. We’d had this really cool battle with them (Bruce was there too, you should just see what a phaery frog with a magic tongue can do to spaceships), but we had to finish it early to do our homework.
‘Well, it used up all of my magic allowance,’ said Phredde.
‘I didn’t know you had an allowance! I thought you had as much magic as you wanted!’
Phredde snorted. ‘Not till I’m seventeen. I mean, I’ve got enough left this week for normal things, like PING!ing up a seven-layer chocolate cake if I get a bit hungry or going invisible like I did this morning when I didn’t know the capital of Chile. But I don’t think I’ve got enough left for a twenty-metre long giant boa constrictor that can swallow a whole horse in one gulp.’
‘Bother,’ I said. I felt so low about it (Dad would have really loved that boa constrictor) that I hardly noticed when Miss Richards struggled out from between the book’s covers and gave it a vicious karate chop on its title page.
‘Of course we could always borrow a bit of magic from Bruce,’ said Phredde casually.
I brightened. ‘Really?’
‘Sure,’ said Phredde. ‘He hardly ever uses any of his. Except for being a frog of course.’
‘Fabuwonderlous!’ I yelled, but that time Miss Richards did hear me. She gave the book a final karate kick and whispered, ‘Shhh!’
Boy, Miss Richards really loves books. Most people would have thrown those books out but she’s had special handcuffs made for them and everything.
‘Sorry, Miss Richards!’ I whispered. Phredde and I tiptoed out, and went in search of Bruce.
Bruce was in his usual spot, having lunch next to the rubbish bin. Rubbish bins are great when you’re a frog. All Bruce has to do is sit there and go
zap
with his tongue every time a fly tries to land in the bin. I could see why he hardly ever used any magic. I mean, what more could a frog want?
‘Ribbit,’ said Bruce.
‘Don’t croak with your mouth full,’ said Phredde, fluttering down beside him.
‘Sorry,’ said Bruce. He eyed another fly that was hovering near my ear.
Zap!
‘Excuse me,’ said Bruce politely. ‘That was a particularly juicy one. What’s up?’
‘I just wondered if I could borrow some magic till Friday,’ said Phredde.
‘Sure,’ said Bruce, his gaze on another big-bummed fly. ‘How much?’
‘Just enough to magic up a twenty-metre long, giant boa constrictor that can swallow a whole horse in one gulp,’ said Phredde in an off-hand fashion.
‘Okay,’ said Bruce. He thought for a moment. ‘What do you want a twenty-metre long, giant boa constrictor that can swallow a whole horse in one gulp for?’
‘It’s a present for my dad,’ I explained.
‘Oh,’ said Bruce, his eyes back on the fly. Phredde kicked it away.
‘Hey, concentrate,’ she said. ‘You can go back to your flies in a minute.’
Bruce sighed. ‘Alright, alright,’ he said. ‘One twenty-metre long, giant boa constrictor that can swallow a whole horse in one gulp coming up. Do you want it here or back at your place?’ he asked me.
I wasn’t quite sure how I’d get a twenty-metre long, giant boa constrictor that could swallow a whole horse in one gulp home with me, so I said, ‘Back at the castle, please. And could you make it a big bright green one with yellow spots?’
‘Sure,’ said Bruce. ‘Where in the castle do you want it?’
I blinked. I hadn’t exactly thought about where Dad would keep a twenty-metre long, giant boa constrictor that could swallow a whole horse in one gulp. I don’t think his bedroom is twenty metres long, even with the en suite, and even if it was, having a twenty-metre, giant boa constrictor in there would make it a bit difficult to have a shower and get to the toilet and all that stuff.
Besides, we’d never get a whole horse in there to feed it.
‘Better put it in the Ballroom,’ I decided. That’s one of the good things about living in a castle. There’s plenty of room for your pets.
‘Okay,’ said Bruce. There was a faint PING! all around us.
‘Wow, thanks,’ I said.
‘Can I go back to my lunch now?’ asked Bruce, hopefully.
But then the volcano exploded and it was time to go back to class.
You know, it’s sort of embarrassing what happened next. I mean, I’d forgotten all about having a volleyball match that afternoon. (We won. Bruce is really good at volleyball—his tongue can zap the ball out of the air from five metres away. Having a giant frog on the team spooks the other side, too. Not to mention having Phredde on the team, too, of course.)
So it was really late by the time Phredde and I were headed home, and I suddenly remembered the boa constrictor.
‘Bother,’ I said. ‘I really wanted to see Dad’s face when he saw it.’
I’ll never forget Dad’s face when I gave him Dribbles. He went quite white with joy.
‘Isn’t it the most incredible present you’ve ever received, Dad?’ I’d asked and he’d said, sort of faintly, ‘A giant sloth. Yes…yes, Prudence, it’s the most incredible present yet.’
So you can see why I was looking forward to being there when he saw his boa constrictor. In fact, I was just about to ask Phredde if she’d mind zapping us back in time a bit, when I remembered she was short of magic till Friday.
‘It’ll probably be hungry,’ said Phredde practically. ‘What are you going to feed it?’
You know, I hadn’t thought of that—at least I hadn’t thought of it again once I’d realised that fitting a horse in the bathroom for it to swallow in one gulp
was not really possible. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘What do giant boa constrictors eat?’
‘Well, horses, I suppose,’ said Phredde.
‘Oh,’ I said. I hadn’t thought about where I’d get the horses to feed it. All I’d thought was that it was a really great present for Dad. I hadn’t considered the practicalities of boa constrictor ownership.
‘We don’t have any horses,’ I said slowly. ‘Well, only my unicorn. And I’m not feeding Tootsie to a twenty-metre, giant boa constrictor.’
‘Of course not,’ agreed Phredde. ‘Anyway, I bet boa constrictors eat all sorts of things.’
‘Like what?’ I was starting to get a bit nervous about having a hungry twenty-metre boa constrictor around the castle, to be honest.
‘Well, like…like…’ faltered Phredde. She shook her head. ‘We’ll just have to offer it all sorts of things and see what it prefers. Would you like me to come, too?’
‘Yes, please,’ I said. Somehow, the idea of a twenty-metre, giant boa constrictor didn’t seem quite as great as it did back in the library. I mean, it was still a supercool, splendimarvellously great present. But I was just starting to see that there might be one or two little problems.
‘Er, Phredde,’ I said.
‘Mmm?’ said Phredde, fluttering up above me and making a rude face at a butterfly.
‘How do twenty-metre, giant boa constrictors go to the toilet?’
‘Dunno,’ said Phredde. ‘Maybe we should have read the book.’
‘Yeah,’ I said.
I wondered how much kitty litter would be required by a twenty-metre, giant boa constrictor that could swallow a whole horse.
And it would have to be in a really big tray.
It was sort of quiet back at the castle, which was a relief. I’d kind of expected that maybe Dad would be in the courtyard bellowing: ‘Prudence! What’s this twenty-metre long, giant boa constrictor doing in our Ballroom?’
He may not even have realised that it was a present for him. He might have thought it was just one of my science projects or something.
Phredde and I dumped our schoolbags in front of the Great Hall and galloped up the steps. (Well, I galloped and Phredde flew.)
‘Hey, Mum!’ I yelled. ‘I’m home!’
No answer.
I peered into the Mostly Peach and Avocado Drawing Room, which is where Mum does her crosswords. The crosswords were there alright, sprawled out all over the desk, but there was no sign of Mum.
‘Let’s try the kitchens,’ I said. So we galloped (okay, galloped and flew) down to the first floor. ‘Hey Gark, what’s for dinner?’ I called.
No answer. And no Gark either. In fact, there wasn’t any sign of dinner, which was really serious because, what with playing volleyball, not to mention worrying just a tiny little bit about Dad’s reaction to the twenty-metre, giant boa constrictor, I was really hungry.
‘How about Mark?’ asked Phredde, hovering above me.
‘Probably doing his homework,’ I decided. ‘He’ll know where they all are.’ (Older brothers know
everything. Or, at least, they think they do. It really gets to me sometimes.)
So we galloped and flew up another four flights of stairs (Mum really needs to ask the Phaery Splendifera to put some lifts in our castle) to Mark’s bedroom in the tower.
‘Hey, Mark!’ I puffed, as we rounded the last flight of stairs. ‘Where’s everyone?’
I stopped. There was no sign of Mark, either.
‘He’s probably out with his mates,’ I said, a bit weakly. It wasn’t just a lack of food and too many stairs, either. I was starting to get just a little bit worried. ‘Let’s try to find Dad.’
I peered out of Mark’s tower window. Dad usually likes to go for a swim after work. But there was no sign of him, just the pirate ship and a couple of whales.
‘Let’s look downstairs,’ said Phredde.
There was no one in the Pink Drawing Room, the Yellow-Spotted Drawing Room, the Patchwork and Quilted Drawing Room (Mum had been going to Tech classes again), the dungeons, the Great Hall, the Not-So-Great Hall, the Really Small Hall behind the TV room, or in the TV room either.
No one was in the garden, the stables, the bedrooms or up on the battlements or down in the courtyard…
Which left just one place left to look.
‘The Ballroom,’ whispered Phredde.
I nodded.
We didn’t gallop at all this time. For one thing, we were puffed, and, for another, well, that little bit of worry had become a giant lead ball in my stomach. So, I trudged there and Phredde sat on my shoulder. I opened the Ballroom door and…
Phredde gulped. ‘It is big, isn’t it?’
‘Twenty metres long,’ I said dubiously. Actually it looked longer, but I wasn’t going to get my ruler out of my schoolbag and measure it.
‘It’s sort of…of bright…’ whispered Phredde.
‘Well, I did ask for green with yellow spots,’ I reminded her.
The boa constrictor lifted up its head and stared at us with its tiny eyes. Well, they were tiny when compared to the rest of it, anyway. Actually, each eye was about the size of a TV set, the head was about as big as our classroom and the rest of it…well, it wasn’t its length, so much. It was just big!
I mean, that boa constrictor had never heard of a diet!
‘Er, Phredde?’ I said.
‘Yes?’ whispered Phredde.
‘Do you think it looks hungry?’
‘I can’t tell,’ whispered Phredde. ‘How do you know when a boa constrictor’s hungry?’
‘When it looks at you like that one’s looking at us, I think,’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ said Phredde. She didn’t say anything else, just fluttered casually up to the furthest corner of the Ballroom ceiling. I could have told her that plucking a phaery from the ceiling would be a cinch for a twenty-metre boa constrictor.
Well, it was either stand there or run away, and someone had told me once that the best thing to do when faced with a snake is to stand still. So I did, because after all, if the boa constrictor really wanted to eat me, I figured that the Ballroom door would probably crack—just like the balsawood Mark used to make his model planes—if a hungry boa constrictor charged at it.