The Phredde Collection

by Jackie French

  ‘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.’

  Chapter 4

  Pru Tries to Work it Out

  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.

  Chapter 5

  Phredde Experiments

  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.’

  Chapter 6

  The Strange Mr Ploppy Bottom

  We sat in Phredde’s favourite tree—the one looking over the hippo swamp3—and tried to work it out.

  ‘It’s not a phaery,’ said Phredde. ‘Because phaeries all PING!, they don’t FLOINGGGGGGGGGGG!’

  ‘Can’t you just get your Dictionary of Magick Sounds and look up who goes FLOINGGGGGGGGGGG!?’ I suggested.

  ‘Well, I could,’ said Phredde. ‘Except there isn’t a Dictionary of Magick Sounds.’

  ‘Well, someone needs to write one,’ I said grumpily. ‘But who else could magic me to safety except a phaery?’

  Phredde looked at me patiently. ‘Lots of other people are magic,’ she reminded me. ‘Witches, wizards…Have you done any wizards a favour lately?’

  I tried to think. I’d brought Mrs Parsnip’s cat back the week before. But if Mrs Parsnip was a wizard, I’d eat her cat. ‘Nope,’ I said at last.

  ‘Trolls?’ added Phredde thoughtfully. ‘Nope, they can only work magic on bridges and you weren’t on a bridge. How about a banshee? Or a leprechaun? Or an elf? Met any of those lately?’

  ‘Nope, nope and nope.’

  ‘A pooka? Kobold? Brownie?’

  ‘I don’t even know what any of those ARE!’ I wailed.

  Phredde sighed. ‘Then how do you know if you’ve been nice to one?’

  ‘The only things I’ve been nice to lately are my piranhas. I fed them Mark’s leftover dinosaur bones. Hey, did you know a piranha can skeletonise a cow in ten minutes? Can you have magic piranha fish?’

  ‘You’ve already told me,’ said Phredde a bit shortly. ‘No, I’ve never heard of magic piranha fish.’

  The hippopotamus began to holler then. (We used to have a volcano to call us into school, but there was a bit of an accident4.) So we straggled—well, I straggled and Phredde flapped—over to school assembly.

  Everyone had that ho-hum, back-to-school look. You know, clean trackkie daks and dirty looks. Amelia had a new diamanté scrunchie and her usual smug smile, and Edwin looked like he’d spent the whole holidays watching Dumb and Dumber 1,786 times and…and I wasn’t looking for Bruce. I WASN’T. But you can’t miss a one-and-a-half metre high frog at school assembly. Except I did miss him, because he wasn’t there.

  Not that I cared. Absolutely no way. Not at all. It’s fun waiting for school to begin every day, I told myself firmly, so I wouldn’t think of Br…things beginning with B. Instead, I wondered if a mysterious tunnel would open in the oval again. Or would a dragon attack the library? Perhaps a hideous zombie librarian would try to kidnap us this time.

  Mum is right when she says school gives you all sorts of challenges that turn you into the adult you’re going to be. I’d never have even thought about how to stop a dinosaur’s diarrhoea if I hadn’t gone to school5.

  Phredde and I lined up with the others. Or should I say I lined up and Phredde hovered, because when you’re only 30 centimetres tall, people tread on you. And you know what happens to your kneecaps if you tread on Phredde. So for everyone’s sake Phredde keeps her head more or less level with ours. Well, higher, mostly, so she gets a better view.

  There was Miss Richards, all fit and tanned looking, and Mrs Olsen in her big hat and sunglasses standing in the shade, as vampires don’t like sunlight, and there was…

  I stared. Phredde stared too. Because out the front where Mrs Allen should have been standing was a totally strange guy!

  He wasn’t that strange—no rotting zombie flesh and no tentacles waving about his head. He just wasn’t Mrs Allen.

  I knew Mrs Allen had threatened to resign as headmistress after the school volcano exploded last term. And then there was all that fuss about Phredde’s dragon. But we didn’t really think she would. How could Mrs Allen possibly want to work at a boring old school instead of ours?

  The strange—well, normal but unknown—guy beamed at us. It was one of those Hello, kiddies. I’m your friend! beams that makes you want to puke. In fact, one of the kindergarteners did throw up, but that was just the banana smoothie he’d drunk before he got on the school bus that didn’t agree with him. (I know, because he
throws up every single Monday. You’d think some kids would learn, wouldn’t you?)

  The guy’s smile wavered a bit at the sight of the sick. And the smell. A banana smoothie is about the worst sick, smell-wise, you can get. Trust me, I get car sick—and magic carpet sick, and bus sick, and flying butterfly and dragon sick—so I know what I’m talking about. Then he clasped his hands in front of him in that fake, grown-up kind of way and said, ‘Hello, everyone. My name is Mr Ploppy Bottom.’

  You could have heard a nit jump from one kindy kid’s head to another. It was one of those Hey, if we laugh are we going to get detention for ten years? silences. Plus, no one could really believe what they had just heard.

  Ploppy Bottom? Some guy actually became a teacher with a name like Ploppy Bottom? And a replacement head teacher at that?

  I put up my hand. ‘Er, sir?’

  Mr Ploppy Bottom upped the wattage. That beam could have lit the library. ‘And what is your name, little girl?’

  LITTLE GIRL! Okay, I’ll admit, I’m a girl. And I wasn’t as tall as him. But as Phredde can tell you, it’s not size that matters. It’s how hard you can kick those kneecaps.

  But he was our new headmaster, so kneecaps weren’t an option. ‘I’m Prudence, sir,’ I said politely.

  ‘And what would you like to know, Prudence?’ The beam was so wide I could’ve counted every one of his teeth if I wanted to. Except I didn’t. They were mossy looking, like Mark’s feet that time he refused to wash them for three months. ‘You can ask me anything!’

  ‘Er…how do you spell your name, sir?’

  ‘P-L-O-T-H-I-E-B-O-T-H-A-M,’ spelt out Mr Ploppy, I mean Plothiebotham. ‘I will be replacing Mrs Allen while she is on holiday. In fact, you never know,’ Mr Ploppy Bottom flashed another smile, ‘maybe I’ll be here permanently!’ Then he paused and looked around the assembly. I could’ve sworn he was waiting for us all to clap our hands and trill6, Goody, goody!. I mean some adults have no idea.

  ‘Now I’d just like to say…’ he went on.