Frankie Fish and the Great Wall of Chaos

by Peter Helliar

  Frankie held his breath.

  ‘Alfie Fish is my friend,’ he heard Hui say finally. ‘He taught me English. He gave me his hook. Good luck to you.’

  And then there was the groan of metal as the gate was locked, followed by the sound of Drew’s hurried footsteps on the stone stairs.

  The other guards arrived at the gateway seconds later and howled in rage to find it sealed shut. In a wild fury they pulled at the iron bars, but it was no use. Their shouts reached down to the group waiting below, and Frankie grinned to himself. He was pretty sure that Drew would have given them the famous Drew Bird reply – sticking his tongue out at them – and he was right.

  A moment later, a flush-faced but triumphant Drew skidded into the cell like a Hollywood stuntman on red cordial. Heaving with adrenalin, he saw Grandad pacing the room and Nanna Fish cradling an unconscious Ping.

  ‘Quick, let’s go,’ Frankie shouted, locking the cell door behind his best friend. The Sonic Suitcase was nearly ready to go. It had exactly twenty-two per cent, but it was anyone’s guess whether that would be enough to hurl them all home.

  ‘But what about Ping?’ asked Drew, confused.

  ‘She’s coming with us,’ replied Nanna Fish. ‘She needs to get to a hospital!’

  ‘Isn’t that against your rules?’ Drew asked, doubtfully.

  ‘Yes,’ said Frankie. ‘But if we don’t break the rules, then Ping could DIE. It’s a risk we need to take.’

  ‘Lucky I eat risks for breakfast then!’ Drew declared, which made no sense whatsoever but since when did Drew worry about stuff like that?

  And then, back up the corridor, there was the distinct sound of keys turning in a metal gate.

  ‘Hurry!’ urged Frankie as Grandad typed the co-ordinates into the Sonic Suitcase.

  The guards trampled down the stairs to the Not-So-Secret Prison, and hustled around the cell doors. They were joined by an angry yet surprisingly refreshed-looking Not-Quite-Emperor, who was yelling like his team was losing an important football game. It seemed they were arguing about who had the key to the cell.

  ‘Typing the final co-ordinates now,’ muttered Grandad. ‘Stand by, everyone.’

  ‘Adios, my peeps.’ Drew winked at the infuriated guards, who were baying for blood and turning out their pockets for that key. It would have been a really cool last thing to say in a movie, except …

  ‘Wait!’ yelped Frankie. He lurched forward and grabbed Grandad’s (one remaining) hand.

  ‘What are ye doing, ye fool?’ Grandad shouted angrily.

  ‘Frankie love, we better get a wriggle on,’ Nanna said, doing a bad impersonation of someone trying to remain relaxed.

  ‘The twins!’ Frankie said aloud.

  ‘Twins? What twins?’ asked a very confused Grandad Fish.

  Frankie looked at Drew. ‘The ones who were banging on the door when we disappeared. They’re barking mad.’

  Mei Mei growled huffily.

  There was a jangle at the cell door. It seemed the guards had now found the right key and were moments away from putting an end to this brazen escape.

  ‘What do ye want me to do?’ Grandad spluttered in a panic.

  ‘Set the co-ordinates so we arrive thirty minutes later?’ Frankie said wildly.

  Grandad did some quick maths in his head, which wasn’t easy at his age.

  Ping, who was barely conscious, looked up at Frankie and asked faintly, ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To Jackiechanland,’ replied Frankie, trying to sound a whole lot calmer than he felt.

  ‘I knew it was real,’ murmured Ping, before falling back asleep.

  The jangle of the lock was followed by a click.

  ‘I really think it would be best if we left immediately,’ Nanna said, urgently yet politely.

  Mei Mei snarled at the guards, who were about to spill through the cell door.

  ‘Come on, Mr Fish,’ Drew begged.

  ‘Young people are always in a rush,’ Alfie grumbled, before adding, ‘happy travels.’

  And, just as the guards poured into their cell, the travellers vanished.

  Travelling forward in time is just like travelling back in time, except everything goes in reverse. So Michael Jackson was now moonwalking forwards while Muhammad Ali and Princess Diana, still in their chariots, were being pushed by those sharks. Weird, huh?

  Luckily, once our heroes arrived at their destination, they’d forgotten most of this. Instead, they all woke up to …

  Old newspaper, dust and wood shavings.

  The time-travellers were sprawled around the Forbidden Shed. Drew had landed on a set of shelves. Frankie was falling off the Charging Bench, with Nanna sitting nearby. Ping was in a box with Mei Mei on her head, while Grandad was on the floor with his backside in the air.

  Frankie sprang to his feet. As exhausted as he was, he couldn’t relax yet. Ping’s appendix could rupture at any moment. Peering nervously out the shed’s windows, Frankie was relieved that the big-haired Texan twins were nowhere to be seen. Behind him, Ping groaned in pain.

  ‘Quick! Call an ambulance!’ yelled Frankie.

  The words had barely left his mouth when the sound of a wailing siren filled the air. For one glorious moment, Frankie thought he’d somehow acquired the power to make things happen simply by saying them. A second later however, reality dawned.

  The siren wasn’t an ambulance. It was a police car. And it sounded like it was heading at top speed directly towards the Fish residence. Mei Mei began howling in terror. Her howls sounded different somehow – like a cat yowling – but at that moment Frankie hardly noticed.

  Frankie pelted down the driveway, but stopped short as he saw the front yard. A police car had screeched to a halt and the Texan twins – Carmel and Christine – were leaping from it, frantically pointing at Frankie.

  ‘There he is, that’s the thief!’ they shrieked.

  A policewoman jumped out of the car and marched towards Frankie, who was frozen in the driveway. Frankie had never been in trouble with the police before. Sure, he’d recently gotten on the wrong side of a Scottish magician and a Not-Quite-Emperor, but never the police. His mouth was as dry as the Sahara desert, and that was exactly where he wanted to be right now.

  ‘He swiped our bottle and locked himself in a shed!’ Christine shrieked.

  Then Carmel took over. ‘And he and his friend simply vanished into thin air. We demand to know what’s going on!’

  Just as Constable Dougal was about to interrogate Frankie, Nanna Fish came rushing up, followed by Grandad and Drew, who were carrying Ping between them.

  ‘Thank goodness you’re here,’ said Nanna to Constable Dougal. ‘This young lady needs to get to an emergency room immediately!’

  Constable Dougal could clearly see that Nanna Fish wasn’t lying. Ping looked like death warmed up.

  Constable Dougal swung into action. Finally, a proper situation to deal with! ‘Put her in my car,’ she ordered. ‘I’ll drive you to the hospital.’

  Ping raised her head and glanced in wonder at the police car with its flashing blue lights. ‘Is that a … dragon?’ she asked, faintly.

  ‘Sort of,’ said Frankie, worriedly. ‘But a good one.’

  ‘How about I drive?’ said Grandad hopefully.

  ‘No!’ replied both Nanna and Frankie at once.

  ‘You can stay home and put your feet up. Have a bite of the blueberry pancakes I made,’ suggested Nanna over her shoulder.

  At that, Drew’s belly rumbled loudly, sending Mei Mei into a fit of barking (which sounded, startlingly, like a cow mooing).

  Thankfully, Constable Dougal hadn’t noticed Mei Mei. She was already wrapping Ping in a silver blanket for warmth, and placing her gently into the back of the police car.

  ‘Come on, let’s go,’ she said briskly.

  ‘But what about us?’ screamed Christine, her hoop earrings swinging madly.

  ‘We need answers. We want this mystery solved!’ demanded Carmel.


  ‘There isn’t time for that now,’ snapped Constable Dougal, who was growing tired of the twins. They’d stunk out her patrol car with hairspray and she knew that the stench would be hard to get out. ‘This is a real emergency.’ And she marched around to the driver’s seat.

  Just as Frankie was climbing into the police car, he saw Grandad stomp over to the twins. Before he could say anything, Frankie heard the old man hiss at them:

  ‘Ladies, here’s the solution to yer mystery: we are time travellers.’

  Frankie felt himself go pale as the twins’ jaws simultaneously hit the ground. What the –

  ‘So our first hunch was right after all!’ breathed Carmel, wide-eyed.

  ‘Tell us everything!’ said Christine greedily, as though a delicious meal had been laid before her.

  Is Grandad going to give it all away? thought Frankie anxiously.

  But to his surprise, Grandad pulled himself up to his full height and gave them a fierce glare. ‘NO. I will tell ye not a single thing more. Ye know the truth now and that should be enough. And let me warn ye,’ he added menacingly in his impressive Scottish drawl, waving his right-arm stump (which was currently hookless), ‘if you repeat ANY of this to a SINGLE SOUL, I will deposit ye smack in the middle of the Colosseum, surrounded by bloodthirsty Romans and hungry lions. Now GET OFF MY LAWN. We’ve got a life to save!’

  The twins stared at him, completely gobsmacked and – blessedly – silent for once.

  Frankie smirked over the patrol car door. ‘Coming, Drew?’

  ‘I guess we don’t all have to go to the hospital,’ Drew replied. ‘I’ll stay here and help with your pancakes, I mean your grandad.’

  ‘Sure thing,’ grinned Frankie, trying to keep the worry out of his voice. ‘I’m sure Ping will be just fine.’

  Then he buckled up just moments before the car screeched out of the Fish driveway – leaving the Texan twins standing awkwardly on the lawn like over-sized garden ornaments.

  Constable Dougal would have impressed even former racing-car champion Alfie Fish with the way she skillfully navigated her way to the Children’s Hospital.

  Ping was rushed straight into emergency surgery while Frankie and Nanna waited in the rather appropriately named Waiting Room, although Frankie thought that a better name would have been the Worry Room. Nanna bought Frankie a hot chocolate, which Frankie barely touched.

  ‘What if we’re too late?’ he asked anxiously. ‘What if Ping’s appendix has already burst? And what if someone figures out that she’s from the seventeenth century? I mean, she doesn’t even have a Medicare card!’

  ‘She’s going to be fine, Frankie,’ Nanna assured him. ‘But we do need work out what will happen to her when she recovers.’

  ‘Maybe she can stay in our time?’ suggested Frankie.

  ‘That would be nice,’ agreed Nanna, but she didn’t look so sure. ‘She is such a sweet girl.’

  After a long, difficult wait, one of the nurses finally came out of the operating theatre. She approached them, smiling broadly, and Frankie leapt to his feet. ‘Is it over? Is she OK?’

  The nurse nodded. ‘The surgery went very smoothly. She should wake up soon.’

  Frankie couldn’t help himself, and neither could Nanna. They both cheered loudly, and then Nanna wrapped Frankie up in a huge hug.

  Nanna, who had worked at this very hospital herself once upon a time, managed to convince the staff to allow Ping to be cared for at home. ‘Our exchange student has some very unusual allergies,’ Nanna told them firmly. ‘I’ll see to her recovery myself.’

  Frankie and Grandad set up the spare room for Ping, removing anything that might lead her to guess she was no longer in 1642. They hung white sheets over the walls to hide the wallpaper and power plugs, so that it looked like a strange little ghost room. Her necklace had been removed for the operation, but Frankie lay it on the chair next to her so she could put it back on the moment she woke.

  ‘Where am I?’ Ping asked blearily, when she was finally well enough to sit up.

  ‘You’re in Jackiechanland,’ smiled Frankie. ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘My pain is gone,’ Ping grinned weakly. ‘I am very tired but much better.’

  She certainly looked much better, although she did sleep an awful lot. She spent much of that day, and the next few days, resting calmly while Nanna kept a close eye on her. But the same couldn’t be said of Mei Mei, whose behaviour was increasingly strange. Sometimes she clucked like a chicken and pecked at the ground. Other times she galloped around, whinnying.

  ‘I think the time-travel has disrupted her DNA,’ said Grandad, frowning, when he spotted Mei Mei waddling around the kitchen one morning, quacking like a duck.

  Frankie knew dogs shouldn’t eat chocolate or chew cooked bones. It seemed like time-travel wasn’t good for them either.

  Nanna had insisted that Mei Mei stay out of Ping’s room to prevent infection, but Frankie was allowed to visit her after school each day. (His parents thought he was just being a good grandson, which he definitely played up.) Drew was allowed to come too, although at first he was worried about getting in trouble after being away for nearly a week in olden-days China without his parents’ permission. Luckily, thanks to the marvels of time-travel, in actual fact he’d only been away for half an hour.

  After a week and a bit had gone by, Frankie and Drew came by to find Mei Mei lying on Ping’s bed, licking her cheek like it was the last lollipop on earth and squawking gently. Ping looked much better, but she had a serious look on her face.

  ‘It’s time for me and Mei Mei to go back,’ she said.

  Frankie dropped his schoolbag on the ground. ‘But you could stay here!’ he exclaimed. He’d already imagined depositing Saint Lou in some other century so that Ping could take over her role as his sister.

  ‘Yeah, I was going to teach you all the French I know!’ said Drew (which would take approximately forty-seven seconds).

  Ping shook her head firmly. ‘Jackiechanland is not good for Mei Mei.’ As if to prove this, Mei Mei began hopping around the bed, croaking like a frog.

  Frankie sighed. He knew in his gut that Ping should probably return to her right time. But they couldn’t just leave her where they’d found her, completely alone and hungry.

  ‘Don’t worry about me, Frankie Fish,’ said Ping, as if reading his thoughts. ‘I am from a family of travellers, remember?’ She held up her necklace with the bird carved into it. ‘Travellers are brave and tough. Like you and Drew are.’

  As Frankie stared at the necklace, an idea came to him. ‘I’ll be right back,’ he said to Ping, and then dragged Drew off to Grandad’s computer to do some research.

  Ping was dozing, with Mei Mei snorting like a pig beside her, when Frankie and Drew returned to her room. She opened her eyes and looked at them hopefully, and then looked at the Sonic Suitcase in Frankie’s hand.

  ‘Is it time to go?’ she asked.

  Frankie nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said gently. ‘But to get there, you must close your eyes and hold onto this suitcase. Do you trust me?’

  Ping nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said, holding Mei Mei close. ‘I trust you, Frankie Fish.’

  Dried grass, ox poop and chimney smoke. These were the things Ping could smell when she woke up in a rice paddy in seventeenth-century China. As she got to her feet, stretched her limbs and attempted to get her bearings, she spotted Frankie Fish and Drew Bird walking towards her. The boys appeared to have walked from a small, picturesque farmhouse that sat on thick stumps. Smoke billowed out of the chimney, which appeared to have a clay serpent wrapped around it. With the sun setting and the smoke drifting towards it, the scene looked like a picture from a tourist brochure.

  ‘Where am I? What just happened? How did we get here?’ asked a confused Ping.

  ‘You’re home,’ Frankie said gently.

  ‘But I don’t have a home,’ said Ping. ‘I have no relatives, remember?’

  ‘Well, we think you do,’ grinned Drew. ‘That bi
rd on your necklace – we looked it up on … uh … in a magical book we call the Google Book. Turns out that that symbol is connected with one small group of people in China, and we found out where they are from … um … another page in the Google Book.’

  Ping was clearly about to ask a whole bunch of questions that would have been very hard to answer, but luckily at that moment the farmhouse door opened and a kind-looking woman came out. She bore a striking resemblance to Ping, and around her neck was a very familiar green necklace.

  Ping stared at the woman for a moment, as though she recognised her. Then she stood up and started walking, a little uncertainly. In return, the woman gave a cry and embraced her tightly, speaking rapidly between sobs. A few moments later, she released Ping and touched the bird design on Ping’s necklace before lifting up her own identical stone.

  Ping turned her head towards Frankie and Drew, a look of amazement and joy on her face.

  ‘She’s my aunty,’ she croaked. ‘She says she and my uncle knew I’d come here one day. They’ve been waiting for me ever since my parents travelled to Beijing and never came back.’

  Suddenly Ping broke away from her aunty and flung her arms around Frankie and Drew. ‘Thank you for everything, strange boys.’

  Frankie and Drew hugged her right back. When he spoke, Frankie found that his voice had gone strangely husky. (Puberty is a real jerk sometimes, huh?)

  ‘Thank you, Ping,’ he said. ‘We couldn’t have found them without you.’

  ‘How far away is Jackiechanland?’ asked Ping.

  ‘It’s quite a distance,’ Drew admitted.

  Ping nodded, as if she’d been expecting this. ‘Well, we are travellers. Maybe we’ll meet again somewhere.’

  ‘Or somewhen,’ said Frankie, which made no sense, but he was both nervous and sad and his brain was not helping.

  Drew dug something out of his backpack and handed it to Ping. It was the old glass bottle – the very same one that had started their whole adventure.

  ‘Something to remember us by,’ explained Drew.