Phredde and the Purple Pyramid

by Jackie French

  ‘But not a king!’ argued Bruce. ‘It’s just weird.’

  ‘Some of us,’ I informed him coolly, ‘think good food is more than zotting a few bugs out of the air with your tongue!’

  ‘Huh!’ said Bruce. ‘You took one look at his muscles and that smarmy smile and decided …’

  ‘Come on,’ I interrupted, even more frigidly, ‘let’s see the next prince.’

  ‘I bet he’ll be Mr Smarm too,’ muttered Bruce, hopping indignantly onto a lily leaf, then off again. ‘Smarming up at you with all that smarmy talk about sunsets, and pizzas and …’

  I shut my ears, or tried to, anyway. Ears need to come with earflaps so you can shut out things like frog sex lessons and dumb boys who are too dopey to say something nice, like a girl looks like a sunset or a sunrise or whatever.

  We followed Sennufer through more gardens, down more colonnades, and finally Bruce stopped muttering about smarmy princes and Phredde and I were able to get a word in.

  ‘I wonder what Prince Narmer will look like,’ said Phredde, fluttering above my left shoulder. ‘I hope he’s as gorgeous as Prince Methen.’

  ‘Huh,’ snorted Bruce.

  ‘No one could be as gorgeous as Prince Methen,’ I said.

  ‘Huh,’ sniffed Bruce again.

  ‘I bet he’ll be tall and have brown eyes and dark hair,’ said Phredde, doing a sort of dreamy backstroke in the air, ‘and …’

  ‘Everyone around here has brown eyes and black hair,’ said Bruce rudely. ‘Except if their hair’s gone grey,’ he added. ‘I bet Narmer is a scribe. They were the Ancient Egyptian writers,’ he explained. ‘I bet he’s going to be really brainy and wear glasses — no, they don’t wear glasses here, do they? Well, tall and skinny, anyway, and really intelligent and really interested in important things like frogs and …’

  ‘I bet he looks just like a football player!’ argued Phredde. ‘And goes on hippopotamus hunts and …’

  ‘Who is right, Sennufer?’ I asked.

  ‘It is not for me to describe His Royal Highness,’ said Sennufer expressionlessly. ‘The Wondrous Heroine will have to make up her own mind.’

  I stared at him. Was he hiding a small grin?

  ‘We’re here, Oh Wondrous Pru,’ said Sennufer, stopping at a giant pair of wooden doors set in the mud-brick wall. A pair of guards bowed, then stood up and blinked at us uncertainly.

  ‘Let us enter!’ demanded Sennufer. ‘For this is the Wondrous Pru, Heroine from Afar, come to choose our king.’

  ‘Not to mention the Wondrous Phredde,’ added Phredde.

  ‘And me,’ said Bruce. ‘The Wondrous Frog.’

  ‘Um,’ said one of the guards.

  ‘It’s not really convenient,’ muttered the other one.

  ‘His Highness is a bit … a bit tied up at the moment,’ explained the first guard.

  ‘Silence!’ thundered Sennufer. ‘Open the doors for The Wondrous One!’

  The guards opened the doors.

  Well, Mum says my room is a mess! You could hardly see the floor in Narmer’s room for all the rubbish — animals preserved in bottles and models of villages and buckets suspended from weird constructions … and there hanging from ropes in the middle of the ceiling was Prince Narmer.

  Like the guards had said, he was a bit tied up.

  ‘You were wrong,’ I said to Bruce.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, staring.

  ‘You were wrong too,’ I said to Phredde. She nodded.

  ‘But no one told us that …’ she stopped.

  ‘That Prince Narmer was a little kid?’ I asked.

  Phredde nodded. ‘A grubby little kid,’ she added. ‘In fact he looks sort of …’

  ‘Dumb,’ put in Bruce.

  Phredde nodded, her eyes still on the kid up near the ceiling.

  I peered up at Prince Narmer. He looked to be a few years younger than we were — I mean really immature. ‘Hi, I’m Prue,’ I said. (All that hail wondrous stuff just didn’t seem appropriate here.) ‘Can we give you a hand to get down?’

  Prince Narmer peered down at us. ‘Er, yes please,’ he said vaguely. ‘I’m a bit tangled.’

  ‘You sure are,’ I said. ‘What are you doing in that net, anyway?’

  ‘I was trying to invent a new fishing net. I think I can get it to work,’ he added hopefully.

  ‘Well, it caught you anyway. PING! him down will you, Phredde?’

  PING! Prince Narmer and the net fell, stopping a few millimetres above the floor and floating gently the rest of the way.

  Prince Narmer blinked. ‘How did you do that?’ he breathed. He began untangling his arms from the net.

  ‘It was nothing,’ said Phredde airily.

  I inspected Prince Narmer — all I could see in the net, anyway.

  He looked okay. Not king-like or anything like that. Just okay. His black hair needed brushing and someone had stuck a false beard on his chin — a beard that looked like he’d borrowed it from a goat and the goat had decided it didn’t want it back. And there were fruit-juice stains on his robe and if he had any jewellery he’d forgotten to put it on and his feet were grubby, like no one had bothered to tell him to have a bath for months.

  But apart from that he was okay. Just like any of the little kids at school, except grubbier, and this one was a prince of Ancient Egypt.

  ‘Well, thankyou anyway,’ said Prince Narmer, working on a tough bit of net around his knees. ‘Can I offer you some rotten goat’s milk?’ he brightened. ‘Try a bit!’ he gestured to a plate of white stuff on one of the cluttered tables. ‘I invented it!’

  I sniffed it suspiciously. ‘It looks like cheese.’

  Prince Narmer frowned. ‘Cheese? I don’t know that word. I added pomegranate juice to the milk to make it more acidic and give it flavour, then when it went all lumpy and rotten I strained out the moisture and hung it up and let it go even more rotten and get hard and …’

  I stared at the stuff on the plate. ‘Yeah, it’s cheese.’

  His face fell. ‘You already know it?’

  ‘Yeah, but we’re from er, afar,’ I said comfortingly. ‘I don’t suppose anyone else around here knows about cheese. Do you like inventing things?’

  Prince Narmer looked surprised. ‘Of course.’ He nodded enthusiastically at a pile of poles in one corner. ‘That’s my new fishing harpoon. It’s double headed, so you can spear two fish at once. It doesn’t quite work yet, but I’m sure I know what I’m doing wrong. And those are plans for …’

  ‘What about governing the country?’ demanded Phredde. ‘Are you any good at that?’

  Prince Narmer blinked again. ‘The country?’

  ‘Yeah, you know. King stuff. Ruling and all that.’

  ‘Well, I’ve never done any ruling,’ he admitted cautiously. He thought for a second, then glanced around as though to see if anyone besides us was listening. ‘But I’d still like to be king,’ he whispered.

  ‘But why should I choose you to be king if you’ve never done any king stuff before?’ I wanted to know. ‘Anyway, you’re still a kid!’

  Prince Narmer edged closer. ‘Well, you see …’ he began.

  ‘What is the meaning of this? How dare you see my horrid little brother before you come to me?’

  Everyone looked around. Sennufer and the guards flung themselves down and bowed frantically.

  ‘Oh, hi, Nut,’ said Prince Narmer offhandedly, untangling his feet from the last bit of fishing net. ‘Would you like some rotten goat’s milk? It’s called …’ he frowned like he was trying to remember. ‘What did you say it was again?’ he asked me.

  ‘Cheese,’ I said.

  ‘Cheese,’ said Prince Narmer.

  The princess glowered at him. (I’d never really understood what ‘glowered’ meant before. It’s sort of glowed and angry put together. I mean she was so furious she shone!)

  ‘No, I wouldn’t like any rotten goat’s milk, slug brain!’ She glanced over at me and Phredde and Bruce. ‘To your knees, worm
s,’ she said to us.

  ‘No,’ I declared. I looked her up and down, then to my fury saw that Bruce was looking her up and down too, much more carefully than I was!

  Well, she was okay looking. Take the most gorgeous movie star you’ve ever seen and give her long black hair and smooth brown skin and flashing eyes and a figure that … well, you’d be close. Her wrists were covered in gold bangles and so were her ankles and her feet shone in gold sandals. The lead on her crocodile looked like it was gold covered, too.

  Oh, did I mention the crocodile? It was big. And it looked hungry. It had a golden collar around its neck which the lead was attached to. The princess was holding the other end.

  ‘Shan’t bow down either,’ said Phredde, hovering above her. ‘Hey, that’s not the crocodile that ate the king, is it?’

  ‘Certainly not, you pile of elephant doings,’ said Princess Nut. ‘It was his brother. Even a pile of elephant droppings should be able to tell one crocodile from another!’

  ‘Burp,’ said the crocodile, looking at me as though he was dreaming of Prudence steaks.

  ‘It’s just a coincidence,’ said the princess, fixing me with a steely stare, ‘that the king was eaten by a crocodile the day after he refused to make me his heir. But then,’ she bent down (showing far too much, um, bosom) and patted the crocodile, ‘my little crocodile friends love me so much! Of course they get angry if someone does something nasty to me.’

  ‘Of course they do,’ agreed Bruce. His tongue was hanging right out and it wasn’t because he was about to zot a fly!

  ‘What other little friends do you have?’ I demanded.

  ‘A darling little nest of poisonous snakes,’ Princess Nut said sweetly. ‘They’d do anything for me. And a python — the sort that likes squeezing people till their bones break and are all soft and squishy, if people upset me. And the sweetest little hungry lion …’

  ‘Hey, your lion isn’t called Fluffy, is she?’ I demanded.

  ‘Fluffy?’ She gave a tinkling laugh. ‘What a stupid name for a lion. No, he’s called Fang. That’s because he’s got …’

  ‘I can guess,’ I said sourly. ‘You don’t know anyone at all named Fluffy, then?’

  ‘Of course not,’ snorted Princess Nut. ‘What a stupid name, anyway. Fluffy!’

  ‘Do you know a Fluffy?’ I asked Prince Narmer.

  He hesitated. It was almost as though he was listening to something, I thought suddenly. Something on his shoulder. I stared. But there was nothing there.

  ‘No,’ said Narmer, looking uncomfortable. ‘I don’t know anyone called Fluffy!’

  ‘Fluffy. Queen of the Nile,’ I added, just to make sure.

  Princess Nut laughed. It was a pretty nasty laugh, and it showed she had lots of sharp white teeth. ‘I am going to be Queen of the Nile, you nasty little drop of dung beetle vomit. If anyone else is going round calling themselves Queen of the Nile, I’m going to be seriously displeased.’

  I wrinkled my nose. ‘Dung beetle vomit’ made a change from ‘Oh Wondrous One,’ but I didn’t like it much. ‘Look, Princess Nutty Face,’ I informed her, ‘you do know that I’m the Wondrous Heroine who is going to choose the next king or queen, don’t you?’

  Princess Nut laughed again. It wasn’t a nice laugh this time either. ‘Just make sure you choose the right king or queen.’ She patted the crocodile’s horny head. It gazed up at her adoringly. ‘My little friends might get angry if you made Prince Methen king!’

  I glanced at Prince Narmer. He’d finally got the last of the net off and was tasting the goat cheese and looking thoughtful. ‘What about him?’

  ‘Narmer?’ She gave another tinkling laugh. ‘Who’d dream of making that brat king? Now I must go and feed my darling pythons. They get so upset if they’re not fed regularly. Why, who knows who they might swallow? Bye bye now!’

  Chapter 14

  Bruce is Tactless

  ‘I vote for Prince Methen,’ announced Phredde. We were back in my room lolling on the cushions and eating grilled fish, and boiled goose studded with figs, and lentils with herbs, and bowls of salad, and some sort of baked potato things, except they were about the size of peanuts and purple, which is my favourite colour,12 and stuffed dates, and some of Prince Methen’s roast hippopotamus.

  Okay, it wasn’t pizza, but it was pretty good, especially the roast hippopotamus. Even Bruce ate some, though the servants had brought him a dish of dead flies and some crispy fried grasshoppers.

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed, taking another slice of hippopotamus and chewing it thoughtfully. ‘I suppose it has to be Prince Methen.’

  ‘What?’ Bruce almost choked on his dead fly. ‘What about Princess Nut?’

  ‘Her! She threatened to have us eaten by crocodiles!’

  ‘Or bitten by deadly snakes or swallowed by pythons,’ added Phredde angrily.

  ‘She was just joking!’ declared Bruce firmly. ‘Don’t you girls have any sense of humour?’

  ‘Joking? That crocodile was looking at me like I was afternoon tea!’

  ‘I think Nut’d make a great queen,’ said Bruce dreamily. ‘She’s got style. Did you see the way she was wearing that white thing?’

  ‘Yeah, she was busting out of it,’ I muttered.

  ‘I mean you look good in your tracksuit, too,’ said Bruce hurriedly. ‘Even all baggy at the knees and with your T-shirt stained down the front, you still look great.’

  ‘It’s not stained …’ I began, then looked down. Okay, so I’d dribbled a bit of hippopotamus gravy down my front. Big deal. I bet I looked as good as …

  No I didn’t, I thought gloomily. I’d never look as good as Princess Nut, even when I was older and started getting, you know, bigger thingummies.

  ‘Er, Pru,’ said Bruce hesitantly. He must have noticed my expression. Boys! I thought angrily.

  ‘Yeah?’ I muttered.

  ‘Er, I didn’t mean …’

  ‘Have some more grasshoppers,’ I said sourly. ‘We need to get this king thing settled. Then we can go see some pyramids and buy some postcards and go home.’

  ‘I don’t think postcards have been invented yet,’ said Phredde.

  ‘Then PING! some up! Anyway, I’m going to bed.’ I snuggled down on my cushions.

  ‘Okay,’ said Phredde. ‘I’ll take that bed over there.’

  ‘I’ll take the bed by the door,’ said Bruce.

  ‘Oh, no you don’t, Buster,’ I said.

  Bruce stared at me with his froggy eyes. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Phredde and I aren’t sharing a room with a boy, that’s what’s wrong!’

  ‘Well, there’s no need to snap at me!’ said Bruce, hurt. ‘I’ll go out and sleep on the lilypads in the garden next door. I like lilypads! See you in the morning!’

  And with that he was gone.

  The servants came in after that, with lots of bowing, and took away the leftover fish, though they left the bread and hippotomous just in case we felt like a snack later.

  Phredde and I washed in the courtyard pool, so it was a good job Bruce had gone out to the main courtyard, because there wasn’t a shower curtain.

  Then we used the golden chamberpots (luckily I was used to chamberpots from my last visit to Phaeryland13) because I’m used to my, er, end products washing away neatly, not just sitting there where you can see them and smell them.

  Anyway, the servants took those away too (I am so glad I’m not a palace servant) and Phredde PING!ed us some pyjamas because the Ancient Egyptians hadn’t heard of pyjamas. Then more servants drew these big curtains between our beds, so it was like Phredde and I were in separate rooms — so Bruce could have stayed after all as long as he’d promised not to peek while we were washing. But I was glad he was gone because I was still really angry with him.

  Really, really angry.

  Sort of, anyway.

  Actually it was pretty lonely in the curtained space by myself. At least in our last adventure we’d all shared the hut together and it had been
like a sleepover, except for the dinosaurs and spotty lions and giant kangaroos.14

  Maybe it was the roast hippopotamus with grain and herb stuffing, but I couldn’t get to sleep.

  I tried lying on my back, then my side, then my tummy. But thoughts kept on bubbling up in my brain and they wouldn’t give me any rest.

  What if I chose the wrong king or queen? It had seemed easy enough in daylight — just say, ‘Hey, you! Congratulations, here’s your crown,’ and buzz off again.

  But what if I chose the wrong one? Prince Methen looked like a king, but much as I hated to say it, Bruce was right. There was something just a little weird about Prince Methen liking cooking so much.

  What would happen when the Marsh Dwellers attacked! Could Prince Methen defend the city with a stuffed hippopotamus?

  Maybe Queen Nut would be better. She was certainly nasty enough to drive off any invaders. But we couldn’t make Princess Nutty Face queen, I thought dismally. She’d feed anyone she didn’t like to the crocodiles!

  Of course she was probably doing that anyway, but she’d be able to order lots more crocodile tucker if she were queen!

  And King Narmer? That grubby little kid probably wouldn’t even notice he was king! He’d be too busy inventing shoelaces or playing with his fishing nets, and the Marsh Dwellers would swarm all over the city and make everyone slaves. And, anyway, he was just a kid who didn’t even wash his feet and …

  And it’d be all my fault if everything went wrong, I thought desperately. And I had no idea at all what to do next!

  ‘Miaow,’ said something next to me. I opened my eyes and stared.

  Chapter 15

  Fluffy, Queen of the Nile

  ‘Who are you?’ I stammered.

  There was a sigh in the dimness. ‘Three guesses, kid. The ghost of the hippopotamus you had for dinner? I don’t think so. Baba, the Dancing Baboon? No, guess again. Or maybe I’m …’

  ‘Fluffy, Queen of the Nile?’ I sat up and stared at her.

  ‘Finally. Give the kid a banana.’ Fluffy peered at me short-sightedly and waved her furry tail. ‘Funny, I thought you’d be brighter than that. You just can’t get decent heroines anymore.’