The Phredde Collection

by Jackie French

  There was a little crazy-paving path too, all cute and crooked, leading up to the front door, which was painted green with a big brass knocker on it. The door was ajar and I could just see the neat little kitchen beyond it, the chocolate and coconut walls, and bright yellow table and chairs—not made out of any food at all that I could tell, unless they were made of solid custard (yuk!)—and a yellow kettle on the stove.

  It all looked sweet and innocent, and suddenly I was sure that whatever Phredde and Bruce were keeping from me, it had nothing to do with this dear little old lady and her sweet little cottage, which meant I’d better get back to them before they realised I was gone and, anyway, it sounded like it was going to rain.

  I turned round just as the thunder roared again. ‘Er, look, I just remembered,’ I said. ‘I’m meant to meet my friends in a few minutes, and…’

  The sweet little old lady’s face fell. ‘Oh, dearie dear. Won’t you just have a teeny tiny nibble? Just a little itsy bitsy nibble?’

  ‘Well…’ I said. After all, she was a sweet little old lady. She was probably really lonely, and it wouldn’t take very long to just take a nibble of her kitchen walls, would it? Just a tiny little nibble…

  ‘Okay,’ I said. I stood back politely to let her past. ‘After you.’

  ‘Oh, no, dearie,’ she insisted. ‘You go first.’

  ‘Alright,’ I said. I pushed the door further open and stepped into the sweet yellow kitchen, and…

  BANG! The door slammed behind me. BOOOOOMMMMMMMM! The thunder growled so loudly this time it rattled the jug on the stove.

  ‘Hey, what the…’ I began. I turned round and tried the door.

  It didn’t open.

  ‘Heh, heh, heh, heh! Got you!’ shrieked the little old lady jubilantly from somewhere out in the garden. Suddenly she didn’t sound sweet at all. The thunder gave a little snicker too.

  ‘Let me out!’ I screamed.

  No answer, unless you counted another evil chuckle, plus more thunder.

  ‘Look, I’m just a harmless kid! There’s no need to lock me up!’

  Another evil chuckle, but this one was even chucklier, as though I had said something really funny. ‘I like human children!’ cried the sweet little old lady.

  ‘Then let me out!’ I screamed.

  ‘I like them fried…or casseroled…or roasted, especially when they’re nice and tender…’

  It was about then I realised that this was no nice little old lady. In fact, I was in real trouble…

  ‘My friends will come looking for me soon!’ I threatened.

  ‘Will they, dearie?’ said the little old lady’s voice, sounding quite different now. ‘I don’t think they’ll recognise you. Not if you’ve been turned into spaghetti sauce with human meatballs, or a lovely human and mushroom pie!’

  ‘Oh, yes, they will!’ I announced. ‘They’ll get here before you can do a thing to me!’ But my voice didn’t sound very confident. Phredde and Bruce would come looking for me. But they’d think I was lost in the lollipop forest. It might be hours before they thought of looking for me here, and who knows what recipe the sweet little old, er, the not sweet at all evil phaery would have chosen to cook me in by then.

  I tried the door handle again, but it wouldn’t turn. I banged on the door instead, then kicked it, but nothing happened. I ran at the door—bang! crash!—just like they do on TV police shows, but all I got was a bruised elbow.

  I turned round. There had to be some other way out! A window perhaps? Nope. No windows. The ones I’d seen outside must have been just for show. There wasn’t even a door leading to another room.

  But there was no need to panic. Absolutely no need to panic. I just had to keep my head. After all, this was just a lamington house. I could munch my way through the walls. Okay, it’d mean I probably wouldn’t be able to fit in any lunch or dinner, and would be so sick of lamingtons I’d never be able to walk past a cake shop again, but at least I’d be free.

  That wall, perhaps? After all, how long could it take to munch through a lamington wall? I headed over to the wall by the stove, when suddenly, BBBOOOOOOOMMMMMM! The thunder roared again.

  PING! The lamington walls were gone. The stove was gone too, and its yellow kettle. The table was gone. The chairs were gone. Even the green painted door had vanished.

  In their place was darkness, thick and damp and horrid. Dimly I could see walls on either side of me—black, damp walls—and the floor looked cold and black as well.

  ‘Fruitcakes!’ I yelled, which wasn’t what I meant to say at all, but like I said, bad language just turns into something else in Phaeryland.

  If I was still in Phaeryland.

  If I wasn’t about to be eaten or tortured.

  Or even worse, just left here in the darkness till I melted into a little puddle of darkness, too.

  And I bet there wasn’t a lavatory here either!

  ‘Fruitcakes!’ I muttered again, but it came out more like ‘Mmmpphh’, ’cause I was crying too hard not to even swear.

  Chapter 9

  In the Dungeon of Doom

  ‘Nothing can hurt you in Phaeryland.’

  ‘You are perfectly safe in Phaeryland.’

  I’d been really dumb.

  Phaeryland was just like the picture books, right? Castles and the Phaery Queen and fairies, alright, phaeries!

  Something squeaked above me. A bat probably. I ignored it. Something squeaked below me. A mouse, I supposed. I tried to ignore that, too, but somehow mice in dungeons aren’t as cute as white mice in little cages. The thunder gave a little mutter, but I was getting used to that.

  Okay, so no-one ever got skin cancer in Phaeryland, and phaeries didn’t need anything rude like bathrooms with the most important item. But those little kids’ stories also had evil phaery godmothers who bewitched perfectly decent princesses so they fell asleep for a hundred years when they pricked their finger on a spinning wheel. There was the evil phaery who imprisoned Rapunzel. And what about that evil stepmother who poisoned Snow White.

  ‘Fool!’ I yelled to myself. ‘We even saw Snow White!! That should have given you a clue that not everything was safe in Phaeryland!’

  There was even a story about the evil phaery who lived in a gingerbread cottage and lured in kids and…

  I gulped. I had been dumber than dumb…(The thunder muttered a bit as though it agreed.) Mum had read me that story a million, zillion times. The evil phaery lured kids into her gingerbread house then boiled them up in a cauldron and ate them, till two smarter than average kids had shoved her in her own oven.

  Well, those kids had been smarter than me, anyway. I’d gone skipping into that lamington cottage like I was on my way to the video bar. I’d come zapping off to Phaeryland without even reading a guidebook, for Pete’s sake. I should at least have done some basic research first! Checked out a few library books of phaery stories. Looked up some phaery sites on the Internet. Made some notes on the hidden hazards of Phaeryland and how to avoid them. I deserved to be…

  I took a deep breath. No, I did not deserve to be casseroled up in a cauldron…or whatever other horrible fate that sweet (huh!) old lady had planned for me. I’d been silly, that was all. But now I had to escape! I was going to escape!

  Definitely.

  Somehow.

  Almost certainly.

  Probably, anyway.

  The thunder chuckled outside the dungeon. A bat squeaked. Probably a vampire bat, who’d suck my blood so there’d be none left for the sweet little old lady, and that would show her, I thought, but it wouldn’t be much use to me.

  I mustn’t panic. That was it. I mustn’t panic. If that movie hero could escape from ninety-six evil ninjas I could escape from this…

  The thunder muttered above me. I looked around. My eyes were adjusting to the gloom now. I stepped forward cautiously, my hands out in front of me.

  One step, two steps, four, five, six…my hands met something slimy. I jerked them back, then gingerly felt f
orward again. Walls…concrete or stone, perhaps something else cold and damp. No sign of a window, but then it might be dark outside wherever I was, so maybe I wouldn’t see light coming from a window, or a door. I’d have to feel it.

  I stepped slowly round to the left, feeling as I went. Blank wall, blank wall, blank wall, blank wall. One corner, two corners, three, four…I’m not the greatest at geometry (you ask Mrs Olsen5 ) but even I knew that a square has four corners, and this room seemed square—although it was pretty hard in the absolute darkness to tell when I was back at my first corner. Maybe it was a hexagon or an octagon or a trapezium…I was running out of geometry, but I suddenly remembered that if they were right angles (and they felt like right angles) then there could only be four of them. Mrs Olsen would have been proud of me—will be proud of me when I get out of here, I thought.

  No easy way out through doors or windows, anyway. If it needed magic to get in and out of here I was really stuck.

  Maybe I could jump on my gaoler’s back when they came in to feed me. If they ever did decide to feed me. Maybe they’d leave me starving here, till I was just bones and jeans and T-shirt. Or maybe they’d PING! me a crust of mouldy bread, and I’d have to lick the slimy water from the walls to stay alive.

  No way—they’d want me fat and tender. I’d probably be stuffed with loaves of bread soaked in peanut oil and…and…fried chicken and soggy chips and sweet and sour blobs of fat and other food specially designed to make me pudgy…

  Stop it! I yelled at myself. Forget about mouldy bread and slimy water and being boiled in cauldrons and stuffed with calories and having my toenails pulled out with red-hot pliers, and Prudence patties and hamburgers with Prudence sauce. Just concentrate on getting out!

  Maybe there was a hole in the ceiling! I gazed up at it. Nothing. Just blackness. Really deep blackness. Either there was no hole or it was so far up there was no way I could reach it, unless I grew wings or turned into a grasshopper.

  I hadn’t felt any nice trapdoor in the floor in my searches, either. Just the chilly water seeping down the walls, and…

  ‘Fruitcake!’ I yelled. ‘Where’s the water going?’

  The water was seeping down the walls. But there wasn’t a puddle building up over my ankles. So it must be seeping down to somewhere.

  Of course, it could just be soaking into the ground. But the floor was stone or concrete and water doesn’t soak into those. Not much, anyway.

  Maybe there was a secret tunnel under my dungeon floor. Dungeons always had secret tunnels. At least, they did in phaery stories, and this was Phaeryland!

  The thunder muttered outside as though it was getting bored. A vampire bat—if it was a vampire bat—flapped lazily round the ceiling.

  Right, I told myself. All you have to do is find the secret tunnel. Easy!

  Except finding the secret tunnel meant kneeling down on that cold, slimy floor. With mice. And probably vampire bat droppings, if those little squeaky things above me were bats (at least, I hoped they were bats—I didn’t like to think what else they could be).

  Come on, don’t be stupid, I told myself. Tracksuit pants can be washed. So can skin. But Prudences can’t be unboiled once they’ve been shoved into a wicked phaery’s cauldron and made into Prudence pies.

  I knelt down. It was just as bad as I thought it would be. There were at least ten centimetres of yuk on that floor and I hoped most of it was slime. I dipped my hands into the ooze and began to feel around.

  Stone. This floor was definitely made of stone. Which meant if all the phaery stories Mum had ever read me were correct, there was a great big iron ring in one of the stones somewhere under all this gunk.

  There was. Well, it was a ring anyway, and it was big and set in a giant stone, and I supposed it was iron. And if I pulled it, then…

  I stuck my fingers through the ring and pulled. Nothing happened. I pulled again. Still nothing.

  I sat back in the ooze and thought. I must be able to pull up the ring! After all, skinny dumb princesses with golden hair pulled up rings and escaped through secret tunnels all the time, and I bet they didn’t play netball three times a week like me and practise martial arts in front of their videos. If they could manage to pull up a dungeon floor ring, I certainly could.

  I pulled again. It didn’t move.

  Maybe I had to say a magic word. Or be a princess with golden hair. Or maybe it only worked on Tuesdays and this was Friday. Or…

  Or maybe if I (eerk) scooped the gunk away from the edges of the stone it might lift more easily.

  I searched in my pockets. This was the time to use my Swiss army knife. Or my nail file. Or the pair of scissors I had accidentally dropped in my pocket this morning.

  Except I hadn’t dropped in any scissors. I’d left my Swiss army knife at home. And I don’t even own a nail file.

  Which just left my fingers. And ten centimetres of goo.

  Well, it wasn’t going to get any less gooey. And the longer I waited, the more likely it was that some not-so-sweet old lady was going to come banging along with her cauldron and turn me into Prudence soup with dumplings.

  I started poking. Seven broken fingernails later, and about two zillion buckets of goo, I tried pulling the ring again.

  Nothing. Nothing…and then it moved…slowly at first, then suddenly WHUNK! it came up and I went down. And the secret passage was open.

  If it was a secret passage, I thought, and not just a hole down to another dungeon. Or a sort of dungeon plumbing system, so the prisoners didn’t drown before their gaoler could turn them into roast Prudence with mint sauce, or vine leaves stuffed with minced Prudence…

  I stuck my head down into the hole. I thought it would be even blacker than my dungeon down there, but there was a faint greenish light from all around. Of course, I thought. In all the best phaery tales there’s always strange phosphorescent slime on the secret passage walls that glows in the dark, just in case the princess forgets her torch.

  But even with the strange green light (or perfectly normal green light, if you read phaery stories) I still couldn’t see much. Like how deep the hole was. Like could I drop down into it without breaking two legs, one arm and a few other bones as well.

  But even jumping into darkness was better than becoming Prudence pikelets. So I jumped, well, slithered, anyway, down the edge of the hole and into the cold, green dimness.

  The thunder shrieked so loud the air seemed to vibrate around me.

  Down, down, d…actually it wasn’t very far at all.

  I landed thump in ankle-deep cold water (which didn’t matter, ’cause my joggers were pretty much wet with yuk anyway), with no bones broken whatsoever. And wherever this led to, at least it was a tunnel.

  At least something had gone right.

  I peered into the dimness. More dimness.

  I peered the other way. Even more dimness.

  Left, or right? Well, ‘right’ was good, wasn’t it? Mum was always drumming ‘do the right thing, Prudence’ into me. And I was the good guy here, and the evil phaery was definitely the bad guy. So I’d go to the right.

  I lifted up my soggy feet, and began to clop through the water as the thunder gave a satisfied BOOOM! outside.

  * * *

  5 Our vampire school teacher.

  Chapter 10

  Down the Slimy Tunnel

  Something squeaked near my feet. A big squeak. Not a mouse-like squeak. Not a bat-like squeak. This was a…a…a rat sort of squeak. A giant rat with long rat teeth and slimy fur and…

  Stop it! I told myself. There are no rats here. And even if there are, aren’t rats better than becoming Prudence pate? Prudence patty cakes? Prudence with pears and custard?

  Squeak!!

  I gulped. ‘You be careful, rat!’ I announced a bit shakily. ‘I…I’m bigger than you!’

  Squeak!

  ‘If my big brother was here, he’d eat you!’ I yelled. ‘My big brother is a werewolf and he loves chasing rats!’

  Ac
tually Mark has a pet rat called Ginger. Mark would never eat a rat. He prefers corgis and Persian kittens. But I hoped the rat didn’t know that.

  SQUEAK!!

  ‘And if my friends Phredde and Bruce were here they’d change you into a flea! So there!’

  Squeak, squeak, SQUEAK!

  I gulped again. Maybe if I sang, I thought. I wouldn’t hear the rat then.

  ‘This old man, he played one, he played…’

  My voice boomed and echoed in the tunnel. Then it suddenly occurred to me that if you are trying to escape quietly out a secret tunnel from a Prudence-eating evil phaery, loud singing might not be such a brilliant idea.

  I stopped singing and kept on wading. Slosh, slosh, slosh…

  At least my singing seemed to have frightened the rat away. If it had been a rat. If it hadn’t been a…a…a vampire slug, about to suck my life blood out my ankles. Or a strand of sentient slime that had mutated in the ooze and was going to slime up my legs and strangle me and then digest me till I was slime as well…

  Be quiet, Prudence! I told myself. Stop imagining things! Just because you’ve been imprisoned in a dark, dismal dungeon by an evil phaery who wants to turn you into deep-fried Prudence, and now you’re sloshing down a slimy secret tunnel with rats and ooze and…and…and things, there’s no reason to get all panicky. Just calm down. Calm down and keep wading.

  Slosh, slosh, slosh…

  My feet were getting cold. My nose was even colder.

  Slosh, slosh, slosh…

  I was hungry, too. If only I’d had time for even a quick nibble of the lamington walls before they’d been PING!ed away! Even a crumb of gingerbread windowsill…

  And I was scared! Who knew where this silly secret tunnel led! Maybe I was just heading down into the evil phaery’s kitchen. The cauldron would be simmering away, just waiting for her to add a cup of chicken stock, three onions, a clove of garlic and a Prudence!

  Should I head back the other way? But that might be even worse! Actually it was hard to think of anything worse. But there was still nothing else I could really do.