The Phredde Collection

by Jackie French

  So I kept on wading. Slosh, slosh, slish, slosh, slish, slosh…

  I stopped. Except the sloshing didn’t stop. Even with my feet totally, absolutely still there was something sloshing up the tunnel.

  Slosh, slosh, slish, slish, slosh…

  It was getting closer, too…

  I had to run! Even if all that awaited me down the end of this tunnel was an evil phaery cook waiting to make a few bowls of Prudence pasta, I had to get away from whatever was slish, sloshing behind me!

  Slosh, slosh, slish, slish, slosh…

  My feet were frozen. My breath seemed frozen too. Move! I yelled to myself. Move, or it’ll get you!

  And suddenly my feet were moving, slosh, slosh, slosh, and my breath was panting too, and I was running, running, running up that dismal secret passage with the slimy water splashing at my knees.

  I couldn’t hear the splosh behind me now. I couldn’t hear anything except my heartbeat, bang, bang, bang, my breath tearing at my lungs, my pounding feet. There was no way I could hear anything else now.

  ‘Pruuudeeence…’ the voice moaned down the tunnel. ‘Pruuudeeence…’

  It knew who I was! It wasn’t just a giant hungry rat looking for a Prudence-sized snack. It was after me! Which meant it probably had particular Prudence-type tortures in mind. It probably…

  This was no time to think! I had to run! Just run and run and…

  ‘Pruuudeeence…Pruuudeeence…’ shrieked the voice. ‘Pruuudeeence…stooooppppp!’

  Ha! I thought. If whatever it is thinks I’m dumb enough to stop just because it tells me to…

  ‘Pruuudeeence…It’s Phreeedddddde!’

  ‘Aaaannnd Bruuuce!’ boomed another voice.

  ‘Phredde?’ I stopped. ‘Phredde, is that you? Bruce?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Phredde’s voice, still a bit echoey and ghostly in the confines of the tunnel as she sloshed towards me. ‘Who did you think it was?’

  A giant vampire rat with yellow fangs…‘Oh, nothing much,’ I said.

  ‘And me too,’ said Bruce’s voice. ‘Hey, isn’t this tunnel cool! Did you know there are giant mosquitoes back there? Lots of them! Well, there were, anyway. Really massive, yummy ones. This is soooooo cool!’ There was a sort of froggy splish! and then there was Bruce, large as life and twice as damp-looking, grinning up at me in the green dimness.

  ‘It’s cool if you’re a frog,’ I said grimly. ‘It’s a bit slimy for the rest of us. Phredde, Bruce, how did you get here?’

  ‘Huh,’ said Phredde—a sort of damp and slimy Phredde. ‘Well, we waited and waited for you in the lollipop forest. Then when you didn’t turn up…’

  ‘I knew you were in a temper,’ put in Bruce.

  ‘I wasn’t in a temper!’ I yelled. Emper, emper, emper came the echo. ‘I was upset! You and Bruce were keeping secrets from me! Just because you’re phaeries and I’m not, you think I’m not good enough…’

  My voice died away. After a few seconds the echo died away, too. Phredde and Bruce were staring at me.

  ‘Not good enough!’ cried Phredde. ‘We just didn’t want you to think that…well…’

  ‘We were embarrassed,’ explained Bruce. ‘I mean, it’s bad enough being different from everyone else, like only being thirty centimetres tall and having wings and things like that.’

  ‘But you don’t have wings!’ I said. ‘You’re a frog.’

  ‘But if I wasn’t a frog I’d have wings,’ said Bruce, ‘and everyone would stare at me.’

  ‘They stare at you now,’ I said. ‘You’re the only frog in the whole school!’

  ‘Yes, but I’m a normal frog,’ explained Bruce, ‘not a stupid-looking phaery with a name like The Phaery Ethelbert.’

  ‘Er…is that your real name?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ said Bruce firmly. ‘It’s Bruce.’

  ‘But I think phaeries are cool!’ I cried. ‘I’d love to have wings and be able to PING! things, and…’

  ‘Well, we’d rather be like everyone else,’ said Phredde. ‘And that’s why we didn’t want you to know, well, that there are evil things in Phaeryland too. I mean, you’re my friend…’

  ‘Mine too,’ croaked Bruce.

  ‘But I thought maybe if you really knew what Phaeryland was like you wouldn’t want to be our friend any more and…’ She sniffed in the dimness.

  ‘Oh, Phredde, don’t be a dope. You’ll always be my best friend. I don’t care what Phaeryland is really like!’

  ‘You don’t?’ gulped Phredde.

  ‘No, of course not! I don’t care if there are evil phaeries who want to chop me up and casserole me with tomatoes and black olives, then grind my bones to fertilise their lollipop trees!’

  ‘You don’t?’ said Bruce.

  ‘Of course not!’

  ‘You’re weird,’ said Bruce.

  ‘What do you mean, weird?’ I demanded, affronted.

  ‘You mean you don’t care if someone chops you up and…’

  ‘Well, of course I care!’ I yelled. ‘Get me out of here!’

  ‘How?’ asked Phredde.

  ‘Well, PING! us back to the guesthouse or something!’

  ‘We can’t,’ said Phredde.

  I stared at her. ‘What do you mean, “can’t”?’

  ‘We can’t PING! you out of here.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you’ve been magicked here. We can’t unmagic someone else’s magic,’ said Phredde reasonably.

  ‘Oh, fantastic. How did you get here, then?’

  ‘Well,’ said Bruce, ‘we guessed you’d come back to the cottage. So we snuck back there, and opened the door and WHAM! We were in this dungeon.’

  ‘It was really creepy,’ said Phredde. ‘All dripping walls and…’

  ‘I know, I know, I’ve been there,’ I said sourly. ‘Then what?’

  ‘Well, there was this great hole in the floor…’

  ‘I did that,’ I said proudly.

  ‘We guessed,’ said Phredde.

  ‘So Bruce jumped down it, cause he’s built for jumping down holes…’

  ‘It was cool,’ said Bruce.

  ‘Not to mention cold and slimy,’ I said.

  ‘Then I followed, but we couldn’t tell which way you’d gone.’

  ‘And then we heard this horrible noise,’ added Bruce.

  ‘A giant, flesh-eating rat?’ I asked.

  ‘No, you singing. So we knew you were in the tunnel and we followed the noise…’

  ‘And here we are,’ said Phredde.

  ‘Well, great,’ I said.

  ‘You might thank us for rescuing you!’ said Bruce reproachfully.

  ‘But you haven’t rescued me! We’re all in this now!’

  The thunder growled above us.

  ‘What was that?’ squeaked Bruce.

  ‘Just thunder,’ I said wearily. ‘It’s been doing that all the time. Haven’t you heard it?’

  Phredde shook her head.

  ‘It must just be following me, then,’ I said tiredly. ‘Okay, you can’t PING! me out of here. How about you PING! yourselves back to the guesthouse and get help?’

  ‘Can’t do that either,’ said Phredde, ‘because the dungeon was magic and we can’t…’

  ‘Can’t unmagic someone else’s magic. Then what can we do?’ I demanded.

  ‘Keep splashing down the secret tunnel?’ suggested Bruce.

  So we did.

  Chapter 11

  The Temple of Gloom

  Splosh, splosh, splosh, splosh…

  Splish, leap, splish, leap, splish, leap…

  Splosh, splosh, splosh, splosh…

  The tunnel seemed to go on forever—the green light and the slimy water and nothing in front of us but more green tunnel and more water…

  Splosh, splosh, splosh, splosh…

  Splish, leap, splish, leap, splish, ZOTTTTT!

  ‘Bruce, will you stop doing that!’ yelled Phredde.

  ‘Doing what?’ asked Bruce guiltil
y.

  ‘Zotting flies with your tongue!’

  ‘It wasn’t a fly! It was a juicy giant vampire mosquito!’ objected Bruce. ‘I wonder what it feeds on down here. Maybe it likes rat blood, or…’

  ‘Bruce!’

  ‘Well, I was hungry,’ muttered Bruce.

  Splosh, splosh, splosh, splosh…

  Splish, leap, splish, leap, splish, leap…

  I was beginning to feel peckish again, too.

  ‘Phredde?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Phredde.

  ‘Can’t you at least PING! up something to eat?’

  ‘Sure, I can do that,’ said Phredde.

  ‘Well, why don’t you?’

  Phredde PING!ed. Suddenly my right hand was full of hamburger and my left hand had a paper cup of banana smoothie in it.

  I felt a bit better after the hamburger and smoothie.

  ‘What will I do with the cup and paper?’ I asked, as the final crumb wriggled down into my tum.

  ‘Just drop it!’ said Bruce. Even he seemed to be getting sick of sploshing up the tunnel now.

  ‘But that’s littering!’ I objected.

  Bruce turned to stare at me. ‘You’re in a slimy tunnel under a dungeon heading towards who-knows-what and you’re worried about littering!?’

  ‘Well, littering is still littering,’ I argued. ‘I mean, the next person to come down this tunnel isn’t going to want to look at my grotty hamburger wrapping…’

  ‘The next person who comes down this tunnel might be an evil phaery with a meat cleaver and a book called 101 Ways to Eat a Prudence,’ pointed out Bruce. ‘Oh, look, I’ll deal with the rubbish…’

  There was another PING! and it was gone.

  Which gave me an idea. ‘Hey, Phredde,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Phredde.

  ‘How about you and Bruce PING! up something else? Something really useful.’

  ‘Like what?’ enquired Phredde.

  ‘Like something to get us out of here. Like a map.’

  ‘But if I don’t know where we are I can’t PING! up a map of it,’ Phredde pointed out, reasonably enough.

  ‘Oh. Right. How about…how about a few machine guns?’

  ‘Do you know how to use a machine gun?’ asked Bruce interestedly.

  ‘Well, no,’ I said. ‘For some reason Mrs Olsen hasn’t taught us about machine guns yet, remember? But it doesn’t look hard in the movies.’

  ‘Wouldn’t work anyway,’ said Phredde. ‘We’re up against magic here.’

  ‘I know!’ I yelled.

  ‘What?’ asked Bruce.

  ‘A sniffer dog! They can find the way out of here…’

  ‘We either go back or forward,’ Bruce pointed out. ‘Anyway, we don’t need a sniffer dog.’

  ‘Why not?’ I said, miffed.

  ‘Because I think we’re there. Look!’ Bruce pointed with one froggy hand.

  I peered into the dimness. Sure enough, the light in front of us was brighter. It looked yellowish, too, not green at all. I could just make out big grey steps leading upwards, out of the tunnel.

  ‘Free!’ I yelled.

  ‘Shh,’ hissed Bruce. ‘They might hear you!’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘I don’t know! That’s just it!’

  ‘Okay,’ I whispered.

  We sploshed—well, Phredde and I sploshed and Bruce leapt and splished—as quietly as possible up to the stone stairs. They were even bigger close-up, and disappeared into a big black hole in the ceiling.

  I peered upwards. ‘Can’t hear anything!’ I whispered. The thunder rumbled faintly in the distance.

  ‘Me either,’ whispered Phredde.

  ‘Alright!’ Bruce squared his froggy shoulders. ‘You girls stay here and I’ll tiptoe up and see if it’s safe, then…’

  ‘What!’ yelled Phredde and then remembered the need for quiet. ‘What do you mean “you girls”?’ she whispered fiercely.

  ‘Yeah!’ I said.

  ‘Well, I’m a bloke, so I should protect…’

  ‘Fruitcakes!’ I hissed. ‘Anyway, you’re not a boy, you’re a frog. I think I should go first.’

  ‘But you got us into this!’ whispered Bruce.

  ‘Then I really should go first!’

  Phredde stuck her chin out. ‘You’re my best friend, and if anything happens to you, it happens to me.’

  Bruce sighed. ‘Okay, let’s all go first. The steps are wide enough.’

  So we did. Phredde and I tiptoed, and Bruce leapt. (Frogs are pretty quiet when they leap—you see if you can hear one some time.)

  One step…two steps…three steps…four. We had reached the top now.

  ‘It’s still dark!’ whispered Phredde.

  ‘I think…yes, there’s a door!’ I whispered back. ‘I’m going to open it. Alight, one, two, three…’

  The door creaked open. Creeeeaaaaaakkkkkk. It was the creakiest door I’d ever heard.

  I peered out. It was dark, but at least I could see that it was an enormous room, all echoey and gloomy, with a high ceiling draped with dusty cobwebs and windows right up at the top, and indistinct, gloomy-lookingfurniture too. A few bats flapped through the dimness sort of gloomily as well.

  ‘No one here!’ I whispered. ‘Come on.’

  We tiptoed into the room. The door creaked shut behind us.

  Creeeeeeaaaakkkkk…

  ‘Surprise!’

  The thunder crashed! The lights flicked on. They were so bright they dazzled my eyes. When the red spots had finally died away, there was the sweet little old lady.

  But now she no longer looked old, or sweet, or even little. Her hair was long and black, and she wore this black, trailing dress sort of dripping all over her, too. Her lipstick was really bright red.

  ‘An evil phaery!’ shrieked Phredde. ‘Run!’

  I grabbed the door handle behind us and tugged.

  Nothing happened.

  Phredde pulled too, and even Bruce wrapped his long tongue around the handle (and around our hands—which felt disgusting, in case you want to know). The door stayed stuck.

  There was a delighted (and evil, naturally) chuckle behind us. ‘There’s no point in tugging, children. You won’t budge it.’

  Phredde hurled herself round. ‘Who are you calling “children”?’ she yelled.

  The evil phaery looked a bit surprised. ‘Well, you are children,’ she pointed out.

  ‘Well, sure,’ said Phredde. ‘But you don’t have to sound so patronising!’

  ‘What would you prefer to be called?’ enquired the phaery. I couldn’t tell if she was serious or not.

  Phredde considered. ‘“Kids” is okay,’ she admitted.

  The evil phaery smiled again. It wasn’t a very nice smile. ‘Very well then, kids,’ she said. ‘You’re trapped. Finished! Bamboozled!’

  ‘No, we’re not,’ I said.

  The evil phaery blinked, which must have taken real effort, ’cause she had about half a tonne of mascara on each eyelid.

  ‘Er, why not?’ she enquired.

  ‘Cause Phredde and Bruce are phaeries too!’ I informed her triumphantly. ‘They can’t magic you, and you can’t magic them.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said the evil phaery. She didn’t look very upset about it.

  ‘So they can just walk out that door…’ I looked around, but there was no door to be seen, ‘er, I mean climb out those windows, and go and get help.’

  ‘Mmm? Really?’ The evil phaery lowered herself gracefully into a dark wooden chair. ‘And where will they get this help from?’

  ‘Er…Pru,’ whispered Phredde.

  ‘Sshhh,’ I said. ‘The Sweet Pea Guesthouse,’ I told the phaery.

  ‘Those little gnomes? I don’t think so,’ said the evil phaery.

  ‘Look, Pru,’ whispered Phredde. ‘I think you should know…’

  ‘Sshhh,’ I told her. ‘Okay, Phredde’s mum and dad,’ I informed the evil phaery. ‘And they’ll go and tell the Phaery Queen, and…’<
br />
  The evil phaery laughed. It was the sort of laugh Amelia at school does when she’s the only one to have worked our homework problems out right. ‘And what do you think the Phaery Queen will do?’

  ‘Er…send you to gaol for kidnapping?’

  ‘Of course not!’ gurgled the evil phaery happily. ‘If she could have done that she’d have tried it years ago! You see, I’m part of Phaeryland just as she is. I can’t magic her, and she can’t magic me.’

  ‘But she’s the queen!’ I said stupidly.

  ‘A constitutional monarchy,’ said the evil phaery. ‘After all, what can she do to any of us? She can’t magic us, because we’re magic too.’

  ‘How about an army?’ I suggested. ‘With swords to cut people’s heads off and…’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said the evil phaery. ‘That wouldn’t be nice, would it? The good queen couldn’t possibly do that!’

  ‘Then what can she do?’ I cried.

  ‘Just be nice,’ said the evil phaery. ‘That’s her job.’

  ‘Phredde!’ I wailed. ‘It isn’t true, is it?’

  Phredde nodded. ‘I tried to tell you,’ she said. ‘Why do you think Mum and Dad don’t live in Phaeryland?’

  ‘I thought…I thought…’ I began. ‘I thought they just wanted a change…’

  Phredde shook her head. ‘You don’t just change countries because you want a change! My older sister The Phaery Milkblossom was kidnapped by a troll, and we had to pay a ransom before it ate her, and Mum and Dad didn’t want that happening to me, so they decided to move.’

  ‘And our family castle was taken over by ghouls,’ said Bruce. ‘That’s why we moved…’

  ‘I…I had no idea…’ I said slowly. ‘Look, I’m sorry…’

  The evil phaery glanced at her watch. ‘How touching,’ she said. ‘But really, we do have to get on with this.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Have you got lots of other people in your dungeons to terrorise?’

  ‘No,’ said the evil phaery. ‘It’s nearly time for Cooking with Crueliana on TV. She does such lovely things with human brains…so I’m afraid we really do have to get on with the torture.’

  ‘But you can’t torture Phredde and Bruce!’ I protested.

  ‘Oh no,’ said the evil phaery. ‘Just you. After all, it’s you I’m going to cook.’ She rubbed her hands gleefully. ‘It’s been years since I had a human to torture! No magic protection! Just you and me, and the nose pliers, the thumb screws, the vampire mosquitoes…’