The Phredde Collection

by Jackie French

  Bored.

  Ate mosquito pizza for dinner.

  Sunday

  Second day of school holidays.

  Ate flies.

  Swam in fish pond. Hopped around a bit.

  Bored.

  Ate stir-fried beetles for dinner.

  Watched a video on South-American frogs. Wasn’t as fascinating as I thought it would be. Tried using dead flies instead of popcorn in the popcorn popper. Mum upset about the mess.

  Monday

  Third day of school holidays.

  Bored.

  Sat on lily pad. Zapped flies. Decided fresh flies are juicier than popped ones. Hopped around a bit. Tried a cockroach for dessert but didn’t like it much.

  Tuesday

  Fourth day of school holidays.

  Mum yelled at me, just because I said I was bored again. Told me to go and spend the day with Pru and Phredde. Then I told Mum I never, ever, ever want to see Pru again. And that goes for Phredde, too!

  Mum said I should visit Aunt Gladioli in Phaeryland. Stormed off to my room. Well, hopped, anyway. It’s hard to storm off when you’re a frog. Am never going to Phaeryland again! Phaeryland reminds me of Pru! How could she have done THAT to me…

  Chapter 1

  The Trouble with Frogs—and Giant Hairy Gorillas

  ‘The trouble is,’ I said, ‘that he’s a frog.’

  ‘He’s a really nice frog,’ said Phredde.

  ‘He’s still a frog.’

  ‘He’s tall and kind and good at football.’

  ‘For a frog,’ I said.

  Phredde and I were sitting on an iceberg in Phredde’s back yard. You never know what you’re going to find in a phaery’s back yard. Worn-out volcanoes. Unicorn horns. Troll teeth or a snot mountain, which means the troll has blown his nose.

  The iceberg was left over from the time the three of us decided to build an igloo. (Magic icebergs never melt.) Phredde PING!ed up the snow and Bruce and I…

  I stopped that memory in its tracks. I was NEVER going to think about Bruce again.

  Not much, anyway.

  ‘But Bruce has always been a frog,’ Phredde pointed out.

  ‘No, he hasn’t! He was born a phaery, just like you. He just LIKES being a frog.’

  ‘Well, he’s been a frog ever since you’ve known him,’ said Phredde reasonably.

  ‘I don’t care,’ I said. ‘All I asked was, could he please stop being a frog for my birthday party. And then he hops in…’ I gulped. ‘He didn’t even bring me a birthday present.’

  ‘You didn’t give him a chance to,’ Phredde pointed out. ‘You just yelled at him and then you did THAT to him.’

  ‘He’s lucky I just did THAT!’ I said and stood up. ‘My bum’s getting cold. Come on, let’s go.’

  ‘Where to?’ asked Phredde, fluttering up above my left ear, her hair going zing, zang, zongle in the sunlight. When you’re a 30-centimetre phaery it takes a lot to really stand out, but with Phredde’s hair all glowing silver, gold and purple and her hot-pink joggers with silver laces, well, fireworks don’t have half the zing that Phredde does.

  ‘Don’t know,’ I said glumly. ‘Anywhere.’

  ‘We could go on your pirate ship and hunt ogres.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Would you like to PING! over to Italy and see if Mount Vesuvius is erupting?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I could PING! us back to Ancient Egypt and we could visit King Narmer1.’

  ‘Did that last week.’

  ‘We could…we could…’ Phredde sounded stumped. Phaeries don’t have much imagination, which is a good thing as they could PING! up all sorts of things if they did. But mostly they don’t think of them.

  ‘Let’s just walk,’ I said. So we did.

  It was okay in Phredde’s garden. Phredde’s mum had got cousin Pinkerbelle and her boyfriend, Mr Prince the landscape gardener, to design it. So there were pink flowers everywhere AND pink rose bushes—the nice, well-behaved sort not the clambering, blood-sucking sort that had attacked us way back when Phredde and I met Bruce for the first time2.

  But I wasn’t going to think about Bruce, I told myself. I wasn’t going to think about him at ALL.

  Of course, being a magic garden it never ended. After the flower beds there were trees that had pink flowers too. There were even pink flowers in the grass.

  Every now and then there were things that Phredde’s mum didn’t want in the house—well, castle—any more, or that Phredde had grown out of, like Phredde’s old teddy bear (it waved to us from the sandpit). We caught a glimpse of Phredde’s old rocking horse galloping among the trees (I nearly stood on a pile of tiny rocking-horse droppings), and a giant gorilla with blood-red eyes heading straight towards us…

  ‘Phredde!’ I squeaked.

  ‘What?’ Phredde had fluttered up to one of the trees and had her nose in one of the big pink flowers. Anyone else would have thought she was sniffing its scent but Mrs Olsen had given us a lesson about the birds and the bees last term and it had got Phredde REALLY interested in what bees got up to in their spare time…

  ‘There’s a giant gorilla with blood-red eyes heading straight towards us!’

  Phredde froze.

  ‘How big a gorilla?’

  I calculated. ‘Oh, about the size of a three-storey building.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Phredde flatly, hovering just above my nose. ‘That gorilla!’

  ‘What do you mean, THAT gorilla? Tell me it isn’t dangerous,’ I pleaded. ‘Tell me the gorilla is just a joke you PING!ed up and let loose when you were finished with it. It’s really a sweet, kind, three-storey gorilla and…’

  ‘Well,’ said Phredde slowly. ‘I did PING! it up.’

  ‘Yes?’ I encouraged her.

  Phredde gulped. ‘It used to be a toy. You know, cute and cuddly. It was the first thing I ever really PING!ed all by myself. You see there was this movie on TV…’

  ‘Let me guess. King Kong?’

  ‘That was it. And…’

  ‘You PING!ed up KING KONG and now he’s loose in your garden!’

  ‘Yes,’ said Phredde in a small voice. ‘I tried to PING! him away before Mum saw him but I was only a little kid and it mustn’t have worked. I must have only PING!ed him away sort of temporarily.’

  ‘GROAAAAR!’

  That was the gorilla, not me.

  ‘Um, Phredde,’ I said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I think you’d better PING! him away for good now.’

  ‘Well, I would,’ whispered Phredde. ‘But…’

  I groaned. ‘How is it I can guess what you are going to say? You can’t PING! him away because…because…’

  ‘Because I can’t remember what spell I used to magic him up!’ wailed Phredde. ‘It was my first ever PING! you know!’

  ‘Phredde,’ I said.

  ‘Yes?’ said Phredde.

  ‘Run!’

  So we ran.

  Well I ran. Phredde fluttered like she was in the butterfly Olympics and the gorilla lumbered behind us. I could hear his footsteps—clump, clump, clump—and his great snuffly snorts too.

  I was terrified! But not too terrified, if you know what I mean. When you’ve been pounded on by dinosaurs, faced a murderous Ancient Egyptian princess, pits of vipers and giant boa constrictors, you get a pretty good feeling that things will turn out okay in the end. You still run of course—I’m not that dumb. But any moment now something was going to save us.

  Maybe a hero in a helicopter would swoop down from the sky!

  Maybe a giant gorilla-eating slug was oozing along the path right this second!

  Maybe there’d be a PING! and it would be Br…

  Swat! The gorilla grabbed Phredde mid-flutter. Phredde screamed. It was a real scream, too, not a ‘Hey, this is terrifying but fun!’ sort of scream.

  I don’t think I’d ever heard Phredde as terrified as that before.

  I tried to work out whether I should stop and kick the gorilla’s
big toe to make him drop Phredde, or just keep running to get help or maybe just dissolve into a small Prudence puddle because I was REALLY terrified now, when…

  Zap!

  Have you ever been picked up by a giant leathery toy gorilla hand? I bet you haven’t, because you’d probably be crunched, just like that gorilla was going to crunch me and Phredde. And once you’ve been crunched down a gorilla’s gullet you don’t do much reading.

  (Mrs Olsen told us in first term about how gorillas were quiet vegetarians, but this was a giant PING!ed toy gorilla boy. And if you are wondering how I knew that the gorilla was a boy, well, he wasn’t wearing boxers, if you get my drift.)

  It’s hard to breathe when massive gorilla fingers are squeezing the breath out of you, and the small gasp of air I managed to breathe in was pretty yuck. That gorilla never cleaned his teeth. I didn’t like to think what he’d been eating. Or who…

  I didn’t like to think of that at all!

  ‘Phredde!’ I managed to squeak out the words.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I forgive you!’

  ‘For what?’ Phredde’s voice was pretty tremulous too.

  ‘For PING!ing up a giant, girl-eating toy gorilla when you were little.’

  ‘Why are you telling me that NOW?’

  ‘I don’t want your last thought being, How can Pru ever forgive me for this?’

  ‘My last thought is going to be, How do I get us out of this?’ shrieked Phredde.

  ‘Hey, that could be my last thought too!’ I called back. I know it sounds like we were being very brave, but I could see Phredde was terrified. I was nearly wetting myself…but it really does help things if you try to sound brave.

  Well, it helps a bit. A very little bit.

  Not much at all, actually.

  For a second I wondered maybe if I did wet myself (or even do something worse) perhaps I’d be less appetising to a girl-eating giant toy gorilla. Or maybe he’d think kid doo-doo was like salt on a potato chip, and a doo-dooed Pru was really delicious.

  And then I stopped thinking altogether, because the gorilla was holding us right up close to his beady black eyes, one in each hand. He was obviously trying to decide which one of us to eat first.

  What do you think at times like this? Let it be me, so my best friend has another two seconds to enjoy the sight of HER best friend going down a gorilla throat!

  There wasn’t time to think, much less decide. When it’s a choice between a 30-centimetre phaery with crunchy wings, or a nicely rounded girl with really good muscles from all that footy practice plus delicious watermelon stains down her T-shirt (Phredde had PING!ed up iced watermelon for a snack a half hour before)—well, there isn’t much of a choice.

  The gorilla’s mouth came nearer, and nearer still. I could see his lips, black like shiny tyres. And then they opened. I could see his teeth. Long, yellow teeth—I was sure real gorillas didn’t have teeth like that—and a dark leathery looking tongue, too.

  Then suddenly…Glump! I was inside, lying all crumpled on the gorilla’s tongue.

  It was a wet tongue, sort of hard and squishy at the same time, a bit like bubble wrap made from sandpaper. I tried to sit up, but my head went bang against the roof of the gorilla’s mouth. It was pink and sort of ridged. Then the gorilla’s mouth began to close. I was forced down, down, down…

  I didn’t even have time to say goodbye to Phredde, I thought, as I was crushed in that giant squishy mouth.

  It wasn’t fair! Every other adventure had lasted DAYS, with plenty of time for rescue and last thoughts. This one had been just too quick!

  Goodbye world, I thought. Goodbye, Phredde, Goodbye, B…

  FLOINGGGGGGGGGGG!

  Chapter 2

  FLOINGGGGGGGGGGG?

  ‘Phredde?’

  ‘Pru!’

  I blinked. That wasn’t gorilla gums up above me. It wasn’t even the inside of a gorilla tummy. It looked like an ordinary blue sky, with a few marshmallow clouds and Phredde hovering above me.

  I sat up and checked myself. I seemed to be all there. No arms missing, all my toes. I hadn’t even lost a thong. And I was dry, not sodden with gorilla spit!

  ‘Phredde! How did you save us?’

  ‘I didn’t!’ cried Phredde. ‘One second the gorilla had crunched you up, then…’

  ‘He didn’t actually crunch me. He’d just glopped me and was about to crunch…’

  ‘There was this FLOINGGGGGGGGGGG! sound. And I was out of his fist and you were out of his mouth and we were here. Then you said Phredde? and I said, Pru! and…and here we are!’

  ‘You didn’t rescue us? Not even accidentally?’

  Phredde shook her head. ‘You can’t PING! accidentally. Trust me. You know when you PING!. It’s…it’s like a sneeze all over you!’

  ‘Could your mum have fixed something up? You know, a Protect My Little Darling Phredde sort of spell that would be activated whenever you’re in danger?’

  Phredde fluttered down beside me. ‘It can’t have been Mum. Or Dad either. That was a FLOINGGGGGGGGGGG!, not a PING! Phaeries PING!’

  ‘Well, who FLOINGGGGGGGGGGG!s then?’

  ‘I don’t know!’

  I looked around, in case there were any FLOINGGGGGGGGGGG!-type rescuers nearby. But there was only a little toy gorilla, lying in the flowery grass. I picked it up and handed it to Phredde. She took it gingerly.

  ‘I don’t think I want it now.’

  ‘Look,’ I said. ‘It’s YOUR toy gorilla. Take it home and lock it up where it won’t go eating people.’

  Phredde nodded.

  PING!

  The toy gorilla vanished.

  I looked at Phredde suspiciously. ‘It’s not going to come back and try to eat us again is it?’

  ‘No way,’ Phredde assured me. ‘I PING!ed it back inside my toy box.’

  FLOINGGGGGGGGGGG!

  Suddenly there was a blanket in front of us where the gorilla had been lying. On the blanket there was a plate of sliced watermelon, iced, just the way I like it, chocolate cake, cut into BIG hunks just the way I like them too, sausage and pineapple pizza and tomato and olive foccacia with extra olives, and frozen bananas rolled in chopped peanuts, and a giant passionfruit sorbet and…

  Well, just about all of my favourite foods. Plus pineapple crush to drink. I LOVE pineapple crush.

  ‘Phredde?’

  Phredde shook her head wonderingly. ‘I didn’t do that either.’

  ‘You mean someone saved us from a giant gorilla and magiced up a perfect picnic and you have no idea who did it?’

  Phredde nodded. ‘Yep.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. I stared at the picnic.

  This was weird! But, hey, whoever had put it there had saved us from the gorilla, hadn’t they? So I was pretty certain the picnic was safe to eat.

  Wasn’t it?

  So we ate it, just to find out.

  Chapter 3

  FLOINGGGGGGGGGgg!…Again

  Phredde’s mum swooped me home on their magic carpet. I burped gently all the way—that picnic had been good.

  I trotted across our drawbridge, through the courtyard, along the Great Hall, into the Lesser Hall, across the Really Quite Small Hall, up the Grand Staircase and the Not-So-Grand Staircase and the Really Steep and Inconvenient Staircase that led to the Very Green Sitting Room where Mum did her crosswords.

  ‘Hi, Mum,’ I puffed. (You try jogging up three staircases after a giant picnic. I must remember to ask Phredde to ask her mum to PING! us some escalators.)

  ‘Hi, Pru,’ said Mum vaguely. ‘What’s a seven-letter word meaning big foot?’

  ‘Macropod,’ I told her. (Years of Mum’s crosswords mean I have a GREAT vocabulary.) ‘Where is everyone?’

  ‘Your father’s feeding the piranhas the leftover tomato salad, Gark is making triple-decker hamburgers with beetroot, lettuce and tomato for dinner and Mark is rolling in something foul up in the tower,’ said Mum, shuddering. My brother Mark is a werewolf—well, at
full moon he is. I was guessing he had a hot date with his girlfriend tonight.

  ‘Yum,’ I said. (I meant the hamburger, not the stuff Mark was rolling in. Okay, I was full of picnic, but I’m always ready to go that extra meal.)

  Mum glanced at her watch. ‘Go tell Mark dinner is ready, will you? And what’s a sixteen-letter word for slob?’

  ‘Slubberdegullion. Sure thing,’ I said. I galloped along the corridor and up the stairs, then up the tower stairs and along the battlements. (For those of you who don’t live in a magic castle, battlements are those great big high bits way up on the castle walls.)

  And then I stopped, because I could see why Mum had shuddered. I mean triple yuck with sweet potatoes! It was FOUL! It looked like a big puddle of what looked like sheep guts mixed with chicken brains and garnished with troll’s boogies that someone had eaten then chucked up again. But it smelt a zillion times worse than even that.

  I could see why Mark wanted to roll on it. Any werewolf smelling that bad was going to be HOT.

  Except it wasn’t so hot for human-type sisters. So I edged my way along the battlements, keeping right to the edge so I wouldn’t step in the yuck. I still don’t know how it happened, but suddenly I slipped on something green and soft and slimy and…

  ‘HELLLLLLLLLLP!’

  I was falling down, down the castle wall! And there was the moat below me full of piranhas! Even if they were full of tomato salad they’d still try to eat me, because I’d be squished and tomato like too by then and irresistible to a piranha and…

  FLOINGGGGGGGGGGG!

  I blinked, and sat up. I wasn’t flying down the castle walls. I wasn’t being gulped by piranhas either. (Did you know it only takes piranhas ten minutes to skeletonise a cow? And three minutes to eat a sausage and pineapple pizza. I timed them.) I was back on the battlements lying in erk and…

  FLOINGGGGGGGGGGG!

  Except it wasn’t erk. It was a bed of rose petals. My clothes weren’t erky either. They smelt like flowers.

  ‘Hey!’ Something hairy with long drooling fangs bent over me. ‘What have you done with my rotten corgi guts?’ it demanded.