The Phredde Collection

by Jackie French

  What if I tried to trap the Tooth Fairy—sorry, Phaery?

  As far as I knew no one had even seen the Tooth Phaery before. Well, no one human anyway. I concentrated even harder because the dentist was doing stuff now that I really didn’t want to notice. What if I sort of borrowed Mark’s fishing net? And if I tied two bits of string around my tooth (I was really concentrating on not noticing now) and tied one bit of string to the net and the other bit of string to my finger? Then as soon as the Tooth Phaery picked up my tooth, the string would tug down the net, and the net would fall on the Tooth Phaery (just like a hunter trapping a wild tiger) and, just in case I fell asleep and missed it all, the other bit of string would tug on my finger. And then I’d get to meet the Tooth Phaery!

  ‘All over now,’ said the dentist, holding up my bloody fang. ‘Now, how about I wrap this up for you so you can leave it out for the Tooth Fairy?’

  ‘Oh, she’s much too old to believe in the Tooth Fairy,’ Mum assured him.

  ‘That’s Phaery, buster,’ I said to the dentist. ‘And you’d better believe it!’

  Well, I won’t bore you about what I had to go through to borrow Mark’s fishing net. (Big brothers don’t understand ANYTHING. There was no reason at all for him to laugh like that, just because I said I needed it to trap the Tooth Phaery.)

  But, eventually, I got the trap all fixed up, had my tomato soup and icecream for dinner (stuff that doesn’t need chewing, although actually my mouth felt pretty much okay by then), and brushed my remaining teeth, and wriggled down between the sheets, and Mum and Dad said goodnight…

  …and I was ready to close my eyes and pretend to be asleep till my trap went off.

  Well, that’s what I meant to do. But it had been a long day, what with school all morning, then the dentist in the afternoon. (My tongue kept exploring where my tooth used to be. Or near it anyway—I didn’t quite have the guts to probe too close.) Anyway, between one thing and another, my eyes dropped lower…and lower…and lower.

  I was just about to drift gently into a dream about me, Phredde, the magic carpet and the longest beach you ever saw, when suddenly, there was a tug at my finger and a giant Crash! came from across the room.

  ‘Glopp!’ I said, sitting bolt upright in the darkness and trying to focus on something very large that was thrashing about in the net.

  ‘HeywhattheImeanhelpImeangroolff,’ said whatever it was, struggling madly as it tried to escape. ‘Get me out of here!’

  I switched on the light just as there was a loud PING! and the net disappeared. ‘Hey, how did you do that?’ I demanded.

  The Phaery looked at me indignantly. ‘Well, I AM a phaery!’

  I stared. ‘But you can’t be the Tooth Phaery!’ I declared.

  ‘Why not?’ snapped the Tooth Phaery.

  ‘But you’re supposed to be a woman!’

  The Tooth Phaery looked at me furiously. ‘Pure sex discrimination,’ he hissed. ‘Blokes have just as much right to be Tooth Phaeries as women!’

  ‘But…but…’ I said, still staring.

  The Tooth Phaery was tall—well, tall for a phaery anyway—and very thin. He had long, drooping hair and long, drooping wings, and a headband with a fringe of long, white beads around it. His bell-bottom trousers had ruffled fringes that went from his knees to the floor, and the pockets of his shirt were fringed as well. Dangling from one shoulder was a large carry bag, which was covered with patterns of flowers made of tiny beads.

  ‘People are just so prejudiced,’ the Tooth Phaery went on, shaking his head so angrily that all the little white beads rattled.

  ‘But…but…’ I said.

  ‘Just because a bloke’s a…well, a bloke, they think he isn’t capable of doing the simplest things.’

  ‘But…but…’ I said.

  ‘It’s not as though it’s hard to collect teeth, is it?’ demanded the Tooth Phaery indignantly, opening his bead-encrusted shoulder bag and hauling out a length of rope.

  Suddenly, I realised what I’d been looking at. ‘Those aren’t beads! They’re teeth!’

  The Tooth Phaery grinned nastily. ‘Pretty, aren’t they?’ he declared proudly.

  ‘But…but…’ I said. ‘What are you going to do with that rope?’

  The Tooth Phaery looked at me in surprise. ‘Tie you up,’ he stated.

  ‘What? Oh, no, you don’t!’ I said, wriggling back as fast as I could into my pillows before he could flutter any closer. But it was too late. After all, he was a phaery.

  PING! my hands were tied.

  PING! my legs were tied, too.

  ‘Helpppp!’ I shrieked. But it was no use. Another PING! and all that came out when I screamed was a tiny whisper.

  ‘But why? What have I done?’ I shrieked in a whisper. ‘I didn’t do anything to you! Well, except for catch you in a net,’ I admitted. ‘But I apologise! Really!’

  The Tooth Phaery flashed me a smile. ‘And your apology is accepted!’ he assured me generously.

  ‘Then you’ll let me go?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said the Tooth Phaery. ‘I didn’t tie you up just because of your little practical joke. Dear me, no.’

  ‘Then…then why?’ I whispered hoarsely.

  The Tooth Phaery gazed at me gleefully. ‘I can’t have you going round telling everyone you’ve met the Tooth Phaery, now, can I?’ he explained sweetly.

  ‘But I won’t tell anyone! I promise!’

  ‘Not good enough,’ declared the Tooth Phaery. ‘I’d like to believe you. I really would,’ he added insincerely. ‘But I just can’t risk it.’

  ‘But why not? I could tell everyone what a wonderful Tooth Phaery you are, even though you’re a bloke!’

  ‘It’s a matter of tradition,’ stated the Tooth Phaery airily. ‘No one’s ever seen the Tooth Phaery before. Or at least, they haven’t seen me and lived to tell the tale.’

  ‘What?’ I shrieked. But it was too late. The world PING!ed all around me and my bedroom vanished.

  It was a lovely dream.

  I was on my pirate ship. The sun was shining, the seagulls were seagulling and the waves were blip, blip, blipping, as they slapped against the side of the boat.

  ‘Hey, Pru, do you want a snack?’ called Phredde.

  ‘Mmmmmm?’ I asked. It’s hard to speak clearly when you’re still asleep.

  ‘I said, do you want a snack…want a snack…want a snack…WANT A SNACK?’ boomed someone about a metre away from my right ear.

  I opened my eyes.

  ‘I said, would you like a snack?’

  I zapped my eyes shut as fast as possible, then opened them again—cautiously. I was still in my dressing gown. My tooth was still tied to my finger. I was still tied up. And I still wasn’t in my bedroom. And the creature was still there.

  He was small and round and blobby. His wings looked melted, too. His head was a blob—it sort of merged into shoulders, which bulged into a body that finished with a pair of tiny feet. His feet were wearing silver sandals with plastic daisies glued onto the tops.

  He grinned at me. His teeth were green and slimy. ‘You want a sandwich?’ he offered generously, but with a suspiciously gleeful look in his eye. ‘A nice delicious sandwich?’

  ‘Er…where am I?’ I groaned, trying to sit up and shove my tooth into my pocket at the same time. (There was no way I wanted the Tooth Phaery to have my tooth now.)

  ‘You’re at our place,’ announced the creature, taking a large jar filled with yellow and green stuff out of the fridge and shutting the door.

  ‘But where’s that?’

  ‘Oh, nowhere in particular,’ said the creature vaguely, as he set the jar down on the bench and dipped a knife into it.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Me?’ The creature’s little piggy eyes gleamed at me as he spread the green and yellow stuff onto a slice of bread. ‘Oh, I’m the Snot Phaery.’

  ‘You’re what?’ I tried to sit up properly, but it’s not easy when you’re on a beanbag with your wri
sts and ankles tied.

  ‘The Snot Phaery,’ said the Snot Phaery matter-of-factly, flapping his blobby wings. They reminded me of something…

  ‘But I didn’t even know there was a Snot Phaery!’ I protested.

  ‘I’m not very well-known,’ said the Snot Phaery modestly. ‘But there has to be a Snot Phaery. Who do you think takes away all the goolies when you blow your nose?’

  I shuddered. Now I knew what his wings reminded me of. ‘I thought the hanky sort of absorbed them,’ I said lamely.

  The Snot Phaery smiled damply. ‘A likely story,’ he said, slapping another slice of bread onto the first, and cutting it into triangles.

  ‘But why don’t you leave money in exchange, like the Tooth Phaery?’

  The Snot Phaery gave an evil little giggle. ‘Leave money for snot? Don’t be silly. Anyway, would you like a sandwich?’ Holding it out, he flapped a bit closer to me. He looked like a constipated budgie trying to stay airborne.

  ‘What’s on it?’ I asked, as the green and yellow stuff oozed out between the slices of bread.

  ‘Snot!’ cried the Snot Phaery gleefully, leaping into the air with a great thrashing of wings.

  ‘Glerrrrppp,’ I said, as the Snot Phaery chuckled above me. ‘You can’t EAT that stuff!’

  ‘Why not?’ demanded the Snot Phaery, taking a big bite. ‘Kids pick their noses all the time!’

  ‘But their OWN noses…’ I decided it was time to change the subject. ‘Look, you couldn’t untie me could you?’ I asked, not very hopefully.

  ‘No,’ panted the Snot Phaery, landing with a thunk on the fridge and taking another giant bite out of his sandwich

  ‘Not even if I say, pretty please with a cherry, or, I mean, a goolie, on top?’

  ‘No,’ said the Snot Phaery, swinging his legs happily.

  ‘Er…could you PING! me back to my bedroom?’

  ‘No,’ said the Snot Phaery, throwing his crusts onto the floor.

  ‘Let me make a phone call to my best friend?’

  ‘Definitely not,’ said the Snot Phaery.

  ‘What are you going to do with me, then?’ I wailed.

  The Snot Phaery shrugged. (A Snot Phaery shrugging is a pretty gruesome sight, so I won’t describe it.)

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘We’re going to have a house meeting about it.’ He gave a happy little chuckle. ‘But whatever it is, I bet it’s going to be fun! For us, I mean. Not for you, of course,’ he added.

  And with that, he flapped out the door.

  For the first time, I had a chance to look around me without being distracted. I hauled myself somewhat upright and tried to take in my surroundings.

  The room was large and tatty—stained wallpaper that might once have been striped, and ratty-looking seagrass matting on the floor. The fridge in the corner was round-shouldered and looked old. As for the other furniture, there was a long table with metal legs and a faded vinyl top, half a dozen matching chairs (all phaery-sized, of course), plus some kitchen cupboards that looked like they belonged at the dump, and three black vinyl beanbags that had spider-web cracks—they were very old beanbags, indeed.

  The beanbags were the only human-sized bits of furniture in the room. No, make that four beanbags, I decided, because I was in the fourth.

  I considered my position. The first priority, obviously, was to get free before either the Tooth Phaery or the Snot Phaery—or any more of the house’s inhabitants—came back.

  The next priority was to escape, which was a bit difficult, given that I had no idea where I was.

  Okay, I thought. First things first. Firstly, get out of the ropes, and secondly, get out of the house…

  I began to wriggle my hands like a worm in a hot frying pan, but it’s not as easy as it looks in the movies to get your wrists free. I’d managed to get one rope to move a bit further down my wrist, and had decided that maybe I should work on getting my feet free first, when something white and shiny flapped into the room.

  I stopped wriggling, and tried to look innocent.

  If the Snot Phaery was the blobbiest Phaery I’d ever seen, this one had the biggest bum and belly. And he wore tight white satin trousers, which didn’t exactly hide the blubber.

  But underneath the paunch, his legs were long and skinny, as were his arms, and his wings were the giant economy size. I suppose they needed to be big to carry him around. His shirt had white sparkling things all over it—sequins, I guessed. He looked to be about the same age as my brother, Mark, or maybe a few years older.

  The vision looked at me in surprise. ‘Hello,’ he said vaguely. ‘Where did you come from? You wanna beer?’

  ‘I’m too young to drink beer,’ I informed him.

  ‘That so?’ He frowned, as though he needed to work hard on that thought. ‘Yeah, I suppose you are.’ He flapped his way over to the fridge, opened it and bent down, stretching the seams on the biggest satin-dressed bum I had ever seen.

  ‘Er…who are you?’ I asked him.

  ‘Me?’ he pulled a can of beer out of the fridge and opened it. ‘I’m the Dandruff Phaery!’ he announced proudly, scratching the bit of bare, hairy stomach that was protruding between his shirt and his trousers.

  ‘The Dandruff Phaery!’

  ‘That’s so.’ He took a long drink of white froth and burped. ‘I knows a pome ’bout a Dandruff Phaery,’ he added.

  ‘A what?’ I asked.

  ‘A pome. You know,’ he said earnestly.

  ‘Oh, a POEM!’

  ‘Yeah. It goes like this.’ The Dandruff Phaery cleared his throat.

  ‘ “Twinkle twinkle on your shoulders,

  Small and flat or shaped like boulders,

  If it falls out of your hair,

  Your Dandruff Phaery’s always there.”

  ‘My mum told me that pome,’ he informed me, fluttering his wings proudly.

  ‘That so?’ I muttered grimly.

  ‘Yeah. That’s when I thought: I want to be a Dandruff Phaery when I grows up. And now I is!’ he announced happily.

  ‘Whacky doo,’ I muttered. This was definitely getting worse. A homicidal Tooth Phaery was one thing. An evil Snot Phaery and a poetic Dandruff Phaery were just too much for me to bear. ‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘But just how many of you live in this house?’

  The Dandruff Phaery counted on his fingers. ‘One, two, three, oh, and me. That’s four,’ he announced carefully.

  ‘I’ve met you and the Tooth Phaery and the Snot Phaery,’ I said grimly. ‘Who else is there?’

  ‘Just Myrtle,’ said the Dandruff Phaery. ‘But she moved out last week.’

  ‘What does Myrtle collect?’ I asked, just to make conversation. I mean, to be honest, I didn’t really want to know. ‘The dirt under your fingernails? Hiccups?’

  ‘Eh?’ asked the Dandruff Phaery. ‘Oh, I get you. You’re joking…no, Myrtle’s the Toe Jam Phaery. She collects…’

  ‘Yeah, I know. The gunk between your toes.’

  The Dandruff Phaery stared at me admiringly. ‘Hey, you’re really bright!’

  ‘Thanks,’ I said sourly.

  ‘I bet you know all sorts of things!’

  ‘What sorts of things?’ I asked.

  The Dandruff Phaery wrinkled his brow. ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘but I bet you do.’

  Well, this was getting me nowhere.

  ‘How about untying me?’ I said, as temptingly as I could. ‘Pretty please?’

  The Dandruff Phaery made an effort to think this through. ‘Can’t,’ he mumbled at last.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because now you know where we hang out. The Tooth Phaery says it’s a secret!’

  ‘But I don’t know where we are!’ I wailed.

  The Dandruff Phaery made another effort. ‘Yes you do,’ he stated proudly. ‘Because you’re here.’

  ‘But I don’t know how I got here! I don’t know anything! I’m just a kid who accidentally woke up. Well, okay, sort of on purpose woke up after the tr
ap went off…but really and truly, I’m the best forgetter you ever met! Just ask my teacher!’

  The Dandruff Phaery tried to work this out. He was still puzzling when the door opened again and his two housemates fluttered in. They perched on the table and considered me.

  ‘Oh, goodie, she’s awake,’ said the Tooth Phaery. ‘The question is: what are we going to do with her?’

  The Snot Phaery wrinkled his brow. ‘We could tie buckets of cement to her feet and then throw her in the sea!’ he offered.

  The Tooth Phaery shook his head. ‘That’s a stupid idea,’ he said.

  ‘Yeah, real dumb,’ I agreed.

  ‘We don’t have any cement,’ finished the Tooth Phaery.

  ‘Maybe one of us could pretend to be the Cement Phaery and go to a building site and—’ offered the Snot Phaery.

  The Tooth Phaery frowned. ‘No…no…’

  ‘How about we PING! up some crocodiles and they could eat her and then we could PING! the crocodiles away afterwards?’ suggested the Snot Phaery.

  ‘Too messy. There’d be blood all over the floor.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I bet bloodstains are really hard to get out of seagrass matting.’

  ‘I know what we can do!’ exclaimed the Dandruff Phaery triumphantly.

  ‘What?’ I asked suspiciously.

  ‘What?’ demanded the Tooth Phaery.

  The Dandruff Phaery’s big white face broke into a great grin. ‘I think we should show her our treasure!’

  ‘Why?’ demanded the Tooth Phaery.

  ‘Yeah, why?’ asked the Snot Phaery.

  ‘Because we ain’t never shown anyone our treasure before. What’s the use of you being a Tooth Phaery and collecting lots of teeth and me being a Dandruff Phaery and getting lots of dandruff and—’

  ‘Okay, we get the idea,’ the Tooth Phaery interrupted. He looked at me consideringly. ‘You know, he just might have a point!’

  ‘I might?’ asked the Dandruff Phaery, beaming.

  The Tooth Phaery nodded. ‘She can look after our treasure for us!’

  ‘Oh, goodie,’ I muttered.

  ‘Don’t you want to?’ inquired the Tooth Phaery, a little too politely.

  ‘Oh, er, yes. I’d love to,’ I assured him. After all, it was better than being eaten by crocodiles. ‘Er…do you think you might untie me then?’