The Phredde Collection

by Jackie French

  The three phaeries looked at each other. Finally the Tooth Phaery nodded. ‘I don’t see why not,’ he said.

  ‘Because why? Because we’re phaeries and can PING! you if you try to escape,’ pointed out the Dandruff Phaery helpfully.

  ‘Wow, thanks,’ I muttered. ‘I had just about worked that out.’

  PING! PING! PING! Suddenly, I was free—well, free as I could be while locked in a room with two homicidal phaeries and one dandruff collector who didn’t know how to tie his shoelaces. I rubbed my sore wrists carefully, and then my ankles.

  ‘Come on then!’ cried the Dandruff Phaery happily, fluttering over to the door. ‘Let’s go look at our treasure!’

  I stood up unsteadily and followed them through the door and down a shabby corridor. Something scuttled in a corner. No, I told myself. It was not a rat. This lot would probably serve roasted rat for dinner.

  We went past a couple of open doors. I forced myself not to look inside. They were probably bedrooms and I didn’t really want to see the bedroom of a Snot Phaery. We came to a door at the end of the corridor.

  The Tooth Phaery flung it open proudly. ‘Ta da!’ he exclaimed.

  It wasn’t as bad as I had expected. I’d thought there’d be bags of teeth all over the place, bloodstained at one end and maybe with bits of tooth decay at the other—I mean, not everyone brushes their teeth as often as I do. I thought that there might be great tubs of dandruff, too, all piled all over the place, and snot oozing out of damp, horrid barrels.

  Instead there was only one gently oozing barrel of snot, a dozen or so quite small bags of what I supposed was dandruff (they were tied up neatly with white ribbon) and one phaery-sized bathtub full of teeth. Mostly baby teeth, by the look of it, although I could see the occasional yellow fang and a suspicious black-red root as well.

  ‘Is that all you’ve got?’ I asked.

  I suppose it wasn’t the most tactful thing to say. The Tooth Phaery turned bright red, the Snot Phaery blew out his cheeks, and the Dandruff Phaery just looked at me mournfully and said, ‘We haven’t been at it long.’

  ‘What?’ I exclaimed. ‘You mean you’re not real Snot Phaeries and Tooth Phaeries?’

  ‘Of course we’re real,’ snapped the Tooth Phaery. ‘Length of service has nothing to do with it.’ He proudly pulled himself up to his full 30 centimetres. ‘And now we must get back to work!’ he declared. Then he glared at me. ‘I want you to have polished every one of those teeth by the time I get back—and I want to be able to see my face in them. Understand me?’

  ‘Or it’ll be crocodile snack time for you, bloodstains or no bloodstains,’ chuckled the Snot Phaery. ‘And I want you to weigh my snot, too. You’ll find the scales in the cupboard with the toothpaste.’

  ‘Er…an’ if you wouldn’t mind counting up me dandruff flakes,’ added the Dandruff Phaery. ‘I’d have done it but I keep on getting muddled.’

  With a final glare at me and a PING!, the Tooth Phaery was gone.

  PING! The Snot Phaery and the Dandruff Phaery were gone, too.

  Then, suddenly, there was another PING! and the Dandruff Phaery was back.

  ‘Er…dere’s beer in de fridge if you want it,’ he offered kindly.

  ‘I’m too young for beer,’ I reminded him.

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ He thought for a minute. There was a soft PING! from the other end of the corridor. ‘I put some lemonade dere instead,’ he told me. ‘An’ dere’s some bread an’ other stuff, too, in case you’re hungry.’

  ‘Er…thanks,’ I said.

  He gave me a tentative smile. ‘It’s a bit like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, isn’t it?’ he asked hopefully. ‘My mum used to read me that story. You see, you’re Snow White and you get to look after us. And we’re…’

  ‘And you’re all the seven dwarfs…’ I added sourly.

  He beamed at me. ‘Yeah! Boy, you’re clever! I bet you’re always top of the class.’

  ‘No,’ I told him. ‘A kid called Amelia is.’ I had a sudden bright idea. ‘Hey, why don’t you get Amelia to be your Snow White? I bet she’d be much better at it than I would be.’

  ‘I likes you,’ said the Dandruff Phaery simply. ‘I REALLY likes you.’ And with another PING! he was gone.

  Well, I reckoned I had four options.

  I could get out the toothpaste and start polishing teeth.

  I could go and investigate the fridge and THEN start polishing teeth, counting dandruff flakes and weighing out cups of snot.

  I could lie down in the corridor and scream and drum my heels against the floor.

  Or I could try to escape.

  I gave the matter a whole two seconds of thought, and decided on option four. I ran down the corridor and opened the front door…

  Well, that’s what I meant to do, anyway. I got as far as running down the corridor when I discovered that the place where there should have been a front door was just a blank wall.

  Okay, back door then. I ran back the other way.

  No back door.

  Side door? I tiptoed into the first bedroom, then the second and the third. (No, I am not going to describe them. It was bad enough having to tiptoe through them. You imagine what a murderous Tooth Phaery’s room would be like, and a Snot Phaery’s and a Dandruff Phaery’s. Now make them about 100 times worse than you imagined and you might just have it.)

  And there was still no door.

  A window then. A kid like me was quite capable of climbing out of a window. Except, of course, I hadn’t found a window, either.

  Maybe a mouse hole, I thought desperately. Or a chimney. If Santa could come down a chimney I could go up it. Except, of course, there was no fireplace. Maybe a loose floorboard. Or I could kick a hole in the wall.

  I had to do something. They’d be back any minute and I hadn’t polished a single tooth, much less started counting the dandruff…

  And what other duties did Snow White have? Cooking and cleaning, wasn’t it? And packing the dwarfs’ lunch when they went off to work. I could just see myself cutting snot sandwiches into neat little triangles for the Snot Phaery’s lunch box…

  If only there was some magic mobile phone that I could use to call Phredde—or Bruce—or even a non-magic mobile phone, come to think of it.

  I patted my dressing gown pockets just in case a mobile phone had fallen in by accident. But, of course, they were empty. Or empty of anything useful anyway, like mobile phones, magic carpets or bazookas. There was just a bit of fluff in one and my tooth on its bit of string in the other.

  My tooth…

  Suddenly I had a brainwave!

  Maybe I’d been right all along. Maybe my captor wasn’t the real Tooth Phaery, no matter what he said. Maybe he was only a pretend Tooth Phaery, a pirate Tooth Phaery, a freelancing, unlicensed, deregistered, unfrocked, non-kosher sort of Tooth Phaery…

  Which would mean the real Tooth Phaery might still come and collect my tooth.

  I calculated swiftly. I’d no idea how long I’d been unconscious, but I reckoned it wasn’t very long. So if it had been about one o’clock when I was kidnapped, it must be nearly dawn now…

  And the Tooth Phaery ALWAYS collects your tooth before dawn, as long as you’ve put it in a glass of water beside your bed…

  A glass of water! I raced out to the kitchen, and rummaged in the miniature cupboard. None of the glasses looked quite clean (I shuddered to think what might have been in them) so I washed one quickly and jammed my tooth in it (you try fitting a human-sized tooth into a phaery-sized container) and managed to get a few drips of water in, too.

  That would have to do!

  Now for a bed! There was no way I was going to lie down in the Tooth Phaery’s bed-shaped swamp, or the Dandruff Phaery’s piles of…well, I HOPED it was feathers, or the Snot Phaery’s…well, let’s just say it wasn’t a waterbed…

  So, I grabbed the beanbags and shoved them together, then I lay down carefully, so that I didn’t push them apart. I placed the glass with my
tooth in it next to me, then tied the string onto my finger again.

  And then I shut my eyes.

  Come on Tooth Phaery, I willed. Come on! Come on! Come on!

  The minutes ticked by, except of course they didn’t, because I didn’t have my watch with me and, anyway, it’s digital and it doesn’t tick.

  At any moment, I expected to hear a PING! as the three phaeries returned, with or without crocodiles. Unless the Snot Phaery had thought of some other way to bump me off, I thought desperately, like boiling me in snot or smothering me in dandruff (but I thought the Dandruff Phaery might object to that) or throwing me in a pit of leeches to suck out all my blood…

  Something tugged at my finger.

  ‘Well,’ declared someone right next to me. ‘This is a nice state of affairs!’

  I opened my eyes.

  A phaery was fluttering just above my beanbags. She was tiny and delicate and businesslike in an off-white linen suit with big brown buttons and matching shoes, a big fashionable pair of glasses, and she was carrying the sort of handbag that holds a laptop computer.

  ‘You didn’t PING!’ I said accusingly.

  ‘Well, of course, I didn’t PING!, child,’ she declared. ‘If I went round PING!ing all the time, I’d wake everyone up. And I’d like to see how THAT would go down with the parents, waking their children up in the middle of the night.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Now if you don’t mind, I’ve got a schedule to meet. So if you could just tell me what you think you’re doing with that…’

  She gestured to the string running from my finger to my tooth.

  ‘I had to attract your attention!’ I cried. ‘I’ve been kidnapped by a fake Tooth Phaery who wants me to polish his teeth and there’s a fake Snot Phaery who wants to feed me to the crocodiles and a Dandruff Phaery who wants me to be his Snow White and there’s a whole bathtub of teeth just down the corridor and…’

  The real Tooth Phaery looked at me carefully. ‘Perhaps,’ she said after a while, ‘it might be best if I take notes.’ She pulled her laptop out of her handbag (I’d been right) and began to tap away while I kept on explaining.

  Well, it took a while to sort it all out.

  ‘And at no time did this so-called Tooth Phaery offer to show you any credentials?’ demanded the real Tooth Phaery, tapping away.

  ‘Well, no,’ I said.

  She glanced at me over her glasses. ‘My dear, let this be a lesson to you,’ she stated. ‘If anyone ever appears in your bedroom at two in the morning and claims to be the Tooth Phaery, have a very close look at his or her credentials.’

  ‘Er, do you have credentials?’ I asked timidly.

  ‘Naturally,’ she assured me crisply. She rummaged in her handbag again and handed a small folder over to me.

  I peered at it. ‘By Royal Appointment,’ it declared at the top in big, gold, scrawly letters. Then underneath it said: ‘I hereby appoint The Phaery Dainty Foot as Tooth Phaery, by order, signed The Phaery Calendula, secretary, for The Phaery Queen.’

  ‘Are you the Phaery Dainty Foot?’ I asked.

  The Tooth Phaery gave me a cold look. ‘I prefer simply to be known as the Tooth Phaery,’ she stated. ‘It’s a matter of professional etiquette.’ She bent down to her laptop again. ‘Now, there is one final matter I’d like cleared up. When you first arrived here, did this individual—’

  There was a sudden PING! over by the fridge and there was the individual in question, in his fringed shirt and trousers with his bulging carry bag slung over his shoulder. Two more PINGS! and there were the Snot Phaery and the Dandruff Phaery.

  The false Tooth Phaery took one look at me and the real Tooth Phaery and turned pale.

  ‘Oh #&%@!’ said the false Tooth Phaery. (I can’t write those words down because Mum would ground me for the next two decades if she even thought I knew what they meant!)

  The false Tooth Phaery lifted up his arms and began to PING!…

  ‘Oh, no you don’t, my lad,’ said the real Tooth Phaery. Before the fake Tooth Phaery could finish his PING!, she swooped over to him like a wasp on steroids and grabbed his elbow.

  ‘Let me go!’ yelled the false Tooth Phaery, pulling his arm away. He lifted his heavy carry bag over her head.

  Zam! Bang! Whop! went the real Tooth Phaery, as she gave him a karate chop to both wrists, followed by a kick to the back of his knees that sent him sprawling across the seagrass matting.

  The real Tooth Phaery glanced over at the Snot Phaery and the Dandruff Phaery. (By this stage they were cowering over by the fridge.) ‘Either of you lads like to add anything?’ she demanded.

  The Snot Phaery shook his head.

  ‘Um,’ muttered the Dandruff Phaery dolefully. ‘Does this mean she won’t be my Snow White no more?’ he said, nodding towards me.

  I shoved the real Tooth Phaery’s computer out of my line of sight. (She’d left it hovering in mid-air when she dashed over to the fake Tooth Phaery.) ‘That’s right,’ I said.

  The Dandruff Phaery looked crestfallen. ‘Oh,’ he said sadly. ‘And I brung you an apple too.’ He rummaged in his pocket. ‘It’s here somewhere…Snow Whites like apples. It isn’t poisoned or anything,’ he assured me.

  Well, he was sort of sweet, in an Elvis Presley lookalike way. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said kindly. ‘I don’t think Mum will let me be anyone’s Snow White until I’ve finished school.’

  The real Tooth Phaery glanced at her watch. ‘Well, I don’t know about you,’ she said to me. ‘But I have appointments. So if you’ll excuse me I’ll just PING! you back to your bedroom and…’

  ‘Hey, wait!’ I yelled. ‘I want to know what’s going to happen to my kidnappers!’

  The real Tooth Phaery shook her head (she had a really cool haircut, sort of short at the sides and all streaked blonde on top). ‘This one,’ she said, gesturing at the false Tooth Phaery, ‘…will be charged with impersonating a duly appointed officer of the Phaery Queen, namely the Tooth Phaery. I would imagine he’ll get a long sentence.’ The real Tooth Phaery’s eyes gleamed behind her glasses. ‘Probably involving cleaning up the dragon droppings in the royal castle dungeons,’ she added.

  ‘Will I have to be a witness at his trial?’ I asked hopefully. (I’d heard that trials sometimes went on for months, which meant I’d get out of school.)

  ‘That won’t be necessary, dear,’ said the Tooth Phaery efficiently. ‘Phaery judges can PING! up the whole incident and see for themselves. But thank you for offering.’

  ‘What about the others?’ I asked.

  ‘Yeah, what about us?’ whined the Snot Phaery.

  The real Tooth Phaery quelled him with a glance. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘as it happens, there is no official Snot Phaery, so this…person…isn’t impersonating anybody.’

  ‘Told you so!’ whined the Snot Phaery triumphantly.

  ‘But, of course, he did assist in kidnapping you, plus the threats to your person.’

  ‘Which included feeding me to the crocodiles and giving me concrete Ugh boots,’ I put in.

  ‘So I imagine he’ll be helping with the dragon droppings.’

  ‘Hey!’ yelled the Snot Phaery. ‘That’s not fair! It was all his fault! I didn’t do—’

  ‘Oh, be quiet,’ snapped the real Tooth Phaery. There was a piercing PING! and the fake Tooth Phaery and the Snot Phaery were gone.

  ‘What about him?’ I asked, nodding at the Dandruff Phaery, who was still standing there blinking, as though he was trying to work out what was happening. ‘It wasn’t his fault, really. He was quite nice, sort of.’

  The Tooth Phaery sighed. ‘As a matter of fact, he is the real Dandruff Phaery,’ she admitted. ‘I know his family slightly.’ She fluttered over to me. ‘A good heart,’ she whispered in my ear, ‘but not…well, not the brightest phaery around. He just got into bad company. I’m sure the judge will be lenient.’

  She straightened up and glanced over at the dejected Dandruff Phaery. ‘After all, he is very dedicated to his profession.’ Sh
e gave a little shudder. ‘No one else would collect dandruff with quite the same enthusiasm.’

  The Dandruff Phaery brightened.

  ‘And if no one collected the dandruff,’ added the real Tooth Phaery, ‘we’d all be knee deep in it by next Tuesday.’

  ‘Then—’ I began, but the Tooth Phaery shook her head.

  ‘I’m sorry dear,’ she said, ‘but I really have to get you home now. I still have several collections to do before dawn.’

  Before I could say anything, there was another PING!

  And this time I woke up in bed.

  Well, after I’d thought things through a bit, I decided not to tell Mum any of my adventures. She’d either have a stress attack or decide I’d been dreaming. I didn’t even tell Phredde, not for a few days anyway.

  I think I must have been a bit upset about it, to tell you the truth—I mean, you try being kidnapped in the middle of the night by a homicidal Tooth Phaery and see what you feel like next morning.

  But anyway, I felt a lot better after I’d told Phredde. Things always feel better after you’ve shared them with someone.

  Phredde sighed after I’d finished my story. ‘It’s always sad when phaeries go bad,’ she said.

  ‘How long do you think they’ll get in prison?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Phredde vaguely. ‘A few thousand years, I suppose.’

  And that was the end of it.

  Except…

  February the fourteenth was a Saturday this year. I hauled myself out of bed about lunchtime, as usual, and staggered down to the kitchen. I’d quite forgotten it was St Valentine’s Day until Mum yelled at me as I was passing the Ballroom (that’s where we keep the computer and the TV and stuff like that). ‘Prudence? There’s a letter for you on the kitchen table.’

  So I staggered a bit faster and grabbed the letter before Mark saw it (big brothers give you no privacy at all about things like that), and opened it fast, just in case it was from…well, never mind about that now.

  There was a card inside. It was a great, big, white one. I opened it up and there, in great gold letters, it said: ‘Will you be my Snow White? Thinking of you always…’