The Phredde Collection

by Jackie French

  It wasn’t signed. But as I stood there staring, something floated to the floor.

  It was big and thin and white and almost transparent. It looked a bit like a snowflake that someone had stuck in a flower press and forgotten about it until it was almost dried out.

  It was the biggest flake of dandruff I’d ever seen in my life.

  So I picked it up, carefully put it in the bin, then I washed my hands very, very thoroughly. And I haven’t even told Phredde about THAT yet, and if you breathe a word to her I’ll…I’ll…well, I’m not sure what I’ll do, but it’ll make the Snot Phaery’s crocodiles seem like little bunny rabbits, believe me.

  And that was absolutely all that happened for ages, until Phredde and I decided we were bored with being attacked by giant squid or chased by ogres, and decided to…

  But that’s another story.

  Phredde and the Boa Constrictor

  It was an ordinary sort of lunchtime in the library—peaceful, with that rich smell of books all around. There was the ping ping pong pang ping of modems as kids checked their e-mails, and the occasional burp from the vampire books, and Miss Richards yelling, ‘Oh, no, you don’t! Take THAT!’ when they tried to bite her as she fed them bones for their lunch.

  In fact, it was so peaceful that I was drifting off into a really cool daydream about me and Phredde and our pirate ship and this evil band of bad guys who were trying to steal the world’s fish, so I didn’t even notice the book I was holding until I was putting it back on the shelf.

  ‘Hey!’ I yelled to Phredde. ‘Have a look at this!’

  Phredde fluttered over to me. ‘Shh,’ she ordered.

  I looked guiltily over my shoulder, in case Miss Richards had noticed, but she was struggling with one of the vampire books, which was trying to gnaw her arm for lunch instead of its bones, so she was too busy to frown at me for making a noise.

  ‘What’s up?’ asked Phredde softly, landing on my shoulder.

  ‘Look at this!’ I held the book up so she could see.

  ‘Animals of South America,’ read Phredde. ‘So what? I thought your dad wasn’t keen on South American things anymore.’

  ‘Yeah, but look at the cover!’ I insisted.

  Phredde peered down from my shoulder. ‘It looks like a snake,’ she said.

  ‘Not just a snake!’ I yelled, then lowered my voice in case Miss Richards heard, but all I could see of her were her legs, which were kicking wildly at the bookshelf, so that was taken care of. I mean, I bet it’s hard to hear anything when your head and shoulders are being swallowed by a vampire book.

  ‘What is it then?’ demanded Phredde.

  ‘It’s a twenty-metre long, giant boa constrictor! It can swallow a whole horse in one gulp.’

  ‘Wow!’ said Phredde. We stared at each other.

  ‘That’s even better than piranhas,’ said Phredde at last. ‘It takes piranhas ten whole minutes to skeletonise a cow.’

  I nodded. ‘How could Dad resist something like that?’ I demanded.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Phredde. ‘It’s pretty cool. But it’s not his birthday for ages, is it?’

  ‘Nup,’ I said. Then I brightened. ‘I could give him an un-birthday present! I mean, he’s a pretty good dad. He helps me with my homework and everything.’

  Actually, Dad is hopeless at homework, especially maths. What did they teach kids back in the stone age before they had videos and Space Invaders? Poor old Dad probably had a set of dinosaur teeth instead of a calculator. But at least he tries.

  ‘Could you magic up a boa constrictor for me?’ I asked.

  ‘Sure,’ said Phredde. Then her face fell. ‘I’ve run out of magic till Friday,’ she admitted.

  I blinked. ‘How can you run out of magic?’

  ‘Well, you know those fifty spaceships full of aliens I PING!ed up on Tuesday afternoon?’

  ‘Yeah. So what?’ I asked. We’d had this really cool battle with them (Bruce was there too, you should just see what a phaery frog with a magic tongue can do to spaceships), but we had to finish it early to do our homework.

  ‘Well, it used up all of my magic allowance,’ said Phredde.

  ‘I didn’t know you had an allowance! I thought you had as much magic as you wanted!’

  Phredde snorted. ‘Not till I’m seventeen. I mean, I’ve got enough left this week for normal things, like PING!ing up a seven-layer chocolate cake if I get a bit hungry or going invisible like I did this morning when I didn’t know the capital of Chile. But I don’t think I’ve got enough left for a twenty-metre long giant boa constrictor that can swallow a whole horse in one gulp.’

  ‘Bother,’ I said. I felt so low about it (Dad would have really loved that boa constrictor) that I hardly noticed when Miss Richards struggled out from between the book’s covers and gave it a vicious karate chop on its title page.

  ‘Of course we could always borrow a bit of magic from Bruce,’ said Phredde casually.

  I brightened. ‘Really?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Phredde. ‘He hardly ever uses any of his. Except for being a frog of course.’

  ‘Fabuwonderlous!’ I yelled, but that time Miss Richards did hear me. She gave the book a final karate kick and whispered, ‘Shhh!’

  Boy, Miss Richards really loves books. Most people would have thrown those books out but she’s had special handcuffs made for them and everything.

  ‘Sorry, Miss Richards!’ I whispered. Phredde and I tiptoed out, and went in search of Bruce.

  Bruce was in his usual spot, having lunch next to the rubbish bin. Rubbish bins are great when you’re a frog. All Bruce has to do is sit there and go zap with his tongue every time a fly tries to land in the bin. I could see why he hardly ever used any magic. I mean, what more could a frog want?

  ‘Ribbit,’ said Bruce.

  ‘Don’t croak with your mouth full,’ said Phredde, fluttering down beside him.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Bruce. He eyed another fly that was hovering near my ear.

  Zap!

  ‘Excuse me,’ said Bruce politely. ‘That was a particularly juicy one. What’s up?’

  ‘I just wondered if I could borrow some magic till Friday,’ said Phredde.

  ‘Sure,’ said Bruce, his gaze on another big-bummed fly. ‘How much?’

  ‘Just enough to magic up a twenty-metre long, giant boa constrictor that can swallow a whole horse in one gulp,’ said Phredde in an off-hand fashion.

  ‘Okay,’ said Bruce. He thought for a moment. ‘What do you want a twenty-metre long, giant boa constrictor that can swallow a whole horse in one gulp for?’

  ‘It’s a present for my dad,’ I explained.

  ‘Oh,’ said Bruce, his eyes back on the fly. Phredde kicked it away.

  ‘Hey, concentrate,’ she said. ‘You can go back to your flies in a minute.’

  Bruce sighed. ‘Alright, alright,’ he said. ‘One twenty-metre long, giant boa constrictor that can swallow a whole horse in one gulp coming up. Do you want it here or back at your place?’ he asked me.

  I wasn’t quite sure how I’d get a twenty-metre long, giant boa constrictor that could swallow a whole horse in one gulp home with me, so I said, ‘Back at the castle, please. And could you make it a big bright green one with yellow spots?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Bruce. ‘Where in the castle do you want it?’

  I blinked. I hadn’t exactly thought about where Dad would keep a twenty-metre long, giant boa constrictor that could swallow a whole horse in one gulp. I don’t think his bedroom is twenty metres long, even with the en suite, and even if it was, having a twenty-metre, giant boa constrictor in there would make it a bit difficult to have a shower and get to the toilet and all that stuff.

  Besides, we’d never get a whole horse in there to feed it.

  ‘Better put it in the Ballroom,’ I decided. That’s one of the good things about living in a castle. There’s plenty of room for your pets.

  ‘Okay,’ said Bruce. There was a faint PING! all around us.


  ‘Wow, thanks,’ I said.

  ‘Can I go back to my lunch now?’ asked Bruce, hopefully.

  But then the volcano exploded and it was time to go back to class.

  You know, it’s sort of embarrassing what happened next. I mean, I’d forgotten all about having a volleyball match that afternoon. (We won. Bruce is really good at volleyball—his tongue can zap the ball out of the air from five metres away. Having a giant frog on the team spooks the other side, too. Not to mention having Phredde on the team, too, of course.)

  So it was really late by the time Phredde and I were headed home, and I suddenly remembered the boa constrictor.

  ‘Bother,’ I said. ‘I really wanted to see Dad’s face when he saw it.’

  I’ll never forget Dad’s face when I gave him Dribbles. He went quite white with joy.

  ‘Isn’t it the most incredible present you’ve ever received, Dad?’ I’d asked and he’d said, sort of faintly, ‘A giant sloth. Yes…yes, Prudence, it’s the most incredible present yet.’

  So you can see why I was looking forward to being there when he saw his boa constrictor. In fact, I was just about to ask Phredde if she’d mind zapping us back in time a bit, when I remembered she was short of magic till Friday.

  ‘It’ll probably be hungry,’ said Phredde practically. ‘What are you going to feed it?’

  You know, I hadn’t thought of that—at least I hadn’t thought of it again once I’d realised that fitting a horse in the bathroom for it to swallow in one gulp was not really possible. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘What do giant boa constrictors eat?’

  ‘Well, horses, I suppose,’ said Phredde.

  ‘Oh,’ I said. I hadn’t thought about where I’d get the horses to feed it. All I’d thought was that it was a really great present for Dad. I hadn’t considered the practicalities of boa constrictor ownership.

  ‘We don’t have any horses,’ I said slowly. ‘Well, only my unicorn. And I’m not feeding Tootsie to a twenty-metre, giant boa constrictor.’

  ‘Of course not,’ agreed Phredde. ‘Anyway, I bet boa constrictors eat all sorts of things.’

  ‘Like what?’ I was starting to get a bit nervous about having a hungry twenty-metre boa constrictor around the castle, to be honest.

  ‘Well, like…like…’ faltered Phredde. She shook her head. ‘We’ll just have to offer it all sorts of things and see what it prefers. Would you like me to come, too?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ I said. Somehow, the idea of a twenty-metre, giant boa constrictor didn’t seem quite as great as it did back in the library. I mean, it was still a supercool, splendimarvellously great present. But I was just starting to see that there might be one or two little problems.

  ‘Er, Phredde,’ I said.

  ‘Mmm?’ said Phredde, fluttering up above me and making a rude face at a butterfly.

  ‘How do twenty-metre, giant boa constrictors go to the toilet?’

  ‘Dunno,’ said Phredde. ‘Maybe we should have read the book.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said.

  I wondered how much kitty litter would be required by a twenty-metre, giant boa constrictor that could swallow a whole horse.

  And it would have to be in a really big tray.

  It was sort of quiet back at the castle, which was a relief. I’d kind of expected that maybe Dad would be in the courtyard bellowing: ‘Prudence! What’s this twenty-metre long, giant boa constrictor doing in our Ballroom?’

  He may not even have realised that it was a present for him. He might have thought it was just one of my science projects or something.

  Phredde and I dumped our schoolbags in front of the Great Hall and galloped up the steps. (Well, I galloped and Phredde flew.)

  ‘Hey, Mum!’ I yelled. ‘I’m home!’

  No answer.

  I peered into the Mostly Peach and Avocado Drawing Room, which is where Mum does her crosswords. The crosswords were there alright, sprawled out all over the desk, but there was no sign of Mum.

  ‘Let’s try the kitchens,’ I said. So we galloped (okay, galloped and flew) down to the first floor. ‘Hey Gark, what’s for dinner?’ I called.

  No answer. And no Gark either. In fact, there wasn’t any sign of dinner, which was really serious because, what with playing volleyball, not to mention worrying just a tiny little bit about Dad’s reaction to the twenty-metre, giant boa constrictor, I was really hungry.

  ‘How about Mark?’ asked Phredde, hovering above me.

  ‘Probably doing his homework,’ I decided. ‘He’ll know where they all are.’ (Older brothers know everything. Or, at least, they think they do. It really gets to me sometimes.)

  So we galloped and flew up another four flights of stairs (Mum really needs to ask the Phaery Splendifera to put some lifts in our castle) to Mark’s bedroom in the tower.

  ‘Hey, Mark!’ I puffed, as we rounded the last flight of stairs. ‘Where’s everyone?’

  I stopped. There was no sign of Mark, either.

  ‘He’s probably out with his mates,’ I said, a bit weakly. It wasn’t just a lack of food and too many stairs, either. I was starting to get just a little bit worried. ‘Let’s try to find Dad.’

  I peered out of Mark’s tower window. Dad usually likes to go for a swim after work. But there was no sign of him, just the pirate ship and a couple of whales.

  ‘Let’s look downstairs,’ said Phredde.

  There was no one in the Pink Drawing Room, the Yellow-Spotted Drawing Room, the Patchwork and Quilted Drawing Room (Mum had been going to Tech classes again), the dungeons, the Great Hall, the Not-So-Great Hall, the Really Small Hall behind the TV room, or in the TV room either.

  No one was in the garden, the stables, the bedrooms or up on the battlements or down in the courtyard…

  Which left just one place left to look.

  ‘The Ballroom,’ whispered Phredde.

  I nodded.

  We didn’t gallop at all this time. For one thing, we were puffed, and, for another, well, that little bit of worry had become a giant lead ball in my stomach. So, I trudged there and Phredde sat on my shoulder. I opened the Ballroom door and…

  Phredde gulped. ‘It is big, isn’t it?’

  ‘Twenty metres long,’ I said dubiously. Actually it looked longer, but I wasn’t going to get my ruler out of my schoolbag and measure it.

  ‘It’s sort of…of bright…’ whispered Phredde.

  ‘Well, I did ask for green with yellow spots,’ I reminded her.

  The boa constrictor lifted up its head and stared at us with its tiny eyes. Well, they were tiny when compared to the rest of it, anyway. Actually, each eye was about the size of a TV set, the head was about as big as our classroom and the rest of it…well, it wasn’t its length, so much. It was just big!

  I mean, that boa constrictor had never heard of a diet!

  ‘Er, Phredde?’ I said.

  ‘Yes?’ whispered Phredde.

  ‘Do you think it looks hungry?’

  ‘I can’t tell,’ whispered Phredde. ‘How do you know when a boa constrictor’s hungry?’

  ‘When it looks at you like that one’s looking at us, I think,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Phredde. She didn’t say anything else, just fluttered casually up to the furthest corner of the Ballroom ceiling. I could have told her that plucking a phaery from the ceiling would be a cinch for a twenty-metre boa constrictor.

  Well, it was either stand there or run away, and someone had told me once that the best thing to do when faced with a snake is to stand still. So I did, because after all, if the boa constrictor really wanted to eat me, I figured that the Ballroom door would probably crack—just like the balsawood Mark used to make his model planes—if a hungry boa constrictor charged at it.

  I stood frozen, and Phredde stayed grasping the ceiling, and the boa constrictor kept looking at us with those tiny TV-sized eyes. Then, slowly, they shut and the giant head dropped to the floor.

  ‘Phredde!’ I hissed. ‘It’s falling asleep
!’

  ‘Maybe it’s not hungry after all!’ Phredde whispered down to me.

  ‘But…but…’

  That’s when it hit me. The boa constrictor wasn’t hungry because it had eaten my family! It had eaten Mum and Dad and Mark (and even if big brothers are a nuisance, he’s the only one I’ve got), and maybe it had even eaten Gark, too.

  I marched up to the boa constrictor and kicked it on the jaw.

  Nothing happened.

  ‘Come on you rancid reptile! Open up!’ I screamed. I kicked it again.

  The boa constrictor opened one eye, then shut it again.

  ‘Phredde, help me!’ I shouted.

  ‘How?’ cried Phredde, still hovering at ceiling level.

  ‘We’ve got to get it to open its mouth! My whole family’s down there!’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Inside this putrid python!’ I kicked the boa constrictor again and beat on it with my fists, but it paid no attention at all. I mean, if snakes could snore, that one would have been snorting like a steam train.

  ‘But…but if it’s already eaten them…’ began Phredde uncertainly.

  ‘Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole!’ I reminded her. ‘Then they digest them inside! It may not be too late!’

  ‘But how can we get them out?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ I cried. ‘If only we could get it to burp…or…or…I know! We’ll tickle it!’

  ‘Tickle it?’

  ‘Yeah! Then it’ll have to open its mouth to giggle, and Mum and Dad and Mark might be able to run out and escape.’

  ‘Well,’ said Phredde. ‘I suppose it’s worth a try.’

  She flapped down cautiously and hovered beside me. ‘How do you tickle a boa constrictor?’

  ‘How should I know? I suppose we just try tickling its tummy.’

  Phredde blinked. Well, that boa constrictor did have a lot of tummy…

  ‘You try that side and I’ll do this one,’ I ordered.

  I lunged at the nearest bit of snake-belly and began to tickle.

  Tickle, tickle, tickle, tickle…