Wonderfully Wacky Families

by Jackie French

  ‘Duh,’ said Prunella. ‘Mum would want to know why we needed a cab. She’d offer to drive us. Mum may not think much of what I do, but she does the dutiful Mum thing.’

  ‘Um.’ Buster wondered whether to say anything, but there had been such hollowness in Prunella’s voice. ‘She does love you, you know.’

  ‘Who? Mum? She thinks I’m a mess,’ said Prunella.

  Buster tried to find the words. ‘She just thinks you’re…different…from her. But she does love you. She thinks a lot of you, too. She just doesn’t know how to say it.’

  ‘How do you know?’ asked Prunella suspiciously.

  ‘I sniffed her bum, of course,’ said Buster.

  ‘You did what!’ roared Prunella.

  ‘I sniffed her bum,’ said Buster matter-of-factly. ‘When I was sitting on my haunches next to her. You can learn a lot about a person by sniffing their bum.’

  ‘You sniffed my mum’s bum! My mum’s actual bum? How dare you!’ yelled Prunella.

  Buster blinked. ‘I couldn’t help it,’ he added. ‘It’s a wolf thing. If you’re near a bum, you sniff it. I didn’t get too close,’ he added. ‘Not a right-up-into-the-bum-hole sort of sniff. Just a, well, you know, an everyday hello-what-are-you-thinking-about, and what-did-you-have-for-breakfast? sort of sniff.’

  ‘No, I don’t know!’ Prunella glared at him. A thought suddenly struck her. ‘You haven’t been sniffing my bum, have you?’ she demanded, even more suspiciously.

  ‘I…er…’ stammered Buster. How was he going to get out of this one?

  ‘You have! You’ve sniffed my bum! How dare you!’ shrieked Prunella.

  ‘Prunella, darling? Is anything wrong?’ Prunella’s mum leaned out the window.

  Prunella lowered her voice. ‘What? Wrong? No, why should anything be wrong?’

  ‘You were yelling,’ her mum pointed out.

  ‘Er…it was at the dog.’ Prunella glared at Buster. ‘He was about to lift his leg on the front door—he’s not toilet-trained. So I yelled at him.’

  Her mum sighed. ‘Sounds like the sooner you take him back the better.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Prunella, glaring at Buster. ‘I bet he’s got fleas, too. And probably mange.’

  Buster stopped scratching. ‘Woof,’ he muttered indignantly. What was wrong with having a few fleas? It was sort of friendly, having fleas. And you always had something to scratch if you were bored.

  ‘Well, I’m glad he’s going. See you at dinner, darling.’

  ‘Yes, Mum,’ said Prunella. She hesitated. ‘Mum…’

  ‘Yes?’ asked her mum.

  ‘I love you,’ muttered Prunella.

  Her mum looked startled, then very, very pleased. ‘I love you too, darling,’ she said, ‘very much indeed. Should we have pizza for dinner?’

  ‘Definitely,’ said Prunella. ‘I love pizza,’ she added, as her mum’s head vanished again. ‘You get to eat it with your fingers.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Buster without thinking. ‘Mouse pizza especially. Aunty Paws makes great mouse pizza. She spreads the mouse guts all over the tomato sauce, then covers it all with cheese.’ Suddenly he remembered he was angry with her. ‘Who isn’t house-trained?’ he barked.

  ‘You,’ said Prunella calmly, beginning to walk down the road.

  ‘I am so too!’ flared Buster, trotting at her heels in a huff. ‘I’ve been house-trained since I was a puppy.’ Dad had always said that was werewolf rule number nine: Never do ‘that’ on the carpet. And he hadn’t!

  ‘You’re not house-trained. You sniffed my mum’s bum. And my bum,’ she added. ‘In my book, being house-trained means no bum sniffing.’

  Buster said nothing. He trotted after her for a while, trying to work her out. She didn’t smell angry. She smelled…what was it? Happy about her mum, in spite of the way he’d found out about it. And eager to find out what had happened to his parents too. And…and…and she was wondering…

  Suddenly he understood. ‘Your bum smells really nice,’ he added. ‘Sort of…friendly.’

  Prunella stopped. ‘Friendly?’

  ‘Yes. And…and detective-like.’

  ‘Detective-like,’ said Prunella slowly. Suddenly she grinned. ‘I like that. I smell like a detective. You must have a really great nose,’ she added.

  ‘The best,’ said Buster modestly. ‘It runs in the family. My dad can sniff out wallaby droppings from half a kilometre away. And my mum can smell what someone is thinking even before they’ve thought it.’

  ‘It must be great to be able to smell what people are thinking,’ said Prunella enviously. ‘It’d be a great help as a detective.’

  ‘It’s the best way to understand the world,’ agreed Buster. ‘The trouble is…’

  ‘What?’ asked Prunella.

  ‘When you’re in wolf form you just don’t understand things so well. You can smell in wolf form, but you have to be in human form to really think about it. It’s like you can’t do both at once.

  ‘But when you’re with me, you can smell and I can think,’ said Prunella triumphantly. She grinned at him.

  Buster grinned back, his tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth. ‘Sounds good to me! And we’ve got a sixth sense,’ he added proudly.

  ‘What’s that?’ demanded Prunella.

  ‘Don’t know,’ admitted Buster. ‘Wolves just know things sometimes. But I don’t know how it works.’

  ‘Cool!’ said Prunella. ‘Okay, Buster, you use your nose sense and your sixth sense, and I’ll use the other four! Now let’s get going!’

  CHAPTER 9

  Back to Werewolf Mountain

  ‘No dogs,’ said the taxi driver flatly, glancing at Buster from over his newspaper.

  ‘But he’s a really well-behaved dog!’ pleaded Prunella. Buster sat back on his haunches and tried to look cute. ‘Woof, woof, woof,’ he yapped, as sweetly as he could.

  ‘He won’t chew the seat, I promise. He won’t even get hair on it. He’ll just sit on the floor at my feet!’

  Buster glared at her. Him! Sit on the floor! The only way to ride in a car was with your head out the window and your tongue lolling out and your ears flapping in the wind!

  But it didn’t matter. ‘No dogs,’ said the taxi driver again. He didn’t even look up this time.

  ‘Well shih-tzu, mate,’ muttered Buster, lifting his leg on the back tyre then following Prunella behind a line of giant rubbish bins. ‘I told you he wouldn’t take dogs,’ he added. ‘We’ll have to run up the mountain instead.’

  ‘No way,’ said Prunella. ‘It’s what, six kilometres! You may have four legs, buster, but I’ve only got two. Nope, you’ll just have to Change back.’

  ‘But if I Change I’ll be, you know, naked,’ protested Buster.

  Prunella thought for a moment, then peered into the nearest garbage bin and hauled out half a dozen plastic bags. She emptied the rubbish out of them, and began tying them together.

  Buster sniffed the garbage. Aha! An ancient hamburger, three disposable nappies filled with baby poo, six half-rotten oranges. Yum! ‘Like a bit?’ he asked, offering Prunella a green bit of bun and soggy meat.

  Prunella snorted, her hands still full of plastic bags. Buster began to chew the hamburger, then a thought came to him. ‘What are you doing with those plastic bags?’ he demanded.

  ‘Making you some clothes.’

  ‘Out of plastic bags! They’ve had yuck in them!’

  ‘You’re the one who’s got his nose in baby poo,’ said Prunella calmly.

  ‘I’m eating the hamburger, not the nappies!’ protested Buster. ‘And yuck is fine when I’m a wolf. You expect me to be a human in that…thing.’ He gazed at it suspiciously.

  ‘It’s a plastic swimming costume,’ said Prunella. ‘See? It goes round here…and here…then you tie it here. And you don’t have to wear it long. Just while we’re in the taxi.’

  ‘Well, I…um…’ Buster swallowed the last bit of mouldy hamburger. If this was what it took t
o find Mum and Dad, he supposed he could stand it. He glanced around, but he couldn’t see anyone looking…

  Buster shut his eyes, nodded his head twice, then…

  It was like a tummy ache that felt good, not bad, with a sort of giggle on the way. He could feel his teeth getting smaller, his tongue getting shorter, and bum smells getting definitely less interesting…

  And he was a boy again.

  The world was brighter and…

  ‘Aaark! Magic! Help help!’

  Buster gazed round frantically.

  ‘You nincompoop!’ hissed Prunella. ‘Why didn’t you check that no one was looking before you Changed!’

  ‘I did check! But I couldn’t see over the rubbish bin. It’s your fault! You should have warned me.’

  ‘My fault?’ began Prunella. ‘It’s your…’

  The elderly woman was clasping her heart. ‘That dog! It…it turned into a boy! Help! Help!’

  Prunella galloped over and grabbed the woman’s shopping before it fell out of her hands. ‘No, really,’ she soothed. ‘I was looking all the time. It must just have been a trick of the light. See, he’s just a normal kid!’

  The woman stopped screaming for a second, and stared at Buster. Then she began to scream again. ‘Help, help!’ she shrieked. ‘A naked boy! There’s a naked boy in the car park!’

  Prunella dashed back to Buster. ‘Quick,’ she hissed, ‘get your swimming costume on.’

  Buster began to struggle into the clammy plastic. ‘Stupid woman,’ he muttered. ‘Can’t she tell the difference between a dog and a werewolf!’

  People were staring at them now. Another woman came over to the screaming lady and put her arm around her comfortingly. ‘What’s going on?’ she demanded.

  ‘Sorry! I have to get my brother to the swimming pool! It’s time for his big race!’ cried Prunella. ‘Hurry!’ she hissed to Buster as she grabbed his hand, dragged him over to the taxi and opened the door.

  The taxi driver put down his newspaper. ‘No dogs…’ he began.

  ‘I don’t have a dog!’ snapped Prunella. ‘This is my brother and he has to get to his big swimming race. We’ll give you double fare if you get him there on time.’

  The taxi driver glanced down at Buster’s plastic swimming togs, glanced out the window at the gathering crowd, then shrugged. ‘Okay. Double fare. Where to?’

  ‘Werewolf Mountain,’ said Buster, for once in his life trying to shut out what his nose was telling him. Now he was a human, those bags smelled yuck.

  ‘There’s no swimming pool on Werewolf Mountain!’ protested the driver.

  ‘Yes there is,’ said Prunella hurriedly. ‘It’s just been built. Hurry!’

  The taxi screeched away from the curb. Buster gave a sigh of relief. ‘Can I take these off now?’ he whispered.

  ‘Only if you want to get thrown out of the cab for being naked,’ snapped Prunella. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Winding down the window.’ Buster thrust his head out the window. His ears were the wrong shape for flying in the wind, but it still felt good.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing!’ yelled the driver.

  The taxi slowed down again. ‘I’m not taking you kids anywhere if you play the fool like that!’

  ‘Triple fare!’ cried Prunella desperately. She nudged Buster. ‘Look, buster, get your head in, you dill pickle.’

  Buster pulled his head in reluctantly. Some people had no sense of fun.

  But it was fascinating looking at the streets he’d run through as a wolf. Things looked so different when you were human! The flowers had colours, instead of scents. The houses had shapes that you never noticed when you were more interested in cats, dogs and guinea pigs and the delicious garden additives like blood and bone and chicken poo.

  But now he was worried too about his missing parents. Wolves lived in the present. But now he was a boy again, his parents’ loss ate at him like acid.

  Could Prunella really find them? Maybe, he thought hopefully. She’d been pretty good with the phone calls, and handling her mum and the taxi driver…

  The landscape outside changed. Houses gave way to paddocks; paddocks gave way to scattered trees; the trees gave way to bush. The taxi began to climb the mountain.

  The scenery changed again. The bush was lusher here. Fat-stemmed creepers hung from the trees, and giant boulders, half the size of houses, seemed to grow out of the hillside.

  ‘See those boulders?’ said the taxi driver. ‘I reckon that’s why they call this Werewolf Mountain. Some of those rocks look just like wolf faces, don’t they?’

  Prunella coughed. ‘You could be right,’ she said.

  Buster looked at the rocks longingly. When he’d been a little puppy, Dad and Uncle Wal used to take him scrambling up the boulders. He and Dad would howl at the moon while Uncle Wal played the same tune on his guitar.

  ‘Hey, stop dreaming!’ Prunella nudged him. ‘Where are we going?’

  Buster thrust the memories away.

  ‘Right here!’ he whispered urgently. ‘This is where Mum and Dad’s scent finished.’

  ‘Stop the cab!’ cried Prunella to the driver.

  The taxi lurched to a halt. The driver looked around. ‘Where’s the swimming pool?’ he demanded.

  ‘It’s a new design,’ said Prunella hurriedly. ‘It doesn’t use any water. Better exercise that way. How much do we owe you?’

  The driver calculated. ‘Thirty dollars and seventy-seven cents,’ he said.

  ‘Fine.’ Prunella opened the cab door. ‘Pay the driver,’ she added to Buster.

  ‘What?’ Buster stared. ‘How?’

  ‘With money. You know,’ Prunella spoke slowly as though to an idiot, ‘m-o-n-e-y.’

  ‘But I don’t have any! How would I carry any money dressed like this!’ Or as a wolf either, he thought, but he didn’t say that aloud in case the taxi driver heard.

  ‘But you’re my client,’ protested Prunella. ‘Clients always pay expenses.’

  ‘How can I…’ began Buster.

  The taxi driver sighed. ‘Look, kids, are you going to pay me or not? Because if you aren’t…’ He left the threat unsaid.

  ‘We’ll pay,’ said Buster hurriedly.

  ‘Just keep driving another kilometre up the road.’ Uncle Flea or Aunty Paws would pay for the taxi.

  But that would mean taking Prunella back to the Tower. Buster could hear Dad’s voice in his head. Werewolf rule number ten: Never take a human back to your den!

  But there was no way out.

  CHAPTER 10

  Back to the Tower

  The taxi driver stared out at the Tower as the taxi drew up to the gate. ‘What is this place?’ he whistled, gazing at the high stone walls, the narrow windows and the flat-topped roof.

  ‘Home,’ said Buster shortly, as Aunty Paws trotted out the door to see what the noise was. She sat on her haunches and cocked her head at the car, then loped back into the house.

  ‘Fine-looking dog, that,’ said the taxi driver. ‘Irish wolfhound, isn’t it? And that’s a grand one too,’ he added, as Uncle Flea galloped round the corner and skidded to a stop.

  ‘Groowwl, woof!’ snarled Uncle Flea.

  ‘It’s only me!’ yelled Buster. He hurriedly got out of the taxi, frantically grabbing his plastic-bag swimming togs so they didn’t slip.

  Uncle Flea subsided.

  ‘Wonderful training,’ said the taxi driver admiringly. ‘You’d think that dog understood every word you said!’

  ‘Woof,’ said Uncle Flea warningly, casting the taxi driver a look that said he was dreaming of taxi-driver steaks.

  ‘I’ll just tell Aunty we’re here,’ began Buster, when Aunty Paws trotted out of the house again.

  But this time she was human. Buster watched as Prunella and the taxi driver stared at her. What were they looking at? he wondered. Aunty Paws had remembered to get dressed! She’d even brought her handbag!

  ‘I owe the driver thirty dollars and seventy-seven
cents,’ he told her hurriedly. ‘I’m sorry, Aunty Paws.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Buster,’ said Aunty Paws gently. She counted out the money into the driver’s hand as Prunella got out of the taxi.

  Aunty Paws glanced at Prunella uncertainly. ‘And this is…’

  ‘This is Prunella, Aunty Paws,’ said Buster. The taxi roared away in a stink of exhaust with Uncle Flea barking happily, as he chased it down the road. ‘She’s…um, she’s human!’ he confessed. ‘Prunella, this is my Aunty Paws.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Mrs…’ said Prunella. She was still trying not to stare.

  ‘Just call me Aunty Paws,’ Aunty Paws said kindly.

  ‘Prunella is a detective,’ explained Buster. ‘She’s helping me find Mum and Dad. And she knows about us,’ he added.

  Aunty Paws stared in alarm. ‘But, Buster, a human…’ she began.

  ‘Aunty, we have to find Mum and Dad,’ Buster burst out. ‘They can’t have just vanished! And Prunella can help us!’

  ‘But your Uncle Wal is looking for your parents,’ said Aunty Paws uncertainly.

  ‘I think,’ said Prunella slowly, ‘we’d better have a chat about Buster’s Uncle Wal.’

  Buster stared at her. So did Aunty Paws. ‘Why?’ Buster demanded.

  Aunty Paws laid a hand on his arm. ‘Let’s wait till we’re inside, eh? And lunch—I’m sure you can both do with some lunch.’

  Buster nodded enthusiastically. The mouldy bit of hamburger seemed hours away. And Prunella hadn’t even eaten any of it. Buster wondered suddenly if maybe he shouldn’t have offered her some of the garbage. He sighed. It was so difficult to know what good manners were, with a human.

  He and Prunella followed Aunty Paws inside. Prunella gazed around, her eyes wide. ‘It’s…just so different!’ she breathed.

  ‘How?’ demanded Buster.

  ‘Well, the ceiling’s really low!’

  ‘Wolves like to feel secure,’ explained Aunty Paws.

  ‘And all the doggie doors.’