The Phredde Collection (32 page)
Jackie French
To ‘Eagle Eye’ Zoe Simpson, the team’s youngest editor, with heaps of thanks for her suggestions.
P.S.Yuka, you’re in the book as promised.
Chapter 1 The Trouble with Werewolves
Chapter 2 The Trouble with Girlfriends
Chapter 6 The Beast with Beastly Breath
Chapter 7 The Big Koala Wildlife Park
Chapter 8 Miss Richards Arrives
Chapter 11 How to Make a Rhoetosaurus Sick
Chapter 12 Snot, Bloo…, er, and Librarian Spit
Chapter 13 A Rhoetosaurus with Indigestion
Chapter 14 Fishing with Phredde
Chapter 16 A Swim Before Dinner
Chapter 17 At Home 100,000 Years Ago
Chapter 18 The Demon Duck of Doom
Chapter 20 A Baby Demon Duck of Doock
Chapter 21 Mrs Olsen Goes Hunting
For those who came in late…
Prudence: A normal schoolgirl who lives in a magic castle and has a fairy, sorry, phaery, as her best friend. She likes feeding her piranhas, sailing her pirate ship and making sure her mum doesn’t find out what she and Phredde get up to.
Phredde: A 30-cm-high phaery. Her real name is The Phaery Ethereal but unless you want your kneecaps kicked by a furious phaery, DON’T call her this unless you’re a teacher, parent or someone even Phredde acknowledges it’s not a good idea to kneecap! Likes any adventure that doesn’t involve wearing glass slippers or handsome princes.
P.S. That’s PHAERY, buster, not fairy. Don’t call Phredde a ‘fairy’ if you value your kneecaps.
Bruce: A handsome phaery prince. Or he might be if he hadn’t decided to be a giant frog instead of a kid. (A
Crinea signifera,
if you want to be precise. Ask Bruce if you want to know more about
Crinea signifera
—or better still, look it up in the library, because Bruce will tell you EVERYTHING.) Bruce likes catching flies and collecting recipes for mosquito pizza. Holds the interschool record for the long jump
and
the high jump at the Athletics Carnival.
P.S. Don’t called Bruce a fairy either. He won’t kneecap you but you might find dried flies in your muesli.
Mrs Olsen: Pru, Phredde and Bruce’s teacher. Also a 400-year-old vampire—but don’t worry, she and her family have a friendly arrangement with the abattoir. The butchers get the meat and the vampires get the bl…, er, red stuff. Miss Olsen keeps her coffin in the art supplies cupboard.
Mark: Pru’s older brother. He’s also a werewolf, a trait he inherited from his father’s side of the family. (Greatuncle Ron is a werewolf too.) He answers to ‘Dog’s Breath’—but don’t try it if you can’t run fast. Mark spends his spare time chasing cars and following football. His favourite snack food is corn chips and corgis.
Pru’s Dad: Loves everything South American, except possibly jaguars, piranhas and giant sloths.
Pru’s Mum: Loves crosswords, coffee and is just beginning to understand computers. Fusses about the
least little thing, like vampires, ogres and going out in the sun without a hat and sunblock.
Miss Richards: School librarian and martial-arts expert. Looks good in a leopard-skin miniskirt.
The Phaery Splendifera: Phredde’s mum. Loves crosswords, honeydew nectar and racing magic carpets. Wants her darling baby Ethereal to marry a nice handsome prince when she grows up. Do
not
mention this to Phredde.
Amelia: In Pru, Phredde and Bruce’s class at school. You don’t really want to know anything more about her.
Edwin: The same goes for Edwin.
The Trouble with Werewolves
It was an ordinary day in our castle.
Mum was down in the dungeons working on a crossword (she says the gloom helps her concentrate) and Dad was up in the Great Hall watching the cricket on TV.
I was feeding my leftover last night’s dinner to my piranhas in the moat (chicken and zucchini curry—yuk!) and watching them gobble up the chicken bits and spit out the zucchini (even piranhas don’t like zucchini—which proves my point) and Mark was howling up on the battlements.
Mark does a lot of howling on the battlements, especially when it’s a full moon, which it was this afternoon, sailing faintly through the afternoon sky like it was a balloon some dopey kid had let fly into the air.
When it’s a full moon Mark turns into a werewolf, which is okay by me because, as big brothers go, he’s
pretty okay when he’s a werewolf, especially that time he bit Amelia on the bum when she slagged off my science project at school Open Day.
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Mum gets a bit narky sometimes at the wolf hair on the sofa and when Mark lifts his leg on the front door, but like Mark says, werewolves have to mark their territory and she should be grateful he just lifts his leg and doesn’t do SOMETHING ELSE. Then Mum asked, who left the doggy doo on her geraniums? And Mark said…but I was telling you about him howling on the battlements, wasn’t I?
Well, there was I, watching the curry sauce turn the moat water yellow, and there was Mark right at the top of the castle howling, ‘Pruuuddeeence!!!!!! Pruuuuuuuddence!!!!!!!!!’
‘What do you want?’ I yelled.
‘Coooommmmee uuuppp heeeere!’
‘What’s the magic word?’ I shouted.
‘Turkey!!!’ howled Mark.
Turkey? That meant that Mark knew it was me who took the Christmas turkey and fed it to the piranhas before Mum had a chance to stuff its bum with herbs and breadcrumbs. Well, it was an experiment, wasn’t it? If a school of piranhas can skeletonise a cow in ten minutes, how long does it take for them to eat a frozen turkey? (If you’re ever asked that question in an exam the answer’s four minutes and twenty-one seconds, ’cause I timed them.
2
)
Anyway Mum doesn’t know and I hope she
never
finds out because she was a bit upset when she discovered the turkey was gone, even though there were
plenty
of turkeys left in the deepfreeze cabinet at the supermarket.
So I yelled, ‘Okay! Coming!’ to Mark and trotted over the drawbridge and through the front door (Mum’s right—it does pong a bit ’cause Mark marks
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his territory every time he goes through the door—like once when he goes to school and once when he comes home and another time when he goes out with his mates and another when he comes back. Four leg lifts
at least
seven days a week means lots and
lots
of little yellow puddles and after a while…
Well, you get the generally pongy idea.
After that I ran through the Great Hall and through the Not So Great Hall and up the Grand Staircase and then the Not So Grand Staircase and up the Really Quite Small Staircase and along the passage and up the narrow stone stairs to the battlements (you get a lot of exercise living in a castle—I’m a whiz at long distance at the Athletics Carnival now) and looked around.
No Mark.
‘I’m up here!’ he yelled.
So I panted up another set of stairs to the top of the turret where Mark has his bedroom and pushed open the door (werewolves can’t manage door handles so Mark’s bedroom has a sliding door now), and there was Mark, looking at himself in the mirror.
‘Hi, Pruneface. Thanks,’ he said.
‘Don’t mention it,’ I said. ‘And don’t mention that turkey to Mum either. What do you want?’
‘Could you brush my hair?’ asked Mark. ‘It’s Tracey’s birthday party tonight.’
‘Sure,’ I said. I know big brothers usually brush their own hair, but while werewolf paws are great at holding down their prey while they rip its jugular vein out, they aren’t much good at holding hairbrushes. I looked round and picked up Mark’s hairbrush from the dressing table. Mark has two hairbrushes now, a little normal one for when he’s human and a great big wide one for when he’s a wolf. I started brushing his back.
Mark craned his head and peered in the mirror. ‘No dandruff?’ he asked.
‘No dandruff,’ I assured him.
‘Good,’ said Mark. ‘I found this great anti-dandruff dog shampoo down at the vet’s. It makes your coat really glossy. You should try it.’
‘No thanks,’ I said. ‘I’ll stick to human shampoo.’ I began to brush his legs.
‘Don’t forget my tail!’ said Mark, wagging it anxiously.
‘Stop worrying about your fruitcake
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tail!’ I told him. ‘It looks fine!’
‘Tracey hates daggy tails,’ said Mark, wagging his tail in my face. I grabbed it and began to brush.
‘Hey, I know a werewolf joke,’ I informed him.
‘Oh, yeah?’
‘Yep. I used to be a werewolf, but I’m over it nowhooooowwwwwlllllll!’ Actually I thought it was a pretty good werewolf howl, but Mark just shrugged.
‘Very funny, Pruneface.’
‘Look,’ I said, ‘if I’m brushing your tail you can laugh at my jokes.’
‘Ha, ha then.’ He craned round for another look at his tail. ‘Does it look okay now?’
‘Every hair is glossy,’ I told him. ‘You’ll be the best-looking werewolf at the party.’ Well, sometimes you have to lay it on thick for older brothers. ‘What present did you get for her anyway?’
‘A jar of flea powder,’ said Mark, examining his fangs in the mirror.
‘Er, Mark…’
‘Hey, is that a bit of guinea pig between my teeth? Pass the dental floss will you?’
‘Er, Mark, about the flea powder…’ ‘Yeah?’ asked Mark.
‘Are you
sure
Tracey
wants
flea powder for her birthday?’
‘Oh yeah, she really needs it. She was scratching like anything last full moon.’
‘Did you TELL her she needed flea powder?’
‘Sure. I said, “Hey, Tracey, that’s a really bad itch you’ve got. You need some flea powder.”’
‘What did Tracey say?’ I asked, fascinated.
‘She didn’t say anything.’ Mark gazed at himself in the mirror. ‘I really think I’d better brush my fangs again.’
I decided to be frank. ‘Look, Mark, telling your girlfriend she has fleas is not tactful. And giving her flea powder so that all her friends know she’s got fleas too is really pushing it.’
‘Oh,Tracey won’t mind.’
‘Look, Mark, believe me on this one, Tracey does NOT want flea powder for her birthday!’
Mark blinked and sat on his haunches. ‘No?’
‘No.’
‘What should I give her then?’
I racked my brains. What would a female werewolf like? Not scent, because that’d cover up her doggy odour. Not chocolates—too much chocolate can kill a dog—it’d be a bit like giving your girlfriend a nice box of rat poison.
‘Er…how about a new collar?’
Mark snorted. ‘Wolves don’t wear collars,’ he said.
‘Toe ring?’
‘Nope.’
‘Essence of rotten cow to roll in?’
‘Look,’ said Mark, showing all his big white fangs, ‘Tracey
needs
flea powder. Besides, I got them to giftwrap it and everything.’
I gazed at the pretty pink parcel on the table. Yeah, it was the best-wrapped jar of flea powder I’d ever seen.
Mark grabbed it in his jaws. ‘See ’oo kid,’ he said and loped down the stairs.
1
Mum doesn’t know about that, so don’t tell her.
2
But I think their teeth ached afterwards because they kept fanging about with their mouths opening and shutting for ages. I don’t suppose piranhas eat iceblocks or other frozen stuff much, so a frozen turkey would have been a bit of a shock in the temperature department.
3
Heh, heh. This is a joke.
4
Ever since I was in Phaeryland last month (see
Phredde and the Temple of Gloom
) whenever I try to say #8 or %# or %!@ it always comes out as fruitcake! It’s sort of turned me off plum pudding too.
The Trouble with Girlfriends
Things were quiet next morning at breakfast time. Things are always pretty quiet at our place at breakfast because Mum doesn’t regain true consciousness till she’s had three cups of coffee and Dad’s always preoccupied keeping Dribbles’s dribble off his newspaper. (Dribbles is Dad’s giant sloth. I gave it/him/her
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to Dad for his last birthday. Dribbles is no trouble at all, because giant sloths don’t do anything much—except dribble of course.) And I like to get stuck into my pancakes with strawberries and maple syrup, or corn and banana muffins, or sausage and tomato pizza, or whatever else Gark has cooked up for breakfast.
This morning it was potato cakes with homemade tomato sauce and I’d just finished my seventh when Mark wandered in, in human shape because the moon was down. Well, sort of human shape.
‘Er, hi, Mark,’ I said, eyeing him a bit warily. ‘Are you alright?’
‘Yes,’ said Mark shortly, sitting down at the table. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes,’ said Mark, reaching for the raspberry and passionfruit juice.
‘I mean I couldn’t help noticing your new haircut.’ Actually it looked like someone had torn out a great big clump of fur…
‘Where’s the muesli?’ asked Mark, ignoring me.
‘And your black eye?’
‘Pass the milk,’ said Mark.
‘You seemed to be limping a bit too…’
That sort of woke Mum up. ‘Mmmpph?’ she asked blearily, then blinked. ‘Mark, what HAVE you done to your hair?’
Dad looked up from his newspaper. ‘Are you alright, son? Eerrkk!’ He grabbed his napkin. ‘That dribble went down my back…’
‘I’m fine!’ yelled Mark. Big brothers can be awfully touchy sometimes.
‘Oh. Good,’ said Mum.
‘How did Tracey like her present?’ I asked. Well, okay, maybe that wasn’t the most tactful thing to say.
‘She’s such a nice girl…I mean werewolf,’ burbled Mum. ‘I’m so glad your girlfriend is…’
Mark crashed the milk down so hard on the table that a splodge hit Dribbles in the eye. Luckily giant sloths don’t worry about that sort of thing. I mean what’s a little extra mucus to a sloth? ‘Tracey is NOT my girlfriend!’ he announced.
‘Huh? Since when?’ asked Mum. ‘I thought you…’
Since you gave her a jar of flea powder for her
birthday, I thought. But this time I had the sense to keep my mouth shut.
‘Why won’t people just leave me alone!’ yelled Mark. He crashed his chair back and marched out of the kitchen, just as Gark brought in a platter of sliced mango and pawpaw and pineapple and kiwi fruit.
‘Oh dear,’ said Mum.
‘%##ee@!!!’ said Dad, but that was because Dribbles had dribbled down his neck again.
I didn’t say anything, ’cause I was tucking into the mango and pineapple fruit salad.
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I was thinking instead. I mean a big brother is a big brother, even if he is a werewolf, and Mark is not a bad brother mostly, like the time he lifted his leg on Amelia’s sports bag just after…but maybe I shouldn’t say anything more about that.
And like Mrs Olsen is always telling us, blood is thicker than water, and she’s a vampire so she should know…
An unhappy werewolf howl floated down from the battlements. ‘Oh, poor Mark,’ said Mum. ‘He and Tracey seemed so happy. I watched them down in the garden just last week burying a bone together, their tails wagging so happily…’
Actually, they’d been burying a Persian cat’s bones—werewolves hate cats and cats aren’t too fond of werewolves either. But I didn’t think Mum needed to know that. Besides, she was right. Mark
did
sound unhappy.
It looked like it was up to his fabulously wise kid sister
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to give him a hand.