The Phredde Collection (11 page)
Phredde kept worrying that Uncle Mordred might turn up to take charge of it, but he sent her a letter to say he was still on his dragon hunting expedition and to take notes on how fast it grew and what it ate and stuff like that.
So we did, which was really educational, and if anyone wants to know how fast a dragon grows and what it eats in its first three months, there’s a copy of it
all in the school library (though we left out the bit about it eating sparrows and the time that cat…well, we left that bit out, too).
And you know something? There was no vandalism AT ALL after the dragon started coming to school. Not even graffiti in the toilets.
So things were really going pretty well. Phredde had moved down to the bottom floor of the castle and sort of extended her bedroom so the dragon could still sleep by her bed at night.
I never knew dragons slept at night till the dragon arrived. In fact, as soon as it gets cold dragons curl up and go to sleep so they like to be somewhere safe and quiet when they do—like Phredde’s bedroom or the verandah outside our classroom where we could all keep an eye on it while it snoozed.
Which is what it was doing, and what we were doing, that afternoon the National Parks and Wildlife Service ranger arrived.
She was quite official-looking in green trousers and a green shirt, and a really great hat.
She must have gone to Mrs Allen’s office before she came to us, because the first thing we knew Mrs Allen was climbing over the dragon’s tail and then helping the ranger over. (Mrs Allen had got really good at climbing over the dragon by then.)
‘This is…’ said Mrs Allen, but the dragon yawned then and opened an eye, so we never did hear what the ranger’s name was and it seemed rude to ask for it to be repeated.
‘I’m afraid I’m here on official business,’ said the ranger. ‘There’s been a report that there is a native animal in captivity here at the school.’
‘Huh!’ said Phredde loudly.
I poked her with my little finger. ‘Be polite,’ I hissed. ‘You don’t want to antagonise her.’
The ranger stared at Phredde (like I said, there weren’t many phaeries around in those days) and then deliberately stopped staring, the way you do when you realise you’re being rude.
‘Is that your dragon?’ she asked—not nastily or anything, just like she really wanted to know.
‘He’s his own dragon,’ said Phredde, ‘and he’s not being held in whatsisname or anything. He can go wherever he likes. He just likes being here!’
“Graha,’ said the dragon sleepily.
‘That’s right,’ I added, really politely. ‘He’s not a prisoner or anything.’ I didn’t want the ranger to get the wrong impression.
‘That’s right,’ said Amelia (I was surprised, her sticking up for us—I mean you never know who your friends really are till there’s a crisis), and the other kids all started to make agreeing noises too. We were
all
really fond of the dragon by then.
‘Graha,’ said the dragon again, outside. He twisted his hind paw and lifted it up to scratch his back. His back had been awfully itchy lately.
The ranger (I wish I’d caught her name) gazed at him for a minute. I have to admit it, she didn’t look at all scared. I mean some people act a bit nervous the first time they see the dragon.
The ranger looked back at us, and took a deep breath. Then she grabbed a chair and sat down facing us. ‘Look kids,’ she said. ‘It’s not as simple as that.’
‘Why not?’ asked Phredde. ‘The dragon’s perfectly happy—anyone can see that.’
‘Graha,’ breathed the dragon, sending the litter scurrying across the playground.
‘Because a dragon’s not a pet,’ said the ranger simply. ‘It’s like keeping a wombat at your place. They may
seem
to be happy. They might sleep on the lounge and have you scratch their back while you watch TV and they might munch on the lawn at night, but no matter how kind you are to them they need wombat holes and bush smells and dirt to dig. Every animal has its natural habitat—do you know what that is?’
‘Sure,’ I said.
‘Of course,’ said Phredde. After all, I’d explained it to her.
‘Well, that dragon needs its natural habitat too. It’s not like a dog, or a cat, that has been bred to live with people. No matter how kind you are to a wombat—or, in this case, a dragon—it needs to be in its own place.’
Everyone was silent, even Phredde. Her wings drooped the way she does when she’s thinking really deeply. Then suddenly she said, ‘But what is a dragon’s natural habitat?’
‘Huh?’ asked the ranger.
‘What’s the right place for a dragon?’
The ranger blinked. ‘Well—where it came from I suppose.’
‘Uncle Mordred found it in a termite’s nest. But dragons don’t
live
in termite’s nests. It was just being hatched there.’
‘Like goanna eggs,’ agreed the ranger, fascinated. ‘Did you know that go annas lay their eggs in termite mounds? The heat from the nest hatches the goanna
eggs. Maybe dragons are distantly related to goannas.’
Phredde shrugged. She couldn’t care less about goannas. ‘But…’
Phredde argues really well, so it’s a pity we didn’t get to hear what else she was going to say. (There was no way Phredde was going to see her dragon sent back to where Uncle Mordred had found it. I mean, what was it going to live on without its garbage bins? Not to mention being lonely without all of us to burp at.)
Anyway, she’d just opened her mouth when suddenly there was this incredible scream from outside, like a fire engine was being squashed by a dinosaur and when we all looked outside there was the dragon rearing up into the air.
At first I thought the dragon had heard the ranger saying it should be sent back to the termite mound. (Not that any of us knew where the termite mound was, except maybe Phredde, who wouldn’t have told even if they minced her fingers really slowly in a hamburger machine—like on that really great movie on TV last night. I told you Phredde was really missing out not having a TV. I had really gross nightmares after that).
But of course dragons don’t understand what humans say, so it wasn’t that at all.
The dragon was rearing up on its hind legs, its forelegs clawing in the air. I hadn’t really realised till then how much the dragon had grown. It was taller than the new science block when it was all stretched out, like now.
The dragon screamed again, and then it snarled and its arms twisted this way and that as it tried to claw its
back. In fact, for a moment I thought it had ripped its back open because there were flaps of skin hanging in great folds along its sides.
And suddenly I realised.
They were wings.
Well, I suppose a dragon’s back gets really itchy before its wings emerge. Like our skin does if it gets sunburnt and is about to peel (you’d have thought I was going to get skin cancer tomorrow the way Mum carried on last time that happened to me, but I do remember to wear a hat and lots of sunscreen now). Maybe it’s back ached too, like when you have a tooth about to come up.
The dragon howled again and let out this great burst of flame (it hadn’t done that in ages, so I knew it must really be hurting) and then it leapt up into the air. It was flying!
We all raced out (Mrs Olsen and Mrs Allen and the ranger, too) but Phredde was ahead of us, either because she flew or because she magicked. It was so confused I didn’t see…
And we stood there in the playground gazing upwards.
There was the dragon, flapping wildly as if it could only
just
keep airborne, and then, suddenly, it must have worked out how to do it properly, because it began to glide—a long, slow soaring through the air, its wings hardly moving at all. Down and up, and all around the school, then just over our heads so we were fanned by the cool air from its wings and felt its breath warm on our faces (no flames of course), then up and up and up again…
‘Look!’ yelled Amelia, and we looked.
The dragon was still rising and then it veered suddenly, over towards Phredde’s castle.
Then it dived, down, down, down, into the moat. We could see the splash even from the schoolyard…and then another splash and another as the dragon played and cavorted in the moat, soaring up and diving back.
Even at a distance you could see a great, big dragon smile spreading across its face.
Phredde (who was fluttering just above my shoulder) turned to the ranger and gave this great enormous grin, almost as big as the dragon’s.
‘Well,’ said Phredde, ‘I guess you could say the dragon has found its natural habitat now.’
The Ranger had to agree.
And that’s the end of the story. It turns out Uncle Mordred DID know what he was doing when he sent the dragon to Phredde. He’s finished his research now (and he found another dragon egg, too, but I’ll tell you about that some other time).
It turns out that dragons migrate just like some birds and butterflies and other things migrate. They lay their eggs in one place and then go to mate or feed somewhere else.
Well, dragons lay their eggs in Australia. In termite mounds, like goannas, so the heat of the nest can hatch the eggs without the dragons having to sit on a nest for a few hundred years or so.
And then the adult dragons fly back to their OTHER natural habitat—which is castles, of course. You know how many phaery stories there are where the dragon lives under the drawbridge of the castle.
(Dragons live in caves, too, of course, but only when there are underground pools for them to swim in. And only when they can’t find a castle.)
So that’s why there are so few dragons nowadays. All the castles have been turned into tourist hotels and many of the best caves have guided tours going through them, and lights, and locked grilles so people can’t get in and damage them and there just aren’t enough castle moats and wild caves for dragons to live in.
So it looks like if we want more dragons we’ll have to have more magic castles. (I can’t WAIT till a dragon comes and lives at ours.)
Uncle Mordred reckons that dragons must live a long time—the old stories sort of hint at that—and only lay eggs once or twice in their lifetime and the eggs probably take hundreds of years to hatch. Perhaps the person who drew that old map that Phredde found in the library saw our dragon’s mum all those centuries ago just before the dragon laid her egg in the termite mound.
Anyway, the dragon’s happy now, living in Phredde’s castle moat and crunching up the rubbish bins every night—except when it’s cold and it goes to sleep.
I asked Uncle Mordred what dragons did before they had rubbish bins, and he just laughed and said, ‘Prudence, humans may only have had rubbish bins for a hundred years or so, but they’ve always had rubbish—especially around those medieval castles.’
(If you want to read up more on dragons Uncle Mordred’s report is in a magazine called
New Scientist.
The June or July edition, I think. Anyway, it’s in our library at school.)
And we sort of miss having a dragon on the verandah at school—especially during geography lessons.
But, as the ranger said, a wild animal is only really happy in its natural habitat. Just like that frog Phredde and I found when we went off to rescue Sleeping Beauty. It was only REALLY happy when…
But that’s another story.
Jackie French
To Sarah Bennett with love and many thanks for all her suggestions…and to Laura and Caroline and Steve too!
There are stories that move you, that become part of you, that make you think and dream…
Then there are the sorts of stories you read when school has stretched out like a long, flat road and you’re feeling totally brain dead and just want to read and laugh and eat some fruit.
These are stories for those times.
Escape stories. Silly happy stories.
Stories to eat with a banana…or a watermelon.
PS…Yes, I do mean eat.
Some people READ stories—mostly when they’re told they HAVE to go and read a story.
And some people EAT them—they way they eat potato chips or cherries…
or watermelons.
It was an ordinary day at our castle.
I was dangling my legs over the battlements, watching the piranhas in our moat lurking under the drawbridge in case a cow fell in (did you know that piranhas can skeletonise a cow in ten minutes? I wonder how long it’d take them to eat a guinea pig?) and Gark our butler was sweeping up the werewolf hair on the terrace down below.
The werewolf hair was from my brother Mark.
Whenever Mark turns into a werewolf he gets fleas, and whenever he gets fleas he scratches himself.
It drives Mum crazy, but not half as crazy as it does when he lifts his leg on her geraniums. Brothers…
What was I saying? Oh, about the battlements.
Battlements are those bits on top of castles which you stand behind to pour boiling oil down on your enemies.
Not that I had any enemies, unless you count Edwin at school, and he’s really improved since Phredde turned him into a corgi, even though Mrs Olsen made her turn him back into a snotty kid ten minutes later.
What was I saying? Oh yeah, it was an ordinary day at our castle.
I was dangling my legs over the battlements watching Gark and the piranhas, and my pirate ship swaying with the waves down in the bay (our castle should really overlook the boring grey road and the shopping centre, but it’s a magic castle so it doesn’t). The sky was blue like it always is above magic castles unless you want it to rain, and the waves were going
swish swish swish
and I wasn’t thinking about anything much, certainly not about my homework, but then again it was only Saturday and there was no need to stress about homework for ages…
When suddenly there was a PING! beside me, and there was Phredde in bright pink joggers and matching hair…
‘What’s up?’ I demanded, alarmed.
Phredde’s a phaery, and can PING! anywhere she wants to.
But phaeries have really good manners and normally knock at the door like everyone else…well, not quite like everyone else because they’re only about as big as your hand and have to fly up to the door knocker to knock, but you know what I mean. Phredde would never just PING! right beside me, unless there was something REALLY wrong.
Phredde hovered in mid-air like an out-of-control sparkler.
‘Pru, you’ve got to help me,’ she gasped.
‘Sure,’ I said. After all, Phredde’s my best friend and something terrible must have happened to upset her. Obviously it wasn’t just some minor little problem, like wondering how to tell her parents her dragon had
burnt down her bedroom again (parents always have a major stress attack about silly things like that). ‘What’s up?’
‘It’s Aunt Petunia,’ cried Phredde, and then she started to cry, which really worried me. I’d never seen her cry before.
Phredde doesn’t cry. She just gets mad. If you think a wasp is fierce when it gets mad, you haven’t seen Phredde.
‘Phredde, settle down,’ I said soothingly, patting the battlements beside me. ‘I can’t help if I don’t know what it’s all about.’
Phredde sniffed twice then zoomed down onto the battlements, her wings drooping. ‘You know my Aunt Petunia,’ she began.
‘No,’ I said. I’d met Phredde’s mum, the Phaery Splendifera, and her dad, the Phaery Valiant, and her uncle Mordred who was mostly a dragon. But that was all, I was sure. I mean phaeries tend to stick in your mind.
‘Oh. Well, Aunt Petunia’s Mum’s aunt really,’ explained Phredde. ‘Aunt Petunia’s fantastic, even better than Uncle Mordred. She doesn’t even ask how school is or dumb stuff like that, but she does get a bit…well, sort of vague sometimes. And now she’s really in trouble! Everyone’s angry with her, and Mum says that if she doesn’t stop making a muddle of things she won’t even ask her to Christmas dinner, because who knows what she might do, and…’
‘But what’s Aunt Petunia done?’ I cried.
Phredde sniffed again. ‘It wasn’t her fault,’ she said defensively. ‘She just wanted to help, that’s all. Aunt Petunia’s always trying to help.’
‘Phredde…’ I said warningly.
‘It’s all Aunt Dandelion’s fault anyway…’ sniffed Phredde.
I blinked. It was getting hard to keep all these phaery relatives straight.
‘Who’s Aunt Dandelion?’ I demanded.
‘She’s Mum’s aunt on her dad’s side. You see Aunt Dandelion had a baby called Pinkerbelle…’
‘You mean Tinkerbelle,’ I corrected.
‘No, Pinkerbelle,’ insisted Phredde, fluttering her wings like a berserk bee…she always does that when she’s upset. ‘Tinkerbelle’s my second cousin on Dad’s side of the family. She’s a real pain. She’s got a crush on this really dumb boy…’
‘Not Peter Pan?’ I interrupted.
‘Yeah. How did you know?’ demanded Phredde, surprised.
‘I just guessed. Anyway, go on about Pinkerbelle.’
‘Well, Aunt Dandelion asked Aunt Petunia to be Pinkerbelle’s Phaery Godmother, because if you’re a Phaery Princess you have to have a Phaery Godmother.’
‘How come she’s a Phaery Princess?’ I asked.
‘Well, everyone on Mum’s side of the family is a Phaery Princess,’ said Phredde reasonably. ‘I thought you knew.’
‘No.’ I said. ‘Hey, are you a Phaery Princess too?’
Phredde looked mutinous. ‘I can’t help it. If you tell anyone, I’ll spit!’
‘I think it’s cool,’ I began, then stopped when I saw Phredde’s expression. ‘Okay, okay! you’re a Phaery Princess but I’ll keep quiet about it. Continue with the story.’
‘Well,’ said Phredde. ‘Aunt Petunia gave baby Pinkerbelle a magic gift, just like Phaery Godmothers always do…’
Phredde suddenly looked like she was about to burst into tears again.
I was beginning to see where all this was heading. ‘What sort of magic gift?’ I demanded.
‘A really nice gift,’ sniffed Phredde. ‘A
sensible
gift. Everyone’s always saying that Aunt Petunia’s never sensible, so this time she thought she’d choose something really…’ Phredde’s voice died away.
‘Out with it, Phredde,’ I said.
‘It was a spell so that as soon as Pinkerbelle turned twenty-one she’d always get a good night’s sleep,’ said Phredde defensively. ‘You know how important a good night’s sleep is. Mrs Olsen’s always telling us.’
(Mrs Olsen’s a vampire and sleeps in her coffin, mostly in short naps during the day, but like all teachers she’s really good at giving kids advice.)
‘Well, what’s wrong with that?’ I asked.
‘The spell went wrong,’ said Phredde in a small voice. ‘Aunt Petunia used too much phaery dust.
‘And now Pinkerbelle’s twenty-one, and she’s fast asleep, and no one can wake her up and her roses are growing wild all over the castle…did I tell you Pinkerbelle breeds roses? Magic roses…and Mum’s furious and says that Aunt Petunia has really done it this time and no one can come up with a counter spell because Aunt Petunia can’t remember her original formula and she’s my favourite aunt and I’m soooo unhappy!’ wailed Phredde.
Well, the whole story was starting to sound familiar. I mean
really
familiar.
‘Er, Phredde,’ I said.
‘Yes,’ sniffed Phredde.
‘Have you ever heard of the story of Sleeping Beauty?’
‘No,’ sniffed Phredde.
‘Well, it’s all about this evil phaery…’
‘My Aunt Petunia’s not evil!’ sparked Phredde.
‘Shhhh. Just listen will you? It’s just a story…This phaery casts a spell on this kid so that when she turns twenty-one she’ll prick her finger on a rose thorn and then she’ll sleep for a hundred years.’
‘That’s sort of like what happened,’ agreed Phredde. ‘Hey, how did you know about the bit with the rose thorn?’
‘It’s part of the story. It’s a really old fairy…I mean
phaery…
story. You know, one of those soppy stories parents always read little kids.’
‘But what happens in the end?’ demanded Phredde, entranced.
‘Well, it all turns out happily.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah, sure. Because this other fairy, I mean phaery, turns up, and she says she can’t undo the spell, but she’ll cast another one to make it all better in the end.’
‘Good thinking,’ agreed Phredde.
‘And this new spell makes this handsome prince turn up and hack his way through the roses to the castle and kiss the sleeping beauty…’
‘Oh yuk!’ cried Phredde.
‘And she wakes up and they get married and live happily ever after,’ I concluded.
I expected Phredde to be really cheered up by this. It WAS a happy ending, after all.
But she looked at me with horror. ‘A handsome prince?’
‘Yep.’
‘And he KISSES her?’
‘Yep.’
‘Urrk! And she wakes up and they get married and live happily ever after?’
I nodded.
Phredde surged to her feet, then kept on surging till she was fluttering high above me. ‘We have to save her!’ she yelled, her wings buzzing like a maniac mosquito.
‘Save who?’ I blinked.
‘Sleeping Beauty…my Cousin Pinkerbelle! We can’t let that happen to her. Not handsome princes and all that stuff!’
Phredde has a thing about handsome princes. It all comes from her mum keeping
The Directory of Handsome Princes
by her bedside table, and reading out entries to Phredde at breakfast. You know the sort of thing—Prince Ethelready, 23 mm tall, well-built, own castle, hobby: phaery dancing on toadstools by moonlight, seeks Phaery Princess with a love of moonbeams and dandelions.
Phredde doesn’t want a Phaery Prince. She wants to go to uni with me. We plan to study zoology, which we’ve both been really interested in since Uncle Mordred gave Phredde her dragon.
1
So as I was saying, ‘Handsome Prince’ is a sort of dirty word to Phredde. Okay, two dirty words, if you want to be fussy.
‘But Phredde,’ I protested. ‘It’s just a fairy…I mean phaery story!’
‘No it’s not! It’s true!’
‘But…’ I hesitated.
Suddenly I couldn’t see where the
real story
ended and the
phaery story
began. But that sort of thing happens when you have a phaery like Phredde for a best friend.
Phredde perched on my shoulder and folded her arms and tucked her wings neatly behind her back so they wouldn’t flutter in my eyes and blind me by mistake.
‘Come on!’ she cried.
‘Where to?’ I demanded.
‘To Cousin Pinkerbelle’s castle! We have to save Sleeping Beauty from the Prince!’
Well, last year, before I met Phredde, if I’d decided to hoon off somewhere to save Sleeping Beauty, I’d have had to get permission from Mum, who probably wouldn’t have given it to me anyway.
‘Where do you think you’re off to?’ she’d have demanded.
‘Off to some magic castle,’ I’d have said airily. ‘I don’t know when I’ll be back. I just have to save a Phaery Princess from a handsome prince.’
And Mum would have given me
that
look and said, ‘What! You’re not going anywhere young lady until you’ve finished your homework and I want to know exactly where this castle is and how you plan to get there and when you’re going to get home…’
But like I said, none of that matters now.
For one thing, Phredde can PING! back and forward in time as well as space, which means that even if it took us three whole weeks to save Sleeping Beauty I
could still be back only five minutes after I left, so Mum wouldn’t even notice.
And anyway, Mum realises I’m a lot more responsible now than I was a year ago.
I mean I’ve been to Phaeryland and survived, and fought in a battle with my pirate ship against a mob of rival buccaneers (I haven’t told you about that one yet. Come to think of it, I haven’t told Mum yet either).
Nowadays if I’d told Mum I was off to rescue a sleeping princess she probably wouldn’t have stressed at all. Or not much anyway.
But like I said, we’d be back even before Mum knew I’d gone, so there was no point interrupting her in the middle of her crossword, especially as she and Phredde’s mum are best friends too and Mum might tell the Phaery Splendifera, and then…
So we just went.
Phredde went PING!!!! (a sort of bigger than normal PING!) and that meant I PING!ed too, and when we’d finished PING!ing I opened my eyes, and there we were at the bus stop.
‘Hey,’ I said. ‘I thought we were going to Cousin Pinkerbelle’s castle!’
‘Sure,’ said Phredde.
‘Then how come we’re at the bus stop?’
‘Because I’m Australian now, and that’s how you get places in Australia. On the bus.’
‘But Phredde, wouldn’t it just be easier…’
‘Hurry up,’ warned Phredde, as the bus drew up to the curb, ‘or you won’t get a seat.’
So I paid my fare, and Phredde paid hers…with real money too, even if she does carry it in a magic wallet so it doesn’t weigh her down when she’s flying.
Phaeries never magic money, just gold and castles and unicorns and space time dimensions and stuff like that.
The bus lurched off like it always does just as you’re aiming for a seat, and I sort of fell onto this great big woman with three laps, six hairs on her chin, and a handbag the same size as her bosom.
‘Excuse me,’ I said.
I tried to sit on the four millimetres of seat left next to her, and she glared at me.
At first I thought it was because I was taking up four millimetres of seat, but then I realised she was scowling at Phredde who was sitting on my shoulder with her wings neatly folded and her hands in her lap.
Some people are really prejudiced against phaeries and werewolves and even vampires. I mean even Mum had a major stress for a while about Mrs Olsen, just because she’s a vampire, till I explained about this really cool arrangement she has with the abattoir…but that’s another story.
2
Or maybe the fat lady just wasn’t impressed by Phredde’s pink joggers with turquoise laces and matching hair.
Anyhow, I was really glad when Phredde poked me in the earlobe with her elbow and whispered, ‘We get off at the next stop.’
So we lurched down the aisle again…well, I lurched and Phredde fluttered…and got off the bus, and I looked around.
A milkbar (why do people call them milkbars when they mostly sell cola and potato chips?) and a newsagent
and a video store and a sagging wire fence with a sign on it saying:
RINCE’S PLANT NURSERY
in big faded letters with a few half-asleep plants sort of choking in the car fumes, and a long grey footpath and lots of houses…
