The Phredde Collection (36 page)

It looked disgusting, to tell the truth. Luckily, I had a bit of lunch paper in the bottom of my school bag so we spread it out and what with my socks and Phredde’s hanky (for a tiny phaery her sneezes produce an awful lot of snot) and a few dozen beetles (I squished them under my heel) all mixed in with the bl…, er, red stuff from Mrs Olsen’s Thermos
and
librarian spit…well, if I were a rhoetosaurus I’d gallop away pretty quickly if someone shoved that at my tonsils. ‘Ready?’ I said to Phredde.

‘R-ready,’ said Phredde a bit shakily, gathering up the yukky lunch paper by the edges. She fluttered up to the roof of the cave and peered out, just as the rhoetosaurus peered back down.

Zam! Phredde threw the yuk bundle into the rhoetosaurus’s mouth like she was throwing a netball into the hoop.

‘Glop!’ The rhoetosaurus swallowed it, blinked and looked surprised.

‘Phredde!’ I yelled, ‘get down here now!’

‘Why?’ shouted back Phredde. ‘I want to see what happens.’

‘Phredde!’ I screamed, just as the rhoetosaurus opened its mouth again. Buuurrrp!!!

The shock waves blew Phredde back into the cave and down into the gloom.

‘Phredde!’ I shrieked again, ‘are you okay?’

‘I…I think so…’ Phredde flapped a bit uncertainly back to the mouth of the cave. ‘W-what’s happening?’

‘Nothing,’ said Bruce. ‘It’s just standing there, thinking. Or I think it’s thinking.’

‘Maybe it liked it,’ said Mrs Olsen dubiously.

‘It
can’t
have liked it!’ I said. ‘It was total yuk!’

‘But maybe rhoetosauruses
like
yuk,’ argued Phredde. ‘Maybe---’

A rumble interrupted her.

‘Earthquake!’ yelled Bruce. ‘Let’s get out of here!’

‘No!’ I yelled. ‘Bruce, stop! It’s not an earthquake, it’s…’

Booooommmmm!

‘Indigestion!’ screamed Mrs Olsen.

‘Not just indigestion,’ breathed Miss Richards warningly. ‘It’s…’

PLOP! PLOP! PLOP!

‘No!’ yelled Phredde. ‘Oh no! It can’t be!’ But it was.

Have you ever been trapped in a cave with a rhoetosaurus outside with diarrhoea? Well let me tell you, it’s
not
funny.

PLOP! PLOP! PLOP! Ploploploploploplop…

‘It’s getting worse,’ whispered Phredde, holding her nose.

I peered out of the cave but there wasn’t much to see. Just big brown lumps of…well, if you think doggy doo is bad, just think what dinosaur doo is like. But not if you’ve just had your lunch. It almost made me glad I hadn’t had any.

‘Heh, heh,’ said Bruce to me, ‘you wanted apples.’

‘So?’

He pointed out of the cave. ‘Dinosaur apples!’

‘Yuk!’ said Phredde. ‘That’s
not
funny, Bruce.’

‘Oh, the pong!’ breathed Mrs Olsen, holding her nose.

‘It’s as bad as the time the school garbage collectors went on strike,’ said Miss Richards.

‘Worse. It’s as bad as the time the meat pies went bad at the tuckshop and
then
the toilets broke down,’ said Mrs Olsen.

‘No, no,’ said Miss Richards. ‘Do you remember when someone put Edwin’s sweaty joggers in the staff room fridge and poured sour milk into---’

‘Er, excuse me,’ I said. ‘But I think we have a problem!’

‘Of course we have a problem!’ yelled Phredde. ‘We’re trapped back in the Jurassic in a horrible little cave and I’ve used up all my magic and don’t have any lunch and there’s a rhoetosaurus outside and a pong inside and…oh…’ She caught sight of the brown tide slowly creeping over the dust and into our cave.

‘Exactly!’ I said. ‘In approximately six minutes that dinosaur doo is going to flood us out.’

PLOOP! Ploooooooooooooooooooooooop!

‘Or even sooner,’ added Bruce helpfully.

‘I
knew
we shouldn’t have added those socks!’ cried Miss Richards.

‘I bet it was Phredde’s hanky that did it,’ contributed Bruce.

‘No,’ said Phredde. ‘I bet it was your beetles.’

‘Hold it!’ I yelled. ‘We don’t have time for this! What are we going to do?’

Miss Richards quickly checked her laptop. ‘A rhoetosaurus has to have another vulnerable spot!’ she declared.

‘Think like a rhoetosaurus,’ I ordered Bruce. ‘Where would you feel vulnerable?’

‘Why do
I
have to think like a rhoetosaurus?’ argued Bruce.

‘’Cause you’re both reptiles,’ I said. ‘I’m not a reptile,’ said Bruce, affronted. ‘I’m an amphibian.’

‘Got it!’ screamed Phredde. She fluttered up and whispered in my ear.

I looked at her with admiration. Phaeries don’t have much imagination usually, but when they
do
come up with an idea it’s usually a doozy. ‘That’s a brilliant idea! Do you think you can manage it?’ I asked.

Phredde nodded bravely. ‘It’s better than drowning in dinosaur doo,’ she said.

‘
Anything
is better than drowning in dinosaur doo,’ added Bruce leaping back as the brown tide crept further into our cave.

‘Alright then!’ I ordered. ‘Find a rock! A big one! Bruce, help me scrape the goo off the flying carpet!’

I spread it out on the cave floor. We were far back in the cave now because the front of the cave was flooded with dinosaur doo, so it was pretty dark and gloomy. Bruce squinted into the dimness. ‘The carpet’s almost dry,’ he said, patting the magic rug.

I nodded and began scraping the mud off with my fingernails. They were going to look pretty revolting after this, but I reckoned that if we ever got back home Phredde could PING them better for me. And if we drowned in dinosaur doo, no-one was going to worry about my fingernails.

‘That’s about as good as I can get it!’ I panted. ‘Have you found a rock?’

‘Got one!’ called Miss Richards from the back of the cave. She and Mrs Olsen rolled a great dusty boulder out from the gloom towards us.

‘Do you think the carpet will be able to lift it?’ worried Phredde.

‘Dunno,’ I said. ‘But it’s our only chance.’

The teachers rolled the boulder onto the carpet.

‘Ready?’ I asked Phredde.

She nodded. Her face was white and her wings were buzzing like a wasp gone berserk, which is always a sign that she’s pretty terrified.

‘Take care!’ I said.

‘S-sure,’ said Phredde. She lifted her chin. ‘What can happen to me?’

Well, she could be swallowed by a rhoetosaurus or crushed by a falling boulder or drowned in dinosaur doo, but it didn’t seem helpful to tell her any of these things, so I just said, ‘You’ll be right!’ encouragingly.

The carpet with Phredde and the boulder on it lifted three centimetres off the cave floor.

‘Higher!’ cried Miss Richards.

‘I’m trying!’ yelled Phredde. ‘It won’t lift!’

‘Maybe if we give it a shove!’ I suggested.

Miss Richards and Mrs Olsen and I bent down and put our fingers underneath. ‘One…two…three…lift!’ ordered Mrs Olsen.

The carpet shot up over the dinosaur doo out the small slice of daylight left at the top of the cave.

‘How are you going?’ I yelled.

‘F-fine!’ came Phredde’s voice, a bit unsteadily. ‘I just have to get behind and lift its tail then…’

‘Gggzzzzzzarrrrrmmmmfff!’ shrieked the rhoetosaurus, as a large, dusty boulder rolled off the carpet and into its…

‘Got it!’ yelled Phredde. ‘And it’s blocked the diarrhoea and everything!’

‘VVVVmmmmfffftttt! Zzzzppppttttxxxxsssstttt!’ shrieked the rhoetosaurus, bouncing round and trying to see what had happened to its rear end.

‘She’s done it! She’s done it!’ Bruce and I joined hands and began to dance around the cave—but cautiously, as that brown tide was still creeping in fast.

Phut!!!!

Bruce and I stopped dancing.

‘You know,’ said Mrs Olsen, ‘that sounded just like

the noise of a boulder popping out of---’

AAAAAGGGGLLLE!!!!

There was the sound of large rhoetosaurus-sized feet galloping off into the distance. The flying carpet appeared at the lip of the cave again. ‘And that,’ said Phredde, ‘is the sound of a rhoetosaurus who’s had enough!’

‘Poor thing,’ said Mrs Olsen. ‘They’re an endangered species too.’

‘How come?’ asked Bruce.

‘Well, there aren’t any in our time,’ said Mrs Olsen. ‘So that makes them pretty endangered.’

‘Huh,’ I said, stepping back even further as the dinosaur doo edged towards me. ‘I think
we’re
pretty endangered too right now! Phredde, get the carpet down here NOW!’

All of 3.19 seconds later we were aboard the carpet, and heading out of that cave—
fast.

I felt like I’d never really appreciated fresh air before.

We flew over the swamps and into the pine forest—well, they looked like pine trees to me, the sort you’d hang lights on at Christmas, but Miss Richards consulted her laptop and said they were auracarias.

Anyway they were big and green and dark-looking, and underneath were ferns and other bushy things and all around us were hills with more aura-thingy trees and a soft blue mist coming down, so it looked like some twit had spilt flour which was wafting all over the landscape.

‘I wish I’d brought my cardigan,’ I said.

‘Well, it did say to bring jackets on the information sheet you took home,’ said Mrs Olsen, in a rather unnecessarily smug tone, I thought.

The information sheet had also said we were going to the Big Koala Wildlife Park, not the Big Jurassic Wildlife Park. But I didn’t say anything, firstly, because Mrs Olsen is my teacher and arguing with teachers doesn’t get you very far (i.e. basically only to the
Principal’s door) and, secondly, because a crowded flying carpet is not a place to have an argument.

Miss Richards looked up from her laptop. ‘As a matter of fact,’ she said, ‘Australia is still joined to Antarctica now!’

‘Antarctica!’ exclaimed Phredde. ‘Where’s all the snow then?’

Miss Richards shook her head. ‘Antarctica in the Jurassic was a lot warmer than now,’ she said. ‘I mean than then…I mean than back in our own time,’ she sighed. ‘It does get confusing.’

I nodded. It wasn’t just confusing. It was cold and damp and the magic carpet smelt of dinosaur doo—or maybe we did—AND I WANTED TO GO HOME! Or at least to the Big Koala Park and have a chocolate milkshake with extra ice-cream and a hot dog with extra tomato sauce and…and…and
anything
extra the twenty-first century had to offer!

But it was no use turning into a wimp.

I swallowed bravely. ‘How about we go fishing?’ I suggested.

Miss Richards brightened. ‘What fun!’ she said. ‘I’ve always wanted to try to rig up a fishing line and hook out of everyday stuff!’

Fun! Phredde and I exchanged glances. I’d rather be playing my Nintendo or sailing my pirate ship or…or just about
anything
that didn’t involve being trapped in the past. But it looked like fishing was the only way I was going to get any lunch.

Well, you try fishing without a fishing line! Believe me, it
is
possible, because Phredde and Bruce and I did it—and Miss Richards and Mrs Olsen too, of course. But it took some work.

First of all, we found this river, winding its way through the not-quite Christmas trees and down to this big lake. It was a prettyish lake—you almost expected to find a caravan park along the banks, except caravan parks weren’t going to be invented for another 144 million years. But, like Miss Richards said, it also looked like the sort of lake that big Jurassic-type human-, phaery- and frog-eating monsters would love to make their home in. So we avoided the lake and brought the flying carpet down on the riverbank instead.

It was almost like a picnic ground, if you forgot that there was damp and squidgy moss on the ground instead of nice normal grass. And the flapping things up in the sky—but luckily a long way up—didn’t look like magpies or even seagulls, and no-one was going to cut down any of the trees behind us to sing ‘Jingle Bells’ under for another 144 million years.

Apart from that, it looked pretty good.

Miss Richards gazed around. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘First of all we need a fire. You three kids go and find some dry wood—there should be plenty under the trees and---’

‘Scream if you see any monsters,’ added Mrs Olsen.

‘Don’t worry. We will,’ I promised.

‘And we’ll,’ Miss Richards took a deep breath, ‘we’ll look up the laptop to see how to start a fire by rubbing two bits of wood together. I’ve always wanted to try that too!’

‘Oh, right,’ I said. Teachers like
weird
things sometimes.

So the three of us marched into the trees and Miss Richards was right, there was
lots
of dry wood. But eight armloads later (which isn’t really heaps of wood
because phaeries and frogs can’t carry much and I was getting tired), Miss Richards and Mrs Olsen still hadn’t worked out how to get a fire going, even though Miss Richards was rubbing two sticks together like mad.

‘Maybe they have to be modern sticks,’ I suggested. Miss Richards glared at me.

‘Maybe if you just rubbed a bit faster,’ put in Mrs Olsen.

Miss Richards glared even more.

‘Maybe it’d be easier to use matches,’ added Phredde.

Miss Richards started to glare at her then stared instead. She dropped the sticks. ‘You have MATCHES?’ she shouted.

‘Sure,’ said Phredde. ‘Remember?’ she said to Mrs Olsen. ‘You said that we had to bring a jacket in case it rained and a hat in case it didn’t and matches to light the barbecue at the Big Koala Park?’

‘Why didn’t you say…?’ began Miss Richards, then just grabbed the matches instead.

Well, a lot of words I’d never heard later (librarians must learn some really interesting words from all those books they work with) and in another twenty minutes (it still took a while to get that fire lit), the flames were blazing up into the mist and it was
warm
and, let me tell you, even the Jurassic looks better when you don’t have goosepimples.

It was going to look a lot better when we had some tucker too.

Miss Richards suggested we all tie our shoelaces together and then she made a hook out of one of Mrs Olsen’s bobby pins (luckily she wears this bun at the back of her neck that needs
lots
of bobby pins because
we broke the first two we tried to turn into hooks) and Bruce zapped a nice fat beetle to use for bait.

Ten minutes after that Miss Richards pulled in our first catch of the day.

We looked at it.

‘It’s…it’s nice and big,’ said Phredde encouragingly.

‘And it’s
sort
of fish-like,’ I added.

‘The tentacles are probably
full
of protein,’ added Miss Richards bravely.

Phredde and I threaded a big, long, thin stick through its mouth and out its bum and we took turns holding the stick over the fire till the fish—well,
thing
—was cooked. Till it was black in some spots and smoking in others and smelt cooked anyway. It didn’t actually smell of fish, but then we were in the Jurassic and there weren’t any chips or tomato sauce to eat with it either.

The fire died down to glowing coals. We looked at the, er, sort-of-fish.

‘I’ll try it first,’ said Miss Richards. She broke off a bit of tentacle and chewed it bravely. We watched her, just in case she turned blue or something.

Miss Richards swallowed. We waited to see what would happen.

Miss Richards took another bite, so I did too, and so did Bruce and Phredde.

I chewed, then kept on chewing. After a while I managed to swallow.

‘That was…um, delicious,’ I said bravely.

‘Yeah,’ said Phredde. ‘Especially the tentacles.’

‘Tasted just like chicken,’ said Bruce.

‘But you hate chicken,’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ said Bruce. ‘That’s why I said it tasted like chicken.’

I took another bite. ‘It’s really not
too
bad,’ I said. ‘Not once you get used to it.’

Bruce looked around for some beetles or mosquitoes. But the beetles had all gone—maybe they didn’t like the mist—and maybe mosquitoes hadn’t been invented yet because there weren’t any of them either. So Bruce took another tentacle and began to chew it.

‘By the way,’ he asked Miss Richards, ‘what are we eating?’

Miss Richards shook her head. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Remember that we only know what animals were around in the Jurassic from fossils. No-one has found any fossils of this creature yet.’

‘Wow!’ I said. ‘We’ve discovered a new species. Can we name it?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Miss Richards doubtfully.

‘How about Prudence-osaurus?’ I suggested.

‘I like Phredde-osaurus,’ said Phredde.

‘Bruce-osaurus sounds better,’ argued Bruce.

‘Well, I caught it,’ Miss Richards pointed out modestly. ‘So it should be librarianosaurus.’

We gazed at the remnants of the librarianosaurus, smoking gently on the fire. ‘Hey,’ I said. ‘I bet this is the first barbecue in the world! We’ve invented the barbecue too!’

Mrs Olsen looked hungrily at the librarianosaurus.

‘You could try some too,’ suggested Phredde.

Mrs Olsen shook her head. ‘Thank you, Ethereal, but vampires just can’t digest meat. Or fish. Or librarianosaurus I suppose either.’ She sighed deeply. ‘I’ll just have to stay hungry till we get back home.’

‘But what if…’ I began, then stopped. I didn’t even want to
think
about not getting home.

I didn’t want to think about what might happen if Mrs Olsen got really hungry either. I mean, okay, she and her family had a really cool arrangement with the abattoir so they got the bl…, er, red stuff and the butchers got the meat, but I wondered if even a super nice teacher-type vampire like Mrs Olsen might start looking hungrily at our necks if she went too long without a decent meal of, er, red stuff.

‘Well, how
are
we going to get home?’ demanded Bruce, gnawing a librarianosaurus bone.

‘I have an idea,’ said Miss Richards slowly.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘How about Bruce and Phredde try to PING together? Two small PINGs might just make a large enough PING to get us back.’

Phredde looked at Bruce then shrugged. ‘It’s worth a go,’ she said.

‘Anything is worth a go,’ I added, looking round at the not-quite Christmas trees and the rippling lake in the distance. I had a horrible feeling those ripples were
not
caused by the breeze because there wasn’t any. Breeze I mean.

‘Alright,’ said Miss Richards. ‘Phredde, you and Bruce hold hands and---’

‘No way!’ said Phredde.

‘I’m not holding hands with anyone,’ added Bruce. He glanced at me. ‘Well, almost nobody, anyway.’

‘Alright,’ said Miss Richards hastily. ‘I suppose it doesn’t matter if you hold hands or not. But when I say three, PING. Alright? One, two, three…’

PiNg!!