The Phredde Collection (67 page)

‘Hi, Tobias,’ said Phredde, inching behind me just a bit.

‘Glad to meet you, Tobias,’ said the Phaery Splendifera. ‘Er…let’s get to the party really quickly, shall we?’

‘Woof,’ said sort-of-cousin Tobias.

I sighed. ‘Just ignore him,’ I said. ‘My brother Mark does this sometimes when he’s a werewolf, too. Just refuses to speak English…’

‘Grrrowfff,’ sort-of-cousin Tobias said, with a great gust of dog’s breath, as he lay down beside me.

‘Hang on!’ yelled the Phaery Splendifera, accelerating again.

Sort-of-cousin Tobias howled.

Well, I’ve never got anywhere so quickly since the last time the Phaery Splendifera broke the sound barrier. One second, we were there in the middle of the footpath, and the next,
zap woooshh poweee,
we were at Bruce’s lily pond.

It was great.

The lily pond was about as big as our school hall, with all these giant, round lily leaves (naturally), enormous pink and white waterlily flowers and this really cool magic lighting, so it looked almost as bright as day, even though it was starting to get dark. There was also the coolest looking rock band I’ve ever seen—all wearing gorilla suits. Maybe they really were gorillas, come to think of it, as this was an enchanted lily pond.

Our entire class was there, dancing on the lily pads—which looked quite firm, so there was no need for Mum to stress about drowning at all. In the middle of it all, Bruce was leaping about, croaking and generally frogging around.

I told you, it was great.

‘Bye, Mum!’ yelled Phredde, hopping off the magic carpet.

‘Thank you for the lift,’ I said politely, sliding off too.

‘Woof,’ said sort-of-cousin Tobias as he followed me, just as Bruce leapt up to greet us.

‘Hi!’ he croaked happily.

‘Happy birthday!’ I shrieked above the noise.

‘Happy birthday!’ yelled Phredde.

‘Thanks,’ croaked Bruce. He glanced suspiciously at Tobias.

‘Er…this is my sort-of-cousin, Tobias,’ I said. ‘Mum…er…suggested he come.’ I gave Bruce a look that said ‘Well, you know what mums are like’.

Bruce gave me a sympathetic look back. ‘Sure. Welcome!’ he said to sort-of-cousin Tobias, then hopped just a little bit further away from Tobias’s fangs. ‘Er…feel free to join in the dancing! He’s very…big isn’t he?’ he whispered to me.

‘Poor kid probably had an early growth spurt,’ I whispered back. ‘You know, like that really tall kid in Year Three.’

‘Er, I suppose so,’ whispered Bruce. He looked at sort-of-cousin Tobias a bit dubiously.

‘Woof!’ said sort-of-cousin Tobias, gazing at the dancers with interest. He scratched his ear with his back leg for a moment, then leapt out onto a lily pad and was lost amongst the dancers.

‘Sorry about that,’ I said to Bruce. ‘Here. Happy birthday.’ I handed him his present.

‘Wow thanks!’ said Bruce, grasping it in his damp, froggy, finger pads. He pulled at the wrapping paper. ‘Hey, thanks!’ he added as he saw what it was.

‘I made them myself,’ I said.

‘Great!’ said Bruce.

‘They’re chocolate-coated,’ I pointed out.

‘I can see,’ said Bruce.

‘I spent days catching them,’ I added. ‘And Mum helped me to roll them in melted chocolate.’

Bruce glanced down at his jar of chocolate-coated caterpillars. ‘It’s a really great present.’

‘And this is from me,’ said Phredde handing it to him. ‘It’s a book about mosquitoes.’

‘Yum!’ said Bruce. ‘My favourite snack food. Got any recipes in it?’ He lowered his voice. ‘Hey, you know what Amelia gave me?’

We shook our heads.

‘A pair of socks!’

‘Yuk!’ said Phredde, fluttering her wings smugly. ‘Who ever heard of a frog wearing socks? How stupid can you get?’ She gazed over at the musicians and her wings started beating in time to the music. ‘Come on, Pru!’ she said. ‘Let’s dance!’

Well, it was great. If you’ve never tried dancing on giant waterlilies that are floating in a magic frog pond, you should have a go! The lily pads sort of bounce up and down, not quite at the same time as you do (undulating, I think it’s called), and it’s really cool leaping from leaf to leaf, and even cooler when someone misses a leaf and falls in. Except, of course, as it was a magic pond, no one fell in very far, and they were dry as soon as we’d hauled them out again. (Like I told Mum, it was perfectly safe).

And there was Bruce, leaping around, sometimes on this lily pad and sometimes on that one, and there were the musicians, playing as fast as their furry arms could manage, and there was sort-of-cousin Tobias…

‘You know!’ I yelled to Phredde over the noise of the music. ‘Cousin Tobias doesn’t seem to be joining in at all! He’s just sitting on his haunches with his tongue hanging out, staring at people!’

Phredde finished a complicated move that involved a free-fall double somersault with a final, wild zoom upwards. She gazed at sort-of-cousin Tobias. ‘He looks hungry,’ she decided.

‘Well, we’re going to have dinner soon,’ I said.

‘That wasn’t the sort of hungry I meant,’ said Phredde, perching on my shoulder and staring over at Tobias thoughtfully. ‘Look at him! He’s gazing at Amelia like she’s a hamburger with extra cheese and beetroot.’

I followed her gaze. ‘So what if he’s drooling a little?’ I said defensively. ‘He probably just wants to ask her to dance.’

‘Amelia!’ hooted Phredde.

‘Well, maybe he likes smug know-it-alls,’ I said. ‘You’re just prejudiced against werewolves.’

‘What’s there to be prejudiced about? They’ve got long fangs, bad breath and eat small creatures like phaeries.’

‘Werewolves don’t eat phaeries!’ I declared.

‘Only because we’re too fast for them,’ stated Phredde, glancing over at sort-of-cousin Tobias again.

‘Why bother flying away?’ I said. ‘You can just PING! them if they threaten you, can’t you?’

Phredde shook her head. ‘Magic doesn’t work on werewolves. Not during a full moon, anyway. A full moon itself is sort of magic, which counteracts the spell…’ she wrinkled her nose. ‘It’s complicated. You wouldn’t understand it.’

Phredde always says that when I ask any questions
about magic. It makes me want to strangle her sometimes.

But she’s my best friend, and I didn’t want to quarrel with her—not tonight anyway—so I just said, ‘Huh!’ and then, to distract her, I said: ‘Hey look! There’s the food!’

It was a pretty good distraction. This great long table had appeared like magic—well, okay, it was magic—along the edge of the lily pond.

The table was covered in a long, white tablecloth, but you could hardly see it, there was so much food on it. Plates of pizza at one end and on the other end, everything you could ever want on a hamburger—tomato, cheese, onion rings, four kinds of sauce, beetroot, pickles, sour cream, lettuce, coleslaw, pickled nightingale’s tongues, four kinds of buns, beef patties, grated carrot, fried moths, singed sausages, lentil burgers, gryphon burgers, chicken patties—you could add whatever you wanted.

And in the middle, there were about 10 000 different sorts of icecream, all kept magically cold, plus every sort of fruit I’d ever heard of, and a lot I hadn’t but couldn’t wait to get my teeth into and…

‘Er, Bruce?’ I said, examining the coleslaw carefully.

‘Mmmm?’ said Bruce, busily assembling a hamburger.

‘How much of this stuff has got flies and mosquitoes as an extra ingredient?’

‘None,’ said Bruce, adding sour cream and barbecue sauce to his hamburger.

‘What about caterpillars?’

‘Nope.’

‘Beetles?’

‘Nope.’

‘Fresh or dried maggots?’

‘Nope,’ said Bruce. He lifted up the tablecloth and there was a whole bucket of flies and…well, at that stage I decided I didn’t want to look closer.

‘I just add my own,’ said Bruce, shooting his tongue down into the bucket and bringing up a tongueful of…well, you don’t want to know either, but at least it was covered quickly by the bun of the hamburger. ‘I promise, everything on top of the table is creepy-crawly free. Except the fried moths. But really, they just taste sort of nutty.’

‘Yeah, nuts to them,’ I muttered. I grabbed a plate and started assembling, keeping well clear of the moth section. (The plate was magic too, which meant I could fit as much on it as I liked.)

I was up to my twelfth scoop of icecream (passionfruit and rose flavoured) and wondering whether I’d rather have tomato and eggplant pizza or prawn and pineapple, or maybe both, and some black olive and pickled onion pizza too, when someone bumped my arm.

‘Opps!’ I said, grabbing at a few slices of watermelon that were headed groundwards.

‘Sorry,’ sang out Amelia, not sounding sorry at all. She smiled at me smugly. ‘Look who I’ve met!’

I looked down. There was sort-of-cousin Tobias, with his great hairy paws, sitting at her feet and gazing up at her and panting.

Phredde was right, I thought uneasily. He did look a bit hungry.

‘I bet he’s a handsome prince in disguise,’ declared Amelia. ‘Just like Bruce.’

‘He’s not a handsome prince at all,’ I informed her. ‘He’s my sort-of-cousin Tobias. He’s a werewolf.’

Amelia blinked. ‘But he can’t be!’ she protested.

‘Take a close look at him Amelia,’ I advised. ‘See? Long fangs. Doggy drool. Perky ears. Hairy coat. Fleas. Doesn’t that sound a bit like a werewolf to you?’

‘But…’ said Amelia. She shook her head. ‘Prudence, he just CAN’T be a werewolf. Look up at the sky!’

‘Why should I? Alright then, ALRIGHT!’ I said, just to settle the whole thing. I squinted up into the sky.

‘Now what can you see?’

Black sky…starlight…a few moths (fresh and unfried) carefully keeping out of reach of Bruce’s tongue.

‘I can’t see anything,’ I told her. ‘Just a few stars.’

‘See!’ said Amelia.

‘See what? I don’t under…oh!’ I said, as the light finally dawned in my head. ‘Oh!! Oh—oh…’

It wasn’t what I could see up in the sky that was important. It was what I couldn’t…

‘The moon hasn’t risen yet…’ I said slowly.

‘Yep,’ said Amelia.

‘And werewolves don’t change into wolves till the moon has risen.’

‘Nope,’ said Amelia.

‘Which means that sort-of-cousin Tobias isn’t…’

‘Woof,’ said sort-of-cousin Tobias. Except he wasn’t was he?

‘Er…does that mean he’s a real wolf?’ I stuttered. ‘But…but he can’t be! Real wolves don’t go running around the suburbs!’

That’s when the moon started to rise. The glow in the east grew brighter, then suddenly a wide, goldorange
rind appeared above the horizon. It grew bigger and bigger.

And sort-of-cousin Tobias—except he wasn’t cousin Tobias at all—began to change.

He sat up straighter. And straighter.

His nose grew shorter. His head grew longer.

He began to stretch and stretch, and his fur began to fade.

Sort-of-cousin Tobias stood up on his long human legs and stretched his arms. ‘Grrrfffffff,’ he rumbled, in the longest, meanest growl I’ve ever heard.

‘He’s…he’s…’ I stuttered.

‘He’s a reverse werewolf!’ shouted Bruce, leaping onto the table in alarm, scattering tuna and potato pizza all over the place.

‘And he’s…and he’s…’

‘He’s naked!’ shrieked Amelia.

‘For goodness sake don’t worry about that!’ I cried. ‘Look at his eyes!’

‘Look at his fangs!’ shrieked Phredde, fluttering up as far out of his reach as she could.

‘Look at his—’ began Amelia until Bruce interrupted her.

‘Stand back everyone!’ he ordered. ‘Stand back!’

Well, he didn’t have to tell us twice. I mean this was one mean-looking wereman. I suddenly remembered Mrs Olsen telling us last term about how humans are the nastiest species on this planet. Well, sort-of-cousin Tobias—or whoever he was—looked like he combined all the meanest bits of human and all the fiercest bits of wolf.

‘Grrrrooooowwwwwwlllll!’ rumbled sort-of-cousin Tobias again, showing his long, yellow, gleaming fangs.
His golden eyes gleamed in the magic lamplight. He raised his paws and leapt!

Phredde zoomed even further upwards, her wings fluttering like they were electric-powered. Bruce gave a terrified ‘Croak!’ and dived into the lily pond. I leapt under the table (I managed to avoid Bruce’s bucket of food additives).

I peered out cautiously. Most of the class had escaped, and were huddling together at the far end of the lily pond, with the lily pads shuddering in sympathy under them. There was no sign of Phredde or Bruce. But there was sort-of-cousin Tobias, grinning down at me evilly. And in his arms he held…

‘He’s got Amelia!’ I shrieked.

‘Hellllp!!!!!’ hollered Amelia. ‘Helllppp, hellppp, helllpppppp!’

Phredde fluttered cautiously down towards me. ‘What should we do?’ she whispered.

‘I don’t know! Can’t you magic him or something?’

‘But I can’t magic werewolves! Or reverse werewolves either! Not at full moon! I told you!’

‘But we’ve got to do something!’ I yelled above the noise of Amelia’s screeching.

‘Why?’ said Phredde reasonably. ‘It’s not as though we like her or anything.’

‘Phredde!’ I hissed.

‘Alright, alright,’ grumbled Phredde. ‘I was only joking. Shut up Amelia!’ she yelled. ‘How can we concentrate on rescuing you if you keep screaming! How about we take him by surprise!’ she said to me. ‘I’ll kick him in the eyeball and you tackle him around the knees…’

‘And I’ll jump SPLATT! onto his back, all cold and clammy, and maybe he’ll drop her,’ put in Bruce, peering out from under a lily pad.

I glanced over at the rest of the class. They were still as far away as possible, shivering in fear. It looked like the rescue was up to us.

‘Well…okay…’ I said hesitantly. ‘When I say “three!” okay? One, two, three!’

Phredde zoomed, Bruce leapt and I dived into the football tackle that Mark had once shown me (brothers are useful sometimes).

Wham!
went Phredde’s foot in sort-of-cousin Tobias’s eye.

Splatt!
went Bruce onto his back.

Whump!!
went my arms around his legs.

‘Arrrrrrrrrkkkkkkk!’ shrieked Amelia as sort-of-cousin Tobias dropped her onto the ground.

For a moment, I thought we had him, then
whack!
Sort-of-cousin Tobias had kicked me back under the table.
Gloop!
He’d plucked Bruce off his back and thrown him back into the lily pond.
Wham! Bang! Biff!
He tried to punch Phredde out of the air, except she was too quick for him and rocketed out of the way.