The Phredde Collection (71 page)

I stood frozen, and Phredde stayed grasping the ceiling, and the boa constrictor kept looking at us with those tiny TV-sized eyes. Then, slowly, they shut and the giant head dropped to the floor.

‘Phredde!’ I hissed. ‘It’s falling asleep!’

‘Maybe it’s not hungry after all!’ Phredde whispered down to me.

‘But…but…’

That’s when it hit me. The boa constrictor wasn’t hungry because it had eaten my family! It had eaten Mum and Dad and Mark (and even if big brothers are a nuisance, he’s the only one I’ve got), and maybe it had even eaten Gark, too.

I marched up to the boa constrictor and kicked it on the jaw.

Nothing happened.

‘Come on you rancid reptile! Open up!’ I screamed. I kicked it again.

The boa constrictor opened one eye, then shut it again.

‘Phredde, help me!’ I shouted.

‘How?’ cried Phredde, still hovering at ceiling level.

‘We’ve got to get it to open its mouth! My whole family’s down there!’

‘Where?’

‘Inside this putrid python!’ I kicked the boa constrictor again and beat on it with my fists, but it paid no attention at all. I mean, if snakes could snore, that one would have been snorting like a steam train.

‘But…but if it’s already eaten them…’ began Phredde uncertainly.

‘Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole!’ I reminded her. ‘Then they digest them inside! It may not be too late!’

‘But how can we get them out?’

‘I don’t know!’ I cried. ‘If only we could get it to burp…or…or…I know! We’ll tickle it!’

‘Tickle it?’

‘Yeah! Then it’ll have to open its mouth to giggle, and Mum and Dad and Mark might be able to run out and escape.’

‘Well,’ said Phredde. ‘I suppose it’s worth a try.’

She flapped down cautiously and hovered beside me. ‘How do you tickle a boa constrictor?’

‘How should I know? I suppose we just try tickling its tummy.’

Phredde blinked. Well, that boa constrictor did have a lot of tummy…

‘You try that side and I’ll do this one,’ I ordered.

I lunged at the nearest bit of snake-belly and began to tickle.

Tickle, tickle, tickle, tickle…

Nothing happened. That boa constrictor didn’t even wriggle.

‘Maybe it can’t feel us!’ I yelled. ‘Try tickling harder!’

I tickled with both hands. I tried head butting and kicking it, too.

That snake didn’t even blink.

‘We’ll have to try something else!’ I yelled. ‘There has to be some way of getting it to open its mouth!…Pepper!’

‘What?’ demanded Phredde, zooming up and over the boa constrictor and landing on my shoulder again.

‘Pepper! It’ll make it sneeze! You remember, just like that time in maths class when we…’

Well, you don’t have to know about that. Come to think of it, even Mum doesn’t know about that. Mrs Olsen said she wouldn’t tell Mum and Dad as long as Phredde and I apologised to Amelia and cleaned up the playground for a week, but, anyway, it had worked.

‘I’ll go get the pepper!’ I cried.

‘No, I will,’ said Phredde. ‘I’ll be faster.’ She zoomed off like a wasp after lemonade, while I stood there, glaring at that snake. If looks could kill, that snake would have been fried into snake kebabs, but I suppose they can’t, because it just lay there snoozing away, while its digestive juices were working on my family.

‘Got it!’ shrieked Phredde. She held up the pepper grinder triumphantly. I grabbed it and stuck it under the snake’s nose—or, at least, where its nose might have been, if snakes had noses.

I started grinding the pepper, anyway.

‘Er, Pru,’ said Phredde.

‘Yeah, what?’ I said, industriously grinding.

‘If the boa constrictor does sneeze…’

‘Yeah?’

‘There won’t be time for your family to escape! It’ll just go, “atishoo!” and shut its mouth again.’

I stopped grinding. ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ I admitted. ‘How can we keep it open? I’ve got it!’ I grabbed one of the brocade chairs that stood against the Ballroom walls. ‘We’ll stuff this in!’

‘I don’t think that’s going to keep a twenty-metre boa constrictor’s jaws open,’ said Phredde dubiously.

‘A table then! Come on, you’ll have to help me!’

We raced out into the corridor and into the Cork Tile and Banana Lounge Drawing Room (it’s where we relax after having a swim) and grabbed the table, sending glasses and jugs and Mum’s big fruit bowl flying everywhere but, after all, this was an emergency. I mean, Mum couldn’t admire her new fruit bowl if she was all dissolved by gastric juices inside a boa constrictor, could she?

We got back to the Ballroom just as the boa constrictor was opening its mouth for a gigantic sneeze.

‘Ahhh…ahhhh…ahhhhh…’ went the boa constrictor.

‘Quick!’ I yelled. Phredde fluttered madly with her end of the table (luckily phaeries are stronger than they look) and I shoved my end…

‘Choooooooooo!’ sneezed the boa constrictor, just as we pushed the table into its mouth.

‘Gllumpphhhhh,’ went the boa’s giant head, which was sort of flattish-looking. I guess there wasn’t much room in there for brains.

‘Mum! Dad! Mark!’ I shrieked. ‘The mouth’s open! Run!’

The boa constrictor made a sort of whummphing noise. It shook its head from side to side trying to spit the table out—or maybe to swallow it. But tables must be harder to swallow whole than horses, because the table stayed put.

‘Dad! Mum! Mark!’ I yelled again.

I stuck my head into the snake’s mouth but I couldn’t hear anything, except a vague gurgling sound coming from a long way down.

‘It’s no use!’ I shrieked up at Phredde. ‘We’ll have to go in there and find them!’

‘Go in there?’ cried Phredde.

‘Sure! It’s perfectly safe. The boa constrictor can’t shut its mouth with the table there.’

‘Both of us?’

‘Of course! You don’t expect your best friend to go down into a snake’s belly by herself do you?’

Well, when I put it like that, Phredde didn’t have much of a choice. Okay, her wings did tremble a bit, but she put her chin up and said, ‘Course not,’ and zoomed down towards me, through the table legs and into the giant mouth.

I hoisted myself up on the boa constrictor’s lips and, let me tell you, it wasn’t like practising on the gym equipment at school. For one thing, those lips were damp and sort of slimy, and I bet boa constrictor’s never brush their teeth after meals. It was alright for Phredde, she could just zoom in without treading in boa constrictor spit…

‘Hurry up!’ yelled Phredde, jetting out again. ‘Boy, is it gungy in there!’

You know something? Phredde was right.

I’d thought that inside a twenty-metre long boa constrictor, there would be a giant passage that you could walk down, or at least crawl. But it wasn’t like that, at all.

First of all, even with Phredde glowing, it was dark. (Didn’t you know that phaeries glow in the dark? I thought everybody knew that.)

It wasn’t much use, though, because the walls, er, the stomach, kept crowding in on us, closer, closer, and closer until I was pushing my way through these slimy, sticky sheets of snake intestine. And the smell! Imagine a rubbish bin full of prawns and vinegar that’s been
baking in the sun for a week. Well, it wasn’t like that at all. It was a million times worse!

Phredde perched on my shoulder and kept the walls from clamping over my face. I kept pushing, pushing, pushing.

‘Mum!’ I yelled. ‘Mum! Where are you? Dad? Mark?’

There was no answer. Just a glub, glub noise in front of us. I didn’t even want to THINK what that was…

Suddenly the world shuddered.

‘Arrk!’ screamed Phredde, grasping my hair like it was a lifebelt.

‘Owwwwwk!’ I shrieked.

‘What…what’s happening?’ cried Phredde.

‘I don’t know! I think the boa constrictor’s trying to shake out the table again.’ I was beginning to wish I’d brought my carsickness tablets with me.

‘Pru, we’d better get out of here!’ urged Phredde.

‘But Mum and Dad and Mark…’

‘We won’t do them any good if we’re trapped in here too! We need to get out and then we can think of another plan!’

‘I’ll just call them once more!’ I cried desperately. ‘Dad! Mark! Mum!’

And then I heard it. Very faintly in the distance.

‘Prudence?’ And then Mum’s scream. ‘Aaarrrkkk!’

‘She’s in here!’ I yelled.

‘No, she’s not!’ shrieked Phredde. ‘That scream came from outside!’

Suddenly, there was a faint thumping on the bit of python stomach next to us. I heard Mum’s sort of hysterical voice. (Mum can really get stressed sometimes.) ‘Prudence! Prudence! Are you in there!’

‘Yeah!’ I yelled. ‘So’s Phredde!’

‘Well, you come out right now!’ hollered Mum.

So we did.

It was easier getting out than getting in, actually, because the boa constrictor was shaking its head trying to spit out the table, which it did just as we emerged at its mouth. We were spat out with it.
Splurrrk!

I hit the Ballroom wall in a great glob of boa constrictor spit. Phredde got tossed up to the ceiling, which would have been okay because usually she can fly, except, now, her wings were gummed up with yuk, so she fell on top of me, and then I fell down on Mum, and, somehow, Dad was there, too, yelling, ‘Prudence! What’s the meaning of all this?’ while the boa constrictor was very carefully chewing the table into toothpicks.

‘Prudence,’ cried Mum again, sort of shaking and crying. ‘Are you alright?’

I scrambled off her. ‘Sure Mum,’ I said. ‘I’m fine. There’s no need to stress about it. Phredde’s fine too.’

‘I need a shower,’ said Phredde, inspecting her gummed-up wings. ‘Eerrk.’

‘Well, young lady,’ said Dad glaring at me. ‘You’ve got some explaining to do!’

‘But it was for you! I just wanted to give you a little present!’ I cried.

‘Little!’ shouted Dad. ‘This thing must be fifteen metres long!’

‘Twenty metres long and it can swallow a whole horse in one gulp,’ I said proudly.

‘Ethereal, did you magic this up?’ enquired Dad sternly.

‘No,’ said Phredde. ‘It was Bruce.’

‘Well, he can just magic it—’ began Dad.

‘Hey, you lot, the pizzas are getting cold’ yelled Mark from the TV, Video and Space Invaders Drawing Room down the corridor.

‘Hey, pizza!’ I cried.

Dad shook his head dazedly. ‘Yes. We just went out to get pizzas for dinner because it’s Gark’s night off, and when we got back, this thing—what exactly is it, Prudence?’

‘It’s a twenty-metre long boa constrictor,’ I informed him. ‘You’ll really love it once you get to know it, Dad. It’s South American!’

‘Listen, Prudence,’ said Dad. ‘I’ve been meaning to have a little talk to you about…’

‘Come and get your pizza!’ yelled Mark again.

So Phredde and I raced off to have showers and get rid of the snake spit before the pizzas got cold, and then Phredde stayed for dinner. (She rang her mum to see if it was alright, but she didn’t mention the boa constrictor. Her mum stresses about things, too.)

After that, Dad seemed to have forgotten what he was going to say to me, which is probably a really good thing.

In fact, what with pineapple, prawn and avocado pizza (which is my favourite at the moment), and peanut butter and sausage pizza (which is Phredde’s), we sort of forgot about the boa constrictor until it started thumping on the Ballroom ceiling.

‘Poor thing,’ said Mum ‘I bet it’s hungry too. What do boa constrictors like?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Horses, I suppose.’

‘Well, I’m not going to have a horse indoors,’ said Mum firmly. ‘You know what a mess your unicorn made the last time you rode it through the Grand Hall. Anyway, it would be cruel.’

‘But the boa constrictor’s got to eat something!’ I pointed out.

‘Pizza,’ said Mark, still with his mouth full. ‘Give the poor thing some pizza.’

So we did.

Of course, it takes a lot of pizza to fill up a twenty-metre long, giant boa constrictor that can swallow a whole horse. So Phredde rang her mum again and asked her to magic up an everlasting pizza for us, one that you could eat forever and it would still be there (which is a really great idea and I wish we’d thought of it before).

You know something? Twenty-metre long boa constrictors really like peanut butter and sausage pizza.

And then, it really did go to sleep.

Boa constrictors snore.

Well, that’s the end of that story. I got Bruce to shrink the boa constrictor a bit the next day.

It still looks cute, all green with yellow spots, but it can’t swallow a horse whole, just one of Mark’s guinea pigs, but that’s alright because Mark hasn’t noticed yet.

And I reckon Dad must be getting fond of it, because I saw him staring at it last Saturday as it wound around the legs of the kitchen table while we were having breakfast. Dad was muttering, ‘I wonder if boa constrictors eat giant sloths or vampire bats?’

Didn’t I tell you about the vampire bats?

They followed me home that time Phredde and I borrowed her mum’s magic carpet and accidentally-on-purpose crashed through the time barrier and landed in a jungle next to this great ancient ruined temple and…

But that’s another story.
⁶

About the Author

Jackie French is a full-time writer who lives in Braidwood in the Araluen Valley, via Canberra, New South Wales. Her book Hitler’s Daughter was awarded the CBCA Younger Readers’ Award in 2000 and the WOW! Award in the UK in 2001. Recently, her book The Night They Stormed Eureka was awarded the 2010 NSW Premier’s History Award for Young Readers.

Visit Jackie at
www.jackiefrench.com

Copyright

HarperCollins
Publishers

A Phaery named Phredde
first published in 1998 as
Stories to Eat with a Banana; Phredde and a Frog Named Bruce
first published in 1999 as
Stories to Eat with a Watermelon; Phredde and the Zombie Librarian
first published in 2000 as
Stories to Eat with a Blood Plum; Phredde and the Temple of Gloom
first published in 2001 as
A Story to Eat with a Mandarin: Phredde and the Temple of Gloom; Phredde and the Leopard-skin Librarian
first published in 2002;
Phredde and the Purple Pyramid
first published in 2003;
Phredde and the Vampire Footy Team
first published in 2004; and
Phredde and the Ghostly Underpants first
published in 2005
by Angus&Robertson
Angus&Robertson is an imprint of HarperCollins Publisher

This combined edition published in 2011
by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited.
ABN 36 009 913 517
harpercollins.com.au

Copyright © Jackie French 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2011
Illustrations copyright © Mitch Vane 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2009, 2011

The right of Jackie French to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the
Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000
.

This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the
Copyright Act 1968
, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

HarperCollins
Publishers
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ISBN: 9781743096383

Cover design by HarperCollins Design Studio
Cover illustration © Mitch Vane