Brigid Lucy and the Princess Tower (2 page)

Chapter one

let’s pretend

‘Jamie, come and
play
,’ Biddy yells at Jamie’s bedroom door.

(Jamie is a boy. Which is okay. Sometimes you have to have boys in adventures. Especially if there are no girls living in your whole entire street.)

‘No,’ says Jamie. ‘I don’t want to.’

‘Jamie. Quick, I don’t have much time,’ Biddy tries to explain, pushing his door open. ‘I need someone to play with me. There is no one else.’

But Jamie doesn’t listen, so Biddy has to pull him out of his room.

This makes Jamie
yell
, ‘Leave me alone! I want to play on my computer!’

‘Don’t be boring,’ Biddy tells him. Then she drags him down the hall and out of the back door into the garden. ‘We’re going to play princes and princesses and
wicked witches
,’ she says.

‘I don’t like pretending,’ Jamie says.

‘Imagination is not pretending, Jamie,’ Biddy explains. ‘It is stories and adventure.’ She is using her mummy-being-patient kind-of voice.

‘Now,’ she says, ‘I’m Princess Rapunzel and you’re my dog.’

‘But I don’t want to be a dog,’ Jamie frowns. ‘If I have to play, I want to be the prince.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Biddy says. ‘We can’t have a prince yet. We have to
find
the prince. That’s the whole point of the story.’

‘I don’t want to be a dog,’ Jamie says again.

‘Not even a big black hunting dog?’ Biddy says. She puts her hands on her hips. ‘What about a
big scary dog
with gold studs in his collar and four gold earrings like a pirate?’ she asks.

Jamie thinks a bit, but then he still shakes his head.

I run up on top of Biddy’s head to get a closer look at Jamie. He looks very determined not to be a dog.

Man! What is it with boys?
I think.
Why won’t they play properly?

‘Come on, Jamie,’ Biddy says. She is being as patient as the scoriaks that live in the Great Bushland. Scoriaks are great,
heavy
creatures that live inside rocks and are as patient as the earth growing.

‘You can turn into the prince later,’ Biddy says. ‘And we’ll fall in love and get married. Okay?’

‘But I don’t want to get
married
,’ Jamie says.

Which is just too totally silly. Everyone in stories wants to get married and live happily ever after.

So Biddy just ignores that and keeps going with the game.

‘Now, if I’m going to fall in love with you, you have to do what you are
told
,’ she says.

She stands up, tall and elegant, like a princess. Then she looks down her nose at Jamie and commands, ‘Sit!’

Jamie shakes his head again.

But I reckon he is about to change his mind, so I lean out from Biddy’s hair, holding onto a strand of her fringe.

‘Keep going, Biddy! He’ll do it!’ I say.

Even though Biddy can’t hear me, I can’t help but talk to her. And sometimes she does listen, kind of.

‘I said, “
Sit!”
, pirate dog,’ Biddy yells.

Then, just when Jamie is about to sit, someone opens the garden gate, and says, ‘Brigid Lucy!’ in a very annoyed voice.

It’s Biddy’s mum!
Oh-oh!
Mum is going to yell at Biddy for coming over to Jamie’s place. I quickly run up Biddy’s fringe and into her hair to hide. I close my eyes and cover my ears.

‘Brigid Lucy, what do you think you are doing?’ Biddy’s mum yells. She rush-walks across Jamie’s garden to where we are playing. Baby Ellen is on her hip, and Biddy’s little sister, Matilda, is being towed along behind.

‘I’ve told you not to go
anywhere
without asking me first,’ Mum continues.

‘I did ask you,’ Biddy says, putting on her most innocent face.

‘You did not,’ says Mum.

‘I did so,’ Biddy says. ‘You just didn’t listen to me, because you were talking on the phone.’

Then Mum’s face goes all red, and she yells even louder, ‘Brigid, go home right now.’ As if it is all Biddy’s fault that she’s in trouble. But it isn’t.

Mum
was
talking on the phone when me and Biddy wanted to go to Jamie’s. So even if we did want to ask, we couldn’t. Because Mum told Biddy she’s-not-allowed-to-make-any-noise-while-Mum-is-on-the-phone. So it is Mum’s fault, too.

But Mum doesn’t admit it is her fault, too. While me and Biddy are walking to the garden gate, we hear Mum tell Jamie in her most polite voice, ‘I’m very sorry, Jamie, but Biddy has been a naughty,
naughty
girl. She is not allowed to play any longer.’

Which is not fair. How come she is so nice to him when he was playing, too?

Chapter two

being very good

When we get back home, Mum tells Biddy, ‘You are the
naughtiest
-little-girl-in-the-whole-wide-world!’

And, ‘What-if-you-had-been-stolen-by-a-big-bad-stranger-person-who-cut-you-into-tiny-pieces-and-sent-you-home-in-an-envelope?’

And, ‘How-would-you-like-it-if-Iran-away-and-you-couldn’t-find-me-and-you-were-worrying-yourself-sick?’

Biddy wants to say she’s very-very-very-sorry.

But Mum hardly stops yelling before she says, ‘
Hurry-hurry-hurry
. We have to go to the Centre of Town.’

The Centre of Town!

Yes! That’s where the museum is with all the dead-people mummies, and the stuffed magical creatures like the extinct Tasmanian tiger.

I hope we are going to the museum
, I think.

But then Mum says, ‘I have a very-important-appointment. So I’m going to take you and your sisters to Granny’s house.’

‘
Hooray!
’ I yell. This is the best news of all. Granny lives in the Centre of Town, and she is going to look after me and Biddy, and Miss Getting-All-The-Attention Matilda, and dribbly little Crybaby Ellen, while Mum goes to the very-important-appointment.

Now, the thing is, there is a new rule in Biddy’s house since we moved to the city. The rule says:
Naughty-girls-are-not-allowed-to-go-on-outings
. If Mum remembers that Biddy has just been naughty, she won’t let Biddy come on the trip to Granny’s.

Instead, Biddy will have to stay with Miss Grimes from over the road. Miss Grimes cuts caterpillars and grasshoppers in half with scissors. And she drowns snails and slugs in jars of beer in her vegetable garden.
Yukki-poo-la-drop-kick!

Biddy really wants to go to Granny’s.

Granny is Biddy’s absolute favourite grandma. She knows everything about plants and herbs. She knows about magic creatures like fairies and goblins. She even knows about those cheeky yebil yebils that come from the Great Bushland. You know, the ones that look like a slip of a shadow and always trip you up when you are running.

And she knows about bugs (particularly spiders). And she knows all about frogs and snakes and
unicorns
. She is the bestest grandma in the whole entire universe.

Mum tells Biddy to promise that she will be ‘the-best-good-girl-that-she-can-possibly-be-for-the-rest-of-the-day’.

Biddy promises she will be good, even though she knows she might not be able to keep the promise. Because how can a person know what’s going to happen when it hasn’t happened yet?

In the end, the promise did get
broken
, but Biddy wasn’t to know that, was she?

She starts by being very good.

Mum says, ‘We’re going to catch the train, so dress yourself appropriately.’

(
Appropriate
is a schoolteacher word meaning ‘okay’ or ‘right’ or ‘good’.)

So Biddy doesn’t wear her favourite pink plastic high-heeled shoes that make the best clicking noises on the footpath. Mum once said they would get caught in the train door. She said that Biddy would fall-down-through-the-gap-onto-the-train-tracks-and-get-chopped-in-half-by-the-train.

Biddy puts on her second-favourite shoes instead. And she doesn’t cry or
scream
when Mum brushes all the tangles out of her fringe, even though it hurts a lot!

But do you think Mum notices how good Biddy is being? No, of course not. Mum is
too busy
, like she always is, trying to feed Crybaby Ellen. And packing the pram. And changing Matilda’s shoes onto the right feet, while Matilda screams, ‘I do it! I do it!’

Even though she can’t, because she is still just a little Getting-All-The-Attention baby-pants.

Chapter three

a train ride

Biddy loves the
clickity-clack, clickity-clack
noise that the train makes as it rocks along the tracks. I do, too. What I like best is when Mum can find four seats that face each other. And then me and Biddy and Matilda all sit together on one side, and Mum and baby Ellen sit on the other one, facing us.

Then Biddy and Matilda bump against each other, and we all sing, ‘
Clickity, pickity, mickity, quack—the train goes down the railway track. Clackity, clockity, cluckity, click—we bump and sway and don’t get sick
.’

Then we go, ‘
Blaah!
’ and pretend to be sick, and Mum tells Biddy and Matilda, ‘Girls. Behave.’

But today we can’t sing the train song because there are too many people in our carriage. We can’t find four spare seats together. So, Matilda has to sit next to Mum and baby Ellen. And me and Biddy have to sit opposite them, next to an evil
witch
. This witch is not a good witch like Granny, the sort that knows all kinds of potions and spells. This witch is a real-proper-evil witch.

It’s true! I know it is hard for you human reader people to believe in witches. But we invisible creatures know all about that kind of stuff. I can recognise magical beings anywhere.

Like, we have a nefarious that lives in our Great Bushland. I know all about her. She is beautiful, but totally ancient and grumpy. If ever you went near her, she would gobble you up
dead
.

And I’ve read heaps about other sorts of witches in Biddy’s books.

Some look just like beautiful young women with long white-tipped fingernails.