The Phredde Collection (10 page)

‘Graha,’ said the dragon.

It looked like it had grown a bit in the night.

It was certainly fatter—its belly bulged as if it had been having breakfast for the past ten hours—and it had an interested sort of smile on its face as it sniffed the schoolbags on the verandah and the door jamb (I held my breath in case it lifted its leg but it didn’t; after all, a dragon isn’t a dog!).

Then the dragon padded through the classroom to sit next to Phredde’s desk (and mine too for that matter. Phredde sits just behind me and that dragon was LONG—I was sure it was much bigger than last night).

‘Er…Ethereal…’ began Mrs Olsen. Her mouth was hanging open so you could see her long, white vampire teeth.

‘Yes, Mrs Olsen. I’m sorry I’m late,’ Phredde repeated. ‘The dragon took longer to feed than I thought.’ Phredde pulled out her geography book.

‘But Ethereal…the dragon…’ Mrs Olsen’s voice grew firmer. ‘Ethereal, we simply can’t have pets in class. You know that. We have pet day once a year and you can bring your dragon then.’

Mrs Olsen hesitated, as though she was imagining the dragon among the rabbits and cats and dogs the other kids bring to class (I brought my unicorn last year and she was a real hit). ‘Well, maybe we won’t have pet day again this year,’ said Mrs Olsen, ‘but the point I’m making, Ethereal, is that you simply can’t have your pet in here!’

‘But it’s not a pet, Mrs Olsen,’ said Phredde.

Mrs Olsen blinked. ‘What is it then?’

‘It’s a wild animal. My Uncle Mordred said so in his letter. Who ever heard of having a dragon as a pet?’ said Phredde reasonably. ‘A dragon stays with you if it wants to, and goes if it wants to.’

The dragon burped suddenly, sending a short burst of flame onto Mrs Olsen’s desk. It didn’t burn the desk—just charred it black along one corner.

‘Gaahaaa,’ said the dragon.

Mrs Olsen edged back towards the blackboard.

‘Are you sure the dragon wouldn’t rather be outside?’ she asked Phredde.

‘Sure I’m sure,’ said Phredde. ‘If the dragon wanted to go outside it would. Dragons do just what they want to do.’

Mrs Olsen eyed the dragon suspiciously. ‘What happens if you try to make a dragon do what it doesn’t want to do?’

‘Dad tried to make the dragon sleep on the doormat last night,’ said Phredde. ‘And it didn’t want to. So it burnt down my bedroom door and the portrait of the Phaery Queen in the corridor.’

‘Ethereal!’ exclaimed Mrs Olsen. She gazed at the dragon, horrified.

‘It’s okay.’ said Phredde. ‘Dad conjured up a new door and I never liked the portrait of the Queen. I mean I bet I’m the only person in the whole class who has a portrait of a queen in the corridor. But, you know Mrs Olsen,’ she went on really seriously, ‘I think we should let the dragon do what it wants to. I mean we don’t want to make it angry. Don’t worry. I bet it goes to sleep now it’s digested its breakfast.’

‘Gahhhaa,’ agreed the dragon, and shut one eye.

Mrs Olsen hesitated, but there wasn’t really anything else to do.

‘Well…if you’re sure it’s safe…’ she began.

‘Of course it’s safe,’ said Phredde. ‘It’s just a dragon.’

The dragon smiled, and shut the other eye.

The dragon DID behave itself. It slept all through geography and maths and only woke up at lunchtime and was REALLY well behaved as soon as everyone decided to feed it their lunch.

Phredde conjured up new lunches for them all and the food was much better than the stuff you buy at the canteen, or that parents pack. Phredde conjured really good stuff like six-layer hamburgers and cold watermelon and chocolate-coated frozen bananas with nuts, and the dragon had a few of the hamburgers as well.

It was an awfully hungry dragon.

When the volcano erupted and we went back into class the dragon settled down next to Phredde’s desk again. (I was right—the dragon was still growing. It was almost half as long as the classroom now, and we had to move a few desks after its tail sort of accidentally squashed Edwin’s.)

We all pretended we were concentrating on the geometry written on the board and not really looking at the dragon, and Mrs Olsen pretended she was concentrating on teaching us geometry and not worrying that the dragon was going to wake up and burn the school down…

…when this bloke tramped along the verandah, trying not to step on any of the schoolbags (they’re always a mess after lunch, and especially after the
dragon had been shoving his muzzle into them looking for stray bananas).

And he knocked on the door and said, ‘Mrs Olsen? Is this Mrs Olsen’s class?’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Olsen, putting down the chalk.

‘My name is Perkins.’ said the bloke, pulling out some sort of identification from his pocket. ‘I’m from the Customs Department. I had a call from…’

That’s when Mr Perkins saw the dragon. He stopped, and gulped three times, then gulped again when the dragon opened an eye. But then it shut it again (I guess it was really sleepy after all that lunch) and the bloke went on, ‘I had a call from a Mrs Allen.’

‘That’s right. She’s the headmistress,’ said Mrs Olsen.

‘And she informed me that there is a…an exotic animal at the school. A dragon to be precise.’ Mr Perkins was still staring at the dragon.

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Olsen. ‘We do have a dragon here. It belongs to Ethereal.’

‘It doesn’t BELONG to me,’ protested Phredde. ‘It belongs to itself. It just wants to be with me.’

Mr Perkins stared at her. ‘Well, it can’t,’ he said firmly. ‘This dragon is a piece of exotic fauna. It is illegal to import exotic fauna into Australia unless they go through quarantine.’

‘Why?’ demanded Phredde.

‘For the very good reason, young lady, that animals from other countries can bring in diseases that we don’t have in Australia! I don’t suppose you want to be responsible for wiping out all of Australia’s koalas or lizards with a new virus?’

‘No,’ said Phredde.

‘Then can you show me any papers to say that this animal has passed quarantine?’

Phredde lifted herself out of her desk and flapped threateningly next to the ceiling, but when you’re only the size of a gladioli you can’t really look all that threatening. ‘I don’t need any,’ said Phredde.

‘Young lady,’ said Mr Perkins (and you have to give him full marks for continuing to do his job even with dragons and phaeries and vampires to cope with), ‘I don’t care how magic you are, or even if this creature came from Phaeryland itself. It simply should not have been brought into the country without going through the proper procedures. Have you any idea how dangerous new diseases can be? I’m going to have to confiscate it at once.’

‘No!’ I cried. I mean Phredde was my friend and the dragon was HER friend so that made the dragon my friend, too. ‘You can’t take the dragon! It doesn’t like being shut up!’

‘I’m afraid…’ began Mr Perkins, not regretfully at all.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Phredde. ‘No one is going to take the dragon.’

‘And why is that?’ demanded Mr Perkins, gazing a bit nervously at the dragon. (It had started lashing its tail ever so slightly back and forth). ‘Even if we have to get the Fire Brigade here to help remove it, I can promise you…’

‘Because the dragon’s not an…an exotic fauna,’ Phredde stumbled a bit over the words. ‘It’s a native Australian animal.’

‘What!’ Mr Perkins’ jaw hung open.

‘My Uncle Mordred found this dragon in Australia. He said so in his letter! He was walking past a giant
termite mound when suddenly the top opened up and there was this dragon!’

‘A likely story,’ sneered Mr Perkins.

‘It’s true!’ cried Phredde again, her wings vibrating like a demented budgie. ‘Phaeries never lie! And it was so small, and there were dingos all around and he was afraid they’d eat it, so he sent it to me to keep it safe.’

‘And what was your Uncle doing near this termite mound?’ demanded Mr Perkins.

‘He was on a dragon hunting expedition,’ Phredde informed him. ‘Uncle Mordred has always been interested in dragons.’

Mr Perkins grinned, but it wasn’t a nice grin. ‘I’m afraid that the word of a confirmed dragon hunter like your Uncle simply isn’t enough my dear,’ he said. ‘If that’s all the proof you’ve got I’m afraid I’ll…’

‘Of course it’s not all!’ cried Phredde. ‘Look!’ She drew a piece of paper out of her pocket (phaery’s pockets are really tiny, of course, but they can fit all sorts of things into them).

Mr Perkins peered across the dragon. ‘What’s that?’ he demanded.

‘It’s a copy of an ancient map of Australia!’ announced Phredde. ‘I photocopied it in the library at lunchtime.’

‘And what’s so special about this map?’

‘It’s from the 16th century,’ said Phredde. ‘That’s before Australia was supposed to have been discovered by Europeans, but the person who made this map knew where Australia was and even got it looking almost right.’

‘Well?’ said Mr Perkins.

‘And look…right here!’ Phredde fluttered over the dragon and handed it to Mr Perkins. ‘It says,
Here
Be Dragons!
There have been dragons in Australia all the time!’

‘Phredde?’

‘Mmmm?’ We were up Phredde’s tree in the playground (I’d really like to know how come no teacher ever sees us up there) and Phredde was intent on her lunch. It was the tiniest Vegemite and lettuce sandwich I’d ever seen.

Phredde had only discovered Vegemite when she came to Australia (I was the one who told her about Vegemite and lettuce—the lettuce has to be shredded and make sure there’s lots of butter and maybe a slice of cheese as well). It was all she ever had for lunch now, though her mum kept packing sweetmeats and other traditional phaery stuff just in case.

At the foot of the tree, the dragon was eating lunch, too, its head in the rubbish bin as it devoured all the leftover hot-dog crusts and chip wrappers and banana peels.

Phredde had bought a big bag of dog biscuits to school for it, but the dragon had decided it didn’t like dog biscuits.

It liked rubbish better.

‘What are you going to call the dragon?’

Phredde blinked. ‘I never thought of calling it anything,’ she admitted.

‘Why not? I called my unicorn Tootsie, and before Dad gave Mrs Olsen his jaguar he called it…’

I hesitated. I wasn’t
quite
sure if what Dad had called his jaguar was polite.

‘I don’t know,’ said Phredde hesitantly. ‘It’s different with the dragon.’

‘Why?’

‘Well…it’s the only one, isn’t it? There aren’t any other dragons, unless Uncle Mordred finds another one.’ She paused. ‘I think we should just keep calling it the dragon.’

‘Okay,’ I said. I took a bite of my olive and dried capsicum focaccia—Gurgle makes great focaccia—then threw a bit down to the dragon. He leapt and grabbed it, and his long flat jaws went ‘snap’.

‘Grahgahaha,’ said the dragon. (I think it liked focaccia.)

‘Phredde?’

‘Mmm?’ Phredde was busy throwing her sweetmeats to the dragon.

‘Were there really dragons in Australia once?’

‘What? Go on you silly dragon, eat them. Yeah, of course there were. Like I said, you just have to look at the old maps.
Here be dragons—
And some of those map-makers had a pretty good idea of where Australia was and what bits of it looked like. They wouldn’t have said there were dragons here if there weren’t.’

‘But what happened to them then?’

Down below us the dragon ignored the sweetmeats. It snapped lazily at the sparrows that
were
eating them.

‘I don’t know. Uncle Mordred doesn’t know either. When the dingos came to Australia about 10,000 years ago
they
might have eaten some of them. But there used to be dragons in other parts of the world, too. And there aren’t any dragons anywhere at all now. Except here, of course.’

The dragon waddled under the tree and gave a contented burp, sending a small shower of sparrow feathers across the playground.

‘There was a programme on TV last night,’ I said slowly. Phredde wouldn’t have seen it, not having a TV. ‘It said that the greatest threat to animals is habitat destruction.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Phredde. (If she had a TV she would have known.)

‘Habitat is the places animals live, and habitat destruction is when those places are destroyed. You know, forests cut down, or rivers dammed so that the animals that live there have no place to go or anything to eat. Maybe the dragons natural habitat was destroyed.’

‘Yeah, maybe,’ agreed Phredde. ‘But what is a dragon’s habi…whatsit?’

‘Habitat. I don’t know,’ I said.

The dragon scratched its back with one long claw. It closed one eye and then the other, and went to sleep.

We sort of just got used to the dragon after that. Even Mrs Olsen stopped worrying about it, especially after the dragon got too fat to squeeze through the classroom door.

It lay out on the verandah, squashing the schoolbags till Mr Findhorn, the janitor, put hooks up so we could hang our bags.

And then the dragon started reaching up and crunching them (the bags not the hooks—even a dragon would find hooks all crunch and no flavour) for a morning snack so Mr Findhorn had to put hooks up inside the classroom instead.

But apart from that the dragon was no trouble.

There was the time it nearly burnt down the library, of course, but that wasn’t its fault and, anyway, Miss Peirson got the fire extinguisher out in plenty
of time and we all missed geography while we waited for the Fire Brigade to say it was safe to go back inside.

And there was the time it crawled up on top of the school bus and fell asleep in the sun, and by the time we got out of school the bus was squashed flat; but that was weeks after the library accident (the dragon was really getting big) and Phredde spoke to it sternly.

Of course, it was hard to tell how much a dragon understood, but at least it didn’t go to sleep on a school bus again.

Like I said, it was hardly any trouble at all.

Phredde didn’t even have to feed it. After that first night it fed itself; on rubbish mostly, which you have to admit is
really
useful. It’s recycling, isn’t it? You just feed everything to your dragon.

Some people complained about their rubbish bins being chewed out of shape, but you can’t have everything and once the dragon learnt not to set fire to its burps (which it did quite early on—it was much easier to house-train than a puppy) you’d hardly have known it was there, except for the occasional clawprint or dragon dropping and the grinding noises in the night (they kept me awake a bit when I slept over at Phredde’s).