The Phredde Collection (24 page)

There weren’t many people at breakfast when Phredde and I went down the next morning. Just Bruce, slurping up a bowl of mosquitoes and a glass of fresh green pond water, and the handsome prince I’d seen the night before, in these really tight tights—I mean, you could see every bump on his knees—and a velvet shirt with sagging sleeves and all these ribbons embroidered up them. He was tucking into a big plate of baked beans on toast and waving away the scrambled gryphon eggs and bacon.

And the three little pigs were there too, even fatter than ever, each with what looked like a bucket of cornflakes in front of them, and stacks of buttery toast so high they looked like they were going to topple onto the floor, and six pots of jam and what looked like a bathtub full of peanut butter.

I wondered if I should tell them about their narrow escape the night before—I mean, they might have been grateful or something. But then I looked at them
chomp, chomp, chomping
their way through their six tonnes of cornflakes—their manners were, well, piggish—and I thought, no, thank you very much; however pigs show their gratitude I just don’t want to know. So Phredde and I sat next to Bruce instead.

‘What’s for breakfast?’ I asked.

‘Fried mosquitoes, grilled flies…’

‘What’s normal for breakfast?’ I interrupted.

‘There’s nothing wrong with a few nice flies,’ said Bruce. He had to raise his voice over the
chomp, chomp, chomp
of the hogs at the other table. ‘Oh, alright. Toasted phaery bread…’

‘Honeydew nectar, scrambled gryphon eggs and bacon, baked beans on toast, cheese omelette and cornflakes,’ said the manager at my elbow, ‘and if madam would like mushrooms on toast…’

I thought about the red and white spotted mushrooms we’d seen on the way here. And even if I did eat bacon at home it didn’t really seem
polite
eating it next to the three fat hogs.

‘Er…just scrambled gryphon eggs,’ I said.

‘Same for me,’ said Phredde.

The manager had just put them on the table—they looked just like normal eggs except they were a darker gold—when Mum staggered in.

‘Gllumpphhhhttt,’ said Mum. Mum isn’t at her best at breakfast. Even her tiara was on crooked.

‘Good morning, madam!’ said the manager brightly. ‘What can we offer madam this bright and glorious morning?’

‘Grrmmmmppphhhh blug,’ said Mum. ‘Just coffee. Lots of coffee.’

‘I am sorry, madam. We don’t have coffee at the Sweet Pea Guesthouse,’ said the manager apologetically.

‘No coffee!’ Mum’s eyes widened in horror. ‘Good grief! Where’s the nearest coffee bar then?’

‘I’m sorry, madam,’ said the manager, and he really did look upset about it. ‘There is no coffee anywhere in Phaeryland. We do have some delicious honeydew nectar, though…’

‘No coffee!’ shrieked Mum again. She was wide awake now.

‘I’m sorry, madam,’ repeated the manager. ‘But the honeydew nectar is really very good.’

‘Is it hot?’ demanded Mum.

‘Well, I suppose we can heat it up, madam.’

Mum groaned. ‘Alright. One hot, strong honeydew nectar.’ She shook her head as he trotted off. ‘No coffee,’ she muttered. She stared at me blearily. ‘What are you eating?’

‘Scrambled gryphon eggs,’ I said. ‘They’re good.’ Mum sort of shuddered. ‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘what are we doing today?’

Mum brightened up a bit. ‘Well, Splendifera is going to take us to have an audience with the Phaery Queen. Just imagine, Prudence, I’m going to meet real royalty! And then we’re going to practise the formal phaery dances, and then…’

‘Er,’ I said, ‘do Phredde and Bruce and I have to come too?’

Even Mum realises that formal dances and I just don’t go together. ‘Not if you don’t want to,’ she conceded.

‘I don’t,’ I said.

‘Well then, why don’t you and Ethereal…and Bruce, of course…’ Bruce gave her a wide froggy grin over his mosquitoes and Mum shuddered again, ‘go for a nice little walk? After all, it’s Phaeryland! There’s nothing that can possibly hurt you in Phaeryland.’

Phredde and Bruce shared a look across the table. It was just like the look they’d shared last night, one of those looks that mean
something
, but just as I was about to ask them what—and how come they were giving each other these looks and leaving me out—the manager placed this great trough of scrambled gryphon eggs in front of the three ‘little’ pigs, and what with their snuffling and snorting and spraying scrambled gryphon egg all over the place, I forgot all about it.

So we went for our nice little walk—I mean, what other sort of walk is there in Phaeryland? Or rather, I walked, and so did Phredde (being extra large in Phaeryland meant that her wings were mostly for show), and Bruce plopped along beside us, except when he splashed through the tinkling stream. (I was getting to wish it’d play a different tune now—go
boom chugga boom
maybe, instead of
tinkle tinkle
.)

‘I still don’t see why we can’t use the bridge,’ I grumbled as I dried my feet on my socks. ‘It’s a perfectly good bridge.’

I gestured up at it. It was a really cute bridge, actually, with a wooden top and big stone piers underneath. In fact the bridge seemed about ten times too big for such a little stream—the water hardly came over our ankles.

Bruce and Phredde exchanged another one of their
looks. ‘But splashing through a stream is fun!’ said Bruce.

‘It might be if you’re a frog,’ I said.

‘I really
like
splashing through streams,’ said Phredde. But somehow she didn’t sound as convincing as Bruce.

‘Well, I don’t,’ I said. I was really starting to get a bit upset, to tell the truth. I mean, Phredde is my best friend, and I sort of thought that Bruce, well, sort of liked me more than anyone else too. But now we were in Phaeryland it was like I was suddenly an outsider.

We put our joggers on (well, Phredde and I did, anyway) and started to walk down the yellow brick road.

‘Phaeryland,’ muttered Bruce gloomily.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked, still a bit grumpily. Phaeryland was pretty boring, true, but it wasn’t that bad.

‘No juicy flies. No crunchy mosquitoes,’ said Bruce.

‘But you had flies and mozzies for breakfast!’ I objected.

‘Imported,’ said Bruce. ‘It’s not the same when your mosquitoes are on a plate, anyway. You don’t get that zing that you get when you haul them through the air on your tongue and they’re still squirming.’

‘Eeerk,’ said Phredde. ‘Look, if you’re going to talk about creepy-crawlies, you can take a walk in the other direction.’

‘Flies and mozzies don’t creep or crawl!’ objected Bruce. ‘They…’

‘Be quiet, Bruce!’ yelled Phredde and I together. So he was.

The sun was winking at us gently through the
lollipop trees and the flowers glowed pink and yellow and blue and red, and the little birds went
tweet, tweet, tweet
like they’d forgotten any other words in the song book. Like I said, it was boring.

‘Hey, there’s that cottage we saw last night,’ said Phredde.

I squinted at it. ‘I thought it was a gingerbread cottage last night!’

‘It was pretty dark,’ said Phredde.

‘But the little old lady
said
it was a gingerbread cottage.’

‘Maybe she just
thought
she lived in a gingerbread cottage, but it was really…’

‘A yummy chocolate and walnut slice cottage!’ announced a sweet little old voice from behind the hedge. A face popped up to match it, all smiles and wrinkles and white hair pulled back into a bun and these cute little glasses on the end of her nose. She even wore a shawl with long, drooping fringes. ‘That’s what this house is! A chocolate and walnut slice cottage! Not a nasty old gingerbread cottage at all!’

‘Er, yeah, I can see that,’ I said.

Actually the chocolate and walnut slices looked like pretty sturdy building material, a bit like bricks really, except chocolaty, and the walnuts made a nice pattern too.

Apart from the chocolate and walnuts, the house was just like those cute cottages in colouring-in books. It had two windows and a door in front, and a chocolate icing roof, and a little crooked chimney, and a few puffs of smoke all white and round against the blue, blue sky. It was really pretty, though I wouldn’t have wanted to be inside when it rained, in case the
roof melted all this chocolate glug over you. But I suppose it never does rain in Phaeryland.

‘Isn’t it a pretty cottage?’ said the sweet little old lady eagerly. ‘Why don’t you all come in and have a little nibble? Especially you!’ She beamed at me in a particularly friendly way.

‘No, thank you!’ said Phredde. She sounded a bit rude, actually.

‘Nope,’ croaked Bruce, even more rudely. ‘Come on,’ he added to me, ‘we’ve got to be going!’

‘Oh,’ sighed the sweet little old lady sadly. She looked at me imploringly. ‘You’ll be kind to a little old lady, won’t you?’ she pleaded. ‘You’ll have a little taste of my yummy cottage?’

‘Er, I’d love to,’ I said, ‘but I’m full of scrambled gryphon eggs. Maybe some other time.’ Like when fish use mobile phones, I thought. After the afternoon tea with Mrs Bunny Rabbit the day before, there was no way I wanted another polite Phaeryland tea party. But I wasn’t going to be rude to her like Phredde and Bruce.

‘But it’s such yummy chocolate and walnut slice!’ protested the sweet little old lady, a bit desperately.

I started to feel guilty. But not guilty enough to go and have morning tea and chocolate walnut slices.

‘I’m really sorry, but we’re late!’ I said politely. ‘See you.’

I set off at a jog along the yellow brick road, Phredde and Bruce tagging behind me.

‘Whew,’ I said, slowing down as we rounded the corner. ‘Is everyone in Phaeryland as hospitable as that?’

‘Sure,’ said Bruce. He hesitated, then glanced at Phredde. ‘But you wouldn’t have really gone into her cottage, would you? Not even if you were hungry?’

‘Well, I might,’ I said. ‘Poor old thing. I think she was lonely.’

‘But you can’t go nibbling on the houses of perfect strangers!’ protested Phredde.

‘Why not?’ I demanded. ‘It’s not like I was going to guts so much I’d eat a whole wall and the house would fall down!’

‘But it’s not…’ began Phredde, then stopped.

I looked at her closely. ‘Not what?’ I insisted.

Phredde bit her lip. ‘Oh, nothing.’

‘You were going to say “It’s not safe”, weren’t you?’ I said.

Phredde exchanged another look with Bruce. ‘Of course not!’ she protested. ‘Phaeryland is perfectly safe. Everybody knows that!’

‘Just like little kids’ colouring-in books?’ I pressed.

‘Sure. Just like that,’ agreed Bruce.

‘Promise?’

‘Promise,’ said Bruce. ‘Just like the colouring-in books.’

‘It’s just…’ began Phredde. She exchanged another of those secret looks with Bruce. ‘You won’t go wandering about without us, will you?’

‘Why would I want to do that?’ I asked. ‘Look, is there something you two aren’t telling…’

‘Hey, look ever there!’ interrupted Bruce quickly.

‘Over where?’ I asked crossly. I thought he was just changing the subject, to tell the truth.

‘That…that
thing
. Through the lollipop trees!’

I peered through the green and brown branches with their round red fruit on sticks. ‘It looks like a bed! And there’s someone on it!’ I started through the trees.

‘Be careful!’ cried Phredde.

‘This is Phaeryland! What’s to be careful about?’ I pushed away a low-lying lollipop branch and stepped into a typical Phaeryland grassy glade. The green grass was as smooth as that really horrible carpet in my Great Uncle Ron’s living room, and three zillion red, blue, yellow and pink flowers blinked all around us, so you felt like some mad florist was going to come leaping out and yelling at you for treading on the blooms. There was even a bubbling brook
³
, just like in our bedroom at the Sweet Pea Guesthouse.

There was also a bed. Well, more like a low table, actually. But it had a sheet over it, and a few bird droppings, and a pillow on top of that with a few more leaves and bird droppings, and lying with her head on the pillow was this woman.

She had black hair, lots and lots of it, all spilling off the bed, or table, or whatever it was, and really white skin like she’d been using triple-strength sunblock all her life and had never gone to the beach or even had a game of netball. And soft red cheeks and red lips, but not like the red lipstick Mum uses when she’s getting all dolled up. And her dress was white, too, and long and soft and spilling down over the sides of the bed/table. Her eyes were shut.

‘Do you think she’s having a nap?’ whispered Phredde.

‘In the middle of the lollipop forest?’ snorted Bruce.

‘Well, it’s a nice day,’ argued Phredde. ‘Maybe she’s trying to get a tan.’

‘Hasn’t she ever heard of skin cancer?’ I asked.

‘There isn’t any skin cancer…’ began Phredde.

‘…in Phaeryland,’ I finished for her. ‘Alright, she’s not going to end up in skin cancer surgery for the rest of her life. But she doesn’t look like she’s sleeping to me. Not normal sort of sleep, anyway.’

‘How can you tell?’ demanded Phredde.

‘You watch,’ I said.

I stepped into the grassy glade—squashing about 10,000 flowers, but who cares, there were still about a zillion left—and walked over to the bed/table. ‘Hi!’ I said.

No answer. The woman just lay there like she was staring at the sky and counting sunbeams, except her eyes were shut, which I suppose was a good thing, ’cause too much sunbeam-counting sends you blind. That’s what Mum says, anyway.

‘I said, hi!’ I yelled a bit louder.

No answer.

‘Hi there!!’ I shrieked at the top of my voice.

Still no answer.

‘Maybe she’s deaf,’ suggested Bruce.

‘She isn’t deaf. She’s eaten a poisoned apple and is asleep for a hundred years,’ I informed him.

Phredde and Bruce stared at me. ‘Have you gone potty?’ demanded Bruce.

‘No, of course not,’ I answered crossly. ‘Look!’

I reached over and shook the woman’s arm—politely, though. I didn’t want her leaping up and yelling ‘Assault!’ at me.

‘Hey, wake up!’ I urged.

No response. She didn’t even blink.

‘Maybe she’s…dead…’ whispered Phredde, her eyes suddenly wide.

‘No, she’s not dead,’ I said impatiently. ‘She’s just eaten a poisoned apple. I told you.’

‘But that’s crazy!’ protested Phredde.

‘No, it’s not. Well, okay, it is a bit. But it’s a little kids’ fairy—sorry, phaery story.’ I suddenly remembered neither Phredde nor Bruce would ever have read Snow White.

‘Look, there’s this nice old king, right? And his wife dies, leaving him with a daughter. She’s called Snow White.’

‘That’s a pretty dumb name for a kid,’ objected Bruce.

‘Well, I didn’t call her that! He did!’

‘But snow is white,’ argued Bruce. ‘It’s like saying “rose red”.’

‘There was another princess called Rose Red,’ I said.

‘Roses can be yellow too,’ argued Phredde.

‘Nah,’ said Bruce. ‘Rose Yellow’s a really dumb name.’

‘Look, will you lot be quiet!’ I yelled. ‘Who’s telling this story, you or me?’

‘You,’ said Phredde.

‘Alright, then! So this king marries another wife, an evil stepmother.’

‘Was she a stepmother before she married the king or after?’ enquired Bruce.

‘She couldn’t be a stepmother before she married him,’ said Phredde.

‘Yes, she could. She could have been married before too, and had stepkids from that marriage,’ Bruce pointed out.

‘Will you lot shut your mouths! Please!’ I screamed. ‘Look, she married this king, and so
then
she became Snow White’s stepmother. And she was really cool-looking, too.’

‘Who? Snow White or the stepmum?’ enquired Bruce.

‘Both of them! And every day the stepmother used to look in her magic mirror and say, “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest one of all?” And the mirror would say, “You are, Queen. You’re the best-looking babe in the land.”’

‘Huh,’ said Bruce. ‘I bet she programmed the mirror to say that.’

‘Yeah,’ said Phredde.

‘
Anyway
,’ I went on, ‘Snow White grew up and got even more totally gorgeous, and one day when the evil stepmum said, “Mirror, mirror”, the mirror answered, “Snow White is the coolest chick around.” And the evil stepmother went totally ballistic!’

‘I should think so,’ said Bruce. ‘After she’s programmed it to say she was the best, too. So did she get a mirror upgrade?’

‘No! She called the woodsman and told him to take Snow White into the forest and kill her.’

‘I bet he told her where to get off,’ said Phredde gleefully. ‘I bet he said, “Look, evil queen, killing princesses isn’t in my job description and I’m going to complain to the union
and
the police,
and
I’m going to go on the ‘World’s Silliest Conspiracies Show’ and tell all, and you’re going to be up for attempted murder and hauled off to prison, and…”’

‘Well, no. He didn’t do that. He took Snow White into the woods…’

‘The sneaky crawler!’ protested Phredde.

‘And then he left her there!’ I shouted. ‘And went back to the evil queen and said he’d bumped her off.’

‘I know what happens next,’ said Phredde happily.
‘Snow White goes and learns martial arts and comes back and goes
Hee!!! How!!! Hong!!!
and throws the evil queen into a barrel of water and…’

‘Er, no,’ I said. ‘She goes and lives with the seven dwarves in the forest and…’

‘Seven dwarves!’ interrupted Phredde.

‘Yeah, and…’

‘She goes and lives with them?’

‘Yeah, and…’

‘All
seven
of them?’

‘Yeah. And…’

‘Hellooo? These are male-type dwarves we’re talking about here?’

‘Yeah. Then…’

‘That’s disgusting,’ roared Phredde. ‘They shouldn’t tell kids’ stories like that. This Snow White chick goes and lives with seven blokes…’

‘Well, they were only small blokes…’

‘I don’t care if they were two centimetres high! It’s still disgusting!’

‘Look, she didn’t live with them…’

‘But you said…’

‘She just did housework and stuff like that!’ I roared. ‘Nothing…you know…’

‘So she was their housekeeper?’ decided Bruce.

‘Yeah.’

‘
Boring
,’ said Phredde. ‘Why couldn’t she have become a marine biologist or a veterinary technician or something?’

‘Because she’d never been to uni! Look, will you let me finish!’

‘No worries,’ said Phredde.

‘Alright, then! But the crazy mirror kept banging on
about Snow White still being gorgeous, so the evil queen got really suspicious. She found out where Snow White was, and disguised herself as an apple seller…’