The Phredde Collection (26 page)

‘Nothing can hurt you in Phaeryland.’

‘You are perfectly safe in Phaeryland.’

I’d been really dumb.

Phaeryland was just like the picture books, right? Castles and the Phaery Queen and fairies, alright, phaeries!

Something squeaked above me. A bat probably. I ignored it. Something squeaked below me. A mouse, I supposed. I
tried
to ignore that, too, but somehow mice in dungeons aren’t as cute as white mice in little cages. The thunder gave a little mutter, but I was getting used to that.

Okay, so no-one ever got skin cancer in Phaeryland, and phaeries didn’t need anything rude like bathrooms with the most important item. But those little kids’ stories also had evil phaery godmothers who bewitched perfectly decent princesses so they fell
asleep for a hundred years when they pricked their finger on a spinning wheel. There was the evil phaery who imprisoned Rapunzel. And what about that evil stepmother who poisoned Snow White.

‘Fool!’ I yelled to myself. ‘We even saw Snow White!! That should have given you a clue that not everything was safe in Phaeryland!’

There was even a story about the evil phaery who lived in a gingerbread cottage and lured in kids and…

I gulped. I had been
dumber
than dumb…(The thunder muttered a bit as though it agreed.) Mum had read me that story a million, zillion times. The evil phaery lured kids into her gingerbread house then boiled them up in a cauldron and ate them, till two smarter than average kids had shoved her in her own oven.

Well, those kids had been smarter than
me
, anyway. I’d gone skipping into that lamington cottage like I was on my way to the video bar. I’d come zapping off to Phaeryland without even reading a
guidebook
, for Pete’s sake. I should at least have done some basic research first! Checked out a few library books of phaery stories. Looked up some phaery sites on the Internet. Made some notes on the hidden hazards of Phaeryland and how to avoid them. I
deserved
to be…

I took a deep breath. No, I did
not
deserve to be casseroled up in a cauldron…or whatever other horrible fate that sweet (huh!) old lady had planned for me. I’d been silly, that was all. But now I had to escape! I was going to escape!

Definitely.

Somehow.

Almost certainly.

Probably, anyway.

The thunder chuckled outside the dungeon. A bat squeaked. Probably a vampire bat, who’d suck my blood so there’d be none left for the sweet little old lady, and that would show her, I thought, but it wouldn’t be much use to me.

I mustn’t panic. That was it. I mustn’t panic. If that movie hero could escape from ninety-six evil ninjas I could escape from this…

The thunder muttered above me. I looked around. My eyes were adjusting to the gloom now. I stepped forward cautiously, my hands out in front of me.

One step, two steps, four, five, six…my hands met something slimy. I jerked them back, then gingerly felt forward again. Walls…concrete or stone, perhaps something else cold and damp. No sign of a window, but then it might be dark outside wherever I was, so maybe I wouldn’t see light coming from a window, or a door. I’d have to feel it.

I stepped slowly round to the left, feeling as I went. Blank wall, blank wall, blank wall, blank wall. One corner, two corners, three, four…I’m not the greatest at geometry (you ask Mrs Olsen
⁵
) but even I knew that a square has four corners, and this room seemed square—although it was pretty hard in the absolute darkness to tell when I was back at my first corner. Maybe it was a hexagon or an octagon or a trapezium…I was running out of geometry, but I suddenly remembered that if they were right angles (and they felt like right angles) then there could only be four of them. Mrs Olsen would have been proud of me—
will
be proud of me when I get out of here, I thought.

No easy way out through doors or windows, anyway. If it needed magic to get in and out of here I was
really
stuck.

Maybe I could jump on my gaoler’s back when they came in to feed me. If they ever did decide to feed me. Maybe they’d leave me starving here, till I was just bones and jeans and T-shirt. Or maybe they’d PING! me a crust of mouldy bread, and I’d have to lick the slimy water from the walls to stay alive.

No way—they’d want me
fat
and tender. I’d probably be stuffed with loaves of bread soaked in peanut oil and…and…fried chicken and soggy chips and sweet and sour blobs of fat and other food specially designed to make me pudgy…

Stop it! I yelled at myself. Forget about mouldy bread and slimy water and being boiled in cauldrons and stuffed with calories and having my toenails pulled out with red-hot pliers, and Prudence patties and hamburgers with Prudence sauce. Just concentrate on getting out!

Maybe there was a hole in the ceiling! I gazed up at it. Nothing. Just blackness. Really
deep
blackness. Either there was no hole or it was so far up there was no way I could reach it, unless I grew wings or turned into a grasshopper.

I hadn’t felt any nice trapdoor in the floor in my searches, either. Just the chilly water seeping down the walls, and…

‘Fruitcake!’ I yelled. ‘Where’s the water going?’

The water was seeping down the walls. But there wasn’t a puddle building up over my ankles. So it must be seeping down
to
somewhere.

Of course, it could just be soaking into the ground. But the floor was stone or concrete and water doesn’t soak into those. Not much, anyway.

Maybe there was a secret tunnel under my dungeon floor. Dungeons
always
had secret tunnels. At least, they did in phaery stories, and this was Phaeryland!

The thunder muttered outside as though it was getting bored. A vampire bat—if it
was
a vampire bat—flapped lazily round the ceiling.

Right, I told myself. All you have to do is find the secret tunnel. Easy!

Except finding the secret tunnel meant kneeling down on that cold, slimy floor. With mice. And probably vampire bat droppings, if those little squeaky things above me were bats (at least, I hoped they were bats—I didn’t like to think what else they could be).

Come on, don’t be stupid, I told myself. Tracksuit pants can be washed. So can skin. But Prudences can’t be unboiled once they’ve been shoved into a wicked phaery’s cauldron and made into Prudence pies.

I knelt down. It was just as bad as I thought it would be. There were at least ten centimetres of yuk on that floor and I
hoped
most of it was slime. I dipped my hands into the ooze and began to feel around.

Stone. This floor was definitely made of stone. Which meant if all the phaery stories Mum had ever read me were correct, there was a great big iron ring in one of the stones somewhere under all this gunk.

There was. Well, it was a ring anyway, and it was big and set in a giant stone, and I supposed it was iron. And if I pulled it, then…

I stuck my fingers through the ring and pulled. Nothing happened. I pulled again. Still nothing.

I sat back in the ooze and thought. I
must
be able to pull up the ring! After all, skinny dumb princesses with golden hair pulled up rings and escaped through secret tunnels all the time, and I bet they didn’t play netball three times a week like me and practise martial arts in front of their videos. If they could manage to pull up a dungeon floor ring, I certainly could.

I pulled again. It didn’t move.

Maybe I had to say a magic word. Or be a princess with golden hair. Or maybe it only worked on Tuesdays and this was Friday. Or…

Or maybe if I (eerk) scooped the gunk away from the edges of the stone it might lift more easily.

I searched in my pockets. This was the time to use my Swiss army knife. Or my nail file. Or the pair of scissors I had accidentally dropped in my pocket this morning.

Except I hadn’t dropped in any scissors. I’d left my Swiss army knife at home. And I don’t even own a nail file.

Which just left my fingers. And ten centimetres of goo.

Well, it wasn’t going to get any less gooey. And the longer I waited, the more likely it was that some not-so-sweet old lady was going to come banging along with her cauldron and turn me into Prudence soup with dumplings.

I started poking. Seven broken fingernails later, and about two zillion buckets of goo, I tried pulling the ring again.

Nothing. Nothing…and then it moved…slowly at first, then suddenly WHUNK! it came up and I went down. And the secret passage was open.

If it
was
a secret passage, I thought, and not just a hole down to another dungeon. Or a sort of dungeon plumbing system, so the prisoners didn’t drown before their gaoler could turn them into roast Prudence with mint sauce, or vine leaves stuffed with minced Prudence…

I stuck my head down into the hole. I thought it would be even blacker than my dungeon down there, but there was a faint greenish light from all around. Of course, I thought. In all the best phaery tales there’s always strange phosphorescent slime on the secret passage walls that glows in the dark, just in case the princess forgets her torch.

But even with the strange green light (or perfectly normal green light, if you read phaery stories) I still couldn’t see much. Like how deep the hole was. Like could I drop down into it without breaking two legs, one arm and a few other bones as well.

But even jumping into darkness was better than becoming Prudence pikelets. So I jumped, well, slithered, anyway, down the edge of the hole and into the cold, green dimness.

The thunder shrieked so loud the air seemed to vibrate around me.

Down, down, d…actually it wasn’t very far at all.

I landed
thump
in ankle-deep cold water (which didn’t matter, ’cause my joggers were pretty much wet with yuk anyway), with no bones broken whatsoever. And wherever this led to, at least it was a tunnel.

At least something had gone right.

I peered into the dimness. More dimness.

I peered the other way. Even more dimness.

Left, or right? Well, ‘right’ was good, wasn’t it? Mum was always drumming ‘do the right thing, Prudence’ into me. And I was the good guy here, and the evil phaery was definitely the bad guy. So I’d go to the right.

I lifted up my soggy feet, and began to clop through the water as the thunder gave a satisfied BOOOM! outside.

Something squeaked near my feet. A big squeak. Not a mouse-like squeak. Not a bat-like squeak. This was a…a…a rat sort of squeak. A giant rat with long rat teeth and slimy fur and…

Stop it! I told myself. There are no rats here. And even if there are, aren’t rats better than becoming Prudence pate? Prudence patty cakes? Prudence with pears and custard?

Squeak!!

I gulped. ‘You be careful, rat!’ I announced a bit shakily. ‘I…I’m bigger than you!’

Squeak!

‘If my big brother was here, he’d
eat
you!’ I yelled. ‘My big brother is a werewolf and he
loves
chasing rats!’

Actually Mark has a pet rat called Ginger. Mark would never eat a rat. He prefers corgis and Persian kittens. But I hoped the rat didn’t know that.

SQUEAK!!

‘And if my friends Phredde and Bruce were here they’d change you into a flea! So there!’

Squeak, squeak, SQUEAK!

I gulped again. Maybe if I sang, I thought. I wouldn’t hear the rat then.

‘This old man, he played one, he played…’

My voice boomed and echoed in the tunnel. Then it suddenly occurred to me that if you are trying to escape quietly out a secret tunnel from a Prudence-eating evil phaery, loud singing might not be such a brilliant idea.

I stopped singing and kept on wading.
Slosh, slosh, slosh
…

At least my singing seemed to have frightened the rat away. If it
had
been a rat. If it hadn’t been a…a…a vampire slug, about to suck my life blood out my ankles. Or a strand of sentient slime that had mutated in the ooze and was going to slime up my legs and strangle me and then digest me till I was slime as well…

Be quiet, Prudence! I told myself. Stop imagining things! Just because you’ve been imprisoned in a dark, dismal dungeon by an evil phaery who wants to turn you into deep-fried Prudence, and now you’re sloshing down a slimy secret tunnel with rats and ooze and…and…and
things
, there’s no reason to get all panicky. Just calm down. Calm down and keep wading.

Slosh, slosh, slosh
…

My feet were getting cold. My nose was even colder.

Slosh, slosh, slosh
…

I was hungry, too. If only I’d had time for even a quick nibble of the lamington walls before they’d
been PING!ed away! Even a crumb of gingerbread windowsill…

And I was scared! Who knew where this silly secret tunnel led! Maybe I was just heading down into the evil phaery’s kitchen. The cauldron would be simmering away, just waiting for her to add a cup of chicken stock, three onions, a clove of garlic and a Prudence!

Should I head back the other way? But that might be even worse! Actually it was hard to think of anything worse. But there was still nothing else I could really do.

So I kept on wading.
Slosh, slosh, slish, slosh, slish, slosh
…

I stopped. Except the sloshing didn’t stop. Even with my feet totally, absolutely still there was something sloshing up the tunnel.

Slosh, slosh, slish, slish, slosh
…

It was getting closer, too…

I had to run! Even if all that awaited me down the end of this tunnel was an evil phaery cook waiting to make a few bowls of Prudence pasta, I had to get away from whatever was slish, sloshing behind me!

Slosh, slosh, slish, slish, slosh
…

My feet were frozen. My breath seemed frozen too. Move! I yelled to myself. Move, or it’ll get you!

And suddenly my feet were moving,
slosh, slosh, slosh
, and my breath was panting too, and I was running, running, running up that dismal secret passage with the slimy water splashing at my knees.

I couldn’t hear the splosh behind me now. I couldn’t hear anything except my heartbeat,
bang, bang, bang
, my breath tearing at my lungs, my pounding feet. There was no way I could hear anything else now.

‘Pruuudeeence…’ the voice moaned down the tunnel. ‘Pruuudeeence…’

It knew who I was! It wasn’t just a giant hungry rat looking for a Prudence-sized snack. It was after me! Which meant it probably had particular Prudence-type tortures in mind. It probably…

This was no time to think! I had to run! Just run and run and…

‘Pruuudeeence…Pruuudeeence…’ shrieked the voice. ‘Pruuudeeence…stooooppppp!’

Ha! I thought. If whatever it is thinks I’m dumb enough to stop just because it tells me to…

‘Pruuudeeence…It’s Phreeedddddde!’

‘Aaaannnd Bruuuce!’ boomed another voice.

‘Phredde?’ I stopped. ‘Phredde, is that you? Bruce?’

‘Sure,’ said Phredde’s voice, still a bit echoey and ghostly in the confines of the tunnel as she sloshed towards me. ‘Who did you think it was?’

A giant vampire rat with yellow fangs…‘Oh, nothing much,’ I said.

‘And me too,’ said Bruce’s voice. ‘Hey, isn’t this tunnel cool! Did you know there are giant mosquitoes back there? Lots of them! Well, there were, anyway. Really massive, yummy ones. This is soooooo cool!’ There was a sort of froggy
splish!
and then there was Bruce, large as life and twice as damp-looking, grinning up at me in the green dimness.

‘It’s cool if you’re a frog,’ I said grimly. ‘It’s a bit slimy for the rest of us. Phredde, Bruce, how did you get here?’

‘Huh,’ said Phredde—a sort of damp and slimy Phredde. ‘Well, we waited and waited for you in the lollipop forest. Then when you didn’t turn up…’

‘I knew you were in a temper,’ put in Bruce.

‘I wasn’t in a temper!’ I yelled.
Emper, emper, emper
came the echo. ‘I was upset! You and Bruce were keeping secrets from me! Just because you’re phaeries and I’m not, you think I’m not good enough…’

My voice died away. After a few seconds the echo died away, too. Phredde and Bruce were staring at me.

‘Not good enough!’ cried Phredde. ‘We just didn’t want you to think that…well…’

‘We were embarrassed,’ explained Bruce. ‘I mean, it’s bad enough being different from everyone else, like only being thirty centimetres tall and having wings and things like that.’

‘But you don’t have wings!’ I said. ‘You’re a frog.’

‘But if I wasn’t a frog I’d have wings,’ said Bruce, ‘and everyone would stare at me.’

‘They stare at you now,’ I said. ‘You’re the only frog in the whole school!’

‘Yes, but I’m a
normal
frog,’ explained Bruce, ‘not a stupid-looking phaery with a name like The Phaery Ethelbert.’

‘Er…is that your real name?’ I asked.

‘No,’ said Bruce firmly. ‘It’s Bruce.’

‘But I think phaeries are cool!’ I cried. ‘I’d love to have wings and be able to PING! things, and…’

‘Well, we’d rather be like everyone else,’ said Phredde. ‘And that’s why we didn’t want you to know, well, that there are evil things in Phaeryland too. I mean, you’re my friend…’

‘Mine too,’ croaked Bruce.

‘But I thought maybe if you
really
knew what Phaeryland was like you wouldn’t want to be our friend any more and…’ She sniffed in the dimness.

‘Oh, Phredde, don’t be a dope. You’ll always be my best friend. I don’t care what Phaeryland is really like!’

‘You don’t?’ gulped Phredde.

‘No, of course not! I don’t care if there are evil phaeries who want to chop me up and casserole me with tomatoes and black olives, then grind my bones to fertilise their lollipop trees!’

‘You don’t?’ said Bruce.

‘Of course not!’

‘You’re weird,’ said Bruce.

‘What do you mean, weird?’ I demanded, affronted.

‘You mean you don’t care if someone chops you up and…’

‘Well, of course I care!’ I yelled. ‘Get me out of here!’

‘How?’ asked Phredde.

‘Well, PING! us back to the guesthouse or something!’

‘We can’t,’ said Phredde.

I stared at her. ‘What do you mean, “can’t”?’

‘We can’t PING! you out of here.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you’ve been magicked here. We can’t unmagic someone else’s magic,’ said Phredde reasonably.

‘Oh, fantastic. How did
you
get here, then?’

‘Well,’ said Bruce, ‘we guessed you’d come back to the cottage. So we snuck back there, and opened the door and WHAM! We were in this dungeon.’

‘It was really creepy,’ said Phredde. ‘All dripping walls and…’

‘I know, I know, I’ve been there,’ I said sourly. ‘Then what?’

‘Well, there was this great hole in the floor…’

‘I did that,’ I said proudly.

‘We guessed,’ said Phredde.

‘So Bruce jumped down it, cause he’s built for jumping down holes…’

‘It was cool,’ said Bruce.

‘Not to mention cold and slimy,’ I said.

‘Then I followed, but we couldn’t tell which way you’d gone.’

‘And then we heard this horrible noise,’ added Bruce.

‘A giant, flesh-eating rat?’ I asked.

‘No, you singing. So we knew you were in the tunnel and we followed the noise…’

‘And here we are,’ said Phredde.

‘Well, great,’ I said.

‘You might thank us for rescuing you!’ said Bruce reproachfully.

‘But you haven’t rescued me! We’re
all
in this now!’

The thunder growled above us.

‘What was that?’ squeaked Bruce.

‘Just thunder,’ I said wearily. ‘It’s been doing that all the time. Haven’t you heard it?’

Phredde shook her head.

‘It must just be following me, then,’ I said tiredly. ‘Okay, you can’t PING! me out of here. How about you PING! yourselves back to the guesthouse and get help?’

‘Can’t do that either,’ said Phredde, ‘because the dungeon was magic and we can’t…’

‘Can’t unmagic someone else’s magic. Then what
can
we do?’ I demanded.

‘Keep splashing down the secret tunnel?’ suggested Bruce.

So we did.