The Phredde Collection Page 10

  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).

  Phredde kept worrying that Uncle Mordred might turn up to take charge of it, but he sent her a letter to say he was still on his dragon hunting expedition and to take notes on how fast it grew and what it ate and stuff like that.

  So we did, which was really educational, and if anyone wants to know how fast a dragon grows and what it eats in its first three months, there’s a copy of it all in the school library (though we left out the bit about it eating sparrows and the time that cat…well, we left that bit out, too).

  And you know something? There was no vandalism AT ALL after the dragon started coming to school. Not even graffiti in the toilets.

  So things were really going pretty well. Phredde had moved down to the bottom floor of the castle and sort of extended her bedroom so the dragon could still sleep by her bed at night.

  I never knew dragons slept at night till the dragon arrived. In fact, as soon as it gets cold dragons curl up and go to sleep so they like to be somewhere safe and quiet when they do—like Phredde’s bedroom or the verandah outside our classroom where we could all keep an eye on it while it snoozed.

  Which is what it was doing, and what we were doing, that afternoon the National Parks and Wildlife Service ranger arrived.

  She was quite official-looking in green trousers and a green shirt, and a really great hat.

  She must have gone to Mrs Allen’s office before she came to us, because the first thing we knew Mrs Allen was climbing over the dragon’s tail and then helping the ranger over. (Mrs Allen had got really good at climbing over the dragon by then.)

  ‘This is…’ said Mrs Allen, but the dragon yawned then and opened an eye, so we never did hear what the ranger’s name was and it seemed rude to ask for it to be repeated.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m here on official business,’ said the ranger. ‘There’s been a report that there is a native animal in captivity here at the school.’

  ‘Huh!’ said Phredde loudly.

  I poked her with my little finger. ‘Be polite,’ I hissed. ‘You don’t want to antagonise her.’

  The ranger stared at Phredde (like I said, there weren’t many phaeries around in those days) and then deliberately stopped staring, the way you do when you realise you’re being rude.

  ‘Is that your dragon?’ she asked—not nastily or anything, just like she really wanted to know.

  ‘He’s his own dragon,’ said Phredde, ‘and he’s not being held in whatsisname or anything. He can go wherever he likes. He just likes being here!’

  “Graha,’ said the dragon sleepily.

  ‘That’s right,’ I added, really politely. ‘He’s not a prisoner or anything.’ I didn’t want the ranger to get the wrong impression.

  ‘Th
at’s right,’ said Amelia (I was surprised, her sticking up for us—I mean you never know who your friends really are till there’s a crisis), and the other kids all started to make agreeing noises too. We were all really fond of the dragon by then.

  ‘Graha,’ said the dragon again, outside. He twisted his hind paw and lifted it up to scratch his back. His back had been awfully itchy lately.

  The ranger (I wish I’d caught her name) gazed at him for a minute. I have to admit it, she didn’t look at all scared. I mean some people act a bit nervous the first time they see the dragon.

  The ranger looked back at us, and took a deep breath. Then she grabbed a chair and sat down facing us. ‘Look kids,’ she said. ‘It’s not as simple as that.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Phredde. ‘The dragon’s perfectly happy—anyone can see that.’

  ‘Graha,’ breathed the dragon, sending the litter scurrying across the playground.

  ‘Because a dragon’s not a pet,’ said the ranger simply. ‘It’s like keeping a wombat at your place. They may seem to be happy. They might sleep on the lounge and have you scratch their back while you watch TV and they might munch on the lawn at night, but no matter how kind you are to them they need wombat holes and bush smells and dirt to dig. Every animal has its natural habitat—do you know what that is?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said.

  ‘Of course,’ said Phredde. After all, I’d explained it to her.

  ‘Well, that dragon needs its natural habitat too. It’s not like a dog, or a cat, that has been bred to live with people. No matter how kind you are to a wombat—or, in this case, a dragon—it needs to be in its own place.’

  Everyone was silent, even Phredde. Her wings drooped the way she does when she’s thinking really deeply. Then suddenly she said, ‘But what is a dragon’s natural habitat?’

  ‘Huh?’ asked the ranger.

  ‘What’s the right place for a dragon?’

  The ranger blinked. ‘Well—where it came from I suppose.’

  ‘Uncle Mordred found it in a termite’s nest. But dragons don’t live in termite’s nests. It was just being hatched there.’

  ‘Like goanna eggs,’ agreed the ranger, fascinated. ‘Did you know that go annas lay their eggs in termite mounds? The heat from the nest hatches the goanna eggs. Maybe dragons are distantly related to goannas.’

  Phredde shrugged. She couldn’t care less about goannas. ‘But…’

  Phredde argues really well, so it’s a pity we didn’t get to hear what else she was going to say. (There was no way Phredde was going to see her dragon sent back to where Uncle Mordred had found it. I mean, what was it going to live on without its garbage bins? Not to mention being lonely without all of us to burp at.)

  Anyway, she’d just opened her mouth when suddenly there was this incredible scream from outside, like a fire engine was being squashed by a dinosaur and when we all looked outside there was the dragon rearing up into the air.

  At first I thought the dragon had heard the ranger saying it should be sent back to the termite mound. (Not that any of us knew where the termite mound was, except maybe Phredde, who wouldn’t have told even if they minced her fingers really slowly in a hamburger machine—like on that really great movie on TV last night. I told you Phredde was really missing out not having a TV. I had really gross nightmares after that).

  But of course dragons don’t understand what humans say, so it wasn’t that at all.

  The dragon was rearing up on its hind legs, its forelegs clawing in the air. I hadn’t really realised till then how much the dragon had grown. It was taller than the new science block when it was all stretched out, like now.

  The dragon screamed again, and then it snarled and its arms twisted this way and that as it tried to claw its back. In fact, for a moment I thought it had ripped its back open because there were flaps of skin hanging in great folds along its sides.

  And suddenly I realised.

  They were wings.

  Well, I suppose a dragon’s back gets really itchy before its wings emerge. Like our skin does if it gets sunburnt and is about to peel (you’d have thought I was going to get skin cancer tomorrow the way Mum carried on last time that happened to me, but I do remember to wear a hat and lots of sunscreen now). Maybe it’s back ached too, like when you have a tooth about to come up.

  The dragon howled again and let out this great burst of flame (it hadn’t done that in ages, so I knew it must really be hurting) and then it leapt up into the air. It was flying!

  We all raced out (Mrs Olsen and Mrs Allen and the ranger, too) but Phredde was ahead of us, either because she flew or because she magicked. It was so confused I didn’t see…

  And we stood there in the playground gazing upwards.

  There was the dragon, flapping wildly as if it could only just keep airborne, and then, suddenly, it must have worked out how to do it properly, because it began to glide—a long, slow soaring through the air, its wings hardly moving at all. Down and up, and all around the school, then just over our heads so we were fanned by the cool air from its wings and felt its breath warm on our faces (no flames of course), then up and up and up again…

  ‘Look!’ yelled Amelia, and we looked.

  The dragon was still rising and then it veered suddenly, over towards Phredde’s castle.

  Then it dived, down, down, down, into the moat. We could see the splash even from the schoolyard…and then another splash and another as the dragon played and cavorted in the moat, soaring up and diving back.

  Even at a distance you could see a great, big dragon smile spreading across its face.

  Phredde (who was fluttering just above my shoulder) turned to the ranger and gave this great enormous grin, almost as big as the dragon’s.

  ‘Well,’ said Phredde, ‘I guess you could say the dragon has found its natural habitat now.’

  The Ranger had to agree.

  And that’s the end of the story. It turns out Uncle Mordred DID know what he was doing when he sent the dragon to Phredde. He’s finished his research now (and he found another dragon egg, too, but I’ll tell you about that some other time).

  It turns out that dragons migrate just like some birds and butterflies and other things migrate. They lay their eggs in one place and then go to mate or feed somewhere else.

  Well, dragons lay their eggs in Australia. In termite mounds, like goannas, so the heat of the nest can hatch the eggs without the dragons having to sit on a nest for a few hundred years or so.

  And then the adult dragons fly back to their OTHER natural habitat—which is castles, of course. You know how many phaery stories there are where the dragon lives under the drawbridge of the castle.

  (Dragons live in caves, too, of course, but only when there are underground pools for them to swim in. And only when they can’t find a castle.)

  So that’s why there are so few dragons nowadays. All the castles have been turned into tourist hotels and many of the best caves have guided tours going through them, and lights, and locked grilles so people can’t get in and damage them and there just aren’t enough castle moats and wild caves for dragons to live in.

  So it looks like if we want more dragons we’ll have to have more magic castles. (I can’t WAIT till a dragon comes and lives at ours.)

  Uncle Mordred reckons that dragons must live a long time—the old stories sort of hint at that—and only lay eggs once or twice in their lifetime and the eggs probably take hundreds of years to hatch. Perhaps the person who drew that old map that Phredde found in the library saw our dragon’s mum all those centuries ago just before the dragon laid her egg in the termite mound.

  Anyway, the dragon’s happy now, living in Phredde’s castle moat and crunching up the rubbish bins every night—except when it’s cold and it goes to sleep.

  I asked Uncle Mordred what dragons did before they had rubbish bins, and he just laughed and said, ‘Prudence, humans may only have had rubbish bins for a hundred years or so, but they’ve always had rubbish—es
pecially around those medieval castles.’

  (If you want to read up more on dragons Uncle Mordred’s report is in a magazine called New Scientist. The June or July edition, I think. Anyway, it’s in our library at school.)

  And we sort of miss having a dragon on the verandah at school—especially during geography lessons.

  But, as the ranger said, a wild animal is only really happy in its natural habitat. Just like that frog Phredde and I found when we went off to rescue Sleeping Beauty. It was only REALLY happy when…

  But that’s another story.

  Phredde and a Frog Named Bruce and Other Stories to Eat with a Watermelon

  Jackie French

  Dedication

  To Sarah Bennett with love and many thanks for all her suggestions…and to Laura and Caroline and Steve too!

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  A Bit About Stories

  A Frog Named Bruce

  Prudence and the Giant Thingummy

  The Ghostly Knight

  Aaaaaaahhhtchooooooo!

  The Six Giant Caterpillars of Phaeryland

  A Bit About Stories

  There are stories that move you, that become part of you, that make you think and dream…

  Then there are the sorts of stories you read when school has stretched out like a long, flat road and you’re feeling totally brain dead and just want to read and laugh and eat some fruit.

  These are stories for those times.

  Escape stories. Silly happy stories.

  Stories to eat with a banana…or a watermelon.

  PS…Yes, I do mean eat.

  Some people READ stories—mostly when they’re told they HAVE to go and read a story.

  And some people EAT them—they way they eat potato chips or cherries…