The Phredde Collection Read online

Bruce snickered down at my feet. ‘Who’s ever heard of a rose bush following anyone, you nincompoop.’

  Well, that did it. If there’s one thing Phredde can’t stand, it’s anyone insulting her friends.

  ‘Don’t you call Prudence a nincompoop,’ she flared.

  ‘I didn’t mean…anyway, it’s all her fault I’m slogging through this stupid garden instead of catching flies on my lily pad!’

  ‘It’s not her fault! She’s just trying to help my Aunt Petunia.’

  ‘Well, it’s your stupid Aunt Petunia’s fault then!’

  ‘She’s not stupid either! You’re the one who…’

  ‘Er, look guys,’ I said. ‘It doesn’t really matter…’

  ‘…and what do you mean, catching flies on your lily pad? It’s Cousin Pinkerbelle’s lily pad! And you mean you EAT flies?’

  ‘All frogs eat…’

  ‘ER, guys,’ I said again, because I was sure I’d caught that rose bush moving again out of the corner of my eye.

  ‘Anyway, flies are good protein.’

  ‘I suppose you eat mosquitoes too.’

  ‘Who me? Eat mosquitoes!’ roared Bruce.

  And that’s when the rose bush struck.

  The first thing I knew it had me around the ankle, then another branch had me around the arm, and three great fat pink roses were stuffed in my mouth, so I could hardly breathe, much less talk.

  ‘MmmmFfff!’ I yelled.

  ‘Pru!’ screamed Phredde, darting towards me and trying to pull the rose bush off with her tiny fists.

  ‘Let go of her you…you flower!’ cried Bruce, hopping over to me. Not that there was much he could do. Frogs aren’t exactly made to grapple with insane girl-eating rose bushes.

  ‘Mmmmbbbgfffff!’ I yelled, which was supposed to mean, ‘Phredde, stop trying to haul it off and do something magic!’, but that’s all that came out through a mouthful of damp petals.

  ‘Help! help! help!’ croaked Bruce, at the top of his voice.

  ‘Hang on kids! I’m coming!’ someone yelled, and suddenly there was the biggest bloke I’ve ever seen brandishing an even bigger pair of what looked like bolt cutters.

  ‘Stand back!’ he yelled, waving Phredde and Bruce out of the way, and before you could say criminally-insane rose bushes he’d snipped the branches wrapped around me into tiny pieces.

  Well, I suppose the rose bush knew when it was licked. It just stood there, like it was rooted to the spot—which it wasn’t of course, being a magic rose bush, not to mention a seriously antisocial one—looking all tattered and ashamed of itself.

  Not that I trusted it of course, but I was sure it was going to behave itself for the moment.

  And then the big bloke said: ‘Look kid, are you all right?’

  ‘I think so,’ I said, picking myself up and trying to pull the rest of the rose thorns out of my flesh. Those branches were prickly.

  ‘Oh, Pru, I’m sorry,’ said Phredde. ‘I should have believed you. I should have kept better watch.’ She pulled at a few lingering rose thorns in my scalp. Phaeries have such tiny fingers that they’re really good at picking out prickles.

  ‘I’m sorry too,’ said Bruce.

  The big bloke blinked. I guess he’d never seen a talking frog before. He probably wasn’t too familiar with phaeries either.

  ‘I don’t know how to thank you,’ I said, really politely. Mum would have been proud.

  The big bloke grinned. He was really cool looking, with the sort of muscles you usually only see on blokes in the movies and really great looking brown eyes. ‘That’s okay,’ he said. ‘Roses are my job.’ He held out his hand. ‘I’m Con,’ he said. ‘Constantine really. Con for short.’

  ‘I’m Pru,’ I said. ‘Well, Prudence really.’

  ‘I’m Phredde,’ said Phredde. ‘Well, it’s Ethereal actually,’ she admitted. ‘But I prefer Phredde.’

  I was impressed. Phredde only tells her real name to people she REALLY likes.

  ‘And I’m Bruce,’ croaked Bruce.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Con. He looked like he was going to shake Bruce’s hand…er, foot…then changed his mind.

  ‘That’s a great pair of, er, thingummies,’ I said to him, nodding at the bolt cutters.

  ‘Them?’ Con looked proud. ‘They’re secateurs. For pruning roses or taking rose cuttings. They’re my own invention. You can prune any rose with these.’

  ‘You sure can,’ I agreed, looking at the downcast rose bush next to us. ‘Is that what you were doing? Pruning the roses?’

  Con looked embarrassed. ‘Well, not exactly,’ he admitted. ‘You see, my dad owns the nursery down the bottom of the road, and I’ve just joined the business. I was potting up the daisies this afternoon when I caught a glimpse of the garden up here and I thought wow, look at those roses! I wouldn’t mind a few cuttings of those.

  ‘So I raced up here before the road disappeared…I suppose I’m trespassing, really.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Phredde assured him. ‘The castle belongs to my Cousin Pinkerbelle. I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘Pinkerbelle,’ said Con thoughtfully. ‘Did she breed these roses? They’re some achievement. I’d really like to meet her.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Phredde. ‘We can…’ and then she gasped, ‘Cousin Pinkerbelle! We’ve forgotten all about her!’

  ‘We have to get into the castle somehow to rescue her,’ I explained. ‘She’s fallen asleep under a magic spell…well, it’s too long to explain now. But we were just trying to find a way into the castle through the roses.’

  Con laughed. ‘Don’t you worry about that, kids.’ He held up his secateurs in a sort of ‘Me King Kong you horrible little weeds’ fashion.

  The rose bushes cringed.

  ‘Just let me at ’em!’ said Con happily, flexing his muscles.

  So we did. Phredde perched on my shoulder, just to make sure she’d got the last of the rose thorns out of my scalp, and Bruce hopped at my side, and we followed Con over to the great thicket of roses around the castle.

  It suddenly occurred to me that we’d only been assuming there was a castle inside all those roses. I mean what if there wasn’t? What if the roses really had digested it, Cousin Pinkerbelle and all? But we’d never know unless we got in there.

  So Con started cutting, and Phredde and Bruce and I started hauling the stuff he’d cut out of the way (Phredde magicked gloves up for us).

  I thought Phredde might have been worried about someone hacking back Cousin Pinkerbelle’s roses, but she didn’t say anything.

  Maybe she realised that Con was a professional, and knew what he was doing. Or maybe she wasn’t feeling quite as protective of the roses after what they had done to me.

  Anyway, after about half an hour of hacking the first stones of the castle wall appeared. Lipstick pink stones of course. And then more wall and more and more, until finally…

  ‘You know,’ I said, staring at the blank pink wall ‘Maybe we should have started cutting the roses around the front door.’

  ‘No worries!’ said Phredde.

  And suddenly there was a door in front of us.

  Well, after Phredde had made the door bigger so Con and I could fit through it too—sometimes Phredde forgets how big humans are—I opened the door and we all ambled through. (I could hear the roses sort of muttering and filling up the gap behind us, but that didn’t matter. Not when we had Con and his secateurs with us, not to mention his muscles.)

  Well, you can guess what the inside of the castle was like. Apart from pink I mean. Phaeries have no imagination, mostly, and all their castles are pretty much the same.

  The corridor had these great high stone ceilings and there was what was probably priceless carpet on the floor and these great long hanging things…tapestries…on the wall. Just like Phredde’s castle, and our castle till Mum redecorated it with easy to clean cork tiles and washable wallpaper, and those pottery hanging things she made at tech last year.

  But
this castle was all pink. I mean ALL pink.

  The walls were pink, the carpets were pink, the tapestries were ten shades of pink, even the stones in the ceiling were pink.

  If there’d been some magic spell to make the air pink too, I bet Cousin Pinkerbelle would have used it.

  Down the pink corridor we went, past a pink suit of armour, and a few long pink tables with pink ornaments on them.

  ‘Which way is Cousin Pinkerbelle’s bedroom?’ I whispered.

  Not that I suppose there was any need to whisper, as Cousin Pinkerbelle wasn’t likely to wake up even if we had a rock band with us. But it just seemed like the polite thing to do.

  ‘Up the stairs and to the right,’ hissed Phredde.

  Con blinked. ‘We can’t go into her bedroom without permission,’ he objected.

  ‘But we’ve got to!’ I insisted. ‘How can we wake her up if we don’t go into her bedroom?’

  ‘But…’ Con stopped. I suppose he thought we knew what we were doing. But we didn’t, of course.

  The stairs were pink—lolly pink this time and striped like bull’s-eyes.

  We tiptoed up them—well Con and I tiptoed, except his boots kept clattering, and Phredde flew and Bruce hopped, and we turned right into Cousin Pinkerbelle’s bedroom.

  Well, if the castle below was pink you should have seen Pinkerbelle’s bedroom.

  Pink carpet almost to your ankles and six layers of pink curtains and this great sunset pink bed with pink curtains with pink roses on it.

  And there was Cousin Pinkerbelle, asleep in the middle of the bed, wearing a pink nightdress with lots of pink skin showing through the silk and lace like you see in those expensive catalogues Mum likes so much and leaves lying around for Dad to see and maybe remember to buy her something for her birthday. (He got her a new rubbish bin last year. Of course Mum needed a new rubbish bin, but she didn’t look delighted.)

  ‘That her?’ demanded Bruce, hopping closer, sort of cautiously.

  Phredde nodded. ‘That’s Cousin Pinkerbelle.’

  ‘The one you want me to kiss?’

  Phredde nodded again.

  ‘Hey kid!’ objected Con. ‘You can’t just go kissing ladies without their permission. That’s called indecent assault. You can get locked up for that. Especially when they’re sound asleep.’

  Bruce hesitated. I could see his cream-coloured chest pulsating as he considered. ‘Maybe he’s right,’ he said, looking sort of relieved.

  ‘Bruce! You’ve got to kiss her!’ cried Phredde.

  ‘But what if…’

  Well, I don’t quite know what happened then.

  Phredde shoved Bruce towards the bed, and Bruce croaked and gave this giant leap to try to get away from her, and Con leapt too and tried to grab at Bruce, and I was sort of in the middle so I didn’t see anything except a lot of arms and leaps and wings…

  …and then Con must have tripped over Bruce or Phredde or something—maybe even me, because I had bruises later that I’m sure weren’t just from the rose bush…

  And the next thing I knew, Con was sprawled out over the bed—AND Cousin Pinkerbelle—going ‘Oooff!’ as all the breath was knocked out of him…

  …and Phredde was yelling ‘Look out for Cousin Pinkerbelle!’ and Bruce was yelling ‘Croak!’ and I wasn’t saying anything much, as I’d been underneath it all.

  And then Cousin Pinkerbelle sat up in bed and said, ‘Phredde darling, what on earth are you doing here?’

  And then she saw Con—who was still lying sort of on top of her, all muscles and hairy arms—and she shrieked, ‘Who’s this? Call the police!’

  And then she saw Bruce, and me, and things got even more confused.

  Well, it all settled down eventually, and Phredde explained, and Cousin Pinkerbelle thanked us all very much really enthusiastically, especially Con, which I thought was a bit unfair as it had been Phredde’s and my idea.

  And then she said it was time for breakfast, or lunch, or dinner, or something. Who cares what meal it is when you’ve been asleep for a week?

  So Cousin Pinkerbelle put on her dressing gown—rose pink silk and lace, naturally, with this sort of fluffy stuff on the sleeves—and we followed her down to the castle kitchens.

  Con and I walked and Phredde flew and Bruce hopped. (He was still keeping well clear of Cousin Pinkerbelle, just in case she decided to kiss him to thank him for helping us.)

  ‘But Phredde,’ I whispered, as Phredde flapped past my ear. ‘How come Cousin Pinkerbelle woke up? She didn’t get kissed. Con’s not even a handsome prince.’

  Con must have heard me, because he turned round and grinned. ‘Actually I am a Prince,’ he said.

  ‘A what?’I gasped

  ‘A Prince. Not a real prince, of course. But that’s my name. Constantine Prince.’

  ‘But the sign on the nursery down below says RINCE,’ objected Phredde.

  ‘The P fell off,’ explained Con. ‘Dad’s been meaning to hammer it back on.’

  ‘But you didn’t kiss her!’ I objected.

  Con blushed. ‘Well, actually, in all the fuss…’

  I let out a deep breath. ‘Well, just think. We found a handsome prince by accident.’

  Con blushed even deeper. ‘I don’t know about handsome,’ he muttered.

  At this Cousin Pinkerbelle turned round to see what all the fuss was about. She must have heard the last bit because she said, ‘Well, I think he’s VERY handsome,’ and Con blushed harder than ever.

  So it all turned out happily ever after, even though it wasn’t quite like in the story. Or maybe those phaery stories just leave out the bits they don’t think you should know.

  Cousin Pinkerbelle didn’t marry her handsome prince—well, not yet anyway—but they’ve gone into business together: PRINCE AND PRINCESS’S PERFECT PINK ROSES.

  I pointed out that they were sort of savage roses too, but Con doesn’t think that’ll be a problem.

  ‘We can just graft ordinary pink roses onto the magic root stock. That’ll tame them. They’ll be fast growing and hardy but they won’t attack anyone,’ he promised.

  Con’s a professional, so I suppose we have to trust him, at least till the roses start taking over the world anyway. (If I was you though, I’d take a close look at any rose bush your parents buy this winter.)

  Bruce is going to our school—Mrs Allen the headmistress said that what with phaeries and vampires and the dragon, not to mention the volcano in the playground3, she didn’t think a frog would be any trouble at all. (Sometimes I think Mrs Allen needs a holiday. She’s been looking pretty tired lately.)

  Bruce is in our class. He’s okay and at least he gets rid of all the flies, not to mention the spiders under the bag racks. But Phredde still doesn’t like him much. She says a handsome prince is still a handsome prince, even if he’s a frog.

  Phredde can be prejudiced too, sometimes, I suppose.

  Bruce steers clear of Phredde as well, just in case she kisses him by accident and breaks the spell, but I could tell him there’s not much chance of that.

  Anyway, to finish the story off properly—Mrs Olsen says I always leave out the most important bits—we all went down to the kitchens with Pinkerbelle and had dinner, which was good because by then I was starving, and it was really delicious even if it was all pink…pink lemonade and beetroot soup and strawberry ice cream and even the chicken was in a pink tomato and cream sauce…

  …and then Bruce went back to his lily pad to say goodnight to it before he went home to his family’s castle, and Con stayed to have a chat about roses with Pinkerbelle over a glass of something that’s not suitable for kids, and Phredde went PING! and we were back down at the bus stop.

  ‘I don’t see why you couldn’t have PING!ed properly and taken us all the way back home,’ I grumbled.

  ‘It’s traditional,’ said Phredde.

  ‘Bother traditional. I’d rather PING!

  ‘Well, it’s my PING! and I say when I use it,’ stated Phredde.
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  I suppose we were both a bit tired by then.

  ‘I bet a bus won’t come for ages.’ I grumbled.

  Well, I don’t know if Phredde just PING!ed quietly and I didn’t notice, but at that moment the bus lurched round the corner and drew up next to us at the bus stop.

  Phredde sort of smirked and I followed her in.

  The bus was mostly empty (which made me think that maybe Phredde had just magicked it up), so we got a seat together, which meant I sat on the seat and Phredde perched on the backrest so she had room to spread her wings.

  ‘Phredde,’ I asked, as the bus trundled through the dark streets—it was quite late by now.

  ‘Mmmm?’ asked Phredde. She yawned.

  ‘About Cousin Pinkerbelle…how come she’s normal size. I mean human size?’

  ‘Well, Aunt Daffodil married a human, Uncle Bryan, and some of their kids are phaeries and some are human.’

  ‘So Pinkerbelle can’t do magic?’

  ‘Not really,’ said Phredde sleepily. ‘She’s magic with roses all right. But not with much else.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  All this inheritance business is complicated. I made a note to ask Mum and Dad about it sometime.

  Well, the bus stopped at my stop first, so I got off and trundled up the drive to our castle, through the stars and moonbeams.

  The light was still on in the ballroom, which is where we watch TV, because Mum was waiting up for me.

  In all the fuss I’d forgotten to ask Phredde to PING! me back to five minutes after we left, so of course I’d missed dinner and TV and everything, and Mum was FURIOUS because I hadn’t even mentioned I was going somewhere.

  As soon as she’d hugged me forty-six times and made sure I was in one piece—except for a few scratches from the mad rose bush, but I didn’t mention those—she informed me that…

  But that’s another story.

  Prudence and the Giant Thingummy

  It was a dark and stormy night. (Mrs Olsen says you can’t start a story like that, but I just did!)

  The wind was screaming around the castle like it was practising for the opera and the rain was hammering tiny fists against the windows like it wanted to come inside. And the black breath of the night was whispering down the chimney. (I must remember that image the next time Mrs Olsen wants us to do descriptive writing—it’s really cool.)