Frankie Fish and the Great Wall of Chaos Read online

  ‘Jackiechanland?’ repeated the thief. ‘I have never heard of a village called Jackiechanland. Does everyone dress so silly in Jackiechanland?’

  ‘OK, I’ve had just about enough from you!’ snapped Drew, and there was a flash of electric blue as he raced at top speed on his scooter towards the boy, swiping the suitcase out of his hand.

  Frankie then tackled the bandit to the ground in case he tried to snatch the suitcase back again.

  ‘Get off me,’ the boy screamed as Frankie held him down.

  It was only now that Frankie got a really good look at the thief’s face … and to his shock, discovered that he had just crash-tackled a girl to the muddy riverbank.

  Oops.

  Frankie leapt to his feet. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he gasped, horribly embarrassed.

  His parents had always taught him to treat girls with respect, and certainly not to crash-tackle them, especially if he was a time-travelling guest in their country (OK, Ron and Tina Fish didn’t exactly say that last bit, but it was implied).

  ‘Did you just knock over a girl?’ asked Drew Bird, standing in ankle-deep water and holding the Sonic Suitcase (rather unnecessarily) over his head.

  The girl stood up and brushed herself down nonchalantly. ‘I’m fine. I’m really strong.’

  ‘You’re really fast too,’ said Frankie, rather begrudgingly. After all, she had nearly caused him to be stuck here forever.

  She shrugged, adjusting the strap of a frayed cloth bag she was carrying over her shoulder, and gave a small smile. ‘I am the fastest in all of China,’ she said. ‘Even faster than this strange blue machine you have,’ she added, blinking at Drew’s scooter.

  Frankie cleared his throat nervously, as scooters were still a few hundred years away from being invented. ‘My name’s Frankie Fish,’ he said quickly, to distract her, ‘and this is Drew Bird.’

  The girl looked up at the two boys for a long time, and finally seemed to decide that she could trust them.

  ‘Gu Ping,’ she said, and nodded her head. ‘You can call me Ping.’

  Frankie and Drew nodded back more times than they had to. Finally, Drew waded out of the water and gently picked up his scooter, which had fallen over on the riverbank.

  Somewhat awkwardly, Frankie asked, ‘Why did you steal our suitcase?’

  Ping looked at the ground and kicked the dirt. ‘Because I am hungry,’ she said sadly.

  ‘Well, there’s no food in the Sonic … I mean suitcase …’ stumbled Drew. ‘Yeah, we just call it a suitcase because it’s just a very normal, everyday kind of suitcase. Yeah!’

  Frankie smothered a grin, and then pulled some shortbreads – a zebra and a wildebeest – from his pocket. ‘Here you go.’

  Ping stared at the cookies for a moment, and then devoured them as if she were an actual lion eating an actual zebra and wildebeest on the Serengeti plains.

  Ping was unlike any girl Frankie had ever met. Mainly because she was the first girl (or first person, for that matter) he’d met from olden-days China. In fact, the closest he’d ever come to ancient china before were the cups and saucers Nanna had been given for her wedding, the ones she saved for special occasions.

  Drew prodded Frankie sharply in his side. ‘Should we ask her what year this is?’ he muttered.

  ‘Oh yeah, Ping – what year are we in?’ Frankie asked, realising too late how stupid the question sounded. ‘Er, Drew and I hit our heads before and we both have concussion.’

  ‘I don’t know that word, concussion. But what year do you think it is?’ Ping asked eagerly, like this was her new favourite game.

  ‘1982?’ asked Drew, which was almost the oldest year he could think up.

  Ping burst out laughing. ‘Wow, you did hit your head hard!’

  ‘Maybe 1906?’ Frankie suggested.

  Ping’s guffaws became louder.

  ‘1840,’ Drew chimed in.

  Ping was now clutching her sides. ‘Lower, lower!’ she cried.

  ‘1750,’ Frankie guessed, beginning to get a little competitive.

  Ping shook her head and gasped for breath. ‘Getting warmer!’

  ‘1720?’

  ‘1690?’

  ‘1660!’

  The game had become one of shouting random numbers at poor Ping, who was now on the ground in stitches.

  ‘1642?’ said Frankie, about to give up.

  Ping jumped to her feet and said, ‘How did you know?’ before screaming with laughter again.

  Frankie and Drew grinned at each other. Ping was HEAPS of fun.

  ‘Or is it 1643 … or 1641?’ Ping added gleefully. ‘No, just kidding, you finally got it. 1642!’

  ‘Finally!’ Frankie laughed. ‘So Ping, do you live around here? Where’s your family?’ He couldn’t imagine his mum allowing him to roam around the forest alone, but maybe parents were different back in 1642 (or 1643, or 1641).

  The grin on Ping’s face disappeared quicker than cupcakes at an elephant’s birthday party. She looked down at her bare feet. ‘I’ve got no mother and father,’ she said sadly. Then she perked up slightly. ‘But my … um, what’s the right word? My sister!’ she announced, pointing over Frankie’s shoulder. ‘Yes, that’s how you say it, sister – my sister is over there.’

  ‘Over at the Great Wall?’ asked Frankie. ‘Can we go and meet her?’

  Ping shook her head. ‘No. She’s on the other side of the wall, where they train dogs to grab children to feed to the dragon that lives inside the wall. That’s why they built the wall. To keep the dragon in it.’

  Drew snorted. ‘No, Ping. It’s to keep the rabbits out. I saw it on a TV commercial.’

  Ping looked at him quizzically, and Frankie reminded himself that he REALLY needed to talk to Drew about the dos and don’ts of time travel before he ruined everything, like Biff did in Back To The Future II.

  ‘You are not Chinese. How are you here?’ Ping asked curiously.

  ‘We love Chinese food,’ ad-libbed Drew, sitting on a nearby log. ‘And we are thinking of starting our own food blog.’

  Ping looked confused. ‘I don’t know this word, blog. Are you sure it’s a word?’

  ‘Well, you see –’ Frankie started.

  ‘I know exactly why you are here!’ Ping interrupted, her eyes wide.

  Frankie gulped just as Drew gasped, and the sound they made was something like Ulgpghah!

  Luckily, Ping didn’t seem to notice. ‘You are both traders, aren’t you?’ she asked excitedly.

  ‘Yes!’ agreed Frankie in relief.

  ‘Exactly!’ chimed in Drew.

  ‘We …’ (LONG PAUSE)

  ‘… trade …’ (LONGER PAUSE)

  ‘… in …’ (EVEN LONGER PAUSE)

  Frankie and Drew’s brains were like phones desperately trying to find reception in the middle of the Amazon rainforest (or in seventeenth-century China, for that matter). The only things these two scallywags from the future had ever traded were football cards.

  ‘Should I try to guess?’ suggested Ping.

  ‘That’s the best idea I’ve heard in a long time,’ exclaimed Drew, and exhaled so much air he could have blown the candles off the Queen’s ninety-second birthday cake.

  Ping considered the strange boys in front of her. ‘Cookies! You trade in cookies. That’s why you had those cookies in your pocket, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s exactly right!’ Frankie shouted.

  ‘You got it in one. The only thing we love more than eating cookies is trading cookies,’ Drew Bird chirped, before sprinkling some sugar on his lie. ‘Actually, I traded one million Tim Tams for this sweet backpack.’

  Ping’s smile suddenly vanished. ‘My sister loves cookies, but I don’t think I will ever see her again,’ she said softly.

  Frankie looked at Drew, and was sure they were thinking the exact same thing.

  ‘Oh well, good luck with that,’ Drew said, rising to his feet.

  Frankie rolled his eyes. ‘Ping, we’ll help you rescue your sis
ter,’ he announced, glaring at Drew.

  ‘What?’ said Ping.

  ‘What?’ said Drew in a fluster. He grabbed Frankie by the arm and hissed. ‘I’ve never told you this, but I’m highly allergic to dragons! If I come into contact with one, I can end up with a nasty rash. Or with my head torn from my neck! And anyway, aren’t we here to find your grandparents?’

  Drew had a point. The future of the entire Fish family and one Bird depended on them finding Nanna and Grandad! But the fact was that Frankie had no idea where they were or how to get to Beijing, let alone find the Secret Prison. And he really wanted to help Ping. (He also felt like he owed her a favour, after crash-tackling her to the ground.) Then he had an idea.

  ‘Ping, do you know what a deal is?’ asked Frankie. ‘It’s where we have an agreement to help each other out.’

  Ping nodded. ‘That sounds good.’

  ‘Then do I have a deal for you!’ Frankie buzzed like a game-show host. ‘We’ll help rescue your sister from the other side of the Great Wall, if you agree to help us rescue my nanna and grandad from the Emperor’s Secret Prison in Beijing.’

  Ping looked like she was considering it.

  ‘Do you know where the Emperor’s Secret Prison is?’ asked Drew.

  ‘Of course I do,’ snapped Ping.

  ‘So do we have a deal?’ asked Frankie hopefully.

  ‘Deal!’ Ping squeaked back.

  Relief washed over Frankie. Finally it felt like the mission was on the right track. Sure, he and Drew had to make a slight diversion to save Ping’s sister, but he was confident that wouldn’t be too hard. After all, he really, almost definitely didn’t believe in child-eating dragons. And once they’d done that, Ping would lead them straight to where Nanna and Grandad were imprisoned. Couldn’t be easier!

  It’s just as well that Frankie was blissfully ignorant of the obstacles ahead of him. Had he known, he might’ve laid down right then and there and never got up again …

  Many hundreds of years into the future, Christine and Carmel were banging on the door of the Forbidden Shed like they were trying to break it down – which was, in fact, EXACTLY what they were trying to do.

  The Texan twins knew that little weasel Frankie Fish was in there. He had swiped their family heirloom and, even more importantly, he had the solution to the mystery they’d been waiting all their lives to solve. Their big hair trembled as they pounded the shed door with their powerful fists.

  ‘We’ve come a long way for answers!’ yelled Christine.

  ‘And we want our bottle back too!’ added Carmel.

  ‘Shhh,’ Carmel said suddenly, holding up her hand. Her colourful bangles clinked alarmingly down her spray-tanned forearm. ‘What can you hear?’

  Christine listened for a moment. ‘Nothing?’ she said.

  ‘Exactly! Just before, there was a whole lot of beeps and whirrs and yells. Now there’s just silence.’

  Christine looked like she’d just been told her own shiny bangles were made from stardust. ‘Are you saying they’ve GONE? But that’s impossible!’

  The twins did a quick lap of the shed, checking for any escape holes or secret tunnels. But there were none, which left them scratching their giant perms with their pink manicured nails, completely perplexed.

  ‘This mystery just keeps getting more mysterious,’ sighed Carmel, as thrilled as she was frustrated.

  ‘What do we do now?’ asked Christine, her eyes bright.

  Carmel thought long and hard, and could only come up with one solution. ‘We go to the police.’

  Frankie Fish was definitely hoping to take a closer look at the Great Wall of China at some point during his adventure, but he’d hoped to do so in a more touristy kind of way, and less in a may-get-fed-to-a-dragon-or-possibly-torn-apart-by-vicious-dogs kind of way.

  Frankie was trying to think of a foolproof plan as quickly as he could. He had seen movies in which the heroes hack into the computer mainframe of a spaceship or a casino or a Death Star to complete their mission, but there were two problems with this tactic. Firstly, Frankie didn’t know how to hack, and secondly, there was nothing to hack.

  There was simply a Great Wall and a camp on the other side being guarded by blood-thirsty hounds. This was not hackable. This was a very analog mission.

  While Frankie was failing to think of a foolproof plan, Ping suddenly made an unusual request.

  ‘We need to swap clothes,’ Ping announced to Drew, untying her waist-wrap.

  ‘What?’ Drew replied. ‘Why?’

  ‘The hounds know my scent. They have been hunting me already. If I go over that wall, they will sniff me out straight away.’ Ping handed Drew her wrap and began wriggling out of her top.

  ‘What? No way, that’s GROSS.’ Drew squirmed.

  ‘Oh, don’t be a boy about it,’ Ping said, taking her shirt off as Frankie giggled gleefully.

  Drew said ‘No!’ approximately one hundred times in three seconds before Frankie finally put his foot down.

  ‘Come on, Drew, time’s running out,’ he said. ‘And anyway, it could be worse. It could be one of Miss Merryweather’s floral dresses.’

  ‘FINE. I’ll give you my clothes, but I am NOT wearing yours!’ screeched Drew, slipping out of his threads.

  ‘Why not?’ said Ping, looking mildly offended.

  ‘I don’t want the dogs coming after me instead,’ said Drew, sounding sensible for once. Then he ruined the moment by adding, ‘And what if someone I know sees me wearing a strange girl’s pyjamas?’

  ‘Who else do you know who’s time-travelled back to olden-days China?’ muttered Frankie.

  ‘You never know,’ retorted Drew. ‘Those Mosley triplets can be pretty crafty sometimes.’

  It’s hard to plan for a rescue mission when you’re not completely sure what’s on the other side of your biggest obstacle – especially when that obstacle just happens to be the most famous wall in history. Construction of the Great Wall of China had begun over 2,500 years ago (depending on the year you’re reading this book) and it was an absolutely COLOSSAL project, even bigger than when Ron Fish decided to build an entertainment area in the backyard that he claimed would be ‘revolutionary’ (date of completion yet to be confirmed). To make planning things even harder, Frankie could not quite work out what Ping knew, and what she was just exaggerating.

  Were there really brutal hounds guarding the wall? Were they really as bad as Ping made them sound? And was there really a child-eating dragon? These were all good questions, but the light was fading and answers were as rare as finding the tooth fairy in a chicken coop.

  Whenever Frankie had imagined the Great Wall of China, he’d pictured a gigantic wall that could only be climbed by mountaineers or zombies or mountaineering zombies. The truth was the wall wasn’t as high as he had imagined. At this particular point, the wall looked about as high as a two-storey house. Frankie figured he was capable of scaling that, particularly if there wasn’t a child-eating dragon inside.

  Frankie handed Drew the Sonic Suitcase. ‘Can you take care of this?’

  Drew looked chuffed as he took the Sonic Suitcase in both hands, as if he’d been presented with the Holy Grail. ‘I humbly accept this awesome responsibility,’ he proclaimed, bowing his head.

  Frankie appreciated Drew’s earnestness, but it was pretty hard to take him seriously when he was stripped down to just his Ghostbusters singlet and BB-8 boxer shorts.

  Ping’s clothes were draped over a nearby tree branch. She was already moving towards the wall, dressed in Drew’s shorts and jumper and still carrying her cloth bag, so Frankie took the chance to give Drew a crash course in the rules of time travel.

  ‘Try not to talk to anyone,’ Frankie hissed, ‘and if you do, keep it vague. No information or details about the future.’

  ‘Can I tell them that the Hedgehog’s breath smells like a hippo’s bum?’

  ‘Why would you need to say that?’

  ‘It might come up.’

  ‘We
ll, try NOT to make it come up, please!’ Frankie said incredulously.

  ‘Roger that,’ replied Drew with a thumbs-up.

  ‘Just treat China like the excursion we took to the museum,’ said Frankie. ‘No touching, because if you break something we will be in BIG trouble, OK?’

  Drew gave him a double thumbs-up, which was a bit tricky because he was still clutching the suitcase.

  Frankie was relieved to leave his best mate alone with the Sonic Suitcase – where he couldn’t talk to anyone – as he joined Ping at the base of the Great Wall of China.

  ‘So Ping,’ Frankie began. ‘What’s the plan?’

  ‘We climb the wall and we hope,’ Ping replied, cheerfully.

  This didn’t exactly fill Frankie with confidence, but there was no time to worry about that now. They needed get a move on – or, to be more accurate, they needed to get a move up.

  ‘Do you feel like it would be easier to rescue a cow from the moon?’ Frankie asked Ping nervously as he gripped the wall in front of him. (It turned out he did have time to worry about this slightly undercooked plan.)

  ‘To arrive at courage, you need to pass through fear,’ said Ping. ‘Or as a wise monk once told me: get it together, kid.’

  Frankie nodded and steeled himself.

  He looked up at the wall and prayed for strength and courage, and for his hands not to sweat. Sweaty hands had always been an issue for Frankie, and had cost him dearly a number of times on the monkey bars at St Monica’s Primary.

  ‘COME ON!’ urged Ping as she began to climb.

  Frankie’s heart was beating faster than the little drummer boy drums at Christmas. ‘Here goes nothing,’ he muttered, hooking his toes into a groove. ‘One step after another. It’s just like walking down the street, but it happens to be the Great Wall of China … and I’m walking up it.’

  At first the going wasn’t too bad and before Frankie knew it, he was halfway up. Obviously that one time his dad had taken him indoor rock-climbing was starting to pay off. (Nice work, Ron Fish.)