Frankie Fish and the Great Wall of Chaos Read online

  But as Frankie got higher, he began feeling nervous. He told himself not to look down, but straight away another part of him said, ‘OMG YOU NEED TO LOOK DOWN NOW! LOOK DOWN NOW! LOOK DOWN NOW!’

  And because the second part of him had a really loud voice, he did what it said and looked down. Immediately his palms got damper than a pig in a sauna. The ground was really far away. His knees shook as he imagined himself falling. He tried not to think about how many bones he would break if he did. He also tried really, REALLY hard not to think about the dragon that might or might not be inside the wall itself. Instead, he focused on hoisting himself upwards.

  Beside him, Ping paused and pressed her right ear against the wall.

  ‘What are you doing?’ panted Frankie.

  ‘Listening for the dragon,’ she answered, then added lightly, ‘I think I heard snoring, so I guess we’re in luck.’

  Right then Frankie didn’t feel lucky at all. He gritted his teeth and tried to block the thought of possibly being within grabbing distance of a child-eating dragon. Get on with it, Frankie! he told himself.

  After what felt like four hours, Frankie swung himself onto the top layer of brick and planted both feet on the famous wall. His entire body relaxed with relief. He’d made it. At last!

  ‘What took you so long?’ Ping asked cheekily. She looked like she’d been waiting for a while. Her threadbare bag – which seemed to be nearly empty of supplies, Frankie realised with a pang – sat limply beside her.

  The sun had dipped below the horizon by now, and there wasn’t much light left – which was good for hiding.

  As he caught his breath, Frankie took in his surroundings. On the other side of the wall was a huge prison camp, with rows upon rows of tents, and small bonfires dotted around for warmth and light.

  Beyond that, the forest stretched into the distance. If he’d had his dad’s iPhone with him, Frankie could have taken a pretty epic selfie … although that would have meant explaining to Ping what cameras, phones and selfies were, and that was a big no-no.

  While Frankie admired the view and waved at Captain Boxer Shorts shivering down on the ground, Ping was inspecting the other side of the wall.

  ‘Hmmm,’ she murmured, in a not-very-positive way.

  Frankie poked his head over her shoulder, and saw immediately what the problem was: burly guards were patrolling up and down the rows of tents.

  ‘What did your sister do to get put in there?’ asked a curious Frankie.

  ‘She bit a guard on the – what’s the word?’ Ping asked, pointing at her bottom.

  Frankie’s jaw dropped. ‘Your sister bit a guard on the butt?’

  ‘She was upset,’ Ping offered.

  Frankie was alarmed, but he tried not to show it. He couldn’t imagine Saint Lou biting anyone on the butt.

  Ping shrugged. She slung her bag over her shoulder, and – when there was a long-enough gap in the patrol guards – darted over the top of the wall to climb down the other side. Frankie quickly joined her.

  Going down was way easier and less scary than climbing up, he had to admit. And he was so busy wondering about Ping’s sister that he’d nearly forgotten about the supposed dragons.

  What kind of butt-biting lunatic are we rescuing here? Frankie wondered as he landed on the ground with a quiet thud.

  He and Ping crouched behind a large bush to work out their next move. The camp was pretty quiet, as most of the prisoners and workers appeared to be resting in their tents after a long day of work. The quiet was occasionally disrupted by a cow’s moo or a horse’s neigh. Thankfully there were no monster dogs that Frankie could see.

  ‘You stay here,’ Ping instructed. ‘Keep a lookout.’ With that, she sprang to her feet and darted off towards a darkened tent in the nearest row.

  Frankie stayed crouching, alone and paranoid. He was a twelve-year-old white boy dressed in twenty-first-century shorts and his favourite green sneakers. He stood out like a giraffe on a miniature train.

  Peering around nervously, he spotted a frayed grey blanket draped over a collection of broken bricks. Figuring nobody would miss it, Frankie scurried over and swiped the blanket, wrapping it swiftly around his shoulders. Then he grinned to himself, suddenly feeling way less like a scared kid and way more like a Jedi knight.

  But as the minutes ticked by, Frankie’s Jedi feelings began to fade. His thoughts turned to Grandad, and exactly where the old man and Nanna might be. Truth be told, Frankie was worried that they could end up with the same problem they’d had in Scotland in 1952. But this time it would be worse, because Nanna Fish and Drew Bird were caught up in this chaos too. If Frankie didn’t fix this time-puzzle and rescue Grandad and Nanna Fish from the Emperor’s Secret Prison, the fallout would be disastrous …

  The longer Frankie waited for Ping’s return, the more anxious (and sweaty) he became. His imagination began to roam. Maybe this is a trap, like when Darth Vader caught Han Solo in The Empire Strikes Back, he thought.

  Finally, Frankie couldn’t stand it for one second longer. He was just about to run over to the tent to help Ping when she emerged through the flaps, carefully holding a bundle.

  Ping’s found her sister! thought Frankie excitedly, but the little girl seemed to be smaller than he’d expected.

  Is she a baby?

  He craned his neck for a glimpse of this mysterious butt-biter, and then reeled back, dropping his blanket in shock.

  Ping’s sister not only appeared to have four legs … but she was also EXTREMELY hairy.

  Seconds later, Frankie realised his mistake. It wasn’t that Ping’s sister was a mutant or in desperate need of laser-hair removal. Ping’s sister was, in fact, a dog. This, however, raised more questions.

  ‘A dog?’ he spluttered. He’d been tricked, and he did not like it one little bit. ‘I’m risking my life for this fuzzball?!’

  The fuzzball appeared to have taken an instant dislike to Frankie, and she growled a warning.

  ‘She’s not a fuzzball,’ snapped Ping. ‘Mei Mei is like a sister to me. She’s all I have. They steal nice dogs like Mei Mei and turn them into evil beastly hounds!’

  Frankie wasn’t having it. ‘What kind of beastly hounds, exactly?’ he snapped right back.

  Ping pointed over Frankie’s shoulder with a trembling finger. ‘That kind!’

  Frankie glanced over his shoulder and felt himself go pale.

  It was a horrifying sight: six beastly hounds were stalking towards them, their FANGS the size of sharpened pencils and positively dripping with saliva.

  In a flash, Ping safely stowed Mei Mei in her bag and bolted back towards the wall, causing the hounds to start barking wildly and chase right after them.

  Frankie followed as fast as his legs and the gentle breeze would carry him. Ping was already halfway up the wall, with Mei Mei’s furry face peeking out of the bag.

  Frankie scrabbled up after her, panicking as his sneakers slipped, until Ping reached down and thrust her hand at him.

  His fury from a moment ago was forgotten. Frankie grabbed it and Ping pulled him up until he found a groove. Then, on his own, he found another, and another – and then suddenly, he felt something tugging hard on his sneaker.

  Uh-oh …

  Glancing down in horror, Frankie saw that one of his shoelaces was now clutched between the fangs of a slavering hound, which growled menacingly.

  For a brief moment, Frankie wished he’d listened to his mum and bought those dorky Velcro sneakers after all. And that moment was all it took for the beast’s friends to notice Frankie’s tasty-looking shoelaces. In a flash, the hound was surrounded by the other ghastly mutts, all of them snapping and barking at the delicious intruders.

  Frankie scrabbled for a higher groove on the wall, but he was starting to slip. ‘Hey!’ he heard Ping call from above. ‘Take my hand!’

  For the second time, she stretched out her hand towards him, and Frankie clasped it like a drowning man clutching a life vest. The hounds’ barking
got louder and more vicious, and Frankie felt his foot drag as the beast thrashed its head from side to side.

  Frankie was struggling to keep his grip on the wall. He could feel the sweat in his palm pooling.

  Just as his fingers began sliding through Ping’s hand, he heard something SNAP.

  Uh-oh – again …

  Frankie looked down, expecting to see his leg bent and twisted like his school pants on his bedroom floor – but instead he saw a saliva-soaked shoelace dangling from the beast’s muzzle like a strand of dirty spaghetti. And then Ping hauled him up a bit, out of reach of the hounds, and Frankie pulled himself up the rest of the way – till finally he was up on top of the wall.

  Without pausing for breath, they darted across and scaled back down the other side of the wall in record time (at least, it was their fastest time). Left behind, the hounds howled and growled and scrabbled furiously at the wall.

  Frankie and Ping and the fuzzball had made it! Just.

  Frankie high-tailed it straight to Drew Bird, who was patiently waiting where they had left him. The only difference was that now he was wearing Ping’s clothes. Frankie raised an eyebrow at his friend.

  ‘What?’ said Drew. ‘It was cold!’

  Mei Mei popped her head out of Ping’s bag and stared at him, letting out a confused growl.

  Drew stared right back. ‘Where’s your sister?’ he asked Ping.

  ‘It’s kind of complicated …’ said Frankie, scratching his head. But his voice was drowned out by the sound of angry hounds baying for blood, and some angry shouts that definitely sounded human.

  ‘We need to go before the guards come looking!’ Ping cried. ‘I have a raft on the river. Let’s use it to escape.’

  After the Great Shoelace Escape of 1642, neither Frankie nor Drew were going to argue with that.

  As our heroes floated down the muddy river on Ping’s makeshift raft, polishing off the last of the shortbreads, Frankie’s mind drifted to Grandad and Nanna Fish.

  He was hoping like crazy that they were OK and would stay safe (enough) until he could rescue them. He couldn’t help but still be cross that Grandad had broken his promise and dragged everybody into another time-web of trouble. But he was also feeling a bit annoyed about this deal with Ping. Rescuing her ‘sister’ had been a lot more complicated than he’d expected. He just hoped it wasn’t too late to save Grandad and Nanna too.

  Unfortunately, Ping’s raft didn’t have a motor on the back of it, mainly because motors were still centuries away from being invented. So as the raft glided slowly towards Beijing, Frankie clutched the Sonic Suitcase and distracted himself by asking Ping questions.

  ‘So you don’t have any, um, human family members, then?’

  Ping sighed deeply. ‘I don’t know,’ she admitted. ‘My parents were travelling when they were both killed in an earthquake. They found me in my mother’s arms – injured but alive. No-one knew who my parents were or where’d they’d come from and no-one came to claim me, so I was taken to an orphanage. I stayed there until last year, when I ran away. The only thing I have from my parents is this.’

  From underneath her old, frayed top (Drew and Ping had both insisted on swapping back outfits), Ping pulled a black cord with a shiny green stone hanging from it. ‘I was wearing this when the rescuers found me. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?’

  Frankie nodded. It also looked valuable. Why hadn’t she sold it or traded it for food? It must have been pretty special to her. ‘Can I have a closer look?’ he asked.

  Ping hesitated for a moment, then took off the necklace and handed it to him. Up close, Frankie could see that it had been intricately carved with the image of a magnificent bird, its wings outstretched.

  She pointed to the bird. ‘An old monk once told me that this is a very special and very rare symbol, only worn by people who journey to places where others fear to go.’ Ping scratched her chin thoughtfully. ‘Or was it “places others are too smart to go”? I can’t remember now.’ She shrugged.

  Drew lifted his gaze from his scooter, which he’d been examining for scratches. ‘Hey Ping, how come you speak English so well?’

  Ping looked proud. ‘About three years ago, I was begging in the streets of Beijing and an old white lady gave this amazing book to me. It was called an English-Mandarin dictionary, have you ever seen one? Anyway, I already knew how to read in Mandarin and I wanted to eavesdrop on the foreign traders, so I taught myself how to speak English.’ She looked at Frankie and Drew. ‘How many languages do you speak?’

  ‘Um,’ replied Frankie, embarrassed. ‘I speak a little Italian.’ (Well, he could say ciao, pizza and spaghetti).

  ‘I speak French!’ bragged Drew. (Sure – if you count croissant and déjà vu.)

  Ping looked at the boys with unbridled admiration. ‘You are both so smart. Maybe you can teach me those languages one day?’

  ‘We’ll see,’ coughed Frankie, blushing and quickly changing the topic. ‘Hey, are we going to sleep on the raft tonight?’

  Ping shook her head. ‘Too dangerous. Let’s pull over and set up camp.’

  Mei Mei helped the boys collect kindling for a fire, but her growling and barking soon made Frankie realise that she really just wanted them to throw sticks for her. When Ping wasn’t looking, he tossed one quickly and Mei Mei happily bounded off after it.

  Frankie watched in amazement as Ping got the fire going in no time whatsoever. He probably shouldn’t have been so amazed, considering she had taught herself how to speak English from a book. The evening chill had started to set in, so the warmth of the flames was a welcome relief.

  It was like the time Frankie went camping with his parents, before they got too busy with their business, Fish Pest Control – except instead of being an hour’s drive from where they lived, it was a couple of thousand kilometres and a few centuries away from where the Fish family had toasted marshmallows and listened to Ron Fish sing Taylor Swift songs.

  ‘Tell me a story,’ demanded Ping as Mei Mei snuggled into her lap. ‘It can be real or made up, it doesn’t matter.’

  That’s lucky, Frankie thought before he ‘made up’ a story about an alien called E.T. who once hid in his bedroom.

  Then Drew ‘made up’ a story about a man named Luke Skywalker who saved the galaxy with his friends: a princess, a scoundrel and a big hairy ape-dog. Then they both ‘made up’ a story about a time-travelling doctor. The boys were careful to make amendments to ‘their’ stories so as not to mention anything too futuristic.

  Ping clapped and cheered all the way through the fantastic stories coming out of Frankie and Drew’s mouths, especially the bit where the space alien managed to send a ‘um … carrier pigeon …’ all the way to his home planet.

  Despite the fact that Frankie and Drew were twelve-year-old boys from twenty-first-century Australia and Ping was a ten-year-old girl from seventeenth-century China, the three of them had fun hanging out together. They ran around under the moonlit sky like loonies, playing tiggy and doing cartwheels. Drew got a ball from his backpack and they played an epic game of downball against the Great Wall of China, which was made even more epic by Mei Mei barking like crazy and trying to catch the ball.

  Ping even sharpened a branch and the three of them carved their names into the famous wall. (Rumour has it that their names are still there. If you’re ever lucky enough to visit the Great Wall of China, you can look for them. Please take a photo if you find the right spot!)

  When Drew found Lieutenant Oscar Bugg’s glass bottle in his backpack, he started teaching Ping how to bottle-flip.

  ‘Erm, do you think that's a good idea?’ Frankie muttered to Drew, and not just because Ping already seemed like she’d be better at it than him. ‘According to the book you wrote, bottle-flipping was only invented in 2016. You might mess up the sports space-time continuum by showing it to her now.’

  But even if Drew had been listening, which he hadn’t, it was too late. Ping was already trying to flip the bottle as well as
Drew could. She looked at Drew in admiration. ‘You can do everything!’ she said.

  ‘Well, not quite everything, but you’re basically right,’ Drew replied, in a failed attempt at modesty.

  As the night wound down, Ping had a bit of a stomach-ache, so she curled up near the fire while the boys warmed their hands over the flames, yawning. Their tummies were rumbling with hunger now, too. Finally, everyone settled down to sleep.

  Ping lifted her head and looked over at Frankie. ‘After we find your grandparents,’ she murmured, ‘will you take me and Mei Mei to Jackiechanland?’

  Frankie gulped. Half of him wanted to tell Ping that there was no such place as Jackiechanland, that Jackie Chan was a brilliant martial-arts movie star from hundreds of years into the future (while also explaining what movies are), and that he had completely made the whole thing up.

  But the other half knew that he couldn’t. He needed Ping and Mei Mei to take him to the Emperor’s Secret Prison in Beijing where Grandad and Nanna were being held. If he told Ping the truth, she might refuse to help. And then he and Drew would be stuck.

  In the end, Frankie did the only thing he could do: he gave a big yawn and closed his eyes, pretending not to hear Ping’s request. And soon enough, he really was asleep.

  The morning brought some good news as Frankie entered the one-one-one-one code into the Sonic Suitcase.

  On the plus side, they hadn’t been tracked down and DEVOURED by those gnarly beasts from behind the wall. Also, Ping had told them they weren’t far from Beijing at all now. She predicted it would take a half-day’s walk south to get there, and so they wasted no time in heading off.

  Frankie wasn’t so keen on long walks, if he was honest. He’d once done a half-day Walkathon with his school and had forgotten to wear his sneakers, so he had to do the entire thing in his brand-new school shoes. By the end of the walk, his feet looked (and felt) like they had been in a molten lava foot-spa.