The Hero's Guide to Being an Outlaw (4 page)

“Blink!” Frederic said.

“All right, all right. I’ll give him another tear,” Rapunzel said. “Just hold on a sec; I’m going to have a hard time working this one up.”

“No, Blink and Deedle!” Frederic said. Two blue lights hovered just outside the cage door, keeping up with the rolling wagon. “Did you bring the crowbar?”

“Too heavety,” Blink said, shaking her little head.

“You need to go get help then,” Frederic whispered to them, glancing around to make sure none of their captors were watching.

“Who?” Rapunzel asked. “None of our friends are within even a day’s ride of here.”

“Right . . . Aha!” Frederic’s eyes lit up. “Go to Castle Sturmhagen and tell Gustav’s brothers we need their assistance.”

“No,” Gustav said adamantly. “Nuh-uh. Not gonna happen.” Gustav’s older brothers were bullies, plain and simple. All sixteen of them. They’d tormented their youngest sibling for his entire life: mocking him, pulling pranks on him, and stealing his glory whenever possible. These were the very men who undeservedly took credit for the League’s rescue of the kidnapped bards.

“Sixteen strong fighters who can probably catch up to us with just a couple hours of riding,” Frederic said. “Sorry, Gustav, they’re our best hope. Go, sprites—alert the princes of Sturmhagen! And be speedy about it.” Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed the intense way Rapunzel was looking at him. He thought it might be admiration. Either that or he had a piece of apple skin stuck between his front teeth. He shut his mouth, just in case.

The sprites rocketed off.

Still holding his foot in the air, Gustav grumbled, “Just what I was hoping for—a family reunion.”

Twenty minutes later, Blink and Deedle arrived at the stark, white-stone walls of Castle Sturmhagen. An hour of searching its antler- and fur-festooned halls, however, proved fruitless. Not one prince was to be found. The sprites hovered under a stuffed caribou head, baffled.

“No biggety princes,” Deedle said.

“Impossible,” Blink replied impatiently. “Should be so many.”

A maid wearing an elk-hide apron stepped out of a nearby bedroom and jumped in terror. “Get away from me, you wee blue demons!” she shouted.

“Wrong thing!” Blink snapped. She crossed her arms and, though she was hovering in midair, she tapped her foot as if there were solid ground beneath her. “Tell us where biggety princes are.”

“We havety message for them,” Deedle added.

“Message, eh?” The maid squinted skeptically at the creatures floating before her. “Well, you’re in the wrong place. Down in the dungeon’s where they are.”

“Princes guard prisoners?” Deedle asked.

“The princes
are
the prisoners,” the maid said. “Quite a shock, I know. All sixteen of ’em turned traitor. King Olaf himself, the lads’ own father, had to lock ’em away. All of us around here are takin’ the news pretty hard. I don’t even know what those boys did to— Wait a minute. Why am I telling this to you? I don’t even know what you are. I should— Huh? Where’d you go?”

The sprites had zoomed up to the throne room, where they hid behind a wall-mounted torch spying on King Olaf. The seven-foot-tall monarch sat hunched on his pinewood throne like an old, gray grizzly. The sprites would have flown right up to him and demanded to know why he’d imprisoned his sons, but the king was not alone. The left-hand throne, usually reserved for Queen Berthilda, was filled (or overfilled, actually) by a stranger—a man who was so tremendously muscular that he made Olaf look like a dwarf in comparison. The enormous mountain of a man sat there, breathing heavily, a red-and-black mask tied around the top of his head and an insanely long, ropelike mustache dangling all the way to his belly.

The sprites had never seen Wrathgar before, so they didn’t know he was the sadistic dungeon master who’d nearly killed Gustav months earlier. Nor did they know that Wrathgar was one of Lord Rundark’s fiercest and most trusted generals. But they knew trouble when they saw it. They fled immediately.

“What now?” Blink asked as they darted out into the cobblestone courtyard.

“Need someone else to helpety Zel,” Deedle panted.

“Ooh! Princety Charmings!” Blink yipped with inspiration.

“Two Princety Charmings stuckety with Zel.”

“Yes, but there two more. Zel say so. And one is the bestety hero of all.”

“Which one?”

Blink squeezed her eyes shut, thought for a moment, then popped them back open. “Duncan! Princety Duncan. He live in Sylvaria.”

Deedle shrugged. “Let’s go to Sylvaria!”

C
astlevaria, the home of Sylvaria’s ruling family, was different from the royal palaces of other kingdoms. For one thing, it was bright salmon pink. Most castle makers stick with the raw stone look or, if they’re going for something fancier, perhaps polished marble. But Castlevaria was designed by its primary resident, King King—a man who had once instructed his royal scientists to “jazz up the rainbow.” “Try sticking a new color between orange and yellow,” he’d told them. The scientists all quit after that.

In fact, over the course of their twenty-five years in power, King King and Queen Apricotta had seen virtually everyone who worked for them resign. By this point the castle staff consisted only of three untrained guards, a one-armed chambermaid, and a nine-year-old houseboy named Pip. The royal family had to take care of almost everything themselves. Which is why Snow White, wife to Sylvaria’s Prince Duncan, was beginning to regret their decision to leave their woodland estate and move into Castlevaria.

“Dunky, you know I’m never one to shy away from chores—they provide an excellent opportunity for whistling,” Snow said while working her way through the washing of a four-foot-high stack of plates (the queen had served blueberries for breakfast and decided it would be fun to put each berry on its own plate). Even while toiling at the sink, the petite princess wore an elaborate dress of her own creation—this one was canary yellow with swirly ribbons dangling from the sleeves. She paused to pull one of the ribbons out of the soapy water. “But living here is exhausting.”

Fig. 4
CASTLEVARIA

Duncan, who was sitting at his kitchen “author’s desk” (he had one in every room), did not look up from the pages of the book in which he was writing. “I’m sorry, Snowy. But aren’t you happy that I’ve gotten so much closer to my family?” he said. He wore an outfit that was, for Duncan, relatively subdued—a velvet vest, puffy blue pantaloons, and curly-toed shoes. Sitting atop his wavy black hair was a miniature derby that Snow had made for him as a congratulations-on-saving-the-kingdom gift. “And I’m getting a lot of work done on my book here,” he continued, tapping the pages of his almost-finished
Hero’s Guide to Being a Hero
. “I’m about to start the chapter on the dangers of ill-fitting leggings.”

He glanced over at his wife. “But I don’t want you to be unhappy,” he said. “Do you think we should go back to live with the dwarfs again?”

Snow sighed and adjusted her acorn-encrusted tiara. “No. But are you sure we can’t hire some more people to help out around here?”

“No one else will work here,” Duncan said with an apologetic shrug. “It’s not like we haven’t tried to get people. And you should have seen some of the incentives my family has offered to potential servants—unlimited use of the royal toenail clipper, all the asparagus you can eat, a new origami pigeon every Friday . . . although we probably shouldn’t have offered that one, since none of us knows how to do origami.”

“Pip, what do you like about working here?” Snow asked, turning to the grubby-faced boy who was sweeping one of Castlevaria’s fifty-seven fireplaces.

“Well, I like feeling safe,” he said. “My last boss was an ogre. Literally. I was always afraid I might end up his next meal.”

“That’s it,” Duncan said cheerily. “I’ll make up some new Help Wanted signs: ‘Come work for the royal family. We will not eat you.’ Figgy Shortshanks!” That last bit was Duncan naming a mouse that skittered out of the cupboard.

Just then, the kitchen door suddenly flew off its hinges. (Don’t worry; it had never been attached.) “That is exciting
every
time,” King King said, clapping. “I’m going to do it again.” The gangly monarch stood the door back up, pushed it down with a crash, and applauded once more. As he bounced, his hair, curling up from beneath his pillow-top crown, flapped like a pair of wings.

“Come along, Son,” the king said. “I need to teach you all about ruling a kingdom.”

“No, you don’t, Dad,” Duncan speedily replied. “Anyway, I’ve got a book to finish. My fans are waiting.” He returned to scribbling on a blank page.

Perhaps you can relate. If you have ever been a child (and I’m reasonably sure you have), then you’ve no doubt experienced the frustration of having a parent pull you away from an enjoyable pastime in order to instruct you on how to reattach loose buttons, clean leaves out of rain gutters, or separate egg yolks—and you have paid little attention because you know in your heart that you will never in your life have cause to do such things. That is exactly how Duncan was feeling at that moment. Even though he was fully grown. Adults don’t really like it when their parents tell them how to do something either. And in this case, Duncan was justified, since his father’s skills as a ruler were questionable at best.

“Nonsense,” King King said, flourishing his red-and-green-checkered robe. “Come with me.” He took his son by the hand and pulled him from his seat.

“Have fun,” Snow chirped as her husband was yanked out of the room.

“Dad, do we have to do this?” Duncan moaned.

“Yes, yes. Very important business,” the king said. He led Duncan down a long, twisting corridor into a large chamber, the walls of which were lined with dried-pasta mosaics. “Ah, here we are,” the monarch said. He pointed to a cushiony armchair upholstered with tiger-striped velvet. “That is a throne. That’s where the king sits. And if you’ll look to the left, you’ll see another throne. And that lady in it is a queen.”

“Yes, I know,” Duncan mumbled, waving to his mother halfheartedly.

“Hello, Duncan,” Queen Apricotta said with a smile, her bright-orange pigtails waggling. “Ooh, is it time for you to learn about all your future kingly duties?”

“Apparently so,” Duncan said sourly. “Even though I don’t think—”

But King King tugged him over to the two inky-haired twins who were standing by the window staring at each other through thick, round goggles. “You probably also know Mavis and Marvella,” the king said.

“For sixteen years now,” Duncan said with a sigh.

The girls turned to look at their brother. “Duncan, you’ve turned huge,” Marvella gasped.

“No, girls, he’s still Duncan size,” the queen said from her throne. “You’ve just got your magnifying goggles on.”

The twins lifted their goggles and nodded. “Ah.”

“We were playing Shrinky People,” Mavis explained. The girls put their goggles back on. “Ahh! We’ve shrunk again! Everything’s giant!”

“Yes, Mavis and Marvella are your sisters,” the king said. “But they have official titles as well. Mavis is Royal Treasurer, which means she keeps track of all the kingdom’s gold. And Marvella is . . . hmm, I want to say Minister of Poultry. I don’t quite remember. But neither job is very important. Being king, however,
is
very important. When you are king, you have a lot to do. You make proclamations—about things like what our national insect will be, or whether a meal can really be called brunch if it’s served after noon. As king you decide what color to paint the fence. You look at maps; you organize chickens— No, wait, that’s probably Marvella’s job. But most importantly, there are people—real people—who live out there in Sylvaria who are called ‘subjects.’ And occasionally, those subjects
need
something. So they come here to the castle to ask you for it. Which is so nice, because people actually
come here
.”

Duncan had missed most of his father’s speech; he was watching his sisters and thinking how fun those magnifying goggles looked. When he realized the king had stopped talking, he turned to him and asked, “But why are you telling me all this? You’re king, not me.”

“For the time being,” King King said. “But someday I won’t be around anymore, and the kingdom will be passed on to you. Maybe sooner than you think.”

Duncan frowned. “That’s a bit doom-and-gloomy for you, Dad. You’re still young. Well, not
young
young—you have a lot of nose hair, and you smell like old library books. But young for a king. Look at Snow’s father, the king of Yondale; he’s a hundred and twelve and still has all his original teeth—by which I mean his baby teeth. It’s very odd to see an old man with such itty-bitty teeth in his mouth. My point is: You’ll be around for years and years yet, so why bother with this?”

King King chuckled. “Don’t worry, Son; I’m not foreshadowing my own demise or anything,” he said, patting Duncan on the head. “I just want to make sure you’re ready to rule the realm someday. Now come along. Let me show you where we keep the royal back scratcher.”

But the back scratcher would have to wait. At that very moment, two glowing blue sprites burst into the throne room.

“Visitors!” Queen Apricotta squealed in delight, and began primping her pigtails.

Mavis and Marvella flipped up their goggles and gawked. “
Real
shrinky people,” Marvella whispered in awe.

“Are you the ambassadors from Fairyland?” the king asked. “I’ve been waiting for you. You’re seventeen years late. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. How was your trip?”

“We needs Princety Charming!” Deedle cried.

“Princety Duncan!” Blink clarified.

“That’s me!” Duncan blurted in surprise. “That’s both me! As long as ‘princety’ and ‘prince’ mean the same thing.”

“Really? You?” Deedle asked skeptically.

Duncan nodded. The sprites looked at each other and shrugged.

“Creepety men took Zel,” Blink said.

“Who’s Zel?” Duncan asked.

“You sure you right guy?” Deedle asked. “Zel! Goldety hair, fixety people . . .”

“Oh, you mean Punzy,” Duncan said.

“No, we mean Zel. Who’s Punzy?” Deedle snipped.

“Frederic and Gustav, too,” Blink interjected. “Creepety men grabbed all of them.”

That was all Duncan needed to hear. He raised his chin and declared, “Duty calls, everyone! I must go!”

He saw his family’s faces droop. “Don’t worry, though. I’ll be back. And I’ll bring souvenirs!” Everybody smiled again.

Ten seconds later, after getting as many details as he could from the sprites, Duncan ran back to the kitchen and pushed down the door. “Frederic, Gustav, and Rapunzel have been captured! I’ve got to go rescue them at once!”

Snow dropped the plate she was washing back into the sink. “I’ll grab our things,” she said eagerly.

“You want to come with me?” Duncan asked, surprised. “On an adventure?”

“As long as we get to leave the castle, yes.”

They dashed off together. Pip looked up mournfully from his soot pile. “There go the only half-sane people in this place,” he said. “But then again, who am I to judge? I’m talking to myself.”

“Dunky, should we get Liam to help us?” Snow asked as they grabbed their horses from the stable.

Duncan shook his head. “I wouldn’t want to bother him on his honeymoon.”