The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom (22 page)

The giant laughed. Gustav took advantage of his foe’s momentary distraction, biting down hard on Reese’s thumb. With a yip of pain, the giant dropped Gustav.

“Now!” Gustav shouted as he tumbled to the ground. “Get him now!”

“Get him how?” Duncan asked. He looked at the sword in his hand. Unsure of what he should do, he tossed his weapon at the giant. The sword flipped through the air a couple of times and landed softly on the grass only a few feet away.

“That was the most pathetic thing I’ve ever seen,” said Gustav.

Duncan stepped forward to retrieve his sword, tripped over his belt, hit his head on a rock, and knocked himself out cold.

“I spoke too soon,” said Gustav. “
That
was the most pathetic thing I’ve ever seen.”

“Duncan!” Frederic hollered, rushing out into the open.

“Another one?” Reese griped.

“What are you doing out here, Tassels?” Gustav said. “Get back behind the rocks!”

The giant took one huge step toward Frederic, bending over in an attempt to scoop the prince up. Gustav tried to stop him. Jabbing Reese with his sword was useless, so he tried a long, hard, slicing blow along the arch of the giant’s foot.
That
Reese felt.

“Ow!” the giant hollered. “I have
got
to get some footwear!” He hopped onto one foot, stumbled, and fell, just as he’d done once before. This time, however, the giant did not topple into the nearby tower.

This time, he landed directly on top of Frederic.

15

P
RINCE
C
HARMING
S
HOULD
N
OT
B
E
L
EFT
U
NSUPERVISED

B
ack in Sylvaria, Snow White was thoroughly enjoying the peace and quiet.

Out in the vast yard of her woodland estate, she kicked off her bow-tipped shoes, loosened the laces on her bow-bedecked teal bodice, and let her bow-trimmed skirt billow around her as she fell backward into the thick, cushiony grass. Flat on her back, she stared up at clouds and tree branches and giggled with contentment. This was how she’d spent much of her childhood.

She smiled at a flock of geese passing overhead, then turned her head to look at a curious bunny that approached her and sniffed at her hair. No one yelled out a strange name for the rabbit.

“Hello, little one,” Snow whispered as the bunny’s long whiskers tickled her cheek. She took a deep breath and sighed.

Snow rolled over onto her belly and rested her chin in her hands to watch a bluebird land on the carved wooden bench that sat by her garden wall.

“Hello, Thursday Bird,” Snow greeted it. “Back again like clockwork.”

She hummed a tune as she plucked blades of grass and began to weave them together into a little square. Chances are that square would have eventually become a potholder (she’d made
thousands
of them), but we’ll never know for sure, because Snow White stopped when she suddenly realized something terrible.

“Thursday Bird?” she gulped, dropping her weaving project and hopping anxiously to her feet. “Wait—you can’t be Thursday Bird, can you? Because I just saw Sunday Bird splashing in the birdbath right after Duncan left.”

Fig. 32 BIRDS of the WEEK

But this was definitely Thursday Bird. She made sure by sticking her face startlingly close to the poor little thing—and getting an angry peck in return. Stepping back and rubbing her sore nose, Snow began to fret. Thursday Bird had never been off its schedule before.

She tried to think. How many sunsets had she watched since Duncan left? There was the first one, when she thought to herself how pleasant it was to watch the moon rise without accompanying flute music. And there was the one when she saw the flying kitten that might have really just been a bat. And the windy one. And the one where she remembered thinking that nothing happened, but that that was a good thing.

“Oh, dear,” Snow exclaimed. “Duncan’s been gone for five days!”

She began to pace back and forth, clapping her hands together nervously. He was only going for a walk, she thought. Walks shouldn’t take five days. How could she not have realized that so much time had passed?

In truth, it wasn’t out of character for Snow White to be so absentminded. She was a simple girl who enjoyed simple pleasures. Most of her life had been spent happily alone, admiring shrubbery and chuckling at wildlife. Without Duncan’s manic energy stealing her focus, Snow easily slid back into that quiet, solitary state—and managed to lose track of her husband.

Now she was worried. While Snow loved Duncan, she had no more faith in his abilities than anyone else. She pictured all manner of strange and awful things that might have happened to him out there on his own. He might have climbed onto the roof of a house and not known how to get down. He might have tried to count the teeth in the mouth of a sleeping wolf. He could have passed out somewhere after trying to see if he could hold his breath and count to a million. With Duncan, the possibilities for calamity were endless.

Snow waved her fist angrily in the air. “Where are you, Monday Bird? Why didn’t you warn me when the first day had passed?”

Just then she heard approaching footsteps. Her heart leapt. She ran to the garden gate.

“Duncan!”

“No, it’s us,” said Frank the dwarf, as he, Flik, and Frak entered Snow White’s yard. Snow slumped miserably when she saw them.

“Thanks for the enthusiastic welcome,” Frank said.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to be rude,” she said drearily. “You know I’m always happy to see you fellows. But I was really hoping you were Duncan. He’s been missing for five days.”

“Jeez, has it been that long?” Flik asked grumpily. “No wonder I’m tired.”

“What do you mean?” Snow asked. “You know he’s missing?”

“Don’t worry,” Frank said. “We’ve been watching out for him. And if we really thought those bandits were going to kill him, we would have done something about it.”

“Bandits!” Snow was aghast. “What bandits?”

“I don’t know,” Frank said with a shrug. “Just some bandits. They’re gone now. And they didn’t kill him. So what’s the big deal?”

“Where is Duncan now?” Snow demanded. She was beginning to get irritated.

“The Idiot Prince didn’t want to come back with us,” Frank replied gruffly.

“Hey,” Snow said. “You know I don’t like it when you call him the Idiot Prince.”

“Sorry,” said Frank. “The Idiot didn’t want to come back with us.”

Snow bent over and pressed her forehead against Frank’s. “Enough with the insults,” she said with a quiet intensity that shook the normally unflappable dwarf.

“O-okay,” he muttered. Beads of sweat ran down his forehead and pooled at the tip of his bulbous nose. Flik and Frak tried to subtly inch away.

“Where is Duncan
now
?” Snow growled.

“Sturmhagen. He’s with a bunch of other guys who all call themselves Prince Charming,” Frank said. “They’re planning to rescue Cinderella from some witch’s tower or something.”

“Prince Charming rescuing Cinderella from a witch’s tower?” Snow repeated, backing off a bit. “What, are they doing a reenactment? I think they’re getting their stories mixed up.”

“No, this is for real. Real Cinderella, real witch.”

“Duncan will be killed,” Snow said. “I can’t believe you three left him there.”

“He ordered us to go,” Frank explained. “He thought it was most important for us to get word to you about where he was. And to give you this stick.” He handed Snow the odd twig he’d gotten from Duncan. “He thought it looked like a pony.”

Snow was flabbergasted. “I can’t believe you listened to him. The man has no sense!”

“But—”

“Listen, I love Duncan dearly, but he
cannot
be left unsupervised,” Snow said. “What was he thinking? Storming a tower? Facing a witch? And this stick is
obviously
shaped like a
cat
.”

“Um, I hate to say this,” Frank mumbled. “But I think they mentioned something about a giant, too.”

Snow was breathing in and out in short, rapid bursts of air, her normally pale white cheeks now pinker than the dwarfs had ever seen. Then, quite suddenly, she regained control of herself. She stood up tall and straight, stared icily at the dwarfs, and cleared her throat. She calmly slipped her feet back into her shoes.

“Gentlemen, get my wagon ready,” she said authoritatively. “You’re taking me to Duncan.”

In earlier times, the meek and quiet Snow White would never have been so demanding. But there was something about living with Duncan that brought out the ferociousness in her.

16

P
RINCE
C
HARMING
M
EETS A
P
IECE OF
W
OOD

I
n order to make sure she’d be taken seriously as a villain, Zaubera had carefully noted the props and set pieces that appeared in every famous witch story she’d heard—cobwebs, broomsticks, jars of dried dead things—and then proceeded to fill her headquarters with as much of that stuff as she could find. Her stronghold was so cluttered with these bits of highly unoriginal witch decor that Liam had to be careful not to trip over a pumpkin or bump into a basket of poisoned apples as he snuck along the winding stone corridors.