All at once, Prunella felt a strong rope being wrapped around her. As she was swung over a man’s shoulder, she caught a glimpse of his pinched nose and despicable grin. “What are you doing?” she gasped, too shocked even to scream.
“We are kidnapping you, of course,” said Mr. Fulcrumb, the foreman of the king’s pepper mill.
“But—but that isn’t nice,” said Prunella.
Mrs. Smudge struggled furiously against the rope that held her to the bony back of the foreman’s assistant. “Don’t just hang there, Prunella. Call for help! HEEEELLLLLLLLLLLP!!!”
“But there’s no one around to hear us!” wailed her daughter.
“That’s exactly right,” snickered Mr. Fulcrumb. “And no one would help you anyway. I’ve found twenty-eight new workers for the pepper mill this very morning, and you two lovely ladies are the icing on the cake.”
Prunella gazed in horror at the back of the foreman’s knees, which was all she could see of him. “You’re going to eat us?”
When their two captors only laughed, Mrs. Smudge sank her teeth into the closest part of the assistant’s body she could reach—which put a quick stop to the laughing, but not to the kidnapping.
Along the southern and southwestern borders of the woods, near the Smudges’ cottage, the trees grew more sparsely and were covered with pepper vines twisting up their trunks. The pepper mill was an ugly, tall, round stone structure farther to the west, just outside of Candlenut. It had a door on one side where the workers went in and a chute on the other side where the newly ground pepper came spewing out into big wooden carts to be taken to the castle.
Mrs. Smudge was livid and Prunella was weeping loudly when Mr. Fulcrumb and his assistant untied their hands and pushed them through the mill’s shadowy entrance. As soon as her hands were free the basket maker smacked the foreman across the face. “If you think I’m going to go one step further into this evil place, you are two quacks short of a roast duck. Let me and my daughter go immediately.”
“Ah, I would, I would, my good woman, but you see it is not I, but the king, who has requested your presence in this fine establishment. Spare the pepper and spoil the soup, you know.”
“Don’t you go quoting your crooked proverbs to me. It’s the rotted tree that catches the fire, I say!”
“Don’t bite the hand that keeps you out of prison.”
“Those who live in stone towers shouldn’t throw glasses!”
“Misery loves company.”
Mrs. Smudge opened her mouth and shut it again. Then she smoothed out her contorted face and folded her hands demurely in front of her. “I’m afraid I cannot be of service to you,” she said calmly.
“Why not?” demanded Mr. Fulcrumb.
“I have a moral objection to physical labor.”
“Then I hope you have no moral objection to dungeons, because that’s where you will be after you have been convicted of treason against the king. You and your pretty daughter.”
Prunella stared at him. “Mother, please, please do what he says!”
Mrs. Smudge sucked in her outrage and crossed her arms across her chest tightly, but her nostrils turned bright red. She followed Mr. Fulcrumb up the flight of stairs that lay just inside the entrance of the mill, kicking each step with her toe as she went and muttering under her breath.
Mr. Fulcrumb’s voice echoed above their heads. “You should be honored to be a part of such an important service to your king. Many hands make more pepper, you know.”
“No, it’s ‘Many hands make more baskets’! You always twist everything for your purposes! This is what comes of education. The more people think, the more they think up cruel things to do to other people. This is what my Persimmony will become, filling her head with books and dreaming of doing everything except what she was born and raised to do—making fine baskets, keeping a clean house, and putting bread on the table. Oh, Prunella, my poor lamb, my pretty puppet, whatever shall become of you? You are too young and beautiful to be slaving away in a pepper mill.” This time she caught the foreman’s heel with her toe.
Mr. Fulcrumb quickened his pace. “Save your breath, woman. You’ll be needing it when we get to the top.”
They certainly had little breath left when they reached the top of the staircase that spiraled its way around the inner wall of the mill. At first Mrs. Smudge and her daughter thought the mill was on fire, for the large room at its summit was thick with smoke. But the smoke was actually the fine, dusty residue of the pepper grinder in the center of the room. A huge vat sat on top of a wooden contraption with thick beams jutting out around it like spokes on a wheel. Lined up along each beam were several workers pushing it—men, women, and children. Mrs. Smudge stared anxiously at each child that passed by, but none was Persimmony.
Prunella sneezed. Mr. Fulcrumb handed her and Mrs. Smudge each a wooden clothespin. Puzzled, they looked at him and saw that he had taken another clothespin (this one made of gold) out of his pocket and put it on his nose. Then they realized that all of the people in the mill had wooden clothespins on their noses to keep from sneezing. So they did the same.
“That beab is yours,” said Mr. Fulcrumb, pointing to one empty beam in the turning wheel. He sounded a little less dignified with his nostrils pinched together, but no one was in the mood to laugh. He turned to the rest of the workers and bellowed, “FASTER! FASTER, YOU LAZY WEAKLIGS, OR YOU’LL BE SEEIG THE IDSIDE OF THE ROYAL DUD-GEODS TOBORROW!” Then he went back down the stairs, leaving them to their fate. His assistant silently stood guard by the door.
“Bay your sleep be full of dightbares and your bed be full of bosquitoes!” yelled Mrs. Smudge, but a moment later she was nearly flattened by five men coming up the stairs carrying huge sacks on their shoulders. The men mounted a platform that extended over the heads of the workers at the grinder and stopped just above the vat. They poured in pounds and pounds of peppercorns, dried black in the sun, from the storerooms beside the mill. Then they returned and trudged down the stairs again to gather more. Mrs. Smudge looked after them for a long time. Her husband had been a peppercorn picker too. He had climbed these very stairs and dumped his sack into that horrible hole. “Oh, by poor lost Sibeod,” she whispered. “What you had to put up with!”
She and Prunella took their places at their assigned beam and began to push.
Supper was a slice of stale bread and a cup of lukewarm water. (Mr. Fulcrumb kept all the good food for himself.) The drudgery continued until midnight, when a bell rang and the workers returned to their homes—everyone except the Smudges, who stumbled into the fresh night air, took off their clothespins, breathed deeply, found a patch of soft grass, and fell sound asleep under the full moon, dreaming of Persimmony and baskets and their own beds.
Chapter 11
IN WHICH OUR HEROES ARE ARMED WITH MIGHTY WEAPONS AND MANY PANCAKES ARE CONSUMED
Very well, then, she would prove there was a giant.
That was Persimmony’s first thought when she woke up the next morning with a sore neck but a clearer mind. She took her feet off the fluffy royal pillows (pleased to see the dirty footprints they left) and sat up to make her plans.
King Lucas thought he was getting rid of her by sending her to the Snoring Cave instead of with the soldiers, but if Theodore said there was such a thing as a giant, then she believed him. She would go to that cave and cut off a piece of the giant’s hair, or mustache, or eyelash, or whatever she could get her hands on. That’s what her father would do, she was sure of it.
She couldn’t wait to see the king’s face when he found out he really had been living on someone else’s stomach all his life.
It took a lot of thinking before Persimmony finally knocked on the door to the room where Worvil was sleeping. There was no answer. She opened it quietly and called out, “Worvil! Worvil, wake up! I’ve got wonderful news to tell you!”
“Gowaymmmshleepinmmmmmmf,” said a lump in the middle of the bed.
“Worvil, the king has chosen us to
go to the Snoring Cave and find the giant!”
The lump jumped and tumbled to the ground tangled in blankets. “WHAT?”
“Everyone is so envious of us. I mean, who wouldn’t want to explore a cave looking for a sleeping giant? It will be loads of fun.”
Worvil untangled himself from the blankets and stuck his head out to stare at Persimmony. “But I don’t want to go to the Western Shore! I don’t like caves! I want to stay right here where there are no Leafeaters and no tortoises and no Rumblebumps and especially no giants!”
“Oh, don’t be silly. We have the easiest job of all. We just have to go into the cave, peek to see if there’s the head of a giant there, and then leave. Nothing to it.”
“But the giant might wake up and eat us!”
“Giants don’t eat worriers. They taste sour.”
“But he might not know that until after he had bitten into me and spit me out again. I wonder what it’s like to be eaten. Do you suppose that you’d actually feel the teeth breaking your bones, or would you have a heart attack and die of fright first?”
“Worvil, don’t you see that if the giant does wake up, the most dangerous place to be in the entire kingdom is the castle? This whole mountain would collapse. Much better to be inside of a cave and out of harm’s way, I think.”
“Good point,” said Worvil.
“Of course it is. And besides, there might not even be a giant.”
“Oh, but there might be, there might be. And it’s the might be that worries me.”
“Listen,” Persimmony said more gently, “I promise that I’ll let you know if there’s anything you need to worry about, and you promise me that you won’t worry until I do. Okay?”
Worvil was quiet for a moment. “I have a feeling I’m going to come back from this trip two inches shorter.”
“What? Why would you be shorter?”
“I’ve been getting shorter for years. If you shrink from danger often enough, then you start to—well—shrink. Every month I have to roll up my sleeves and trouser legs a little more.” He heaved a long and heavy sigh. “One of my cousins was brave once. He jumped into the ocean to save a little girl who was drowning.”
“See? You have courage running through your blood after all.”
“A shark got him.”
Worvil was finally persuaded, however, and the two made their way to the great hall, where the king was having a special breakfast served to the two search parties. Theodore had not yet arrived. Persimmony wasn’t very happy to be sitting next to the archaeologist Dustin Dexterhoof, who was a walking dust cloud, but at least she had Worvil to her right. The twelve soldiers bound for the Leafeater city were happily stuffing their faces with banana fritters. Captain Gidding, who Persimmony thought was much more heroic-looking now that he was awake, was absentmindedly stirring salt into his tea and smiling up at the ceiling as if he saw a magnificent sunrise behind the wooden beams there.
When all the guests had had their fill, Lucas rose to his feet solemnly, wiped mango juice from his chin with the back of his hand, and cleared his throat. “My faithful, unimpeachable, indefatigable subjects, some of you will depart today to face crafty, cowardly enemies hiding underground among the worms and scheming up their diabolical mashed potatoes ...”
“Machinations, Your Highness,” whispered Professor Quibble.
“Others of you will undertake an investigation of gargantuan importance, to prove—or disprove—the existence of that dangerous creature they call a ...” He paused as he remembered that he had forbidden any mention of the giant and that the soldiers did not know about the rumors. “A cleft-lipped razor-barbed man-eating stingray,” he finished.
“Persimmony,” Worvil whispered, “I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to go after all.”
“Shhhh! I can’t hear the king,” Persimmony whispered back.
Lucas adjusted his crown and smiled broadly at the faces of his guests. “Of course, I know why you are willing to risk your lives in such heroic tasks: Me. You love your king. If I may say so, I don’t blame you—”
Lucas was interrupted by the sudden appearance of the potter, who was carrying a bulky sack over one shoulder. “So sorry, so sorry,” he said, out of breath.
“You’re late,” snapped Lucas. “You missed breakfast and a very eloquent speech. I spent a whole hour looking up all the big words in the dictionary.”
“Well, if the soldiers hadn’t dumped all of my pots in a pile in the kitchen and the cook hadn’t started putting them away with the royal dishes, I could have come a lot sooner. I have some gifts.” He drew one clay pot out of his sack and set it in front of Worvil. He set a second one in front of Persimmony. With delight, she immediately recognized it as the elegant pot she had seen on the grass outside the potter’s cottage. When he gave it to her, he looked her straight in the eye and whispered, “Find the giant. Quickly. Everything will depend on you.” She looked back at him questioningly, but he said nothing more.
“She shouldn’t get one!” said King Lucas. “Give the pot to Captain Gidding. He’s in charge of the assault against the Leafeaters—he’s important!”
“Oh, I don’t mind.” Captain Gidding smiled and went back to studying the ceiling again.
“The pot belongs to the one to whom I give it,” said Theodore, “and I give this one to Persimmony.”
Lucas was about to object again but stopped when the potter drew a third pot out of his sack and set it at the head of the table. It was a pot fit for a king—large, stout, and covered with intricate patterns traced in the clay. King Lucas gave a squeal of pleasure and thrust his hand deep into the pot. An instant later, he pulled it out again as if he had been stung. His hand was soaking wet. “What’s this?” he cried, and licked his palm. “Milk! I hate milk! I wanted pepper, not milk. What is the meaning of this?”
“I only make the pots,” said Theodore. “I am not responsible for what comes out of them.”
Persimmony gazed at her pot with a bubble of excitement in her stomach. What could it hold? A long, shiny sword sharp enough to slice through the skull of a giant with a single blow? A suit of armor glimmering like the sun on the sea, so light that she could run a race in it, so strong that a whole army of Leafeaters could not penetrate it?
She put her hand in cautiously, wary of what had happened to the king, but her fingers met something soft. When she pulled it out, she saw that it was a feather with a long, white plume.
The bubble in her stomach popped. Disappointed, she looked at the potter. “A feather, Theodore? Is that all? How is a feather going to help me?”
“I have no idea,” said Theodore, inspecting the feather curiously. “But you will need it, that is certain.”
Meanwhile Worvil was inspecting his own pot. It was very thin and very tall, just large enough for his hand to fit into, and though he tried several times to look he could not see what was inside. Reach into that? With who-knows-what-unseen-slimy-disgusting-creatures waiting at the bottom to bite off his fingers? But he did, though it cost him several heartbeats, and nothing bit him. He pulled out a long, round, hollow piece of wood. One end was flattened, and there were small holes, evenly spaced, down the length of the wood.
Guafnoggle took the strange object out of Worvil’s hands, turned it over several times, put the flat end in his mouth, and blew hard. Out came a high-pitched, ear-piercing “SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEAK!”
“I know what that is!” cried the archaeologist. “I once discovered one buried underneath a decayed fishing boat. Well, of course that one was a lot dirtier than this one—perhaps the objects are distant cousins rather than exactly the same thing—but to come to the point—”
“What is it?” asked Lucas, Persimmony, and Worvil at the same time.
“It’s an ancient musical instrument called a flute!” said the archaeologist.
“That’s not music,” said Persimmony, holding her ears. “If anything will wake up the giant, that will.”
“Shhhh!” said Lucas
at the mention of the giant.
Professor Quibble tapped his chin thoughtfully. “So . . . the kingdom faces its worst crisis in history armed with a feather, a flute, and a pot of milk.”
“We’re doomed,” Worvil groaned.
Captain Gidding rose from his seat. “Your Highness, I have just finished composing a poetic ode to sweet potatoes, in fifty-two stanzas. May I recite it for you?”
“No!” said Lucas, and that was the end of breakfast.
The two parties departed from the front gates soon afterward. Persimmony, Worvil, and Guafnoggle headed west. Captain Gidding and the twelve soldiers headed east.
Standing in the highest tower, King Lucas watched miserably as they departed. He had carried his pot up with him and every so often would peek inside, hoping that somehow there had been a mistake and the milk would magically turn into pepper—or at least something besides milk. Gold would do. But apparently the milk was there to stay.
“I’ll punish that wicked potter. I’ll force him to do nothing but make pots until he gives me pepper.”
A cool breeze blew through the window. Lucas shivered and turned away. “I think I’ll take a very long bubble bath. In fact, I think I could spend the rest of the week taking bubble baths.” He started down the stairs, but something warm against his leg stopped him.
He looked down. It was a gray cat, its hair matted and its bones sticking out sharply from its thin body. Lucas gave it a kick, and the cat let out a cry of pain. “Get out of my way, you ugly beast,” he muttered, and took another step down the stairs. Then an idea occurred to him, and he turned around and came back. He took a bowl, set it down on the floor, and poured the entire contents of Theodore’s pot into it.
“Ha! If that potter thinks I’m going to drink his milk, he can think again. There it goes, every drop, down the belly of a mangy animal. Serves him right!”
The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic Page 7