“My poor, brave, reckless, unlucky, darling husband,” said Mrs. Smudge. “He always knew the world needed to be saved from something; he just had trouble figuring out what, that’s all. Maybe everything did go wrong when he tried to save people, but at least he tried! Not like some people, who sit around all day talking about ‘noble causes’ instead of being noble. But it’s obvious you are cowards, and I have a deep and abiding moral objection to cowardice in all forms. So, good day!” She began to turn her back on them.
“Wait!” said Flack. He looked at her doubtfully. “I assume, then, that you also have a moral objection to injustice, oppression, tyranny, prejudice against turnips, cruelty to animals, and overcooked eggs?”
“Especially overcooked eggs.”
Flack was silent for a few moments. “Ned, I believe I like Smudges. In fact, I don’t know why I never thought of rebelling before. Why not us? Why not, after all? We’ve got brains. We’ve got strength. We’ve got an all-consuming desire to do good in this world. So I say, let’s do it!”
“Hear, hear!” said Ned.
“Be quiet, you ninny,” shushed Mrs. Smudge. “Do you want to give our plans away?”
“But we don’t have any plans yet,” whispered Flack.
So they put their heads together—at least Flack, Ned, and Mr. Smudge put their heads together, while Prunella buried her head in her apron—and came up with a scheme to free the pepper mill workers. Then the conspirators climbed back up the stairs to the top of the pepper mill, took their places again at the wheel, and waited eagerly for the right moment to put their plan into action.
Persimmony raced past the pepper mill along the road leading to the Willow Woods. She knew she had to hurry—there was no telling how close the Leafeater diggers were to the giant’s feet—and yet something held her back. Gradually the road faded into grass and dirt, and she ran more and more slowly, until at last she trudged with a heavy heart. And as she paused to take a breath, she saw to her right, tucked behind a tangle of bushes, her own cottage.
It looked so small and vulnerable. A giant could blow it over gently with a breath. But it belonged to a world in which there were no giants, no soldiers, and no Leafeaters with disastrous plans—only dirty dishes, baskets made of sea grass and palm leaves, and quarrels with Prunella. She could walk through that door and receive the punishment coming to her, and do her chores, and go to bed, and forget the creature in the cave and the painful lump inside of her that wouldn’t go away.
She hesitated, but only for a moment. “Mother! Prunella!” She ran into the cottage. The broom lay on the grass outside the window. The broken pieces of the Giving Pot were gathered in a corner by the fireplace. The willow wands and branches waited in neat piles.
Grabbing the quilt from her bed, Persimmony climbed down the ladder to the little cellar underneath the cottage and sat amidst the jars and the musty old blankets, with the basket from the cave beside her. For the first time since her journey started, she wanted to cry. She pulled the quilt over her head and tried very hard, but no tears would come out. Brave of heart and light of foot . . . Adventures were so much simpler when they happened inside her head.
Everyone had laughed at him—her father. They had laughed as if he was just a silly man instead of the hero she knew he must be. How could they do that? It was like laughing at a giant. It was like a mighty giant had shrunk to the size of an earthworm. She didn’t want her father to be an earthworm. She put her head on her knees and pressed the ends of her hair against her closed eyelids.
Ever since the cave, she had been secretly hoping that she would find her father in the Leafeater city, and they would stop the Leafeaters together, and he would help her make everyone believe because he had seen the giant too. But Rhedgrave Rhinkle had said that the Leafeaters never kidnapped anyone, and Rheuben Rhinkle had said there was no one in Willowroot like her. The Rhinkles could have been lying, of course. If they had actually kidnapped someone, would they admit it? But Rheuben had believed her. And she believed him.
Where was her father, then? Perhaps he—perhaps—
Perhaps he had passed her in a crowd of people and not recognized her, because she was just an ordinary little girl who had never done anything worth noticing. Perhaps he had snuck up to the cottage one day, peeked through the window, taken one look at her, and decided not to come back after all.
On the other hand, she thought more practically, perhaps he had taken one look at Prunella.
There was only one possibility left that she could think of: He had never made it out of the cave. She remembered the giant’s teeth, glimmering in the faint light of the torch. She remembered the quivering and quaking of his enormous mouth as he dreamed. If someone got too close . . .
This was too much. This was unbearable. She shook herself as if she were waking up from a nightmare. But the nightmare wasn’t over yet.
Where were her mother and sister? Maybe she should go and find them. They could fill this cellar with apples and berries, and stay here until the danger had passed. The giant might stomp the cottage to bits, but they would be safe under the ground. But what if she didn’t find them in time?
What was Worvil doing? She remembered what he had said: “I wonder what it’s like to be eaten.” Ugh! Sometimes she wished she didn’t have quite such a good imagination.
There was no stopping the worst from happening unless someone stopped the Leafeaters from digging. What if—?
She reached into the basket and picked up the little pine-needle creations and turned them over and over in her hands. And now she realized what the second one was: a grasshopper, with little twigs for legs and wings covered with silvery, wispy strands of a spider-web. A turtle and a grasshopper. He had taken them with him into the cave—why? To remind him of her and Prunella? To give himself courage to face a giant for their sake?
Her father wasn’t a failure. He had saved twelve starfish from a hungry sea otter.
He was brave. He wouldn’t have hidden under a quilt when his family was in danger. If he saw her now, would he be proud of her?
Persimmony threw off the quilt. There was a kingdom to save. She climbed back up to the cottage and began filling her father’s basket with whatever bits of food she could find. A little water jug on the floor had a dead frog inside, but she dumped it out and filled the jug with water. She was about to throw the dead frog out the window, but changed her mind and put it on Prunella’s pillow. There—things felt a little bit normal again. Smiling, she set her face toward the woods.
Chapter 16
IN WHICH CAPTAIN GIDDING SHOWS HIS VALOR WITH COCONUTS
And so Persimmony was back where she had started only two nights ago. She climbed through the bushes to the dirt path that led into the Willow Woods and all the way to the potter’s cottage. Only this time, the woods were silent—and she was careful to stay on the path.
Her plan was to stick close to the potter’s cottage and walk in wider and wider circles looking for one of the large willows that Rheuben had described. When she arrived at the cottage, however, she found it occupied. The king’s soldiers had been given no directions for how to find Willowroot—since of course no one knew were it was—and so they had come here, to the only place in the woods where they had been before. They had already lost one of their number—a soldier had sat down in a patch of poison ivy and had run screaming and itching all the way back up Mount Majestic.
Captain Gidding was walking around the cottage, sniffing wildflowers and peering into gopher holes. It was his first time outside the castle in ten years (usually his job was to be the king’s personal bodyguard, which meant standing outside the royal bedroom and swatting mosquitoes at night), and therefore he was in ecstasy over everything around him. He spotted Persimmony and ran to greet her with his arms full of white and yellow blossoms. “Do you smell that?” he cried. “It is the sweet aroma of honeysuckle. Is there anything more lovely in all the world?”
Captain Gidding’s face was so open
and honest. Persimmony knew that, even if he didn’t believe her, he at least would not laugh at her. She untied the hair belt from around her waist and told him everything she had seen.
Slowly the excitement in Captain Gidding’s eyes turned to quiet awe. He took the giant’s hair in his hands, stroking it reverently. “To think that we live in a world where such a being exists! Doesn’t the island seem bigger to you all of a sudden, knowing that it contains a giant?”
Persimmony had not thought about this. She was too busy thinking about what the island would be like if everything on it were squashed flat. “Then you believe me?”
The captain looked at her as if she had asked a nonsensical question. “Of course!”
“Then you see why I’ve got to find the Leafeaters and tell them as soon as possible to stop digging into the mountain?”
“Brave girl, you have looked upon a creature whose presence would have shattered the hearts of most grown men. I will follow you to the depths of the earth if I can serve you in this worthy quest.”
Persimmony felt as if every heroic tale she had ever told herself under the quilt at night was suddenly bursting out into the daylight.
“Then find something that will make marks on the trees and let’s start searching,” she said. “We don’t have much time left before—”
She was interrupted by a cry of rapture from Captain Gidding. “A buttermilk-blue-dappled butterfly! I never believed that I should live to see such a thing. Oh, there it goes!”
“That’s nice, Captain Gidding, but did you hear what I said? We need to hurry . . . Captain Gidding, where are you going? Stop!” The captain was rapidly disappearing into the trees—still holding the giant’s hair. The other eleven soldiers, seeing their superior take off with such speed, obediently jumped up and followed. “Wait!” cried Persimmony. “You’ve got my hair!” And she ran after them.
It was nearly dusk when Mr. Fulcrumb began to climb the pepper mill stairs to check on his workers, as he did every evening. He went slowly, loudly, knowing that above him they were all trembling at the sound of his approach.
And all were—except four. Flack, Ned, Mrs. Smudge, and Prunella heard the footsteps and looked at one another across the crowded room. Mrs. Smudge winked.
Mr. Fulcrumb reached the top of the stairs and stopped beside his assistant to survey the workers. They were a lovely picture, soaked in sweat with their hair plastered to their foreheads like that. “Faster! Faster!” he yelled.
Mrs. Smudge stumbled out of line. She clutched her heart, spun around twice, and collapsed onto the floor.
Prunella shrieked and rushed to her side.
Mr. Fulcrumb didn’t move. “Get back to work.”
Prunella threw her clothespin across the room and cried out, “You’ve killed her! You’ve killed her! Oh, Mother, darling Mother, don’t leave me here in this wretched place with this horrible man. Aaaaaachooo!”
“GET BACK TO WORK!” Mr. Fulcrumb said.
But Prunella sobbed and Prunella wailed and Prunella sneezed and Prunella blubbered, until not a person in the room could bear the sound of her suffering a moment longer . . . for if there was one talent in the world Prunella possessed, it was a gift for going into hysterics.
The grinder slowed. The other workers paused and turned to see what was happening. Ned and Flack emerged from the shadows.
Mr. Fulcrumb walked over to where Prunella sat beside Mrs. Smudge. “Did you hear be? I said . . . get . . . back . . . to . . . WORK!!!!”
Flack jumped forward and grabbed the foreman’s arms from behind. Mrs. Smudge came alive and grabbed his feet. The foreman’s loyal assistant ran to the aid of his boss, but Ned stuck out one leg to trip him, and the assistant landed flat on his nose. The rest of the mill workers, realizing at last that a rebellion was underfoot, left their places at the grinder with a joyful cheer and joined the fight. “Tie theb up,” Flack yelled. In a matter of seconds, Mr. Fulcrumb and his assistant were back to back, bound together with rope.
“You’ll be arrested for treasod!” Mr. Fulcrumb screamed. “You’ll be throwd idto the kig’s dudgeons! You’ll be eated alive by rats! You’ll be hugg upside dowd by your toedails!”
But his screams went unheard amidst the cheering of the crowd as the men hoisted the wriggling bundle above their shoulders and sprinted down the stairs—sluggish no more. The workers burst out of the door of the pepper mill into the fresh air and followed Flack to the back of the mill, where he opened the chute and let the pepper pour out onto the ground. “Bag it up! Bag it up!” he said, and the workers who had followed him scooped up the pepper into large sacks. When the chute was clear, Flack and Ned lifted up the two squirming captives, stuck them inside, and shut the door again, not forgetting to take off the foreman’s clothespin.
Flack didn’t waste a moment. He climbed onto the wooden cart that was now loaded with sacks of pepper and turned to face the liberated mill workers. “By fellow citizeds,” he said proudly, “we are dot goig to put up with this tyraddy ady logger!”
“HEAR, HEAR!” shouted the crowd.
“Are we ready to give His Highdess Kig Lucas a taste of his owd bedicine?”
“YES!” cheered the crowd.
“Thed follow be!” And with that, Flack jumped off the cart and began marching toward Mount Majestic.
“Let’s go!” yelled Mrs. Smudge, pulling Prunella behind her.
“But I thought we were looking for Persimmony!” said Prunella, who had lost her clothespin and didn’t care. “Can’t the bad men just say they’re sorry and we can all go home?”
“Prudella Sbudge!”
“Yes, Mother.”
If Prunella was confused as she followed her mother, Persimmony was even more confused as she, Captain Gidding, and the soldiers ran after the buttermilk-blue-dappled butterfly in the Willow Woods. It led them toward the mountain; it led them toward the sea; it led them up into trees and down again; it led them around and around and around in circles.
When Persimmony finally caught up with the group, her words tumbled over each other: “Thanks to you we are now completely lost!—Oh, my hat!— Stop that, quickly!” For she had noticed three things at once.
First, she noticed that Captain Gidding was crouching before a gorgeous creature with creamy wings speckled with blue.
Second, she noticed that the butterfly was perched on top of her very own hat that had flown away in the thunderstorm. Apparently the butterfly thought it was an apple tree.
Third, she noticed that they were in a grove of coconut palms and willow trees and that the soldiers were attacking the long willow boughs with their swords. A bird in the branches had dropped something white and sticky on the head of one of their fellows, and they were trying bring the offending creature to justice.
Persimmony yelled to the soldiers again. They dropped their swords in surprise at the urgency in her voice.
But it was too late. The willows had been disturbed. Down crawled the poison-tongued jumping tortoises, sliding slowly from the tree trunks surrounding the little party. There was no chance of hiding or running this time. Four, five—no, six tortoises crept forward, tightening the circle slowly.
Then one of the poison-tongued jumping tortoises pounced.
A soldier drew his sword, but the tortoise already had him on the ground, flattened underneath a massive shell with a poisonous tongue aimed straight at his nose. Suddenly the willow grove was a battlefield. Swords were useless against the spiked armor of the tortoises, but the soldiers swung them wildly anyway. The beasts jumped after the men, who dodged left and right—and the air was filled with the thud of metal against tortoise shells and the thud of tortoise shells against tree trunks.
Persimmony grabbed the sword the first fallen soldier had dropped and drove it into the foot of the nearest tortoise. The tortoise turned with an angry hiss. The world around her spun wildly. There was a sharp pain in her chest as she fell under the weight of the furious creature and felt its muscular leg
s pressing all of the breath out of her. She pushed her arms against the heavy flanks with all her might, but she was not strong enough. The tortoise’s tongue was inches from her face.
Suddenly a blade flashed in front of her eyes, and the severed tongue flew out of the tortoise’s mouth into the bushes. The tortoise screamed in agony and drew its head and limbs into its shell.
“Get up!” said Captain Gidding anxiously, sheathing his sword and rolling the huge tortoise off Persimmony. “Run! Find a place to hide. I’ll take care of these devils.”
Persimmony watched dumbfounded as the captain, whose mind had just been full of honeysuckle and butterflies, swiftly leaped back into the fray. “The coconuts! Use the coconuts!” he yelled, picking up one of the many fallen coconuts that lay in the grass and hurling it at a tortoise. It hit the beast directly on the snout, and the tortoise withdrew into its shell. The rest of the castle guard began to do the same, and soon there was a blur of flying coconuts.
Persimmony did not hide. She raced around the grove, loading her arms with coconuts and heaving them at every tortoise she saw. Her fear was gone now. This was the moment she had been waiting for. This was what adventures were all about. She ran, she threw, she jumped, she dodged—
And then her head struck something tall and stubborn, and the world went black.
Chapter 17
IN WHICH INJUSTICE IS OVERTHROWN AND A PERFECTLY GOOD BUBBLE BATH IS SPOILED
After the soldiers had departed for the Willow Woods and Persimmony, Worvil, and Guafnoggle had departed for the Snoring Cave, King Lucas had (true to his word) spent most of that day taking bubble baths, until he was finally able to thrust archeologists, professors, potters, giants, milk, and rude girls out of his mind completely.
The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic Page 11