Of Mice and Magic

by Ursula Vernon

  “I’m doing you a favor here,” said the fairy.

  “Right,” said Harriet, climbing to her feet. If the future of the hamster kingdom was at stake, she knew what she had to do. She held out her hand to the shrew. “You’ve convinced me. One hamster hero, at your service.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Harriet was in an excellent mood.

  The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and she had a quest to follow and some fellow princesses to save. The notion that failure would mean the eventual end of her own kingdom did not bother her. Failure, in Harriet’s world, happened to other people.

  “This is just what we need, Mumfrey,” she said. “I get to save the future kingdom and it gets me out of the castle again!”

  “Qwerk,” said Mumfrey bitterly. He was still sulking about his cupcake.

  They made good time down the road. In fact, they made entirely too good a time down the road.

  “I’m pretty sure we should be about a week away from the palace,” said Harriet. “But that sure looks like it down there.”

  “Qwerk,” said Mumfrey, which was Quail for “Fairy work. I don’t trust it.”

  “Me neither,” said Harriet, “but here we are anyway.”

  She rummaged around in Mumfrey’s saddlebags, and found two packages that she was pretty sure hadn’t been there before.

  Mumfrey was thrilled. His box contained not one but two chocolate-and-birdseed cupcakes.

  Harriet opened her package.

  Instead of cupcakes, Harriet’s box contained a strange, slippery gray fabric.

  She shook it out. It looked like a cloak, but there were no clasps. It was a circle of fabric with a hole in the middle for her head and a large hood.

  Harriet could tell, just by holding it, that it was magical. It made her whiskers tingle.

  She pulled it on.

  A Poncho of Invisibility is not quite as good as a Cloak of Invisibility, but they’re cheaper and easier to sew. Harriet had to readjust the folds several times to make sure that her feet didn’t become visible.

  Mumfrey scowled. He didn’t like invisibility. There was a nasty bit when the poncho was partway on and partway off where he could see Harriet’s innards. The princess was his best friend and he loved her very much, but he still didn’t want a view of her giblets.

  “Right,” said Harriet, stashing the poncho back in her saddlebags. “I get it. I’m supposed to go invisible and follow the princesses. No need to draw me a map or anything.” (It was, frankly, a better plan than she had been working on, which had involved disguising herself as a mouse princess. Hamsters do not look very much like mice, and Harriet was a terrible dancer.)

  “C’mon, Mumfrey,” she said. “Let’s get curse-breaking.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Princess Harriet arrived at the castle and went immediately to the stables with Mumfrey. Stables tell you a great deal about how a kingdom is run. If they’re warm and dry and cleaned out regularly, that’s one thing.

  If they’re filthy and badly lit and the grain is full of mold and weevils, the odds are good you don’t want to spend very long in that particular kingdom. It remained to be seen how the mouse kingdom would measure up.

  A hamster came around the corner, wiping his hands. “My apologies, traveler, I was seeing to a—”

  He stopped.

  He stared at Harriet.

  Harriet stared at him.

  “Wilbur?!”

  “Harriet?!”

  “A fairy sent me,” said Harriet. “Curse on the princesses, needs breaking—well, you know.” She waved a hand in the direction of the castle. “Why are you here?”

  “They needed a stable boy,” said Wilbur. “All the other stable boys went off to try and fix the curse.”

  “You’re a prince,” said Harriet.

  “Besides,” he added, “Heady the hydra’s laid an egg and she’s gonna have a baby hydra soon, and you know how much they eat. And the basement flooded again.”

  “You didn’t want to try breaking the curse yourself? You’d get half the kingdom . . .”

  Wilbur shuddered. “I can’t even pay for the kingdom I’ve got. And I’d have to marry a princess,” he said. “I am not getting married. I barely escaped marrying you.”

  This might have been insulting, but Harriet felt quite the same way about it. Wilbur was a good friend, but not a boyfriend.

  She’d first met Wilbur while breaking her own curse, and she knew that his mother’s kingdom was very poor. Wilbur had been able to fix the roof with the reward from breaking Harriet’s curse, but money was still tight.

  He’d had a paper route, but being a stable boy probably paid better. She knew from listening to her father complain that basements were expensive to fix.

  “It’s wonderful you’re here,” said Harriet warmly. “You’re just the person I need. Tell me everything about the kingdom. Is the mouse king a good man? Are the princesses unhappy? Can I leave Mumfrey here? How good is the birdseed?”

  Wilbur held up his hands to forestall the questions. “The stables are fine. The birdseed is excellent. I don’t know that much about the king, but I’ll tell you everything I know.”

  “He was determined to have twelve daughters named after months. He had a list and he’d cross a name off every time he had another daughter.”

  “Yikes!” said Harriet. Being a princess was hard enough without being a name on somebody’s list.

  “The king will only travel in carriages pulled by quail that match exactly. The footmen have to all be the same height and wear uniforms that match the curtains. I’ve heard the royal bodyguards are actually identical twins. And you’ll see about the décor when you go inside.” Wilbur shook his head. “It’s . . . well, it’s something.”

  Harriet was extremely curious now, but she had one last question. “What about the princesses?”

  Wilbur shrugged. “They’re okay. Most of them never come down here. I see August sometimes. She has a quail.”

  Mumfrey looked up, interested.

  “A riding quail, not a battle quail,” said Wilbur.

  “That’s okay. Mumfrey started out as a riding quail. He’s learned to be a fearsome battle quail now, though!”

  “Qwerk!” said Mumfrey, which was Quail for “I am very fierce.”

  “Does she seem like she’s under a curse?” asked Harriet. “The princess, not the quail. Does she act normal?”

  Wilbur thought about it. Unfortunately, he didn’t know many princesses. August didn’t act like Harriet, but then again, who did?

  “She seems angry,” he said finally. “And sad. Talk to her. You’ll see.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Harriet went into the castle by the side door. She was barely through the second set of rooms before she realized what Wilbur had meant about the décor.

  Everything matched.

  The first room was purple. The walls were painted purple, the drapes were purple, the door frames and tapestries and throw pillows were purple.

  The second room was green. The walls were green, the carpets were green, the end tables were inlaid with green marble, and the lamps had green blown glass shades. You got the impression that if there had been a way to make the sunlight coming through the window green, the decorator would have done so.

  The third room was blue. The ceiling was blue, the walls were blue, and the decorator had solved the sunlight problem by installing a blue stained-glass window that streamed blue light over the blue carpet on the blue floor.

  There was a guard. Harriet thought he was wearing blue, but even if he weren’t, his clothes would have looked blue. His fur had a bit of a bluish cast, but that was probably the light.

  To his credit, the guard did not say “But you’re a girl” or “But you’re awfully young” or any of the other regrettable things that people often said
to Harriet.

  “You’ll have to go to the Gray Room,” said the guard. “It’s down the hall to the left, third door, down the stairs, turn right, up the spiral staircase—”

  “Can’t you show me?” asked Harriet.

  “No,” said the guard. “I’m in Blues.”

  He said this as if it were an obvious statement. Harriet waited politely for a moment and then said, “Yes? And?”

  It occurred to Harriet that she was dealing with a very peculiar sort of mind.

  “I see,” she said. “What do you do when you need to go to the bathroom?”

  The guard stared at his feet. “We make sure the rooms are cleared, then make a run for it,” he mumbled. “But don’t tell the king!”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” said Harriet, patting him on the arm.

  She was wearing blue herself, but no one tried to stop her. Apparently the rule only applied to employees.

  After wandering over what felt like half the castle, Harriet found a pale pink room. It was just as overwhelming as all the other rooms, but there was a small mouse in a white dress in it, arranging flowers.

  The mouse squeaked and whirled around. A second mouse, who had been staring out the window, turned toward the door.

  “Sorry,” said Harriet. “I’m looking for the Gray Room. I’ve been through two Blue Rooms, one Green Room, what I think was two separate Orange Hallways—although I might have wandered into the same one twice—and something that I think was the Magenta Room, except that it was so blinding that I had to close my eyes and feel my way to the door. Can you help me?”

  “You’re supposed to curtsey,” said the mouse by the window. She sounded snotty but also tired, as if being snotty was just a habit by now and she didn’t really care one way or the other. “We’re princesses.”

  “Well, that makes three of us,” said Harriet, who was not above being a princess when it suited her. “Princess Harriet, at your service.”

  The mouse at the window looked Harriet over and then turned back to the window. “Our dad’s kingdom is bigger.” She leaned her head back on the windowsill and appeared to doze off suddenly.

  To Harriet, she said, “I’m sorry about my sister. I’m August. It’s nice to meet you.”

  “August!” said Harriet. “You’re the one with the riding quail, then?”

  “Oh, yes!” August put her hands together. “My dear little Hyacinth! I don’t get to ride her as much as I want to. We can’t leave the castle grounds . . .”

  This was not the reaction that Harriet would expect from someone who wanted their curse broken.

  She considered various subtle methods of extracting information, and then rejected them all in favor of asking: “Do you want your curse broken?”

  August stared at her feet. After a moment, she picked up the flowers and began sliding the stems, one by one, into the vase. The flowers were pink, of course, but their green stems made a welcome break from the pink covering the room.

  “Nobody can break the curse,” said September, waking up. She blinked a few times and stifled a yawn.

  “I don’t want anybody else to get hurt,” said August angrily, cramming the rest of the flowers into the vase. “I wish I wasn’t a princess!”

  “Boy, have I been there,” said Harriet. She patted August on the shoulder.

  The mouse princess looked surprised at the sympathy.

  “Come on,” she said finally. “I’ll take you to my father, the king.”

  The mouse king sat in the Throne Room, which was several hallways away from the Gray Room.

  You could not simply go to the Throne Room. Harriet discovered this when August went to the Gray Room to summon a butler (who wore black) and the butler went through the hallway opening doors.

  “If you wear black, you can go to any of the rooms,” August explained. “Black goes with everything and doesn’t clash.”

  “Your father certainly has some interesting ideas,” said Harriet. She made a mental note to acquire a rainbow-colored hat at the earliest opportunity, and wear it in every possible room to annoy him.

  The Throne Room was black and silver. It was twice as large as the one in Harriet’s parents’ castle, but it seemed nearly empty by comparison.

  “Your Majesty,” said the butler, bowing, “may I present the Princess Harriet, Slayer of the Wicked Fairy Ratshade, Bane of Ogres, and Champion of the Joust.”

  “Did you really slay a wicked fairy?” whispered August.

  “Nah,” whispered Harriet. “I just de-magicked her. Last I heard, she had moved to another country and was selling condemned real estate.”

  The mouse king did not look impressed by any of these titles. He straightened up in his chair, but not by much.

  “What brings you here, Princess Harriet?” he asked.

  Harriet bowed. She wasn’t going to curtsey, even for a king.

  “I’m here about the curse, Your Majesty,” she said.

  There was a lengthy pause.

  A rat standing beside the throne leaned forward and whispered something to the mouse king. The king whispered something back. The rat whispered something rather urgently. They both looked at Harriet, then back to each other.

  Harriet wondered if she should be offended.

  Finally the mouse king said, “You’re a girl.”

  “Oh, you’re quick, Your Majesty,” said Harriet.

  The rat cleared his throat, took a step forward, and said, “I believe what His Majesty intends to say is that the call for curse-breaking was to heroes.”

  “You really think you can break the curse?” asked the king. “Many men have tried already.”

  “Had they ever been cursed?” asked Harriet. “And were they slayers of wicked fairies, and jousting champions? Because if not, I’m better.”

  More whispering.

  “Very well,” said the king. “I suppose we do not need to worry about the details unless you manage to succeed.” From his tone, Harriet could tell that he didn’t think this was likely. “The rules are simple. You may spend three nights in the hall where the princesses sleep. At the end of three days, you will either tell me how the princesses wear their shoes through, or you will leave the palace—and my kingdom—at once. Is that clear?”

  “Yep,” said Harriet.

  “If you succeed, the reward is half the kingdom and the hand of one of the princesses in marr . . .”

  He stopped. He looked at Harriet, who was undeniably a twelve-year-old girl. He opened his mouth and closed it again.

  “Half the kingdom and a princess,” said Harriet cheerfully. “Got it.”

  “Do you have any questions?” asked the king.

  “Just one,” said Harriet. “What would you have done if December had been twins?”

  The king didn’t so much as blink. “I would have disowned the younger twin. It is a set of twelve, not thirteen.”

  Definitely a peculiar sort of mind. Harriet wasn’t sure if she should break the curse or lead a revolution and put one of the princesses on the throne instead.

  “Report to the Gray Room tonight,” said the mouse king. “You will be taken to the princesses.”

  “Righto,” said Harriet, and left the room without bothering to bow.

  CHAPTER 7

  Harriet spent the rest of the afternoon making a map of the castle. This was very boring work and required several different colors of crayon, but she was able to find her way to the Gray Room without any trouble.

  From the Gray Room, the butler led Harriet up a long spiral staircase and into the princesses’ bedroom. They slept in a tower, very high above the ground, to make it extra-hard to break in.

  The bedroom was very long, lined with a dozen beds with iron frames. There were bars on all the windows.

  The door was made of iron and had seven locks and seven
bars and four combination locks and three chains and a complicated thing made out of spikes. Someone wanted to make very sure that door stayed closed.

  “This is like prison,” said Harriet.

  The butler grunted. He shut the door behind her, and she heard the bar grind heavily into place and then the clunks and bangs and clatters of the other locks closing.

  She turned and faced the princesses. They were wearing nightgowns and holding each other’s hands.

  All of them looked sad. Some of them looked angry and sad or bored and sad or tired and sad. Harriet thought that she had never seen so many shades of sorrow in one place.

  One or two appeared to be dozing off where they stood. Dancing all night apparently left you very tired in the morning.

  “Right!” said Harriet, clapping her hands. “Listen up!”

  All twelve of the mice stared at her.

  “You all look like you’re at a funeral,” said Harriet. “I don’t blame you. Your father’s very weird. Also there’s this whole curse thing going on. My name’s Princess Harriet, and I’m here to break the curse.”

  (Privately she thought that something would have to be done about the mouse king as well, but that was technically treason, so she kept it to herself.)