The Boy Who Didn't Want to Save the World

by Dominic Barker

  Princess Lois approached the great horse. She was wearing a leather jerkin and stout boots and her long red hair was pinned up in preparation for the journey. It was the first time Blart had seen the Princess when she wasn’t throwing a tantrum and being nasty to people, and yet he still found her attractive. There was something about the spark in her brown eyes when she looked at him that made him think that they somehow understood each other. The Princess caught sight of his open-mouthed gaze.

  ‘Stop staring at me, spotty,’ she told him. ‘I want to see the world. I don’t want to see your ugly face.’

  Blart turned away. Maybe they didn’t understand each other.

  The King and Queen went over to their daughter.

  ‘Now, dear,’ said the Queen. ‘Promise me you’ll wear a vest every day. I’ve heard that the big wide world is full of draughts.’

  ‘Yes, mother,’ said Princess Lois.

  ‘And don’t talk to strange men,’ advised the Queen.

  Princess Lois nodded towards the three comrades already sitting astride Pig the Horse.

  ‘I’m going with strange men,’ she pointed out.

  ‘Well, don’t talk to strange women, then, dear.’

  ‘Oh, Mother,’ said Princess Lois.

  ‘Give your old dad a kiss goodbye, then,’ said the King, offering his cheek.

  ‘Dad.’ Princess Lois raised her eyes to heaven, but she could think of no way out and gave her father a very quick kiss.

  The watching Illyrians didn’t miss the kiss, though, and, being supportive of all forms of positive affection, burst into loud applause. Princess Lois rounded on them.

  ‘Shut up!’ she yelled at the assembled crowd. ‘I only did it because he made me.’

  The crowd was shocked into silence. Then there were mutterings among them as, in traditional Illyrian fashion, they tried to see the best in it. Within a few seconds it was agreed among the crowd that Princess Lois was suffering from nerves at the thought of leaving their wonderful country. They all looked at her sympathetically.

  ‘Aaaaaah,’ they said together.

  ‘Don’t do that!’ shouted Princess Lois. ‘Don’t you dare start aaahing me. That’s even worse than when you smile and clap.’

  Unfortunately, the more abusive Princess Lois became, the more convinced the crowd became of her nervousness, the more they sympathised with her and the more they went ‘aaah’.

  ‘Stop it!’ said Princess Lois.

  ‘Aaaah,’ said the crowd.

  ‘I hate you!’ she screamed at them. ‘I hate all of you and I hope I never see any of you ever again!’

  And with that Princess Lois climbed on to the back of Pig the Horse, the three questors became four and they set off to meet their destiny.

  ‘Three cheers for Princess Lois.’

  ‘Hip hip hurrah! Hip hip hurrah! Hip hip hurrah!’ obliged the crowd.

  ‘If anybody else is nice to me today, I’m going to kill them,’ said Princess Lois grimly.

  Chapter 24

  And so they flew east. Over the other half of Illyria with the green fields and the abundant orchards. All the people they flew over waved. Capablanca waved back. Beo waved back. Princess Lois made rude gestures. Blart thought this was a rather good idea and made rude gestures too. Princess Lois hit him hard on the back of the head and said that she was the only one who was allowed to make rude gestures on this horse and that if Blart did it any more she’d push him off. She was sitting behind Blart in what is undoubtedly the position of power on a flying horse so Blart stopped.

  And then they were flying over a different land. The grass was no longer as green and the orchards were no longer as full. As they flew overhead the people below made rude gestures. Capablanca ignored the rude gestures. Beo waved his fist. Blart did nothing for fear of being pushed to his death and Princess Lois waved happily to the people below.

  ‘This is what I’ve always wanted to see,’ she commented enthusiastically. ‘The big wide world where total strangers make rude gestures at you for no apparent reason. Travel really does broaden the mind.’

  ‘They’re rubbish rude gestures,’ shouted back Blart, who was something of an expert in the field. ‘I can make far better rude gestures than that.’

  ‘Shut up, you ugly little toad,’ said Princess Lois. ‘Let me enjoy the moment.’

  And so they flew on. After a while the grass disappeared below them entirely and there was sea. But it was not a deep, calm, blue sea like the last one Blart had seen. It was grey and angry, and mysterious black objects bobbed up and down in it. Even though they flew high above it a terrible stench reached their nostrils.

  ‘That is the Sea of Corpses,’ Capablanca shouted back to them. ‘Any living thing that enters it dies immediately. The black objects you see bobbing up and down are the dead bodies of unfortunate creatures who have swum in here by mistake.’

  ‘He’s always showing off about all the stuff he knows,’ Blart whispered to Princess Lois.

  ‘Don’t talk to me, you little worm,’ replied Princess Lois.

  Blart began to think there were signs that they were getting on better.

  The silence above the Sea of Corpses was eerie. When they had crossed the sea before there had always been birds flying around them. But here there were no birds. Just the questors and the vastness of the ever-darkening sky.

  And the sky did not darken because of approaching night. It was dark in the middle of the day. Even Pig the Horse sensed the oppressive atmosphere and stopped making the cheerful neighs that often punctuated his breathing whilst he was flying.

  Finally they sighted land. Each of them secretly cheered but not for long. For replacing the Sea of Corpses below them was the Land of Harsh Parch. A land made up of sand and scrub grass where strange thin-looking beasts burrowed and searched hopelessly for water. The sun’s power was diminished in the semi-darkness, but as the dark thinned to the light of dawn the temperature slowly began to rise and sweat began to run from their bodies. Beo suffered worst of all as he insisted on travelling in full battle armour. Capablanca began to feel his old bones aching inside him. Blart felt like a sponge that had been wrung out. It was even more difficult for Princess Lois as royalty was not supposed to sweat. Fortunately her companions were much smellier than she was and no one else noticed this unfortunate departure from royal protocol.

  But much worse than the sweaty smell was the incredible thirst. Blart’s throat felt harsh and rough and hurt each time he swallowed. His lips were chapped and raw from the sun and his tongue was no longer wet enough to moisten them. His fellow questors suffered similarly – nobody spoke for a long time as each concentrated on preserving the water in their bodies.

  Most worrying of all was the condition of Pig the Horse. Unlike those sitting on his back, he was working, which was causing him to lose water quickly. It poured out of him. The heat caught the rivulets that travelled down his neck and flanks and converted them to steam. So it seemed as though they were travelling through a thick fog. Pig’s breathing became noisier and more rapid.

  ‘We must land soon,’ croaked Capablanca. ‘Pig is exhausted.’

  ‘I don’t want to stop here,’ said Blart, who didn’t like the look of the land below.

  ‘We must save the horse,’ said Beo.

  ‘Why?’ demanded Blart. ‘We’ll just carry on until he dies and then find another one.’

  A tremendous blow crashed on to Blart’s back from behind, which nearly sent him tumbling off the horse and down to his death in the endless wastelands of the Land of Harsh Parch. He had forgotten that Princess Lois, who had little time for the human race, was a confirmed animal lover.

  ‘Careful!’ Blart shouted at her. ‘I’m the only one round here who can save the world, you know. You ought to be nicer to me or I might decide not to.’

  ‘Don’t talk to me, you mouldy runt,’ shot back Princess Lois, ‘or I’ll push harder next time.’

  She was good. Blart had to admit it. She was
good.

  ‘Look for an oasis!’ shouted Capablanca. ‘We’ll stop there.’

  They all looked. However, only three of them actually knew what they were looking for. Blart didn’t know what an oasis was but there was no way he was going to ask with Princess Lois sitting behind him ready to laugh at his ignorance. So he looked just as hard as the others. But the ever-darkening sky and the steam rising from the sweat on Pig’s flanks meant that visibility was limited. Blart had the best eyesight, as we know, and so spotted quite a number of oases without recognising them before finally Princess Lois shouted out, ‘There!’

  ‘Where?’ asked Capablanca, scanning the ground below.

  ‘There,’ repeated Princess Lois with added emphasis but no added assistance to Capablanca in finding it.

  ‘Oh, yes, there. Well done,’ said Capablanca.

  Blart looked down and saw that what they were heading for was just a big puddle with a couple of scruffy trees next to it.

  ‘I’ve seen loads of those,’ he boasted proudly but stupidly.

  ‘Shut up, Blart,’ said his three companions as one.

  ‘That’s not fair,’ Blart continued. ‘She sees one puddle and everybody says “Well done” and I see five and everybody says “Shut up”.’

  ‘But you didn’t tell us about them,’ explained Capablanca through gritted teeth.

  ‘You’re just biased,’ sulked Blart.

  Pig the Horse circled down towards the oasis. Blart closed his eyes as he saw the ground rushing up to meet them. However, Pig the Horse had learnt from his last landing and, even though they came down with a bump, none of them fell off. Without waiting for them to dismount Pig made straight for the pool in the middle of the oasis where he began to drink greedily. None of the others was far behind him. They threw themselves down and drank in great gulps of the clear, cold water. For a time there was nothing but the sound of slurping and swallowing.

  Blart had never thought that water could taste so wonderful. He could feel it trickling through his body, reviving his parched insides. He drank until he could drink no more and finally lay back on the sandy bank and smiled.

  ‘Don’t pull faces at me,’ said Princess Lois.

  ‘I wasn’t –’

  ‘You’re ugly enough without pulling faces.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘When I get to be Queen I’m going to introduce the death penalty especially so I can kill you.’

  ‘I’ll feed you to my pigs,’ snapped back Blart. He was relieved. Finally he was able to insult her. He felt a huge wave of relief.

  ‘You are a pig,’ responded Princess Lois.

  At this point the argument ended. Princess Lois was satisfied because she thought that she’d had the last word, and Blart was satisfied because he’d been called a pig, which to Blart was a compliment. So they both thought they’d won.

  ‘We must build a fire,’ said Capablanca, ‘and then consult the map in order to decide what we will do tomorrow. I believe that we may be only a day’s flight away from the Great Tunnel of Despair and our great battle with Zoltab and his Ministers and minions.’

  Despite the heat, Blart shivered. He had not forgotten that he was going to have to face Zoltab when the time came, and the nearer the time came the less he fancied it. But he had no option. He was lost. If he did not follow the wizard he would die in this terrible desert. If he did he would die at the hands of Zoltab. It wasn’t much of a choice, when you came to think about it.

  ‘I can’t wait to be a-cleaving and a-smiting,’ announced Beo, flexing his huge bicep. ‘My arm is out of practice. It aches for the lack of a good killing.’

  ‘Will there be many Ministers and minions?’ asked Blart.

  ‘Sissy,’ said Princess Lois.

  ‘Legion,’ said Capablanca. ‘For tomorrow we fly towards Crathis, Land of Storms and Terror where lies the Great Tunnel of Despair.’

  Blart sighed and turned his back on the other questors. He was feeling very sorry for himself. He didn’t want to save the world. After all, it had never done anything for him.

  Chapter 25

  They were sitting round the fire listening to Beo’s stomach make noises. They had eaten a dinner of fruit, bread and sand. Something had gone wrong with Beo’s guts and they were filling the night air with their unpleasant rumblings.

  ‘I apologise, Princess,’ said Beo, who was very much aware that it was considered unchivalric to make noises in front of a damsel, however uncontrollable they were. ‘I have not eaten meat all day and a warrior needs his meat.’

  ‘That’s disgusting,’ said Princess Lois as another noise escaped from Beo.

  ‘Please don’t tell anybody about them,’ pleaded Beo. ‘Especially your father.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I?’ demanded Princess Lois sharply.

  ‘Because he’ll never make me a knight then,’ explained Beo pathetically.

  ‘Why should I care?’ said Princess Lois. ‘Who wants a big fat lump like you as a knight anyway?’

  ‘There are more important things to worry about than your promotion,’ Capablanca told Beo irritably. ‘We must examine the map and decide on a plan of action.’

  Capablanca pulled out the map and spread it out on the sand.

  ‘That doesn’t look much like a map to me,’ said Beo.

  ‘That’s the back,’ said Capablanca testily. ‘I’ll just turn it –’

  ‘What’s that writing?’ said Princess Lois.

  ‘What writing?’ asked Capablanca.

  ‘There.’ Princess Lois pointed at some very small, very faded script in the bottom left-hand corner of the back of the map.

  ‘I didn’t notice that before,’ admitted Capablanca, ‘but my eyes are not what they used to be. Read it to me please, Princess.’

  Princess Lois put her face close to the unrolled parchment and read:

  ‘Know ye, men who hold this map

  This prediction is not pap

  Zoltab may rise and then worse be wed

  To a noble woman back from the dead

  Why he’ll do this I don’t see

  He never seemed the marrying type to me.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked Beo.

  ‘Whoever wrote the prediction wasn’t sure,’ answered Capablanca, carefully avoiding admitting that he wasn’t sure either. ‘But it will be entirely irrelevant if we can prevent Zoltab rising, which is what we intend to do. We can’t waste time trying to solve ancient puzzles. Turn the paper over.’

  Princess Lois did so to reveal the map.

  ‘Now, I think that this is where we are now.’ Capablanca pointed to a picture of a blue pool on the map with an ‘S’ by it.

  ‘What does that mark mean?’ asked Blart.

  ‘It has a number of possible meanings,’ said Capablanca, which was his way of avoiding saying ‘I don’t know’. ‘But whatever meaning it has will probably start with an “S” sound.’

  ‘Sea,’ suggested Blart.

  ‘It’s not the sea, is it?’ said Capablanca irritably.

  ‘Sand,’ suggested Beo.

  ‘There’s sand everywhere,’ pointed out Capablanca. ‘Why would they just mark it here?’

  ‘Stupid men,’ suggested Princess Lois, looking meaningfully at Blart and Beo.

  ‘It’s probably not important,’ snapped Capablanca, who reasoned that if he didn’t know something then it couldn’t possibly matter. ‘Now here is the Great Tunnel of Despair.’ He pointed to a picture of a large, gaping black hole. ‘That is our destination.’

  ‘What’s that?’ said Princess Lois, indicating a different symbol on the map.

  ‘That’s not relevant,’ said Capablanca.

  ‘Please tell me, Capablanca. You are so wise and clever,’ said Princess Lois in a tone so unlike the one she usually used that Blart could hardly believe it. It was sweet and melodious and it made Blart feel sick.

  ‘Well, all right then,’ said Capablanca with fake reluctance. For all his great knowledge and experie
nce, he was not above being flattered by a young princess. ‘This symbol means that the area is home to a great colony of dragons.’

  ‘Dragons!’ said Princess Lois excitedly.

  ‘Dragons,’ said Beo dolefully. He had hoped that the whole dragon episode could be forgotten.

  ‘Yes, dragons,’ snapped Capablanca, who wanted to focus on more important things. ‘But they are in totally the opposite direction to our journey and aren’t at all important.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Beo quickly, thankful that the subject of dragons could be dropped.

  ‘No,’ agreed Princess Lois. This surprised Blart, considering she’d been going on about how attached she was to them all the time that they’d been in Illyria.

  ‘We should be able to reach the Great Tunnel of Despair by tomorrow. Let us hope we are not too late.’

  ‘What happens if we are?’ asked Blart hopefully.

  ‘We’ll improvise,’ said Capablanca and he gathered up the map and stalked off.

  ‘He should tell us, shouldn’t he?’ Blart appealed to Princess Lois and Beo.

  ‘You’ve got a huge spot growing on your nose, ugly boy,’ replied Princess Lois, which was hardly to the point.

  ‘If you weren’t always moaning on we’d do a lot better,’ growled Beo. ‘If it was up to me we’d have cleaved you in two days ago.’

  ‘Then you wouldn’t have to worry about that big spot,’ added Princess Lois, ‘and I wouldn’t have to look at it.’

  Blart was abused into silence. They were all mad, he decided. None of them seemed to care whether Zoltab killed them or not. Blart was beginning to realise that it is very dangerous to hang around with brave people.

  ‘I think I shall go for a brief stroll,’ said Princess Lois in the sweet voice Blart hated. ‘Beowulf. Would you care to escort me and provide me with protection?’

  ‘Protection from what?’ asked Blart scornfully. All around them as far as the eye could see was nothing but sand. And sand is not renowned for its aggressive qualities.