Dial Books for Young Readers
Penguin Young Readers Group
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street
New York, New York 10014
Copyright © 2017 by Ursula Vernon
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Ebook ISBN 9780399186547
Design by Jennifer Kelly
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For Mz. Faunce
CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER 1
Harriet Hamsterbone was dripping wet and shivering with cold, and she had never been happier.
She had spent the last two hours climbing up a hundred-foot cliff and throwing herself off the top into the river. It had been a good day.
“Cliff-diving,” she said to her faithful battle quail, Mumfrey. “Do you know how much I’ve missed cliff-diving?”
“Qwerk,” said Mumfrey, which is Quail for “I may have some idea, yes.”
Harriet was a princess, heir to the throne of the hamster king, and she had not been cliff-diving in ages. She had been very fond of it when she was young and (owing to a fairy curse) invincible, but once the curse wore off, she’d had to give it up. Cliff-diving is not a terribly safe sport. Her mother had never approved.
Another fairy had recently given Harriet back her ability to cliff-dive, as thanks for breaking the curse on twelve dancing mouse princesses, and Harriet intended to make the most of it.
“I would have saved them anyway,” she told Mumfrey. “I mean, they needed help, and clearly nobody else was going to do it. But the cliff-diving is a nice bonus.” She shook the water out of her ears.
“Qwerk,” agreed Mumfrey.
“It’s definitely magic too! I could feel it!” (There are approximately six thousand ways that one can cliff-dive wrong, almost all of which are fatal. Harriet had slipped on one of the jumps and the magic had actually swooped in, pointed her toes correctly, and gotten her lined up with the water in the proper fashion. This was why Harriet was not spread across the landscape as hamster jam. Did we mention that cliff-diving was a very dangerous sport?)
“Qwerk . . .”
“Still, I suppose we should be getting back home.”
“Qwerk!”
She was fluffing up her damp fur and feeling generally good about life, when a cloaked figure stepped out from behind the bushes.
One of the downsides to being a famous warrior princess is that cloaked figures are always jumping out at you from behind bushes. There were days when Harriet had no fewer than three people in cloaks to deal with. She was good at it, but it did get tiresome.
She snatched up her sword from where it hung on Mumfrey’s saddle and pointed it at the figure. “Halt! Are you an assassin?”
“Um,” said the figure, looking at the sword. “No.”
“Evil wizard?”
Harriet sighed.
She would almost have rather dealt with an assassin. People throwing poisoned daggers at you was annoying, but you didn’t feel rude whacking them with your sword afterward. People trying to sell you things made it terribly awkward to refuse.
“Right,” she said wearily. “Get it over with.”
The figure coughed. “Where was I?”
“Right. Yes. Thank you. Princess!” cried the cloaked figure. “I have an offer for you that only a fool would refuse!”
“How did you know I was a princess?”
The cloaked figure had a striped face and appeared to be a chipmunk. “I don’t,” he admitted. “But you’re wearing a tiara, so you’re either a princess or you think you’re a princess, and I’m trying to sell you something here, so I’m happy to go along with your delusions.”
“Fair enough,” said Harriet. She admired honesty in salespeople. “What’re you selling?”
The chipmunk reached into his cape pocket and presented his goods with a flourish.
“. . . those are beans,” said Harriet.
“Yes!” said the chipmunk. “The finest beans in all the land! And I will trade three of them to you for the quail you are riding.”
“No deal,” said Harriet. “Mumfrey is my best friend. He isn’t for sale. And also, those’re beans.”
“Perhaps you do not quite understand, Princess,” said the chipmunk. “For these are no ordinary beans. They’re magic!”
Harriet stifled another sigh. The world was full of magic, and she had encountered quite a lot of it, although she herself was about as magical as a rock. (Except for the cliff-diving thing.)
Unfortunately, the world was also full of people trying to sell you something by claiming it was magical. Harriet’s dad had a real problem with this, and had acquired an entire room full of gadgets that were supposed to slice vegetables at a touch, remove blemishes, and reduce eye wrinkles, all sold to him by smooth-talking salesmen. None of them worked at all, although the one that reduced eye wrinkles would explode if you pulled the wrong lever.
“I don’t care if they wear little tutus and do a dance,” said Harriet. “I wouldn’t trade Mumfrey for three magic beans.”
“Qwerk,” said Mumfrey, satisfied.
“Are you sure?” asked the chipmunk, waving his handful under Harriet’s nose. “Because these are some seriously magical beans.”
“Not interested,” said Harriet.
“You don’t find beans like this every day.”
“Really, truly not interested,” said Harriet.
“In fact, these are quite possibly the most magical beans that have ever—HEY!”
“Mumfrey!”
The chipmunk had waved his hand too close to Mumfrey’s beak. The beans looked a great deal like birdseed, and the quail was feeling irritable.
Harriet and the chipmunk both stared at the quail in dismay.
“Well, now you owe me a quail,” said the chipmunk.
“Not happening,” said Harriet. “And he only ate one bean, so technically I’d only owe you a third of a quail, even if I agreed to it, which I didn’t.”
“I’ll give you the other two beans and take the quail!”
“The third bean is inside the quail, so you’d get both the bean and the quail, and I’d get nothing! If anything, you’d owe me another magic bean!”
The chipmunk clutched his ears. “But how am I supposed to get my bean back!?”
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“Quails have a really fast digestion,” said Harriet apologetically. “I mean, I’m sorry about your bean. He shouldn’t have done that. But you still can’t have Mumfrey.”
The chipmunk stared at her.
“Look, would you take money? We can go to my dad’s castle and I’m sure they’ll pay you a fair price for your bean—”
The chipmunk let out a shriek of frustration and then, quite to Harriet’s surprise, vanished in a puff of smoke.
“I guess he was magical after all,” said Harriet. “Hmm. Now I wonder about those beans . . .”
“Qwerk!” said Mumfrey, which is Quail for “I didn’t like him at all.” Then he belched.
“Jeez, Mumfrey!”
Harriet sighed. She was used to fairies and magical creatures that did weird things, but they didn’t usually go poof! like that.
“Well,” she said, “maybe he’ll go to the castle. Mom and Dad will take care of it, I guess.”
She gathered up Mumfrey’s reins and they ambled down the road together.
CHAPTER 2
Harriet slept that night under the stars. She’d been meaning to go back home to the castle, but . . . well . . .
“Qwerrreeeeelllcch!”
“Mumfrey, I don’t know what was in that bean you ate, but you smell like a rotten fish wrapped in old socks!”
Harriet wasn’t the most princessly princess in the world—she was happy to admit that to anyone who would listen—but a good ruler takes care of the people she rules over. That meant that she didn’t want to take Mumfrey to the castle stable and subject all the stable hands and the other quail and the kennel-newts to the extraordinary smells that Mumfrey was producing.
So she bedded down in a field, with Mumfrey downwind, and tried to sleep despite the noises that his innards were making. He sounded like bad plumbing.
“Good night, Mumfrey,” she said. “Try to get some sleep.”
“Qwwwwergle . . .”
In the morning, Harriet woke up feeling refreshed. “Hey, it stopped smelling around here. Mumfrey! Do you feel better?”
“Qwerk!” said Mumfrey, which is Quail for “Much better!”
“What a great morning! I could go for a cup of tea . . .”
It was a beautiful morning. The sun was shining and the birds (other than Mumfrey) were singing. A little breeze blew, and went:
Harriet paused.
She was used to breezes going “whoosh” or perhaps “swish.” She was not used to them making a sound like a gigantic tarp snapping in a gale.
“Uh . . . Mumfrey? Did you just hear . . . ?”
Harriet turned.
Behind their campsite, a gigantic beanstalk climbed into the heavens. The top was lost in the clouds.
The sound that Harriet had heard was the leaves moving in the breeze. Each leaf was the size of a barn roof, and when the wind moved them, where a normal bean plant would have gone rustle-rustle, the giant beanstalk went WHOMPH WHOMPH WHOOOOOMPH.
The trunk was as thick around as the tower that Harriet had lived in until the incident with the thorn hedge. There was a bean dangling a few stories up that could have fed an entire village for a week, and somebody could have lived in the empty bean pod afterward.
“Mumfrey,” said Harriet slowly as her eyes went up . . . and up . . . and up . . . “Mumfrey, at some point last night, did you get up to use the bathroom?”
“Qwerk,” muttered Mumfrey, scuffing his foot on the ground.
“I know that wasn’t there yesterday,” said Harriet. “But you ate a bean and now there’s . . . that. So . . .”
“Qwerk!” said Mumfrey irritably. This is Quail for “Fine! Yes, well, everybody does it. And I felt better afterward.”
Harriet could picture exactly what had happened.
The magic bean had emerged back into the world—ahem—and found itself in a pile of the highest-quality fertilizer that a trained battle quail could produce.
And it had grown.
It had grown a lot.
The breeze blew again and she saw the bean leaves lifting like sails in the wind. A cloud drifted away, and she saw even more of the beanstalk, going up and up, and then into another bank of clouds.
“Well,” said Harriet. “I guess I owe that chipmunk an apology. Those really were magic beans.”
CHAPTER 3
The beanstalk cast a shadow like a black bar, stretching for miles. People were going to start coming to investigate soon. Harriet didn’t really want to have to explain things.
On the other hand, it was not very heroic to leave a giant beanstalk lying around, where it might present a threat to migrating birds and low-flying dragons and whatnot. And it was Mumfrey’s fault, and that meant it was Harriet’s fault, because she was Mumfrey’s owner.
Harriet walked around the beanstalk. It was rigidly straight, which beanstalks usually weren’t. She chalked that up to magic.
“Okay,” she said. “So if I get an ax and chop this down, it’s going to fall.”
She looked around. In three directions there were trees, which would probably prefer not to be flattened. In the fourth direction, there was a farm field and off in the distance, a village.
If she chopped the beanstalk down, there was a chance it might land on the village.
This would be very bad. People would complain. Her parents were pretty good about letting her wander around on her own having adventures, but there were limits. Accidentally flattening a village would definitely get her grounded, possibly for life.
“Hmmm . . .”
The leaves went WHOOOSH.
And then, very far away, as if from the top of the beanstalk, Harriet heard another sound. It was very thin and very faint and it sounded like . . .
“Who’s playing a harp up on top of a giant plant?” asked Harriet.
“Qwerk,” said Mumfrey, which is Quail for “No idea.”
“Well, now I really can’t chop it down if there’s somebody on top of it!”
“Qwerk.”
Harriet scowled. She stomped around. She built a small campfire and made tea. She stomped around some more, and then discovered that most of her tea had spilled out and she had to make more.
Carefully not stomping, she drank her tea and listened.
There is something very soothing about making tea. You have to concentrate on the whole process, and then you have tea. Even someone as decisive as Harriet had to make tea sometimes and think things through.
“Someone’s up there,” said Harriet. “And I suppose that means I have to go up and find out what’s going on.”
She placed her mug carefully in the ashes of the campfire, where it would stay warm.
“All right, Mumfrey,” she said, cracking her knuckles. “Let’s go.”
CHAPTER 4
Battle quail, as everyone knows, cannot fly. They can shlop, which is a bizarre bouncing gait like a gallop with flapping. It is not dignified, but it gets the job done.
They can also glide very well.
If Harriet was climbing the beanstalk by herself and slipped, she would have only an instant to grab a handhold before she was engaged in a sudden, spectacular cliff-dive with no water at the bottom.
But if Mumfrey climbed the beanstalk, using his heavy claws, and he slipped, all he would have to do would be to spread his wings and glide safely to the ground.
Harriet was brave and strong and confident in her abilities, but she still would never have tried to climb the beanstalk without specialized equipment like ropes and crampons and spiked shoes . . . or a battle quail.
Up Mumfrey went, digging his clawed feet into the woody surface of the beanstalk. Occasionally he grabbed the base of a leaf in his bill and used it to haul himself up. All Harriet had to do was hang on tight and listen to the distant, elusive harp music.
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�You’re doing great!” she told him.
“Grrrnnggghwerk!” said Mumfrey, with his mouth full of leaves.
On they went, higher and higher.
Harriet looked down and saw the world spread out under her like a quilt. The forest made big green puffy patches, and the fields were brown and golden, and the village streets looked like lines of embroidery.
“Nice view,” said Harriet.
It would probably look less nice if she’d dropped a beanstalk the size of a giant sequoia on it. She sighed.
It was cold in the upper reaches of the beanstalk. Harriet wished briefly that she was a fluffy teddy bear hamster. She pulled her arms inside her jacket and hunched her shoulders up around her ears.
Mumfrey pulled them up another few feet, and suddenly they were in the clouds.
It was soggy and foggy and cold. Harriet could barely see Mumfrey’s bobbing topknot in front of her.
“Clouds,” muttered Harriet. “They look so pretty and then you get into them and it’s just a pile of fog.”
Mumfrey qwerked irritably. He didn’t like what fog did to his feathers.
They climbed inside the cloud for what felt like hours, but which was probably only about ten minutes. Mumfrey had to set his feet carefully on the damp beanstalk.
Harriet knew that this was the most dangerous part of the climb. It was so cold and the air was so thin that if Mumfrey fell and tried to fly, his wings might ice. Then it wouldn’t matter if he could fly.
Suddenly they broke through the surface of the cloud.
“Whoa,” said Harriet. “Now THIS is gonna be a problem.”
CHAPTER 5
There was a castle in the clouds.
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