Hamster Princess--Giant Trouble

by Ursula Vernon

  Harriet clung to the top of the shoe, waiting to see if the sound had woken its owner. She was glad that she hadn’t had anything more than tea since the night before. If there had been anything in her stomach, she’d probably lose it loudly, and there’s nothing worse than trying to fight a giant while you have the dry heaves.

  The giant didn’t stir.

  Great. Now I just need to get this unlaced . . . somehow . . .

  She grabbed one end of the shoelace and began to feed it through the hole in the leather.

  The lace came out easily, but there was a lot of it. She stopped to wipe her face and without warning, the giant rolled over.

  For a brief moment, up was down and down was up and Harriet was dangling over empty space.

  She had the shoelace wrapped around one arm, so she didn’t fall very far. But she hit the end of the lace with a squeak and hung there, spinning slowly.

  Does he know I’m here? Can he feel me?

  Let’s see, if I’m one-thirtieth his size, then something one-thirtieth my size would be about the size of a small sack of flour. If a sack of flour was hanging off my foot, I’d feel it!

  She had to get off his foot before he woke the rest of the way up.

  “Gnnnrrff . . .” mumbled the giant. He reached an enormous hand down and scratched his ankle.

  Harriet watched the hand coming and felt her heart pounding.

  He’s just got an itch, he’ll scratch and then finish shortly, that’s all—

  He didn’t. He scratched harder. The shoelace flopped back and forth with Harriet on the end.

  “Hrrrzzzggh . . . fuh . . . itchy . . .” mumbled the giant.

  Oh no! That was a word! He’s waking up!

  “Feee . . . zzzz . . . foe . . . fitchy . . . footzzzz . . . so . . . itchy . . .”

  Harriet’s heart hammered in her chest. She had to get off the shoe, but not without the shoelace!

  She swung as hard as she could on the lace. It was almost completely out of the shoe now.

  It’s at least 98/100ths of the way out—which reduces to 49/50ths, which doesn’t reduce any further—

  She was thinking this when the shoelace came 50/50ths of the way out of the shoe, which reduced all the way to 1, which reduced to Harriet falling toward the floor.

  CHAPTER 14

  She landed on the pile of knots that she had chewed free. It was slightly softer than landing on, say, sharp rocks, but not by much. Harriet lay across the pile of ropes for a minute, the breath knocked out of her. The shoelace landed across her back an instant later, so that it was like getting hit twice, once from below and once from above.

  On the bed, the giant finally stopped scratching and went mumbling back to sleep.

  Harriet concentrated on trying to get her breath back. Unfortunately, since she was lying in a pile of concentrated foot funk, breathing wasn’t that much better than not-breathing.

  “Ungh,” she said finally, pushing herself up. She pulled her shirt collar over her nose and began coiling the shoelace over her shoulder.

  She felt exhausted. She’d fought Ogrecats and they hadn’t been half so difficult.

  Carrying the rope, and trying to breathe through her mouth—the shirt didn’t help much—she staggered out of the room.

  She made one detour on the way back to Strings. The goose was asleep with her head under her wing. In addition to the food bowl, she had a second bowl of water.

  Harriet fell to her knees and dunked her entire head in it.

  Eventually she had to come up for air. Her mouth felt better. Instead of tasting like feet, it tasted like water, and faintly like feathers. She could handle that. You didn’t spend all day with a battle quail without getting used to feathers in your food.

  Harriet climbed up the chair and leaped to the shelf, carrying the shoelace around her shoulder.

  “Yeck,” said Strings. “You’re all wet. And what’s that smell?”

  “Giant shoelaces,” said Harriet. “His feet have a giant funk to go with them. I don’t think he ever takes them off.”

  “Shoelaces!” said Strings. “Of course!” She smacked her forehead with a jangling sound.

  Harriet went to the back of the shelf. There was a gap between the giant board and the wall where Strings’s chain dangled down. It was only about a foot wide, but that was more than enough space for Harriet. She fed the shoelace down around one of the shelf supports and began anchoring it in place.

  “I just wonder why he wears shoes at all,” she said as she worked.

  “Oh, that’s easy,” said Strings. “It’s clouds. You walk around on clouds all day, your feet get super-soggy. And giants have notoriously weak ankles.”

  “They do?”

  “Yeah,” said Strings. “They’re carrying a lot of weight around. They all wind up wearing orthopedic shoes eventually.”

  “How do you know so much about giant feet?”

  “Fascinating,” said Harriet. “I shall keep this in mind the next time I fight a giant.” She had finished tying the shoelace to the shelf support and began to feed it down over the edge. “Now let’s see about this chain . . .”

  “It’s fastened to a hook on the wall down there,” said Strings. “You’ll have to actually get down to the hook to get it loose, though. I’ve tried everything from up here.”

  Harriet nodded. She’d only known Strings for a couple of hours, but it was pretty obvious that if there was an easy way to get free, the harpster would have done it already.

  Harriet respected a kindred spirit, even if they were a magical musical instrument.

  She grabbed the shoelace and jumped to the chair back. She could see the hook, gleaming red in the firelight. It was several yards beneath the shelf.

  “Okay,” she muttered. “Just like a rope swing back home . . .”

  She wrapped her legs around the shoelace, grabbed with both hands, and pushed off from the chair.

  CHAPTER 15

  At first Harriet was afraid she wasn’t going to get close enough to the hook, and then she was afraid she was going to get much too close. The hook had a wicked, backward-curving point, perfect for (to take an example completely and totally at random) impaling anybody who was swinging toward it at high speed on a giant shoelace.

  “Uh-oh—”

  She flung her weight sideways. The shoelace shuddered and the room swung dizzyingly. Unfortunately, she could still see the gleam of light off the point of the hook, which was still coming right at her.

  “—uh-oh-uh-oh-uh-oh—”

  If she got impaled on a hook in a strange castle, her mom was going to have a fit. Harriet let go with one hand and prepared to jump.

  She hit the wall six inches from the hook, smashed her nose, nearly lost her grip on the shoelace, flailed wildly to catch it—and grabbed the chain. There was a jangle overhead as her weight struck the chain and yanked Strings over backward.

  “You’re telling me . . .” said Strings. The harpster sounded somewhat squashed.

  The shoelace began trying to swing backward. Harriet clung to the chain. The chain slid downward, dragging Strings back across the shelf.

  “Stop pulling!” cried Strings.

  “Stop moving!” cried Harriet.

  “I can’t! There’s nothing to grab!”

  The chain slithered downward. So did Harriet. The shoelace burned through her fingers.

  “Sorry!” said Harriet. She hadn’t expected to drag Strings all the way across the shelf by the chain.

  “It’s fine,” said Strings, obviously through gritted teeth. “Just—hurry.”

  Harriet climbed up the chain. Every time she grabbed a link, there was a grunt from overhead, as Strings took not only Harriet’s weight, but the not-inconsiderable heft of the giant shoelace.

  When she reached the hook, she grabbed it with
both hands and took her weight off the chain at last.

  “Oh, thank the myriad melodious gods of music,” panted Strings.

  Harriet’s hands were starting to ache. She wished she’d brought gloves.

  Fortunately, with the chain dangling so far down, it was easy. She gripped with one hand and unhooked the chain with the other. “There!” she said. “It’s loose!”

  Strings began to pull the chain up. Harriet watched as the last link vanished through the crack between shelf and wall.

  “Come on, then,” said Strings. “Let’s get out of this place. I don’t want to stay here one minute longer than I have to.”

  CHAPTER 16

  In the end, it was harder than that, of course. Harriet had to perform some extraordinary contortions to get firmly back on the shoelace-rope, while still keeping hold of the hook. Her palms were burning and red by the time she managed to swing back over to the chair.

  Strings was waiting at the edge of the shelf. She helped pull Harriet up onto it.

  “You all right?” asked Harriet.

  Strings had wound the chain around the back of the harp, out of the way. “Yeah. Gonna have some really exciting bruises, that’s all. You okay?”

  Harriet flexed her aching hands. Her mother wouldn’t let her wear fingerless leather gloves because she said they made Harriet look like a biker, not a princess. Harriet thought she might just stash a pair in Mumfrey’s saddlebags for times like this.

  Then again, if I did that, they’d be in the cage with Mumfrey, so they wouldn’t do me any good right now anyway . . .

  “I’ve been slammed into shoes, walls, and piles of rope. I about gagged myself gnawing through a shoelace, and my hands are killing me.” She grinned. “So, y’know, all in a day’s work.”

  Strings was no coward. She grabbed the shoelace and swung herself down. Her arms rippled with muscles. Harriet was impressed. Apparently playing the harp only looked delicate.

  The harpster went down hand over hand. Harriet waited until she had reached the floor, then untied the shoelace and slung it over her shoulder. She might need it to get Mumfrey free.

  She leaped to the chair back, hopefully for the last time, and climbed down. There was a bad minute when she tried to get a handhold on the chair rungs and her hands did not want to close properly. She dropped to the floor—

  —and Strings caught her.

  “Normally that’s my job,” said Harriet.

  “Hey, I gotta look out for my drummer,” said Strings. She set Harriet down. “What next?”

  “Well, I have to get Mumfrey down.”

  Mumfrey’s cage was on top of the mantelpiece. The fireplace was made of rough stone. There were plenty of handholds for a hamster-sized hero.

  Mumfrey poked his head over the edge of the mantelpiece. His face lit up when he saw Harriet. “Qwerk!”

  “Hush!” hissed Harriet. “Don’t wake up the giant!”

  She was staring up the fireplace and wondering how she was going to get Mumfrey’s cage open at all, when she heard an unexpected voice from the castle door.

  “Harriet? Are you in here?”

  Strings jumped, startled. Harriet spun around.

  “Wilbur?!”

  CHAPTER 17

  It was indeed her best friend, Wilbur. He was leading his riding quail, Hyacinth, and looking around with interest.

  “Keep your voice down!” whispered Harriet. “There’s an evil giant!”

  “Of course there is,” said Wilbur, but he said it in a whisper.

  Harriet introduced hamster and harpster to each other.

  “Nice to meet you,” said Wilbur.

  “I’ve heard so much about you,” said Strings.

  “But how did you know I was up here?” said Harriet.

  Wilbur flipped his hair out of his face. “So I rode Hyacinth up the beanstalk.”

  “Cool,” said Harriet. “We’re rescuing Strings here from an evil giant. We’re gonna start a band.”

  “You know she can’t sing, right?” said Wilbur to Strings.

  “She’s the drummer. She just has to hit stuff.”

  “Oh, she’s very good at that.”

  Harriet beamed.

  “Anyway, now that you’re here, Hyacinth can help me get Mumfrey down!”

  Hyacinth was craning her neck up to look at Mumfrey in the cage. “Qwerk!” she said, which is Quail for “How dare someone put Mumfrey in a cage!?”

  “Qwerk!” replied Mumfrey, which is Quail for “I know, right?”

  Hyacinth scowled. She was a delicate little riding quail, not a trained battle quail, but nobody put her friends in cages!

  She hopped up to the table, took a running leap, and flapped frantically. The movement of stubby quail wings carried her to the top of the mantelpiece.

  “Qwerk,” she grumbled. “Qwerk, qwerk. Qwerrrrk—gnff!”

  The last bit was as she flipped the latch open and tried to pull the lid back. Mumfrey tried to help by pushing his head up against the underside.

  The cage was already hanging partly over the edge. It rocked on the mantel. Wilbur, Strings, and Harriet held their breath.

  With much flapping and fluttering and thumping, Hyacinth managed to flip the lid over.

  “Qwerk!” said Mumfrey happily, which is Quail for “I’m free!”

  “Qwerk!” said Hyacinth, which is Quail for “We did it! And my beak is sore!”

  Their glee lasted for almost five seconds, and then Mumfrey launched himself out of the cage.

  Even in magical kingdoms, the laws of physics still apply most of the time. In this case, the law was a very basic one—that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

  If a battle quail pushes off against the floor of a cage, the quail goes up.

  Unfortunately, sometimes it also means that the cage goes down.

  The cage teetered on the edge of the mantel—started to lean—and Mumfrey hit the edge with his feet as he tried to bounce free.

  It fell.

  Harriet watched as the cage fell toward the floor in what seemed like slow motion. She leaped forward, as if a hamster could really stop a cage the size of a small room from falling.

  The cage struck the floor and shattered into a million pieces.

  From the bedroom came the roar of an awakened giant. “Fee fie foe fair! What is going on in there?”

  CHAPTER 18

  Go!” cried Harriet. “Go, go, go! I’ll hold him!”

  “He’s thirty feet tall!” said Strings. “How are you gonna—”

  Fortunately Wilbur was there. “Trust Harriet!” he said, helping Strings onto quail-back. “She knows what she’s doing at least half the time!”

  Harriet tried to work out whether or not that was a compliment. Really, it was more like three-quarters of the time. Maybe even four-fifths. She could hear the giant flinging blankets around as he got up.

  She planted herself in front of the bedroom door. She wished she had had time to grab her sword. In her experience, it was a lot easier to make monsters pay attention to you when you had a sword.

  Guess I’ll just have to improvise . . .

  The door slammed back and the giant appeared in the doorway, looking groggy and furious. Harriet could hear the quail scurrying toward the exit.

  My job is to make sure he doesn’t notice them.

  The giant blinked a few times, then looked down.

  “Yeah, I’m talking to you!” shouted Harriet. “You’re—uh—mean! And smell bad! And your rhyme schemes are terrible!”

  “Fee fie foe fart! Nobody insults my art!”

  Harriet was briefly struck dumb by the rhyming of art and fart. Fortunately she did not have to think of a comeback, because the giant tried to step on her.

  She dodged out of the way, behind the door, and he had
to jerk it open to get at her. That gave her time to dart between the chair legs, where he couldn’t stomp.

  She shot a glance toward the castle exit. Her friends were nowhere to be seen. Harriet felt like cheering.

  Yes! Now I just need to get out myself—

  Taking time to look around cost her. The giant snatched her up by the back of her jacket and hauled Harriet into the air in front of his face.

  “Um,” said Harriet. She had an astonishingly clear view of the giant’s nostrils. She hadn’t ever given rabbit nostrils much thought. Most rabbits had cute fuzzy noses that sort of folded over.

  It turned out that when you were hanging directly in front of a nose bigger than you were, it stopped being cute and fuzzy. The giant’s nostrils were the size of storm drains. Harriet could see a wad of snot in one that was the size of Mumfrey’s head.

  No wonder he snores . . .

  “Fee fie foe famster!” roared the giant. “I knew I smelled a mortal hamster!”

  “You can’t rhyme hamster with famster,” said Harriet. “It’s just not right.”

  “Fee fie foe fimes! As long as it starts with f and rhymes!”

  Harriet felt that, with this, the time for civilized conversation had passed. She squirmed out of her jacket and jumped.

  “Hey!” shouted the giant. He slapped at Harriet. Since she was on his face, this meant that he dealt himself a stinging blow to the nose while Harriet half ran, half climbed toward his forehead.

  “Stop that!” shouted the giant. “I mean, fee fie fo—OW!”