Harriet the Invincible

by Ursula Vernon

  The curse took.

  The princess felt it take, a great wash of cold air that ruffled her fur and pinned her ears back. Someone had pricked themselves on the enchanted wheel . . . but it was the wrong person.

  Ratshade screamed.

  Sparks arced and cracked over the rat’s fur and between her whiskers. The smell of burning hair made Harriet’s eyes water. The hamster dropped the wicked fairy and staggered backward into Mumfrey.

  The cold wind grew stronger and seemed to blow out of the wheel, whipping past them. Mumfrey dug his claws into the ground to keep from being knocked off his feet.

  The cold wind whipped around them once, twice, three times—and the third time knocked Harriet into Mumfrey and knocked Mumfrey into the stable wall.

  And then there was silence.

  CHAPTER 11

  Princess Harriet got to her feet.

  After a moment or two, so did Mumfrey, although he was missing a couple of feathers.

  The stableyard, strangely enough, did not look as if a magical cyclone had whipped through it. The haystacks were still in their mounds, not blown halfway across the kingdom. A cricket chirped somewhere in the stillness, then thought better of it, and didn’t chirp again.

  The one thing that clearly had been hit by the magic wind was the enchanted hamster wheel. The frame was broken into a hundred pieces. It looked like a pile of kindling, not like the bringer of a terrible fairy curse.

  Ratshade lay atop the pile, her eyes closed.

  “Uh-oh,” said Harriet. “Is she dead?” You didn’t generally get in trouble for killing wicked fairies, but fairies are still people, and she felt a little funny about it.

  Mumfrey was trying to preen his wings to cover the bare patches where his missing feathers had been. He gave Ratshade an unfriendly look.

  Harriet didn’t want to get close enough to the pile of wood to poke her, just in case the curse was still active. It wouldn’t have been possible to climb the pile without getting at least one splinter.

  Fortunately, at that moment Ratshade snored.

  “She’s asleep,” said Harriet, with a sigh of relief. “The curse backfired on her. Whew.”

  Another sound came to her attention then.

  It was not quite a rustling and not quite a creaking and there was almost a hissing, but also a groaning—what was it? Harriet had never heard anything quite like it.

  She turned around and around the stableyard, trying to figure out where it was coming from. She had just about decided that it was coming from all directions and was thinking that she really wanted her sword—and then she saw it.

  The brambles were growing.

  It was really no wonder that Harriet didn’t recognize the sound. Very few people on earth have ever heard the sound of a plant growing at a thousand times the normal speed. (The middle fairy god-mouse would have recognized it, of course, but she had given up god-mousing some years earlier and had started a lucrative career selling organic cabbages.)

  The brambles shot up around the palace walls like flailing serpents, great whippy vines of green and brown, coiling around the base of the tower and slithering over the stable roof.

  For a minute, Harriet thought that they might actually overgrow the stableyard and that she and Mumfrey were going to have to run for it, but the vines stopped at the edges as if they’d run into a wall. They waved back and forth, putting out thorns as long as a dragon’s claws, then hurriedly grew upward, arcing overhead and weaving together until it looked as if a giant wicker basket had been dropped over the top of the palace.

  The stones of the palace creaked in protest as vines scrabbled and clawed at them.

  Harriet remembered how her father had fretted over the impact of fast-growing brambles on the foundations of the tower. This . . . this was impacting a bit more than the tower.

  “I guess we should go tell them I beat Ratshade,” said Harriet. “They’re bound to have noticed the plants by now, anyway.” She cast a last glimpse up at the bramble roof, and saw a star winking at her through a gap in the thorns.

  CHAPTER 12

  It turned out to be a bit more complicated than that.

  Harriet first noticed the problem when she went back into the stable. All the quail were asleep with their wings over their heads. Well, it was evening, that wasn’t unusual, but they didn’t wake up, not even when Harriet rattled the birdseed bin getting Mumfrey his dinner.

  Normally the sound of the birdseed bin would bring all the quail in the stable to high alert.

  The head stablehand was asleep in the corner of one of the stalls, leaning up against the wall, and he didn’t wake up when Harriet talked to him.

  Princess Harriet was starting to get a sinking feeling in her stomach.

  She hurried across the little alley that separated the stables from the main palace. Thorns meshed overhead. When she pulled the door open, the guard who had been leaning against the door fell down in front of her with a clatter of armor . . . and he didn’t wake up either.

  The butler was asleep. The maids were asleep. In the great hall, the dukes and the earls and the viscounts and the regular count were all asleep at the dining table, and the servants who were bringing them food had lain down on the floor and were sleeping curled around their serving trays. Prince Cecil was sprawled out, face-down.

  And worst of all, at the far end of the hall, curled up in the seat of the enormous thrones . . .

  Everyone in the palace was asleep, except for Harriet and Mumfrey. She ran up to the top of the tower and down to the depths of the wine cellar, and every person she found was sleeping. In the royal kennels, even the fierce hunting newts were sleeping in soggy piles, making wet, snuffly little snores.

  There were, as it happened, one hundred seventeen people in the palace at that time (not including quail and newts) and Harriet, who had a mathematical turn of mind, counted all of them to make sure that every single one was actually present and asleep.

  They were all there.

  She had a hopeful few minutes when she couldn’t find one hundred fifteen and one hundred sixteen, but it turned out that they were both in the boys’ bathroom, where she initially hadn’t thought to look. (And which was very dirty compared to the girls’ bathroom. Harriet did not stay long.)

  She herself was number one hundred seventeen, and with the addition of Ratshade, that meant that she and Mumfrey were the only ones awake in a palace of one hundred eighteen people.

  One over one hundred eighteen was a very, very small fraction.

  When she tried to wake them up, nothing happened. She poked the dukes and yelled at the earls and sang “Wakey-wakey!” to the viscounts and rolled Prince Cecil down a short flight of steps (he probably deserved it) and none of them even stopped snoring.

  Eventually she went back to Mumfrey, because there is something very, very creepy about being the only person awake in an enchanted palace. Everyone in the stable was asleep too, including all the other quail, but at least she didn’t have to look at them, and quail don’t really snore.

  CHAPTER 13

  The Crone of the Blighted Waste had what is possibly the least accurate name in the history of magical rodents.

  When someone says crone, you will likely think of someone like Ratshade—withered and cruel, with a long pointy nose and warts tucked in unusual places. What you might not know is that crone is a courtesy title among witches, and means that you are very good at magic indeed.

  The Crone of the Blighted Waste was a plump, motherly guinea pig who always had fresh cookies available. And the Blighted Waste itself, while it had been very blighted and very unpleasant several centuries ago, had been turned into affordable senior housing years earlier, so the crone lived off to one side of a rather nice park with lots of flowers.

  Princess Harriet rode up to the crone’s door, slid off Mumfrey’s back, and rang
the doorbell.

  The crone opened it, looked down at the bedraggled princess, and said, “Good heavens! You look like you’ve been dragged backward through a briar patch!”

  The crone bustled around the house, getting cookies and, being a thoughtful witch, also brought Band-Aids and some nasty-smelling gunk in a bottle. “Hold still,” she told Harriet, applying the gunk to the princess’s scratches.

  “Ow,” said Harriet. It stung, as almost all nasty-smelling gunk does.

  “It’ll keep them from getting infected,” said the crone. “You’re no longer invincible now, you know, and you will have to start getting used to it.”

  Harriet sighed. She’d been trying not to think about it. If the curse was off, that meant that her magical invulnerability was also gone. She might even have to give up cliff-diving.

  “So you can tell the curse is gone?” she asked, taking a cookie.

  The crone laughed. “My dear, every fairy in a fifty-mile radius felt that curse go. What on earth did you do to poor Ratshade?”

  “Threw her into the enchanted hamster wheel. And you don’t get to feel sorry for her! She’s the wicked fairy!”

  “My dear,” said the crone, passing a cookie out the open window to Mumfrey, “I would feel sorry for anyone who went up against you. When did we first meet? That poor giant, wasn’t it?”

  “Yup,” said Harriet. “He had that awful Jack fellow bothering him.”

  “Nasty fellow,” said the crone, shuddering. “Chopping down his vegetables and stealing the silverware. I had to make all those traps.”

  “The traps worked,” said Harriet. “All I had to do was drag him out after he’d gotten stuck.”

  “Right,” said the crone. “You did very well. And so, as long as I have known you, my dear, you have been tough and stubborn and inclined to bull-doze everything in your path.”

  “So I am allowed to feel a little sorry for Ratshade, who clearly did not know what she was up against.” She took a sip of tea.

  “What I don’t understand,” said Harriet, helping herself to another cookie, “is why I didn’t fall asleep. Everyone else in the palace is out like a light, except for me and Mumfrey.”

  “Oh, that’s simple enough,” said the crone. “When magic backfires on its wielder like that, you get a—a magical tornado of sorts. A cyclone, if you will. And in the very center of a tornado or a cyclone, you have the eye of the storm, which is a completely calm place. I suspect that you and your darling little quail—”

  “Qwerk!” said Mumfrey, who was not willing to be called a darling little quail, even by someone who kept handing him cookies.

  “—I’m sorry, your big, fierce, heroic quail—”

  “Qwerk,” said Mumfrey, pleased.

  “—were fortunate enough to be in the eye of the magical storm. Since you were the one to deal with Ratshade, you could hardly have avoided it. Once everyone was asleep, of course, the modifications to the spell took effect. I suspect that none of your people will have to eat or drink while they are asleep, and the brambles seem to have grown around the entire palace quite nicely.”

  Harriet sat and thought about this. This was heavy thinking, and required several more cookies and another cup of tea.

  CHAPTER 14

  Fortunately for you,” said the Crone of the Blighted Waste, “the same prince ought to do it. I don’t think you’ll have to find—what is it—one hundred and seventeen new princes? Plus however many for the quail. That would be quite daunting.”

  Harriet groaned. The thought of one prince was daunting. Prince Cecil had been . . . well, pretty awful. Finding another prince to kiss him . . .

  She groaned again, with feeling.

  The crone fixed her bright black eyes on Harriet, who had a feeling that she was missing something. (The trouble with witches is that they are much like a certain kind of teacher, and they won’t tell you the answer to a question if they believe you’re capable of working it out on your own.)

  “I’ll have to convince him to kiss all the newts too, I guess,” said Harriet. She didn’t mind the hunting newts herself, who were generally good-natured and liked having their gill-slits scratched, but a stuck-up prince might certainly balk at kissing a newt.

  “Just remember,” said the crone, “magic has a long tail.” And she gave Harriet another very hard look.

  “Err?” said Harriet, glancing back at her own tiny, stubby tail. “If you say so?” She wasn’t sure what the crone was talking about, but the way that she emphasized the words meant that they were important.

  That was the trouble with witches, they expected you to be smarter than you really were.

  The crone shook her head, sitting back. “Just remember that, will you? And now, I might be able to give you some help . . .” She went into the back of the cottage and began banging around in a closet. “Now, where did I put that thing . . . ?”

  Harriet relaxed back into the chair and had another cookie. If the Crone of the Blighted Waste had some enchanted object to help her, she was in a much better state. Maybe it would be a magic sword. You could do a lot with a magic sword. Or a cloak of invisibility.

  “Right!” said the crone, emerging from the back with dust on her apron. “Found it!” She held out her hand.

  “Snap this clothespin on anyone or anything, and it’ll stay snapped,” said the crone. “It’s really very useful.”

  “If you’re trying to do laundry in a high wind, I suppose,” said Harriet dubiously. “I don’t suppose you’ve got a magic sword or anything back there?”

  “It’s the clothespin or nothing,” said the crone firmly.

  Harriet sighed. However, she had not spent the last two years traveling the world for nothing. She knew that if a witch gives you something, the odds are good that when you are in some dire peril, it will be exactly the thing you need.

  Anyway, she still had a perfectly good un-enchanted sword.

  “Thank you,” she said, putting the clothespin in her pocket. “I’m sure it will come in handy.”

  “You’re not sure of anything of the sort,” said the crone cheerfully, “but you’ve learned to be polite to people who can turn you into a turnip, and that’s not a bad skill.” She handed Harriet a small sack. “Here are some cookies for the road, and a bottle of antiseptic. You put that on your scratches morning and evening, and I don’t want any complaining about it stinging. I shall be watching you in my scrying mirror to make sure.” (Many witches have scrying mirrors, which allow them to see what is going on in distant places. The Crone of the Blighted Waste kept hers in the spare bedroom, which was very surprising to guests who would go to check their hair and suddenly have a view of India or Samarkand.)

  And so, the valiant princess Harriet took her cookies and her enchanted clothespin and her un-enchanted sword and climbed onto Mumfrey’s back to set off in search of a prince.

  CHAPTER 15

  The first palace that Harriet came to was very tall, with banners flying from the tops of the towers. It had a charming moat, blue slate roof tiles, and was in every way a perfect castle.

  Princess Harriet rode up the winding road to the castle door, climbed off Mumfrey’s back, and knocked.

  The door opened immediately, and a butler looked down his nose at Harriet. He was tall and thin and haughty and looked as if he had coat-hangers for bones.

  “You and everyone else,” said the butler. “What is your name?”

  “Princess Harriet.”

  The butler’s face did not move at all, but his eyes definitely flickered a bit. “I will go and see if the prince is available.”

  “I have half a mind to ride away and go find another prince,” she told Mumfrey. “But Mom and Dad need help.”

  The butler returned a few minutes later and said, “The prince is not at home.”

  “I can wait,” said Harriet,
shoving her foot in the door.

  “No,” said the butler, “you can’t. The prince is not at home. He will not be home for the foreseeable future. As far as you are concerned, Princess, he will never be at home again.”

  Harriet’s jaw dropped at the sheer rudeness of this, and the butler took advantage of her astonishment to slide her foot off the threshold and slam the door again.

  “Qwerk!” said Mumfrey, and left a steaming pile of quail poop on the doorstep of the perfect castle.

  The next palace was even larger, and according to a helpful peasant on the road, had not one but two princes in residence. Harriet felt much more optimistic.

  It was just as perfect as the last one. The road was lined with topiary, which is an art form where people cut bushes into the shapes of animals. A row of enormous boxwood rabbits watched Harriet ride up to the door.

  The butler who opened this door was nearly identical to the first butler, except that he was even taller and thinner and more haughty-looking. He looked like a coatrack wearing a suit.

  “I’m looking for a prince,” said Harriet. “Either one. It’s an emergency.”

  “It always is,” said the butler sourly, and slammed the door.

  The door opened again, and the butler said, “What’s your name?”

  “Princess Harriet,” said Harriet.

  “You’re a princess?” said the butler.

  “Absolutely,” said Harriet, trying to look pale and melancholy and as if she were capable of balancing a book on her head.