Her mom and dad didn’t need to eat or drink in their enchanted sleep, but what if something else went wrong?
“They’ll be fine,” said Wilbur. “My mom always says that things look darkest just before the dawn.”
“Unless you’re underground,” said Harriet. “Or at the bottom of a dungeon. Then it doesn’t matter what time it is.”
“ . . . um,” said Wilbur.
CHAPTER 21
When they finally reached the top of the hill leading to the castle, Harriet’s relief was so intense she nearly cried. The brambles were still in place around the castle. Nobody had gotten in.
Actually, they were more than “in place.” When Harriet tried to find the tunnel she’d hacked out, it was so overgrown that she could barely see where it had been. If she hadn’t left an ax sticking out of a briar trunk at the entryway, she might never have found it again.
“I don’t think you have to kiss the brambles,” said Harriet. “Although . . . could you try? I mean, one little kiss is bound to be easier than hacking our way back through there . . .”
Harriet handed Wilbur the ax.
He lasted about five minutes before dropping the ax and planting a smooch on the nearest briar.
Nothing happened.
Both of them muttered bad words under their breath. Harriet’s was much better, but then again, she’d learned it from a one-legged weasel pirate on the Seas of Terror, and they have much better bad words than you are likely to learn on a paper route.
They went back to chopping brambles.
Harriet took over as soon as Wilbur’s arms were tired—about five minutes—and started breaking the job up into fractions.
This did not get the brambles chopped any faster, but it did make things seem less daunting.
It was nearly nightfall by the time they reached the stableyard. Mumfrey rushed in to check on the other quail. They were all still fast asleep in the stables.
Ratshade was still sleeping as well. The only thing that had changed was the pile of wood left by the enchanted hamster wheel, which had turned into a pile of black ash.
That . . . and Ratshade’s nails.
“Yeesh!” said Wilbur, staring down at the sleeping fairy. “What’s with her nails?”
“They must grow really fast,” said Harriet. “Wow.”
“Poor rat. That must be really uncomfortable.”
Harriet gave him a look. “You know she’s the one who cursed everybody, right?”
“Oh. Hmm. How do you suppose she goes to the bathroom?” asked Wilbur.
“Very carefully.”
CHAPTER 22
Prince Wilbur kissed everyone.
He kissed the quail in their stalls and the newts in their kennels. He kissed the dukes and the earls and the viscounts and the regular count. He kissed the servants and the guards and the pages and the cook and the maids.
At first he was squeamish and would have to screw up his courage to kiss a sleeping hamster on the ear or the cheek, but after about forty kisses, he stopped caring and started complaining.
“They’re not waking up, though,” said the prince, kissing Harriet’s mother on the cheek and her father (awkwardly) on top of his head. “And I’m starting to feel really weird about this.”
“They won’t wake up until you’ve kissed everybody,” said Harriet. “The Crone of the Blighted Waste told me so. You’re doing great.”
Wilbur sighed.
The day wore on. He kissed the two pages in the boys’ bathroom and the six guards in the tower bedroom and a couple of visiting dignitaries and the castle janitor and the three stablehands tending the quail. (Mumfrey watched, very concerned, as he kissed the various quail. Those were his friends, after all!)
He stopped occasionally to take a drink of water. Harriet watched impatiently.
He kissed another newt sleeping in front of the fire, and turned finally to Prince Cecil, who was still asleep at the bottom of the stairs.
“He should be the last one!” said Harriet enthusiastically.
“I can’t feel my face.”
“It’s probably better that way. Do you want to feel this?”
“Not . . . really . . .” He frowned. “Did this poor guy fall down the stairs?”
Harriet quivered with excitement. Wilbur screwed up his face—the other prince had drooled in his sleep, and it was all very unpleasant—and kissed the tip of the prince’s ear.
Nothing happened.
“Give it a minute,” said Harriet.
A minute passed. Nothing continued to happen.
“Please don’t tell me I’ve kissed all those people for nothing,” said Wilbur. “My lips feel like old tires, and I’m still not entirely sure there isn’t something deeply creepy about all this.”
“They’re supposed to wake up!” said Harriet. “The crone said! She said once you’d kissed everyone, they’d all wake up!” She put her hands on her hips.
“I think I kissed some of those newts twice,” said Wilbur.
“And the dukes and the earls and the viscounts?”
“Check, check, and check.”
“And I know you kissed my mom and dad . . .”
“I would prefer not to dwell on that, thank you.”
Harriet bit her lip. The crone had said that the prince had to kiss everyone in the palace who had fallen asleep, and then everyone would wake up. What was she missing?
“Everyone in the palace . . .” she muttered. “Everyone in the palace . . .”
The crone had even given her a look. What had the look meant?
And then it hit her.
CHAPTER 23
But I don’t want to kiss an evil fairy!” said Wilbur, for about the eight hundredth time.
“We don’t have a choice,” said Harriet, tightening a rope around Ratshade’s left foot. “We’re going to have to wake her up. We’ll just have to make sure she can’t escape.”
“But . . . it’s not that I don’t want to help . . . I mean, I’d feel awful if it was my mom under a magic sleep . . .”
“Look,” said Harriet, “if you don’t kiss Ratshade, then all the other kisses won’t work. And you’ll have kissed the newts and Prince Cecil and my parents for nothing.”
Harriet pulled the last belt tight and stood back to survey her handiwork. “There. If she can escape this . . . well . . .”
The truth was that if Ratshade could escape from the pile of ropes, belts, stakes, weights, and handcuffs that Harriet had shackled her with, there was really nothing that they could do about it.
“That’s everything I can think of to do,” Harriet said. “Are we all ready?”
“Hiss!”
“Qwerk!”
“. . . I guess.”
The princess drew her sword and nodded to Wilbur.
Wilbur gulped and slowly bent down toward Ratshade. Kissing evil fairies had not been in the job description.
The same cold wind that had struck Harriet before came shrieking out of nowhere. It whipped Mumfrey’s feathers and tangled Heady’s heads and blew Harriet’s whiskers sideways.
This time, though, the wind seemed to be coming from behind them, and blowing directly into the body of Ratshade.
THE . .WIND shrieked.
The pile of belts and ropes binding Ratshade creaked warningly. Buckles rattled as it vibrated and shook. Heady grabbed Wilbur’s shirt in one set of teeth and tried to pull him away from the wicked fairy and her bindings.
And then, just as it had before, the wind whipped around them one last time and faded into silence.
“Did . . . did it work?” asked Wilbur. “Is she awake?”
“I’m not sure,” said Harriet.
The pile of ropes exploded.
“Yes,” snarled Ratshade, spitting out the last w
ords of a spell that made the ropes whip off her like frightened snakes. “I’m awake.”
CHAPTER 24
Harriet was feeling a relief so intense that her knees were getting a bit shaky.
The spell had been broken! Prince Wilbur’s kiss had worked! Ratshade was awake, and that meant that everybody else would be waking up too, including her parents!
There was the small matter of the angry fairy and the bit where Harriet herself was probably about to be turned into a turnip or a sea cucumber or something equally unfortunate, but these things happened.
Ratshade pointed a shaking finger at Harriet. Her claws had grown so rapidly in her sleep that it looked as if she had earthworms strapped to the ends.
Harriet gripped her sword more tightly and took a step forward.
Ratshade sneered at her. “Still playing with swords? You should learn how to act like a princess!” She twitched her claws, and the sword shot out of Harriet’s hands and buried itself in the wall next to Wilbur’s head. Wilbur yelped and jumped sideways.
“I am acting like a princess!” yelled Harriet. “I’m a princess, and therefore any way that I act—oh, never mind!” She lunged for the sword.
Ratshade’s spell hit her before she made it ten feet. It felt like somebody had clubbed her in the back of her knees.
Ratshade raised both hands and whipped them through the air like a conductor.
Two of Heady’s heads crashed together, two more tied themselves in a knot, and the fifth head looked extremely confused.
With all the heads out of commission, Heady could no longer see where she was going and fell over on her side. Ratshade snickered.
The quail lunged. His topknot quivered with rage, and the spurs on his scaly feet glittered.
She rolled her eyes, stuck out an arm, and Mumfrey’s feet stopped moving. The rest of Mumfrey did not stop moving, which meant that he went beak-first into the dirt.
Wilbur looked at Heady, looked at Mumfrey, looked at Harriet, who was still crawling grimly toward her sword—and finally looked at Ratshade.
The wicked fairy was a terrifying sight. Ash streaked her fur and her eyes glittered as red as dying suns. The stump of her tail twitched back and forth like a metronome. Her claws seemed to writhe as she lifted her hands.
“A prince!” hissed Ratshade. “A prince has come to fight me!?” Static sparked and crackled over her fur. “Princesses are nothing, but a prince . . . !”
It would be nice to report that Wilbur said something heroic at this juncture, something really impressive and clever and suited to a fairy-tale prince. But it can be hard to think of clever and impressive things to say when you are facing a profoundly wicked fairy, particularly when you aren’t used to adventures.
Harriet sighed.
“Not much of a prince, are you?” growled Ratshade. “Well, she’s not much of a princess, so I suppose that fits. But you did break my curse . . .” She raised her claws over her head and strode forward.
Wilbur looked around wildly, and saw the sword.
No! Harriet wanted to yell as Wilbur yanked the sword out of the wall. No, you idiot, you’re holding it all wrong, you don’t know the first thing about using a sword, you’re going to cut your own leg off—
But she didn’t, because Ratshade was ignoring her, and had walked right by her, and Harriet didn’t want to draw her attention. Apparently the wicked fairy didn’t think that princesses were worth worrying about. It didn’t matter that Harriet had thrown her into the hamster wheel earlier—in Ratshade’s world, princesses existed to be cursed and weren’t good for much else.
I’ll show her. I’ll figure out a way . . .
For some reason, she couldn’t look away from the stump of Ratshade’s tail. It twitched in front of her, as if something was still attached to it . . . back and forth . . .
. . . back and forth . . .
Magic has a very long tail, the crone had said.
“A sword?” sneered Ratshade. “Fool! Do you really think you can hurt me with that? Blades cannot cut me!”
Since Harriet’s plan had mostly relied on having a sword, this was unwelcome news.
I’d chop her tail off, if I could! And if she still . . . had one . . .
. . . what if she does?
“I don’t have to,” said Wilbur, and drawing his arm back, he threw the sword across the space between them.
“Ha!” said Ratshade. “You missed!”
“I,” said Prince Wilbur with great dignity, “am a paper boy. I never miss.”
Ratshade turned.
CHAPTER 25
Ratshade opened her mouth to say something—an insult, a magic phrase, Harriet had no idea and wasn’t about to give her the chance. The hamster princess swung the sword up over her head and down in a great cleaving arc.
She wasn’t aiming at Ratshade, though—not exactly. Many wicked fairies are indeed immune to blades, unless you have a magic sword forged of moonlight and iron, and those are expensive even for princesses. Harriet’s sword was plain steel and probably would have bounced right off Ratshade.
Instead, Harriet aimed for the stump of Ratshade’s tail.
Crone, I hope you knew what you were talking about!
The blade passed so close to the wicked fairy that her ash-streaked fur rippled with it, and chopped through the air a millimeter away.
Ratshade screamed.
It’s not widely known, but when a rat trades its tail for magic, the magic attached itself to the stump in the same way that the tail did.
Princess Harriet had just amputated Ratshade’s magic.
Electricity sparked and whined through the air. Harriet’s sword turned red-hot and the hamster princess dropped it, where it promptly melted into a small molten puddle.
“Whoa,” said Harriet.
“My magic!” screamed Ratshade.
She was still a wicked fairy—being a fairy is something you’re born with, and nobody can take that away—but she was suddenly much less powerful. She spun around and tried to cast a spell that would have blasted Harriet into smithereens—and nothing happened.
Harriet had no idea what Ratshade would try next. She hadn’t been sure that chopping off Ratshade’s tail would even work. That had been her only sword, and unless she could grab a broom from the stable, she was completely out of weapons.
She was, however, a bit surprised when Ratshade decided to try and strangle her.
“I’ll kill you!” screamed the evil rat fairy. “I’ll turn you into cufflinks—into a raindrop—into a six-note kazoo solo!”
Harriet pried at the fingers around her throat. Ratshade’s monstrous claws were cutting into her skin and making it hard to breathe, and she had absolutely no desire to be turned into a kazoo solo.
The rat was bigger than she was, and hideously strong. She dropped one hand and began fumbling around for something—a rock, a broom, anything—to whack Ratshade over the head with.
“No, you aren’t!” shrieked Ratshade. “A proper princess would die!”
She couldn’t breathe. Bright spots were starting to form in front of her eyes. But Harriet’s questing hand landed in her pocket, and found something she’d completely forgotten.
The clothespin.
With her last strength, she whipped the clothespin out of her pocket and snapped it shut on Ratshade’s twitching nose.
The world went gray.
Suddenly she could breathe again. The claws were gone. Harriet pulled herself up on her elbows and watched as Ratshade staggered around the stableyard, clawing at the clothespin.
Either the magic of the Clothespin of Binding was such that it wouldn’t come off Ratshade’s nose, or the wicked fairy’s claws had simply grown too long for her to be able to get a grip on it.
Her flailing brought her too near Mumfrey. Even with hi
s eyes crossed from having hit his beak too hard, the quail managed to stick out a wing. Ratshade tumbled over it and landed on her back.
“Enough!” she cried (although with the clothespin on her nose, it came out as “Ennogggk!”). She waved her hands in the air, and with the last of her fairy strength, she vanished.
Harriet sat up and rubbed her neck.
“Is . . . is it over?” asked Wilbur. He had prudently taken refuge behind a haystack. “Is she gone?”
“I think she’s gone,” croaked Harriet. Her throat was sore and raspy. “We’ll have to check with the crone, but I don’t think she’ll come back unless she can get the clothespin off.”
“Oh good,” said Wilbur. “In that case, I think I’m going to faint.”
And he did.
Harriet rolled her eyes.
CHAPTER 26
The days that followed were busy. Harriet had to explain everything to her parents and to everyone in the palace, and then she had to explain it all over again three or four times, because no one was listening and everybody was saying things like “How long were we asleep?” and “Are you quite sure Ratshade is gone?” and “Where did that smashed-up hamster wheel in the stableyard come from?”
There was also the matter of the brambles, which had not vanished when everyone woke up. The royal gardeners were out hacking at stems and trunks and vines for days, and the royal guard and the royal woodcutters had to get involved too. Harriet’s father spent a lot of time wandering around the castle muttering about the foundations.
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