Long Live the Queen

by Gerry Swallow

Because he had kept his part of the bargain by leading them to the money, Krool was now officially a free man. And if Elspeth and her friends thought Krool the prisoner was unbearably obnoxious, they now had to deal with Krool the fully pardoned and legally untouchable ex-con.

  “Could we possibly pick up the pace here?” he growled. “At this rate, by the time we get where we’re going, that awful witch will have spent half my money on hair spray and eye of newt.”

  This was more than likely an unfounded concern being that there were no hair salons, mini malls, or stores of any kind in the Thick. Besides, it was common knowledge that most witches bought their eye of newt in the bulk section of the local market.

  Still, Krool was right about one thing. With the horses having been turned into armadillos, the traveling speed of the group had been greatly diminished by the fact that they now had to go on foot, carrying all the provisions on their own backs. For an elfin man like Winkie, on the other hand, such an animal offered the perfect ride.

  “I can’t believe you would allow yourself to be humiliated like this,” Krool said, looking down on Winkie both literally and figuratively as he walked alongside him. “Aren’t you worried what people are going to say about their king parading around on the back of a pink . . . whatever that thing is?”

  “Armadillo,” said the armadillo over its pink-armored shoulder. “And I’m not pink. I’m dusty rose.”

  “I don’t care what your name is,” said Krool. “Anyway, I suppose you’ll come in handy should we run out of food.”

  The dusty-rose armadillo responded to the remark by belching loudly and returning to the more important task of filling its own belly, gobbling up any and all insects along the road. Beyond Krool’s occasional snide remark, for a very long time there was little or no conversation among the group. Even Gene, after having seen an innocent shrub instantly reduced to cinders, had decided it was best to keep a much lower profile.

  The silence from the others might have been due to fatigue after a long day of travel but most likely it was something not so easily remedied with a good night’s sleep. Since that up-close encounter with Mary Mary, the general mood had changed from caution and trepidation to a steady and abiding fear. And though Elspeth was looked upon as a brave general and liberator of the people, inside she was absolutely terrified of what lay ahead. While it was true that she had experienced fear while leading an armed rebellion against Krool, this was entirely different. Toppling the wicked king and his army had been a dangerous undertaking, but at least Krool was bound by the laws of nature. Mary Mary, on the other hand, seemed to have command of them, the ability to bend and break them on a whim.

  Elspeth wondered what other incredible things the witch could do. What, if any, were her limits and weaknesses? Just then, her thoughts were interrupted by a shadow moving quickly across the ground. Glancing up, she caught site of a hawk circling overhead. Was it just that? A hawk in search of field mice? Or was it Mary Mary, watching and stalking them from above?

  “Do you think that’s her?” asked Gene, terrified at the thought of being reduced to a glowing ember.

  “I don’t know,” said Elspeth. She studied the bird as keenly as she could from such a distance. “Probably just a hawk. Still, it’s best to be ready for anything.”

  “I’m ready for anything but spontaneous combustion,” Gene replied.

  And while Gene trembled in Elspeth’s hand, there was another member of the group experiencing a far more severe reaction to the stress. The feeling that Mary Mary could strike at any time, from any angle, and in any number of incarnations soon became too much for Dumpty and caused his vertigo to return for the first time since Winkie had been restored to the throne. Without warning, he teetered one way and would have toppled right over the other way if Bo-Peep, with her cat-quick reflexes, hadn’t reached out and caught him by the arm.

  “Dumpty! Are you okay?” she exclaimed as he continued to wobble and she continued to fight to keep him on his feet.

  “Just fine,” he lied, while stumbling about. It would have been comical were it not so painful to watch a man struggle against a renewed feebleness he thought he’d long ago conquered. “No problem at all.”

  The three brothers rushed to Dumpty’s side, took him by the elbows, and helped lower him to a seated position in the middle of the road. “Easy now, Mr. Dumpty,” said Cory.

  Dumpty shook his head, and his eyes gave several exaggerated blinks. “I’m so sorry,” he said, feeling suddenly more ashamed than dizzy. “It’s just the stress. I’ll be fine in a moment or two.”

  Such a failure in front of his friends was humbling to be sure. But to falter like this in the presence of Krool was nothing short of devastating.

  “Well, it looks as though someone chose the wrong profession,” said Krool, wasting no time in seizing upon the opportunity to further embarrass Dumpty. He stood over the fallen spy with his hands on his hips. “A secret agent who can’t handle stressful situations. What’s next? A tightrope walker who’s afraid of heights?”

  “Quiet, you insensitive animal,” Elspeth scolded.

  “Hey, I resent that,” said the armadillo.

  “Sorry,” said Elspeth. “You’re right. That was an unfair comparison.”

  Krool seemed amused by it all. After all, stirring things up had always been one of his favorite things to do. “I would like to assert that I am not entirely unsympathetic to Dumpty’s situation,” he said. “And if he’s unable to walk any farther, I would be more than happy to roll him the rest of the way.”

  Bo-Peep stepped forward and held the end of her staff very close to Krool’s square, dimpled chin. “If you’re in such a hurry,” she said, “then perhaps you’d better go on ahead. And if you choose to remain with us, you’d better have something to offer in exchange for us having to put up with your horrible attitude.”

  “Yes,” said Winkie. He dismounted from the armadillo and walked back toward Dumpty and the others. “Let’s hear it, Krool. I think it’s time for you to put your stolen money where your foul mouth is and reveal your plan to deal with Mary Mary. Tell us, how do you propose we vanquish a witch with powers to turn a black horse into a pink armadillo?”

  “Dusty rose,” said the armadillo, though no one seemed to notice.

  “It’s quite simple,” said Krool. He sauntered to the side of the road and took a seat upon a log that was too old to object to the intrusion. “If there’s one thing I understand more than evil, it’s greed. And the fact that Mary Mary would give up her youth and beauty for possession of a golden pear, and that she would not be content with the million sixpence ransom she originally demanded, tells me we’re dealing with someone whose greed possibly rivals my own.”

  “Hard to imagine,” said Elspeth.

  “Yes, quite impressive, isn’t it?” said Krool with the kind of admiration one boxer might show for another who has just beaten the stuffing out of him.

  “Still, I fail to see how Mary Mary’s greedy nature is of any benefit to us,” said Winkie. “All it means is that there’s no pleasing her.”

  “This is precisely why you need me more than you know,” said Krool. “You see, to a point, greed is a strength.” He spoke as if referring to the nutritional benefits of a high-fiber diet. “It propels people like me to great accomplishments. Without it I never would have become king. Of course, with anything, too much of it and that strength quickly becomes a weakness. When you overextend yourself, entire empires can collapse. Just ask the Romans.”

  “A lovely history lesson, but your plan is still missing a great deal of detail,” said Winkie. He walked over and climbed up onto the log on which Krool sat to better face him eye to eye.

  “Actually, it’s missing only one,” said Krool. “Answer me this. What’s the one thing that all greedy people want but can’t buy?”

  “A unicorn?” said Gene.

  This earned Gene a scowl from Krool. Gene would have responded with a shrug if sticks had the shoulders ne
cessary for such things. “No,” Krool sneered. “Not a unicorn. I’m talking about power. Political power. In this case, the throne.”

  Winkie nearly tumbled off the log. “What? Are you suggesting I hand over the keys to the kingdom to some lunatic witch?”

  “You don’t hand them over,” said Krool. “You dangle them in front of her, like raw meat before a tiger.”

  “I don’t understand,” said Winkie.

  “Of course you don’t,” said Krool. “So allow me to explain it to you. Money, jewels, your precious queen. These are all things she can abscond with and take back to the Thick. But if you can convince her that she can have it all, and that she deserves nothing less, she’ll have to come to you. Home-field advantage: Winkie.”

  The king stood in silence for a moment, his eyes narrowed in thought. “I don’t know,” he said. “What do you think, Dumpty?”

  “I don’t like it,” Dumpty answered.

  Krool sprang to his feet somewhat aggressively and threw up his hands. “Of course he doesn’t like it, because it was my idea. Now are you going to listen to me or to some scrambled egg?”

  “You will show some respect,” said Winkie.

  “There’s only one person here worthy of any amount of respect,” said Krool. “And that is Elspeth Pule. I threw her down a well, and she came out kicking and screaming. That is deserving of a certain amount of reverence. The rest of you, on the other hand, are a bunch of pathetic losers. Look at you.” Krool leveled his gaze at Winkie. “The only reason you’re king is because you were born into it. You’ve done nothing to deserve such privilege.”

  Winkie, at that moment, wanted nothing more than to put Krool in his place, but he simply could not think of a fitting response. Instead he bit his lip and leered back at his attacker.

  “And you,” Krool said, turning to the three brothers. “I’ve never in my life seen such blubbering from grown men. Sniveling about having to live in a shoe. Oh, boo-hoo, poor us. We smelled like leather, and everyone laughed at us. Well, if suffering builds character, then you should thank me for all I’ve done for you.”

  “Thank you?” said Maury.

  “You’re welcome,” said Krool.

  The three brothers clenched their muscular jaws, and their hands moved to the grips of their swords. Bo-Peep, sensing that Krool was about to talk himself into being sliced to pieces, quickly interjected. “You’d be wise to keep your mouth shut,” she said.

  “Ha!” Krool replied. “Listen to you. You should be thanking me most of all. If not for me, you’d still be wandering around in a field, learning to yodel and smelling of filthy sheep.”

  “They were not filthy,” said Bo-Peep.

  “You’re right,” said Krool. “They were delicious.”

  The stick moved so quickly and so fluidly that Krool scarcely had time to flinch before it made contact with the side of his squarish jaw. The impact caused his head to snap to one side. He stumbled back and tumbled over the log upon which he had once sat. With a crunch and a thud, he fell into the brush where he lay flat on his back, his legs in the air.

  “A little help would be nice.” He wheezed as he reached out and found, not a helping hand, but the end of the very stick that had knocked him silly. He grabbed hold of it, and Bo-Peep pulled him up over the log and to his feet. He quickly fell back onto the log and almost off the other side again before regaining his balance. “Well, I suppose I deserved that,” he said, blinking excessively and waggling his jaw back and forth.

  When his eyes came into focus once more he saw Dumpty standing before him with a wry grin. “Well then,” said Dumpty. “Looks like you and I have something in common, old boy. Both prone to bouts of dizziness. Now, shall we get moving, or will I have to roll you the rest of the way?”

  Krool asked for and was granted another minute and soon they were on their way again. But not for long. As they approached the cliffs above Torcano Alley, by now the sun had vanished behind the forest in the distance, leaving the sky streaked in purple and pink. Or, if you prefer, dusty rose. Crossing the alley in darkness would be foolish, so they decided to make camp for the night in the soft grass surrounding the oak tree named Beatrice.

  None of them relished the idea of camping out in the open while an evil witch of unknown abilities might very well be lurking nearby. Elspeth laid out her bedroll while the three brothers gathered armfuls of dead sticks and twigs to build a fire, an act that Gene found highly objectionable.

  “I can’t believe this,” he moaned as the dry wood crackled in the quivering flames. “Is that any way to show respect for the dead?”

  “Actually,” said Dumpty, “it’s the ultimate show of respect, if you happen to be a Viking.”

  “A Viking,” Gene pondered. “Well, I guess if it was good enough for the Vikings, it’s good enough for sticks.”

  With the camp set and the fire roaring with the souls of Viking sticks, rising upward in the form of bright-orange sparks, the travelers all gathered around for warmth and for what little protection the fire might provide. By now a full moon shone down, gently caressed by slow-moving wisps of cloud in an otherwise clear night sky.

  “I suppose I don’t need to remind any of you that we will soon be face to face with the epitome of evil,” said Winkie, the firelight giving a strange and eerie movement to his face. “I know you’re all frightened, and I would just like to say—”

  “Is this the one about the guy with the hook for a hand?” asked Gene.

  “The what?”

  “The ghost story. About the guy with the bloody hook? Or is it the one about the guy who gets buried alive and he has to—”

  “This is not a ghost story,” Winkie snapped. “We’re not here to roast marshmallows and sing folk songs around the campfire. Like it or not, this is real life. And we very well might be facing the end of it. So at this time I would like to offer you all the opportunity to turn back, without shame or judgment.”

  Winkie scanned the faces around him, and his eyes landed on Elspeth’s. “You’re but a child,” he said. “I was wrong to bring you into this. You should be home with your parents.”

  Elspeth couldn’t have agreed more with this statement. She should have been home with her parents. “You’re right. This whole situation is ridiculous and I’m out of here,” she said in her head. But those were not the words that came out of her mouth, for she was a hero with a bronze statue standing twelve feet tall in the middle of the castle courtyard. And that is not the sort of thing that heroes say, so instead she replied, “I don’t care. I’m going with you. As a natural-born citizen of New Winkieland, Farrah is my queen too. And I’m going to help rescue her.”

  Winkie only nodded in reply before rising to his feet. He puffed up his cheeks and expelled the air loudly. “All right then. We should probably try and get some sleep.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Gene. “What about him?” He was looking at Krool, and now the others were as well.

  “What about him?” asked Winkie.

  “How do we know he’s not going to wait until we all doze off then kill us in our sleep?”

  “Good point,” said Bo-Peep. “We should take turns standing guard.”

  “We’ll do it,” said Rory.

  At this Krool just chuckled. “Silly people,” he said. “The very idea that I would ever kill someone in their sleep. After all, seeing their reaction is half the fun. Besides, I can’t take on Mary Mary by myself. So, as hard as it may be for your tiny brains to comprehend and as difficult as it is for me to admit, I need you almost as much as you need me. So the idea of me killing any of you in your sleep is utterly ridiculous. Got it?”

  They stared at Krool for a time, and finally Cory said, “I’ll take the first shift.”

  Now I lay me down to sleep,

  I pray that I won’t dream of sheep.

  If I should die before I wake,

  Then this was all one big mistake.

  Chapter

  16

 
Elspeth suffered nothing in the way of bad dreams that night, simply because in order to dream you must first sleep, something she did very little of between the time they all bedded down and that moment when finally the sun circled around behind them and lightened the sky once more. Only then, when the others were just beginning to stir, did she finally allow herself to slip away.

  It may have been an hour but it seemed like only minutes when she woke to a gentle nudging. She looked up to see Bo-Peep’s smiling face, speckled with early morning sunshine and shadow from the low-hanging leaves of Beatrice, the great oak.

  “Sorry to wake you,” said Bo-Peep. “But King William is quite anxious to get going.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Elspeth. With her thumb she pushed some dried gunk from the corners of her eyes and, sitting up, she was instantly aware that her hair was sticking up in several places and at odd angles. It reminded her of Mary Mary with her twisted, knotted hair and acid-filled eyes. While trying unsuccessfully to push down the cowlicks, she looked around and found that everyone else was more or less packed up and ready to go. Winkie was just finishing loading his tiny bedroll onto his armadillo while Dumpty kicked dirt onto what remained of the fire.

  Krool, the side of his face marked with a bruise of purple and greenish gold, stood, impatiently fidgeting, while Cory, Rory, and Maury, with no weights to lift, took turns bench-pressing one another.

  “Come on, five more!” yelled Cory as Rory lay on his back, grunting and straining to hoist up Maury the suggested number of times. “Feel the burn!”

  “Feel the burn?” said Krool, rolling his eyes. “Seriously?”

  “So then, we’re all still alive,” said Elspeth, taking a visual inventory of the group.

  “Alive and kicking it,” said Gene. “By the way, I love what you’ve done with your hair.”

  Elspeth glared down at the stick, lying on the grass next to her.

  “What?” he said. “I was only joking.”

  Elspeth responded by quickly springing to her feet, picking up Gene, and raising her arm into a throwing position. “Wait!” Gene screamed. “No! Don’t throw me into the bushes! Please!”