Ratpunzel

by Ursula Vernon

  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 © 2016 by Ursula Vernon

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  eBook ISBN: 9780399539367

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Vernon, Ursula, author. Title: Ratpunzel / by Ursula Vernon.

  Description: New York, NY : Dial Books for Young Readers, [2016] | Series: Hamster princess ; 3

  Summary: “It is Princess Harriet Hamsterbone to the rescue when Heady the hydra’s egg is stolen, but her search leads her to a castle accessible only by a rat with a very long tail”— Provided by publisher.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2015049506 | ISBN 9780803739857 (hardcover)

  Subjects: | CYAC: Princesses—Fiction. | Hamsters—Fiction. | Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. | Rats—Fiction. | Humorous stories.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.V5985 Rat 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2015049506

  Version_1

  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

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  For Kathy,

  who, in a roundabout fashion, was the architect of my success

  CHAPTER 1

  Harriet Hamsterbone had come home to her parents’ castle, and she was already starting to regret it.

  “Where have you been?” cried her mother, the queen, descending on her with a washcloth. “And how did you get so grubby?”

  “I was saving princesses in the mouse kingdom,” said Harriet, squirming away from the washcloth. She’d gotten home late and hadn’t taken a bath before bed, but that was no reason to go flinging washcloths at her as if she were a little kid. “It was important.”

  “Saving princesses is all very good,” said the queen, “but who’s going to save you? You’re not invincible anymore, dear.”

  “I’ll save myself,” said Harriet, puzzled. “That’s why I’ve got a sword. And Mumfrey.” (Mumfrey was her trusty battle quail.)

  “Is it Tuesday?” asked the king, wandering into the room. “It feels like Tuesday . . .”

  “It’s Thursday, dear,” said Harriet’s mother, distracted.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “Oh. Hmm. What happened to Wednesday?” Her father patted Harriet’s shoulder absently. “Hello, honey. Did you have fun in the mouse kingdom?”

  “I helped knock the mouse king’s castle down,” said Harriet, which was only a slight exaggeration.

  The queen pressed a hand to her forehead. “Harriet! Did you apologize?”

  “He was a bad king, Mom! He had gone to a very dark place in pursuit of organizational excellence!” (This was an understatement. The mouse king had been color-coding his guards and treating his daughters like a matched set. It had not gone well.)

  “I suppose we can rule out getting a prince for you to marry from there,” said her mother grimly. “Honestly, Harriet! You’ve terrified every eligible royal bachelor in ten kingdoms, and your room is a disaster.”

  “It can’t be Thursday,” said the king, winking at Harriet. “If it was Thursday, that would mean that we were having high tea with the Archbishop of Rodentbury, and I don’t have any clean crowns.”

  The queen swung toward Harriet’s father, her mouth falling open. “We are! In twenty minutes! I told you yesterday!”

  “Is that what happened to Wednesday . . . ?”

  The queen held the washcloth aloft. “You’re coming with me!” she cried.

  Harriet mouthed thank you silently to her father as her mother dragged him out of the room.

  Harriet decided that maybe she’d been home long enough. She grabbed a fresh change of clothes from her dresser, raided the kitchen for sandwich materials, and scurried down to the stables.

  Mumfrey the quail poked his beak over the stall door. He’d had a good meal of birdseed and was ready to head back out again, if that’s what his rider wanted.

  Harriet led him out of the stables and through the gate, and swung herself up on quailback.

  The castle shrank behind her.

  “It’s good to go home again,” said Harriet. “If only so that you can leave home again.”

  “Qwerk.”

  After a while, as Mumfrey trotted along, Harriet started to sing.

  There are undoubtedly princesses out there with beautiful singing voices. Harriet was not one of them. She was good at hitting monsters with swords. Hitting notes was a little beyond her.

  Mumfrey made it through twenty minutes of tuneless singing and was very glad when he saw someone in the distance.

  The quail pointed one wing. Far down the road, a quailback rider was charging toward them.

  “Oh,” said Harriet. “Man, they’re coming in fast too . . .”

  She pulled Mumfrey’s reins up and waited.

  The rider did not slow down. If anything, he sped up.

  “Hey, I think it’s Wilbur!”

  “Qwerk!”

  It was indeed her friend Wilbur, a prince from the next kingdom over. He was bent low over the neck of his own riding quail, and his expression was grim.

  He pulled up in front of Mumfrey and Harriet and practically fell out of the saddle. His quail, Hyacinth, dropped her head, panting.

  “Jeez,” said Harriet. “What’s wrong? Is something on fire? Is your mother okay?”

  “Harriet,” gasped Wilbur. “You have to help.” He staggered to Mumfrey’s side and grabbed Harriet’s ankle. “You have to help!”

  “Of course I’ll help,” said Harriet. “What do you need me to do?”

  “It’s Heady,” said Wilbur.

  “Your hydra? What’s wrong?”

  “Her egg,” he said. “It’s been stolen.”

  • • •

  Riding quails can’t fly, but they can hop while flapping frantically. It’s a good way to cover rough ground that they can’t run over, because the quails’ feet only touch the ground every few yards. This specialized gait is called “shlopping” and is well known among quail-riders everywhere.

  If you are riding a quail who is shlopping, you cling to the reins as tightly as you can and try not to fall off. When the quail comes in for a landing, you stand in the stirrups so that you are not bounced brutally against the quail’s back.

  Above all else, you try not to think about how ridicu
lous you (and your quail) must look.

  Wilbur and Harriet were taking the shortcut to Wilbur’s mom’s castle, which involved a lot of rocky terrain. Trying to run across it would have been dangerous for everyone involved, so they were shlopping.

  Wilbur was not terribly good at it and kept missing the landings. He was looking a little seasick by the time the castle came into view.

  It’s very hard to communicate effectively while shlopping, so Harriet had not learned anything important, other than that the egg was missing and Heady the hydra was devastated.

  “Why would anyone want to steal a hydra egg?” moaned Wilbur as they finally reached the road and settled into a more normal trot.

  “Presumably they wanted a baby hydra,” said Harriet. “Or a really big omelet, I guess . . .”

  Wilbur shuddered. “Don’t say anything about omelets to Heady! She’s already upset!”

  “Any chance that the egg could simply have been misplaced?”

  Wilbur gave her a sideways look. “You’ve never seen a hydra egg, have you?”

  Harriet had to admit that she had not.

  “They’re the size of a desk. It’s not like you can just put one down for a minute and forget what you did with it.”

  “Right!” said Harriet. “I will investigate the scene of the crime! No one steals an innocent monster’s egg on my watch!”

  “Just . . . be nice to Heady,” said Wilbur.

  The castle that Wilbur’s mother ran was small and rather run-down. The family fortunes had vanished long ago and left them with a castle that was expensive to keep up. Wilbur worked a variety of odd jobs to bring in money to fix the leaks in the roof.

  Despite the disrepair, it was a cheerful little castle. Wilbur’s mother was always cutting flowers in the meadow and arranging them in the hallways. It usually smelled like fresh-baked bread.

  It was jarring to walk inside and hear loud sobbing from downstairs.

  They left the quails in the courtyard and rushed down the steps to the basement, toward the sobbing sounds.

  A hydra has nine snake-like heads, and every single one of Heady’s was crying. Wilbur’s mother was holding tissues for one of the heads and saying “There, there,” because that’s the only thing to say when someone is crying. (Which is rather odd, when you think about it, because if you are crying because your egg has been stolen, “There, there” is much less helpful than “I’ve found your egg” or even “I will find your egg” or possibly “I will find those responsible for stealing your egg and beat them about the head and shoulders.”)

  “Oh, Heady!” said Wilbur. “It’ll be okay! I brought Harriet!”

  One head sniffled and turned toward the stairs.

  “Harriet’s going to get your egg back,” said Wilbur. “You remember Harriet. She’s invincible.”

  “Well, not anymore . . .” said Harriet, but this didn’t seem like the best time to get into the details.

  Several more heads turned toward her.

  “Can you show me where you saw the egg last?” asked Harriet.

  Heady nodded and shuffled aside, leading the way into the back corner of the room.

  The basement was warm and damp. Pipes zigzagged across the ceiling, dripping water onto the floor.

  In the farthest corner, Heady had built a nest. It did not look like a bird nest built of twigs. Hydras are more like snakes or crocodiles, so Heady’s nest was a lumpy mound, about knee high, and seemed to be made mostly of mud and old towels.

  The hydra scuffed at the depression in the middle of the empty nest and let out another sob.

  “She took very good care of the egg,” said Wilbur’s mother. “She checked on it every hour and she slept down here at night. I don’t want you to think that Heady was careless in the least!”

  “Nobody’s saying that,” said Harriet, patting one of the heads. “Heady’s a great mom. When did the egg go missing?”

  “Hisssss-sss-ssss,” said Heady.

  “Early in the morning,” translated Wilbur.

  “She got up to make breakfast and when she came back, the egg was gone,” said Wilbur’s mother. “Oh, you should see her make breakfast! Six heads with frying pans and three to crack the eggs. It’s amazing.”

  Harriet nodded. She was familiar with Heady’s astonishing cooking skills. “Anybody strange going in or out of the castle?”

  “You can’t think it was the gardener,” said Wilbur’s mother. “He’s ninety years old and the only thing he cares about is plants.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Harriet. “No secret egg-smuggling rings?”

  Harriet had to admit that it seemed unlikely.

  She stared at the muddy nest.

  It wasn’t a very pretty nest. It wasn’t the sort of place where you’d expect to find something valuable. In fact, if you were looking for something valuable, you probably wouldn’t go looking in Wilbur’s castle in the first place.

  “They knew the egg was here,” said Harriet slowly. “It wasn’t random. They didn’t just break in looking for stuff. Whoever took it must have known you had a hydra egg.” She crouched down in front of the nest, looking closely at the mud.

  “It’s not like Heady’s a secret,” said Wilbur’s mother. She patted the hydra.

  “Hiss-sss-ss,” said Heady sadly. One of her other heads teared up again.

  “But who would have done this?” asked Wilbur, wringing his hands.

  “I don’t know,” said Harriet, standing up. “And I don’t know where they’ve gone or how they got in undetected.”

  She pointed at one corner of the nest. “But I do know that they left a footprint.”

  CHAPTER 2

  The print was longer than Harriet’s foot, but a lot narrower. “Gerbil, I think,” said Harriet. “If I’m right—ha! Yes, here’s the tail print. You can see where the hairs were in the mud.”

  “That rules out the gardener,” said Wilbur. “And anybody in the castle.”

  His mother frowned. “I’ve got a few friends who are gerbils,” she said, “but they’re all pen pals now. They haven’t even been to visit in years.”

  “Have you written to any of them recently?” asked Harriet. “And if so, did you mention the egg?”

  Wilbur’s mother tapped one of her nails against her teeth. “Hmm . . .”

  “I don’t know,” said the older hamster. “She’s a lovely woman, really. Very into plants. A little hard to get along with sometimes, but I can’t think that she would steal Heady’s egg.”

  “Lots of us have friends who are hard to get along with sometimes,” muttered Wilbur, giving Harriet a meaningful look.

  “Huh?” said Harriet.

  “. . . never mind,” said Wilbur. His mother chuckled.

  “Anyway, maybe she didn’t steal the egg. Maybe she just left the letter lying around and someone read it. It can’t hurt to check it out.”

  “All right,” said Wilbur’s mother. “I’ve got her reply around here somewhere. Let’s check the return address and see what we’ve got.”

  They tromped upstairs, after reassuring Heady that they were hot on the trail of the missing egg. Harriet’s last view of the disconsolate hydra was a tangle of heads curling up around the nest and sighing heavily.

  “Poor Heady,” she said once they reached the courtyard. “I didn’t know she’d feel that way about her egg. Quails don’t get nearly so attached to their eggs.” She considered this. “Of course, they also have a bunch at a time . . .”

  “Hydras only have one,” said Wilbur’s mother. “She’s so maternal. She mothers all of us, and she was so excited to have her own egg. It breaks your heart to see it.”

  • • •

  The study was a disaster. Papers were piled on every surface, including the floor and the chairs. Wilbur and Harriet stood around with their hands in
their pockets, waiting, while Wilbur’s mother dug through her big rolltop desk.

  Harriet took the envelope and read the return address. “Dame Gothel . . . Deadly Tower . . .”

  “That sounds ominous!” said Wilbur.

  “. . . Tiddlywinks Lane . . .”

  “That sounds . . . less ominous?”

  “. . . Forest of Misery . . .”

  “More ominous!”

  “. . . Kingdom of Sunshine.”

  “Yeah, I give up,” said Wilbur.

  “She’s really very sweet,” said his mother, opening the letter. “Listen to this . . .”

  My dear Hazel,

  It is so sweet of you to write. I do enjoy hearing about the goings-on in the wide world. I spend so much time here in my tower, with my plants, that I rarely travel as widely as I would like. You always tell me about such unusual things! A hydra who cooks! And she had an egg? Perhaps I should come visit you someday soon. Please do tell me more, and know how much I treasure your letters.

  Hugs,

  Gothel

  Harriet frowned. On the surface, the letter didn’t seem that strange. But it was clear that Gothel knew about the egg, and that was something.

  She tapped the envelope. “Well, it’s the only lead we’ve got. Let’s go talk to Dame Gothel.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Harriet and Wilbur rode toward the address listed on the envelope, arguing as they went.

  “This is very simple,” said Harriet. “We will find Dame Gothel and I will point my sword at her and say, ‘Tell us everything you know about the hydra egg.’”

  “Violence is a great answer. I have personally answered twenty-eight Ogrecats with violence! And they are all reformed characters now too. Two of them make baby clothes for disadvantaged guinea pigs.”

  Wilbur clutched his head. Harriet had a very direct personality. Sometimes a little too direct.