Then he cut, pinched, stubbed, and bent fingernail–ed his middle finger.
“OW!”
That last “ow” was much louder than it should’ve been.
He froze.
His ears searched for foreign sounds—footsteps along the path, the flapping of bat wings, a dragon’s roar of rage.…
But all he heard was a whispery breeze blowing some leaves across the forest floor.
Could the dragon have lost interest?
Carlos listened some more.
Nothing. Even the breeze had silenced itself.
Could the dragon have been a figment of his imagination?
It was possible. He hadn’t seen the dragon. He had only heard it.
And had he really heard it?
Maybe he was jumpy after losing all his weapons. And his helmet. And the wheelbarrow. The mind can play tricks on a jumpy person.
That’s probably it, Carlos decided. That’s definitely it. I’ve been jumpy, and I heard a roar that wasn’t really there.
Then, suddenly—
ROAR!
That roar was really there.
The beastly snarl echoed off the trees and made the ground tremble like the skin of a drum. Carlos’s attention flew back to the armor covering his arm. He managed to undo only one strap, but that made the armor loose enough for him to wriggle out the rest of the way.
The leather straps on his breastplate, however, were even trickier. These straps were tied together rather than buckled.
Oh, come on, Carlos thought. Who triple-knotted this stupid thing?
ROOOAAAR!
The dragon’s bellow was so loud that Carlos hunched into a shivering ball. His head was between his knees. He was looking down at the bed of rocks he sat upon.
Lots of rocks.
Lots of very sharp rocks.
An idea forced its way into Carlos’s jumbled, jumpy brain.
“Ha!” Carlos grabbed the sharpest rock in the bunch and hacked at the leather straps. Almost at once, the armor plates fell away. His body felt light and loose and eager to move.
He bolted from his hiding spot with a speed that he hadn’t known he possessed.
His feet flew over roots, leaves, and stones. He leapt over tangles of shrubs. He skidded around the forest’s majestic trees. And with every stride, he heard:
Jingle-jangle! Jingle-jangle!
Oh no! He had been wearing his jester clothes under the armor this whole time.
ROOOOOOAAAAAAAR!!
“No!” Carlos shrieked. “Leave me al—”
Before Carlos could finish the sentence, a shove from behind knocked him to the ground.
CHAPTER 6
Carlos lay facedown in the dirt, unable to move.
He felt the weight of the creature on his back. Its talons poked through the silk of his lime-green jester outfit.
This was it. The end. Carlos knew that much. All he could do was wait to be burned to a crisp or eaten alive. He hoped it wouldn’t be as painful as it sounded.
Carlos felt the creature shift its weight and lean in close. He felt its fiery breath against the back of his neck.
“Oh, hai!” it said. “You the ice-cream man?”
Carlos coughed up a lungful of dirt. “Whuh?”
“I heard the jingle-jangles, and I wanna fudge-ickle,” the creature said. “It cools my hot bref.”
Carlos coughed some more. “I don’t have any.… Can you … can you let me up, please?”
“Oh, sure, sure, sure!” the creature said. It stepped off his back.
Freed from the creature’s weight, Carlos pulled himself into a sitting position.
Before him was a dragon. It looked exactly the way Carlos imagined a dragon would look. It had green-and-purple scales trimmed with orange highlights, a rubbery pair of bat wings on its back, a full set of sharp claws, and a long neck and tail. The only unexpected thing was the dragon’s size. It was about the size of a sofa—a smallish one that can only sit two people (if their butts aren’t too wide).
“I was calling you and calling you!” the dragon said. “Didn’t you hear me?”
“That was you calling?” Carlos asked.
The dragon looked to its scaly feet with just a hint of guilt in its eyes. “I really wanna fudge-ickle,” it explained. “And we’re in the woods, so I don’t need to use my indoor voice.”
Carlos couldn’t argue with that logic.
“Sorry about knocking you down, but you were about to go into the blurblings,” the dragon said.
“Blurblings?” Carlos asked.
The dragon nodded. It picked up a rock and tossed it a few feet away from where Carlos sat. There it rested for the briefest of moments before the ground blurbled and blorped and pulled the rock under.
Quicksand! If Carlos had run just a few more steps, there would’ve been nothing left of him.
“Wow,” Carlos said. “Thank you … um … Mr. Dragon.”
“My name is Smudge,” the dragon said. “I’m a little boy.”
Carlos slowly held out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Smudge. I’m Carlos Charming.”
“Carlos Charming?” Smudge repeated. “Hm. Carrrrlos Charrrrming. Carrrrrrrrrrrloooos…” Smudge rolled the name over his tongue for a minute. It didn’t seem to suit him. “CC. Can I call you CC?”
Before Carlos could reply, Smudge nodded, as if the matter was now settled. “I’ll call you CC. You got a fudge-ickle?”
“No,” Carlos said. “Sorry.”
“Oh, poopers,” Smudge harrumphed. “Oh, well. I still like you.”
“I like you, too,” Carlos replied. And he meant it. Smudge was cute. And sweet. And he had saved Carlos’s life. There was a lot to like.
“I like ice cream. It makes my hot bref cold,” Smudge said.
“Yeah, I remember you saying that,” Carlos replied.
“Some dragons like to use their hot bref to set fire to villages and cook people alive, but not me,” Smudge said. “I don’t do that. So the other dragons call me a DINO.”
“What’s a DINO?” Carlos asked.
Smudge sighed sadly. “A Dragon In Name Only.”
“Ah,” Carlos said.
“So I come to the woods to do what I was meant to do.” From behind his back, Smudge produced a half-finished scarf of red and green. “Knitting!”
“Wow,” Carlos said. “I didn’t know dragons knitted.”
“They don’t,” Smudge sniffed. “But I do.”
In that moment, Carlos’s affection for the little dragon grew even stronger. After all, a dragon who knits is very much like a prince who jesters. Both Carlos and Smudge just wanted to live their lives in slightly unusual ways.
“And when I don’t knit,” Smudge said, “I look for the ice-cream man!”
“Does the ice-cream man ever come through the forest?” Carlos asked.
“No,” Smudge pouted.
Carlos thought Smudge looked like he could use a pat on the nose. He was right.
“Oh, that feels pleasant!” Smudge said.
Carlos’s eyes twinkled mischievously. “The reason you can’t find the ice-cream man is because his ice-cream truck lost a wheel.”
“It did?” Smudge asked.
Carlos nodded. “Yup. Do you know why?”
Smudge shook his head.
“Because of the rocky road!” Carlos said.
Smudge blinked.
“The ice-cream truck lost a wheel because of the rocky road,” Carlos repeated.
This time, the dragon’s eyes grew wide with understanding. “Rocky road is a kind of ice cream!”
“Yes,” Carlos said.
Smudge began to pant with excitement. “And a road that is rocky can make an ice-cream truck break down!”
“Yes,” Carlos said.
“THAT’S FUNNY!” And Smudge dissolved into a wave of snorting, tail-wagging, wing-flapping dragon giggles. “You’re funny, CC!”
Carlos waited a moment, then asked, “Do you like ju
ggling?”
Smudge’s mouth dropped open. He bounced up and down. Merry bursts of smoke puffed from his nostrils.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Carlos scooped three acorns off the ground and sent them flying through the air. Carlos was a very accomplished juggler, and he knew it. The many, many lonely nights of practicing in his bedroom were finally paying off.
Bop! He bounced an acorn off his elbow.
Bop! He bounced an acorn off his knee.
Klunk! He bounced an acorn off his head. Without missing a single toss, Carlos crossed his eyes, staggered, and stumbled about as if the tiny acorn had knocked him senseless.
It was all part of the act, and Smudge went bananas for it.
The dragon flopped onto his back and wheezed with laughter. Enormous, gleeful fireballs rose up in the air.
“You know what?” Carlos asked, still juggling away.
“WHAT?!” Smudge could barely contain himself.
“I’m getting a little hungry!” Carlos tilted his head back and threw the acorns high up in the air.
PLOP! PLOP! PLOP! One by one, the acorns dropped into his open mouth.
Carlos grinned at Smudge, his cheeks as stuffed as a chipmunk’s.
“BWAAAH!” The fire shooting from Smudge’s mouth made the air shimmer and shake.
Carlos twisted his face into a mock grimace. “Bweh! Dese acowns taste tewwible!”
“THEY DO?!” Smudge was skipping in a circle now. He was too excited to sit still.
Carlos spat out the acorns with a PTOO! and resumed juggling.
More laughter. More fireballs.
Smudge was having the time of his life. So was Carlos.
In fact, both Smudge and Carlos were having such a wonderful time that neither noticed the distant, ominous rumble of hoofbeats.
CHAPTER 7
“CARLOS! GET DOWN!”
Startled, Carlos dropped one of his acorns. “Dang. Wait—what?”
A horse and rider burst through a distant tangle of shrubbery.
The horse was Cornelius. The rider was—
“Gilbert!” Carlos shouted. “What are you doing here?”
Cornelius reared up on his hind legs. Gilbert smiled, revealing a set of perfectly straight teeth. Even from a distance, Carlos was blinded by their whiteness.
The proud prince unsheathed his sword and raised it in triumph above his head. The blade glinted in the late-afternoon sun. It was even more blinding than his teeth, if that was even possible.
“I’M HERE TO SAVE YOU FROM THAT VICIOUS, FIRE-BREATHING DRAGON!” Gilbert declared. He spurred Cornelius forward into an earth-shaking gallop.
“NO! STOP!” Carlos ran toward the racing horse and rider to catch them, to slow them down, to do anything. His legs churned as fast as they could go. He waved his fists in the air. (These weren’t fists of fury; Carlos was making fists because he was still thoughtlessly holding an acorn in each hand.) “THAT DRAGON IS MY FRIEND!”
But Gilbert and Cornelius were too wrapped up in their princely and horsely duties to listen. They spotted the small, curious dragon, and their killing instincts kicked in. They barreled past Carlos, heading straight for Smudge.
“WAIT!” Carlos screamed at Gilbert’s and Cornelius’s backs.
But they didn’t wait.
Gilbert leveled his sword.
Smudge, now aware of the danger storming toward him, let out a sound. It was a sound that was very different from the throaty roars that had sent Carlos running or the laughs that had later filled Carlos with joy.
The sound was shrill.
Piercing.
Frightened.
It was a scream. “AAAAAAHHHH!”
The scream echoed in Carlos’s ears and lit a fire inside his brain. He scanned his surroundings for a weapon. Finding nothing but what was already in his hands, he hurled the acorns at his targets as hard as he could.
One acorn smacked Gilbert on the back of his helmetless head. The other pegged Cornelius in the butt.
Gilbert wobbled a little and drooped to one side. Cornelius bucked and leapt and launched Gilbert from his saddle.
A moment later, Gilbert was flat on his back, separated from his sword. Cornelius thundered through the underbrush and back toward the castle, the rhythm of his hoofbeats fading away.
“What the…?” Gilbert mumbled, his words a little slurred. He blinked his confident eyes, which looked a little less confident than usual. In fact, they were a wee bit crossed. His gaze landed upon his sword just in time to watch the earth swallow it up with a blurble and a blorp.
“Are you okay, Gilbert?” Carlos asked.
“What … what hit me?” Gilbert asked.
“An acorn. I hit Cornelius, too.” Suddenly, the recent hand-buzzer incident flashed into Carlos’s mind. “Man, that horse is going to kill me.”
Gilbert shook off a bit of his dizziness and raised himself onto his elbows.
“You felled Cornelius and me with acorns?” Gilbert asked.
Carlos nodded.
“While we were at a full gallop?” Gilbert asked.
Carlos nodded.
“At the same time?” Gilbert asked.
Carlos nodded a third time.
Gilbert quickly looked around to make sure no one else had seen his fall. No one had.
“How did you do all that?” he asked.
“I’m a jester,” Carlos replied, his chest swelling a bit. “Jesters juggle. And juggling jesters throw with great accuracy.”
“I suppose so,” Gilbert said.
“Now, I have a question for you.” Carlos’s expression grew hard. “What are you doing here?”
Gilbert rubbed the raw spot on the back of his head and sat up. “Your father sent me.”
“What?” Carlos asked. “Why?”
Gilbert looked uncertain. “After you went into the forest with your wheelbarrow, I took the king aside and explained that our lessons hadn’t gone very well.”
Carlos’s face flushed. What Gilbert had said was true, of course, but Carlos still felt insulted. He was insulted that Gilbert and his dad were talking about him behind his back. He was insulted that his father sent Gilbert to watch over him like a babysitter. He was insulted by the sneakiness of it all.
“You and my dad both stink,” he said.
“No!” Gilbert said. “Your father was worried about you! I was, too. So he asked me to follow you. He instructed me to keep out of sight and not get involved unless you were in real trouble. So when I saw the fireballs, I thought— OOF!”
Gilbert didn’t think OOF. OOF was the sound Gilbert made when Smudge jumped on him, sending him sprawling back onto the ground.
“Oh, hai!” Smudge was, once again, his old cheerful self. He wasn’t one to let an attempted murder get in the way of a new friendship. “Are you the ice-cream man?”
Clearly, some introductions were in order.
“Gilbert, this is Smudge,” Carlos said. “Smudge, meet Gilbert.”
“Hai.” Smudge extended his paw.
Gilbert paused for a moment. He was struggling with the idea that he was making the acquaintance of a dragon. Then he paused some more to note the sharp talons on Smudge’s paw. Finally, he cautiously accepted it.
Smudge rolled the new name over his tongue. “Gilbert. Gilbert? Gilllllllllberrrrrrt. Hm. Giiiiiiiiilbeeeeeeeert. Hm.” Smudge twisted his mouth into a thoughtful grimace. “Can I call you Gert?”
“No,” Gilbert said.
“Gert.” Smudge nodded. As far as the dragon was concerned, the matter was settled. “I don’t fireball people, Gert. I knit. See?” He held up his scarf.
“I thought I saw fireballs,” Gilbert said.
“You did. Those were laughs,” Carlos explained.
“Laughs?” Gilbert asked.
“Biiiiig laughs!” Smudge corrected.
“I did a comedic juggling bit,” Carlos explained.
“CC is so funny, Gert,” Smudge said. “Soooo funny. I laughed soooooo h
ard!” The memory of Carlos’s routine brought out more laughs and a few tiny fireballs. “CC slayed me!”
Carlos’s eyebrows went up. “I slayed you?” he asked. “I did slay you, didn’t I?”
“Yes, indeedy,” Smudge replied.
CHAPTER 8
“That is not the kind of slaying I had in mind,” King Carmine said. “And I think you know that.”
The king slumped in his throne. He looked a bit more tired than usual, and he always looked sort of tired.
“Yeah, I know,” Carlos admitted. “But the slaying I did is a lot harder than the slaying you wanted me to do.”
Smudge nodded. His forked tongue slurped up the last dribbles of his fudgesickle. “CC’s right. Dragons don’t like jokes so much.”
The king looked at Smudge and then back at Carlos. Then the king rubbed his eyes as if they hurt. “Okay, fine—you slayed a dragon. Good job.”
Carlos wanted to say “Oh, and don’t forget: I also defeated Prince Gilbert the Perfect on the field of battle!”
Before he could, however, the king spoke once more. “I’m glad you’re safe, son. And I’m sorry that I underestimated you.”
That made Carlos forget what he wanted to say.
“That’s okay,” he replied after a moment. And he was telling the truth. It really was okay.
“And CC has more good news!” Smudge had finished his ice cream and was now fully part of the conversation.
“It’s true,” Carlos said. “I do have more good news.”
The king sank a little lower in his throne. “Oh, geez, what is it?”
“I hired you a new lamplighter!” Carlos said.
“You did?” the king asked. “Who?” Then he figured it out. “Wait—no! We are not keeping a dragon in the castle!”
“Why not?” Carlos protested.
“Because he is a dragon!” the king said. “They are not safe! And he is— OOF!”
The king didn’t say the dragon was OOF. The OOF was because Smudge leapt onto the king, nearly knocking him off his throne.
“Oh, I am safe,” Smudge assured him with a smile. “And I made you a scarf!”
Before the king could protest, Smudge wrapped the knitted creation around the king’s way-too-skinny neck. “I’m also a good worker! Watch!”
Once Upon a Prank Page 3
