by Nancy Krulik
No, there were no thin moles in here. They were all pretty chubby. And no wonder. They were surrounded by the largest bug buffet Princess Pulverizer had ever seen. (It was also the only bug buffet the princess had ever seen.) The moles were slurping their weight in slugs and centipedes.
Squeort! The mole king let out a loud squealing snort.
The other moles stopped eating. They looked in Princess Pulverizer’s direction.
Then they began to snort and squeak as loudly as they could. It almost sounded like cheering—like she was their hero or something.
Which maybe she was. After all, Princess Pulverizer had captured Sir Surly. He wasn’t going to be able to trap any more moles in the orchard. They were safe. And she was the one who had saved them all.
Princess Pulverizer smiled at the moles and nodded her head. She was happy to have been of service.
The mole king twitched his snout in her direction. Then he lifted a crown of knotted worms from the ground and placed it squarely on Princess Pulverizer’s head.
Ugh. The feeling of worms wiggling around in her hair was really repulsive. But she didn’t remove the crown. She didn’t want to insult the mole king.
Squeork! Squawk!
Suddenly a group of moles in the corner began making the strangest noises.
Another group stood on their hind legs—and began to twist.
The moles twisted to the left. They twisted to the right. Then they dropped to the ground and wiggled all around.
It was as though they were doing some sort of dance. A worm dance! And all that squeorking and squawking had to be mole music.
Princess Pulverizer could only imagine what Lady Frump might say if she could see this kind of dancing!
The mole king twitched his snout at the princess. He beckoned her with his paw. Then he twisted to the left. He twisted to the right. He twisted to the ground and he wiggled all around.
The princess did not want to dance with the mole king. She didn’t want to be his queen, either. And judging by the worm crown on top of her head, that was what he was offering her.
“Sorry, I can’t stay,” she told the mole king. She started for the exit.
But Princess Pulverizer didn’t get very far. The exit was blocked completely by mole guards. They were piled on top of one another, leaving no way out of the room.
“Excuse me, I’ve got to get through,” the princess told them politely.
But the mole guards didn’t move.
So much for being polite. The princess used her free hand to try to shove the mole guards out of the way.
But the guards didn’t budge. They stayed there, piled up, blocking her from leaving. Like a giant, unmovable mole mountain.
Which meant Princess Pulverizer was trapped—the only human in a sea of dancing moles.
Chapter 9
OOMF.
Princess Pulverizer grunted loudly as she tried once again with all her might to knock the guards out of the way.
She pushed so hard that the worm crown fell from her head. But still the mole mountain did not move.
OOMF. She grunted even more loudly, pushing harder. The guards wavered just a bit, then steadied themselves.
OOMF! Princess Pulverizer threw her full body weight into the guards. And then . . .
The wall of moles began to break apart! The creatures tumbled from one another’s backs and began running in the opposite direction.
“Wow! I guess all those push-ups came in handy,” Princess Pulverizer congratulated herself. She flexed her muscles proudly and hurried out of the room.
Except it hadn’t been the push-ups. In fact, Princess Pulverizer hadn’t been the one to move the moles.
Lucas had moved them! And he hadn’t even had to flex a muscle. All he’d had to do was bring treats for the mole guards. He stood there outside the room, throwing slugs, centipedes, and ants down the long tunnel with all his might. And the mole guards were hurrying to scoop them up and scarf them down.
Princess Pulverizer stared at Lucas in surprise. It was a brilliant plan. And he’d thought of it all on his own.
“Am I happy to see you,” Princess Pulverizer said. She looked at the crowd of mole guards chowing down on bugs. “Bringing them treats was a great idea.”
“No mole can refuse a juicy slug cluster,” Lucas said. “The bugs weren’t hard to find, either. Even in the dark, I could feel them running around.”
“Why did you run off?” Princess Pulverizer asked him. “It would have been so much easier if you’d just stayed near the opening in the first place.”
“I was worried about you dueling Sir Surly,” Lucas said. “I thought you might need my help fighting him off. So I went looking for a place where I could climb out.”
“I managed to beat him,” Princess Pulverizer boasted. “He’s our prisoner now. Dribble is guarding him.”
“Wow! You won your first duel!” Lucas congratulated her. “All by yourself.”
“Yup.” Truthfully, the princess had had more than a little help from a snake, but she didn’t feel the need to tell Lucas that. She doubted the snake would ever take any credit—seeing as how snakes can’t talk.
“How did you know I was down here? And how did you find me?” Princess Pulverizer asked Lucas. “You don’t have a candle to light your way.”
“I couldn’t see. But I could hear you asking the mole guards where they were taking you,” Lucas explained. “Then I heard all that oomfing you were doing trying to get out of that room. I just followed the sound.”
“Where did you learn to do that?” Princess Pulverizer inquired.
“When you spend as much time with your visor falling down over your eyes as I do, you figure out how to get along using your other senses.”
Princess Pulverizer laughed. Lucas did seem to have his visor down over his eyes a lot of the time.
“We gotta get moving,” Lucas told the princess. “It won’t take the mole king long to figure out you’ve escaped. Come on, follow me.”
Even though Princess Pulverizer hated taking orders from anyone, she knew Lucas was right. So she followed him. This time.
As she ran off beside Lucas, Princess Pulverizer looked up, searching for an opening in the top of the tunnel. But there was no sign of daylight anywhere.
And to make matters worse, Princess Pulverizer and Lucas soon reached a fork in the road. One path went to the right. The other to the left. Either one might lead them to freedom. Or straight back from where they’d come. There was no real way to tell.
“I think we need to go this way,” Princess Pulverizer said, pulling Lucas to the right.
“No, I think it’s to the left,” Lucas countered.
“Let’s let the arrow settle this,” Princess Pulverizer said. She began to reach into her bag. “It will bring us to where Dribble is waiting. I’m sure it—”
Lucas put his hand over her mouth.
“What are you doing?” Princess Pulverizer demanded. Only it came out “Wa r u din?” because Lucas’s hand was holding her lips still.
“Shhhh . . . ,” Lucas said, trying to quiet her. “They’ll hear you.”
Suddenly, everything went black.
“Now look what you’ve done!” Princess Pulverizer scolded him. “Your shushing blew out the candle. We can’t see a thing. Not even my arrow. What are we supposed to do?”
Lucas didn’t answer. He just stood there with his nose high in the air.
Sniff. Sniff. Sniff.
“What are you doing?” Princess Pulverizer whispered.
“Sniffing,” Lucas whispered back.
“I can hear that. What I want to know is why you’re sniffing.”
“I’m trying to smell our way out of here,” Lucas told the princess. He began pulling her through the darkness. “We have to go left,” he insisted.
“How can you tell?” Princess Pulverizer asked him.
“I smell grass,” he told her. “It’s coming from over there. And that means we have to be near an opening in the ground that’s right below an orchard.”
Princess Pulverizer didn’t like being told she was wrong. But she decided to follow Lucas’s nose anyway. What he said made sense. And besides, it wasn’t like she had any better ideas.
“See, the smell of the grass is getting stronger,” Lucas told her as they walked hand in hand down the path. “And I think I feel a bit of a breeze. That has to be coming from above the ground.”
“I feel it, too,” Princess Pulverizer whispered excitedly. “We’re getting closer.”
A few moments later, a sliver of light poked through the darkness.
“I think we found an opening!” Lucas told the princess.
“Now all we have to do is climb out of here,” Princess Pulverizer said excitedly.
Lucas shook his head. “We can’t,” he said. “The walls are too slippery, and there’s nothing to grab onto.”
Just then Princess Pulverizer heard a whole lot of footsteps—or make that pawsteps—heading their way.
“It’s the mole guards!” Lucas said. “They’re coming for us. We’ve got to get out of here.”
Princess Pulverizer agreed. The only problem was how to get out.
Suddenly the princess remembered something Lucas had told her when they’d first met. He’d explained that knights helped one another. Being a knight was all about teamwork.
One of their team was still above ground. All Princess Pulverizer had to do was ask for—
“HELP!” she shouted up through the mole hole. “DRIBBLE, HELP!”
“DRIBBLE!” Lucas added. “WE’RE DOWN HERE. CAN YOU HEAR US?”
Bump. Thump.
Suddenly, the ground began to shake.
“The mole guards are getting closer!” Princess Pulverizer exclaimed.
BUMP THUMP.
The ground shook even harder.
“No, wait,” Princess Pulverizer corrected herself. “Those steps are too strong to be mole guards. They’re being made by something bigger—like a dragon!”
Princess Pulverizer was pretty proud of herself for having figured that out. In fact, she was surprised Lucas hadn’t complimented her on her excellent use of her other senses.
Then again, they were a little busy at the moment.
“You okay, little buddy?” Dribble shouted from up above.
“We’re both fine,” Lucas assured him. “But we won’t be if we don’t get out of here right away.”
“Okay,” Dribble told him. “Stay there. I’ll be right back.”
Crr-rr-ack. Princess Pulverizer heard something breaking. A moment later, a long, thick branch from an apple tree slid down through the hole.
“Grab on, you guys,” Dribble told them. “I’ll pull you up.”
“You go first,” Princess Pulverizer told Lucas. “I’ll wait here.”
“No way,” Lucas said. “I’m not leaving you here alone. Dribble is strong enough to pull us both up at the same time.”
“Okay. You climb up first, and I’ll grab on behind you,” Princess Pulverizer said.
Lucas began to climb up the thick branch.
Suddenly Princess Pulverizer heard lots of squeaking and squawking coming from just around the bend. “Hurry,” she urged Lucas. “The guards are almost here!”
Lucas climbed higher up onto the branch.
As soon as Lucas had left her enough room, Princess Pulverizer climbed on beneath him, wrapping her hands tightly around the tree branch.
“Pull, Dribble! Pull!” the princess ordered.
“Hold on tight,” Dribble called down to his friends. “Here we go!”
“WHOA!” Princess Pulverizer let out a shout as Dribble yanked at the branch with all his might. She almost felt like she was flying up and out of the mole hole.
The next thing the princess knew, she was in bright sunlight. Safe above ground. Way above ground.
The princess was flying!
Dribble had pulled with such force that Lucas and Princess Pulverizer lost their grip on the branch. And now they were up in the air.
Thud. Clank.
And then they were down. Boy, was that a hard landing.
“Hahahahaha!” Sir Surly began to laugh. “That had to hurt.”
Princess Pulverizer scowled as she stood up and rubbed her sore behind. She opened her mouth and started to say something snide to the evil knight. But then she thought better of it. She had far more important things to say right now.
“Thank you for saving me from the mole guards,” Princess Pulverizer told Lucas.
“Thank you for coming down to save me,” Lucas replied.
Ahem. Dribble cleared his throat loudly.
“Thanks, buddy,” Lucas told him. “You got us out of there just in the nick of time!”
“My pleasure,” Dribble said. “Glad to help.”
“Mole guards have nothing on us,” Princess Pulverizer said cheerfully. “Not when we’re working together.”
“The power of three is really powerful,” Lucas agreed.
Dribble looked over at Princess Pulverizer. “What’s that crawling around in your hair?” he asked.
Princess Pulverizer reached up and pulled a worm out of her ponytail. “How did that get in there?” Dribble asked her.
“Don’t ask,” the princess replied. “Now what do you say we get going? I can’t wait to tell the folks in Yabko-kokomo that there is no beast. And that the orchard is the king’s land again.”
“Hey! What about me?” Sir Surly called out. “You’re not going to just leave me here with all these spiders and snakes, are you?”
“Oh, I’m sure the king will send troops to come get you, once we tell him where you are,” Princess Pulverizer assured him.
“But it’s going to be dark by then,” Sir Surly complained.
“Then I guess the king will just have to send the knight shift, won’t he?” Princess Pulverizer replied with a laugh, as she and her friends walked off toward Yabko-kokomo.
Chapter 10
“This is awful,” Princess Pulverizer whispered to Lucas as she spit a piece of apple pie into her napkin. “Sir Surly was right. Madame Zucker is an awful baker.”
“It’s better than a banquet of slugs and centipedes,” Lucas reminded her.
“Not by much,” Princess Pulverizer insisted.
Burp! Dribble let out a belch. A dragon belch. Which came with a little flame, and a little stink. “Sorry,” he apologized. “Must be something I ate.”
Princess Pulverizer leaned back in her chair and looked up at the stage where the King of Yabko-kokomo was sitting in his throne, droning on. “That guy sure can talk, can’t he?” she whispered impatiently to her friends.
“With Sir Surly in prison, the apple orchard belongs to our kingdom once again. And Madame Zucker has returned to bake apple pies for us all,” the king was saying.
“Are you sure that one was a good deed?” Dribble joked, pushing the tasteless pie farther away from him on his plate.
“At least Dr. Cuspid was able to finally brush his teeth,” Princess Pulverizer pointed out. “That’s a good thing—for everyone in this kingdom who has a nose.”
Just then, Lucas stood up.
“Where are you going?” Dribble asked him.
“Nowhere,” Lucas assured him. “I just need to stretch for a minute. We’ve been sitting for hours. My rear end hurts.”
“Sit down,” Princess Pulverizer whispered to Lucas. “No one is allowed to stand up until the king does. That’s a royal rule.”
“Oh. Sorry,” Lucas apologized. He started to sit down.
But before Lucas could reach his
seat, someone pulled the chair out from under him. Clink. Clank. Clunk. He landed right on his bottom.
Everyone turned and stared. Even the king stopped speaking. The only sound in the room was Nate Jape’s hysterical laughter.
“That wasn’t funny,” Lucas hissed at the practical joker.
“Won’t you ever learn?” Dribble asked him.
Nate shrugged. “Probably not,” he admitted.
Ahem. The King of Yabko-kokomo cleared his throat to bring the attention back to himself. He rose to speak. “Now, will our three brave heroes please come up onstage with me.”
Princess Pulverizer walked proudly onto the stage along with Lucas and Dribble.
“As a token of our gratitude, I present you with this golden mace,” the king said, handing Princess Pulverizer a heavy metal stick with a golden apple on the top.
Princess Pulverizer took the stick graciously. Her knees buckled slightly. The mace was heavy. She probably would have been better off keeping the crown of worms as evidence of a good deed. They were wiggly, but at least they didn’t weigh a lot.
“That is not just any mace,” the king continued. “It is one of our crown jewels. And as such, it has magical powers.”
Princess Pulverizer brightened. That was something the worms didn’t have. At least she’d never heard of a magic worm before.
“The mace of Yabko-kokomo can be used to heal the wounds of anyone who fights on the side of what is good and right,” the king explained. “But a word of caution: It is important to be sure that the person you are healing really is a good person,” the king warned. “If you try to use the mace’s power on someone who is deceitful or evil, its magic will disappear.”
“Thank you so much,” Princess Pulverizer replied. “We’re just glad we could rescue the prisoners and return your orchard.”
“Now let the banquet continue!” the king declared.
As Princess Pulverizer and her friends walked down the stairs from the stage, the king continued speaking.
“The rescuing of our fellow countrymen reminds me of a story I heard when I was just a young prince,” he said. “Once upon a time, there was a princess who was trapped in a tower by an evil beast. She had long, long hair, because no barber was ever allowed in the tower . . .”
