Worse, Worser, Wurst

by Nancy Krulik

  “Oh, I’m sure. Read the signs.” The princess pointed to the warnings posted on the nearby trees.

  “That settles it!” Lucas insisted. “I’m going back. I don’t want to be turned into a lizard.”

  “Don’t worry,” Princess Pulverizer told Lucas. “You and Dribble aren’t going into the Wizard of Wurst’s tower. Only I am.”

  Lucas stopped and looked at her. “I don’t want you to be turned into a lizard, either.”

  “I won’t be,” Princess Pulverizer promised. Although she wasn’t entirely sure it was the truth.

  “How exactly do you plan to get into the wizard’s tower?” Dribble asked. “You can’t just walk in uninvited.”

  “I haven’t figured that part out yet,” Princess Pulverizer admitted. “I guess I’ll have to trick him into inviting me in.”

  “Trick him?” Dribble asked. “You’re going to trick a wizard?”

  “Sure,” Princess Pulverizer replied confidently. “It worked before. I fooled the ogre into letting me into his castle when I found out he’d stolen jewels from the Queen of Shmergermeister.”

  “Ogres aren’t known for their brains,” Lucas pointed out. “They’re easy to fool. But wizards are smart.”

  “Judging by these signs, this wizard is also really mean,” Dribble added.

  “Wizards have magic,” Lucas warned. “They turn people into frogs, bats, and even mosquitoes—which is really bad, because bats eat mosquitoes. You don’t want to get eaten, do you?”

  Princess Pulverizer didn’t answer Lucas’s question.

  She hadn’t even heard Lucas’s question.

  In fact, she hadn’t heard a single thing he’d said after the word magic.

  “Magic,” Princess Pulverizer repeated excitedly. “I’ll use magic to get into that tower.”

  “Um . . . I hate to be the one to point this out, but you don’t have magic powers,” Dribble said. “You don’t even know any magic spells. You’re not a wizard.”

  Princess Pulverizer smiled broadly. “Exactly,” she agreed mysteriously.

  Chapter 4

  “Okay, you two stay here and hide in the forest,” Princess Pulverizer told Dribble and Lucas a while later, as they stopped near the Wizard of Wurst’s tower.

  “Are you sure you want to go in there alone?” Lucas asked her.

  “Of course,” Princess Pulverizer replied.

  “Besides, she’s not completely alone,” Dribble told Lucas. “You and I are going to be in spitting distance of that tower.”

  Princess Pulverizer wiggled a rye seed loose from between her teeth and spit it into the air.

  The seed whirled.

  It twirled.

  It did a loop-the-loop. And landed right at the tower’s front door.

  “Yup,” she agreed. “Spitting distance.”

  Princess Pulverizer reached into her sack and pulled out a shimmering ruby ring.

  “You hold on to this for me,” she told Lucas. “It’s the ring the Queen of Shmergermeister gave me as a reward for returning her jewels. It’s got magic powers.”

  “I remember,” Lucas said. “Whoever wears it will walk with complete silence. No one will hear him coming.”

  “Exactly,” Princess Pulverizer agreed. “That will give you the element of surprise in an emergency.”

  “E-e-emergency?” Lucas stammered nervously.

  “I’ll try not to give you any reason to use the ring,” Princess Pulverizer assured him.

  Lucas didn’t look very comforted.

  “I better get going,” Princess Pulverizer said. “The sooner I get in there, the sooner I can rescue Lester the Jester.”

  Knock. Knock. Knock.

  Princess Pulverizer bit her lip nervously as she knocked on the wizard’s front door. She wondered if grown-up knights ever got scared. They didn’t seem to. But who knew?

  Maybe they just pretended to not be scared.

  Knock. Knock. Knock.

  Princess Pulverizer knocked even harder this time. She wanted to sound brave.

  Finally, she heard footsteps coming from inside. The door opened. And there he was: the Wizard of Wurst.

  Wow. The wizard didn’t seem scary at all.

  He was short and round, and his nose was squishy. He looked a little like a pig.

  Princess Pulverizer breathed a sigh of relief. There was nothing to be afraid of with this guy. He . . .

  “WHAT DO YOU WANT?”

  Gulp. Uh-oh. The wizard might not have looked scary, but he sure sounded scary.

  “I . . . um . . . I want to be a wizard,” Princess Pulverizer stammered nervously. “And I need you to teach me.”

  The wizard gave her an odd look. “You want to be a wizard?” he bellowed.

  “Y-yes,” Princess Pulverizer replied.

  “But you’re just a kid,” the Wizard of Wurst said. “I don’t want to be a babysitter.”

  That made the princess angry. She was no baby. And she didn’t need to be sat. She was perfectly capable of taking care of herself, thank you very much.

  But Princess Pulverizer didn’t say that. She didn’t want to make the Wizard of Wurst angry.

  “I was told you are the wisest wizard in the world,” she said instead.

  “That’s true,” the Wizard of Wurst boasted.

  “I want to learn from the best,” Princess Pulverizer continued.

  The wizard gave her a look. “I can’t help feeling you’re full of baloney,” he said.

  Actually, the princess was full of gouda from the grilled cheese sandwich she’d eaten that morning. But she didn’t say that, either.

  Instead, she replied, “I really want to learn to be a wizard. I’ll do anything you ask. Mop your floors, feed the princes you’ve turned into frogs, stir your eye-of-newt stew—”

  “I don’t make eye-of-newt stew,” the Wizard of Wurst interrupted her angrily. “That’s for amateurs. I use eye of gecko. The spells last longer that way.”

  “You see, you’ve taught me something new already,” Princess Pulverizer said. “You’re not just a wise wizard, you’re a great teacher.”

  “Yes, I am.” The Wizard of Wurst puffed his chest proudly. “I suppose we can give it a try.”

  Princess Pulverizer grinned as she followed the Wizard of Wurst into his tower. Getting inside hadn’t been difficult at all.

  In fact, it had been kind of easy.

  Still, as she walked through the dimly lit halls, making sure not to step on any of the mice that scurried angrily at her feet, Princess Pulverizer couldn’t help feeling that the hard part was yet to come.

  Chapter 5

  “Worms?” Princess Pulverizer asked the wizard with surprise. “You turned a whole army of soldiers into worms?”

  It was the middle of the afternoon, and for hours now the wizard had been bragging about the amazing things he’d done with his magic.

  “Those soldiers came to steal from me,” the Wizard of Wurst declared. “So I turned them into worms. Worms can’t steal. They don’t have any hands.”

  Princess Pulverizer stared nervously at the jar of worms. If she wasn’t careful, she might wind up in there with them. The thought of it made her hands shake.

  CRASH!

  The jar of worms slipped from Princess Pulverizer’s fingers and broke into pieces on the floor.

  “Look what you’ve done!” the Wizard of Wurst bellowed angrily. “You’ve freed my prisoners!”

  Princess Pulverizer frowned as she looked at the worms that were now crawling around on the floor. Those were definitely not the prisoners she’d come here to free.

  The wizard handed her an empty jar. “Catch those worms and put them in here. You better get every single one—if you know what’s good for you.”

  Gulp. Princess Pulverizer dropped nervo
usly to her knees and started picking up worms and dropping them into the jar. It wasn’t easy. The worms were really slimy.

  And to make matters worse, some of them were crawling over the broken glass. The sharp slivers cut them clean in half.

  Strangely, the sliced worms didn’t die. They kept on creeping and crawling.

  Except now, where there had been only one worm, there were two.

  And where there had been only two worms, there were four.

  And where there had been only four worms, there were eight.

  Soon, there were hundreds of worms. They were everywhere.

  Crawling into the corners.

  Winding their way up the walls.

  Wiggling onto the windowsills.

  The Wizard of Wurst let out an evil laugh. “I’ll meet you in my study when you’ve caught them all,” he told Princess Pulverizer. “If you ever do.”

  By the time Princess Pulverizer had captured the very last worm, she was very tired. And hungry. And cranky.

  “I’ve gotten them all,” Princess Pulverizer told the Wizard of Wurst as she entered his study after hours of worm gathering.

  “Took you long enough,” he replied gruffly.

  “There were a lot of worms,” Princess Pulverizer explained. “And they kept slipping out of my hands.”

  “No excuses,” the wizard huffed. He pointed to an extra magic wand on his desk. “Grab that. Let’s do some magic!”

  “Now?” the princess asked. “Can’t I eat something first?”

  “I’ve made you a liverwurst sandwich,” the wizard said. “You can eat it later.”

  Princess Pulverizer glanced at the tiny sandwich on the wizard’s desk. It was two pieces of white bread with a single slice of pale pink lunch meat slapped in between.

  Some dinner that was. What the princess wouldn’t give for one of Dribble’s grilled cheese sandwiches right around now.

  Still, since the small black cat perched on the windowsill was also eyeing the sandwich, Princess Pulverizer figured she’d better get busy learning her magic spells if she was ever going to get to eat.

  “I’m ready,” she told the wizard.

  “Let’s start with something easy,” the wizard said. “A growing spell.”

  “A what?” Princess Pulverizer asked.

  “A growing spell.” The wizard sounded annoyed to have to repeat himself. “Point the wand at something and come up with a rhyme to make it bigger.”

  Princess Pulverizer nodded. That didn’t sound too tough. She just had to find something small that should be big.

  Rumble. Grumble. Just then, the princess’s empty stomach began to churn. Which gave her an idea.

  Princess Pulverizer pointed her wand toward the liverwurst sandwich, and said, “I like things big. And I’m in charge. This object, once small, I will enlarge.”

  Poof! There was a flash of orange smoke. When it cleared, the princess came eye to eye with the largest mouse she had ever seen!

  “MEEEEEOOOOOWWWWW!” The cat took one look at the giant mouse and raced out of the room.

  “I’m sorry,” Princess Pulverizer apologized. “I was aiming for the sandwich.”

  “You have lousy aim,” the Wizard of Wurst scolded her.

  Princess Pulverizer didn’t argue. How could she? There was a giant mouse standing right there in front of her.

  The wizard pointed his wand at the mouse and rhymed, “You’re too tall, and that’s not right. Now be small and out of sight.”

  Poof! There was a flash of yellow smoke. When it cleared, the mouse was small again.

  The tiny creature stood there for a moment, shocked. Then it scurried away into a hole in the wall—completely out of sight.

  “You’re good,” Princess Pulverizer complimented the wizard.

  “I’m great,” the wizard countered. He plopped down on his couch and rested his feet on a nearby coffee table. The table shifted under the weight of his legs.

  “I hate the way this wobbles,” the wizard groaned. “That’s your next task—fix the broken feet under this table.”

  Princess Pulverizer had watched her father’s knights fix the Skround Table many times. A few taps with a hammer and the wizard’s table should be good as new.

  “Where do you keep the toolbox?” Princess Pulverizer asked.

  The wizard rolled his eyes. “Use magic,” he told her. “And try to aim the wand more carefully this time.”

  Princess Pulverizer was getting annoyed. What did the wizard expect from her? She bet he hadn’t gotten everything right when he was first starting out.

  Still, she carefully aimed her wand toward the bottom of the table and tried a spell. “The legs of this table move this way and that. When my wand gives a tap, its feet will stay flat.”

  Poof! There was a flash of purple smoke. When it cleared, the table’s feet were flat to the floor. They had no arch at all.

  That was the good news.

  The bad news was that the feet now had toes. And those toes were tapping!

  The next thing the princess knew, the table started tap-dancing around the room.

  The table danced its way through the door and into the hall.

  It was heading toward the stairs when the Wizard of Wurst shouted, “Don’t just stand there. Stop that crazy thing!”

  Princess Pulverizer leaped on top of the dancing table.

  The table reared forward, trying to throw her off.

  The table shifted to the right.

  It tilted to the left.

  It turned in a circle.

  But Princess Pulverizer couldn’t be thrown.

  The wizard stood angrily and pointed his wand. “Table, be again as you should,” he chanted. “With a marble top and feet of wood.”

  Poof! There was a puff of hot pink smoke. When it cleared, the table had stopped tapping its toes. It didn’t even have any toes. It just had wooden feet.

  Wobbly wooden feet.

  “Do you want me to try to fix it again?” Princess Pulverizer asked as she climbed off the table.

  The Wizard of Wurst shook his head. “You’ve caused enough trouble for one day. I’m going to bed. You should, too. We have a lot of work to do in the morning.”

  “Okay,” Princess Pulverizer agreed. “Where should I sleep?”

  “Choose any room you want, except for the one at the end of the hallway. That’s off-limits,” the wizard warned her. “Good night.”

  As the Wizard of Wurst left his study and entered his bedroom, Princess Pulverizer smiled to herself. He had just given away a big secret.

  There was only one reason a room might be off-limits. The wizard had to be hiding something really special in there.

  Or someone really special.

  Someone like Lester the Jester.

  Chapter 6

  Princess Pulverizer really regretted leaving her ruby ring with Lucas. The floors in the tower were old and rickety. She couldn’t take a single step without making noise.

  Creak. Creak.

  She tried to walk a little more quietly so she didn’t wake the wizard. But Princess Pulverizer wasn’t exactly light on her feet.

  Finally, the princess reached the door at the end of the hallway. She reached out and turned the knob. But the door was locked. And there was no key in sight.

  Now I’m really in a pickle, Princess Pulverizer thought to herself.

  Grumble. Rumble.

  At the mere thought of the word pickle, the princess’s stomach started to groan.

  She should have eaten that pathetic liverwurst sandwich before she set off to rescue Lester the Jester. But that would have taken time. And frankly, the princess wanted to get out of this creepy tower as quickly as she could.

  The sooner she freed Lester, the sooner she could get back to Lucas and
Dribble—and to one of Dribble’s delicious grilled cheese sandwiches. Maybe he would make her a cheddar cheese on rye. The princess really loved rye bread—seeds and all.

  If only she could pick that lock.

  Pick . . .

  That’s it! Princess Pulverizer thought. She reached into her knapsack and pulled out one of the small slivers of wood she used to pick rye seeds out of her teeth.

  She slipped the slim toothpick into the keyhole.

  She jiggled it to the right.

  She joggled it to the left.

  And then . . .

  Click.

  The lock popped open!

  The princess smiled proudly as she slipped her toothpick back into her sack and turned the knob to the forbidden room.

  The legendary knight Sir Loin hadn’t been able to unlock the door to Lester the Jester’s prison.

  Neither had a whole army.

  But she had been able to do it. And it hadn’t taken her more than three seconds to figure out how.

  Quickly, the princess turned the knob and burst through the door. “Lester the Jester, you are free! I, Princess Pulverizer, have rescued . . . oh!”

  The princess stopped talking as soon as she entered the room.

  That was when she realized that she hadn’t freed Lester at all.

  He was trapped in a giant cage that was kept behind the locked door.

  That meant there were two locks.

  One on the door.

  And one on the cage.

  “You were saying?” Lester the Jester replied, glaring at her from behind the cage’s thick metal bars.

  At least Princess Pulverizer assumed the man in the cage was Lester. They hadn’t been properly introduced. But judging by the funny hat on his head, and the bells on the tips of his shoes, she figured that was who he had to be.

  “Um . . . I was saying that I, Princess Pulverizer, have arrived to rescue you,” the princess corrected herself.

  Lester looked her up and down. “Salami get this straight—I’m going to be rescued by a kid?” he asked her with a laugh. “Impossible.”