Whiskerella

by Ursula Vernon

  “We must hold another ball!” said the hamster queen, just as Harriet was about to bite into her toast.

  “Oh jeez,” said Harriet. “Another one?”

  “Yes,” said the queen. “Prince Archibald’s mother has been asking. They said there was a lovely masked hamster at the ball.” She nudged Harriet and beamed. “Apparently all the princes are quite smitten!”

  “Sure,” said Harriet, “but not with me!”

  Still, she couldn’t be too annoyed. If the strange hamster showed up again, she’d have a second chance to get to the bottom of the mystery. And this time, she’d be prepared.

  She went down to the stables and prowled around until she located the groom, who was shoveling quail manure.

  “Sorry, Princess,” he said, picking up his pitchfork. “You startled me.”

  Harriet was used to people being startled when she showed up, and politely didn’t comment. “Can you help me . . . uh . . . sorry, what’s your name?”

  He looked at her warily. Princess Harriet had a reputation for danger and daring, and the groom was not particularly interested in either of those things.

  “Right!” said Harriet. “Ralph. Good. Now, we’re going to have another masked ball shortly, and there’s a chance that the coach with the white quail will show up again.”

  “Well, that’s where I’ll be,” said Harriet. “I mean, I’d get away if I could, but my mom will notice, so I have to be there until I really need to leave.”

  “Princess, I’m a groom,” said Ralph. “I can’t go to a ball!”

  “You’ll be fine,” said Harriet. “It’s a costume ball. People will think you’re a prince dressed as a groom!”

  Ralph did not look thrilled by this prospect. Actually, if anything, he looked much more upset. “But if people think I’m a prince, they’ll—they’ll expect me to do prince things! Like dancing and—uh—table manners!”

  Harriet snorted. “Believe me, most princes have no table manners at all. Anyway, it’s not like you have to be there the whole time. You just have to come in and find me and then you can leave.” She was a bit envious. She would have loved to spend the entire ball in the stables herself.

  Ralph looked unconvinced. “Well . . . I guess . . . if I don’t have to dance . . .”

  “I shall protect you from dancing,” said Harriet. “But it’s very important that I see that coach and those quail!”

  CHAPTER 6

  The day of the ball arrived and Harriet was ready.

  “You’re really into this,” said Wilbur, sitting on the edge of the bed. He and Ratpunzel were hanging out with Harriet before the ball started. Harriet’s bedroom resembled an explosion in a weapons factory, so the bed was really the safest place. Otherwise you ran the risk of sitting down on an ax that had gotten wedged into the upholstery.

  Wilbur shrugged. “Everybody’s wearing a mask,” he pointed out.

  “It’s probably just some local duchess or marchioness or viscountess,” said Ratpunzel.

  Marchionesses and viscountesses are types of female nobility, rather like duchesses, only lower down on the social ladder. (For some reason, though, female earls aren’t earlesses, but countesses. Harriet suspected that it was because the word “earless” looked like somebody who was missing ears, not like somebody with a medium-sized castle.)

  Go far enough down the social ranks and people are simply Lord So-and-So and Lady Such-and-Such. There were a lot of lords and ladies about. Some of them came to balls, but most of them just lived ordinary lives. Being a lord didn’t count for much unless you inherited a castle and money to go with it.

  “Or countess or baroness or knightess—” Ratpunzel continued, apparently determined to list every single type of nobility she knew.

  “Female knights aren’t knightesses,” interrupted Harriet. “They’re just knights.”

  “They aren’t?” said Ratpunzel.

  “I thought female knights got called dame instead of sir,” said Wilbur.

  “They do, but I thought dame made it sound like I was eighty years old, so I said ‘I want to be Sir Harriet instead’ and they said ‘Okay, that’s fine, please go away now, you’re scaring the chickens.’”

  From Harriet’s point of view, this was a perfectly normal conversation. Wilbur did not question it.

  “Anyway,” he said, “about the masked hamster . . .”

  “Right!” said Harriet. “She can’t have been anyone we know, because she didn’t have an invitation! And Mom knows all the royalty for miles around, and she didn’t know who it was!”

  “Maybe she’s not royalty at all,” said Ratpunzel, combing her fur. “Maybe she just wanted to go to the ball.”

  “Blargggh,” said Harriet. “Who’d want to go to a ball if they didn’t have to?”

  Wilbur and Ratpunzel exchanged glances. Ratpunzel was not the smartest rat in the kingdom, but even she knew that some people would very much want to go to balls, even if they weren’t royal and didn’t have an invitation.

  “I would have loved to go to a ball when I was locked up in the tower,” she said.

  Harriet shuddered. “Yeah, but now you’ve seen what they’re like,” she said. “A bunch of people standing around punch bowls, dancing and worrying about stepping on each other’s feet, and eating tiny little sandwiches with the crusts cut off.”

  “They can’t be real glass,” said Ratpunzel suddenly.

  “What, the sandwiches? I think they’re cucumber.”

  “No, no.” Ratpunzel twisted her long tail between her hands. “The slippers! When you said that people stepped on each other’s feet, I thought about her slippers. They can’t be real glass.”

  It had not occurred to Harriet that anybody might think that the hamster’s footwear was really made of glass. Real glass would have shattered into a million pieces and also been very, very uncomfortable to walk in.

  “They must be magic,” said Ratpunzel. “Don’t you think?”

  “Or some kind of transparent rubber.” Harriet had a hard time imagining that, if you were a wizard or a fairy, you’d spend a lot of time magicking up shoes. There were so many more important things you could spend magic on, like swords or flying carpets or heavy artillery.

  “I mean, have you looked at feet?” Harriet wiggled her toes. “They’re all weird and knobbly. And if you shove them inside a slipper, they’re all weird and knobbly with the toes squished together. And they’d be sweaty. And everybody could see your weird, squished sweaty feet whenever they looked down.”

  Fashion was not Harriet’s strong suit.

  The door at the bottom of the stairs opened, and Harriet’s mother shouted, “Harriet! Time for the ball!”

  “Right!” Harriet jumped out of the chair. “Come on, guys. And remember, whatever you do, when she arrives, don’t let her out of your sight!”

  CHAPTER 7

  There was a herald stationed at the door to announce people, which was difficult when everyone was wearing masks and supposed to be anonymous. Wilbur was announced as “Handsome stranger!” Ratpunzel was “Exceedingly long-tailed stranger!” Harriet was “Oh, it’s you, Princess. Uh. I mean, Princess Stranger.”

  Wilbur sighed. He was not by nature a sarcastic hamster, but Harriet brought out some of his snarkier qualities. He still wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.

  The three of them drifted over to the punch bowl. Ratpunzel went off to dance with the rat prince. Wilbur ate several tiny sandwiches. Harriet kept an eye on the door, waiting for Ralph the groom.

  When he finally arrived, he was out of breath and there was straw in his fur. The herald at the door looked him over and announced, “Stranger in a very convincing costume!”

  Harriet hurried to meet him. “Ralph! It’s me, Harriet!”

  “Yes, Princess, I know,” he said.

 
There was a moment when Ralph clearly realized that “Mom” meant “the hamster queen” and turned slightly green with social anxiety.

  “Right!” said Harriet. “Is it the coach?”

  “With the white quail. It just showed up!”

  “Great!” said Harriet.

  “I dunno, Princess,” said Ralph. “Those quail aren’t running right. I think they may have wobbly quail . . .”

  (Wobbly quail is a terrible affliction of quail that requires extremely expensive orthopedic shoes to fix.)

  Harriet winced. “Both of them? Are you sure?”

  “Well, I don’t rightly know. I told her about it and she seemed very concerned, but then I remembered that I was supposed to come here, and I’m sorry I took so long, but I was looking at the quail’s feet . . .”

  Harriet waved this off. “It’s fine. Now we just have to—oh, blast!”

  “Mysterious and beautiful stranger!” cried the herald at the front of the room.

  The strange hamster swept into the room.

  Her dress was the color of a summer sky. Her shoes were still made of glass. They also, now that Harriet was looking closely, were highly reflective, which resolved the issue of sweaty squished-up feet nicely.

  She came down the steps into the ballroom. Princes, dukes, and minor nobility of all sorts rushed to dance with her. She looked across the room.

  Ralph made a strangled noise.

  Harriet nodded. Ralph did stick out, since he wasn’t masked and nobody else had dressed up as a groom. The stranger might not notice it . . . but then again, she might, and it might make her ask inconvenient questions that would get Ralph in trouble. “I’ll handle it,” she whispered. “Get ready to go out the door!

  “Hold this,” she said, handing her punch to Wilbur, and advanced across the dance floor like a general advancing on the enemy.

  Princes scattered before her. They did not have much choice in the matter.

  Harriet reached the mysterious hamster, bowed as deeply as one can while wearing a ball gown, and said, “Madam, would you care to dance?”

  CHAPTER 8

  The stranger looked at her. Harriet looked at the stranger. She could feel the eyes of a great many princes on the back of her neck.

  “. . . sure,” said the stranger, and took Harriet’s hand.

  Harriet was a large and sturdy hamster for twelve years old. The newcomer was at least sixteen or seventeen, but she was as delicate as a leaf, so they were at eye level to each other.

  There was a moment or two of confusion when the stranger thought they were going to waltz and Harriet, panicking a little, defaulted to a tango. One glass slipper came down on Harriet’s foot. It only hurt a little, but more important, it did not shatter into a million pieces. It felt hard and cold, not like rubber at all.

  Magic glass, thought Harriet. Ratpunzel and Wilbur were right.

  “You’re not from around here,” said Harriet.

  “How would you know, Princess?” asked the stranger.

  “The same way you knew I was a princess,” said Harriet, which startled a laugh out of the stranger.

  “What’s your name?” asked Harriet.

  “You may call me Ella,” said the stranger.

  “No last name?”

  “Not that I’m going to tell you.” She arched her beautiful whiskers forward smugly.

  Harriet considered this. “Ella. With the whiskers. Whisker . . . Ella. Hmm.”

  Harriet tried to spot Ralph over Whiskerella’s shoulder, but they were pointing the wrong direction. She tried to spin the other way, which made Whiskerella stumble a bit and step on her foot again.

  “You’re a very . . . um . . . unusual . . . dancer,” said Whiskerella.

  “I’m better at jousting,” admitted Harriet. “And cliff-diving. And fractions.”

  “Oh? What’s three-eighths plus one-fourth?”

  “Five-eighths,” said Harriet.

  “Your story checks out.”

  Harriet might have had a snarky reply, but then she saw Ralph, who was trying to get to the door but had run into Ratpunzel and was now helping her pick up her tail. “Oh blast!”

  “Beg pardon?”

  “Nothing. Let’s go this way.” Harriet steered them toward the back wall.

  Other couples were moving in stately orbits like planets. Harriet and Whiskerella careened through them like a rogue comet.

  “This is the most peculiar dance I’ve ever danced,” said Whiskerella.

  Harriet managed to spin and saw Ralph run out the door. She breathed a sigh of relief. “Well, I don’t want to keep you,” she said. “And I’m sure lots of princes will want to dance with you.”

  “I doubt any of them will dance quite like you,” said Whiskerella dryly. “At least, one can hope.”

  The music stopped. Couples bowed to each other, or curtseyed. Harriet bowed, remembered the ball gown, tried to curtsey, remembered the sword, and gave up. She stepped back.

  Princes A, B, and C charged into the fray. Harriet waved to Whiskerella, then gathered up her skirts and ran for the door.

  CHAPTER 9

  She found Ralph having quiet hysterics in the hallway.

  “Someone thought I was a prince!” he whispered.

  “That was the idea,” said Harriet.

  “Yeah, but—but—she wanted to dance with me! She asked where I got my costume!” Ralph shuddered. “I don’t know how to dance! I told her I had to go and ran away.”

  Harriet shook her head sadly. “You’re too honest, Ralph. Tell people you have leprosy next time.”

  “Leprosy?!”

  “Yeah, horrible disease, bits fall off, nobody wants to dance with you.”

  Ralph stopped and stared at her. Since Harriet was hurrying down the hallway, this meant that he stared at her back and then had to run to catch up. “I don’t want to tell people I’ve got a horrible disease!”

  “Fine, then tell them it’s twenty-four-hour leprosy and you’ll be better tomorrow.”

  They reached the stable yard. Ralph pointed toward the big paddock with the quail. “The white quail are in there, Har—err, Princess.” (He was having a hard time remembering to call Harriet by her formal title. Harriet often had this effect on people.)

  Harriet looked over, saw the white quail’s topknots, and ran into the stable to deploy her secret weapon.

  “Mumfrey!”

  “Mumfrey!” whispered Harriet. “Mumfrey, go talk to those quail! See if you can find out where they’re from!”

  “Qwerk,” said Mumfrey. He slicked his topknot back and went to go charm the two white quail.

  “Qwerk,” said Mumfrey, which was Quail for “So, you come here often?”

  The white quail said nothing.

  “Qwerkkkk,” said Mumfrey, which was Quail for “Are you twins?”

  The white quail continued to say nothing.

  “Qwer-r-rk,” said Mumfrey, which was Quail for “How about this weather we’re having, huh?”

  The white quail stared at him. If they had opinions of the weather, they kept it to themselves.

  “Qwerrrrrrk?” said Mumfrey, which was Quail for “So . . . uh . . . nice talking to you . . . ?”

  The silence of the white quail seemed to chase him back into the stable.

  “Well?” said Harriet. “What did they have to say?”

  Mumfrey put his wing over his head. “Qwerk,” he mumbled.

  “Nothing?” said Harriet. “Not a word?”

  “Qwerk.”

  This was very odd. Quail were among the chattiest birds in the world. Now they had two non-qwerking quail and Mumfrey was having an emotional crisis about whether he was likeable or not.

  She hated to leave Mumfrey when he was obviously distraught, but the ball wouldn’
t last forever. “I have to go see the coach-mouse,” she said. “I’ll be back in just a minute.”

  “Qwerrrrrggggggk,” mumbled Mumfrey into his wing.

  Harriet made her way across the stable yard to where the coaches stood. For a very long ball, it was usual to park all the coaches and then unhitch the quail so that they didn’t have to stand around for hours on end. The coaches sat empty in the moonlight with the shafts of the harness sticking out like fence posts.

  Only one coach had anyone on it. It was a very old style of coach, at least a hundred years out of date, but Harriet was less concerned about the fashion and more about the coach-mouse sitting atop it.

  He was small and white, with pink eyes and nose. He had a very large hat.

  “I’m Princess Harriet!” said Harriet cheerfully. “What’s your name?”

  The coach-mouse stared at her.

  Harriet was used to people staring at her in stunned silence. It seemed to happen a lot, in fact. She had gotten used to carrying the first part of the conversation. “Your coach has the white quail, right?”

  The coach-mouse continued to stare.

  After a moment it occurred to Harriet that he wasn’t blinking. As soon as she realized that, her own eyes began to water in sympathy.

  Harriet could think of any number of reasons why the coach-mouse wouldn’t answer—he might be deaf or unable to speak or not speak Rodentish or simply painfully, agonizingly shy. None of those involved not blinking, however.