Ratpunzel

by Ursula Vernon

  “Violence should always be the last resort. We should talk to Dame Gothel first.”

  “Anyway,” said Wilbur, “we are not going to attack an innocent gerbil—who happens to be a friend of my mom’s—just because she got a letter about the egg!” He sniffed. “We’ll ask her, first, if she’s seen the egg.”

  Harriet grumbled. “Fine,” she said. “Heady’s your hydra. We’ll do it your way.”

  “Thank you.”

  “. . . for now.”

  “Qwerk,” said Hyacinth the quail, sounding amused.

  “Qwerk,” agreed Mumfrey.

  “I heard that,” said Harriet.

  • • •

  The Kingdom of Sunshine was a few days away by quail. They slept on the ground, which Harriet was used to and Wilbur hated.

  “Are you kidding?” said Harriet. “The Land of Comfortable Beds is terrifying. Monsters under everything.”

  Everyone in the Kingdom of Sunshine was cheerful, in that extremely grating way that made your teeth ache.

  “Isn’t it a magnificent day?!” asked a farmer, leaning on his hoe by the side of the road.

  “Don’t you just want to hug the clouds today?” asked a flower-seller in the town square.

  “It’s going to be the best day ever!” shouted a little girl, running by with a doll behind her.

  “Everyone seems very . . . happy . . .” said Wilbur.

  “Yep,” said Harriet. “Not gonna lie. If I had to live here, I’d go evil in a week. I’d be building an army of giant spider-chickens and saying things like, ‘No, Mr. Wilbur, I expect you to die, muahahaha.’”

  “Qwerkahahaha!” said Mumfrey, with feeling.

  “Yes, exactly like that.”

  “You’re just cynical, Harriet.”

  “Let’s see how you feel in another day or two. We’re only two-fifths of the way across the kingdom.”

  Wilbur rolled his eyes. Harriet had a strange obsession with fractions, but there was no point in trying to get her to drop it. “Everyone should be happy,” he said instead.

  “Yes, but they don’t have to be obnoxious about it.”

  They stopped at an inn for lunch. The innkeeper told them at length about how the Kingdom of Sunshine was the happiest kingdom, and how thrilled he was to live there and how his grandchildren made him confident in the future of rodentkind.

  Harriet interrupted his monologue to ask if he had seen a gerbil with a giant egg.

  “Not with an egg, no,” said the innkeeper. “And this is my granddaughter when she was a year old . . .”

  “Without an egg, then?” asked Harriet.

  “Look at that face! And here she is when she was two years old. . . . Oh, yes. A gerbil lady in a cloak. She came and bought sausages and left. Now, here I have a poem that my granddaughter wrote about clouds . . .”

  “O cloud! You make the sun so happy, my heart overflows with love—”

  Harriet gritted her teeth. She didn’t think she could handle happy poetry.

  “Please,” said Wilbur, “it’s kind of important. Did the gerbil lady say anything?”

  The innkeeper paused in his recitation. “The poem won an award,” he said. “Most Joyful Poem About Weather in the Third Grade.”

  “Lives may be at stake,” said Wilbur.

  “Oh my! Well, no. Just that she couldn’t ever get good cooking at home. Said her taste buds were positively withering away. They were lovely sausages.”

  “Thank you,” said Wilbur.

  “My other granddaughter wrote a sonnet about sausages. It was voted Most Joyful Poem About Meat Products in the Second Grade. I could recite it for you, if you like.”

  “Perhaps another time,” said Wilbur. One of Harriet’s eyelids was twitching. They left the inn in a hurry.

  “Well,” said Wilbur. “If that was her, she came by here. But she didn’t have the egg.”

  “You wouldn’t take the egg into an inn,” said Harriet. “People’d notice a giant egg. Around here, they’d probably compose poems about it.”

  • • •

  They stayed at an inn that night. The inn had featherbeds. The innkeeper confirmed that a gerbil had come through several days earlier, gotten food, and left again, and that she had spent ten minutes talking about how dreadful the cooking was at home.

  “She was very negative,” said the innkeeper. “I felt just terrible for her. I sang her a song to cheer her up.”

  “I sang ‘I’m So Happy, I Could Hug the World’ and ‘A Smile Is a Dream Written on Your Face’ and—”

  “Which way did she go?” asked Wilbur. He still sounded pleasant, but Harriet could hear him grinding his teeth.

  The innkeeper pointed down the road, in the direction of the Forest of Misery. “Would you like me to sing?”

  “No!” said Wilbur quickly. “That’s fine!” They fled the inn.

  “I am beginning to see your point,” said Wilbur an hour later as they climbed the steps to the bedrooms. “I mean, I get that he likes to sing, but ‘The Happy Bluebird Is So Happy, He Makes Me Happy Too’ was a bit much. They’re all very nice people, they’re just a little . . . too happy.”

  “Muahaha!” said Harriet.

  • • •

  By the time they came to the Forest of Misery, it was almost a relief.

  “Dark, dank, dripping,” said Harriet. “No songs about happiness. No poems about meat products. I could get to like this place.”

  “What I’m wondering is why they called it the Forest of Misery,” said Wilbur. “You have to think that in a place like the Kingdom of Sunshine, they’d have a happier name for it. Like . . . oh . . . I dunno . . .”

  “It’s a bit long,” said Wilbur. “I was thinking the Forest That Just Needs a Nap, or something.”

  “Qwerk-erk!”

  “That’s a good one too.”

  The trees clutched at them with dark, twiggy fingers as they rode past. Moss dripped from trunks and spread a thick green carpet over the ground. Pale mushrooms glowed underneath the trees.

  Somewhere, a bird called in a low, mournful voice, like a flute being played at a funeral.

  “Cheery,” said Wilbur.

  “Still better than the Kingdom of Sunshine.”

  “I feel like something’s watching us,” said Wilbur.

  “Yep,” said Harriet.

  “You feel it too?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Probably my nerves.”

  “Well, that and the pack of weasel-wolves that’s been following us.”

  “Weasel-wolves?” squeaked Wilbur.

  “For about the last half mile,” said Harriet. She drew her sword. “Don’t panic. They won’t attack unless they think we’re an easy target.”

  Wilbur thought about this for a minute.

  “Err . . . Harriet?”

  “Yes?”

  “. . . we are an easy target.”

  “Speak for yourself!” said Harriet, and then the weasel-wolves attacked.

  • • •

  Harriet saw the first weasel-wolf break from the undergrowth and launch itself at Hyacinth.

  It was a blur of teeth and claws and tail, and it was extremely fast.

  Mumfrey, however, was faster.

  Harriet’s trusty battle quail lunged between Hyacinth and the monster. The weasel-wolf suddenly discovered that it was no longer charging at a panicked target, but at Harriet Hamsterbone, notorious monster slayer.

  Harriet grinned.

  She didn’t even have to do anything. She just held her sword up and the weasel-wolf’s jump carried it right into the pommel, cracking itself in the forehead. Its eyes crossed and it fell to the ground, where Mumfrey stepped on it a few times for good measure.

  Another weasel-wolf charged. Hyacinth leap
ed straight into the air, shlopping frantically, and her attacker fell back with a mouthful of tail feathers. Mumfrey squawked with rage. Hyacinth was his girlfriend!

  He spun around—Harriet grabbed for the reins—so that his rump was facing the startled weasel-wolf. The monster spat out the feathers and grinned.

  What it did not know was that the most dangerous place you can be is directly behind a battle quail.

  Mumfrey’s power was all in his kick. His legs shot out—one-two—and lifted the weasel-wolf off its feet. It flew through the air, bounced off a tree trunk, and ran into the woods with its tail between its stubby legs.

  “Qwerk!” said Mumfrey, which is Quail for “Hmmph!”

  The weasel-wolves looked at her, looked at one another, and melted away into the forest. Harriet sheathed her sword.

  “That’s that,” she said. “They’re cowards.”

  Wilbur slid off Hyacinth’s back. “You’re the best quail,” he told her. “You don’t have to be scared. You did great!”

  Mumfrey looked vaguely offended. He’d done all the work! But Harriet patted his neck. She knew that Hyacinth wasn’t a battle quail the way that Mumfrey was, and she needed to be reassured after the encounter.

  “You shlopped at just the right time,” said Harriet to Hyacinth. “That was perfect!”

  Hyacinth made a small, fretful qwerk but straightened up. She settled her feathers a bit.

  “Let’s keep moving,” said Harriet. “We’ve still got to find this tower. On . . . err . . .” She checked the envelope. “. . . Tiddlywinks Lane.”

  They rode on through the Forest of Misery. Occasionally Harriet would spot a weasel-wolf out of the corner of her eye, but they looked less like hunters and more like prey.

  And then the road they were on branched. The main thoroughfare continued on, but to one side, an even darker and more forbidding pathway beckoned.

  There was a cheerful signpost at the fork, looking wildly out of place. Harriet got off Mumfrey to go and read it.

  “That doesn’t look happy,” said Wilbur. “That looks like the opposite of happy.”

  “Sad?”

  “Painful!”

  “Still,” said Harriet. “I guess this is the way we’re supposed to go . . .”

  A cold breeze blew through the Forest of Misery. Wilbur wrapped his arms around himself and shuddered.

  CHAPTER 4

  They had to ride single file down Tiddlywinks Lane. Harriet took the lead.

  Around them, the Forest of Misery dripped and squished and groaned.

  “This is starting to get to me,” said Wilbur. “I mean, it’s like it’s being deliberately unpleasant. Look at that tree there.” He pointed. “It’s totally got angry faces in it. And so does that one. And that one.”

  Harriet peered at one of the trees. It did indeed seem to have a rodent face in it.

  “That’s weird,” she said. “Normally those things are just tricks of the eye, but that looks like an actual person in that tree.”

  “And that one over there too,” said Wilbur. “And that other one. And . . . hmm.”

  Harriet tapped her claw against her big front teeth. “That one looks like a quail.”

  “Qwerk!”

  She slid off Mumfrey’s back and walked a little way into the forest. Most of the trees in every direction looked as if the bark had been carved into the shapes of people.

  “There’s a newt,” she said. “And that thicket there is like a dozen weasel-wolves.”

  The resemblance was uncanny. A few of the faces did look angry, but most of them just looked puzzled. One or two looked surprised.

  “Maybe Dame Gothel likes to carve,” said Wilbur.

  “Sure,” said Harriet. “That’s definitely the most likely possibility.”

  “Right,” said Wilbur.

  “And we don’t know that it’s Gothel doing . . . whatever this is,” said Harriet, climbing back onto Mumfrey. “Although didn’t your mom say that she was very into plants?”

  “I thought she meant that Gothel . . . oh, grew roses or prize-winning zucchini or something.” Wilbur ducked under a branch that grew over the path. It looked alarmingly like a warrior rat holding up a spear.

  “I suppose that’s possible.”

  They rode on. More carved tree trunks appeared on either side. Most were carvings of people, with scattered beasts and birds among them. One massive oak tree was carved into the shape of a crouching Ogrecat. Harriet got down again and walked around that one.

  “It’s frighteningly good,” said Harriet. “With the emphasis on frightening. It’s got whiskers, and the tail’s just right too.”

  “I don’t like this,” said Wilbur.

  “We’re here for Heady’s egg,” said Harriet. “Just remember that.”

  They passed more trees. Most of them looked like people, except for the ones that looked like ordinary trees.

  A couple, though . . .

  “That’s weird,” said Harriet.

  One of the trees looked mostly like a tree, except that there was an enormous slash in the trunk. It gaped open like a mouth, and Harriet could see heartwood inside.

  The tree looked as if it should be dead, with that kind of opening in it, but it had leafed out and appeared completely healthy.

  “Really weird,” said Wilbur. “Can we get back on the quail now?”

  “Yeah,” said Harriet. “Yeah . . .”

  They rode onward.

  They hadn’t gone more than a few dozen yards when Mumfrey halted, flipping his topknot nervously.

  “What is it?”

  “Qwerk!” said Mumfrey, which is Quail for “Someone in the road.”

  Harriet slid off the quail’s back and advanced. She could see what he was looking at—a long, rope-like thing lying across the road.

  It was an awfully shaggy rope, though. And there was a black tip on the end.

  “Come out!” yelled Harriet. “I know you’re there!”

  “How do you know that?” said the bushes.

  “Because your tail is sticking out!”

  With rustling and rattling and thumping and a great deal of noise, an elderly gerbil in a black cloak slowly emerged from the bushes.

  “Oh, dearie me,” said the gerbil. “Dearie me. I’m sorry, I thought you were weasel-wolves.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Harriet. “Are you Dame Gothel?”

  The gerbil’s eyes went sharp for an instant, then softened, so quickly that Harriet wasn’t sure if she’d seen it at all. “Why, yes, my dear. Do I know you?”

  “You’re friends with my mom,” said Wilbur. “I’m Wilbur.”

  “Oh! Yes, of course, Hazel’s little boy! Why, how nice to see you! She writes about you all the time.” Dame Gothel clasped her hands together. “Such a good, sweet boy! She’s so proud of you.”

  Wilbur blushed and mumbled something.

  Harriet opened her mouth to say something—probably not something terribly good or sweet—and Wilbur hastily said, “We’re looking for a stolen hydra egg!”

  Harriet closed her mouth again and glared at Wilbur. If Gothel was the egg thief, blurting it out wasn’t going to make their job any easier.

  That odd expression flicked across the gerbil’s face again. Harriet studied her closely, frowning a little. Gothel didn’t seem to have the egg . . . but something didn’t add up.

  “A hydra egg?” said Gothel. “Dear me! I’ve never seen a hydra. They’re supposed to be naturally gifted cooks, though.”

  “Heady is,” said Wilbur. “She’s brilliant. But someone took her egg.”

  “Oh, the poor thing!” Gothel clasped her wrist to her forehead. “Oh, there’s such wickedness in the world.”

  “We thought you might have heard about it, since my mom wrote you . . .
”

  “Oh, no, my dear sweet boy.” Gothel patted his hand. “I don’t think she said anything about an egg, no. Not to me.”

  “So you haven’t seen the egg,” said Harriet.

  The gerbil shuddered theatrically.

  “So is your tower around here?” asked Wilbur.

  “No,” said Gothel. “Not anywhere nearby.”

  “I thought this was Tiddlywinks Lane.”

  “Oh, well, yes. It is. But it goes on for a long way. Miles. Days of travel. Anyway, I should get moving if I’m going to get home. It was lovely to meet you!”

  There was an awkward silence. Gothel stood in the middle of the path and didn’t move.

  “Right,” said Harriet. “Sorry to bother you. We were hoping you’d seen it. Come on, Wilbur, let’s ride away from here and see if we can find the thief somewhere . . . else. Far away. Now.”

  Wilbur blinked at her. Harriet jerked her head toward the quails.

  “Right,” said Wilbur. “Uh . . . thanks, ma’am. It was nice meeting you.”

  “You’re so sweet! I shall write your mother and tell her that you are a delightful young man, young man.”

  Gothel waved. Harriet turned Mumfrey and broke into a fast quail trot.

  “That was odd,” said Wilbur, when they were out of earshot.

  “That was beyond odd,” said Harriet. “She was lying about your mother mentioning the egg in her letters, did you notice?”

  Harriet urged Mumfrey off the path, into the woods. “Come on. She’s probably waiting to make sure we’re gone. I want to circle around ahead of her and see where this tower is.”

  “She said it was days away,” said Wilbur, following.

  “Yeah,” said Harriet. “Did you believe her?”

  Wilbur shook his head slowly. “No.”

  CHAPTER 5

  The woods were deep, and full of unpleasant carvings. Harriet focused on moving quietly. In this, Hyacinth was better than Mumfrey. She was light on her feet and could hop delicately over dry branches that a heavy battle quail would just stomp through.