by M. E. Castle
Kyle grabbed hold of his brother as Halley popped up right next to them. Her soaked hair was plastered to her face like she’d had a fight with a plate of spaghetti … and lost.
Francisco and Bernardo reached the edge of the moat. Then they stopped. Bernardo shook his head with a smirk.
“Maybe you were right,” he said. “These people are way too clumsy to be real spies. I bet Prince Hamlet did set this up.”
“Ugh,” Francisco said. “Thank the bard he’s only a prince and not the king. Can you imagine how difficult life will be if Prince Hamlet actually becomes king?”
“I don’t want to imagine it,” Bernardo said with a shudder, and Kyle wondered what kind of awful pranks this Prince Hamlet had played to be so disliked.
“Come on,” Francisco said, “let’s get out of here. I’ve got another box of cookies hidden in the guardhouse.”
They walked away, their voices getting too faint to hear.
Kyle’s face scrunched up in puzzlement as he continued to tread water. Even with a big moat like this, the guards seemed awfully sure they couldn’t possibly escape.
Foolish as Bernardo and Francisco could be, they weren’t quite foolish enough to dive into a snake-filled moat.
“A what-filled moat?” Halley shouted. “Could you maybe have mentioned that before we jumped in?!”
The only reply was a sound like a slow air leak.
And after a moment, it got much, much louder.
HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
“SNAKES!” Kyle said. He paddled hard in the opposite direction, tightening his grip on his wriggling brother. Halley splashed feverishly after them. The cold water made his joints ache, and his feet were starting to go numb.
This was worse than when Kyle’s class had taken a trip to a lake and Kyle got chased around for an hour by a pack of angry kindergartners he’d tricked into thinking geese spat poison darts.
He made a mental note to add poison-dart-spitting geese to the list of villains Mal and Cal Worthy would fight in his comic.
Both sides of the moat were six feet of smooth stone. Kyle couldn’t have climbed that from solid ground, let alone floating with a squirming poop factory under his arm.
But they wouldn’t get to the wall anyway.
HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
More snakes floated at them from that direction.
And the two guards were long gone.
“Fissy?” Gross Gabe said, looking at the snakes.
“Well,” Kyle said, “I guess this is it.” He was numb past his ankles now. “Halley, I want you to know, I don’t really like you. I think you’re an annoying know-it-all and I’m not happy that I’ll die without finding out what happened to my favorite televised dino … but even so, I’d never wish for you to get eaten by moat snakes.”
“T-t-thanks, K-kyle,” Halley said, her chattering, almost-tap-dancing teeth making her even harder to understand. “I think you’re a la-la-lazy, obnoxious s-slacker with n-n-no imagination, but if I could s-s-s-save you from w-w-watery, venomous d-doom, I w-would.”
He was a little offended by her no imagination remark, before remembering that he’d never shown her or even told her about his comics. He also didn’t know what venomous meant, but he wasn’t about to bring that up at a time like this.
“Sorry, little bro,” Kyle said to Gross Gabe, the snakes less than three feet away on all sides. “I would’ve liked to see you grow up to be more of a person than a fart machine.”
“Fissy!” Gross Gabe shouted, waving happily.
KER-PLUNK!
Suddenly, Kyle got hit in the face with another mouthful of mossy moat water. Something white and heavy crashed into the water and then bobbed up. With a unified hiss, the snakes pivoted, moving off in the direction of the splash. Kyle felt a scaly tail whip his ankle and shuddered.
He turned around to see what had saved them.
And saw a human skull floating in the water.
CHAPTER SIX
REAL BOYS AREN’T AFRAID TO WEAR TIGHTS
Kyle gulped. Whose skull was that?
“Y-y-you’ve g-got to b-be kidding me,” Halley said, shivering even harder. “How m-much s-s-scarier can this place g-get?”
A lot, actually. Just wait until you get to the part where—
“NOT HELPING!” Kyle bellowed.
You’re right; spoilers always make things less fun. Please, continue.
“Pssst!” A whisper came from behind them. “This way! Before the snakes come back for you!”
Kyle and Halley looked around. A door had opened in the side of the moat, halfway up the castle wall. Kyle and Halley swam as fast as they could for it while Gross Gabe made motorboat noises that sounded suspiciously like farts.
Halley pulled herself up onto a small stone landing just inside the open door. Kyle handed Gross Gabe to her before pulling himself up. Whoever had whispered to them had already vanished into the castle through a second door, which was barely cracked open.
Shivering, Kyle advanced down the passage, Halley and Gross Gabe right behind. Their soggy shoes squished against the stone floor. The doors closed behind them with a SNAP, and Kyle jumped.
At first it was too dark to see anything. Then Kyle made out a dim flicker of orange-yellow candlelight, a palm-size glow that grew brighter as a person came toward them.
The light revealed two things.
First, that the room they were in was full of books, shelved and neat.
Second, the room was also full of skulls.
Great. It was bad enough that they were in a library. Kyle thought about just turning around and taking his chances with the snakes. He’d never liked books much to begin with, but after today he would never trust one again.
The footsteps were getting closer.
“I did not escape a pack of snakes just to be dinner for the world’s deadliest librarian,” Halley whispered.
“All librarians are deadly,” Kyle whispered, as he and Halley carefully backed up, only to find they had nowhere to go.
He looked around for a weapon. Where was Cal Worthy’s giant, scorpion-inspired mace when you needed it? The best he could do was grab a thick, heavy book from a nearby stand. It looked to be about a thousand pages. At last one of these things might come in handy.
Following Kyle’s lead, Halley put Gross Gabe down and picked up a book of her own. Gross Gabe started chewing the pages of a paperback that he found on the ground.
The figure came around a tall shelf, and Kyle was dazed by the sudden bright candle flame. He blinked at the shadowy image. This was just like what happened in the Mal and Cal Worthy stories. Which was exciting but at the same time, Mal and Cal Worthy had had a lot more training in battling evil skeletons than he had.
“Stay back!” Halley shrieked. “You won’t take our skulls, mister!”
“Your skulls?” the shadow echoed. “But I—”
“BOOKS AWAY!” Kyle shouted.
Halley and Kyle threw their books. They missed by several feet. The stranger moved his candle, and he turned out to be a barely four-foot-tall boy, with a much taller shadow.
He flinched and then backpedaled as the books flew overhead, almost tripping over his own feet.
“Wait! Wait!” he called out. The boy seemed to be about Kyle and Halley’s age. “I was just trying to help! See? I brought you tea to get the moat taste out of your mouths! It’s the worst.”
He held out his hands, and Kyle could see he had a candle in one and a pair of short clay mugs in the other.
The boy was also wearing the strangest clothes Kyle had ever seen—even stranger than his great-aunt Susan’s floral sundresses with square-dancing cats appliquéd down the front.
He had on a loose shirt with odd puffy sleeves, an embroidered black vest that went past his waist, a hat that looked like a deflated balloon animal on his head, and dark-green tights. Tights. It was like the boy’s mom shopped at a store where everything was designed by a blind three-toed sl
oth.
“But … but…,” Halley said. “The skulls!”
“Oh!” the boy said, looking around. “You mean these? They’re sweet skulls, made of sugar. Spun sugar comes in almost any shape—camel, weasel, whale, whatever you want! I keep them here to distract the snakes, and they seem to like skull-shaped the best. My uncle Claudius put the snakes in the moat to keep people out.”
Kyle thought that in Mal and Cal Worthy’s next adventure, they should journey to the Amazon and collect a poison snake or two. It could help keep certain pink-sneakered villains out of their secret lair.
Gross Gabe had already abandoned his tasteless book and started gnawing on a skull. He giggled between tiny bites. Kyle wondered if he was actually part puppy, and not just teething like their mother said.
“I’m surprised those bizarre clothes you’re wearing didn’t sink you,” the boy said. “Don’t tell me—you’re from Verona. I hear the Italians have a very different sense of style—lots of reds and blues. Wouldn’t suit me at all.”
“And who are you, exactly?” Kyle asked.
The boy cleared his throat. “Sorry, I should introduce myself. Hamlet. I’m the prince. Not that my uncle treats me like it. Not that anyone at all has treated me like royalty lately.”
“Wow!” Halley said. “Hamlet himself! It’s an honor.”
“Nice that someone thinks so,” Hamlet said glumly. He set the candle down on a table and handed one mug each to Halley and Kyle.
“Prince, huh?” Kyle said suspiciously, eyeing the mug in his hand. He remembered what the guards had said about the prince. “You have a crown?”
“I do … somewhere.” Hamlet sighed. “Haven’t seen the thing in days. I have a feeling my uncle might’ve taken it. Not that he needs my little prince crown, since he wears the king’s crown.” There was a little bitterness in that statement. “Hard to say, though. Things have been weird around here.”
Shivering, Kyle raised the mug to his lips. The tea was almost too hot to drink. He had never had tea before. Mom drank it with her cookies, but he’d never tasted it. It always kind of looked like dirty bathwater to him. And given that his last tea-based experience had ruined a sketchbook, he was extra-reluctant this time. Still, anything had to be better than tasting the peppered-asphalt-and-boiled-cactus flavor of moat water the rest of the day.
The tea was a little bitter, but it warmed him up nicely. He grabbed a sugar skull and broke off the jaw, then sank it into his mug. Even better.
Once his nose warmed up, he realized that it didn’t smell quite so bad in here. Just the musty old smell of books, which—besides making him think about books—wasn’t awful.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’m Kyle, and this is Halley. The tiny explorer eating your skulls is Gabe.”
“Charmed,” Hamlet said. “So how did you get here? I haven’t seen any caravans or wagons in days, and what with the way my uncle has treated travelers lately, I didn’t think anybody was even trying to visit anymore.”
Uh-oh. That didn’t sound good.
“A book was sent to me,” Kyle said. “A book with your name on it. I started to read it, and then it became huge and swallowed us up, and the next thing we knew we were in this castle.”
That’s a pretty underwhelming way to describe it. Hardly gets into the beauty of the book or the wonder of traveling between worlds at all.
“Forgive us if we’re too busy trying not to get swallowed by serpents to think about the art of book traps,” Kyle said.
“Agreed,” Halley said. “Running for our lives is distracting. Not that you didn’t know how much danger we’d be in, of course.”
“Gah!” Gabe said.
What fun would there be with no danger? Wouldn’t be much of a story.
“We didn’t ask to be in a story,” Kyle said sourly.
“Who are you talking to?” Hamlet asked.
Halley and Kyle looked at each other.
“You can’t hear him?” Kyle asked.
“Hear who?” Hamlet said. He was curious, but he wasn’t staring at them like they were out of their minds. “Maybe I was right!”
“Right about what?” Halley asked, forever curious. Kyle was surprised she knew how to ask a question without raising her hand to answer it herself.
“It means I can prove to Uncle Claudius that I’m not crazy or an irresponsible prankster!” Hamlet said triumphantly. “I’ve gotten a reputation as the castle lunatic.”
Remembering the guards’ conversation, Kyle eyed Hamlet warily. Francisco and Bernardo had seemed pretty sure that Hamlet was up to no good. But if anyone was a prankster in this castle, Kyle would have said it was the Narrator.
“If I ever want to be treated like a prince again,” Hamlet continued, “I need to prove that what I saw was real.”
As Kyle watched Hamlet hop a spontaneous jig, he wondered if Hamlet might have celebrated his non-craziness a bit too soon.
“What you saw?” Halley asked. “What did you see?”
Hamlet stopped his dance. His delighted grin flattened into dead seriousness as he leaned forward to whisper, “The ghost.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
WHERE THERE’S A GRAVEYARD, THERE’S A … GHOST?
The word ghost echoed and bounced around the room, sounding just about as scary as … well … a ghost.
“Psh,” Halley said, rolling her eyes. “Ghosts aren’t real.”
“But books that hurl people through time and space are?” Kyle shot back as Hamlet frowned at her.
“You were just talking to an invisible being that I can’t hear,” Hamlet joined in.
“But that wasn’t a ghost!” Halley said.
“How do we know that?” Kyle said. “We have no idea what this ‘Narrator’ is.”
“Either way, we don’t have time for ghost hunts,” Halley said. “We need to find the book so we can get home.” She started searching the closest shelf.
Kyle looked at Hamlet. “What did you mean by saying you have to prove to your uncle that you’re ‘not crazy or an irresponsible prankster’?” he asked.
Hamlet sighed. “Strange things keep happening around the castle—dogs meowing, bells tolling by themselves. Just a few days ago, this horrible stink came out of nowhere, and it’s made the whole castle smell like five-week-old toad stew.”
“Erch!” Gabe said in sympathy.
“It’s clear that we’re being haunted,” Hamlet said. “But King Claudius keeps blaming these things on me, saying I’m just playing a bunch of pranks on the poor people of the castle.”
He clenched his hands into fists. “When my father died, I should have become king. My uncle said I was too young, and that he would rule until I was old enough to take the throne, but as more time passes I think.…” He trailed off, frowning.
“Think what?” Halley prompted.
“I think he wants my job. Permanently,” Hamlet explained. “If he can convince the kingdom that I will never be mature enough to rule and I will always seem insane, he might get away with it. I think he wants me to do something, anything, that he can use as an excuse to remove me from succession.”
“To remove you from what?” Kyle said.
“To un-prince him,” Halley explained. “What about your mom? Isn’t she the queen?”
“Since she lost Dad, she’s been a shadow of herself,” Hamlet replied. “Barely talking, mostly keeping to her room. Claudius lets her stick around the court, probably to keep an eye on her. I’m sure she would like to help me, but she’s not in any condition to. Besides, Claudius is very intimidating.”
“And you still told him you think you saw a ghost?” Halley said. “That was silly.”
Hamlet hung his head. “I did see a ghost. I thought if I explained that, it might prove to him that it wasn’t me who put the minnows in the morning porridge, but it totally backfired. Now the entire castle thinks I’m a liar, and no one believes a word I say! They think I’m responsible for the stink!”
He crossed h
is arms. “But I’m not. And I did see a ghost. It’s completely unfair that no one believes me.”
“Well, I’m sorry to hear that.” Halley patted him on the shoulder. “I can’t imagine what that must be like, having all the pressures of being a prince. And then to have people think you’re not fit for it.”
She looked at Kyle expectantly. It took Kyle a moment to figure out what she was hinting at.
“Oh! Er, right … real bad. Very sad. Sorry to hear it, dude. Prince! I mean, Prince.” Kyle punched Hamlet’s shoulder. “Soooo … do you think you could help us find our book? This is the library, right?”
Halley glared at him. “Subtle.”
She turned back to Hamlet. “What Kyle means to say is, could you please help us find a very important book we need?” She made what Kyle thought were supposed to be puppy eyes, but to him they looked more like guppy eyes.
Hamlet sighed glumly. “This room is just my private book collection. I spend most of my time here these days, so if a new book had appeared, I would’ve seen it. I could take you to the castle library, but remember how I said no travelers want to come here? Well, there’s a reason. If my uncle finds out you came into the castle he might … well, you know.”
“What?” Kyle asked.
“Let’s put it this way,” Hamlet said, straightening his cap. “He throws people in jail for frowning at him. He taxes people for walking on grass. He decrees that all birthday parties must be under twenty minutes long. Yesterday he had his chef plunged in pea soup until he almost drowned because there was too much salt on the potatoes. Imagine what would happen if we were actually caught doing something illegal?”
“Reega!” Gross Gabe said, even more garbly than usual.
“I think that’s enough skulls,” Kyle said, bending down. He grabbed a third of a sugar jaw out of his brother’s hand.
