Knight-napped!

by Ursula Vernon

  “Looks more like an example of Cathar architecture than Austrian,” said Wendell.

  “I wonder if it’s got a moat!” said Danny.

  “Moats are a pain in the tail,” said Wendell. “I wouldn’t have a moat. They’d always be flooding the basement or getting algae or something.”

  “But castles have to have moats! Otherwise they’re just . . . big . . . stone . . . thingies! Where would you put the moat monster?”

  “Can’t I have a sidewalk monster instead?”

  Christiana chewed on her lower lip. “Well, this is the castle . . . but how do we tell if Spencer’s inside?”

  “We could go up and ask . . .” said Wendell dubiously.

  Danny shook his head. Wendell was brilliant, but he was also a little too likely to trust grown-ups. “If they really have kidnapped Spencer—and I’m not saying they didn’t have a good reason—but just in case, it probably isn’t smart to go up and say ‘Hey, are you holding my cousin prisoner?’ We might end up kidnapped too.”

  All three shuddered.

  “And if they didn’t do it, they might be very upset,” said Christiana. “Accusing people of kidnapping is serious.”

  “Do we go up and look in the windows?” asked Wendell. “Only Spencer’s note said he was in the tower, and that’s a long way up . . .”

  Danny scratched underneath Fluffy. The pigeon cooed.

  “Maybe we could call the castle and ask to speak to Spencer . . .” Christiana said.

  “That’s it!” said Danny.

  “What, call the castle?”

  “Not that! Fluffy!” said Danny. He looked up toward the bird. “Hey, Fluffy . . . Good pigeon. Nice pigeon. You’re a homing pigeon, aren’t you?”

  “Coo?”

  “So you can home in on Spencer, right?”

  “It doesn’t work like that,” said Wendell. “They find places, not people.”

  “Fluffy found me, didn’t he?” said Danny. “He’s clearly a genius pigeon. Aren’t you, Fluffy?”

  “Coo!”

  “I think that’s an oxymoron,” said Christiana.

  “You’re an oxymoron. Don’t listen to them, Fluffy.” Danny prodded the pigeon. “Now go! Go find Spencer! Be a good pigeon!”

  Fluffy shifted from foot to foot, cooing uncertainly.

  “You think that’ll work?” asked Christiana. “I mean, fine, okay, I’ve seen you talk to rats, but pigeons . . . ?”

  “My dad always says pigeons are rats with wings,” said Danny.

  “My mom says pigeons are beautiful expressions of nature’s infinite wonderment,” said Wendell gloomily.

  “Harsh,” said Danny. Christiana winced.

  Fluffy, however, seemed to enjoy being called an expression of nature’s infinite wonderment. He stood up straighter and flapped a few times.

  “Good pigeon! Nice pigeon! Who’s a good pigeon that can go find cousin Spencer?”

  Just when Danny was starting to think that he was standing in the woods, flattering a bird for no good reason, the pigeon spread its wings and launched itself off Danny’s head.

  Fluffy flapped furiously.

  The trio watched as the pigeon gained altitude, sweeping in a broad circle around Castle Wanderpoll.

  Up it went, and around—once, twice—and then landed on a ledge at the window of the highest tower.

  They were too far away to see if anyone came to meet the bird, but after a minute or two it became obvious that it wasn’t coming back.

  “Well,” said Danny. “I guess that proves it.”

  “It proves that the pigeon went back to Castle Wanderpoll,” said Christiana. “It doesn’t prove he went back to Spencer—although that does seem logical—and it still doesn’t prove that Spencer’s being held prisoner.”

  “Looks like there’s only one way to find out for sure,” said Danny.

  “Lizard Scout Cookies?” asked Wendell. “Really?”

  “Do you have a better plan?” asked Danny. “Besides, you know how it is—they take the orders first and then deliver them later. We’ll just take the order. We don’t actually need the cookies.”

  “How does that get us inside?” asked Wendell. “When you order Lizard Scout Cookies, the Scouts stay at the door.”

  “We’re just doing reconnaissance,” said Danny loftily.

  Christiana looked at him suspiciously. “Do you even know what ‘reconnaissance’ means?”

  “Sure,” said Danny, who had seen it in a number of video games. “It’s when you go sneaking around to see what’s where. People do it before military missions and stuff.”

  “Aren’t Lizard Scouts usually girls?” asked Wendell dubiously. “And don’t they wear uniforms?”

  “We’ll tell them our uniforms are in the wash,” said Danny.

  “And don’t you forget it,” growled Christiana.

  Danny was just glad she wasn’t moping anymore. Christiana being quiet and miserable was weird.

  They tromped up the road toward the castle. It was an old gravel road, with deep ruts and pebbles that glistened like a toad’s warts in the sun.

  “We’ll take the order,” said Danny. “And we’ll ask how many people are in the castle, and if any of them would like to order cookies.”

  “Then what?” asked Wendell.

  “Uh . . .” Danny scratched his head. It felt cold without the pigeon.

  “We could build a giant box of cookies out of wood, climb inside, and leave it outside the walls,” said Christiana. “Then when they bring it inside, we sneak out.”

  Wendell snickered. “Trojan cookies!”

  Danny shook his head slowly. “Seriously, all that nerd brain power and that’s the best you can come up with?”

  “It has great historical precedent,” said Wendell with dignity.

  “Maybe Christiana could go in and say ‘Hi, I’m your long-lost cousin . . .’” Danny offered.

  Christiana shook her head. “No! What if they turn out to be kidnappers after all? What if they’ve got a weird family cult or start demanding DNA samples or put me on a Christmas newsletter mailing list or something?”

  “Don’t look now,” said Wendell, pointing, “but that’s a bad sign.”

  Wendell frowned and rubbed his snout with one hand. “But that doesn’t make any sense!” he said. “If there are no dragons allowed, why would Spencer be there? He’s a dragon!”

  “Maybe he’s not here,” said Christiana hopefully. “Maybe it was a stupid prank and he trained a pigeon for it and nobody’s been kidnapped and now we can go home.”

  “Pfff!” Danny marched past the sign. “Where’s your sense of adventure? We’re at a real castle! Run by your relatives! Don’t you want to meet them?”

  “Not really,” said Christiana, following him. “Who says my relatives are nice people? I mean, Spencer’s your relative, and you’re not exactly best buddies.”

  Danny was forced to yield to the logic of this observation.

  Wendell stayed staring at the sign for a moment longer, then ran after the other two, still frowning and deep in thought.

  “It seems so specific,” he said. “I wonder if Spencer saw it?”

  “Spencer is bad about noticing when he’s not welcome.”

  As they walked toward the castle, they discovered it had a moat. Danny was ecstatic.

  Sure, it was only half-full, and the water was green and slimy and had an old tire floating in it, and sure, the drawbridge had been down for so long that it had rusted in place and somebody had put traffic cones in front of it and a little sign that said THIS IS NOT A PARKING SPOT, but that didn’t matter.

  “It’s still a moat!” said Danny, delighted.

  “I suppose for some value of ‘moat,’ you’re correct,” said Christiana.

 
“I think I’m behind on my tetanus shots,” said Wendell, peering in. “And hepatitis shots. And . . . err . . . moat-fever shots. . . .”

  Mosquitoes buzzed over the surface of the slimy water. Bubbles trailed up from the depths and burst with a wet popping sound.

  “What do you think is in it?” asked Danny.

  They came to a huge door with big iron studs and wrought iron knockers. That would have been cool, except . . .

  The door knocker was in the shape of a dragon, twisted around, with a sword rammed right through it.

  “I dunno, it’s kinda wicked-looking,” said Wendell, “but I guess I wouldn’t like it if it was an iguana with a sword through it.”

  “Are we going to knock?” asked Christiana.

  Danny scowled. He didn’t approve of people having impaled dragons on their doors. He balled up a fist and hammered on the wood instead.

  BOOM!

  BOOM!

  BOOM!

  “There’s a sign that says No Soliciting,” said Wendell worriedly, pointing to a small sign beside the door.

  “Good thing we’re just selling cookies,” said Danny.

  “Selling cookies is soliciting,” said Christiana.

  “Good thing they’re fake cookies, then.”

  After a long moment, they heard a bolt being drawn back, and the door creaked open.

  “Lizard Scout Cookies!” the trio chorused.

  The door opened a little wider.

  “We’re not soliciting,” said Danny. “We’re selling Lizard Scout Cookies.”

  Christiana sighed.

  The knight stared at Danny for a long moment. “Aren’t you supposed to be in uniform?”

  “They’re in the wash,” said Danny. He tucked his tail behind him to keep the dragonish point from being obvious.

  “And aren’t Lizard Scouts usually girls?”

  “Uh—”

  “We’re an equal opportunity organization,” said Wendell firmly.

  “Today’s Lizard Scouts refuse to be bound by stereotypical gender roles,” said Christiana. “You want some cookies or not?”

  The knight considered this. “Do you have the mint ones? With the little frosting squiggles?”

  “Mint Squigglies,” said Wendell. “Sure. Shall I put you down for a dozen boxes?”

  “Yes, please,” said the knight. His gaze crept back to Danny. “Do I know you? You look awfully familiar . . .”

  “Did you buy cookies last year?” asked Danny, thinking quickly.

  “No . . .”

  “Twelve boxes of Mint Squigglies,” said Wendell, pretending to make notes in his geometry notebook. “And is there anyone else in the castle who might like some cookies?”

  “I could swear I know you from somewhere . . .” muttered the knight.

  “Anything else?” asked Wendell, a bit desperately. “Chocolate Moon Puffs? Peanut Butter Crunchie-Wunchies?”

  “Are you sure twelve boxes will be enough?” asked Danny. “If you’ve got a lot of people in the castle, they may all want some!”

  The knight blinked. His gaze traveled over Danny, from the top of the dragon’s head down to the tip of his tail . . . which Danny had forgotten to keep tucked out of sight.

  “Uh—” said Danny.

  Wendell opened his mouth. Danny knew that the iguana was about to say something brainy, something brilliant, something that would get them out of trouble.

  Unfortunately the knight grabbed Danny by one arm and Wendell by the other and dragged them both inside the castle before the iguana could say more than “Wait—hey—ouch!”

  Danny had always wanted to be in a dungeon.

  Dungeons were cool. They had cells with bars and rattling chains and moldy straw and weird wooden contraptions that probably did something horrible if you could just figure out how the levers worked.

  Being locked in a dungeon was even better. As stories go, “So there I was, locked in the dungeon” was way cooler than “So there I was, touring the dungeon on a school field trip . . .”

  He had to admit, though, being locked in the dungeon was way more exciting in theory than in practice. In theory there had been dark deeds and daring escapes. In practice, he and Wendell and Christiana sat around in the straw—which wasn’t moldy, although it was rather itchy—and played a game. The game was called “What Time Is It Now?” and no one was enjoying it.

  “No way,” said Danny. “It feels like days.”

  “You have no idea . . .” said Christiana, not quite under her breath.

  Danny sighed. “It was nice of you to get locked up with us,” he admitted. “I mean, you didn’t have to kick that knight in the shins like that.”

  “Although if you’d run away before the other knights showed up to grab you, you could have gone for help,” said Wendell.

  “We’re in Austria,” said Christiana, “in the middle of nowhere. Assuming I could even find somebody, they’d probably speak German or Serbian, and my Serbian is a little rusty.” She wiggled her toes in the straw. “Besides, even if I found the police, they’d call my dad, and I’d have to explain why I was a trans-Atlantic flight away, and it would all get very complicated.”

  Wendell opened his mouth and then shut it again. On the one hand, it was nice that Christiana had finally accepted that buses acted weird around Danny. On the other hand, he had been about to point out that they might not even be in the real Austria, but in a weird mythological historical Austria, and that would probably strain Christiana’s credibility a little too much.

  “One of these days, Danny, we’re going to have to figure out how you make buses do that,” said Christiana, as if reading Wendell’s mind.

  “I don’t do anything,” said Danny. “It’s a good bus system.”

  “Anyway,” said Christiana, “I think we’re going to have to figure this one out for ourselves.” She scowled at the bars.

  “They’re knights,” said Danny. “I’m a dragon.”

  The other two looked at him blankly.

  “You’ve never roasted a knight,” said Wendell.

  “Up until today, I’d never even seen one,” Danny admitted. “They’re an endangered species or something. Granddad Turlingsward is always going on about knights, though. I think it’s an old-people thing, like the Great Depression. And rotary phones.”

  He wouldn’t have minded roasting the knight that had dragged him and Wendell into the castle, but he was never very good at breathing fire reliably. And then once they were inside, there had been more knights, all of them very tall and grown-up looking.

  Danny knew that once you started setting fire to grown-ups, you got in trouble so deep they had special words for it, like “delinquent” and “juvenile hall.” Being in a dungeon was nothing compared to what his mom would do if she found out he’d been randomly breathing fire on people.

  “Think Spencer’s in this dungeon too?” asked Wendell.

  Danny looked up, startled.

  “I don’t see any windows for pigeons,” said Christiana, “and I think we’re below the level of the moat. But it couldn’t hurt to check.”

  Danny jumped to his feet and leaned out between the bars.

  His voice echoed from the stone walls, but the echoes were the only response.

  Danny tried again—“Spencer! Yell back if you can hear me! It’s Danny!”

  Nothing.

  “I don’t think he’s down here,” said Wendell.

  “Looks like you got somebody else’s attention, though,” said Christiana as the door to the hall creaked open.

  A knight clanked through the doorway and up to the bars. It was hard to tell if it was the same one who had met them at the door. They all looked alike in their armor.

  He was followed by another, identical knight. They closed the door a
nd peered into the cell.

  “Because you grabbed us and put us in a cell,” said Danny. “Obviously.”

  The knights exchanged looks.

  “The heads of twenty-seven dragons are mounted in the castle library,” said one of them, in conversational tones, “and we would be happy to add a twenty-eighth to the collection. I suggest you answer a bit more respectfully.”

  “Twenty-seven—” Danny’s jaw dropped. “You’ve—twenty-seven—!? Those are my relatives, you jerk!”

  “Calm down!” hissed Christiana. “You’re not gonna help anybody if you’re stuffed and mounted in the library!”

  “We’re here looking for someone,” said Wendell hurriedly. “A little kid named Spencer.”

  The knights exchanged looks again.

  Danny shook off Christiana and lunged for the bars.

  One of the knights took a step back.

  “He’s a feisty one,” said the other knight.

  “Relax, dragon, we haven’t done anything to Spencer. Yet. He’s being treated very well.”

  “Then why don’t you let him go home?” demanded Danny.

  It was hard to tell with the helmet, but Danny thought the knight smiled.

  Danny grabbed both the bars in his hands. That didn’t sound good at all.

  “Fine!” he said, smoke pouring out of his nostrils. “I’m a dragon! Let Spencer go!”

  The knights looked at him thoughtfully for a moment.

  “You’re a bit large,” said one finally.

  “We need a small dragon. The smaller the better, frankly.”

  That didn’t sound good.

  Before Danny could say anything else, though, Christiana shoved him aside.

  If this lack of recognition bothered Christiana, she didn’t give a sign. She drew herself up to her full height (four feet, ten and three-quarter inches) and said “I am Christiana Vanderpool, descended from the House of Wanderpoll. Release us immediately!”