Hamster Princess--Giant Trouble Read online

  Harriet lunged forward instinctively, reaching for her sword. She had to save Mumfrey!

  Strings sidestepped, pulled the chain holding her taut, and tripped Harriet with it. The hamster landed flat on her face.

  “Not now!” hissed Strings in her ear. “You’ll get yourself eaten!”

  Harriet gritted her teeth, but she knew Strings was right. She didn’t dare attack the giant right now. Not while he had Mumfrey actually in his hand and could squish her poor battle quail in an instant!

  She crawled backward, into the nest of towels, seething.

  “Well,” said the giant, who had been too busy studying Mumfrey to notice what was happening on the shelf behind him. “Well, well. It’s a quail. What are you doing here, little bird?”

  He finally turned and looked at Strings. “And why didn’t you mention it?”

  “Thought it had left,” said Strings nonchalantly. “The hamster came in with it. Left with it too. It must have come back to see the goose.”

  “And you didn’t hear it come in?” asked the giant suspiciously.

  “I take naps sometimes, you know,” said the harpster. “It’s pretty boring here. I mean, would it kill you to bring some reading material back sometime? A couple of books, or a magazine?”

  The giant turned back to Mumfrey. “Well, good luck for me, anyway. I’ll have a quail omelet tonight!”

  Harriet dug her fingernails into the wooden shelf hard enough to get splinters. If he tried to eat Mumfrey, she was going to run out there and stab him in the ankle, giant or no giant!

  Strings gulped and looked over her shoulder at Harriet’s hiding place. Harriet saw an expression of panic pass over the harpster’s face.

  Then she squared her shoulders (the strings went jingle-jangle as she did so) and turned back.

  The giant paused, with Mumfrey still in his fist. “What?”

  “They’re birds,” she said. “They lay eggs.”

  Mumfrey looked faintly insulted. While some male birds did occasionally get confused and lay eggs, nobody in his family had ever done anything so crass.

  Fortunately for him, it’s very difficult to tell male and female quail apart, unless you’re a quail yourself.

  “I’m just saying,” said Strings, “that you can eat the quail tonight, or you can have quail eggs in your omelets for days to come. You’ve got to be bored with goose eggs by now.”

  The giant visibly wavered. “Won’t they be tiny?”

  “I hear they’re a delicacy in some places.” (This is actually true. Mumfrey had made it clear to Harriet that he did not want to visit those places. He didn’t mind people eating eggs, but there’s something weird about seeing them eat eggs from your own species.)

  “No sense eating the quail that lays the . . . err . . . tasty eggs,” said Strings, examining her nails.

  “You’re pretty smart for a harp,” said the giant slowly. “That’s a good idea. And if I don’t like the eggs, I can always eat the quail later!”

  “Qwerk!” said Mumfrey, trying hard to look like a quail who would lay absolutely delicious eggs.

  The giant opened a cupboard and pulled out a wooden cage. It looked small in the enormous rabbit’s hand. He popped the top open and dropped Mumfrey inside.

  Then he set the cage on the mantel of the fireplace, twenty feet off the ground.

  Harriet narrowed her eyes. How was she going to get Mumfrey down now?

  The giant picked up the spontaneously laid egg, then crouched down in front of the fireplace and cracked the goose eggs into the frying pan. He pulled a sack out of the cupboard and dumped it over the eggs. For a minute Harriet thought it was spices, and then she realized that the giant was dumping an entire sack of potatoes into the pan.

  The scale is starting to get to me, she thought. When I go back down the beanstalk, everything is going to look tiny. Like a dollhouse. (Harriet had owned a dollhouse when she was young, because her mother thought that dollhouses were the sort of thing a princess should own. This lasted until she discovered Harriet using her dolls to play Invading Army, where the heroic defenders of the dollhouse stood off a siege by the attackers, and occasionally threw the attackers off the roof. Her mother had been horrified and the dollhouse had been banished to the attic.)

  She itched to do something, but all she could do was settle in to wait until the giant finished his dinner and finally went to bed.

  CHAPTER 10

  Fortunately it didn’t take long. The giant finished his meal, belched loudly, and then dumped grain for the goose into a food dish labeled GOOSEY.

  “Does he feed you?” Harriet whispered.

  “I’m an enchanted harp,” said Strings. “I don’t have a digestive system. I live on the joyous spirit of music or something like that. The wizard had a sentimental streak.”

  “Eh?” said the giant, turning his head.

  “Nothing,” said Strings.

  The giant grunted. Harriet was starting to think that his hearing wasn’t very good, despite those gigantic ears.

  The giant glanced up at Mumfrey, then plopped a potato into his cage. Mumfrey gazed at it sadly.

  “Qwweeerrr-eerk . . .” he said, which is Quail for “I have the quailhouse blues and I don’t even have a harmonica.” (The quailhouse blues are like the jailhouse blues, only for birds.)

  “Eat up, birdy!” said the giant. “I’m gonna want eggs!”

  He banked the fire and turned down the lamp, yawning. “All right, Harp. Play me one of those lullabies. You know the kind I like.”

  Strings rolled her eyes but didn’t say anything. She reached her arms back and began to run her fingers over the strings of her harp half.

  The sound that emerged was slow and liquid. It flowed through the room like water, and seemed to say Sleep . . . Sleep . . .

  Even Harriet found herself yawning.

  Sleep . . . Sleep . . .

  “Of course, that won’t work on me,” Harriet said to herself. “I’m a seasoned warrior . . . zz . . . zzzz . . .”

  She was astonished when, a few minutes later, Strings was shaking her awake.

  “Whoa,” Harriet said. “What happened?”

  “It’s a pretty serious lullaby,” said the harpster. “Has to be, to put out a giant. He’s gone to bed.”

  “Right.” Harriet sat up, covering her mouth with her hand, and yawned again. “Right. Okay.”

  “Give him an hour,” warned Strings. “He wakes up easily at first. Wait until he’s snoring.”

  Harriet nodded.

  She took the time to sit down and compose a letter home to her parents. She had no idea how she would mail it, but she always tried to write home before a pitched battle, just so that her mom wouldn’t worry.

  Dear Mom & Dad,

  I am sorry that I will not be home for dinner. There was an inconvenient beanstalk. It is not too large, only a mile or so high. Also, there is a giant. He is much smaller than the beanstalk, but wicked. The beanstalk is not wicked, so far as I know. I am not sure how beanstalks would be wicked. Dad would not like it, though. I know how he feels about very large plants, after the thorn hedge incident. I may have to fight the giant.

  I have made a friend named Strings who is a harpster . . .

  She finished the letter and read it over. Then she tried to read it again, as if she were Wilbur. After a minute, she added:

  Don’t worry. I will be fine and probably won’t get squashed. Love, Harriet.

  That didn’t seem to be quite enough.

  She wrote:

  P.S. I have fought giants before, so I am sure it will be okay.

  She put the letter away, frowning. She hoped that it was true. The giant was extremely large, and Harriet hadn’t actually fought a giant since she had stopped being invincible. Being invincible wasn’t everything, but it counted for a lot
when you were up against a foe that big.

  The more she thought about it, the more she hoped that she could get everyone out without fighting the giant. Brave warriors were all very good, but smart warriors lived a lot longer and got to show their medals to their grandkids.

  A noise echoed through the castle. It sounded like a cross between a lonely whale and an erupting volcano.

  Harriet blinked.

  “I know, right?” said Strings.

  Harriet shook her head, amazed. She’d heard some pretty brutal snoring in her life, but that was something else entirely.

  “Well, then.” She rubbed her hands together. “Let’s get us all out of here.”

  CHAPTER 11

  This was easier said than done. Harriet walked the length of the shelf, studying the room. The bedroom door was ajar, and she could hear the giant snoring. Even the goose, curled up by the fire, was honking quietly in her sleep.

  Mumfrey, in the cage on the mantel, looked at Harriet sadly. He was still awake.

  “Qwerk,” he sighed.

  Harriet waved to him and surveyed the rest of the room. Finally she turned back to Strings.

  “Can you jump?”

  Strings pushed off with her toes and managed a two-inch hop.

  “Err. How high can you jump?”

  “You’re looking at it,” said Strings. “These legs are mostly decorative carvings.”

  “Right,” said Harriet. “New plan. Can you climb a rope?”

  “No problem,” said Strings. “You try playing the harp backward your whole life, you’ll get biceps like you wouldn’t believe.”

  She’d actually seen something that could be used as a rope earlier. The hard part was going to be getting to it.

  “What happens once we get down?” asked Strings. She folded her arms. “Because if you’re expecting me to make a run for the door, you’d better have an hour or so free.”

  “Do you think you can ride Mumfrey?”

  Strings tapped her fingernail against her front teeth. “Hmmm. It’d be awkward, but yes, I think so. If we run a rope through here”—she waved toward the opening with the strings in her harp half—“and tie me into the saddle . . . yeah.”

  “Might be pretty uncomfortable,” warned Harriet. Being tied to the saddle of a galloping quail wasn’t high on anyone’s list of a great time.

  “Oh, I’ll be terribly out of tune by the end, I’m sure.” Strings shrugged.

  “Probably not,” said Harriet. “All right.” She looked across the room to where Mumfrey sat sadly in his cage.

  “How do you plan to get him down?” asked Strings.

  “I haven’t got the foggiest idea,” said Harriet. “But don’t worry. I’ll think of something. I always do.”

  Fortunately, the giant hadn’t pushed his chair in when he got up from the table. Harriet wasn’t sure how she would have moved it back into position. It had to weigh at least a thousand pounds. But it was in more or less the same place, only a little bit farther away from the shelf.

  She leaped from the shelf to the chair and swung down. In the cage overhead, Mumfrey qwerked worriedly at her.

  Harriet didn’t dare shout up to him, but she waved reassuringly. He looked more dejected than she’d ever seen him.

  “I’ll get you out, buddy, I promise,” she muttered. “You and Strings—and the goose too!”

  It wasn’t as easy getting down from the chair without a quail to help. Harriet had to dig her fingers into the rough wood of the chair leg. She had acquired a truly heroic set of splinters by the time she reached the bottom.

  “Ow,” she mumbled, pulling one out with her teeth. “’At ’urts!”

  She crossed the wooden floor to the back wall. The giant had left the door just slightly ajar—but slightly ajar for a giant was still enormous. Harriet stepped through without even having to turn sideways.

  The giant’s bedroom was dark except for the red glow of the fire behind her. Harriet paused to let her eyes adjust.

  The enormous rabbit was covered by acres of quilts. His mouth hung open and the snores poured out of it.

  Harriet looked around. An idea had been poking at the back of her mind ever since she’d seen the giant stomping through the room.

  “Now where are his shoes . . . ?”

  She scanned the floor, increasingly puzzled. There was the bed, which sat directly on the floor with no space under it. There was a big chest that practically screamed “Treasure Goes Here!” which was of no particular interest to Harriet. You started digging around in treasure chests and you always got caught. It was practically the law.

  Besides, her father already owned a kingdom. There was no point in getting greedy.

  Other than the chest, there was nothing. The giant didn’t even have a nightstand with a glass of water.

  “His shoes have to be somewhere . . .” muttered Harriet to herself.

  She inched farther into the room.

  The giant let out another snore and rolled over. Harriet flattened herself against the wall.

  And then she saw it.

  When the Giant Lop rolled over, he stuck one of his feet out from under the covers. (Harriet also liked to sleep with one foot out from under the covers herself, so she quite understood this.)

  The giant was wearing his shoes in bed.

  Harriet gazed up at the enormous foot, in the equally enormous shoe. Holding it together, the ends trailing untidily, was a shoelace.

  The shoelace was as long and thick as any rope that Harriet had ever seen. She just had to get it out of the shoe.

  Which would have been a lot easier if he didn’t sleep with his shoes on, she thought grimly.

  She rubbed her hands together. In the room behind her, between the snores, she heard Mumfrey quietly crooning the quailhouse blues.

  (“. . . qwerka-qwerk-werk-werka-qwerk . . .”)

  “Right,” she said to herself. “Let’s do this thing.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Getting up on the bed was relatively easy. The blankets fell over the edge to the floor, and Harriet could literally walk right up them. She went to the foot of the bed, and started her hike.

  The valiant Princess Harriet ascends Mount Giant! she thought. The valiant Princess Harriet is a third of the way up!

  The giant snored.

  Now halfway . . . now three-fifths . . .

  (“. . . qwerka-werk, qwerka-werrrrrrk . . .”)

  The valiant Princess Harriet is only an eighth of the way from the summit!

  The giant went “SNRRRGHHHKK!” and turned his head on the pillow. Harriet had to clutch at the blankets as the whole bed shook.

  Her weight was negligible compared to the enormous blankets, but she still pulled a fold more tightly over the giant’s ankle.

  “Mnnghhk,” he mumbled, and flexed his foot.

  Harriet saw the sole of the shoe coming toward her like a wall. She flung herself flat, digging into the blankets, as the giant’s foot passed over her head with barely an inch to spare.

  She rolled over on her back and grabbed for the shoe before it could come back the other way and possibly squish her. The shoelaces were enormous and crisscrossed like a rope ladder. Harriet jammed her arm in between the laces and hauled herself up.

  It took several minutes for the giant to settle, during which time Harriet grimly rode the foot back and forth.

  Every time he flexed his toes, her teeth rattled in her head.

  (Hamsters, like many rodents, have teeth that grow their entire lives, so Harriet wasn’t all that worried about breaking one. It would grow back, it just would have been annoying. And if one tooth broke, the other one often grew in lopsided, and she’d be spending hours with a steel file trying to get it evened out.)

  Eventually, the giant let out a truly epic snore and his foot relaxed. Ha
rriet climbed to the top of the foot.

  The valiant Princess Harriet reaches the top of Mount Giant!

  The shoelaces were a knotted mess, and they stank. They smelled like feet and like shoes that somebody has been wearing for years without any socks. It was nasty.

  The laces had absorbed all that funk. Some of the knots were as big as she was. Possibly the giant didn’t take his shoes off to sleep because he couldn’t get them untied.

  Harriet sighed.

  If she’d had her sword, she could have sawed through the laces, but it was in Mumfrey’s pack.

  That only left one option.

  “If there was a rope anywhere else in this castle . . . !” she muttered to herself.

  She took a deep breath, which was a mistake, because then she got a lungful of foot smell. She stifled a cough, let it out, and took a very shallow breath.

  Then she scrunched up her face, set her chisel-like hamster teeth against the shoelace, and began to gnaw.

  CHAPTER 13

  It tasted awful.

  The shoelaces parted easily under her teeth, but she had to keep stopping because the taste was so unspeakably nasty.

  It was like . . . like . . . well, Harriet didn’t know how to describe what it was like. It seemed like you’d need epic poetry to do justice to a taste like this. Her parents had hired a tutor to teach her poetry, that being one of the princessly arts, but he had wanted her to recite poems about clouds and flowers, and Harriet was more interested in poems about mighty adventures and glorious final charges into battle.

  “I sing of the hero Harriet, quail-rider, fighter of foot funk . . . No, just doesn’t have the same ring to it. . . .”

  She sighed and went back to chewing on the shoelace.

  Eventually—after Harriet had to stop several times to gag quietly into her elbow—the shoelace parted. The enormous knot at the top tumbled off the shoe and fell to the floor. It landed with a thump.