The Noble Mr. Prickles

CHAPTER TEN

  Advan had kept his head outside of the child's pocket while she was escorted to the throne room by the same servant who had woken her up that morning. When they arrived at the door to the throne room he not only knew the route, he had figured that it would be about a day's journey on foot, half a day, if they could somehow retrieve their horses.

  "Quick, duck down!" Tabby whispered to him as the large wooden double doors swung open. He slipped down into her pocket as she entered the throne room to a booming fanfare.

  Advan stayed hidden until the girl stopped moving. He poked his head out and saw a room so massive it was almost overwhelming. It must have been a mile wide and two miles long, so huge that he could barely make out the far walls. The floor was made of shiny black tiles each that were at least a hundred square feet and the ruts between them looked at least a foot deep. The girl was sitting in a child sized throne next to what must have been King Donovan's own seat, a chair with more gold and jewels on it than Advan had ever seen, even when visiting the great dwarf mines as a child. How he would ever be able to find one orange rose in this chamber was beyond him. It could take a year or two to explore the king's throne room, and they did not have that kind of time.

  A fanfare sounded again. There was a group of musicians by one wall each with trumpets a hundred feet long. They were announcing the arrival of Donovan, a humungous creature dressed in flowing scarlet robes and a crown larger than Advan's own home. The giant king moved to his own throne and sat beside his daughter. Advan ducked back into her pocket so he would not be seen.

  Donovan greeted his daughter, then the others in the throne room, and then the fanfare sounded again, announcing the arrival of the delegation of Southern Giants. Names were announced, titles given, and formal greetings exchanged, none of which interested the dwarf. But then, as she had been instructed to do, Tabby got off of her throne and bowed to the visitors. He poked his head out as she did this, trying not to fall from her pocket, and as she went back to her seat he caught site of a tiny speck of orange under her throne.

  He could not be sure, but it might have been the rose. In all of their discussion of this quest, the warriors had never stopped to question whether the rose was giant-sized or human-sized, but if that speck of color was their target, then it was an ordinary human rose. Advan wondered how a normal sized flower wound up growing in the middle of the Kingdom of the Northern Giants, but that was not his concern. His concern was getting to the flower and retrieving one of its petals so they could cure King Orvan of his insanity.

  Tabby sat down and he lost sight of the flower, but he knew now where it was and if they could get back to the throne room, he could guide the others to it. The giants spent the next hour in rather boring political discussion, none of which concerned Advan in the least, and finally, Tabby was dismissed from the throne room.

  She went back out to the hallway and practically ran back to her bedroom. Advan poked his head out in order to make sure he remembered the route. Just before getting to the princess's room, he saw the oddest thing. Sitting outside the bedroom door, half hidden in the shadows, was Mr. Prickles. He was sitting astride Lazarah's horse and the other two horses were standing nearby. The monkey waved up at him. Tabby did not see the animals and went straight into her room. She put Advan back on the table and lay on her bed sighing.

  "That was so boring!" she moaned. "When I'm queen I'm going to do away with all those boring meetings!"

  Advan went into the doll house and told the waiting humans all that he had seen, including the rose and the monkey on the horses. They, in turn, told him about their idea of moving the pillow to the table so they could jump down onto it.

  "But we haven't figured out how to move the thing yet," Jack said. "It must weigh a ton."

  "And that dog will most likely be sleeping on it," Lazarah said. "And it would like nothing more than to get its paws on one of us."

  They would have continued to discuss this, but Tabby decided that the best thing to alleviate her boredom was to play with her living dolls. They spent the next few hours play acting glorious battles and ballroom dances. None of them noticed when Mr. Prickles and the three horses came back into the room and snuck underneath the bed. Not even the puppy saw them.