The Noble Mr. Prickles

CHAPTER FIVE

  Traveling undetected through the giants' kingdom was easy. Not only were the people in this place ten times larger than normal, so were many of the plants and animals. To anyone not looking specifically for three humans, a dwarf, and a chimpanzee riding on horses, Javan and his friends would look like rats or other vermin. Their real problems would come when they reached the palace. Besides being so enormous that traversing its hallways could take days, security there was not so lax. If they were seen there, they would be killed without question.

  It took three days of high speed travel before they could even see the palace, looming like a great mountain a mile above their heads, and it took another day for them to reach it. During that time they had encounters with giant squirrels, birds, and a snake that ate Advan's horse, forcing him to ride behind Jack on his black mare. They also discovered that they had a taste for ant, something they never would have found out had they not killed one as big as large rat and its meat out of some morbid curiosity. Advan insisted that when they left the giants' kingdom they take a few giant ants with them.

  They reached King Donovan's palace a week after leaving Dargod. Under cover of night, they snuck in through a crack in the wall and found themselves in a long corridor whose ceiling was so high they couldn't even see it. The bricks used to construct the walls were as big as houses and they discovered that they could travel along the walls in the shadows and not be seen by the many giants moving through the hallways.

  "Now we have to find the throne room," Advan said.

  "That could take days," Javan said. "It took us over a week to get here and it will probably take us another week to get back. Since Kanaro gave us a month, we can't take any longer than two weeks to find the rose and get out of here."

  They were trying to be as quiet as possible. They could not convince Mr. Prickles of that need, though, and he would often start screeching that annoying monkey scream at the most inopportune times. This spelled disaster for the warriors when they stumbled across a gigantic kitchen on their second day in the palace. They decided to stock up on food, knowing that they could take as much as they wanted and it would not be missed. They were filling their bags with gigantic bread crumbs and pieces of cheese when the chimpanzee saw a banana that was ten feet long about a hundred yards away. Nothing could contain his excitement and he was off, screaming excitedly and attracting the attention of three women, big even for giants, who were cooking at a counter that was, to Javan and the others, about a thousand feet away.

  "Is that a rat?" one asked.

  "It doesn't look like one," another said.

  The third came over and picked the monkey up between her forefinger and thumb. Javan and the others hid behind a nearby stick of butter and watched as the gigantic woman held Mr. Prickles up to the light of an open window and examined him.

  "It looks like a monkey," she said, "but it's so small!"

  "It must be from the kingdom of those little human thingies," the first woman said. "Oh how those little critters frighten me. So creepy crawly. They can go into your ears while you sleep and lay eggs in your brains, you know!"

  "Yeah," said the second woman. "My cousin Ida had human brain eggs last winter, she did!"

  "But he's so cute," the woman holding Mr. Prickles said. "I think I'm gonna keep him. He can live in a box in my room."

  "That gross little thing?" said the first. "You don't know where it's been!"

  At that moment, what would have been a little girl, had she not been forty-five feet tall, entered the kitchen. While the human warriors weren't very familiar with giant politics, it looked to them like she was dressed in royal attire. She wore a very extravagant pink dress and a tiara covered with enough jewels and gold to fill Orvan's treasury twice over.

  "Hi, Sissy!" she yelled in a voice so loud that the humans thought that their ears would burst. Sissy was apparently the one holding the chimpanzee for upon this greeting she let out a little yelp and dropped the poor creature back onto the counter. After a moment to get his bearings, Mr. Prickles resumed his trek towards the giant banana.

  "Oh, Princess Tabby," the giantess said, flustered. "Don't sneak up on me that!"

  "I can do whatever I want, Sissy," the little girl replied. She certainly carried herself like one who had very few restrictions on her young life. "What's for dinner?"

  Sissy proceeded to tell Tabby the menu for that evening. With the giants distracted, apparently forgetting all about Mr. Prickles once he had scurried across the counter towards the banana, Lazarah went after the monkey. Hiding behind giant bits of food and utensils she made her way over to him in about thirty seconds.

  "Mr. Prickles!" she yelled, knowing that her loudest scream would sound like a mere whisper to the giants' ears. "Mr. Prickles! Get over here!"

  Mr. Prickles had buried his head deep into the banana and grunted contently as he gorged himself. Lazarah sighed and grabbed onto his leg. She tried to pull him out of the fruit but he kicked at her and dug in deeper. Lazarah was about to try to pull him out again when she was plucked from the countertop by the giant princess's chubby thumb and forefinger. Lazarah screamed and struggled, but she could not free herself from the girl's grip.

  "Oh no!" Jack exclaimed. "She'll be killed!"

  He ran off, sword drawn, to rescue his friend, although he had no idea how he would accomplish this.

  "Wait, lad!" Advan called after him. "You're no match for that child!"

  "Come on, Advan! We have to do something!" Javan said, and the two of them followed the young warrior into what was promising to be the most bizarre battle of their lives.

  The giant cook was still rambling off about venison and baked pies and did not see it when Princess Tabby scooped up the three men and held them struggling in her two gigantic hands. The four warriors were pinned, unable to use their weapons, and the girl smiled a mischievous grin three feet wide.

  Her lack of a response to some question caught Sissy's attention and the woman turned around.

  "Hey now, Princess," she said, "What have you got there?"

  "Nothing," Tabby replied, thrusting the four humans behind her back.

  "Maybe she has that little monkey thing," another giantess said.

  "Tabby," Sissy said, "do you have a little monkey thing?"

  "No, ma'am," Tabby said.

  "Then what's behind your back there, child?"

  Tabby thought for a moment, then said, "Dolls! Four little dolls."

  "Let's see them then," Sissy demanded. "Or I'll call your father!"

  Tabby turned around, shifting her captives to her front. The look on her face showed them that she was not afraid of much, but she was afraid of her father. She held the humans up to her face and whispered to them in a voice louder than their shouts:

  "Act like dolls or I'll feed you to my puppy!"

  They sat as still as they could and held their breaths. When Tabby turned around again and held them out for inspection, all Sissy saw was four realistic looking dolls that to her were only six inches high.

  "All right then," Sissy said. "Now get out of here! If you don't stop distracting us, we won't get dinner done on time. You wouldn't want that, would you?"

  Princess Tabby was a very chubby child and the prospect of a late meal sent her scurrying from the kitchen as if running from a fire, taking the four warriors with her.

  Mr. Prickles was finally full of banana and pulled his head out of the giant fruit. He turned around looking for his companions, but they were nowhere to be found. He moved to the edge of the counter and looked down to where the three horses were still tied to a fallen fork waiting for their masters to return. The rope which they had used to climb the huge counter was still there undisturbed.

  Ever since that man in the forest had touched his head, Mr. Prickles had felt different. Things were clearer to him and he found that he could almost understand his strange hairless companions. He did not know it, but the Mad Forester had made him more intelligent with that magic touch. H
e was not quite human, but he was almost there, much more intelligent than any chimpanzee had a right to be, and he also somehow knew the importance of their mission.

  So he knew now that he must find the humans and make sure they were okay. He climbed down the rope to the waiting horses. He got onto Lazarah's, which was the smallest, untied it, and went out of the kitchen. The other two horses were distracted by a large leaf of lettuce that it would take them a week to consume so they were unconcerned by their owners' absence or the monkey riding their companion away.