“Is anybody home?” Frederic called out. His answer came in the form of a second blip of blue light zooming up to his face—another sprite, male this time.
“You’s Frederic,” he said. “Skinny like candy cane.”
“Yes, that’s me.” Frederic sighed. He climbed down from his horse. “Is Rapunzel about?”
“Zel’s in forest. Too many patients. Busety-busy,” the sprite rattled off. “You wait here.”
“I can do that,” Frederic replied. “But, in the meantime, I suppose . . .” And then he realized that both sprites were gone, having already zipped off among the thickly clustered pines that lined the small valley. He took a deep breath. “Well, I suppose I’ll make myself comfortable.”
Fig. 1
DEEDLE and BLINK
That was when the hobgoblin limped out of the woods. Dripping with what was either sweat or slime, the rust-colored creature shambled toward Frederic. It was only half the prince’s height; but something about its long, pointed ears, bulbous nose, and jagged teeth told Frederic that this was not a creature to be messed with.
He ran into the cottage and slammed the door. But the thing outside began to knock. “My toe,” the hobgoblin moaned. “Hurts. So. Much.”
“Uh, Rapunzel’s not in right now,” Frederic said. “I’d be happy to take down your name and contact information.”
“Help me,” the monster sniffled through the door. “The golden lady says all who come to her cottage will be healed. Please.”
Frederic’s mind turned to thoughts of his favorite fictional hero. He asked himself, What would Sir Bertram do? No matter what kind of challenge he faced—be it an orc using uncouth language or a baroness eating her entrée from a dessert plate—Sir Bertram the Dainty remained calm, levelheaded, and, above all, polite. There was no question as to what the dandy knight would do in this situation.
“Okay,” Frederic said. “Let’s . . . uh, see what we have here.” He opened the door and cautiously stepped outside to see the drippy monster wobbling on one leg. “A hobbling hobgoblin. Heh. Try saying that five times fast. Well, I will hazard a guess that there is something wrong with your foot.”
“Yes,” the hobgoblin said. “Look!” It slapped its damp hands on Frederic’s shoulders and raised its bare foot toward the prince’s face, flaunting the three-inch-long shard of broken, splintery wood stuck in the fat flesh of its big toe.
That’s when Frederic passed out.
3
AN OUTLAW PLAYS DOCTOR
When he opened his eyes, Frederic expected to see the grisly snarl of the hobgoblin. He was pleasantly surprised to be greeted by Rapunzel’s smiling face instead, her big eyes bright and her round cheeks dimpled.
“Thank you for coming,” she said. “But must you make me think you’re dead every time you show up at my house?”
“In my defense,” Frederic said, “I looked fine and healthy when I arrived here this time. You just happened to miss it. Lovely new dress, by the way. The blue brings out your eyes.”
“It’s good to see you, too,” she said, blushing slightly. She pulled her waist-length blond hair back and tied it into a massive ponytail. “But this is actually the same old white dress I’ve always had. I dyed it. Felt like it was time for a change.” She helped him up.
“Is someone playing a tambourine?” Frederic asked as he massaged the sore spot on the back of his head where his skull had hit the ground.
“That’s just Blink and Deedle,” Rapunzel said, nodding toward the two sprites hovering nearby. “They sound like that when they speak their own language. They must not want you to hear what they’re saying about you.”
“Why?” Frederic asked, trying to smooth the wrinkles out of his clothes. “Is it bad? Do you have a mirror?”
Rapunzel chuckled. “Relax, Frederic. I don’t understand a lot of sprite language, but I’m pretty sure they’re not mocking your appearance. I think they’re laughing at you for fainting.”
“Right thing!” Blink shouted gleefully.
Frederic loosened his collar. “How did you know I . . .” And then he noticed the hobgoblin sitting a few feet away on an overturned bucket. The creature waved its now splinter-free foot at him. “Ah, I see,” Frederic said. “He must have filled you in. Well, you see, it was a very large splinter, and—”
“It wasn’t just a splinter,” Rapunzel said. “It was an arrow. Part of one, anyway. Most of it had broken off when this poor fellow was running for help.”
“I was lucky to get away with my life,” the hobgoblin said. “They would have killed me for sure.”
“Who?” Frederic asked.
“Humans—big, ugly ones,” the creature said. “Of course, you all look big and ugly to me. No offense. But I didn’t do a thing to these guys. I was just out herding cats, minding my own business, when they came by and shot at me.”
Frederic turned to Rapunzel and whispered, “Do you think he’s telling the truth?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” she replied. “I’ve heard similar stories from other patients. An awful lot of forest dwellers have been attacked these past few weeks. Too many for me to handle on my own, frankly. Which is why I sent for you. I was hoping you’d be willing to assist me.”
“Assist how?”
“While I’m healing the more grievous injuries with my tears,” she said, “you would be taking care of the patients with, um . . . everyday problems.”
“Like splinters?”
“Yes, well . . .” She let out a short, uncomfortable laugh. “If I’d known you would be alone, I would have instructed the sprites to stay with you. I guess I expected you to bring Ella along.”
“You did?” Frederic slumped a bit. “Oh, yes, Ella . . . well, she and I . . . She and I have sort of gone our separate ways.”
“Oh!” Rapunzel’s eyebrows shot up. “I mean, that’s . . . Um, I’m sorry?”
“Oh, no need for condolences,” Frederic said. “It was mutual. She and I just weren’t right for each other. For example, on our way home from Rauberia, I wanted to stop for the night at an adorable little bed-and-breakfast called Granny Pumpkin’s Cozy Cottage—they offer twenty-four-hour scone service. But Ella insisted on an inn we saw named the Battered Kidney. At least that’s what I think it was called—there was an unconscious man draped over the sign. I didn’t think any place could be worse than the Stumpy Boarhound, but this one was. By the time I’d gotten our horses tied up outside, Ella was already involved in a brawl. I walked in to find her pouncing across the bar with a dagger between her teeth. That was when I started seriously rethinking our relationship.
“Don’t get me wrong—Ella and I will always be the best of friends. As long as she forgives me for letting her get banished from Harmonia, that is. But anyway . . . I was surprised to see that Gustav wasn’t here.”
“Gustav?” Rapunzel asked suspiciously. “Why would Gustav be here?”
“I don’t know,” Frederic blurted. He cleared his throat. “Just because, you know, he lives nearby. If you needed help, I thought maybe you’d ask him first.”
“I need a nurse,” Rapunzel said. “Someone gentle. With a good bedside manner. Does that sound like Gustav?”
Frederic laughed.
“If you stay, I promise it will get easier,” Rapunzel said. “I’ll have Blink and Deedle guide you through everything.”
“No, no, no! Nixety-nix!” cried Deedle, flying between them. “Our job is lookety for new patients; no time for helpety candy cane princes.”
“Where did this candy cane thing come from?” Frederic asked.
“Shushety, Deedle!” Blink squeaked, popping up next to her fellow sprite. “This what Zel needs, this what we do. And if Frederic fall-down-go-boompety again, at least we can finish jobs for him.”
“I really don’t think I went boompety,” Frederic mumbled. He turned to Rapunzel. “Couldn’t you just leave me with a bucket of your tears? It doesn’t sound too difficult if all I need to do is flick a drop
at anyone who shows up.”
“I’m sorry,” she answered, shaking her head. “After we lost track of the vial I gave you in Deeb Rauber’s castle, I don’t feel comfortable doing that again. I would hate for my tears to be misused. And to be honest, I don’t want to waste any. We all assume that my magic will last forever, but what if it doesn’t? What if there’s only so much of it in me? What if there comes a time when tears I cry are just salty water?”
Frederic was silent.
“So will you do it?” Rapunzel asked, her big, hopeful eyes fixed on Frederic’s. “Will you help?”
He took a deep breath. As if I could say no to you. He nodded, and Rapunzel threw her arms around him.
“Morning!”
Lying on his cot in the stable, Frederic opened his eyes just in time to see Rapunzel tossing an apple to him. He tried to catch it, but it bounced off his face and landed in his lap.
“Sorry I can’t fix a better breakfast today,” she said hastily. “I’ve got an emergency to get to in Fluglesborg. The sprites are waiting. See you tonight.”
“Tonight?” he asked, still groggy. But Rapunzel had ridden off on her mare, Pippi. “Okay, then,” Frederic said. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, picked up the apple, and took it outside to wash it (the fruit had touched his pants, after all). On his way to the well, however, he was stopped in his tracks by a streak of blue light.
“New patient!” Deedle cried.
“Already?” Frederic combed his fingers through his sandy-brown hair. “But I must look a fright.”
“Right thing!” Blink chirped. She flew in from the forest with a sad-looking dog-man shuffling behind her.
“Can I change, at least?” Frederic asked. He was wearing one of his lavender silk “sleep suits.” And cashmere slippers.
“Dog-man. Now,” Deedle commanded.
Frederic huffed and turned to the patient. The dog-man nodded his scruffy terrier head toward his rear end and whimpered.
“Brokety tail,” Blink explained.
Frederic grimaced. “That looks painful.” He poked at the fractured tail, and the dog-man let out an ear-piercing howl.
“Wrong thing! Wrong thing!” the sprites shouted.
“I gathered that,” Frederic said. “Apologies, sir. Umm . . .”
“Tail hurts when tail moves,” Blink said helpfully.
“Ooh! We need to make a splint!” Frederic said. “Just like Sir Bertram the Dainty did in The Case of the Overwaxed Dance Floor when his squire, Niles Tibbets-Wick, stubbed his pinkie finger. Blink, Deedle—can you find me a piece of wood and some string?”
Five minutes later, the dog-man was panting happily as he trotted back into the woods with his newly splinted tail. And Frederic was feeling pretty darn proud of himself, which helped get him through the next several hours of treating patients, one right after another.
Later that afternoon, when Frederic had just waved good-bye to a squinting gnome for whom he’d sewn a very fashionable eye patch, Rapunzel returned. She rode out from the nearby trees and hopped down from her horse looking exhausted.
“Yay! Zel’s back!” Blink shouted.
“We can go now!” Deedle chirped. The sprites sped into the woods.
“So, what was the crisis in Fluglesborg?” Frederic asked.
“Another of these seemingly random attacks by armed men,” Rapunzel said. “Whoever they are, they’re marching across Sturmhagen from the east, and they’ll apparently attack anyone who crosses their path.”
“Hmm,” Frederic said, sitting down on a short log bench under the eave of the cottage. “I’d think they were Deeb Rauber’s guys, but the bandit army is more about stealing stuff than assaulting people. Maybe I should send for Liam.”
“Perhaps,” Rapunzel said, sitting down next to him even though there wasn’t much room on the bench. “How did things go here? I hope you weren’t overwhelmed.”
“Overwhelmed? Oh, not at all,” Frederic said, sitting a bit taller. “Piece of cake, actually. I handled the whole task quite masterfully, if I do say so myself.”
“Really?” Rapunzel sounded amused. “You’re still in your pajamas.”
Frederic looked down at himself. “Well, I didn’t say I was underwhelmed. Not overwhelmed, not underwhelmed—just whelmed. I was whelmed.”
Rapunzel shook her head. “Frederic, I hope you realize you can be yourself around me. You don’t have to pretend you’re anything you’re not.”
“Oh, I’m not pretending,” he said earnestly. “I really am this awkward.”
“Good,” she said. “Because you and I, we’re . . . friends. And friends should feel comfortable with each other.”
Fig. 2
FREDERIC, oblivious
“I do feel comfortable. A little too comfortable, perhaps. I’ll go change out of my pj’s.” He started toward the barn when the sprites burst from the trees in a panic.
“Helpety! In the woods!” Blink shouted.
“What is it?” Rapunzel asked, standing up.
“He’s hurt!” Blink said.
“Who is?” Rapunzel asked.
“He said not to get Zel,” Deedle added, glaring at his partner. “Said he’s not hurt bad.”
“But it is bad!” Blink insisted. “Arrows in his back. Leg in a trap. Can’t walkety!”
“Who?” Frederic asked.
“Gustav,” both sprites said in unison.
4
AN OUTLAW FEELS NO PAIN
Prince Gustav had been in worse predicaments. There was, of course, the time he was thrown from a high tower into a thorny bramble (the incident after which Rapunzel famously healed him). And more recently he nearly had the life choked out of him by a ridiculously oversize dungeon keeper (Rapunzel fixed him up after that one, too). So to the long-haired, big-muscled, well-armored Gustav, having a couple of arrows in his shoulder and one leg caught in a steel-jawed bugbear trap felt like something he could deal with on his own. Sure, it hurt worse than the time his brothers had slipped an angry porcupine into his bed, and yes, he was stuck with no way to reach food or water, but he wasn’t really worried. Hey, he was in the wilderness; he figured that eventually some impatient buzzard would assume he was dead already, start sniffing around a little too close, and—boom!—drumsticks! No, this was a situation Gustav felt pretty certain he could handle.
Until Rapunzel showed up.
He groaned the moment he saw her rosy-cheeked face appear from behind a gnarled fir tree, the sprites orbiting her like miniature moons.
“Aw, for crying out loud,” Gustav groused. “I told you little blue traitors not to bring Sister Goldenhair out here.”
“The sprites did the right thing,” Rapunzel said.
“We had to tellety Zel,” Blink argued. “You’re dying!”
“I am not dying!” Gustav snapped. And he immediately winced in pain. “Annoying, know-it-all firefly.”
Rapunzel ran over to him and examined his wounded leg, which was crunched at the ankle between the steel teeth of a hunter’s trap. “Oh, dear. You look awful.”
“I know, I know,” Frederic said, panting, as he staggered up and flopped against a tree to catch his breath. “My face always gets red like this when I run. It’ll go back to normal in a half hour or so. Oh! You weren’t talking to me.”
“Tassels? What the heck are you doing here?” Gustav cried in bewilderment. “And where are your tassels?”
Frederic joined Rapunzel, crouching down by the fallen prince. “Good day to you, too, Gustav,” he said. “Rapunzel, I assume your tears can take care of this?”
“Heal the wounds, sure,” she said. “But free his leg?”
“Pfft!” Gustav scoffed. “What good are those magical tears of yours if you can’t even cry open a bugbear trap?”
Rapunzel glared at him.
“Relax, Blondie,” Gustav said. “You know I’m just kiddin’ ya. Look, find me a nice, strong piece of metal, and I’ll pry the thing open myself.”
She tu
rned to the sprites flitting beside her head. “There’s a crowbar in the stable by the extra horseshoes. Do you two think you could carry it back here?”
Deedle and Blink bolted away in a blue streak.
“Now, let’s see about those arrows,” Rapunzel said.
“What arrows?” Gustav said coolly. He casually reached over his shoulder and yanked the two barbed shafts from his back. “See . . . I’m . . . fine,” he wheezed between clenched teeth, his face twisted into the kind of expression you’d see on a poorly carved jack-o’-lantern.
Frederic teetered, but righted himself. “Me, too! I’m fine. No fainting here.”
Rapunzel shook her head. “I don’t know which of you is worse.”
“Who did this to you, Gustav?” Frederic asked.
“Bounty hunters,” he said. “Tall, homely guy with gnarly teeth, a pointy-eared guy with a bow, a beady-eyed one with giant trained ferrets, couple of others.”
“Did you say ferrets?” Frederic asked. “People train giant ferrets?”
“Never mind that,” Rapunzel said. “Explain the bounty hunters. What could a bounty hunter hope to get by capturing you?”
“Um, untold riches,” Gustav said, looking at them incredulously. “Because I’m one of the most wanted men in the Thirteen Kingdoms.”
“Wanted for what?” The idea was so farfetched, Frederic almost laughed.
Gustav paused. “You two really don’t know?”
Frederic and Rapunzel shook their heads.
“Here,” Gustav said, reaching down into the boot of his free leg and retrieving a rolled-up parchment. “I pulled one of these off the wall of a butcher’s shop in Smorgsjürgen. But they’re everywhere. I figured you would’ve seen ’em by now.”
He handed the paper to Frederic, who unrolled it and started reading.
WANTED
for the CRIME of MURDER:
the SO-CALLED “LEAGUE of PRINCES,”
the members of which are as follows—