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Princess Harriet? Princess Harriet?”
Harriet Hamsterbone—princess, warrior, breaker of curses, and recreational cliff-diver—looked up from where she was practicing her sword work on a dummy. “Eh? What?”
She was working in the courtyard of her father’s castle. A small hamster stood in the entryway, wearing a red cloak. The hood was drawn down, but even so, Harriet could see that she was very young.
“Princess Harriet?” The little girl had a high, lisping voice, of the sort that adults thought was adorable and precious and that made other kids immediately suspicious.
Harriet stopped and wiped the sweat from her fur. “Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for…” The girl trailed off. “Err… why are you hitting that dummy with a sword?”
“In case you’re attacked by dummies?” asked the girl.
“Because the dummy’s the only one that will hold still,” said Harriet’s best friend, Wilbur, who was reading a book on the sidelines. He looked up. “When she comes after me with a sword, I scream and run away.”
“Then you must be Princess Harriet,” said the girl with relief. “Thank goodness! You’re supposed to be the best, nicest, kindest, sweetest, most wonderful princess in the whole world!”
“.…h,” said Harriet. She would have accepted “fiercest” or “bravest,” but “kindest” and “sweetest” were definitely stretching things.
“I have a terrible problem!” the little girl said. “They’re after my grandmother!”
Wilbur and Harriet looked at her blankly.
“You have to save her! She’s all I’ve got!”
“Who’s ‘they’?” asked Wilbur.
“Where’s your grandmother?” asked Harriet.
The little girl sighed. “It’s complicated.”
“Start at the beginning,” suggested Wilbur.
“Or start at the point where you need me to hit something with a sword,” said Harriet. Harriet had what her old teachers would call “a straightforward personality with clearly defined goals.”
“We just moved here, but there’s a huge horrible one in the woods! The biggest one I’ve ever seen! And a bunch of others too. They’re lurking around my grandmother’s cottage!”
“They’re lurkers, all right,” said Harriet, narrowing her eyes. “And you say there are a lot?”
“Packs and packs. But there’s a big one in charge! Huge! Awful! Smelly!”
Harriet’s mind filled with visions of a coming invasion. “A horde of weasel-wolves?”
“Err…” said Wilbur. “Are you sure maybe you and your grandmother shouldn’t move out of the cottage? If there are so many?”
“Grandmother can’t leave the cottage,” said the little girl primly. “She’s not well. I take care of her.”
“So you walked here all by yourself?” said Wilbur, astonished. “Past all the weasel-wolves?”
“Yes?” said the little girl.
“You’re awfully young to be alone in the woods,” said Wilbur, which was true, but not the sort of thing that it would occur to Harriet to say.
“They’re only really dangerous at night,” said the girl. “I need to get back before it’s dark, though. In fact, I should leave now.”
“We’ll go with you,” said Harriet. “Give me five minutes to clean up and get my good sword.”
The little girl in red tapped her foot impatiently the whole time. Harriet and Wilbur saddled up their riding quail and followed her down the road.
“Qwerk!” said Mumfrey, Harriet’s riding quail, who didn’t like weasel-wolves at all.
“Qwerr-rr-rrk,” said Hyacinth, Wilbur’s riding quail, who liked weasel-wolves even less than Mumfrey did.
“Oh, what beautiful quail!” said the little girl, flinging her arms around Hyacinth’s neck. “Aren’t they just the bestest, most wonderful quail in the whole world?”
“Qwerk?” said Hyacinth, which was Quail for “Err, I guess?”
Mumfrey looked suspiciously at the little girl. “Qwerk,” he said, not quite under his breath.
“Problem?” said Harriet.
“.…werk…” said Mumfrey, which was Quail for “No… I guess that’s something a normal person would say… maybe…”
Harriet followed his gaze to the little girl. She came up to the middle of Harriet’s chest and her cloak was blazing scarlet, the color of poppies. It wasn’t the sort of thing you’d wear in the woods if you were trying to be sneaky. People could probably see that cloak from the next kingdom.
Still, she needed help. Harriet was the princess, so it was her job to take care of the people in her kingdom, and that meant finding out why the weasel-wolves were harassing innocent grandmothers in the woods.
They passed the tiny village of Lonesquash and looked down the road toward the forest. The countryside was tranquil, with broad farm fields and narrow bands of shaded woodland. Grain waved gently in the fields, almost up to the edge of the woods. It did not look like the sort of place where you expected to find a gathering army of weasel-wolves.
Still, Harriet knew that danger could lurk in the most unexpected places. You always had to be on your guard.
“So you live out here?” asked Wilbur.
“Oh, no,” said Red. “I wish we did. It’s so pretty and nice! But we live in the woods. Which are also pretty and nice, I guess. If you like trees.” She looked briefly doubtful. “Which I do.”
“Trees are nice,” offered Wilbur.
“Yes! And these are the bestest, nicest, most wonderful trees in the whole wide world!”
“And you live there with your grandmother?”
“Yes! She’s the bestest, nicest, kindest grandmother—”
“In the whole wide world?” finished Harriet.
“Yes! How did you know?”
“Lucky guess,” said Harriet. She spurred Mumfrey and they trotted down the road and into the forest.