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I have no idea what’s going on,” said Harriet. “I mean, usually that doesn’t bother me, but I have even less idea than usual now.”
“So now the weasel-wolves want help?” said Wilbur. “And Red wants help with the weasel-wolves? Does everybody in this whole forest need help? And was that big one the one she was talking about?”
“Those are excellent questions, Wilbur,” said Harriet. “I have no answers for any of them.”
They began walking down the road in what was presumably the direction of Red’s grandmother’s house.
“They could be cleverly drawing me out,” said Harriet. “By writing a note. Then they’ll attack when I ride to the rescue!”
“I’m not saying you’re wrong,” said Wilbur, in the tone of voice he used to indicate that Harriet was almost certainly wrong, “but why wouldn’t they have attacked as soon as you showed up? What are the odds that weasel-wolves are that smart?”
“They wrote a note. That’s pretty smart.”
“Yeah, but their spelling was awful.”
“Just because you can’t spell doesn’t mean you can’t lay a clever trap, Wilbur! Very few diabolical traps are dependent on your ability to spell a word like—err—”
“Qwerk-qwerk-qwerk-qwerk...” began Mumfrey, which was Quail for “ D-I-A-B ...” But then he couldn’t remember if the next letter was a Qwerk or a Qwerk and trailed off into silence.
“I just think that if they were trying to lure you into a trap, they probably wouldn’t have included the stink lines,” said Wilbur.
Harriet grumbled under her breath. The idea that weasel-wolves might need her help was not sitting well with her.
“Well, let’s see what Red wants us to do. Maybe then everything will make sense.”
The shadows lengthened as they went down the road. Occasionally Harriet heard a twig snap or leaves rustle, as if a weasel-wolf was watching them, but when she looked back, no one was there.
It took longer than Harriet expected to reach Red’s grandmother’s cottage. The road snaked back and forth through the woods, and she had the feeling that they were walking a long time without making much progress. It would have been much quicker simply to cut through the woods, but then they’d risk losing the path altogether. They might even wind up at a completely different cottage and confuse the inhabitants as to why there was a princess banging on their door after dark.
People in Harriet’s kingdom had developed a certain paranoia about having a princess show up at the door in the middle of the night. It usually meant that something was invading and no one was going to get a decent night’s sleep.
The sun had just dropped below the trees when the road opened up into a clearing and they came at last to Grandmother’s house.