“Hmm. That appears to leave us with two options,” Deeb said. “We wait until dusk and attack the monster when it shows up or we find the thing’s daytime lair and kill it while it sleeps.”
“First one!” the girl shouted gleefully. “Attack the monster! Attack the monster!”
Deeb jumped back. “Whoa, there, Hoodsy. While I appreciate your enthusiasm for violence, I’m gonna tell you why I think option number two is the better choice.”
“Because it’s the safer one?” the girl asked flatly.
That was the reason, but Deeb wasn’t about to admit that. “Because it’s the more devious and wicked way to do it,” he said in a sinister tone. He squinted at the townsfolk. “Let it be known that the Bandit King is not above coming after you while you’re asleep.”
Hood nodded. “Nice.”
“Any questions before we begin?” Deeb asked.
“Yeah,” said the girl. “Who’s Bozworth?”
The Bandit King was befuddled. “The pasty bald guy,” Deeb said, pointing. “The one who brought me here.”
Hood snickered. “That’s Roger Thistlewit,” she said.
“Thistlewit?” Deeb eyed the man, who nodded sheepishly. “Then why have I been calling you ‘Bozworth’?”
“I’ve been wondering that for three days,” he said. “But I was afraid to correct you.”
Deeb shrugged. “That was a good call on your part. I probably would have poured the fire ants down your shirt. Come on, Hoodsy, let’s go.”
“Let’s,” Hood said with a smile. “Can I try on your crown?”
He tossed the jewel-encrusted headpiece to her. “Keep it,” he said. “I’ve got twelve.”
The girl pulled down her hood to reveal a head of lush black curls, upon which she placed the glittering crown. Her eyes seemed to glitter as well. And her teeth. And, somehow, her earlobes. Deeb felt suddenly overheated in his velvet suit. He snatched the crown back off her head.
“You were better with the hood up,” he blurted.
Hood led the Bandit King to various spots up and down the street, pointing out paw prints in bare dirt yards and claw marks on unpainted wooden doors. The rest of the Fizzledorfers followed in a tight clump, listening as the two would-be detectives discussed the clues.
“So, you ever seen this monster yourself?” Deeb asked as Hood ran around on all fours, growling, to demonstrate how the beast had ruined one family’s grassless lawn.
“No,” the girl said. “But my granny has. And she told me to run like the willikers if I ever even catch a glimpse of the thing. But Granny’s old. She’s sick all the time. She uses words like ‘willikers.’ Of course she’d say to run away. But running away’s not really my thing.”
“You don’t seem like you fit in around here much,” Deeb said. “How’d you end up—”
“Ooh! I know where to take you!” Hood bounced on her toes. “The pigs!”
“Yes!” Deeb said. “Take me to the three pigs. They survived a close encounter with this monster; they should be able to tell me something about it.”
Hood grabbed Deeb by the hand—which sent his cheeks into a rapid flush—and half dragged him down to the end of the road, where there lay two large piles of debris and one simple, stonework house. Hood banged on the door.
“Who is it?” a small voice asked from inside.
“The Bandit King,” Deeb said.
“Ack!” the voice screamed.
“He’s with me,” said Hood. “Open up.”
“You’re not much better, Red,” said a second voice. Deeb raised an eyebrow at this. “Can’t you please just go away? Haven’t we suffered enough?”
“We’re here to stop the monster,” Hood said. “Open the door now, or I will drop another stink bomb down your chimney.”
“Another?” Deeb asked with admiration as they heard several bolts slide back, and the door opened a crack. Hood pushed it open all the way, and they marched in.
The first thing Deeb noticed upon entering the home of the three pigs was the stench—it smelled worse than an ogre’s outhouse. It was also covered with dirty clothes and food scraps that littered every surface. And there were no actual pigs.
“Aw, man,” the Bandit King griped. “You’re just people? Filthy, grime-covered people? There’s no talking pigs here?” But his scowl quickly morphed into a grin. “Heh-heh. Actually, that’s pretty funny.”
“Thank you,” said Hood. She leaned over and whispered into his ear, “The bards may have had a little help coming up with that idea.”
Deeb snorted.
“It’s a very insulting song,” said the youngest of the “pigs,” a man in greasy overalls, who had a huge dollop of dried oatmeal caked between his eyebrows.
“Way I see it, you guys coulda been called a lot worse,” Deeb said. “Have you looked in a mirror lately?”
“We would,” said the middle sibling, a tangle-haired sister with crusty nostrils. “But it’s hard to see yourself through all the pancake batter spattered on there.”
“Okay, we’ve established that you people are disgusting,” Deeb said, grabbing a chair. “Now let’s get down to business. I’ve got a monster to— Holy muttonshanks! What did I just sit in? Eh, I think I’m gonna stand. So, where were we? Oh, yeah. Tell me about the monster.”
“Well, it had great big eyes,” said the youngest sibling. “And great big ears. And a great big snout. And—”
“A wolf. It looked like a wolf,” the sister said. “Wolves are about seven feet tall and walk on two legs, right?”
“How did you all manage to survive?” Deeb asked.
“That would be thanks to me,” said the oldest sibling.
“I’m Solly; I’m the smart one.” He tapped his head to show everyone that he knew where his brain was, and several old peas fell out of his hair. “My brother, Rufus, went and got himself attacked first, and my sister, Petunia, got it second. But I was smart enough to get attacked third. By the time the wolf-monster got to me, the sun was coming up, and it ran away. I didn’t have to do nothing. That’s smart.” He sat back and crossed his arms, a satisfied smile on his filthy face.
“So basically, you were saved by the sunrise,” Hood said. The younger siblings nodded.
“Hey, this is my investigation,” Deeb snipped. “I’ll ask the questions.”
“Sorry, Your Majesty,” Hood drawled.
Deeb smiled proudly. “It’s about time someone started addressing me by my proper title.”
Hood slapped her forehead. “Aw, man. I forgot you were actually king of something. I was trying to be sarcastic.”
Deeb shot her a dirty look before returning his attention to the eyewitnesses. “Which way did Old Big Bad go when he ran off?”
“Back that way, into the woods,” said Petunia, pointing to the rear of the cottage. “But when it left, it wasn’t very—”
Hood gasped. “Granny lives back there!”
“In the woods?” Deeb asked. “By herself?”
Hood nodded. “Believe me, she’d be even farther from this village if she could. She’s always hated it here. It’s so boring.”
“Tell me about it,” Deeb said. “These three slobs are the most interesting things in town. And just being in the same room with ’em makes me wanna barf.”
“We can hear you, you know,” said the younger brother.
“Look, if the beast’s lair is anywhere near Granny’s house, I’ve gotta go warn her,” Hood said. “She’s old and sickly. In fact, I was supposed to bring her a basket of muffins just this morning. But then that weaselly-eyed kid from the hill started looking at me, and I had to chuck the muffins at his big, dumb forehead. Well, I suppose I didn’t have to, but I did, and now— What was I saying? Oh, yeah—Granny! Sorry, Woodsy, I gotta go.”
“Wait,” Deeb cried as she darted out the door. “What about our investigation?”
“There will be no more investigation!” shouted a red-faced man who plowed through the crowd of onlookers t
o block the Bandit King’s path. The newcomer’s ruffled collar and tall hat made him look like a circus clown compared to the other residents of Fizzledorf. “How many times have I warned you all? How many times have I decreed that the monster is off-limits?”
“Thirty-seven,” said the pig sister.
“Well, consider this your thirty-eighth and final warning,” the man growled, his temples throbbing. “In the name of safety, no Fizzledorfer may attempt to hunt the monster, track the monster, or otherwise seek out any information about the monster.”
“Gee, that’s not weird or suspicious at all,” Deeb snarked. “But whatever, High-Hat. I’m the one conducting this investigation, and I’m not a Fizzledoofus. For your information, I happen to be—”
“Where did this gaudily dressed moppet come from?” the angry man snapped, looking straight over the Bandit King’s head. “One of you must have brought him here. Who?”
“Okay, first off, I have no idea what a moppet is,” Deeb said. “But if it means ‘kid,’ I’ve got a bag of fire ants I need to crack open. And secondly, it was Bozworth.”
“Who?” the man asked.
“He’s here because of me, Vulpin,” Hood said, stepping forward. “This town is never gonna be free of the monster if we keep waiting for you to handle it. So I sent for help.”
The man gave her a steely-eyed stare. “You will address me as Mayor Vulpin, young lady. Do not forget your place just because of our familial relationship.”
“Our familial relationship doesn’t exist,” Hood shot back. “Not yet, anyway.” She turned to Deeb. “The mayor here has been courting my granny. I don’t know what she sees in him.”
“So, you think just ’cause you run this dump, you can tell me what to do, eh?” Deeb said, shooting his own steely-eyed gaze back at Vulpin. “Well, I happen to be the one and only Bandit King. And while I may not be up on my social studies lessons—because school is for losers—I’m pretty sure a king outranks a mayor.”
“The Bandit King? Oh, really?” Vulpin’s lips curled downward in contempt. “While I don’t believe for a second that you really are the notorious Deeb Rauber, I’ll play along and pretend you are. In which case, there are approximately eight hundred outstanding warrants for your arrest. Constables, place the ‘Bandit King’ in one of our jail cells. And hurry, it’s nearing sundown.”
Deeb laughed. “Oh, right. Like you’re going to— Hey, stop! What are you losers doing? Put me down!” But there was not much that one thirteen-year-old—even a notoriously wicked one—could do to prevent eight officers in drab gray uniforms from picking him up and hauling him down the road.
“And now for you, young lady,” he heard Vulpin say. “Where are you? Red! Where did you go? Someone find that girl! No, never mind! Everybody into your homes! The sun has started to set. I’ll take care of that brat myself.”
As Deeb was carried into a dull, stone jail—and locked into a dull, stone cell—he found himself facing an unusual dilemma. He was pretty sure the girl in the hood was going to get him out of this predicament somehow. And he wasn’t sure how he felt about that.
The next hour was excruciating for Deeb. He paced his small cell, waiting for a rescue he was sure to come—and which he planned to complain about thoroughly when it happened, insisting that he, the dreaded Bandit King, didn’t need anybody’s help, especially that of a snot-nosed girl in a hood who was too big for her own—
Crash! Bang! Thump!
“Ooh! She’s here!” Deeb jammed his head between the bars and peered down the hall to where the guards had been stationed. He bit his lower lip in anticipation as he watched a head full of black curls appear from around the corner. But then he grimaced, because those curls had gooey strands of melted cheese tangled among them.
“You?” He spit the word from his mouth like a bite of moldy beef. “What are you doing here? Where’s the Hood?”
“She sent me to break you out,” said Petunia, the sister from the pig family, as she unlocked Deeb’s cell with the key she’d just stolen from the guards.
“But why?”
“She said if I did this for her, she’d stop throwing stink bombs down our chimney.”
“Heh. That probably just means she’ll start throwing ’em in through the window instead.” Deeb snickered. “But why didn’t she come herself?”
“She had to get to her grandmother before the werewolf did,” mumbled Petunia, who grew gloomy upon realizing that Deeb was probably right about the stink bombs.
“Wait—werewolf?”
“Um, yeah, that’s what she figures the monster is,” Petunia said. “I told her what I tried to tell you both earlier—that when the monster ran away from our house last month, I saw it get smaller and less hairy as it went. By the time it reached the end of the road, it was basically person-shaped. So Red thinks it’s a werewolf.”
“She’s right!” In his excitement, Deeb grabbed Petunia’s arm—but quickly let go for fear of contracting cooties. “And I know who the werewolf is, too. It’s that grump-factory mayor of yours. That totally explains why he was all, ‘Nobody look for the monster!’ And why he was in such a rush to get out of there before sunset. ’Cause he was about to turn all fuzzy carnivore on us. And—Hoodsy’s in trouble! The mayor will eat her the way he probably already ate her grandma. I’ve got to get to her!”
“Okay, good luck,” Petunia said as Deeb dashed from the jail. Then she curled up for a nap inside his vacant cell, because it seemed like a much nicer place to stay than her brother’s house.
Deeb Rauber ran as fast as his short legs could carry him, down the forest path that extended deep into the woods beyond the wrecked homes of the three pigs. He tripped a number of times, over rocks and roots invisible in the dark. His knees were scraped, his elegant suit scuffed, but none of it slowed him down. In fact, the only thing that did make him pause was the sudden realization that he was on his way to help someone. To rescue someone in trouble. To save a life.
Deeb hit the brakes.
What am I doing? he thought. I’m the Bandit King, the most dreaded criminal in the Thirteen Kingdoms. I don’t end troubles, I cause them. Why would I risk my own safety for some girl I barely know? When no one will even be around to see it?
He stood among the moonlit trees and ran his fingers through his uncombed hair. I should focus on staying alive until dawn and then take care of Mayor Monster Face when he’s back in grouchy human form. That way I get the glory and none of the potential teeth marks. He nodded to himself. That’s what I’m gonna do. That’s what the Bandit King would—
A scream interrupted his train of thought. The cottage was in sight, only a dozen yards away. And a clamor erupted from inside.
“Hoodsy.”
Deeb ran to the house and threw open the door. The place was a wreck—overturned furniture, shattered plates, shredded linens—and Hood, backed into a corner by a ceiling-scraping, bristly furred, slobbering beast in a lavender nightgown.
Deeb quickly put it all together. Mayor Werewolf had gotten there first, devoured the grandmother, and then put on the world’s worst disguise in order to trick Hood—which, apparently, had worked—and now the beast was about to wrap its enormous jaws around the poor girl’s throat.
“Freeze, Kibble Breath!” Deeb shouted. “You may think you’re big stuff, picking on old ladies and little girls. But you’re dealing with the Bandit King now. And I think you’ll find that with the Bandit King, you can never quite expect—”
Clonk!
Hood clobbered the werewolf across the head with a broken bedpost. The creature collapsed.
“Thanks, Woodsy,” Hood said. Her actual hood had fallen back, and Deeb could see her bright, glinting eyes as she smiled at him. “You showed up just when I needed you to.”
It was one of the rare moments when Deeb Rauber had no idea how to respond. So he walked over to the unconscious werewolf and poked it with a stick.
“It’s totally the mayor, you know,” he said. r />
“Well, duh,” Hood replied.
And as they watched, the body of the creature began to wriggle and writhe. It was changing back.
“I wasn’t scared at all,” Hood said. “Were you? I mean, I’d completely understand if you were; this guy turning into a man-eating wolf and all.”
Deeb shrugged. “I used to know a guy who turned into a giant snake. This? Meh.”
Within seconds, the furry, gray paws protruding from the nightgown became thin, bony, very human arms and legs. And the hideous, fanged face turned into that of a wrinkled old woman.
Deeb and Hood gaped at each other.
“Yeah, well, before, when I said, you know, about the mayor,” Deeb stammered. “I was just, you know, testing you.”
Two seconds later, Mayor Vulpin appeared in the doorway, panting. He saw Granny on the floor and ran to her side. “Oh, my dear, sweet Griselda!” He put his ear to her chest. “She’s alive. But . . . you’ve seen, haven’t you? You know.”
Hood nodded. “My granny is the monster.” All the energy and exuberance was gone from her voice. “How?”
“It was a curse—a horrible, evil curse,” Vulpin said, cradling the head of his bride-to-be, “placed upon her by a spiteful fairy, simply because it hadn’t gotten an invitation to our engagement party. Now do you understand, though? Why I had to do the things I did?” The mayor began to weep. “I just wanted to protect her. I love her.”
“I understand,” Hood said, her own eyes welling up. “But the rest of the villagers won’t. If they find out, they’ll hunt her down and slay her. Isn’t there anything we can do?”
“Not unless you know some way to remove a magic curse,” Vulpin said.
“Well, actually,” Deeb said. He said it without stroking an imaginary mustache. He said it without puffing out his chest or dusting off his velvet jacket. He said it without thinking at all. Because the words came from somewhere other than the Bandit King’s diabolical brain. “Actually, I do.”
Three months later, while Deeb Rauber sat upon his throne, dunking an unpaid-for scone into a mug of smuggled Maldinian cocoa, Vero took a break from practicing his swordsmanship on a life-size troll doll.