The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom - Christopher Healy

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the farming family with a hungry smile on its hideous face. Rosilda quickly ushered her eleven children inside their small wood-frame house, where they all watched from the windows as the monster sat down amid their crops and started tossing handfuls of freshly picked beets into its mouth. Rosilda was furious.

      “Stinking up the yard is one thing,” she spat, “but there’s no way I’m letting that beast devour our produce.”

      The thickset, red-faced farmer woman wiped her hands on her apron, threw open the door, and marched back outside. “Get your grimy hands off our beets!” she yelled. Her wild and frizzy carrot-orange hair bounced with every angry word. “We spent the whole morning pulling those things up, and I’ll be darned if I’m going to let you gobble them all!”

      Rosilda picked a shovel up off the ground and raised it over her head, threatening to clobber the vegetable thief, who was nearly twice her size. Her children crowded in the doorway and cheered her on. “Mom-my, Mom-my!”

      The troll looked up at her in shock, as bright red beet juice ran down its chin. “Uh,” the thing grunted. “Shovel Lady hit?”

      “You’re darn right I hit,” Rosilda growled back. “Unless you drop those veggies and head back into the woods you came from.”

      The troll looked from the woman’s scowling face to the long, rusty shovel she waved menacingly overhead. It dropped the handful of beets it had been about to eat.

      “Shovel Lady no hit Troll,” it mumbled as it stood up. “Troll make no trouble. Troll go.”

      Enter Prince Gustav. Clad in clanking, fur-trimmed armor and wielding a large, shining battle-ax, he charged at the troll on horseback.

      “Not so fast, beast!” Gustav shouted as he approached, his long blond hair flowing behind him. Without stopping his horse, he leapt from the saddle, turning himself into a human missile, and knocked the troll flat onto its back. The prince and the troll rolled through the garden in one clanking, grunting mass, smashing down freshly sprouted beet plants, until the creature finally got back to its feet and tossed Gustav off. The prince crashed through the wooden planks of the farmer’s fence but nimbly picked himself back up, ready to charge the monster again. That was when Gustav spotted the bright red beet juice around the troll’s mouth.

      “Child eater!” he screamed. All the children were, of course, perfectly fine—and had actually filed back out into the yard to watch the fight—but Gustav was too focused on the monster to notice. The prince swung his ax. The troll caught the weapon in its large, clawed hands, yanked it away from Gustav, and tossed it off into a corner of the farmyard, where it shattered several barrels of pickled beets with a crunch and a splat.

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      “Starf it all,” Gustav cursed (which prompted some of the older children to cover the ears of the younger ones).

      Now unarmed, the prince stood face-to-face with the troll. The monster was nearly three feet taller than him, but Gustav showed no hint of fear. Gustav didn’t really do “fear.” Annoyance, consternation, occasionally embarrassment: Those were emotions Gustav was familiar with. But not fear.

      “Why Angry Man do that?” the troll asked. Gustav charged at the creature, but it grabbed him in mid-run and lifted him into the air. The troll spun the prince upside down and rammed him headfirst into the ground with a pile-driver-like maneuver. Dazed, Gustav tried to crawl away, but the troll, still holding him by the feet, swung him to the left, smashing him through a stack of wooden crates. The monster then swung him back to the right, wrapping him around a fence post. Gustav swung his fist at the troll, but his punch didn’t even land. The creature hoisted him overhead and was ready to chuck him up onto the farmhouse roof, when Rosilda stepped up behind the troll and smacked it in the back of the head with her shovel.

      “Ow!” The troll dropped Gustav in the dirt and rubbed the sore spot on its skull. “Shovel Lady said Shovel Lady would not hit Troll.”

      “That was before you started beating up on that poor man,” Rosilda snapped. “Now get out of here.”

      “But Angry Man hit Troll first.”

      “I don’t care. You get out.” She raised the shovel again.

      “No more, no more. Troll go.” And the huge creature shuffled off toward the forest. The children burst into cheers and danced around the garden.

      Rosilda held her hand out to Gustav, who still lay on the ground. He angrily waved the woman’s hand away and stood up by himself. “I had it under control,” he scolded. “You shouldn’t have put yourself in harm’s way.”

      “You know, the troll was about to leave when you jumped on him,” Rosilda said. “Everything was fine. And now look—you’ve wrecked our garden.”

      Gustav surveyed the yard. There were broken fences, smashed barrels, squashed beets, and row after row of flattened plants. “You care about a few vegetables? The monster ate your children!” he shouted.

      “It did no such thing,” the woman scoffed.

      “It had blood on its mouth.”

      “Beet juice.”

      “Are you sure?” Gustav asked, looking around at the giddy, dancing children. “It must have eaten at least one kid. Have you counted them?”

      “Now look here, my knight in shining armor,” Rosilda said as she handed Gustav the beet-stained ax he’d lost. “I know how many wee ones I’ve got, and none of them are in the belly of a troll. Perhaps if you’d taken a second to stop and think before you—”

      Rosilda paused and stepped closer to Gustav. “Wait a minute,” she said with a grin. “I know who you are. You’re the prince from that Rapunzel story.”

      At that point, the children swarmed around Gustav, oohing and ahhing. He said nothing.

      “Yeah, I’m sure it’s you,” Rosilda said. “Prince Charming himself.”

      “My name is Gustav.”

      “I’ve been to the royal castle, you know,” she said. “I’ve seen you there.”

      Gustav looked stern. “No, you’re thinking of my brother. He’s Charming. I’m Prince Gustav. Gustav the Mighty.”

      At that, a small boy and a small girl each started climbing up one of Gustav’s arms.

      “Okay, Your Highness,” Rosilda said. “Why don’t you open up your royal wallet and pay us for the damage you’ve done to our farm?”

      “I carry no gold with me,” Gustav said, with a child sitting on each shoulder pulling at his hair. “But I’ll tell the royal treasurer to send you some money.”

      He tried to walk away before the woman pried any further into his least favorite topic, but was slowed down by two more children, one sitting on each of his feet, hugging his heavy, fur-lined boots.

      “Tell me one thing, Your Highness,” Rosilda called to him. “Why didn’t you get a ladder?”

      That question again? It was more than Gustav could bear. He shook off the children, who all dropped, giggling, into the dirt. “Pah!” was all he offered in response.

      “When you get back to your castle, why don’t you tell that Lyrical Leif that he needs to write some new material?” Rosilda said with a smirk. “It’s been months now, and I’m gettin’ tired of hearing about how that sweet girl saved your life.”

      “For your information, that weaselly song-spitter hasn’t shown his face around Castle Sturmhagen in weeks,” Gustav snarled. “And I say, good riddance!”

      He abruptly turned his back on Rosilda and hopped onto his dark brown warhorse. He planned to speed off and kick up a cloud of dust at this annoying woman, but before he could spur the horse on, a newcomer approached the farm. This fellow was

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