The Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom (5 page)

Prince Gustav, who stood six-foot-five and had shoulders broad enough to get stuck in most doorways, was nonetheless the smallest member of his family. Growing up as the “tiny” one among sixteen older brothers, Gustav felt a desperate need to appear bigger and more imposing. This usually involved puffing out his chest and speaking very loudly: Picture a six-year-old boy standing on top of the dining room table, posing like a statue of a war hero, and shouting, “The mighty Gustav demands his milk cup be refilled!” This didn’t make him look impressive—it made him look strange. His older siblings mocked him mercilessly.

Fig. 4 Prince GUSTAV

The more people laughed at him, the more distraught Gustav became. He stuffed balls of yarn into his sleeves to make his muscles look larger (and sadly, lumpier). He tied bricks to the bottom of his boots to make himself taller (and clomped around like a sumo wrestler in a full-body cast). He even grew his hair long, just so he would have more of
something
. Unsurprisingly, his brothers continued to tease him.

In his later teen years, Gustav became a frustrated, angry loner. For as much of the day as possible, he avoided contact with other people (which was not necessarily a bad thing for the other people). He would roam on horseback through the pine forests of Sturmhagen, hoping to find some creature he could fight—and thereby prove his strength and heroism. One day he stumbled upon something incredible.

There was a tall tower standing all by itself in a forest clearing. Oddly, it had no doors and no stairs. But it did have a girl stuck up in a room at the very top—a girl with eighty feet of hair. She lowered her shimmery blond locks down to Gustav, and he used them as a rope and climbed up to her. Once inside the small tower room, Gustav learned that the girl’s name was Rapunzel and that she was the captive of an evil witch.

Fig. 5 TOWER

Now, Gustav was not exactly a ladies’ man; in fact, this may have been the first time he’d ever made eye contact with a girl. But he was struck by Rapunzel. She was so different from the girls he’d seen around the castle, especially his brutish cousins, who liked to hold him down and smack him with their thick, whiplike pigtails. Rapunzel was all soft, pillowy curves and delicate, graceful movements. She smiled at him warmly, held his hand, and spoke to him kindly.
So this is why people like girls
, Gustav thought.

Overtaken by feelings that were entirely new to him, Gustav opened up. He complained about his brothers, and, to his surprise, Rapunzel listened. Gustav was in heaven. He yammered on for hours, until Rapunzel realized the sun was going down. The witch would be returning soon, she said, and she begged Gustav to go for help.

Fig. 6 Lady RAPUNZEL

Gustav climbed back down Rapunzel’s hair, hopped on his horse, and took off in the direction of the royal castle. But he stopped just a mile or so away from the witch’s tower. There was no way he was going to round up his brothers to come and help him. They would take all the credit and probably even steal Rapunzel’s attention away from him. No, this was going to be
his
rescue,
his
heroic deed.

Under the darkening sky, he turned around and rode back to the tower. Rapunzel let down her hair for him but was confused to see Gustav reenter her prison room alone.

“Where are the others?” she asked.

“I need no others,” Gustav said with total confidence. “I will rescue you myself.”

“Did you get a ladder?” she asked hopefully.

“No,” he said, suddenly sounding less sure of himself.

“How are we going to get out then?”

Gustav had no plan, so he said nothing. He just peeked around in the corners of the room, pretending he was looking for something.

Moments later, a scratchy voice called from outside, “Rapunzel, let down your hair.”

“It’s Zaubera,” Rapunzel whispered. “Quick, you must hide.”

“I hide from no one,” Gustav said. “Let her up. When she steps into the room, I will kill the witch.”

“But—”

“Just do it,” Gustav insisted.

Rapunzel let down her hair.

When Lyrical Leif later chronicled the event in his song about Rapunzel, Prince Charming’s “battle” with the witch went on for three lengthy verses. In reality, it was over in less than three seconds. As soon as the witch stepped over the windowsill, Gustav leapt at her. The evil old woman caught him and, with superhuman strength, hurled him from the tower. Done and done.

Gustav’s landing was particularly nasty. He came down face-first into a painfully prickly briar patch. So painful, in fact, that the thorns scratched his eyes and blinded him. He spent the next several days stumbling through the forest, feeling his way from tree to tree. It was pitiful. After nearly a week, he collapsed from hunger.

Rapunzel, in the meantime, managed to get free (though how she pulled off that feat was a mystery to everyone but her and the witch). She searched the woods for Gustav, and eventually found him sightless and starving. Rapunzel cradled him in her arms and wept. And here’s the really amazing part: As soon as her tears hit Gustav’s eyes, his vision was restored.

Once the story got out—and boy, did the minstrels get a lot of requests for this one—Gustav’s brothers treated him worse than ever. He couldn’t show his face in the castle without hearing mocking calls like, “Look out, Prince Charming, I think I see a scary shrub! Don’t worry, we’ll call Cousin Helga to come save you!”

Gustav considered this the lowest point of his life. He’d become famous for being a failure. He’d never been much of a people person to begin with, and this only made things worse.

One day, after being jeered by a group of shepherds (according to Gustav, the sheep were laughing, too), the big prince retreated into the forest, climbed a tall tree, and sat among its highest branches, hoping to avoid human contact. Rapunzel found him anyway.

“Come down,” she called. “Come back home with me.”

“Go away,” Gustav said. “Can’t you see I’m in a tree?”

“I see how the words of others hurt you,” Rapunzel said. “But you’ll hear no harsh words from me.”

“Oh, that’s right—you’re Little Miss Perfect,” Gustav grumbled from up above. “It’s all your fault, you know. It’s because of you that everyone thinks I’m a joke.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Rapunzel said, craning her neck to see him. “You know I only meant to help. When I saw you in that condition—”

“I would’ve been fine.”

“You were half-dead.”

“More like
half-alive
. See, that’s your problem, Mega-Braid. You’re always trying to fix something that doesn’t need fixing.”

“Fixing people is my gift.”

Gustav snorted. “Well, I’m returning it. Go re-gift it to someone else.”

Rapunzel was silent for a moment, then said, “I should. It’s selfish of me to keep this gift to myself. The world is full of people in need; I’m wasting my talents here, trying to give you reasons to like yourself.”

“What?” Gustav jumped down, breaking several branches on his way to the ground. “Why don’t you use your power on yourself, Miracle Girl? You’ve obviously got something wrong with your brain. ’Cause I like myself just fine. I
love
myself. What’s not to love? I’m a better fighter than anyone, a better hunter, a better horseman—”

“If you truly like yourself as you are, why do you feel the need to prove yourself better than everyone else?”

“Leave,” Gustav barked. “You said it: Go help someone else. I don’t need anybody.”

Rapunzel gathered her hair and began to walk away.

“You’re right,” she said as she left. “Helping others is what I was meant to do. I don’t understand you, Gustav. But maybe you do understand
me
, after all.”

He never told anyone that Rapunzel had left. But her departure only made Gustav more determined than ever to show the world he was a hero worthy of respect. He spent his days riding around the countryside, looking for someone to rescue.

Months later, on the outskirts of Sturmhagen, Rosilda Stiffenkrauss and her family were busily plucking beets from the ground, when the nearby trees parted with a rumble and a hulking troll stepped out of the forest, sniffing the air with its tremendous nose. If you’ve never seen one before, trolls are about nine feet tall, covered with shaggy, swamp-colored hair, and may or may not have horns (this troll had one crooked horn jutting out from the left side of its head). Many people, upon seeing a troll for the first time, think they are being attacked by a big, ferocious pile of spinach. Rosilda Stiffenkrauss, however, had lived in Sturmhagen her entire life and knew a troll when she saw one.

Fig. 7 TROLL

“Oh, for pete’s sake,” she sighed. “Here comes another one. Come on, kids; everybody inside until it goes away.”

The big, greenish man-thing grunted and lumbered toward 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.