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

Dedication

For Dashiell and Bryn, my heroes

Title Page

Dedication

Map of the Kingdoms

PROLOGUE: Things You Don’t Know About Prince Charming

1. Prince Charming Misplaces His Bride

2. Prince Charming Defends Some Vegetables

3. Prince Charming Claims He Is Not Afraid of Old Ladies

4. Prince Charming Loses Some Fans

5. Prince Charming Is the Worst Person in the World

6. Prince Charming Has No Sense of Direction

7. Prince Charming Has No Idea What’s Going On

8. Prince Charming Is Afraid of the Dark

9. Prince Charming Is a Wanted Man

10. Prince Charming Annoys the King

11. Prince Charming Takes a Dive

12. Prince Charming Hugs Trees

13. Prince Charming Is Completely Unnecessary

14. Prince Charming Falls Flat

15. Prince Charming Should Not Be Left Unsupervised

16. Prince Charming Meets a Piece of Wood

17. Prince Charming Still Has No Idea What’s Going On

18. Prince Charming Gets Battered and Fried

19. Prince Charming Needs a Bath

20. Prince Charming Walks into a Bar

21. Prince Charming Joins a Gang

22. Prince Charming Is a Sneak

23. Prince Charming Takes the Wrong Seat

24. Prince Charming Hates Children

25. Prince Charming Really Needs to Figure Out What’s Going On

26. Prince Charming Gives Up

27. Prince Charming Gets Good News and Bad News

28. Prince Charming Is Doomed

29. Prince Charming Does Exactly What He Said He’d Never Do

30. Prince Charming Almost Saves the Day

31. Prince Charming Gets Just What He Thinks He Wanted

EPILOGUE: Prince Charming Goes Where Everybody Knows His Name

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Copyright

About the Publisher

Prince Charming is afraid of old ladies. Didn’t know that, did you?

Don’t worry. There’s a lot you don’t know about Prince Charming: Prince Charming has no idea how to use a sword; Prince Charming has no patience for dwarfs; Prince Charming has an irrational hatred of capes.

Some of you may not even realize that there’s more than one Prince Charming. And that none of them are actually named Charming. No one is. Charming isn’t a name; it’s an adjective.

But don’t blame yourself for your lack of Prince Charming–based knowledge; blame the lazy bards. You see, back in the day, bards and minstrels were the world’s only real source of news. It was they who bestowed fame upon people. They were the ones who sculpted any hero’s (or villain’s) reputation. Whenever something big happened—a damsel was rescued, a dragon was slain, a curse was broken—the royal bards would write a song about it, and their wandering minstrels would perform that tune from land to land, spreading the story across multiple kingdoms. But the bards weren’t keen on details. They didn’t think it was important to include the names of the heroes who did all that damsel rescuing, dragon slaying, and curse breaking. They just called all those guys “Prince Charming.”

It didn’t even matter to the bards whether the person in question was a truly daring hero (like Prince Liam, who battled his way past a bone-crushing, fire-blasting magical monster in order to free a princess from an enchanted sleeping spell) or some guy who merely happened to be in the right place at the right time (like Prince Duncan, who also woke a princess from a sleeping spell, but only because some dwarfs told him to). No, those bards gave a man the same generic name whether he nearly died (like Prince Gustav, who was thrown from a ninety-foot tower when he tried to rescue Rapunzel) or simply impressed a girl with his dancing skill (like Prince Frederic, who wowed Cinderella at a royal ball).

If there was anything that Liam, Duncan, Gustav, and Frederic all had in common, it was that none of them were very happy about being a Prince Charming. Their mutual hatred of that name was a big part of what brought them together. Not that teaming up was necessarily the best idea for these guys.

If we were to peek ahead to, say, Chapter 20, we would see our heroes in a small mountain town called Flargstagg, sitting in just about the worst tavern in all of creation: the Stumpy Boarhound. The Stumpy Boarhound is the kind of dank and miserable place where pirates and assassins play cards while plotting their next despicable crimes (which often involve robbing the tavern itself). It’s not the type of place where you would expect to find even one Prince Charming, let alone four. And yet, in Chapter 20, there they all are: Liam, bruised and soot-stained, with fish bones in his hair; Gustav, in charred and dented armor, massaging his bald, bright red scalp; Frederic, covered with enough dirt to make you think he’d just crawled out of a grave; and Duncan, with a big bump on his forehead, and wearing . . . is that a nightshirt? Oh, and there are about fifty armed thugs surrounding their table, all of whom seem eager to smash the princes into paste.

Of course, by Chapter 20, you can’t fault the princes for looking like wrecks. They’re lucky to be alive after their run-ins with the witch, the giant, the bandits, the—well, you’ll see. Basically, the fact that they’re about to get into a major brawl is none too surprising, considering the kind of week these princes have just had. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Before we reach that turning-point night at the Stumpy Boarhound, we need to head back to the peaceful kingdom of Harmonia, where the whole adventure—or mess, depending on whom you ask—began. We have to go back to when Prince Frederic managed to lose Cinderella.

Frederic wasn’t always helpless. There was a time when he aspired to become a hero. But it seemed it wasn’t meant to be.

From the moment he was born—and immediately placed into the delicate swishiness of a pure silk bassinet—Prince Frederic led a life of comfort. As heir to the throne of the very wealthy nation of Harmonia, he grew up with an army of servants standing ready to pamper him in every way imaginable. While learning to crawl, he was fitted with lamb’s-wool knee pads to keep his baby-soft skin from getting scuffed. When he wanted to play hide-and-seek, butlers and valets would hide in the most obvious places—behind a feather, under a napkin—so that the boy wouldn’t have to work too hard to find them. Pretty much anything young Frederic could have wanted or needed was handed to him on a silver platter. Literally.

The only thing Frederic had to do in return was live the life of a proper gentleman. He was allowed to attend as many poetry readings, ballroom dances, and twelve-course luncheons as he wanted. But he was forbidden to take part in any activity that could be considered remotely risky or dangerous. Appearances were very important to Frederic’s father, King Wilberforce, who vowed that no one in his family would ever again suffer the cruel mockery that had been heaped upon his great-grandfather, King Charles the Chicken-Pocked. “Not a scar, not a bruise, not a blemish” was the motto of King Wilberforce. And he went to extreme measures to keep his son away from anything that might give him so much as a scratch. He even had Frederic’s pencils pre-dulled.