1.
Pocket Money
“I’d like my pocket money now, please,” said the boy, and in came a man with a wheelbarrow brimming with gold coins.
Edwin wasn’t an ordinary nine-year-old boy. He was a king, with a throne and his own suit of armor and a castle with secret passages and everything. Best of all, he had a crown.
A crown is very important. If he didn’t have one, you would just say, “Look at that boy over there. Doesn’t he look amazingly normal, like any other kid?” But put a crown on his head and you say, “Wow! He’s a boy and he’s a king! I bet he has fun and lots of adventures. What’s a king without a crown?”
This crown was really special because each point had a little crown on the top. The crown had crowns. You can’t get more crowny than that. No wonder King Edwin never took it off.
“Thank you very much,” said Edwin to the palace guard with the wheelbarrow, because even though he was the ruler, he was a very polite boy.
King Edwin delved into the gold and pulled out a great, gleaming handful. All the coins had his face on one side. He always got a buzz out of that.
Edwin turned to his special helper. “I’m leaving the castle for a bit, Jill!” he said.
… Minister Jill said while writing two letters at once, one with each hand. Try it sometime. It’s not easy.
Jill was always busy. Jill was a grown-up with a very grown-up job. Even though Edwin was the ruler of the kingdom of Edwinland, he needed an adult to help him with the complicated parts.
Who had to find a dancing bear for a birthday feast? Jill.
Who had to write a letter of apology when the dancing bear ate somebody’s arm? Jill.
Jill worked as much as Edwin played, and Edwin played a lot.
* * *
Edwin trundled the coin-filled wheelbarrow down a lane.
“Afternoon!” said King Edwin.
“Afternoon, Your Majesty!” said a passing peasant.
Edwin’s kingdom had peasants, but they weren’t miserable, hungry peasants dressed in sacks and boiling nettles for dinner. No, these were merry peasants, all plump and smiling. Whenever the day’s work was done, they danced in the town square for the sheer joy of being alive.
Edwin headed for the nearest village. Edwinland wasn’t a big country, so there was only one. It was called “Village.” If they ever built a second village, then Village would be in serious need of renaming.
King Edwin went into a candy shop. There were a lot of candy shops in Village. He grabbed two heavy fistfuls of gold coins and spilled them across the counter.
“Hello. I’d like every chocolate, every chocolate bar, and every chocolate-based snack in this shop.”
“The usual order, Your Majesty? Certainly.”
Minutes later, King Edwin left the shop with a huge mound of goodies in his wheelbarrow.
Then he bought everything in the next candy shop.
And the next.
And the next.
By half past five, Edwin was balancing an enormous, wobbling tower of chocolate in his wheelbarrow. He tipped it into a giant funnel attached to a pipe, attached to a wheel, attached to another pipe, attached to a piston, attached to … well, you get the idea. It was quite a complicated machine: King Edwin’s Nutritious Nibbles Ejector, Thrower, and Hurler. Or K.E.N.N.E.T.H. for short.
The king rode K.E.N.N.E.T.H. through the streets of Village, spraying chocolate in every direction. The peasants ran out of their houses, grabbing all they could. It was their favorite part of the week.
“It’s a powerful, good king we have in this land,” the peasants would say.
“Spends all his pocket money on us, he does!”
“Yes. Because he loves us.”
And they loved him right back. Some weeks they loved him so much they would declare Friday to be We Love the King Day, and everybody would celebrate instead of going to work or school. If it went really well, Monday would be a We Love the King Day, too.
On those days, Minister Jill would mumble things like “lazy peasants” and “any excuse” under her breath, but Edwin didn’t think she was being fair. The people loved the king, the king loved the people, they all loved chocolate, and that was that.
* * *
The next Friday, as Edwin sat on his throne waiting for his pocket money to arrive, he thought to himself, This isn’t a bad life. I’m a lucky boy. In fact, I’m so lucky, I bet nothing will go wrong for me ever again.
The palace guard pushed the wheelbarrow into the throne room.
Edwin stared.
The wheelbarrow was empty.
“Your Majesty? The money’s all gone.”
2.
Foo Hoo Hoo Hoo
A tall figure rose from a dark and spiky throne.
“GUARDS? SEIZE HIM!” said the figure.
The sinister soldiers looked around, confused. There was nobody to seize. Emperor Nurbison slumped back into his throne. He knew there was no one about, but he just liked shouting “GUARDS? SEIZE HIM!” whenever he felt like it. And that was quite a lot.
There are plenty of ways to tell if an emperor is an evil emperor. First, take a good look at his castle, most likely as you are taken toward it in a cage on the back of a wagon.
The castle of a good king is made of warm-colored stone. Yellow or light brown. The whole thing is always wider than it is tall, and there is a brightly colored flag on the top. Edwin’s castle was just like that.
The castle of an evil emperor looks totally different. It’s always taller than it is wide. It’s made of jagged black stone, and it stands on a tall, jagged rock. You can only get to it by a steep, windy path with no hand rails. Evil emperors never care about health and safety.
Nurbison’s castle was just like that. Only his was extra super evil because it was surrounded on all sides by a bottomless pit. Bottomless pits are very rare. Probably because they take a very long time to dig.
He wore a black cloak, black tights, black boots, and a little goatee beard. To top it all off, his evil crown bristled with sharp spikes, and it didn’t glitter at all. In place of twinkly diamonds, he had priceless anti-diamonds that sucked light in and kept it there.
But his laugh set him apart from the rest of the evil crowd. “Bwahahahaha” had been done. So had “muhahahahaha.” So Emperor Nurbison plumped for a spine-chilling
“FOO HOO HOO HOO HOO HOO.”
Try it. It’ll terrify everyone around you.
All the same, the emperor wasn’t laughing very much that day. He hadn’t done anything dastardly all morning. After breakfast, he had deliberately trapped a fly in the window’s double glazing
and let it
bump around between
the two bits of glass
for at least ten minutes
before releasing it. But that hardly counted.
“Globulus! The map!” said the emperor.
Globulus, the emperor’s servant, came running in. He was the exact shape and size of a beach ball. He unrolled a map across a huge wooden table.
“See these many lands?” said Emperor Nurbison. “So many of them belong to me now. So, so many…”
Globulus pointed to the edge of the map.
“But not, kind of like, you know, Edwinland?”
“Edwinland!” spat the emperor as he jammed a dagger into the map (a great trick they teach you at evil school). “Ruled by that moon-faced boy with that ridiculous shiny crown he loves so much. He’s a proper little king flashypants. Somehow my sinister soldiers cannot defeat his palace guards.…”
He glared at the sinister soldiers. They shuffled a bit and looked at the floor.
“But soon!” Emperor Nurbison said. “Soon the day shall come when that foolish boy makes a fatal mistake. And then…”
Globulus and the sinister soldiers waited silently for the emperor to finish.
“And then…!”
Still everyone waited.
“AND THEN … Well, Globulus? Get the bowl!”
“Oh! Yes, Your Majesty!”
Globulus ran out of the throne room and rushed back a few seconds later with a bowl of fruit.
“As I was saying … And then I will crush Edwinland as easily as I crush this fruit!”
Emperor Nurbison grabbed a grape and got crushing. Juice ran down his arm.
“FOO HOO HOO HOO HOO. FOO HOO HOO HOO HOO!”
said the emperor. “Come on, join in, everybody!
FOO HOO HOO HOO HOO!”
Globulus and the sinister soldiers did the laugh. Not quite as scarily as Emperor Nurbison, though. The emperor didn’t like it if you did anything better than him.
“Fetch my telescope,” said the emperor. “I shall watch Edwin’s kingdom. I shall watch and wait and make my plans against him!” And with a last “foo hoo hoo hoo,” the emperor twirled his cloak and strode from the hall.
3.
Pig
King Edwin and Minister Jill were climbing inside a pig. The pig didn’t utter a single oink of complaint. It was made of china.
Kings don’t have normal piggy banks. They have massive ones. The official piggy bank of Edwinland was as big as a house and stood in the middle of the castle courtyard.
Any visitor to the Great Pig had to climb through a slot high on its back. There was a much easier circular door in its belly, stopped with a big rubber plug, but you could only use that when you were leaving.
said Jill
as she
tumbled
through
the slot
and thumped
onto the pottery floor.
said Jill again as King Edwin landed on her, pointy crown first.
Minister Jill walked from one end of the pig to the other. She crouched down and squinted. It didn’t make any difference. Whichever angle you looked from, there were absolutely no coins inside this pig.
“There are no coins inside this pig,” said King Edwin.
“I was just thinking that,” said Minister Jill.
“So where have they all gone, then?”
“Well,” said Jill, “remember how I put you in charge of the kingdom’s money? To give you some practice running the kingdom yourself when you’re a grown-up?”
“You mean, when you let me choose how much pocket money I get? Yeah. That was brilliant.”
Minister Jill closed her eyes and pinched the top of her nose.
Ah, thought Edwin. That’s one of those things grown-ups do when they get stressed.
Maybe Jill was stressed.
“You haven’t been spending it all on chocolate, have you?” said Jill.
“No,” said King Edwin.
“So what else, then?”
“I paid a carpenter to make a bigger wheelbarrow, to get more money from the Great Pig, so I could buy my peasants even more chocolate.”
“Where do you think all the money comes from, Your Majesty?” said Jill.
“Hmmmm…,” said King Edwin, digging his finger into his ear while he tried to remember. “There’s Uncle Gavin. He’s a duke of somewhere or other. He always sends me a boatload of treasure on my birthday.”
“No, he sends it when Duchess Karen reminds him it’s your birthday. I don’t think she reminded him this year.”
“Oh. Right.”
“So now the kingdom has no money. Remember that lesson I taught you a few months ago? Everything a king needs to know about money? I think we need to do it again.”
King Edwin nodded. He knew Minister Jill was about to use lots of complicated grown-up words, and it would be very hard for any nine-year-old to concentrate.
I will try to concentrate, thought the king. Nothing to distract me in this empty, pig-shaped room. Except a little bit of blue sky I can see through the slot at the top.
“Your Majesty? Your Majesty? Are you listening?”
“What? Yeah! Totally,” said King Edwin, sitting up. “I just missed the last bit. Could you say that again?”
“So where should I start from?”
“Um—the beginning? Sorry.”
“Try to concentrate this time,” said Minister Jill. “A country gathers money through taxation and borrowing.…”
King Edwin felt his mind wandering even quicker this time. Oh dear. Think about the boring stuff Jill’s saying, he thought to himself. Don’t think about cool things like whales or the sea. Think about dry land.
King Edwin imagined he was looking at a big map of his own country. Then he thought,
“YOUR MAJESTY!”
“Ah! Hello. What were you talking about again?” said the king.
Minister Jill took a deep breath. “The lesson will have to wait,” she said. “The kingdom needs money right now. I know just where to look. Let’s get out of this pig.”
The king and the minister jumped up and down on the big rubber stopper at the bottom. It took a while to budge, but finally it gave way, and the pair of them thonked into the courtyard.
“Your Majesty, please summon the palace guards,” said Minister Jill.
The king blew on a giant horn. Every stone in the castle shook. Doves fluttered into the air.
There were lots of ways to summon the palace guards, but the giant horn was definitely the coolest.
Soon the guards stood in front of King Edwin, ten rows deep. They were a fearsome-looking bunch. They had to be, to keep people like Emperor Nurbison out of Edwinland.
“At Your Majesty’s service!” said Centurion Alisha, the commander of the guards.
Alisha had a powerful stare. One glance from her could knock a nail into a piece of wood.
Minister Jill gave the orders. There were countless rooms in King Edwin’s castle. Nobody knew how many for sure. Lots of those rooms had sofas. The guards had to stick their hands inside every sofa in the castle to see if there was any loose change hiding down there.
Off they went, plunging their arms into the furniture.
Some of them got their chain mail stuck on the sofa tassels, and it took another six guards to pull them free.
But they didn’t find very much money.
“Call all the guards in the kingdom!” said Minister Jill. “Tell them to check every sofa five times!”
Centurion Alisha growled a command. The message went out across the countryside by horse, smoke signal, and tin cans on string. Before long, guards came running in from every fort in the land.
“It’s going to be okay, isn’t it?” asked King Edwin.
“Yes, yes, Your Majesty. It’s all going to be fine,” said Minister Jill.
The king wondered why, if it was all going to be fine, the minister had started chewing a strand of her own hair.
* * *
Far, far away, a hunched figure peered through a telescope.
He saw Edwin’s guards running from their forts toward the young king’s castle. His evil lips parted.
4.
The Coming of the Emperor
There was a dotted line painted on the ground.
Emperor Nurbison stood on one side of it. His big collar flapped in the wind, and the pointy bits jabbed other people in the eyes. But nobody was allowed to say “ouch” or “aargh” or “For heaven’s sake, get a less stupid coat.”
The emperor took one step forward, over the line.
“And now I stand in Edwinland!” he said to Globulus and the sinister soldiers. “And where are his legendary palace guards? Are they here to throw me back into my own country? No! They are not!”
“’Cause yesterday all the guards, like, went running to his castle. I reckon there’s some sort of emergency or something,” said Globulus.
“Some sort of emergency or something,” said the emperor. “A fine analysis of the situation, Globulus. Let us stride to the nearest village, and there we will learn if this emergency can help me.”
Emperor Nurbison loved to have scary music playing as he strode. So a marching band walked along behind him, walloping big drums and blasting trumpets. They played “The Emperor’s Striding Theme” and an even more terrifying song they’d been working on called
“ANTHEM OF DESTRUCTION.”
It was quite a long walk to Village, so they played each tune three times, as well as “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”
The emperor cast his eye down Village’s main street. Instead of the smiling, happy peasants he might have seen on any other day, he saw sad, worried-looking peasants.
“Peasant! Approach!” he said to one of them.
“Oh, hello,” said the peasant. “Aren’t you evil Emperor Nurbison, sworn enemy of happiness, and the eternal foe of King Edwin?”
“Why, yes, I am! Globulus, give him a signed picture.”
Globulus handed the peasant a signed drawing of the emperor standing on a big rock, looking into the distance, with an eagle perched on his hand.
“Why has this become a land of misery?” said the emperor. “I thought the peasants here were of the merry sort?”
“Yesterday, the king didn’t come to give us chocolate. He always does that on Fridays.”
More peasants clustered round.
“None of us can handle a Friday without chocolate. That’s too much for anyone.”
“We love our king, but it’s like he’s…”
“It’s like he’s forgotten us!”
“We’d ask one of the guards what’s going on, but there are none around. They’re all at the palace.”
The emperor nodded and frowned, as if he felt sorry for the peasants.
“This, like, situation here and stuff. You could, you know … do a thing,” said Globulus.
“If by ‘do a thing’ you mean ‘use their unhappiness to seize this land,’ then yes, I could indeed ‘do a thing.’”
Emperor Nurbison climbed onto a hay cart. They’re very good for making big olden-day speeches on short notice.
“Workers! Peasants! Scum!” the evil emperor began. Then he remembered he needed to be nice to them, at least for the next hour or so.
“I mean … dear friends! If your king has not brought you chocolates and sweets, he has indeed forgotten you!”
There was a moan from the crowd.
“But fear not! All you need to do is rise up! Rise against the king who no longer loves you. Overthrow him, I say, and I, Emperor Nurbison, Earl of Unjerland, Overlord of Glenth and Boolander, Monarch of the Salty Marshes of Splop, shall be your new ruler!”
The peasants patiently watched the emperor for a while.
“That was the end of the speech,” Nurbison said. “Honestly, I thought flapping my arms and shaking my finger at the sky would have given you a bit of a clue. Anyway, will you rise against King Edwin?”
The peasants sat in a circle and talked it over.
“Seems reasonable,” said one peasant.
“Yes, I thought the emperor had a lot of interesting things to say,” said another.
A very small peasant jumped into the middle of the circle. She was called Natasha, and she was seven years old.
“But he’s an evil emperor,” said Natasha. “So anything he says might be a lie.”
Hardly anybody tells a lie in Edwinland, so the peasants had forgotten that not everywhere was like that.
“Powerful point,” said another peasant.
“Food for thought,” said another.
On they talked.
Emperor Nurbison leaned over to Globulus. “What exactly is going on here?”
“I reckon they’re, you know, having different points of view and telling each other about them,” Globulus replied.
“Oh. I’ve heard about this kind of thing. It’s called a ‘discussion.’ I certainly won’t be letting that happen when I take over. But it’s fascinating to see one going on.”
The discussion went on and on. The emperor grew more and more impatient. He drummed his fingers on Globulus’s head.
“They’re not yet ready to turn against their king,” Nurbison said to Globulus. “We need more … something big, to win them over.”
“Sort of like, there’s a curse on the kingdom? Something like that?”
“Exactly like that. Quickly, back to my castle!”
They all ran back to Nurbisonia. The band played “The Emperor’s Striding Theme,” but three times faster than normal.
* * *
Later that afternoon, Emperor Nurbison sat back on his throne and admired his work.
“The citizens of Edwinland will get rid of their puny king when they see their land has been cursed. And what better curse is there than a scary monster? Here is such a monster!
Globulus and the sinister soldiers stared at the dragon.
Except it wasn’t really a dragon. There hadn’t been dragons in the world for hundreds of years. So the emperor had found a cow and spent the last two hours using his incredible crafting skills to make it look like a dragon.
Its wings were made from wire coat hangers and crepe paper. Its hooves were now claws—or rather, two pairs of furry-monster novelty slippers that the emperor had been given for his birthday but had never worn. The tail was a long sock stuffed with tissue paper. Two candles stuck on the cow’s nose were the “fiery breath.” The animal was painted green. Or at least the front half was—the paint had run out. The emperor had tried to color in the back half of the cow with felt-tip pens, but he had never been very good at putting the tops back on his felt tips, and they had all dried up. But the emperor thought it would be okay, because if the cow was scary enough in the front, the peasants would run away before they saw the back.
“We will let this fearsome dragon loose on the streets of Edwinland,” said Emperor Nurbison. “We will tell them their kingdom is cursed until Edwin is gone. Soon! Soon I shall crush Edwinland as I crush this fruit!”
Globulus looked around the room. The fruit bowl had been taken away to make room for the emperor’s craft box.
“As I crush this fruit … As I crush this … Oh, somebody get some! An apple! A fig! A cherry, I don’t care!”
And Globulus ran from the room, a piece of crepe paper stuck to the back of his trousers.
Copyright © 2016 by Andy Riley
