Samantha R. Cichella - A New Successor

Wendell was the first to wake up. As soon as the sun rose, he got up and packed up his blankets. As soon as he had all of his stuff packed up, he began waking everyone up. He first went to Virginia, figuring she would get up easier than her father would. As soon as she was up, they tried getting Tony up. It took well over ten minutes but he was finally able to sit up without plopping back down.

Wendell next had to try and get the trolls up. He was really not looking forward to this. He was afraid that they wouldn’t like getting woken up this early. The last thing he needed were the trolls picking a fight with him. They would easily overpower him. He cautiously made his way over to their sleeping area. He figured he would try and wake Bluebell up first. After all, he was the smallest of the three and Wendell might have a chance if it were just him. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw that Tony and Virginia were watching him from a safe distance. Virginia smiled encouragingly. Turning back around, Wendell took a deep breath before gently nudging Bluebell. At first it didn’t seem to faze him at all, so Wendell tried a bit harder. It seemed like an eternity before Bluebell finally opened his eyes. Wendell leaned back as quickly as he could just in case. After a minute, Bluebell sat up rubbing his eyes.

“Suck an Elf! Why did you wake me?” Looking around, he added “What time is it?”

“I’m sorry to have to wake you up so early Prince Bluebell but we really must be on our way. It is about 6:30 in the morning. If you could please wake your brother and sister up, I have to get back to packing up our supplies.” Wendell tried not to run back over to where Tony and Virginia were. As it was, he tripped over a big rock while backing up. Tony and Virginia turned away so he wouldn’t see them laughing. Wendell’s face turned a bright red.

Less than an hour later, everyone was packed up and ready to go. The trolls were still grumpy about being up so early and were going around mumbling to themselves and tripping all over the place. Wendell, Tony, and Virginia had some fruit and bacon for their breakfast while the trolls had some left over meat from their dinner the night before. When breakfast was done, they put out the fires and led their horses back onto the road.

They rode silently for an hour, or the humans were silent, the trolls were talking about various torturing methods. Virginia thought she might be sick from listening to them. If it hadn’t been for Wolf, they would have used some of those methods on her. Thinking of Wolf once again, she almost started crying. Forcing herself to think of something else, she brought her horse next to Wendell’s, who was in the lead.

“How far away is Little Lamb Village from here?” Virginia knew she probably sounded like a little kid bugging her parents with Are We There Yet? But she couldn’t help it, she really wanted to have Wolf back in her arms again.

“We should entering the village around noon time. There aren’t really any other villages around here, so we’ll need to stop in that one. We’ll just ask some of the people there if they happened to see three men with a cart go by three days ago. Hopefully they will have some information, but I’m not getting my hopes up. The people in that town are a little bitter these days.”

“Are the Peeps still there? What ever happened to Wilfred Peep? He should have been thrown into jail.” Virginia cringed as she remembered what he did to his own granddaughter and then tried to blame Wolf for it, almost getting him burned at the stake.

“Last I heard, the Peeps were run out of town. All except a few. I believe Wilfred’s wife is still there. She was so furious with him, she left him right after the incident. As for Wilfred himself, shortly after I was crowned king, I sent some guards there to arrest him but he was nowhere to be found. The villagers all said that he still lived around there but they weren’t sure exactly where.” Wendell sighed.

There was silence for a while again. Tony was behind Virginia and Wendell. He was still moaning and complaining about his butt hurting him from the saddle. He seemed to have gotten the hang of riding though. He only slipped off three times so far. After awhile, Virginia thought of something else that she had been meaning to ask Wendell.

“Wendell? Wolf and I were talking and we decided that when the baby comes, we’d like you to be the godfather. You’ll already be the uncle, but that way if anything were to happen to us, we’d like you to watch over the baby.” Virginia was hoping nothing would happen to her or Wolf but the way this place went, who knew?

“I would be honored. By the way, will you and Wolf be getting married before the baby comes?” He tried to sound casual but the truth was that he was brought up proper and believed that certain stuff needed to wait until after the wedding. He decided to push Virginia a little bit, but not too much to make her want to rebel. But it really would make him look bad to all of the other rulers if he had a pregnant unmarried stepsister.

“We’ve been discussing that and we are going to get married before the baby comes. We were thinking about having the wedding here in the kingdoms, maybe in a month or two.”

“That would be wonderful. I’ll have to tell Lord Rupert about it as soon as we get back. He loves planning weddings and celebrations and such. I’m sure it will be a great turnout as well, all the rulers of the other kingdoms will want to come to this one.” Wendell smiled. He was getting excited about the wedding already.

“Why would they want to come to our wedding? Wouldn’t they have more important things to do?”

“Oh, No. I’m sure they would come. After all, it’s the wedding of two of the Four Who Saved the Nine Kingdoms. Everyone in the kingdoms will want to be there.”

Virginia turned pale. She was not much of a people person. She was afraid of being in front of that many people, with everyone watching her. Wendell noticed the look on her face.

“Don’t worry, we don’t have to make it real big. Just invite a few important people, friends, and family.” Virginia nodded. That sounded a little better. But she was still going to keep an eye on Wendell and Rupert. With those two, who knew what they would plan?

Tony rode up on the other side of Wendell. They started talking about Tony’s progress with the bouncy castles. They were obviously still on the planning stage.

“I was thinking, we could do a bouncy tree, like the Huntsman’s tree that Virginia was trapped in, I’ll bet that will be a big hit.” Virginia grimaced. She turned to glare at her father but he was too excited to notice. “Then we could do a pumpkin carriage one, you know, for Cinderella. Let’s see, what else can we make?” Wendell laughed and shook his head.

“That’s great Dad, but do they even have plastic over here? How are you going to make them?” Virginia thought it was neat that her father was so excited over this whole thing, but she really didn’t think that they could actually make those castles over here.

“We’ve already thought of that, Antony said that we could try using elastic or the stuff that our balloons are made of. We just need to make it a bit stronger. But I think it should work.” Virginia nodded her head. Maybe they could do it. She left them to their conversations and became lost in thought.

Every now and then she would check her map to see if they were any closer. She was beginning to get impatient. Couldn’t these horses go any faster? She was anxious to get Wolf back. He was never leaving her sight after this.

Tony had been complaining about his sore bottom again until finally Virginia took one of the blankets and made him sit on it like a cushion. He didn’t complain as much after that. Although, he did tell Wendell that next time, if they had to travel this far, he wanted a cushioned carriage. Wendell found it was just easier to agree with him than argue. Virginia had whispered to Wendell that it took her years to figure that out and that he was wise to start now, there was just no winning with him. Wendell laughed and Tony had asked him what was so funny, but Virginia just said nothing. Tony gave them a look but went back to studying the map.

It was almost noon when Wendell suggested that they take a break and fix some lunch. Virginia protested and said that they didn’t need to waste any more time and that they could eat on the road. Tony and the trolls complained at first, but Virginia wouldn’t change her mind.

“If you want to stop and eat, go right ahead. But I’m going to keep going. You can catch up with me when you’re done.” And then she had started ride away when Wendell and Tony called her back.

“Virginia, you can’t go off on your own like that. It’s too dangerous. Can you just wait a few minutes?” Tony was very close to begging. He really didn’t like horseback riding. He was getting too old for it. But by the look Virginia gave him, he quickly mumbled “Fine, we’ll eat on the road.”

The trolls began to protest again but when they saw the look Virginia gave them, they too fell silent. As they left again, Burly quietly mumbled to his siblings, “Suck an Elf! That little witch can really scare me. Are you sure she isn’t half troll or something? She’s more fearsome then we are.” Burly felt a sharp pain in his ribs and looked to see Blabberwort glaring at him.

“Get a grip on yourself! That girlie isn’t fearsome. I just didn’t feel like arguing at the time.” Bluebell snorted, which quickly earned him a punch in the ribs also. “Go Suck an Elf, Bluebell!”

Wendell had been listening to their conversation and had to stifle a laugh. He just shook his head and rode to catch up with Tony and Virginia.