The Kitchen Warriors Read online

  But before this the queen, stirring the applesauce, had made a shocking discovery. She was very startled to hear the gold ring, when it grew warm in the steam, let out a little golden cry:

  “I’m not your true ring

  You can hear when I sing!

  The rune, the rune,

  Doesn’t sing the right tune.”

  The queen took off her ring and looked inside. There were her initials, but she realized that the rune inscribed on the gold was not the right one. In fact the ring was just a cunning imitation—not her own ring at all!

  She hated to tell the king this when he was so ill. He was still very far from recovery. So she waited.

  In the end they had to fetch in the Norn, who came very unwillingly, clattering along on her cobwebby three-legged broom. She took one look at the king, and said: “One of the apples must have been missing. The applesauce wasn’t strong enough. That prince of yours will have to go back to the cellar for the other apple.”

  “Oh, my goodness!” wept the queen. “It will be much more dangerous this time!”

  “Can’t help that,” grunted the Norn. “He should have picked all the apples in the first place.” And she retired to her broom cupboard.

  Prince Coriander went back to the hearthstone at moonrise and picked another ash flower. And he climbed down into the cellar again. He did it faster this time, for he knew the way, but still it took a long time and he was very worried about his poor old father, lying so ill. Suppose the king should die before Coriander got back? And it will all be my fault, he thought, for not making sure that I had picked all the apples. What a fool I was!

  It took more courage to go back the second time.

  “Who’s there?” roared the dragon, flashing his red eye.

  The prince waved his ash flower, and quickly shouted:

  “A tree in my head, I’m ready to fall

  Once I was a blossom and now I’m a ball.”

  This was all that came into his head, which happened to be full of apples at that moment.

  But the dragon, who had never eaten an apple in his life, was wholly puzzled by the riddle.

  “A tree in my head? What can that be? A fossil?”

  Prince Coriander dashed across the cellar floor, found the last apple, a tiny, misshaped one growing low down near the ground, picked it, and sprang away, faster than a cricket.

  “Wait, wait!” roared the dragon, as he bounded up the steps. “What has a tree in its head?”

  “An apple!” called the prince, just before he nipped through the door.

  A hot blast of fire followed him, and burned his other heel, so that he was limping badly by the time he returned to the palace.

  The lost apple was speedily made into applesauce and administered to the king, who swallowed it down, sat up in bed, and declared that he was better.

  “Now we will hold the running race!” he announced.

  Prince Coriander’s heart sank. He was so lame, with two badly burned heels, that he knew he did not stand a chance against the fast Finpair.

  But now Queen Corasin spoke up. “I’m sorry to tell your majesty,” she said to her husband, “but your nephew Finpair is a nasty cheat! He had a ring made which looks exactly like the one I lost. But it is not my ring and I can prove it.”

  She called for a boiling kettle, and held the ring in the steam. And again it sang its little song:

  “I’m not your true ring

  You can tell when I sing

  The rune, the rune

  Doesn’t sing the right tune.”

  “Good heavens!” said the king, greatly shocked. “To think that a nephew of mine should stoop to such a low trick!”

  Finpair was summoned, and came to the palace all smiles. He knew that Prince Coriander was very lame, and he knew he could run much faster than Borodig; he thought that he was certain to be appointed king.

  But he met with a very different reception from the one he expected.

  “You are a vulgar, cheating swindler, sir! To think that such a person had the impertinence to believe he might become King of the Elves! I hereby sentence you to a hundred years of exile, to be passed in the windy Snow-country south of Nowhere.”

  “You haven’t got your crown on, dear,” whispered the queen.

  The king glared at her, clapped his crown on his head, and repeated, “I sentence you, Finpair, to a hundred years of exile in the windy Snow-country south of Nowhere.”

  The fact that King Corodil said the words with the crown on his head made them absolute law. Finpair was obliged to leave the palace, very crushed and crestfallen, saddle a horse, and depart for the windy Snow-country.

  “Now we’ll hold the running race,” said the king.

  “That is unfair!” said the queen. “Poor Coriander has two dreadfully singed heels.”

  “The race must be held today,” said the king obstinately.

  But when it came to the race, fat Borodig was still so slowed down by the enormous greedy quantity of jam turnover he had eaten, that, in spite of his burns, the prince was able to win the race quite easily.

  “Now you both have to think of a Good Idea,” said the king. “Both competitors are equal at the moment, since Borodig brought in his jam turnover long before Coriander arrived with the bag of apples—which, anyway, was missing one.”

  “And a lot of good that jam turnover did you!” snapped the queen. “It nearly killed you. If Coriander hadn’t brought the apples, you wouldn’t be here now.”

  “Hush, woman!” said the king. “Borodig, let’s hear your Good Idea.”

  Poor Borodig looked this way. He looked that way. He rubbed his forehead. He squeezed his cheeks. He racked his brains. But not a single Good Idea could he produce.

  “Well, Coriander,” said the king at last, “what’s yours?”

  “My Good Idea,” said Coriander, “is that I should have a try at getting mother’s ring out of the dishwasher.”

  “Oh yes!” cried the queen clapping her hands, “Oh yes, that’s a perfectly splendid idea.”

  King Corodil was obliged to admit that his son had won the contest, and Coriander was proclaimed Heir Apparent of the Elves.

  “But,” said the king, “I feel so much better now that I don’t think I shall retire just yet after all.”

  Borodig was hugely relieved that he didn’t have to be king. “Coriander will do it much better. He is a very good fellow. If you ask me, being king is too much like hard work!”

  5. The Kelpies’ Bowl

  “HOW CAN I GET MOTHER’S ring out of the dishwasher?” wondered Prince Coriander.

  Down at the bottom of the dishwasher live the kelpies. When the tide rises high, up they come; you can hear them booming and wailing and thrashing about inside. Kelpies are dreadful beings: they look like huge horses, with the heads of cows, they have enormous quantities of dagger-sharp teeth, their hides are covered with shells and weed, they have long claws, curved and sharp as grass-hooks, and they also have savage and unpleasant natures. Moreover, although they can and often do make a great deal of noise, laughing and whistling and wailing, they can also be as silent as fog, creeping along behind people and snatching them unexpectedly.

  Kelpies, of course, only come out at night. But the elves only come out at night too.

  “You will certainly need a rowan twig,” said Coriander’s mother Queen Corasin. “That much I do know. Kelpies have a great dislike of rowan twigs.”

  A rowan twig didn’t seem a lot of help against huge savage kelpies, with skins thicker than rhinoceros hide and teeth like the alps. But still, Prince Coriander paid a visit to his cousins, the Garden Elves, and came back with a bundle of twigs. He gave some to his mother to keep in the palace. “Just in case the kelpies chase me home.”

  Queen Corasin began to worry. “Oh dear, oh dear, I wis
h you’d never said you’d go after that wretched ring. Why can’t it stay where it is, at the bottom of the dishwasher?”

  But King Corodil said, “The boy certainly can’t be king until he has done one or two things like that. Why, at his age, I had performed all sorts of brave deeds: beaten off the Larder Goblins, and defeated the Garbage Ghosts, and fought a hand-to-hand combat with the Nametape Monster, and rescued you, my love, from the Sewing-machine ogre.”

  “Very true,” said the queen, drying her eyes. “Well, Coriander is a brave boy. And I’m sure he’ll do his best to recover the ring.”

  “We’ll hold a feast to welcome him when he gets back,” said King Corodil, who loved feasts. “We’ll have honey-cakes and frumenty and ambrosia-bread, and metheglin, and red-hot mead. You had better get the palace girls to work, making the honey-cakes and ambrosia, and I’ll start the lads heating up the red-hot mead.”

  Off he bustled to set about this. The queen looked after him anxiously. She thought it was much too soon to begin arranging for such celebrations. And she knew a thing that would have made King Corodil furious if he had known it too: Prince Coriander had gone off to consult his friends the nixie girls who live in the sink. He thought they might have useful advice to offer about how to deal with kelpies, for nixies and kelpies both live in the water, and, indeed, when the kelpies can’t think of any other harm to do, and if the tides are right, they sometimes climb out of the dishwasher and give the nixies a great deal of trouble.

  Prince Coriander found his friends laughing and dancing and plaiting their golden hair in the long winding ribbon of water that comes down from the tap into the kitchen sink. The nixies are green, with golden eyes and hair, and they have beautiful voices and fun-loving natures.

  “There you are, prince!” they called, laughing and splashing. “Come and play with us! Come and sing with us!”

  There were five of them, sisters: Waterslenda, Watersleep, Watersmoon, Waterswit and Watersweet. They were all very fond of the prince, but Waterslenda loved him best, for he had rescued her from the trolls in the deep-freeze.

  “I can’t play with you today, dear friends,” he said, “for I have promised to try and get back my mother’s ring, which lies at the bottom of the dishwasher.”

  At this the sisters looked very grave.

  “You will be in horrible danger! If the kelpies catch you, they will munch you up like a sardine! The ring has been there such a long time—why not leave it?”

  “My mother misses it. It is a magic ring, which prevents her from feeling any aches or pains. And, now she is growing older, she needs it more.”

  The nixies never feel any aches or pains, so they found this hard to understand.

  But Waterslenda said, “Well, if you must go, you must. You will have to wait until low tide, for you can’t get into the dishwasher except at low tide.”

  “How do I get in then?”

  “Climb or jump up to the top, and press the red button. Then the side of the dishwasher will open.”

  “What must I do next?”

  “Climb inside. Mind you take a rowan twig with you! That will stop the kelpies from smelling you. At low tide they are all down out of sight, lurking in the Black Pot Pipe.”

  “What is the Black Pot Pipe?”

  “That’s where the kelpies lurk at low tide,” said Waterswit rather crossly. “Really, prince, you are very slow!”

  “Then,” went on Watersleep, “you must climb down through the prongs of the dishwasher. Mind you do not fall! It is a giddy and dangerous height. You had better tie a rope round your waist and fasten one end of it to the prongs up at the top.”

  This sounded like excellent advice to the prince, who resolved to get a long rope made of human hair.

  “The kelpies sleep very lightly. The softest sound will wake them.”

  “Will they come out at low tide?”

  “Oh yes, they may. But what they can also do is switch on the dishwasher, so that the tide may come flooding in. Are you a good swimmer, prince?”

  “Middling,” said the prince, who could not swim very well, and was beginning to look more and more discouraged.

  “Well, if you are only middling, you had best wear a life jacket, for the water may come flooding in faster than I can say these words.”

  Rope, life jacket, wrote the prince on his tablets.

  “What if the kelpies come after me?” he asked.

  “If they do, you are probably doomed—unless you can stab each kelpie with a red-hot wimble.”

  “A wimble? What is a wimble?”

  “Really, you are ignorant! A gimlet—an awl—a corkscrew.”

  Prince Coriander sighed. “I can’t very well carry a red-hot corkscrew with me into the dishwasher. It would have cooled off before I ever climbed down to the bottom. Isn’t there anything else I can do?”

  “Yes,” said Watersweet. “You can break the kelpies’ pearl bowl.”

  “Pearl bowl?”

  “It is their greatest treasure. At spring tides they drink salt wine out of it. Queen Thetis gave it to their great-grandfather.”

  “Where do they keep the pearl bowl?”

  “Down at the bottom.”

  Something to smash pearl bowl, wrote Coriander on his tablets. Then he thanked the sisters kindly, bade them goodbye, and left them to their dancing.

  “You should have told him not to take any piece of the pearl bowl away with him,” pointed out Watersmoon.

  “The prince is a gentleman. He would never steal anything, even a piece of the kelpies’ bowl,” said Waterslenda indignantly.

  “You think too much of that boy!” scolded her sisters. “He is extremely ignorant, he can hardly swim, and he isn’t even cold-blooded. Put him out of your mind. A nixie can’t possibly marry an elf.”

  “But I love him!” sighed Waterslenda.

  Meanwhile Prince Coriander supplied himself with a long, long rope, a small hammer, a large piece of cork, which he strapped to his chest, and a bunch of rowan twigs, which he stuck in his hair.

  Thus equipped, he sprang to the top of the dishwasher and pressed the red button.

  Tide was at its lowest, and the whole side of the dishwasher slowly leaned outwards, showing a forest of white hooks and racks inside, arranged in layers, going right the way down to the bottom, which was dark and green and damp. A channel led to the Black Pot Pipe. Far, far down, Prince Coriander could see something white and gleaming and circular. That must be the kelpie’s pearl bowl, he thought. And inside that, he could see something that shone even brighter—a tiny twinkle of gold.

  That must be my dear mother’s magic ring, he thought.

  The height made him dizzy. But he set his teeth, and tied one end of his rope firmly to one of the topmost prongs, and then began doggedly climbing down, hand over hand, paying out the rope as he went, sometimes twisting a length of it round a prong, letting himself carefully down from one rack to another.

  It was a long, slow climb. Oh, if only the kelpies don’t hear me, he thought. He tried to be as quiet as a cloud. And he wondered how long it would be before the tide began coming in again.

  It was hot and damp and steamy and silent inside the dishwasher. And it felt very dangerous indeed—even more dangerous than it had in the trolls’ lair, or the Utility Desert, or the cellar where the Furnace dragon lived.

  But at last Prince Coriander was down on the bottom rack of all, and not far away he saw the beautiful pearl bowl of the kelpies, standing right way up. It was so large that twenty elves could have sat in it, and it shone like the full moon. It had been carved out of a single pearl.

  In the middle lay Queen Corasin’s ring.

  Prince Coriander took off his shoes, and, in his sock-feet, stepped delicately into the bowl. He tiptoed over the shining, slippery surface, and grabbed the ring, which he pushed on to his
finger.

  As he did so, he was horrified to hear a deep, deep groan. That was one of the kelpies waking from sleep. Then he heard a wild watery laugh. That was another kelpie waking. Then, in a chorus, all the kelpies began laughing and whistling and wailing until the sound was louder than ten gales at sea, all blowing at the same time.

  Prince Coriander leapt for the side of the pearl bowl. But, in his sock-feet, he slipped, and fell headlong. He already had in his hand the hammer which he had pulled out of his pocket; the hammer hit the pearl bowl and smashed it into fifty pieces. Prince Coriander fell through, right down to the bottom of the dishwasher, right beside the entrance to the Black Pot Pipe.

  And, coming out of the Black Pot Pipe, he saw the dreadful whiskery face, and the huge staring eyes, and the horns, and gaping mouth, and sharklike teeth of a kelpie. Behind the first kelpie were others—two, ten, twenty, fifty.

  “Mercy on me!” gasped the prince. Luckily the kelpies are slow; they passed right by him. And luckily also the rope was still tied to his waist, and the upper end of the rope still firmly fastened above; the prince began pulling himself up with frantic speed, hand over hand, clutching the rope with his hands, and with his feet and legs crossed, as sailors do, and he thanked the stars that he had spent a year at sea and knew how to climb ropes.

  At first the kelpies were too startled by the sight of their broken bowl to pay attention to anything else. They did not notice Prince Coriander in the darkness above their heads, climbing, climbing up his rope.

  “Our bowl, our bowl, our beautiful bowl! How can it have broken? It was not very old, only a thousand years. Can a stone have fallen on to it?”

  They began trundling about in the bottom of the dishwasher, picking up the pearly fragments and trying to fit them together.

  But then, as bad luck would have it, one kelpie found the hammer which had shot from the prince’s hand as he fell.