“Aaah!”
“Run away!”
They ran pell-mell from the exploding fireworks. The monkey lit firecracker after firecracker to feed the chaos, throwing them wherever the boys clumped together.
When it finally grew quiet and Elliott sat down, exhausted, the greatest tragedy of the night occurred. A figure suddenly appeared next to him.
“Hm?”
When he looked up, he saw the chief lady-in-waiting.
“Your Highness, it seems that all my scolding the other day simply went in one ear and out the other.”
“Uh, no...” Elliott mumbled.
“Shall we discuss this in your office? Or perhaps you’d prefer to get down on your knees and apologize to the night workers in the front hallway?”
“In my office, please...”
“That was awful...” Elliott whimpered.
After the chief lady-in-waiting gave him the tongue-lashing of his life, Elliott castigated his own guys for their ill-conceived plan, then dragged himself back to his room. He was an emotional wreck, and he just wanted to pass out—to collapse into bed without another thought. He took his coat off in the living room and opened the door to the bedroom with every intention of falling into bed with his shirt still on. Unfortunately, that was when the final tragedy of the night came for him.
When Elliott opened the door, the monkey was there.
“Huh?”
No doubt about it; there was a monkey in his bedroom. It looked at him, equally as shocked to see Elliott as Elliott was to see him.
“Huh? You! Wait! What’s that?!”
The monkey was holding a torch. It threw it at Elliott and dashed past him.
Elliott flinched. “Damn it! Guards! We have a monkey arsonist!”
Elliott wasn’t sure that the words coming out of his mouth made sense, but it was the only thing he could imagine a monkey would do with a lit torch.
“Curse you, Rachel,” Elliott bellowed. There was only one white monkey in the palace, and it was Rachel’s pet. “You’re turning to arson now?!”
Elliott stomped out the little monkey-sized torch, then hurriedly looked around to see what had caught fire. He discovered that the monkey hadn’t torched any of the furniture. In fact, nothing was ablaze, so burning his room hadn’t been the goal. He did see some things that hadn’t been there before, however.
“What’s this?”
As Elliott entered the bedroom, he saw pots spread out across the floor—roughly ten of them. There were boards on the floor with piles of pine oil and sawdust on them, and the pots were sitting on top of those. The monkey had been lighting those piles. Inside the pots were what seemed to be corn kernels and oil.
Elliott didn’t know what popcorn was. Before he could act—although, even if he’d tried dousing the flames immediately, it wouldn’t have been easy—the first kernels began to pop.
Pop!
“Huh? What?!”
That single pop echoed and then spread rapidly.
Po-po-po-po-po-po-po-po-pop!
Unidentified white puffs flew all over. In short order, popcorn was shooting up and then raining down like hail, violently striking Elliott from all directions. The fragrant scent of oil spread through the room.
“Ow! That’s hot! What’s happening?!”
The guards rushed to the scene, but they couldn’t do anything either. They were just as unfamiliar with popcorn as Elliott was, so they didn’t know if it was safe to suddenly pour water on it.
The number of white puffs continued multiplying as the chief lady-in-waiting came, despite no one calling for her, and snapped at Elliott. By the time the explosions had finally subsided, Elliott’s room was littered with little white puffs of corn as far as the eye could see.
An exhausted Wolanski was walking down a hallway near the rear gardens as he headed home. Along the way, he stopped to rest on a short set of stairs in the hall.
“Whew... I’m beat.”
He felt especially tired today. He hadn’t expected Miss Rachel to strike back with fireworks of her own. Had she had them with her from the beginning? What a formidable young lady.
“If I have to be run ragged by a young lady, I’d be much happier if she were flat.”
Rachel was the polar opposite of that. She was also tall and beautiful, without a hint of cuteness about her.
“They both have the same abundant natural beauty, but Miss Margaret really is more my type. Mm-hmm.”
Having come to this conclusion, Wolanski happened to look down the hall. There was the monkey. He was carrying a little basket on his back and seemed to be just passing by.
If I recall, the little scamp’s name is...
“Henry?”
He’s Miss Rachel’s pet, isn’t he?
“Ook!”
The monkey vigorously shook his head, but it was hard to imagine there were two monkeys like him in the palace. Wolanski wasn’t sure why the little simian was so stubbornly denying it, but it didn’t matter. Unlike His Highness, Wolanski wasn’t going to bully an animal.
“I don’t really mind if you want to lurk around. Just don’t pull any funny tricks, okay?”
Wolanski didn’t know if Henry understood, but he figured he should caution him anyway. Obviously, Wolanski had no way of knowing that the monkey was on his way back from making a huge mess of Elliott’s room.
“Hmm?”
It seemed pets took an interest in people who weren’t interested in them, because the next thing Wolanski knew, Henry had come over and was looking up at him. Henry set his basket down and pulled an orange out of it. He offered it to Wolanski.
“Ook.”
“You’re giving me this? You’re a good little guy.”
Henry gave Wolanski the orange and sat down next to him. He looked up at Wolanski as if saying, “If you need someone to talk to, I’m all ears.”
“I see. You’re actually pretty cute up close like this.”
Wolanski didn’t know if the monkey understood him, but he was in the mood to vent, so he started unloading his thoughts on Henry.
“And that’s how it is. I’m doing the best I can, but nothing’s come of it.”
Whether he understood Wolanski or not, Henry nodded sagely. When Wolanski paused for a moment, Henry made a sign saying that he’d be a moment and disappeared. He returned with a miniature bottle of whiskey and shot glasses.
“Ook!”
He set the two glasses side by side, skillfully pouring the amber liquor into them, and offered one to Wolanski.
“Ook!”
“Where did you get this?”
“Ook-ook!”
“What? ‘From your master’? ‘You’re the only one she’ll get mad at, so don’t sweat it’? Henry, buddy, you’re so manly...”
Touched, Wolanski gratefully accepted, clinking his glass against Henry’s.
Being a monkey, Henry didn’t actually drink alcohol, but having the drinks there made it feel as if they were close friends talking at a bar. Henry had good timing, and even as he nodded along to Wolanski’s story, he always kept the man’s drink topped off.