The villagers, the hermits, the travelers, the goblins, the elephant, Walter, the penguins, and what was left of the wood sprites were gathered in front of the girls on the hills.

“Is your seat as cold as mine?” Rosa called over to Irving.  A distinct chill in the air was keeping the ice mounds frozen.

“Y…Y…Yes!  What do you suppose these golden apples are for?”

CRUNCH!

“They’re not that bad.  This topping is a caramel.

“Here are the rules to this contest,” King Robin said, holding up an ancient looking parchment he had been given by the Laplander mayor.  “The contestants for the hands of yon fair maidens are to ride up these hills and receive a golden apple bestowed from said maidens for their efforts.  A contestant keeps going until he fails to receive an apple.”  The King squinted at a line of the parchment.  “Or until he achieves a clear plurality of apples or the apples are all bestowed.  Well, that makes sense,” he said.  “When all the apples are given out, the brave contestant with the most apples gets to marry the fair maiden of his choice.  Then the next place winner, and so forth, until the supply of fair maidens is depleted.  Fair maidens are free to assist where their hearts so lead them.  Then it goes on.  This contest is not valid in Rhode Is…  Well, that part’s not important here.”

“Oops!” said Rosa, as she hid the partially eaten apple behind the other two.

“To make this contest fair and unbiased, we’ll draw straws…and then compete in order of rank.  I am the only king here, aren’t I?”

“No,” said Ekaraj.

“Are you competing?” asked Robin.  “Because I don’t mind telling you that I don’t think those hills are strong enough for your weight.”

Without answering, Ekaraj walked over to Irving’s mound, reached up with his trunk, and sucked her three apples off her lap.  “Oww!” he groaned, as he overtaxed his swollen trunk.

“Foul!” called the Marquis.  “The rules say that the contestant must ride up the hills.”

The Prince stopped in the middle of a negotiation to purchase a reindeer, and asked, “Is there any restriction in there about flying?”

The villager he was negotiating with grabbed the Prince’s purse, and said, “Too late!”, then handed him a rope attached to decrepit looking creature with antlers and a red nose.

“Here, let me toss those back up for you,” said the notary public, as he took the golden apples from the ailing elephant.

“Hey.” called out Irving, as she caught them.  “These aren’t the apples.  You tossed me back shiny rocks.”

“Really?” said the penguins.  “What do they look like?”

“They can’t be,” responded the notary.  “I have a signed document that says they’re apples.”

“This looks interesting,” said Walter, as he plucked three apples from the back pocket of the notary public’s tunic.  “And it tastes like caramel.”

“Give me those,” said Randolph.  And he tossed two and a half golden apples back to Irving.

 “Well,” said the King, as he rolled up the parchment and handed it back to the Mayor.  “I believe I’m up first.”  He put two fingers to his lips and gave a sharp whistle.  “Here, Charger!”  A snowy white horse trotted down the path and stopped beside him.

Some villagers, standing at an angle that caused the horse to blend in with a snow bank, muttered, “Blimey!  It’s invisible.”  “Bring the torches,” one of them shouted.  “At last we have a monster.”

As the rest of the contestants lined up behind the King, Ekaraj and Llywarch sought shelter under a tree behind them, a little over sixty feet away from the mounds.

“Never fear, Rosa, my love.  Here I come to sweep you clean off your feet, and I’ll spare no pains treating you as royally as you deserve.”

“What did he say?” Rosa asked.

“He said,” Chris interpreted, “something to you about sweeping and cleaning, that you deserve treatment, and then there were comments about royal and pain.”

“Oh, he did, did he?”

As Robin and Charger started the slippery climb up the ice hill, Rosa beaned him with a golden apple.  It bounced of Robin, then slammed the horse in the back of the head, before landing in the snow.

“Are you going to eat that?” Walter asked, as Randolph picked up the apple and tossed it back to Rosa.

“Blast it!” said Robin, as he and Buck untangled themselves from the bottom of the hill.  “I get a do-over.”

The Mayor opened the parchment.  “It says nothing in here about do-overs.”

“But she hit me with an apple.”

There was a general muttering among the villagers.  “We feel that falls under the category of the fair maiden being free to assist where her heart so leads her,” the Mayor decreed.

“My turn,” said the Prince, as he led the reindeer over to the foot of Irving’s hill.  “Er…How’s your aim,” he asked her.

The reindeer took off like a rocket, its nose creating a jagged red streak as it bucked across the Lapland sky.  The Prince was hanging on for dear life to the antlers, as he bounced along its back.

While everyone watched the flight, Rosa secretly took another bite of apple.

“One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three…” said the watchers.  The Prince fell off before the count of four.

“It would be a great sport,” Ekaraj told Llywarch, “to see if a person could hold on until the count of eight.  And then they sent in clowns to rescue him when he fell off.”

Llywarch added, “And after that they could wrestle Rex.”

“No fair,” shouted the other contestants.  “No flying.”

“That was your turn,” Robin said, from the end of the line.  “There’re no do-overs.”

“I don’t want one,” said the Prince, as he soothed his bottom in a pile of snow.

The Duke decided not to ride the reindeer he had purchased and went charging up Rosa’s hill on foot.  He was half way when he slipped; slid around the side, and into a nearby stream.

The wood sprites applauded enthusiastically.

“But he wasn’t riding,” the Indian Chief complained.

“A ruling,” declared the Mayor.  “Do to shortages of animals.  We will accept foot contestants, but flying is still prohibited.”  One of the villagers whispered in his ear.  “Oh, yes,” he continued.  “Monsters do not qualify as participants – in either the riding or foot categories.  That should keep out the riff-raft,” he added.

In the line to make an attempt at the hills, Chris found that a ship’s first mate was not only behind a marquis, a count, a knight, and an Indian chief in order of precedence; he was also behind a notary public, a mayor, and a member of the local water district.  At least Chevy got in line behind him.

The contestants seemed to be evenly divided between competing for Rosa and competing for Irving.  Brunettes were much admired in the blonde abundant north.

The sun rose higher and the chill wore off.  The hills started to melt, but no one not sitting in the cold run-off noticed.

“I…I think I’d be willing to marry a monster to get off this hill,” Rosa told Irving.  Irving gritted her teeth and held out for Chevy.

The Marquis clomped up to the foot of Irving’s hill, with snow clinging to his heels.  “What’s he wearing on his feet?” the crowd wondered.  He slowly raised one foot and stamped it on the ice.  The lumps of snow fell away revealing that he had tied bone fishhooks all around his shoes.  They worked!  He was able to stand nearly perpendicular to the slope without slipping.  He stamped the other foot a few feet above the first one.

“Blimey!  I bet that would hurt in stocking feet,” said Gary, the goblin.

In no time at all, the Marquis was half way to Irving.  Then the trouble started.

“I think he’s getting a nose bleed,” said one of the villagers.

The drops of blood combined with the melting ice and the hooks started slipping.  Desperately, the Marquis stamped harder.  There was a crack in the ice starting from the base clear to where Irving was sitting.  “Whoa,” she said, as she struggled to maintain her balance with one foot on either side of the opening crevice.

“Are you talking to Charger,” her father asked.  “Because I don’t think he was moving.”

The Marquis was not as fortunate as Irving.  He pitched headlong into the opening, which immediately re-closed and, when the sun passed behind a cloud, quickly froze back over.  Only one foot remained sticking out.  Dangling from one of the hooks was a frightened worm.

“Dibs!” cried Walter.

The Count bought the red-nosed reindeer from the Prince for pennies on the pound and weighed him down with reindeer droppings.  “Road apples, we call them,” said the farmer who supplied them in gunny sacks.  The sacks were tied on the back of the reindeer until, with the Count added, the animal was barely floating an inch off the ground.

“Be sure to move your legs like you’re walking,” the Count leaned forward and whispered in his ear.  He slipped him a carrot to ensure his cooperation.  “There’s plenty more where that came from.”  He patted his pocket.

“Ooh!” came the admiration from the crowd, as it appeared to them that the reindeer was walking steadily up hill towards Rosa.  No one noticed the gradual tearing of the bottom sack, with its contents escaping to lighten the load.

Suddenly, just as the Count was reaching down to grab the one remaining uneaten apple from Rosa’s lap, the reindeer shot into the sky.  The force of the thrust completed opening the tear, and Rosa was showered in reindeer manure, while the Count was bucked off in about two seconds.

“You’re right,” Llywarch told Ekaraj.  “It would be better with clowns.”

As Rosa and the manure both sat steaming, every contestant, except Chris, moved over to the line in front of Irving.

“Gang way!” came a voice for the back of the crowd.

The penguins could be heard singing about French hens, turtle-doves, and partridges, as forward they rushed.  The knight had hired them to carry him up Irving’s hill.  He was wearing a full suit of armor borrowed from the castle, and he was spread out among the penguins’s upstretched wings to equalize his weight.

But he was still heavy.  Two-thirds of the way uphill, the penguins sat down to rest, leaving the knight grasping at the apples just beyond his reach.  The metal of the suit acted like runners on the ice, and he started to slide.

“Whoopee!” cried the penguins, as they carried the poor, beleaguered knight up the hill and rode him down several more times before the Mayor put a stop to it, insisted that each time constituted a new and unauthorized attempt by the contestant.

“Now he has to miss several turns,” demanded the other contestants.

A tall shadow fell on the ground.  The crowd looked up.

“It’s a monster,” one of them shouted.  “Bring the torches.”

Instead it was the Indian Chief on stilts high enough to block the sun.  “I made them with my tomahawk.  They’re just the right height to reach the apples,” he added.  It was a little hard to understand him, with that toothpick in his mouth.

He walked toward Irving, carefully staying upwind of Rosa.  But when he got there, there was a problem.  The hill had melted, and he was about four feet too high, causing him to walk completely over Irving, and have to turn around.

“No fair,” the contestants declared.  “Turning around is a do-over.”

For his own turn, the notary public attempted a legal maneuver.  He produce a document declaring that the hills were zoning violations and demanded that they be demolished, while he waited beside them to pick up the apples.

There was a general muttering among the crowd, and the penguins threw him into the stream.

The Mayor and the water board representative both attempted to ski to Irving.  They started from an adjacent slope, but hit a bump in the ice near the bottom - and they were both launched clear over her.  The Mayor ending up in a tree, and the board member upside down in a snow bank

“If you combined that with the knight luge, you have the start of a Winter Olympics,” Ekaraj suggested.

Hombre was kind enough to loan Harley to Chris to ride on.  “Would you like to borrow my helmet?” he asked, offering Colleen’s pot to him.

“No,” said Chris.  “If I wore that, Rosa would make fun of me.”

“I’ll make fun of you anyway,” retorted Rosa, ignoring the fact that she could understand him.

Harley’s slow, but steady pace brought Chris right to the top of Rosa’s hill.

“This is the first time I couldn’t smell you coming,” sniffed Rosa, as she sat in her pile of manure

“Just give me the apples,” demanded Chris, as he sat there with his knees up to his chin.

Embarrassed, Rosa lifted her scarf and showed Chris three cores.  “I was hungry,” she offered as an excuse.

Chevy had no problem being declared the winner of the contest with two and a half apples.  By the time it was his turn, Irving’s hill had melted to the point where he could walk up to it and, by stepping on the Marquis’s foot, reach nearly to her lap.  Invoking the maidenly help rule, Irving tossed them to him one at a time.

“That’s no fair,” cried the Prince.  “Why does royalty always have to go first?”

“Nothing in the rules about it,” declared the Mayor, after someone set his broken leg.  “Chevy’s the winner.”

“And I’m second place, aren’t I?” asked Chris, showing his collection of cores.

“I’m afraid not,” replied the Mayor, holding up the parchment.  “It says nothing about apple parts.  I declare this contest over,” he said, on crutches.

“Wait a minute,” said the royals.  “We still want wives.”

“Wait a minute,” said the village women.  ”We still have spinster daughters.”

“I’m not a spinster,” insisted one of the girls.  “I’m a librarian.”

“But the hills are melted and we only have two apples,” said the Mayor.  “Scratch that.  We don’t have any apples,” he added, as Chevy and Irving each threw a core over their shoulder.

“No problem,” said the women.  Using pitchforks, hoes, and shovels, plus one partial burned push broom, they recreated the two hills with snow.  The wood sprites were enlisted to haul in buckets of water to ice them down.

“You call these road apples?” one of the wives asked the farmer who supplied them.  “That’s close enough.  She used a ladder to put her two unmarried daughters on top of each hill and tossed them each a dropping.  “Line up.  Line up.”  And she rounded up the remaining contestants.

It wasn’t really a contest.  The village girls climb up on the hills, one after another, and hit the suitor of their choice with a road apple.”

“Blimey!” complained the Prince, when he was chosen.  “That one wasn’t dry yet.”

“I saw that one coming,” said Ekaraj.

“I wish I could,” said Llywarch.  “Wait a minute!  This is a walnut tree.  That’s my favorite nut.”  And he gathered nuts until his bag was full, making sure the string was knotted tightly before storing it back in his robe.

“I didn’t notice.  I still have blurred vision,” complained the elephant.  “I wish there was something that could fix my eyesight.”

WHOOSH!

There was flash of lightning, a cloud of smoke, and the roar of thunder.  And Ekaraj was fitted with a pair of thick rimmed glasses.

“Those look nice on you,” Gretel told him.  “Plus, they make your ears stick out.

“Really?” said Ekaraj.  “Too bad there aren’t any female elephants around here.  He strutted over to the stream to admire them.

Rosa was there washing reindeer residue off her dress.  “It’s sure hard to keep clothes clean in this wish,” she muttered.

“Fortunately, I have a clogged nose,” Ekaraj reminded her.

The royals, with their fiancées, stood before Llywarch and said, “We wish to be married.”  Then they waited expectantly.

Nothing happen.

“Er…It seems that you haven’t earned a wish,” said Llywarch.

“Too bad,” said the notary public.  “Because I would wish to spend the rest of my life as a public servant.”

WHOOSH!

There was flash of lightning, a cloud of smoke, and the roar of thunder.  The notary public and his fiancee disappeared.

Llywarch held up a walnut.  “It appears that he and his fiancee are married, and he is a slave for hire somewhere in the Sudan.”

“At least she’s married to someone with a steady job,” said her mother.

Gary, the goblin stumbled over another hidden rock.  “Blast!  I wish we had someone that could make shoes.”

WHOOSH!

There was flash of lightning, a cloud of smoke, and the roar of thunder.

“Hi.  My name is Alvin.  I’m an elf shoemaker.”

“All right,” said Gary.

“But Alvin starts with an ‘A’”, said Rosa, who had wandered back from her washing, cold, wet, and bedraggled.

“It’s a shameful family secret,” the elf answered, “but my father never learned to spell.”

“What’s this?” said the Librarian, picking up the book Ekaraj borrowed from the castle library.  She turned to Robin.  “This is checked out to you.  And it’s fourteen years overdue.”

“I’m sorry,” replied her fiance.  “But I’ve been banished for fourteen years and two weeks.”

“You’ll have to pay the fine or we can’t get married.  If I make that exception for you, then I’ll have to make that exception for everybody who’s been banished.”

“The problem now is how do we get married?  Since no one has a wish that can help.  What we need is…”

Suddenly, a stranger appeared.

“Bring the torches,” shouted a villager.  “Finally a monster.”

 “Hello there!  I’m a traveling minister.  My name’s Friar Tuck.”  In one hand he was holding several reindeer chips.  “Someone’s been throwing these.”  In his other hand, he was holding a string of fish.  “I caught these with a shoe I found stuck in a block of ice.”

“So what are you?” asked Walter.  “A chip monk or a fish friar?  Heh…heh….  Ouch!  Who pinched me?”

It was a wonderful ceremony.  At first Robin refused to let Irving and Chevy marry.  “I know other kings allow it, but I think fourteen is too young.”

“I wish you were old enough for the King to let you marry, Princess,” Geowulf commiserated with her.

WHOOSH!

There was flash of lightning, a cloud of smoke, and the roar of thunder; and Irving was nineteen years old, while Chevy was twenty.

*     *     *

“I can’t figure out what kindness that goblin did,” said Rosa.  “But I’m going to miss Chevy.”   The remaining travelers were gathered on the carpet prepared to take off.

“The only thing I can think of is showing us the egress,” Chris admitted.

“The poor king was unable to marry the librarian,” added Gretel.  “It turns out there wasn’t enough money in the entire kingdom to pay that book fine.”

Ekaraj was taking up the space in the center of that carpet that use to belong to Rex and the oxcart, with Rosa, Chris, Llywarch, Hombre, Colleen, Harley, Randolph, Gretel, and the Blarney Stone spread out for balance.  Walter and the penguins were marching toward the Antarctic.  No one noticed that a thread of the carpet got caught on a branch of a tree as it took off.

“Finally, we’re off to England and I can turn in my report.”  Randolph patted his pocket to ensure it was still there.