The Hero's Guide to Being an Outlaw Read Online Free

overwhelmed, not underwhelmed—just whelmed. I was whelmed.”
    Rapunzel shook her head. “Frederic, I hope you realize you can be yourself around me. You don’t have to pretend you’re anything you’re not.”
    “Oh, I’m not pretending,” he said earnestly. “I really am this awkward.”
    “Good,” she said. “Because you and I, we’re . . . friends. And friends should feel comfortable with each other.”

    Fig. 2
FREDERIC, oblivious
    “I do feel comfortable. A little too comfortable, perhaps. I’ll go change out of my pj’s.” He started toward the barn when the sprites burst from the trees in a panic.
    “Helpety! In the woods!” Blink shouted.
    “What is it?” Rapunzel asked, standing up.
    “He’s hurt!” Blink said.
    “Who is?” Rapunzel asked.
    “He said not to get Zel,” Deedle added, glaring at his partner. “Said he’s not hurt bad.”
    “But it is bad!” Blink insisted. “Arrows in his back. Leg in a trap. Can’t walkety!”
    “ Who? ” Frederic asked.
    “Gustav,” both sprites said in unison.

4
A N O UTLAW F EELS N O P AIN
    P rince Gustav had been in worse predicaments. There was, of course, the time he was thrown from a high tower into a thorny bramble (the incident after which Rapunzel famously healed him). And more recently he nearly had the life choked out of him by a ridiculously oversize dungeon keeper (Rapunzel fixed him up after that one, too). So to the long-haired, big-muscled, well-armored Gustav, having a couple of arrows in his shoulder and one leg caught in a steel-jawed bugbear trap felt like something he could deal with on his own. Sure, it hurt worse than the time his brothers had slipped an angry porcupine into his bed, and yes, he was stuck with no way to reach food or water, but he wasn’t really worried. Hey, he was in the wilderness; he figured that eventually some impatient buzzard would assume he was dead already, start sniffing around a little too close, and— boom! —drumsticks! No, this was a situation Gustav felt pretty certain he could handle.
    Until Rapunzel showed up.
    He groaned the moment he saw her rosy-cheeked face appear from behind a gnarled fir tree, the sprites orbiting her like miniature moons.
    “Aw, for crying out loud,” Gustav groused. “I told you little blue traitors not to bring Sister Goldenhair out here.”
    “The sprites did the right thing,” Rapunzel said.
    “We had to tellety Zel,” Blink argued. “You’re dying!”
    “I am not dying!” Gustav snapped. And he immediately winced in pain. “Annoying, know-it-all firefly.”
    Rapunzel ran over to him and examined his wounded leg, which was crunched at the ankle between the steel teeth of a hunter’s trap. “Oh, dear. You look awful.”
    “I know, I know,” Frederic said, panting, as he staggered up and flopped against a tree to catch his breath. “My face always gets red like this when I run. It’ll go back to normal in a half hour or so. Oh! You weren’t talking to me.”
    “Tassels? What the heck are you doing here?” Gustav cried in bewilderment. “And where are your tassels?”
    Frederic joined Rapunzel, crouching down by the fallen prince. “Good day to you, too, Gustav,” he said. “Rapunzel, I assume your tears can take care of this?”
    “Heal the wounds, sure,” she said. “But free his leg?”
    “Pfft!” Gustav scoffed. “What good are those magical tears of yours if you can’t even cry open a bugbear trap?”
    Rapunzel glared at him.
    “Relax, Blondie,” Gustav said. “You know I’m just kiddin’ ya. Look, find me a nice, strong piece of metal, and I’ll pry the thing open myself.”
    She turned to the sprites flitting beside her head. “There’s a crowbar in the stable by the extra horseshoes. Do you two think you could carry it back here?”
    Deedle and Blink bolted away in a blue streak.
    “Now, let’s see about those arrows,” Rapunzel said.
    “What arrows?” Gustav said coolly. He casually reached over his shoulder