Free The New Kid at School by Kate McMullan

Chapter I
    Rnock! Knock!
    “Who’s there?” Fergus bellowed from inside the hovel.
    “A poor minstrel!” came a voice from out in the blizzard.
    “A poor minstrel who?” Fergus called.
    “Please! I am freezing!” cried the minstrel. “This is no time for a joke!”
    “Pity!” Fergus yelled. “There’s nothing I like better than a good knock-knock!”
    He yanked open the door. There stood a snow-covered man with a lute and a pack slung over his shoulder. Icicles hung from his nose and ears. His lips were blue from the cold.
    “Be gone, varlet!” Fergus shouted through his dirty yellow beard. “There is no room here!”
    Fergus spoke the truth. His whole hovel was but one cramped room, which he shared with his wife, Molwena, and their thirteen sons.
    Twelve of these sons were big, beefy lads with greasy yellow hair like their father’s. They scowled out the door at the minstrel, shouting, “Be gone! Be gone!”
    But the third-eldest son, Wiglaf, was different from his brothers. He was small for his age. He had hair the color of carrots. And he could not bear to see any creature suffer.
    When Fergus reached out to slam the door in the shivering minstrel’s face, Wiglaf grabbed his arm.

    “Wait, Father!” he said. “Could not the minstrel sleep in the pigsty?”
    “I sing songs and tell fortunes,” the minstrel offered.
    “Songs? Fortunes?” Fergus growled. “Pig droppings!”
    “I also chop wood, shovel snow, slop pigs, rake dung, scrub floors, and wash dishes,” the minstrel added quickly.
    “Oh, but we have Wiglaf to do all that,” Molwena told him.
    “Please!” the minstrel begged through his chattering teeth. “There must be something I can do in return for a roof over my head.”
    Fergus scratched his beard and tried to think.
    “He might kill rats for us, Fergus,” Molwena suggested. “Wiglaf won’t do that.”
    “Wiglaf feels sorry for the rats,” one of the younger brothers told the minstrel.
    “Wiglaf won’t squish a cockroach,” another brother tattled. “He won’t even swat a fly.”
    “Wiggie never wants to kill anything,” complained a third. “I was pulling the legs off a spider once, and—”
    “I have it!” Fergus bellowed suddenly. “The minstrel can kill rats to earn his keep!” He grinned. “Show him to the sty, Wiglaf!”
    So Wiglaf did just that. And later on he took a bowl of Molwena’s cabbage soup out to the minstrel for his supper.
    “Ah! Hot soup to warm my cold bones!” The minstrel took a sip. “Gaaach!” he cried, and spat it out.
    “It is foul-tasting at first,” Wiglaf admitted. “But you’ll get used to it.”
    “I must or I shall starve,” the minstrel said. “Talk to me, lad, while I try to get it down.” Then he held his nose and jammed a spoonful into his mouth.
    “You are lucky to bed out here with the pigs,” Wiglaf told him. “The sty smells far better than our hovel, for my father believes that bathing causes madness. And Daisy, here”—he patted the head of a plump young pig sitting next to him—“she is my best friend. And far better company than my brothers. They only like to fight and bloody each other’s noses.”
    Wiglaf rubbed his own nose. It was still tender from one of his brother’s fists.
    “They gang up on me something awful,” he added. “Then they call me a blister and a runt because I will not fight back. I know it is foolish,” he went on, “but sometimes I dream that one day I will become a mighty hero. Would not that surprise my brothers!”
    “No doubt it would,” the minstrel said. He jammed one last spoonful of soup into his mouth. Then he burped. “Ah! That’s better. Now, my boy, I know some tales of mighty heroes. Would you care to hear one?”
    “I would, indeed!” Wiglaf exclaimed.
    No one had ever told Wiglaf a tale before. Oh, Molwena sometimes told him what she would do to him if he did not wash the dishes. And Fergus often told him how he was no use at all in the cabbage