Yes. A knave. The fourth child, the other sister, was the family villain, the Knave of Taking Things.
“What are you doing up there?” called the King of Opening Things.
“What do you mean, what am I doing up here?” the Knave of Taking Things called. “This is where you sent me!”
She couldn’t be a king, you see, because a king shouldn’t take things. A king ought to give. So her family had made her a knave, and when even that punishment wasn’t enough to make her stop taking things, they sent her away, to a place surrounded by so much water, she couldn’t reach any of the other islands in the kingdom. They said they’d send someone to look after her so she wouldn’t be alone and wouldn’t burn herself making soup. But then it rained too much, and no one came. So the Knave of Taking Things was alone for a long time.
But she had learned her lesson! She learned not to take things. As soon as she looked out the window and saw her brothers and sister, she called down and she promised.
“Come and get me,” she begged. “Please! I’m ready to come home. I won’t cause any more trouble. I won’t be a villain anymore.”
The three kings looked up at the castle window. “You really promise?” shouted the King of Opening Things.
“I do promise!” the knave shouted. “I promise never to take anything: never, never, never again!”
They looked at her with hard faces so she would understand how serious this was. “You’ll have to pinkie-swear when we reach you,” the King of Finding Things called back.
The knave promised that too, and down on the ground, the three kings began to make a plan.
The big gate door to the castle was easy: the King of Opening Things took care of that. Inside, they found a staircase leading up, but half the stairs were broken. On the bottom step, the King of Finding Things found an envelope sitting on top of a coil of rope. The envelope said, Read me if you want to rescue the knave. She opened the envelope and took out a note. The stairs are broken, it said. To get up to the tower, you will need to climb, but this is the only rope and it has a spell on it so that it cannot be knotted.
The King of Tying Things picked up the rope and started tying knots in it. But the note’s message was true: none of the knots would stay. They untied themselves right away. It looked like a snake uncurling.
But the King of Tying Things had tricks for ropes like this. He had a sailor’s tool that he could use to weave rope together if he wanted to tie something without a knot, and that’s what he did. He wove the rope into a loop without a beginning or end, a loop he knew was stronger than any knot there was, a loop strong enough to bind monsters. But that day, the King of Tying things used it like a lasso, so that as they climbed, each time they reached a missing stair, he threw the rope around a piece of the banister beside the next part that was solid, and they all pulled themselves up that way.
When they reached the top, they found a door. “Are you there?” they called to their sister.
“Yes, I’m here!” she shouted. “The door is locked!”
But they already knew that, because the King of Finding Things had found another envelope propped up next to a Christmas cake on a table by the door. The door is locked, it said. The key is the prize in this cake, but you have only one chance to cut a piece and find it.
That made the three kings laugh, because every time there was a holiday and a cake with a prize, of course you knew who got it. The King of Finding Things had three false teeth made from pearls because she’d broken three of her own on all sorts of cake prizes: glass rubies and sixpences from England and tiny charm-bracelet bicycles. So she stepped forward, picked up the knife next to the plate, took a long, thoughtful look at the cake, and cut a triangle. She lifted the piece out and took a careful bite. She chewed, then reached into her mouth and took out a little package wrapped in wax paper. Inside the wax paper was a key, and she handed it to the King of Opening Things.
Her brother put the key in the lock. It took some jiggling, because it had been locked for a long time, but nothing that opened and closed could withstand the King of Opening Things. At last the door swung open, and the fourth sibling came running out and into the kings’ arms.
“We love you and we missed you,” they said. “We missed you so much!”
“I missed you!” she said, and, “I love you, too.” And the Knave of Taking Things cried a little bit, because she had been a little bit afraid all that time while she’d been alone. Just a little bit. But then she was all right.
The knave made the pinkie oath she’d promised she would. Then they ate the rest of the cake, because they were all very hungry, and after that, they climbed back down the broken stairs and through the garden maze and back to their boat.
From then on, the Knave of Taking Things stayed home safely, the way she was supposed to, because she knew if she did, then one day, when she was grown up enough and when she had earned it, she might
