Snow White and the Seven Samurai

Chapter 11

Somewhere in the darkness, a rat scuttled.

‘Ah,’ said the Beast, relieved. ‘I was just starting to think I was lost.’

Sis shuddered. It was dark down here; not Hollywood-dark, which is an environment where people are deemed not to be able to see even though the heat from the rows of sodium lamps behind the camera is enough to peel the skin off your nose, but dark as three feet down a long bag. Add the scuttling of offstage rats, and the result was something she didn’t much care for. ‘Are we nearly there yet?’ she quavered.

‘We should be,’ replied the Beast. ‘That rat’s the first hint of the big cellar full of rats bit that comes up just before we stumble through into the castle. Follow me.’

‘Big cellar full of rats?’ Sis echoed. ‘You are joking, aren’t you? Because if you think I’m going anywhere near a cellar full of rats…’

‘Nothing to be afraid of,’ the wicked queen interrupted briskly. ‘They’re just doing their job, same as the rest of us. Just think of them as — oh, I don’t know, what about decor? Or atmosphere. Like raffia-covered Chianti bottles in an Italian restaurant. They’re there to tell you where you are and when the adventure’s likely to begin.’

‘I see. Wouldn’t a simple signpost do just as well?’

‘Wouldn’t be able to see a signpost in the dark. But everybody can understand the significance of a carpet-of-squirming-rodents noise. It’s a convention, like the stylised pictures of men and women on lavatory doors.’

‘I don’t like rats,’ Sis replied sullenly.

‘Good. You aren’t meant to. A secret gateway that leads directly into the very heart of the castle isn’t meant to be fun. It’s all about brooding menace and all your secret phobias suddenly brought to the — Hello, what’s this?’

‘You tell me.’

‘I’m not sure. But it feels oddly like carpet.’

‘Carpet?’

‘Carpet,’ the queen confirmed. ‘Quite definitely. Hey you, Beast, what’s all this in aid of?’

‘Don’t look at me,’ the Beast replied. ‘Not that you would if you had any sense and the lights were on, but…’

‘Don’t drift off-topic. Why’s this tunnel carpeted, like something out of The Hobbit? Have we come the wrong way?’

Because of its unique collection of hideous physical deformities, you could hear the Beast shrug its shoulders. ‘No hobbits in these parts,’ it said. ‘Used to be one or two who had weekend tunnels down here; you know, caved-in old mineshafts they buy up and have all done out in stripped pine and Habitat—

‘You mean Hobbitat, surely,’ Sis muttered.

‘—But they soon got fed up and moved away. Said the TV reception was hell and they couldn’t find anybody that delivered pizzas. Nobody here these days but us storybook types.’

The queen knelt down and groped with her fingertips. ‘Not just carpet,’ she said. ‘Thick, deep, good quality carpet. Might even be Axemonster.’

‘Shouldn’t that be Axminster?’

‘You don’t want to know. Well, if this is what passes for all your secret phobias suddenly made real in this neck of the woods, I can’t say I’m impressed. Unless it’s all sort of post-modern secret phobias stuff; you know, the carpet clashes unbearably with the wallpaper, and the curtains don’t go with the loose covers…’

‘I don’t think so,’ the Beast said. ‘Not even with the subdued lighting effects. It wasn’t a bit like this when I was last here. Or at least,’ it added, ‘I can’t quite recall—’

‘Enough said,’ sighed the queen wearily. ‘It’s just another cock-up in the system. Instead of thickly carpeted with rats, it’s thickly carpeted by rats. Any minute now—’

‘Halt! Who goes there?’

(‘Told you,’ muttered the queen.)

Suddenly the tunnel was filled with blinding light. Up ahead they could see a figure, clearly identifiable by the shape of its ears as rat, despite the fact that the savage back-lighting reduced it to a silhouette. ‘Beast?’ it said. ‘Is that you?’

‘Oh, so he knows you, then,’ breathed Sis, with an edge to her voice you could have shaved with.

‘At least you don’t sound quite so frightened any more,’ the Beast replied.

‘What’s there to be frightened of?’ Sis said. ‘That’s not a rat. That’s just Mickey Mouse’s disreputable younger brother. I’m only afraid of real rats, not unemployed actors in costume.’

‘Excuse me,’ said the wicked queen firmly, ‘but are we going the right way for Beauty’s castle?’

The rat nodded. ‘Follow your nose up the tunnel,’ it said. ‘You can’t miss it. Only, would you mind awfully wiping your feet before you go any further? In fact, if you could just wait there, I’ll put down some newspaper.’

It bustled away, leaving the queen to admit that an obsessively house-proud rat made quite a good secret phobia. When it came back and had finished putting down pages from last week’s colour supplements, it gave the queen a long, hard look.

‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’ it said.

The queen shrugged. ‘Possibly,’ she replied. ‘I used to be something of a public figure around here. Why do you ask?’

‘No reason. Well, carry on. And please — don’t touch anything, will you? I’ve just done a thorough spring clean, and—’

The queen did a double-take. ‘Spring cleaning?’ she demanded.

‘That’s right.’

‘As in “Hang spring cleaning!” and everything that implies?’

The rat twitched its whiskers. ‘Don’t know what you’re getting at,’ it said. ‘And now, if you’ll excuse me.’

The queen nodded, and they carried on up the news-papered passageway, past what seemed like miles of sofas, coffee-tables, Parker Knoll reclining chairs, embroidered footstools and the like. ‘Now I know where we are,’ the queen whispered, as soon as they were out of earshot. ‘This confounded tunnel’s mutated into Wind In The Willows. Which means that where we’re headed for is going to turn out to be Toad Hall.’

‘Oh. Is that bad?’

‘I’m not sure,’ the queen confessed. ‘You see, it won’t be your actual Toad Hall, because of all these horrid random mutations. It’ll have turned into something ostensibly similar but effectively different, just like everything else has round here. And without knowing what that is, I haven’t a clue whether it’ll be good for us or not. See what I’m getting at?’

‘I think so,’ Sis muttered. ‘Look, I don’t know if this is at all important, but when Carl was a kid, he really used to like Wind In The Willows. Well, the cartoon version, anyhow, he never was a great one for books. Not unless they’re the right height for propping up a wobbly computer workstation.’

The tunnel had come to an abrupt end. ‘Which means,’ the wicked queen said, as she groped in the darkness, ‘that somewhere here there’s got to be a trapdoor or something of the like. It’s one of the immutable laws of physics in these parts: mysterious tunnels always come out somewhere important. Causes a hell of a lot of problems for big rabbits, I can tell you.’

‘Here,’ grunted the Beast. ‘I think this may be what you’re…’

The rest of his sentence was cut off as he tumbled sideways into a sudden wash of bright light. The queen scrambled after him, but before Sis could follow, the door slammed shut.

Odd, Sis reflected as she screamed and hammered with her fists against the unyielding panel, that we should have been talking about secret phobias only a moment ago. What you might call a curious coincidence. A trifle bizarre, you might say.

Another thing you might say (and Sis did) was ‘HEEEEEEELP!’ It didn’t seem to do any good, though. It rarely does.

Now then. Calm down. In the immortal words of Lance-Corporal Jones: don’t panic. All you have to do is go back down the tunnel till you meet the nice rats — (Nice rats. Just listen to yourself. You’ve been here way too long…) — And ask them if you can borrow a screwdriver or a big hammer or a couple of sticks of dynamite, and then you can be through here and out the other side in no time at all. This sort of thing happens all the time. People are buried alive every day of the week, and…

‘HEEEEEEELP!’ she repeated hopefully. As a problem-solving technique its main virtue was consistency; it didn’t work but at least it kept on not working, so at least you knew where you stood. Looked like it came down to a choice between staying here and losing weight the sure-fire way, or the nice rats.

Query: down a long, dark tunnel with no visible vegetation or animal life, what do the nice rats find to eat? Maybe not the nice rats.

‘Ah’m.’

In any list of things not to do in a five-foot high tunnel, suddenly jumping six feet in the air must come pretty close to the top. ‘Ouch!’ Sis remarked twice; once when her head bumped against the roof, the second time when she sat down hard on what felt suspiciously like a bone.

‘Sorry. Did I startle you?’

Sis had been intending to say ‘EEEEEEK’ or something along those lines; but the voice sounded so soft, quiet, gentle and terrified that instead she sat up, rubbed her head and said, ‘Yes.’

‘Oh. I hope you didn’t hurt yourself.’

‘What?’ Oh, no, not really. Who are you?’

The voice didn’t say anything for a moment. Then it said, ‘I’d rather not say.’

‘Huh?’

‘Well — only if you promise not to laugh.’

‘What?’

‘People do, you see. Or else they assume I’m taking the mickey. You won’t laugh, will you?’

‘I don’t know,’ Sis replied. ‘Depends on whether it’s funny or not.’

‘All right. My name’s Rumpelstiltskin.’

‘Really? Fair enough.’

‘You’re not laughing,’ Rumpelstiltskin said.

‘Why should I? Listen, compared with some of the stuff I’ve been subjected to since I got stuck in this beastly continuum or whatever it is, your name’s about as funny as the second season of George & Mildred. Do you know a way out of here?’

‘Well, I can recommend the way I’ve just come, if you don’t mind spartan but functional. Nice straight tunnel, nothing fancy, no frills.’

‘Really?’ Sis replied. ‘What about the rats?’

‘Rats?’

‘You didn’t come across a whole load of rats, then?’

Rumpelstiltskin shivered. ‘Certainly not.’

‘Rats in pinnies with carpet sweepers and feather dusters who put down newspaper for you to walk on?’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Rumpelstiltskin replied. ‘Rats don’t do that. You’re thinking of the Beatrix Potter mice, and they live over the other side of the forest, just across from the sewage farm.’

‘No rats,’ Sis repeated. ‘Oh well. I’ve stopped being surprised by things like that now. After you, Mr Rumpelstiltskin. And if you’ve been lying to me and there are rats, I’ll kill you. Got that?’

They turned a corner and hey presto, there the rats weren’t. Instead, there was a door.

‘That’s odd,’ Rumpelstiltskin said, rubbing his battered nose. ‘There wasn’t a door here just now.’

‘I know,’ Sis replied. ‘There were rats. In frilly aprons. Well, aren’t you going to open it?’

‘I don’t know,’ Rumpelstiltskin said thoughtfully. ‘You hear all sorts of things about unexplained doors and stuff in this neighbourhood. There’s supposed to be one in the back of a wardrobe somewhere that’s an absolute menace. You can get into a lot of trouble going through doors.’

‘You can get into a lot more not going through them,’ Sis pointed out. ‘If you don’t believe me, I can arrange a demonstration.’

‘Please try not to be so aggressive,’ the dwarf replied. ‘Really, it never helps in the long run. I’ll open this door if you insist, but don’t blame me if you don’t like what’s on the other side of it.’

‘Oh, get out of the way and let me do it,’ said Sis impatiently. ‘So long as it’s not the rats again, I don’t mind what it…’

Mistake.

‘Oh marvellous,’ moaned the wicked queen. ‘That just about wraps it up as far as I’m concerned. Now what do we do?’

The Beast shrugged its asymmetrical shoulders. ‘Depends,’ he said. ‘If she had any luggage, we could sell it.’

The wicked queen tried the panel again, but it wouldn’t budge. ‘Nothing for it,’ she sighed. ‘We’ll have to get out of the castle, go round to the entrance of the tunnel and go back in to look for her. What a nuisance.’

The Beast clicked its tongue. ‘Actually,’ it said, ‘that might not be possible. You see, I have an idea the tunnel isn’t there any more.’

‘Oh? What makes you say that?’

By way of reply, the Beast banged its fist against the panel. ‘Solid,’ he pointed out. ‘Therefore, no tunnel. Not in this version of the story, anyway.’

The queen closed her eyes and counted to ten. ‘I’ve had about enough of this,’ she said. ‘This domain was never exactly what you’d call stable at the best of times, but at least you used to be able to walk through a door without it turning into a wall the moment your back’s turned. It’s intolerable. Think of going to the lavatory, for instance.’

‘Odd you should mention that,’ mumbled the Beast, shuffling its feet uncomfortably. ‘Would you excuse me for just a moment? Only—’

‘Stay right where you are,’ the queen snapped. ‘You’ll just have to wait.’

‘Sorry, I don’t think that’s going to be possible. I’ll be right back, I promise.’

He scampered off down one of the three dark, gloomy corridors that converged opposite the panelled wall they’d emerged through. For a while the queen kept herself amused by poking and prodding at the corners and edges of the panelling; nothing happened. As she did so, it occurred to her that she’d never before met anybody in the domain who’d had to interrupt the adventure to sneak off and have a pee. That sort of thing doesn’t happen in narrative, ever; it’s in the Rules. Why, then, should the Beast be taken short at what was obviously a crucial moment in the story? Good question.

He was gone an awfully long time.

Eventually she got tired of waiting and set off to find him. That was easier said than done; the corridors wound on and on, the way that only corridors in an interior that has no exterior can do. At last, just as she was cursing herself for not marking her way with bits of torn-up paper or a thread or something, she came across a rather disagreeable sight.

On the floor there was a small puddle; but that wasn’t the bad part. What the queen really didn’t like the look of were the chunks of plaster gouged out of the wall, the splashes of blood, the stray bits of Beast fur scattered in all directions, the scorch-marks and the words chalked on the wall just above the puddle. They read:

Well. These things happen.

She walked carefully round the puddle and carried on up the corridor. As well as having a missing girl to find and a Beast to avenge, she was by now hopelessly lost in a building that could be a castle, Toad Hall or pretty well anything that has long winding corridors with no doors in them and no lighting apart from the occasional flickering torch set in a sconce high up on the wall. You could have played Doom in there for hours, assuming you survived that long.

Arguably, the wicked queen muttered to herself, that’s precisely what I am doing. What fun.

She wandered around for another ten minutes or so, but all she found were more corridors. They were, she noticed, all carefully swept and dusted and free of cobwebs; and that set her thinking. Housework — castlework, even — doesn’t do itself. Therefore — No sooner had she formulated the thought than she heard in the distance the sound of somebody humming, off-key. She ducked behind a pillar and waited.

Not long afterwards, someone came. It was a cosy-looking middle-aged woman in an apron, wheeling one of those big housekeeping trolleys you see in hotels. Every fifteen yards or so she’d stop, unload a broom or a dustpan and brush or a long-handled feather duster, clean up, put new torches in the sconces, polish the noses of the gargoyles and move on. The tune she was humming was almost but not quite recognisable; it was probably a theme song or an advertising jingle, and she hummed the same bit over and over again.

‘Excuse me,’ said the queen, stepping out from behind her pillar.

‘Gaw!’ The woman started, then clicked her tongue. ‘Gave me a fright, you did, jumping out like that.’

‘I’m sorry,’ the queen replied. ‘The fact is, I’m lost.’

The woman smiled sympathetically. ‘Confusing, isn’t it, till you’re used to it? Where was it you was wanting to go to?’

‘Actually,’ the queen said, selecting a silly-me sheepish grin from her repertoire of facial expressions, ‘I’m not even sure where this is. You see, I was in this secret passage—’

‘Oh, one of them,’ the nice woman said, with a knowing smile. ‘Ever such a lot of them, aren’t there? And you come up out of it and you haven’t a clue where you are, right?’

The wicked queen nodded. ‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘You see, I thought this was Beauty’s castle, but then it seemed as if it had turned into Toad Hall, and now — well, I’m completely foxed. I mean, it could be anywhere.’

The nice woman laughed. ‘Funny you should say that,’ she said. ‘Oh well, best of luck. Some of ‘em do get out eventually, so they say.’

The wicked queen’s happy smile faded abruptly. ‘Well, couldn’t you, um, point me in the right direction for the way out? If it’s no trouble, that is.’

‘Sorry, love.’ The nice woman looked genuinely sorry. ‘But I’m just the housekeeper. And that’s a job and a half, I can tell you. All of this to keep clean and tidy, and never a word of thanks. I reckon they think it all cleans itself, you know.’ She loaded her tackle back on to the trolley and prepared to move on. The wicked queen grabbed a trolley handle.

‘Please don’t do that,’ the housekeeper said.

‘Look, I really don’t want to cause trouble, but—’

‘Funny way you got of showing it,’ the housekeeper said, making the wicked queen feel rather wretched; after all, the poor woman was only doing her job, and it looked as if it was a fairly horrid job and in all probability she only got paid a pittance for it. ‘Now you take your hands off my trolley. You’ll get me in trouble, you will. I’m behind with my rounds as it is.’

The wicked queen shook her head. ‘I don’t think you quite understand,’ she said. ‘I really have got to find a way out of here, and you obviously know your way around. Couldn’t you just see your way to—?’

The housekeeper tried to move the trolley forward, but the wicked queen jammed her foot against one of the wheels, making it veer off into the wall. ‘Please,’ she said. ‘I honestly don’t want any unpleasantness, but…’

She broke off, mainly because the eight-inch dagger the housekeeper was pressing against her jugular vein made talking somewhat uncomfortable. ‘Mind you hold still, dear,’ the housekeeper said, in a horribly matter-of-fact tone. ‘I’ve got enough to do without mopping up blood all over the place. It can be a real pain, getting blood off these tiles.’

‘Anything you say,’ the queen croaked. ‘The last thing I’d want to do is make extra work for you.’

‘Should’ve thought of that earlier, shouldn’t you?’ the housekeeper replied reproachfully. ‘Now where did I put those dratted handcuffs? There’s so much stuff on this trolley, you don’t know where to start looking. Ah, here we are. Now, you just hold your hands out where I can get at them, that’s the ticket.’

The ratchets of the handcuffs clicked into place around the queen’s left wrist; then the housekeeper passed the central links under the handle of the trolley and fastened the right cuff as well. ‘That ought to do it,’ the housekeeper said. ‘Now you’ll just have to wait there till I finish off my rounds, I’m afraid. I haven’t got too much more to do, just this wing and the east wing and the main hall and the old guard tower and the refectory and the dortoirs and the garderobe and the north dungeons and the inner keep and the solar and the bailey. Pity you can’t give me a hand,’ she added wistfully. ‘Could be through it all like a dose of salts with another pair of hands.’ She stopped, thought for a moment, looked at the large knife and the queen’s wrists, then shook her head. ‘In a manner of speaking,’ she added.

‘I don’t mind helping, really,’ the queen replied, with perhaps just a touch too much eagerness in her voice.

The housekeeper shook her head sadly. ‘Sorry, love, but you know how it is,’ she replied. ‘Not that I’m saying I don’t trust you or anything like that, you understand.’

The wicked queen muttered something uncouth under her breath as the housekeeper carried on with her dusting and her rather unbearable humming. After a while the housekeeper relented and let her push the trolley, but apart from that it looked very much as if negotiations had reached stalemate. If she tried to say anything, the housekeeper simply hummed a bit louder, or accidentally clouted her across the face with a feather duster. Tactically speaking, it was a mess.

But the queen did have one advantage. Sooner or later, she figured, they’d come to the place where the Beast had had his nasty experience, and that was going to take some clearing up. The housekeeper was going to need the mop and bucket, the broom, the dustpan and brush, the floor cloth and (assuming she was going to do a proper job, which, to do her credit, seemed likely) the tin of floor wax and the electric polisher. To make the electric polisher work, she’d need a power source; and although there hadn’t been any signs of electrical sockets in the walls when she’d been this way earlier, that was probably because she hadn’t been looking for them. The combination of electrical appliance, power source and puddle of nameless liquid suggested various avenues for exploration by a keen strategic mind, although it was pointless trying to formulate a detailed plan of action until she could get another look at the actual terrain.

‘Dah dah dee dah dah,’ the housekeeper warbled; then she broke off in the middle of a mangled bar and tutted loudly, her hands on her hips. ‘Oh for crying out loud,’ she complained, and the queen smiled. Ah, she said to herself. We’re here.

‘Some people,’ the housekeeper was saying, and her back was turned. Very carefully, so as to prevent the links of the handcuffs clinking against the trolley handle, the queen reached out for the polisher flex —‘And you leave that flex alone,’ the housekeeper said, without turning her head. ‘Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to, ‘cos I do.’

Baffled, the wicked queen slumped forward; and the trolley moved. The housekeeper had forgotten to apply the brake.

Quickly, the wicked queen made a mental assessment of the odds. They weren’t good; she stood about as much chance as an egg in a game of squash. But they were still better than nothing. She took a deep breath, threw her weight against the trolley and pushed for all she was worth.

‘Hey!’ shouted the housekeeper, dropping her mop and making a grab for the rail. ‘You stop that, or I’ll—’

Supermarket trolley syndrome. Honestly, the wicked queen didn’t mean to do it, but the navigational matrix of any heavily laden independent wheel carriage when savagely nudged is at best erratic, usually uncontrollable — or, to put it another way, any sudden movement and they home in on people’s ankles like sharks in bloodied water. ‘Yow!’ the housekeeper shrieked, as the trolley cannoned into her Achilles tendon; then she fell over.

Occupational hazard, the wicked queen rationalised as she shoved against the dead weight of the trolley. A job like hers, on her feet all day, stands to reason the poor soul’s got bad ankles. She felt awful about it, up to a point; the point being the sharp one on the end of that very big knife she’d had digging in her throat not so very long ago. When she considered that, she didn’t feel quite so bad after all.

She still had the minor problem of being chained to a very heavy trolley, which she was having to push along at one hell of a lick just to keep the momentum going. She’d reached the stage by now where the thing was moving quite well, but she couldn’t help feeling that any attempt to steer it, for example round a corner, was going to be fraught with unpleasant difficulties. Stopping it in anything less than a hundred yards of clear, uncluttered straight was more or less out of the question, unless a messy and spectacular crash counted as a stop for the purposes of the exercise. All in all, it was an unhappy state of affairs, and she couldn’t help feeling that she was now so thoroughly settled into the shit that she could quite legitimately apply for citizenship and a work permit.

So preoccupied was she with this train of thought that she didn’t notice the door until it was too late.

The results were quite spectacular. The trolley hit the door, crumpled up like the sacrificial front end of a Volvo, and came to a juddering halt. The door, having auditioned unsuccessfully for the part of immovable object, got out of the way in a jumble of flying splinters, just in time to let the remains of the trolley come skidding through on its side. At some point in all this, the struts that supported the handle must have come under a sufficient degree of torque to pull the heads of the retaining rivets clean through seventy-five thousandths of an inch of steel tubing, leaving the handle (and, incidentally, the wicked queen) conveniently behind.

Fortuitous, you might say.

The queen stood up and checked herself for damage. There was something wrong with her left knee and her ribs ached; but the chain linking the handcuffs had broken and she no longer had the housekeeper’s humming to contend with, so on balance she was in better shape than she had been. After a quick glance back through what was left of the door (about enough to provide sticks for two dozen ice lollies), she set off at an express limp in the opposite direction.

Fairly soon she found herself standing in what could only be the great hall of the castle. There was a wide oak table, marginally shorter than the Ml but much more highly polished, and beyond that a raised dais with another long oak table running from side to side; in the corners of the hall behind that were the wells of two spiral stone staircases, which presumably led to the minstrels’ gallery. There was also, improbably, a bell-rope dangling from inside a cupola in the centre of the roof, quantities of big free-standing wrought-iron lamp-stands, some life-sized stone statues of saints and crusaders, any number of chairs, footstools and other easy-to-trip-over furniture, floor-to-ceiling tapestries on the walls — lots of clutter and excitingly varied levels, in other words. Which could only mean one thing.

As soon as she’d made the connection in her mind, the queen started to back away in the direction she’d just come from; but she’d left it too late. Out of the archway leading to the tunnel erupted two male figures, both dressed in white shirts and tight trousers. They were sword fighting.

Because this was, of course, the sword fighting area of the castle. Build a great hall to these dimensions and furnish it in this manner, and you can’t complain if you find it constantly infested with clashing blades, smashed chairs, decapitated statues, overturned tables, chandeliers that’ll never hang straight again after having been swung on. Fly-papers attract flies, great halls attract swordfights. If you can’t stand the heat, stay in the kitchen.

The queen’s first instinct was to hide under a side-table, but she resisted it; fortunately for her, since it was one of the first casualties of the duel. Swordfighter A turned it over and ducked behind it, swordfighter B ran it through, almost but not quite kebabing his opponent, and while he was struggling to pull his sword out again, swordfighter A aimed a doozy of a backhand slash at his head, missing him by inches and slicing off one of the table’s legs. By the time they’d finished picking on it and had moved on to beating the bejabers out of a rather fine elm-backed settle, it’d have had trouble getting a job as a drinks mat. The duellists, needless to say, didn’t seem to give a damn what they smashed up, thereby illustrating the old adage that good fencers make bad neighbours.

The wicked queen cleared her throat. ‘Excuse me,’ she said.

The duellists froze in mid-stroke, turned and looked at her. They were more or less identical; same clothes, same hairstyle, same pencil moustache on the upper lip. Briefly the queen wondered which one was the hero and which was the villain; nothing to choose between them. For all she knew, they took turns.

‘Well?’ said A.

‘Sorry to butt in when you’re obviously busy,’ the wicked queen said sweetly, ‘but I was wondering, could you very sweetly point me in the direction of the way out of this castle? I’d appreciate that ever so much.’

By the looks of it, the duellists weren’t sure what to make of the interruption, though to judge by the somewhat hostile glint in their eyes, mincemeat was probably top of their list of preferences.

‘And about time too,’ said A, irritably. ‘We couldn’t wait any longer so we started without you.’

‘Ah,’ said the queen. ‘Gosh.’

The duellists glowered at her. B tapped his foot on the flagstones.

‘Well?’ he said.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Get on with it, girl. Now you’re here you might as well.’

The queen converted her bewildered gawp into a charming smile. ‘I think I may not be quite up to speed here,’ she said. ‘What exactly is it you want me to do?’

A’s face creased into an Oh-for-pity’s-sake expression. ‘Scream, of course,’ he said. ‘Then, when he’s knocked the sword out of my hand and he’s getting ready to stab me, you bash him over the head with a candlestick.’

The famous imaginary light bulb so popular with cartoonists lit up in the queen’s brain with an almost audible snap. ‘How dreadfully slow of me,’ she said. ‘All right, then, here goes.’ She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. ‘EEEEEEEEE!’ she said.

The duellists looked at each other.

‘I know,’ said B with a wry smile. ‘But she’s all I could get at short notice.’

‘Oh,’ A replied. ‘What happened to the usual girl?’

‘It’s her mother’s birthday. Ready?’

‘Ready.’

Immediately, the fight resumed. This time, the casualties included an alabaster figure of St Cecilia (no great loss), half a dozen specialist matchwood chairs (guaranteed to shatter at the slightest touch or your money back) and, needless to say, the bell-rope (with A halfway up it). The wicked queen, who had been following the moves carefully, recognised her cue, selected the likeliest-looking candlestick, sneaked up behind the duellists while they were locked in one of those mechanical-advantage arm-wrestles and did her stuff. There was a deep, clunking noise. The swordfighter she’d just clobbered turned round.

‘Not me, you fool,’ he said. ‘Him.’ Then he fell over.

The queen took a step back, while the remaining sword-fighter closed his eyes and made a face. ‘You clown,’ he sighed. ‘You realise what you’ve just done? You’ve nutted the hero.’

‘Oh.’

‘That’s all you’ve got to say for yourself, is it?’ said the swordfighter angrily. ‘All these years we’ve been working together on this, all the hours we’ve put in, the strains on our marriages, the quality time we haven’t had with our kids, and all you can say is, Oh. Well,’ he went on, stooping down and picking up his opponent’s sword, ‘there’s nothing else for it. Here, catch.’

The queen just managed to grab the sword before it impaled her. ‘Excuse me?’ she said.

‘You bashed him, you take his place,’ the swordfighter replied. ‘Only reasonable. And remember,’ he added, as he aimed a swipe at her that would have done to her head what your butter-knife does to your breakfast hard-boiled egg if she hadn’t managed to duck at precisely the last possible moment, ‘you’ve got to win. Okay?’

‘But I…’

The swordfighter wasn’t listening, and fairly soon the wicked queen was far too busy to talk, unless you count largely involuntary remarks such as ‘Eeek!’ as talking. Even while she was dodging the blows, however, a select committee of her mind was pointing out that this sort of thing was exactly what she ought to have been expecting, given the foul-ups in the narrative patterns and the hopeless tangle the various alternative versions had got into by now. In fact, the committee reported, a simple role reversal was about the mildest form of nuisance possible at this juncture; think how much worse it could have been if this was one of those junctures where the current narrative was gate-crashed by bits of another story…

It was while the committee was considering its findings and filing its expenses claim that the big doors at the far end of the hall suddenly burst open. The swordfighter, who had just knocked the sword out of the wicked queen’s hand and was preparing to run her through, hesitated, looked round, muttered, ‘Oh for God’s sake!’ and let his sword-arm drop to his side.

In the doorway stood seven samurai.

‘Now what?’ Grimm #1 asked.

They were standing under a tree, over a low branch of which they’d slung a rope. One end of the rope was tied round the trunk of the tree, and the other had been worked into the noose around Fang’s neck.

‘Guess,’ replied Dumpy grimly. ‘Now, when I say pull—’

‘Something’s not quite right,’ interrupted Tom Thumb. ‘We’re missing an important point here, I’m convinced of it.’

Dumpy waved his hands in a dismissive gesture. ‘Sure, he should be on a horse,’ he replied. ‘But we ain’t got no horse, so we’ll just have to make do. And one, and two, and…’

Fang, meanwhile, had caught the elf’s eye, and she’d tiptoed over to the tree, shinned up it and settled herself in a low branch next to Fang’s ear.

‘Gggugg,’ Fang muttered. ‘Ggg. Gg.’

The elf shook her head. ‘Relax,’ she replied, ‘it’s going to be all right. You know as well as I do what happens now. Just when they’re about to do the business, an arrow comes whistling out from the nearby trees and cuts the rope, you roll away and escape in the confusion. It’s a stone-cold certainty. You could bet your life on it.’

‘Ggg!’

‘Hang on,’ said Tom Thumb, as Dumpy and the Brothers Grimm took up the strain, ‘I’ve figured out what’s wrong. No,’ he added loudly, ‘stop!’

‘But you just said hang…’

‘Figure of speech. Look, you’re going about this entirely the wrong way. That’s now how you waste big bad wolves. They’ve got to drop down chimneys into big tubs of boiling water.’

Dumpy scowled at him. ‘Quit horsin’ around, partner,’ he grunted. ‘That ain’t no way to run a lynchin’.’

‘But that’s the proper way of doing it,’ Thumb objected. ‘Everybody knows that, surely. I learnt that at my mother’s knee…’

‘Ain’t never heard such foolishness,’ Dumpy growled. ‘Look, are we lynchin’ this sucker or ain’t we?’

(‘Any minute now,’ the elf whispered confidently. ‘Pfft. Whizz. Snick. Job done. Any ideas where we’re going to have lunch afterwards?’)

‘All I’m saying is,’ Thumb said, ‘we’d better get this right because we only get one shot at it. I mean, if we do it the wrong way and the clients throw a wobbly and refuse to pay up, we can’t very well bring the wolf back to life and have another go.’

Dumpy thought it over for a moment. ‘Guess you may be right, at that,’ he conceded. ‘Only question is, where the Sam Hill we gonna find a big tub o’ boilin’ water and a chimney out here in the backwoods?’ He looked round and—

‘Just a second,’ Grimm #2 objected. ‘That cottage wasn’t there a minute ago, surely.’

Dumpy grinned. ‘You figure it just done sprung up like a mushroom, son? Maybe that kind o’ thing happens where you’re from, but not hereabouts.’

‘Of course it doesn’t,’ Grimm #2 replied, or he would have done if he hadn’t suddenly thought of Milton Keynes. ‘Of course it doesn’t happen often where we come from,’ he said. ‘And it shouldn’t happen here, either. Something funny’s going on here if you ask me.’

‘Well I didn’t, so get the sucker down and let’s mosey on over and have a look-around. We’ll be needin’ a long ladder, I guess.’

‘Now that’s odd,’ said the elf, as the Brothers Grimm slackened the noose round Fang’s neck. ‘By rights, there should have been an arrow, but there wasn’t. Something’s gone wrong. Most disappointing.’

Fortunately, Fang was in no fit state to reply, so he had to keep his views on the elf’s choice of the word disappointing to himself. He spent the time taken in reaching the cottage in compiling a shortlist of disappointments he’d have liked to share with the elf, up to and including total immersion in boiling groundnut oil.

‘This is weird,’ muttered Grimm #1, examining the door of the cottage. ‘Didn’t we just come from here?’

‘All these cottages look the same to me,’ his brother replied. ‘Back home, of course, it’d have two Porsches and a Volvo parked outside, and the kitchen would be all Delft blue and yellow with a split-level grill and lots of pine.’

‘Talking of kitchens,’ said Grimm #1, ‘keep an eye out for something to eat. I’m starving. Is it my imagination, or don’t these creeps eat food?’

‘Only when it helps the story along. Haven’t you got the hang of how things work here yet?’

‘Huh. Well, what I think this story desperately needs right now is a deep-pan Seafood Special with extra anchovies. It’s what Shakespeare would have done. And Ernest Hemingway.’

Inside the cottage it was dark and gloomy, and there was an off-putting smell of damp. It didn’t feel lived in at all.

‘Okay,’ Dumpy sang out, ‘let’s make a move. You two, go find a big pot and fill it with water. Thumb, light a fire. Rumpelstiltskin, you’re with me…’ He stopped dead and looked round. ‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Anybody seen Rumpelstiltskin?’

There was a moment of thoughtful silence while everybody realised that they hadn’t. Dumpy sighed, then shrugged. ‘Makes no never-mind,’ he said. ‘He weren’t no good no how. Right, I’ll go find a ladder. Thumb, guard the prisoner.’

‘Oh yes?’ demanded Tom Thumb, as Dumpy disappeared through the door. ‘And how exactly am I supposed to…?’

The door shut, leaving Thumb alone with Fang and the elf. There was a moment of awkward silence.

‘Don’t make it hard on yourself,’ Thumb said, trying to raise a snarl but getting a whimper instead. ‘You just sit still and everything’s going to be just fine.’

‘Except that I’ll be chucked down a chimney into a tub of boiling water,’ Fang replied. ‘Apart from that, though, I’ll have absolutely nothing to worry about. Elf, get these damn ropes undone quick.’

‘I…’ The elf hesitated. ‘Look, I hate to be a wet blanket, but…’

‘That’s just fine,’ Fang snapped. ‘You don’t like being a wet blanket, I don’t like dying horribly painful deaths. We can avoid both if you’ll just get the fucking ropes.’

‘Yes, but…’

‘But?’

The elf came up close to Fang’s ear. ‘If I untie you and you escape,’ she whispered, nodding her head in Tom Thumb’s direction, ‘he’ll get in trouble. I mean, he’s supposed to stop you escaping, and that dwarf’s got a foul temper.’

‘I see,’ said Fang. ‘I’m supposed to go plummeting to my doom just so your boyfriend there doesn’t get yelled at. I’m so grateful to you for explaining it so clearly.’

The elf pulled a face. ‘Don’t be like that,’ she said. ‘Really, you’re putting me in a really difficult position here, you know?’

‘I’m putting you…’

The elf sighed. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘we only just met and, to be really up-front about this, when you’re my size you don’t get so many offers that you can afford to go pissing guys off before you’ve even been to see a film together. Don’t you think it’s cute the way his hair curls round his ears? I think that’s just so adorable…’

‘Elf…’

‘Look,’ the elf replied wretchedly, ‘I said I’m sorry. But that dwarf person trusted him, and he’s trusting me, and if you haven’t got trust, what kind of relationship are you going to have anyway? And stop looking at me like that,’ she added angrily. ‘The last thing I need at what may well be an important stage in my personal development is a whole load of heavy guilt.’

‘Elf,’ said Fang, with terrifying solemnity, ‘when I first met you, as far as you were concerned, love means never having to say Aaaargh! Where in hell’s name has all this deep and meaningful crap come from?’

The elf didn’t reply; instead, she slumped on to the floor and started to cry.

‘Elf?’

‘Snff.’

‘Elf? Elf, you get your bum over here and untie these ropes, or you’ll be very sorry.’

‘Snff snff.’

A stray bundle of memory slipped in through the cat-flap of Fang’s mind. ‘Unless you untie these ropes now,’ he threatened, ‘I’ll say I don’t believe in fairies.’

The elf frowned. ‘Neither do I,’ she replied. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

‘Oh. I thought that if someone said that, somewhere a fairy turns its toes up and snuffs it.’

‘Quite possibly. But I’m a elf, not a fairy. And anybody who goes around saying he doesn’t believe in elves gets petrol through his letterbox. Understood?’

Fang was about to take the argument further when the front door flew open and a round pink shape whizzed in and cowered behind a sofa.

‘Don’t let them know I’m here,’ he said. ‘I think I got rid of them this time, but I’m not taking any risks.’

Fang stared for a moment, speechless. Then he started to laugh.

‘He’s a pig,’ he said, in reply to the elf’s request for further and better particulars. ‘In fact, I reckon he’s one of the three little pigs who used to live on my patch. Now what on earth…’ He leaned forward and had a closer look. ‘Hello, it’s Julian, isn’t it?’

‘Who the devil are you? No, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know. Just don’t let my brothers know I’m here, all right?’

‘Sure,’ Fang replied. ‘After you, are they? That’s odd. You people always struck me as being just one happy family.’

‘I don’t know what’s got into them,’ Julian said sadly. ‘Behaving like utter swine, both of them.’

Fang shrugged, as far as he was able with a quarter of a mile of rope tied round him. ‘I won’t say a thing, promise. And in return you could do a small favour for me.’

‘Such as?’

‘Undoing these ropes’d be favourite. Come on, before I die of old age.’

The pig did as he was told. For some reason, Thumb (who could easily have fitted inside Julian’s ear) made no effort to stop him. The elf, who’d been anticipating having to race to Thumb’s rescue and defend him with, if necessary, all reasonable force (she’d been looking forward to that) sat open-mouthed.

‘You’re not just going to cower there while the prisoner escapes, are you?’ she said at last.

Thumb shrugged. ‘Why not? No skin off my nose.’

‘But…’

The elf’s first reaction was to mention such concepts as duty, loyalty, my comrades right or wrong; but there was something in Thumb’s manner that suggested that he wasn’t likely to respond well to that sort of argument. ‘That dwarf’ll flatten you if you don’t,’ she therefore said.

‘So? And the pig’ll flatten me if I do. Besides, Dumpy’ll have to catch me first. He may be big but I’m small, if you get my meaning. There may be nowhere on Earth a dwarf won’t dare to go, but there’s ever so many places he won’t fit.’

‘But…’ The elf hesitated. Somehow, she’d assumed that, just because he looked fairly like the dream man she’d imagined for herself over the years, the interior specifications would match the externals. The idea that he might turn out to be a coward (defined in her world view as someone who doesn’t joyfully embrace a potentially lethal fight with a much larger, stronger opponent without a better reason than not letting down a colleague he couldn’t actually stand) came as a bitter disappointment. ‘Oh, go on, then,’ she snarled. ‘Get out of my sight before I tread on you.’

‘Hey!’ Thumb stared at her in pained surprise. ‘What’s all that about, then? I thought we were, well, you know…’

‘Did you? Then you were wrong.’ She reached down and grabbed his ear, so that he had to stand on tiptoe to avoid becoming a permanent Van Gogh look-alike. ‘I really thought you were something special, you know? Someone I could rely on. Someone I could look up to.’ She stifled a sob and twisted his ear another thirty degrees. ‘Just goes to show how wrong I was, doesn’t it?’ she said, and let him go. He fell to the ground with a bump. ‘Come on,’ she said to Fang, who was free of his ropes at last, ‘let’s be getting out of here. You wouldn’t happen to have such a thing as a white feather about you anywhere, would you? It so happens I need one.’

Before they could get to the front door, however, there was a tinkle of broken glass and a rock sailed in through the window. Fang reached for the door handle and wrenched it open, then jumped back with a yelp of terror as an arrow shot through his hair and embedded itself in the wall behind his head.

‘Bit late for that now, surely,’ the elf said, then she too ducked as six or seven more followed it. ‘Like buses, really,’ she muttered. ‘You wait and wait, and then they all come along at once.’

‘YOU IN THE HOUSE!’ The bullhorn voice made the surviving windows rattle. ‘SURRENDER THE PIG AND NOBODY GETS HURT EXCEPT THE PIG, OF COURSE,’ it added, ‘OR THERE WOULDN’T BE MUCH POINT YOU HAVE THIRTY SECONDS.’

‘Oh Christ, it’s Desmond,’ Julian wailed. ‘Remember, you said you wouldn’t tell.’

‘That’s okay,’ Fang replied. ‘We’ll just explain that this is nothing to do with us and quietly go on our way. I’m sure they’ll understand.’

He opened the door a crack and actually got as far as ‘Excuse me,’ before another volley of arrows spitted the door. Before retreating he carefully plucked one out of the door, unpicked a white feather from the fletchings and handed it solemnly to the elf, who was cringing under the table with a waste-paper basket over her head. ‘You wanted one of these,’ he said.

‘All right,’ she snarled back, ‘point taken. Where are those other three clowns when we need them?’

‘IN CASE YOU’RE WONDERING WHAT’S BECOME OF YOUR THREE FRIENDS,’ the voice went on, ‘PERHAPS I SHOULD MENTION I HAVE THEM HERE. IF YOU EVER WANT TO SEE THEM ALIVE AGAIN, YOU’D BETTER DO AS YOU’RE TOLD. GOT THAT?’

‘Incentives just aren’t his strong point, are they?’ Fang sighed. ‘Well, we might as well make ourselves comfortable, because it looks as if we’re going to be here for quite some time.’

‘You reckon we should stay put?’ the elf said doubtfully.

Fang shrugged. ‘Not much option, really,’ he replied. ‘At least while we’re safe in here, there’s not a lot they can do to us.’

‘True.’

‘ALL RIGHT THAT DOES IT TIME’S UP EUGENE, START THE GENERATOR.’

Fang didn’t particularly like the sound of that; so he crawled to the window and cautiously peered out. In the distance he could see two pigs setting up a huge, diabolical-looking machine, something that looked like a giant mutant vacuum cleaner. ‘Jeez,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘What in hell’s name is that?’

‘Let me see,’ Julian said, and he crawled over and had a look. ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘That’s bad.’

‘Really? What is it?’

‘It’s a heavy-duty compressor,’ Julian replied nervously. ‘Used to generate an exceptionably powerful jet of compressed air. If I know Desmond, he’s proposing to huff and puff and blow our house down.’

‘But he can’t!’ Fang exclaimed. ‘That’s my…’ He remembered who he was talking to and broke off.

‘Your what?’

‘Oh, nothing.’

‘Didn’t sound like nothing to me. And how the hell did you know my name?’

Julian stared at Fang with a curious expression on his face, but before he could say anything further, the compressor started to rumble, making further conversation impossible. Fang took one last look, then dived for cover.

‘Anyway,’ he growled to himself, ‘it’ll never work.’

Wrong again.