Snow White and the Seven Samurai

Chapter 14

Once upon a time there was a little house in a big wood. It was a dear little house. It was adorable. The glass in its small, leaded windows was so old and distorted by age and authenticity that light stood about as much chance of getting in through them as an unemployed Libyan has of getting into the United States, and the sheer weight of the climbing roses on the front elevation was threatening to pull the house’s face off and dump it around the front door in dusty heaps. It had been photographed so often you could almost see it hold its thatch back with both hands and show the cameraman a bit of basement.

And in the cottage there lived a cute little girl called Snow White, along with seven dwarf samurai. And three bears. And three little pigs. And three blind mice. And a cross-dressing werewolf. And that was just the downstairs parlour.

Ask the residents of Own Goal Cottage (such a pretty name, even if nobody has a clue why it’s called that) about the reasons for the overcrowding, and if they’ll admit that the place is a wee bit cramped (which is by no means certain) they’ll be sure to tell you about the great flood; the flood in which all the other cottages in the domain were washed away, leaving only this place and Suckerbet Castle still standing. Just don’t bother asking when this flood was, because they won’t remember.

On the wall of the parlour there hung a big mirror in an ornate gilded plaster frame; and it had a crack in it that ran diagonally across the face. Even before it was broken it hadn’t been much good, of course, for it was a distorting mirror, bought by Dumpy the dwarf from a travelling circus for the sole reason that it was cheap.

In front of the mirror one fine sunny morning stood Snow White, in her prettiest gingham dress, with her brightest and most cheerful pink ribbons in her hair. She smiled at it, wedged her face into a demure smile, and asked:

‘Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?’

In the cracked mirror there appeared a rough impression of what her face might look like if it was inadvertently put in a blender. One eye was six inches higher than the other, the two halves of her nose made her look as if she’d been drawn by Picasso and then got in a fight with a barful of marines, and her mouth was a fat red slug trying to climb a ladder.

‘You, O Snow White,’ said the mirror, ‘are the fairest of them all.’

Snow White preened herself like a contented cat, even though she knew the mirror said exactly the same thing to everybody who asked the question. It had worried her for a bit, until nice Mr Hiroshige had explained to her that since all things are, cosmically speaking, One, all reflections are the same reflection and so everybody is by definition the fairest. Although she was somewhat disappointed, in the end she came to the conclusion that that was probably the best way to deal with the matter. After all, where there is no competition there’s no conflict, and where there’s no conflict there’s peace. Except in this case, when the flying pigs swoop too low and the sonic boom breaks all the glass in the greenhouse. Fortunately, that only tended to happen once in a blue moon; say, on average, every sixty-two days.

‘Doesn’t necessarily mean beautiful, either,’ Eugene whispered to Julian behind his trotter. ‘It could mean all sorts of things besides that. Gould just mean the one with the most mouse-coloured hair.’

Julian made a noise that eloquently if somewhat vulgarly communicated his scepticism by blowing air through his snout. ‘Just because she’s the fairest,’ he muttered, ‘I still don’t see why that gives her the right to boss us around. That’s twice this week she’s stopped my choccy bicky allowance for treading mud on the carpet, and it wasn’t even me that did it.’

Eugene drew his trotter along the point of his chin thoughtfully. ‘You know what,’ he said, ‘I’ve been thinking, wouldn’t it be nice if we had a place of our own? You know, a nice little house just for the three of us.’

Julian considered the proposition, then dismissed it. ‘Face facts,’ he said. ‘With none of us working we’d never get a mortgage.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of buying,’ Eugene replied. ‘How’d it be if we built it ourselves?’

‘What, us? Just the three of us?’ Julian’s nostrils twitched. ‘What the hell do we know about building houses?’

‘We could learn,’ Eugene said. ‘Can’t be all that difficult, can it? We could build it out of— oh, I don’t know, how about straw?’

‘Straw,’ Julian repeated, a thoughtful expression on his face. ‘Actually that’s not a bad idea. I mean, it’s cheap, it’s good insulation, it’s no bother to move about. And if hayricks and stuff stay up, why not a house? The only problem I can see is spontaneous combustion in the hot weather, when the residual moisture content starts to ferment. I gather that’s the cause of seventy-nine-point-three per cent of all hayrick fires.’

Eugene chewed his lip. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘How about sticks? Sticks are really cheap.’

‘True,’ Julian said, as he unearthed a truffle. ‘And you avoid the spontaneous combustion problem quite neatly. But then you run into your strength-of-materials hassles. You’d have to get the equations just right, or you’d end up with the whole lot around your ears.’

‘Okay,’ Eugene said, with just a hint of exasperation. ‘Forget straw and sticks. What about brick? Plain, honest-to-God bricks and mortar? You can’t go wrong.’

Julian shook his head. ‘Don’t you believe it,’ he replied. ‘The ground’s way too soft around here, you’d never be able to get proper foundations. You’d come home one evening and find the whole thing on its side, like a stag beetle that can’t get up again. Sorry, but bricks are a definite no-no in these parts.’

Eugene closed his eyes. ‘Just a minute,’ he said. ‘Dammit, the answer’s as plain as the snout on your face. How about straw and sticks and bricks? Thatched roof to reduce weight, wooden rafters, lintels and floorboards, the rest of the fabric in brickwork? Though I say so myself as shouldn’t, it’s bloody brilliant. Well?’

Grudgingly, Julian nodded. ‘Can’t see much wrong with it myself,’ he replied. ‘Taken at face value, of course. We’d have to draw up proper plans, do the maths—’

‘You could do that. You’re ever so good at that sort of thing.’

Julian nodded to acknowledge the self-evident truth. ‘And I reckon I know where I could lay my trotters on a supply of brick, definitely at trade, maybe cheaper.’ Already he’d started tracing sketches in the dust with his nose. ‘Of course, we’d have to get someone in to lay the damp-proof course…’

While he was talking, something moved away in the distance, nearly out of sight of the cottage, over by the patch of marshy ground where the old cesspit had been. At first it was just a quiver on the surface of the slime; then there was a deeply resonant glopping noise, and a long, thin canine muzzle forced its way to the surface into the air. It sneezed; then the rest of a wolf’s head followed it, and finally the rest of the wolf. It was, of course, filthy dirty, its fur plastered to its skull with creamy black yuck, and the smell was somewhat distressing.

‘Woof,’ muttered the big bad wolf; then he sneezed again. How long he’d been down there, he had no idea. Fortuitously, he had fallen into a large air-pocket, just enough to keep him going while he gathered his strength for the monumental effort of forcing a way out. Now he was hungry and thirsty, he felt horrendously squalid and he had a doozy of a cold. His priorities were revenge and a nice hot bath, in no particular order.

As soon as he’d shaken the loose stuff out of his coat he looked round and saw the cottage. It looked good. There’d be all sorts of useful commodities in there; things (or people) to eat, hot water, clean towels, maybe even a basket lined with an old blanket where he could get a good night’s sleep. And what was more, someone had been up on the roof putting back a fallen roof tile and had left a ladder leaning up against a wall. It’d be a piece of cake, climbing (a-a-a-CHOO!) up on the roof, sliding down the chimney, in like Flynn before you could say pork teriyaki. Having wiped further crud out of his eyes with the back of his paw, he set off across the clearing at a loping run.

Inside the cottage, an argument was raging. Mr Nikko was trying to get Baby Bear to understand that no, he hadn’t been sitting in her chair, it was too small for him and he simply wouldn’t fit; Mummy Bear was complaining loudly that the damned mice had been nibbling the cheese again and since there were seven grown men with blasted great swords around the place, couldn’t something be done about it, because if not she was going to commandeer one of said blasted great swords and cut the little perishers’ tails off. Dumpy the dwarf, meanwhile, was protesting that his back was killing him and there was no way he was going off to work today, not for all the cocaine in Nicaragua. The only sound that could be heard above all these discordant voices was Snow White, announcing that she wanted a nice warm bath and it was Mr Miroku’s turn to light the fire under the copper. This did at least have the effect of ending the civil disturbances like a volley of rubber bullets; and Mr Miroku, grumbling softly under his breath, got up out of his comfy armchair and did as he was told.

‘And mind you make sure the water’s piping hot,’ Snow White added. ‘And then the lot of you can clear off and let me have a couple of hours’ peace and quiet.’

Alone at last, Snow White pulled the cork out of her bottle of bath salts and poured copiously, until the tub overflowed with foam. She was just about to get undressed when there was a frantic scrabbling from somewhere up the chimney. A cloud of soot came billowing out, engulfing Snow White to the extent that her name suddenly ceased to be even remotely appropriate. Then there was a colossal splash, and the hot tub was suddenly and unexpectedly full of large, mucky wolf.

‘Woof,’ sighed Fang contentedly. ‘Woof!’

For once, Snow White was utterly speechless. Forget the soot for a moment; the whole of the living-room floor was awash with suds, scores of cubic feet of the stuff. Obviously she’d put in too much bath salts, because the foam was still oozing out over the sides of the tub, glugging across the floor like a self-propelled predatory carpet. At this rate, it wouldn’t be long before the whole room was flooded in the stuff…

In consequence, she was not pleased; and when she wasn’t pleased, she tended to express herself freely. This occasion was no exception.

For all that he was back in lupine form again, Fang had been a human being for so long that, when he suddenly became aware that he was lying in a bathtub with no clothes on in the presence of a young girl, he immediately began to feel markedly self-conscious. As it happened, there was a change of clothes handy; true, they’d once belonged to the wicked witch, and consisted of a thick, baggy black dress, a shawl and a bonnet that looked like something left over from the last BBC Dickens serialisation; but Fang was scarcely spoilt for choice. Quick as a flash (as you might say) he was out of the bath and into the clothes and out of the door and up the stairs, a part of the house that had the all-important feature in his eyes of being Snow White-free.

Even before he’d reached the landing, he was aware of the nature of his dilemma. He couldn’t stay upstairs indefinitely, but going downstairs wasn’t currently a viable option. He was standing there in an uncharacteristic state of dither when he heard footsteps. He took stock of his position, namely that he was a wet, wretched wolf in women’s clothing in a strange house, and that if word of any of this ever made it back to the 77th Precinct, the rest of his career in Wolfpack was going to be very, very wearing.

He saw a bedroom door, slightly ajar. He bundled through it, closed it carefully behind him and turned the key, drew the curtains, dived into the bed and pulled the covers up over his muzzle.

Not a moment too soon; the door flew open and Snow White burst into the room. Somewhere along the way she’d picked up Mr Nikko’s katana and a handful of razor-edged throwing stars. She stood for a moment in the doorway while her eyes adjusted to the dim light; then she made out the figure in the bed and raised her right arm as if about to let fly. Fang braced himself for a race with a speeding missile that he knew he’d lose; then Snow White’s arm seemed to relax a little, and she lowered her hand.

‘Grandma?’ she said. ‘Is that you?’

‘Wf,’ Fang mumbled, trying to make it sound like a sneeze.

‘Oh.’ She sounded disappointed. ‘Buggery. Look, you haven’t seen a wolf roaming around the place, have you? Probably wringing wet and covered in soot and soapsuds?’

‘Well, if you do…’ Snow White narrowed her eyes and peered. ‘Are you all right?’ she said. ‘You look awful.’

‘Wf,’ Fang replied, and added a yawn for good, measure. He was halfway through it when he realised how bad a mistake it was.

‘Shit a brick, Grandma, what big teeth you’ve got,’ Snow White observed. Then she did a massive double-take. ‘You!’ she snarled.

As the first throwing star split the wood of the headboard, Fang was already out of the bed and halfway out of the window. The second star shaved off the last few split ends of his tail-hairs. He landed in the flower-bed below with a heavy thump, rolled down a slight slope and found himself up to his neck in a goldfish pond.

Suddenly there was activity everywhere; dwarves, little pigs and samurai coming at him from all directions with a curiously diverse selection of garden implements, builders’ tools and traditional Japanese weapons. As he tried to make a run for it away from the cottage, an arrow from Mr Akira’s bow missed him by the thickness of a hair split by a top-class lawyer, sending him scampering for the back door. But the way was blocked by Rumpelstiltskin, who was wearing a red hood and holding a garden fork, so he turned in his tracks and sprinted for the front of the cottage, where Julian was lying in wait for him with a twelve-pound sledgehammer. He managed to dodge the blow, but the only safe direction open to him was up. He sprang as hard as his hind legs could manage and was just able to get his forepaws into the tangled branches of one of the climbing roses that clustered (inevitably) round the cottage’s door. There were ever so many thorns in the rose entanglement but somehow, in his moment of direst need, the thought of Julian’s sledgehammer inspired him with the will and determination to keep on going. If there was an award for scrambling up climbing roses and he’d won it, no doubt the sledgehammer would have been properly thanked in his acceptance speech.

So far, he said to himself, so good; because all the psychopathic loonies are now outside the house, which makes being inside the house a viable, not to mention preferable option.

With the last scrapings of his adrenaline reserves he hooked a thorn-lacerated paw over the sill of an open window and dragged himself through. Now all he had to do was run downstairs and get the doors bolted and the windows shuttered before the psychos could get back in; then it’d be a simple matter of sending a smoke-signal to Wolfpack HQ for reinforcements. Piece of — A stray fragment of cobweb brushed against his catarrh blocked nose, which started to tickle. A bluebottle, which had been trapped in it, managed to struggle free.

Oh hell, Fang thought.

The first spasm he was able to smother, so that all that came out was a muffled noise, something like hf. The second one nearly got away from him, but he pulled it back at the last moment and managed to hold on, while puffing out briskly through his nose. The third and most convulsive tickle, however, was more than lupine flesh and blood could stand. He sneezed.

To start with, the building merely stirred, like a heavy sleeper gently shaken by the shoulder. Then plaster dust started coming down from the ceilings, which Fang took as a fairly heavy hint. The first football-sized gobbet of falling masonry missed him by a few inches as he jumped through the scullery window without bothering to open it first; in consequence, he was well and truly clear by the time the roof caved in.

On the other paw, he found that he’d landed directly between Desmond and Mr Hiroshige.

Not surprisingly Mr Hiroshige was the first to react, and he’d have cut Fang into two equal halves if his slicing sword-blade hadn’t collided with Desmond’s flailing pickaxe. As it was, the two instruments met in a shower of sparks a few inches above Fang’s shoulders, giving him plenty of time to dart between them and head for the trees, which were at most some forty yards away. Desmond was momentarily distracted by a direct hit on the head from a falling rafter, leaving Mr Hiroshige to take up the pursuit alone.

Easy, Fang muttered to himself as he ran. A race between a wolf and a middle-aged man in heavy armour; no problem. He put his head down, accelerated, and ran full tilt into a tree.

When he came round, he found himself sitting in a huge cauldron full of water, on the surface of which floated a few thinly sliced carrots, some parsnips, a few leeks and other sundry vegetables. The cauldron was tied with thick hairy rope to a couple of stout posts that had been driven firmly into the ground, and below it lay a large and tangled pile of junk timber, mostly salvaged from the ruins of Own Goal Cottage. Around him in a ring stood the pigs, the dwarves, the bears, the samurai, even the three blind mice. Snow White was just inside the circle, and she was holding a burning torch. All in all, he got the impression that he wasn’t here to receive an honorary degree from the University of Fairyland.

‘Woof?’ he murmured, in a very small voice.

Snow White was grinning at him. She was bending forwards. She was touching the torch to the wood— ‘That’ll do,’ said the wicked queen.

She walked out of the trees, passed through the cordon of spectators and up to Snow White. ‘Now then,’ she went on, grabbing the torch in Snow White’s hand, ‘I thought I told you to play nicely.’

‘Get lost,’ Snow White replied. ‘This is none of your business.’

The queen smiled. ‘Oh yes it is,’ she said. ‘I’m the queen, remember? Which means everyone’s got to do as I say. Including you.’

‘We’ll see about that,’ Snow White replied furiously. ‘Miroku, Nikko, Hiroshywashy-whatever-your-name-is, get up here this instant.’ She waited. Nobody moved.

‘Hey,’ she shrieked, ‘that’s a direct order.’

Mr Hiroshige, whose attention appeared to have been elsewhere, looked round in mild surprise. ‘I’m terribly sorry,’ he said. ‘Were you talking to me?’

‘Yes. Now get your mystic arse up here and—’

‘Although,’ interrupted Mr Miroku, in a calm, soothing voice, ‘looked at from the point of view of the true adept of the Way, how can anybody hope to be that specific? A call to one is surely a call to all. Are we not all blossoms from the same jasmine bush, after all?’

Snow White ground her small, pearly teeth. ‘All right, then,’ she said. ‘All of you. Come on, move.’

Mr Akira rubbed his chin. ‘Surely in this context,’ he said, ‘all of us means not just those of us who are gathered in this particular clearing in this particular wood, but all samurai everywhere. Indeed, all human beings, regardless of race, creed or caste. All living creatures even, since all living things are part of the universal matrix.’

‘Good point,’ muttered Mr Wakisashi. ‘I like that.’

‘Which means,’ Mr Akira went on blithely, ‘that, much as we’d like to help, it’s simply impossible. There’s not enough room in this forest, let alone this rather cramped little clearing.’

Snow White’s eyes were starting to bulge out of her head. ‘For the last time,’ she growled. ‘Are you going to come up here and kill this bitch for me, or aren’t you? Well?’

There was an awful silence, and the dwarves, bears, mice et cetera took a few steps backwards. Eventually, Mr Hiroshige spoke. He said:

At once the rest of the crowd burst into furious applause; and in that split second, Snow White knew she was through.

She could see it in their faces; no more fetching and carrying, no more taking their boots off in the hall, no more running errands and being at her beck and call. Her power was broken. It was time to move on.

‘Oh, all right then,’ she said, and her voice was almost cheerful. ‘See if I care.’ She let go of the torch, skipped lightly away through the cordon and off into the darkness of the wood. She knew where she was going; there are always places you can go when you’re cute, sweet and utterly ruthless. In a few months’ time she’d be trying on the glass slipper or taking a thorn out of the Beast’s paw or thanking some poor sucker of a knight in shining armour for rescuing her from a dragon the size of a small Jack Russell. She didn’t even look back. Her kind never do.

The crowd started to drift away, chattering in quiet but excited voices about the cottages they were going to build, the evenings they were going to spend with takeaways and videos, the pink frilly curtains they weren’t going to have in the living room. For the first time since she’d come to this domain, the wicked queen sensed the absence of something; it was like the moment when the pneumatic drills that have been digging up the road outside for the whole of the past week suddenly stop.

‘Woof,’ muttered Fang.

‘That’s all right,’ the queen replied. ‘Sorry I took so long getting here.’ She cut the ropes, the cauldron hit the ground with a bone-jarring thud and Fang poured himself out of it, brushed a few slices of potato off the top of his head and curled up in a ball. ‘After all,’ the queen continued, ‘what’s the point of being a wicked queen if you can’t interfere with the true course of justice? If I were you, though, I’d take a hike. Better still: get a haircut and a collar, pack the wolf business in for good and start over as a cuddly dog. Waggle your tail a bit and sit in a shop window. There’s girls in Amsterdam who do that for a living.’

As Fang wobbled unsteadily away into the trees, the wicked queen sighed and shook her head. She had her doubts about this, even now. Starting all over again from scratch was all very well in principle, but there was going to be an awful lot of this sort of thing; old habits dying hard, deeply rooted narrative trends to get rid of, happy endings to untangle. At times it made her wish she was back in real life. No, belay that thought. However hairy it might get here sometimes, it was never that bad.

She walked home, let herself into the castle by the back door and went upstairs to her dressing room. On the way she passed the great hall, where the Brothers Grimm were busily, if hopelessly, occupied with mops and buckets. It was possible, she told herself, that one day they’d manage to clean up the mess, and if that day came then in theory they’d be free to go back. But somehow it turned out that for every bucketful of soapy water they tipped out of the window into the moat, another two or three would ooze up out of the waterlogged rushes. Served them right, she muttered to herself.

‘That’s right,’ she called out as she passed. ‘Remember, if you can get your chores done in time, you shall go to the ball.’

The Grimms looked up at her and muttered something under their breath. It had something to do with the ball, or balls in general, but the queen was too far away to make out what it was.

She reached her dressing room, closed the door and sat down in front of the mirror. She took a deep breath and said the words.

‘Running DOS,’ replied the face in the glass. ‘Please wait.’

When the moment came, she felt unaccountably nervous. True, she had no reason to do so that she could think of; she’d saved the big bad wolf from the lynch mob, the Grimms had been dealt with, she’d broken the power of Snow White and set everybody free. Not a bad start, she told herself.

‘Path fair not found,’ said the face. ‘Define fair.’

‘Just,’ the wicked queen replied. ‘Even-handed. Amenable to reason. Equitable in one’s dealings with others.’

The face remained impassive.

‘You, O queen, are the fairest of them all.’

The wicked queen nodded politely, said thank you, and closed down the mirror. So that’s all right then,’ she said aloud. ‘And now I think I’ll go and have a bath.’

Once upon a time there was a little house in a big wood.

No roses round this door. No white picket fence, no neatly trimmed flowerbeds, no cheerful chintzes at the windows. This place is a pigsty.

Which is as it should be, because three little pigs live here. As far as they’re concerned, it’s just the way they like it, even if it can be a bit of a nuisance crunching your way across a carpet of empty styrofoam pizza boxes every time you go for a pee.

It’s solidly built, of thatch, timber and brick; but there are no more wolves to huff and puff in the forest now, so it’s largely academic.

No more Snow White, no more wolves; you’d be forgiven for thinking this might constitute a happy ending. That would be premature, of course; it’s never the happy ending until the master of ceremonies calls out ‘Let’s hear it for the fat lady’ and they start bringing on the bouquets. There’ll be other pests, be sure about that: road-widening schemes, local byelaws about keeping livestock in residential areas, RSPCA inspectors, weekenders from the city who move in and start complaining about the noise or the smell. But this is Make-believe Land, where the wicked queen can be relied on to come and chase the nuisances away.

It’d be nice to be able to say that everyone gets to live happily ever after, here in Mr Dawes’s rose-tinted Gulag; but that would be taking fantasy a bit too far. The happiest the ending is likely to get is probably the small diner that Tom Thumb and the elf are running these days, out by the Hundred Acre Wood by-pass; or the noisy, dirty engineering works where the dwarves go during the day, endlessly churning out precision-machined grommets and drinking tea out of cups that never seem to get washed up. It may even be somewhere in the Akira Integrated Circuits business park, where Mr Akira (president and managing director), who gives a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work and tries not to screw too many people while he’s about it, applies to the production of high-quality electronic components absolutely none of the principles he learnt back in the days when he was an earnest young student of the True Path of Enlightenment.

Handsome is as handsome does; ask any mirror.