Snow White and the Seven Samurai

Chapter 3

‘Before you crashed it.’

‘Yes, all right, you’ve made that point already.’ Sis sighed and sat down on what she thought was a tree-stump, though in fact it was a giant mushroom. ‘Point is, we can’t rely on this silly old system of yours. In fact, any adventures that do come along are likely to be the wrong ones anyway. That,’ she added, ‘is the law of probability. Or don’t you have it here?’

‘Not in the way you think,’ the queen admitted. ‘Around here, if you find yourself captured by a bandit chief and he’s about to slit your throat with a great big knife, you know it’s your lucky day, because it’s a dead certainty he’s your long-lost brother and you’re in for a half share of the year’s takings. It’s getting so it’s hard to find people who’re prepared to be bandits these days. Too expensive, they reckon.’

Sis sniffed, as if she could smell toast burning. ‘This isn’t getting us anywhere,’ she said. ‘Now then, think. Who is there apart from my brother Carl and your dead sorcerer who might know something about your horrid old system?’

‘Don’t think there’s — Just a moment, though.’ A smile leaked out over the wicked queen’s face. ‘There is someone who might just be able to help. Mind you, it’s highly unlikely—’

‘Good.’ Sis nodded firmly. ‘Then by your reckoning it should be a sure thing. Which way? You explain as we go.’

‘I—’ The queen looked round. ‘To be truthful I’m not sure. Usually, you see, there’d be this little old man—’

‘Or an old crone carrying firewood, I know. Come on, think.’

‘All right, I’m doing my best.’ The queen closed her eyes, turned round three times, pointed at random and opened her eyes again. ‘That way,’ she said.

‘You’re sure?’

‘Absolutely positive,’ the wicked queen replied, freeing the hem of her skirt from a stray bramble. ‘Come on, then, don’t dawdle. And I think it’s your turn to carry the bucket.’

‘You again,’ snarled the elf. ‘Don’t you people ever give up?’

The frog dilated its cheeks. ‘No,’ it croaked. ‘It’s a little thing called duty. Not something I’d expect your kind to know anything about.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong then,’ jeered the elf. ‘I know lots about duty. It’s seventeen per cent on gin, whisky, rum and tequila, twenty-eight per cent on cigars.’

‘Forget it. Now, this time it’s going to be different.’

‘You bet,’ grumbled the elf, squirming ineffectually between the frog’s long, flexible toes. ‘For a start, I’m not having anything to do with it.’

‘That’s what you think, is it?’

The elf looked up into the frog’s round, yellow eyes. ‘Be fair,’ she said. ‘If you want to go around eating grandmothers, be my guest. Go for it. Just so long as you leave me out of it, because it’s not my war and I don’t want to get involved. When it comes to the irreconcilable conflict between man and beast, our role is strictly confined to robbing the dead. Okay?’

‘No,’ replied the frog. ‘Now, when I give the word…’

The elf planted her feet against a green toe and pushed with all the strength of her legs. It wasn’t enough. ‘Just think, will you?’ she said. ‘What makes you think it’ll work a second time? They may be woodcutters, but they aren’t stupid.’

‘Maybe, maybe not,’ replied the frog. ‘Actually, I have a theory that constant exposure to fresh sap rots their brains. There’s only one way to find out.’ He blinked twice with disconcerting rapidity. ‘What it comes down to is: who are you more afraid of, them or me?’

The elf subsided. ‘Go on, then,’ she muttered. ‘What’s the big idea?’

‘Better attitude. Now, on my mark I want you to run about and start yelling at the top of your voice The wolf is coming, the wolf is coming! Can you manage that, or would you prefer it if I tattooed your lines on your knees?’

The elf scowled. ‘I should be able to manage that,’ she said. ‘But what’s it going to achieve?’

The frog grinned. ‘Because, my one-thirty-second-scale friend,’ he said, ‘that way they’ll be looking for a big bad wolf, not a frog. Simple, isn’t it, when you think it through.’

‘You’re the boss,’ replied the elf. ‘Okay, ready when you are.’

It worked. As soon as the elf broke cover, the woodcutters leapt to their feet and hurried off in the direction she’d just come from, allowing the small green frog to hop unmolested out of the bushes and squeeze itself through the crack under the door.

Wonderful! He was in.

Now all he had to do was eat the grandmother.

In front of him was a huge black thing, like a low hill. Further reconnaissance proved it to be one of Granny’s shoes. It was then that the frog realised that perhaps, when he was planning the mission, he’d focused a little too intently on getting in and hadn’t given as much thought as he should to what came after that. With a lot of effort, a little luck and a week to do it in, he might just manage to eat one of Granny’s toes.

Then the ground began to shake. He tried to hop, but something huge and burning hot caught him and lifted him high into the air. Involuntarily he closed both eyes; when his conscious mind had recognised that self-induced blindness wasn’t likely to be the editor’s choice for Survival Trait of the Month and had sent word down his cheapjack amphibian synapses to belay that last order, he was staring into a vast pink — Face.

‘Hello, little frog,’ said a girlish voice that reverberated from one end of the galaxy to the other. ‘I’m Little Red Riding Hood. I think you’re cute. Have you got a name, little frog?’

The frog wanted to snarl, lay his ears flat to his lean wedge-shaped skull and bare his teeth; the best he could do was croak ‘Rivet!’ very weakly and kick into thin air with his back legs. The giant red-hot human let forth a silvery laugh that threatened to bend the sky.

‘Oh you’re so sweet,’ said the voice, ‘I think I shall call you Sugarplum and keep you in the pocket of my apron. Wooza itta bitta pretty liddle frog, den?’

The face came slowly down on him, like nightfall on a man condemned to hang at dawn, and the frog could see an opening beginning to form in the sheer rose-red wall of flesh. It was opening its mouth.

Poetic justice, thought the frog, I’m going to get eaten. In a way, it wasn’t such a bad way to go at that. Looked at from the right angle, the food chain’s more like a party conga, winding in and out through the discarded paper trays and slices of cake ground into the carpet and taking everybody with it. He braced himself; then couldn’t help a spasm of terrified pain as the burning hot surface membranes of the all-enveloping mouth made contact with his skin. There was a ghastly slurping sound—

And then, nothing. He hadn’t been eaten after all.

Not eaten.

Kissed.

That was when things really started to happen. It was as if he’d topped off a meal of beans, onions and garlic with a large primed bomb, and his skin was stretching under the force of the blast. He was also falling — the girl had dropped him — and his ears were deafened by her little gasp of surprise. He landed, but found he was going upwards, and standing on his hind legs at the same time. He was growing, dammit, and at a terrifying rate. He was — There happened to be a mirror on the wall opposite. The mere fact that he was tall enough to look in it should have been enough to warn him that things had just defied the laws of physics and got worse. He looked into it. ‘Oh, shit a brick!’ he moaned.

‘Language,’ Little Red Riding Hood warned, wiping her lips on the back of her hand. ‘If Grandmama catches you swearing, she’ll rip your ears off.’

He’d turned into a handsome prince. ‘Turn me back!’ he yelled hysterically, staring at the mirror. ‘That’s awful! I don’t want to be one of those things!’

‘Tough,’ replied Little Red Riding Hood with a grin, and as she advanced towards him, she produced from the pocket of her dainty scarlet cape a pair of handcuffs and a nasty-looking hypodermic. ‘That’s the way it goes, buster. And you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing it’s all in aid of medical research.’

‘Uh?’ Fang goggled at her. ‘What are you drivelling about?’

‘Medical research,’ the girl replied, making a grab for his arm that he only just managed to avoid. ‘The nasty old authorities banned us from using frogs for our—’ (horrible grin) ‘—experiments. But we found a way of getting round that, as you can see. Just turn the frog into a cute boy, the cute boy gives his consent to the experimental treatment programme, and Bob’s your uncle. Now if you’ll just hold still…’

A last tiny drop of adrenaline flopped from his pineal gland and gave Fang the little spurt of energy he needed to dive between the girl’s legs and bolt for the door. ‘Spoilsport!’ she screamed after him; then she threw the handcuffs, which hit him behind the ear and raised a nasty bump. Fortunately, he still had enough of his wolf mindset left to prompt him to jump into a tangled thicket of brambles, where a mere human wouldn’t dare follow for fear of being horribly scratched.

A short while later, he remembered that he was a mere human now, and later still spent a thoroughly miserable couple of hours picking thorns out of all sorts of places, many of which wolves don’t even have.

In fields, mushrooms; in high streets and shopping precincts, video libraries, designer greetings cards vendors and small, eternally hopeful shops stocking silver jewellery, aromatic oils and CDs of traditional Tibetan music; here, castles. They pop up out of the ground, bloom, burgeon; then, when the story’s finished with them, they vanish without leaving so much as a scar in the grass.

This castle, at the other end of the forest from the wicked queen’s rather more substantial pad, is the #2 Enchanted Kingdom set. Its graceful coned roofs and swan-necked towers imply that it’s happy-ending compatible, but the absence of rosy-cheeked peasants and bustling market-stalls outside the gates suggests that the happy ending’s still a reel away, or even that the story hasn’t started yet.

There were two halberdiers in fancy dress armour in front of the castle gate when Dumpy, the Dwarf With No Name, slithered awkwardly off his Shetland pony and tethered it to the guard-rail. He looked at the halberdiers, and they at him.

‘You’re a dwarf,’ said one of them nervously.

‘So?’

The halberdier fidgeted with the handle of his spear. ‘And there’s just the one of you, right?’

‘Reckon so.’

The two halberdiers exchanged glances. ‘Pass, friend.’

‘Mighty obliged to you.’

He chuckled to himself as he crossed the courtyard and started to climb the spiral staircase. How dwarves had acquired this extraordinary reputation for blind savagery and skill at arms he didn’t know. Among the empty cardboard boxes and string-tied bundles of old newspapers in the cellar of his memory was a vague recollection of a time when it hadn’t been this way; of having to scamper out from under the feet of contemptuous humans in the streets, of the sting of sand kicked in his face on a hundred beaches right across the dimension, of jeering references to fishing-rods and dinky red hoods. Since the furthest back he could remember was last Thursday (or Once Upon A Time, local designation) this wasn’t saying a great deal in absolute terms. Around here, people simply didn’t remember things for very long. A goldfish, which forgets where it’s been in the time it takes to swim a circuit of its bowl, could have made a good living in these parts as a database.

In which case, he mused as he rested halfway up the vertiginous stairs of the tower, how come he seemed to remember a time when he was able to remember back to a time he’d since forgotten?

Must be a reason. He scratched his head. If there was one, it had slipped his mind. Couldn’t have been important.

There were more halberdiers at the top of the stairs, standing on either side of the doorway that led to the royal apartments. They looked at him and flinched.

‘It’s okay,’ he said, in a tone of voice implying the exact opposite. ‘Just put down the halberds where I can see ‘em, nice and easy, and nobody’s gonna get hurt.’

The guards did as they were told, laying their weapons down as if they were spun-sugar tubes filled with warm nitro-glycerine. ‘Beat it,’ Dumpy growled. They fled.

And another thing. Why am I talking in this most peculiar way?

Doesn’t sound like the way I’d have imagined I usually talk. Sure does seem mighty odd. Yeah, sho’ nuff

The door wasn’t locked; after all, it was only the door to the king and queen’s private apartments, why the hell should it be? As he reached for the handle, he heard voices on the other side. He listened for a moment or so, then smiled. Yup, he’d come to the right place.

‘Valdemar?’

‘Nope.’

‘Vernon?’

‘Nope.’

‘Victor?’

‘Nope.’

‘Vincent?’

‘Nope.’

‘Well, that’s the Vs. Okay. Walter?’

‘Nope.’

‘Wilbert?’

‘Do me a favour.’

‘William?’

‘Nope.’

Dumpy pushed the door open. Inside the chamber it was dark, lit only by the few skinny photons that had managed to squeeze through the loopholes in the wall, but he could see the King (must be the King, because he’s wearing a crown), his young wife, the baby hugged protectively in her arms, and a short, hunchbacked man squatting on the clothes press and swinging his legs.

‘Say,’ he demanded. ‘You the dwarf?’

The little man looked up and scowled. ‘No, I’m Arnold Schwarzenegger, but they washed me without looking at the label first. Would you mind waiting outside, whoever you are? I’m in a meeting.’

Dumpy ignored him, ducked under a footstool and strode into the room, not failing to notice the way the King and Queen shrank back as he approached. ‘I was told there was a dwarf in this here castle,’ he said. ‘Reckon as how you’ll fit the bill, friend.’

‘Jolly good. Now, if you’d care to wait outside…’

Dumpy folded his arms across his diminutive chest. ‘They call me the Dwarf With No Name,’ he went on. ‘I…’

He stopped abruptly. The Queen had made a funny squeaking noise. Dumpy spun round and glowered at her, then faced the little man again.

‘Do they?’ The little man glowered back. ‘What a coincidence.’

Dumpy’s eyebrows puckered. ‘Don’t say you’re a dwarf with no name too,’ he said. ‘That’d sure make things mighty complicated.’

‘I should say so,’ replied the little man. ‘Actually, to be fair, it’s not so much that I haven’t got a name, more a case of—’

Dumpy reached out and lifted the hem of the hood that overshadowed the little man’s face. ‘I know you,’ he said. ‘You’re Rumpelstiltskin.’

The Queen made a loud yipping noise and started dancing round the room, while the King clenched both fists, punched them in the air and shouted ‘Yes!’ For his part, the little man gave Dumpy a look that would’ve poisoned a reservoir.

‘Oh thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you ever so much.’ He slid off the clothes press, swivelled round and kicked it savagely. ‘Have you got any idea how long it’s taken me to set up this gig? Six months of hard work, sitting up all night spinning straw into gold, and thanks to you it’s all just gone down the toilet. You blithering…’

He broke off, mainly because Dumpy had grabbed him by the lapels and lifted him off his feet. ‘I’d think twice about calling me names, pal. That’s how come I ain’t got one. I guess,’ he added, suddenly uncertain. He put Rumpelstiltskin down again.

‘All right,’ said the other dwarf. ‘But that works both ways, you know.’

‘Yeah,’ Dumpy growled remorsefully. ‘Guess I owe you an apology, at that. Shoulda guessed you might still be pulling that old name scam.’ He frowned. ‘Another thing I forgot,’ he added to himself. ‘C’mon, let’s git,’ he said, pulling himself together. ‘I get the feeling these folks ain’t feelin’ too friendly.’

Sure enough, the King and Queen were beginning to fidget in an ostensibly warlike manner. The two dwarves headed off down the stairs.

‘Why were you looking for me?’ Rumpelstiltskin asked.

‘I’m looking for good dwarves,’ Dumpy answered, as they came out into the castle courtyard. It was deserted, and the only sound was that of hurriedly closing shutters and bolts being slammed home on doors. ‘Dwarves I can rely on. They gotta be smart, mean and fast with a—’ With a what? Suddenly he realised that he couldn’t remember what dwarves fight with. Something small, presumably, and capable of being used to devastating effect against the ankles of their victims. ‘Fast,’ he repeated. ‘Real fast.’

‘I see,’ Rumpelstiltskin said thoughtfully. ‘Smart, mean, fast, reliable dwarves. What’s this for, a cut-price pizza delivery service? One where you just carry the pizza in under the door without waiting for the customer to open it?’

Dumpy shook his head, trying to recall what the job was. ‘Fighting a wolf,’ he said, suddenly inspired. ‘I been hired to keep this wolf from preying on three little pigs.’

‘And so you want reliable, quick, clever, stingy dwarves. Sorry if this sounds rude, but the logical connection escapes me.’

‘Not stingy,’ Dumpy explained. ‘Mean. Like in, you know… mean.’ Dammit, he knew there should be a better word, a word that’d mean what it meant, but somehow he couldn’t think of it. It was as if there was a big fat policeman standing outside the door of his memory, refusing to let him in there unless he could produce the necessary permits. He knew he was capable of expressing himself in something more lucid than this strange idiom and this horrible drawling accent, which he knew for certain had never been spoken by any real person. ‘Mean,’ he repeated. ‘Don’t you understand Dwarvish?’

They reached the gate. The two halberdiers on duty took one look at them, dropped their weapons and jumped in the moat. ‘What was all that about?’ Rumpelstiltskin asked.

Dumpy shrugged. ‘Folks is just scared of dwarves, is all,’ he said.

‘Oh. Why?’

‘Because we’re mean, I guess.’

‘Ah. I can see where that might be annoying, like if you’ve gone out for a meal together, but not frightening, surely.’

Dumpy concentrated. A stray shard of memory was loose in his mind, but it wouldn’t stay still long enough to be identified. ‘You saying that where you come from, folks ain’t scared of dwarves?’

Rumpelstiltskin nodded. ‘It’s more or less the other way around, in fact. At least, I think so. Thought so. You know, it’s sort of slipped my mind.’

‘Where you come from,’ Dumpy repeated, ‘dwarves are scared of regular folks?’

‘I think so. Or at least they try to stay out of their way. Partly I imagine it’s unthinking bigotry and size-hatred, but mostly it’s because they tend to tread on us without realising we’re there. That’s why we’re shy, retiring creatures who live deep in the forests and hide when the Big People come clumping by.’

Dumpy was shocked. ‘We do?’

‘Apparently. Hard to credit, isn’t it?’ Rumpelstiltskin frowned, and the frown hardened into a scowl. ‘Can’t be right, though. I mean,’ he went on, straightening his back and letting his chin jut out, ‘we’re dwarves, dammit. How come we let those big guys push us around? How come they don’t show us no respect?’

‘Too darned right,’ Dumpy confirmed. ‘You ain’t got respect, partner, you ain’t got nothin’.’ He jutted his chin out too, so that the pair of them looked like a bonsai granite outcrop. ‘C’mon, let’s go out there and kick us some ass.’

‘Sure thing,’ replied Rumpelstiltskin, punching the palm of his left hand with his right fist and wincing slightly. ‘Mind you, we may need to stand on something in order to reach.’

Dumpy bristled. ‘Forget that kind of talk, mister,’ he said. ‘Dwarves bend the knee to no man.’

‘Well, quite. Wouldn’t be a great deal of point. Still, let’s get out there and teach the suckers a thing or two.’ He grimaced horribly, knowing that for some reason it was the right thing to do. It hurt his face, and he stopped.

‘Sure.’ Dumpy rubbed his chin. ‘Though of course we ain’t gonna go around terrorising innocent folks.’

‘No? I’d have thought they’d be easier. For beginners, that is.

‘Hell, no. We don’t do that kinda stuff. We’re good.’

Rumpelstiltskin blinked. ‘We are?’ he said. ‘Oh.’

‘You betcha. We’re the goddamn heroes. Okay, maybe we gotta throw our weight about from time to time, punch out a few guys who don’t show us no respect, but deep down we’re the best. In a land torn apart by anarchy and oppression, we are the law.’

‘Oh joy,’ muttered Rumpelstiltskin, without enthusiasm. ‘What I always wanted to be when I grew up.’

‘Somewhere,’ muttered the queen, a shoe in each hand, ‘near here.’

Around their ankles, the mud of the swamp seethed and gurgled like a casserole neglected in a hot oven. Wisps of thick grey fog wound in and out of the skeletons of dead trees. In the distance, swamp gas occasionally flared into torches of lurid orange flame. Overhead, some kind of huge, slow-moving bird wheeled and circled, watching them with a more than passing interest.

‘Somewhere near here,’ the queen repeated. ‘Usually, of course, he comes to see me.’

Sis groaned, and shifted the bucket across to her left, marginally less blistered hand. Something in the mud around her ankles was nibbling at her toe. ‘Who are you talking about?’ she asked.

The queen pulled aside a curtain of lank reeds, shook her head and let it fall back. ‘My accountant,’ she said.

‘Your accountant?’

‘That’s right.’ She turned her attention to a dead tree, its heart eaten out by time and some indeterminate form of blight. ‘Hello? Anybody home? Oh well.’

‘Your accountant.’

‘You seem surprised.’

‘Sorry. It just seems a bit unlikely, that’s all.’

The queen raised an eyebrow. ‘Not a bit of it. Oh, your heroes and dragonslayers and knights in shining armour are all right for fetching and carrying and basic pest control, but when you’re in serious trouble what you need is sensible, level-headed professional help. And this chap we’re going to meet is so level-headed you could play snooker on his hat. Given a choice between him and your average heavily armed leather fetishist—’

‘I see what you mean,’ Sis replied. ‘It’s just that my uncle Terry’s an accountant, and his office is over a chemist’s shop in a suburban high street. This doesn’t look…’

‘Different strokes, girl,’ the queen said patiently. ‘In these parts, this is a suburban high street. I wish you’d said you were an accountant’s niece. I’d have taken you a bit more seriously if I’d known that.’

‘I—’ Sis would undoubtedly have said something worthy of her ancestry if she hadn’t chosen that moment to step on a chunk of green, slimy log and topple over. There was a horrible-sounding glop! noise, and she disappeared into the mud.

‘Oh God,’ the queen said, hauling her out, ‘the bucket…’

She looked round. Being lighter than a fairly well-nourished adolescent girl, the bucket hadn’t sunk into the mire; it was sitting, or floating, on the scummy surface at an angle of about forty-five degrees. There was a newt swimming in it.

‘Hell,’ the queen said. ‘That’s another chunk of data we’ve lost. Much more of this and we might as well forget the whole thing. Why couldn’t you look where you were going, instead of…?’

Sis wasn’t listening. Rather, she was staring at something behind the queen’s back and pointing. ‘Over there,’ she said.

‘Hm? Oh good Lord, right under our noses and we didn’t see.’

The base of the dead tree had swung open, revealing a carpeted staircase apparently leading down into a tunnel under the mud. Having carefully unglued the bucket, the queen waded across, looked in vain for something to wipe her feet on, then squelched down the stairs and out of sight, leaving Sis to follow as best she could.

The staircase was long, narrow and dark, and the slippery condition of her shoes made the journey an interesting one. When she finally emerged into light and air, she found herself in what looked unnervingly like a warm, bright, enchantingly dull waiting-room. There were the usual plastic chairs, the usual table with dog-eared copies of ancient magazines, the usual gaunt-looking avocado plant in a too-small pot; and behind the absolutely standard receptionist’s desk sat a nice, cosy-looking middle-aged—

‘Hello,’ the leprechaun was saying to the wicked queen.

‘Have you got an appointment?’

“Fraid not,’ the queen replied. ‘If he could spare me a minute or so, it’d be greatly appreciated.’

The leprechaun beamed. ‘I’ll let him know you’re here,’ she said, and pressed a button on her desk.

‘I’ll regret asking this,’ Sis muttered while the receptionist was making her call, ‘but isn’t that—?’

The queen nodded. ‘They all are. Logical choice of profession, given their experience in hiding pots of gold under rainbows. Don’t stare, it’s rude. She’s not staring, and you’re a whole lot weirder in these parts than she is.’

By the time Sis had thought that one through, the connecting door had opened and a — dammit, yes, a funny little man with sparkling eyes behind round spectacles and a long white beard was shaking hands with the wicked queen and asking after the health of some carefully memorised relative. Sis felt better; that proved he was an accountant, for all that he was four feet tall and dressed in red and yellow slippers with bells on the toes. Any minute now, she thought, he’ll press the tips of his fingers together and say ‘Let’s just run through those figures again, shall we?’ and then she’d know.

She followed them through into the leprechaun’s office, which was even more reassuring. There was the desk; one comfy chair behind it, two chair-shaped instruments of torture in front. There were the filing cabinet, the rows of loose-leaf reference books, the files neatly stacked on the floor with Dictaphone tapes balanced on them ready for the typists, the obligatory framed photograph on the desktop with picture of generic wife, small child and dog (look closely at some of those framed photos; wherever you go, sooner or later you’ll notice they’re all of the same woman, child and dog). The only thing missing was the VDU and where it should have been there was a free-standing grey-plastic-framed mirror.

‘So,’ the leprechaun said, nodding them into the punters’ chairs, ‘what can I do for you?’

The wicked queen settled her face into that expression of charming helplessness that can sometimes draw the fangs of even the most hard-bitten professional adviser. ‘I’m afraid I’ve done something awfully silly,’ she said, ‘and I was wondering if you could possibly help me.’

The leprechaun smiled. ‘That’s what I’m here for,’ he said. ‘And I’m sure it can’t be as bad as you make out.’

The queen simpered back; Sis had done enough pocket-money work for Uncle Terry during the school holidays to know it was tactically quite sound, but that didn’t stop her wanting to be noisily sick. ‘It’s like this,’ she said. ‘We — that’s her and me — we’ve managed to crash the Mirrors network for the whole kingdom and all that’s left is what’s in this bucket, and we’ve spilt quite a lot of that. Also, her two brothers are missing out there somewhere, nothing seems to work at all, and we haven’t a clue how to put it right. Do you think you could suggest something?’

‘Um,’ the leprechaun replied, looking as if he’d just found a sea-serpent coiled round his soup spoon. ‘All due respect, but that doesn’t really sound like an accountancy problem. I’m sorry if that sounds negative,’ he added quickly, as the queen’s face fell like share prices after a spring election, ‘but the tax advantages of a total systems wipe-out aren’t all that great. Of course,’ he went on, ‘it’s all a bit of a grey area, and I’d need to take another look at the figures—’

(Ah, whispered Sis to herself. I believe.)

‘Actually,’ the queen interrupted, ‘the tax thing isn’t absolutely uppermost in my mind right now.’

The leprechaun looked at her and blinked. ‘It isn’t?’ he said.

‘Well, no.’

‘Oh.’ Something in his manner suggested that where he came from, people had been burnt at the stake for less. ‘So how can I help?’

The queen smiled and pointed at the mirror. ‘I seem to remember you saying that your, um, one of those ran off an independent network, and I was just wondering if I might possibly—’

The leprechaun looked at her gravely, as if she’d just asked if she might borrow his mother for a little experiment. ‘I’m not sure,’ he said guardedly. ‘What did you have in mind?’

‘Nothing drastic,’ the queen assured him. ‘For starters, I was wondering if we could use your mirror to translate my, um, bucket. You see, it’s all jumbles of silly letters and symbols and things, and I haven’t the faintest idea what that’s all about. It certainly isn’t any use, how it is. If we could somehow load it on to yours, we might be able to get things running again.’

The leprechaun leaned back in his chair and fiddled with the stem of his spectacles. ‘Of course I’d love to help in any way I can, you know that,’ he said. ‘But there are sensitive personal files relating to my clients’ financial affairs—’

‘I won’t peek, honest,’ the queen cooed.

‘Quite so.’ The leprechaun hesitated, patently torn between his obligations to his paying customers and his loyalty to his queen. ‘Unfortunately, the rules of the profession are very strict. After all,’ he added, sensing that he’d hit on a winning argument, ‘you wouldn’t want me letting all and sundry look at your file.’

For some reason, the queen suddenly looked thoughtful. ‘Fair enough,’ she said. ‘You do it, then. You probably know far more about these gadgets than I do anyway. Don’t suppose it’d take you more than a minute or so.’

It was the accountant’s turn to look thoughtful. On the one hand, he was saying to himself, my mother didn’t raise me to be no systems analyst; on the other hand, for his usual hourly charge, paid cash, quite likely in advance, he’d cheerfully do handstands in the street, sing serenades under young girls’ windows while accompanying himself on the mandolin (hire of mandolin extra), escort inconvenient female relatives to social functions or clean out a blocked sink. ‘Certainly,’ he said, plastering a smile onto his face and then wiping it away before it set hard. ‘I shall do my best.’

‘Oh good,’ the queen said. ‘That’s a weight off my mind. Here’s the bucket.’ She hauled it up and placed it carefully on the desk; she didn’t spill a drop, but the mud on the bottom made an awful mess of a thick wodge of paperwork. ‘Do you want us to wait in the waiting room, or shall we go away and come back, or what?’

The leprechaun peered down into the bucket, wiggled his ears, and sat down in the general direction of his chair. When he spoke next, there was a curiously shell-shocked tone to his voice.

‘This may, ah, take some time,’ he croaked. ‘Perhaps you’d better go away and come back later. Better still, I’ll call you when it’s ready.’

The wicked queen raised an eyebrow; it was a gesture that suited her, and she knew it. ‘How?’ she asked sweetly. ‘With everything being offline all over the kingdom.’

‘Oh.’ The leprechaun looked up, his mind clearly elsewhere. ‘I’ll, er, send a messenger. You’re going back to the palace, presumably.’

The queen nodded. ‘That’s very kind of you,’ she said. ‘I feel ever so much better now.’

Once the door had closed and the sound of footsteps on the stairs had died away, the accountant got up, drew the curtains, checked under the mat and behind the picture frames, took off his red and yellow stripy jacket and loosened the staid, demure tie he wore hidden under the vestments of his trade. Then he looked into the bucket again. Then he grinned.

‘Hold all calls,’ he barked into the intercom, ‘and cancel all my appointments for the day. Something’s come up.’

‘Well?’ Julian demanded.

‘Nearly finished,’ Eugene replied, his mouth full of bolts. ‘Just got to tighten up this last nut and… There, all done. What d’you think?’

Julian looked up and saw a dear little cottage, with roses around the door and chocolate-box windows curtained in flowery chintz, suspended twenty feet in the air from the belly of a huge balloon. ‘I see the logic behind it,’ he said eventually. ‘I’m just not sure about how you’ve put it into practice.’

‘What’s there to see?’ Eugene shouted back. ‘It’s pretty simple, really. The next time the bastard starts huffing and puffing, all we do is cut the anchor cable and then just ride out the blast. Okay, so perhaps we end up a hundred miles away, but I’ve fitted a couple of rocket-powered motors, so we’ll be back home within the hour. It’d damn well better work,’ he added with feeling. ‘I got a carrier pigeon from the insurance company while you were out, and they’re not happy. Somehow I feel that threatening to take our business elsewhere isn’t keeping them awake at nights any more.’

‘Come down,’ Julian said. ‘Sorry to sound downbeat, but I don’t think that thing’s safe.’

Eugene gazed up at the balloon. ‘It’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘But I’m coming down anyway. Press that red button on the instrument panel, would you? It works the elevator.’

‘Which red button? There’s two of them.’

Far away in the distance a dish and a spoon, each carrying two suitcases, a flight bag and a yellow duty-free carrier that clinked as they moved, paused to look up at the strange grey sausage that seemed to have a house hanging from it. A passing cat started to play ‘Fly Me To The Moon’ on the violin.

‘The one marked Lift,’ Eugene shouted back.

‘Lift-off?’

‘No, Liiiiiift!’

‘Sorry,’ Julian yelled, as the balloon abruptly tore away from its moorings, wrenched loose by the explosive force of the rocket motors. ‘I think I may have pressed the wrong button.’

On the distant hillside, the cat lifted the bow clear of the strings and corrugated her brows into a pensive frown. ‘I thought it was meant to be a cow,’ she said.

“Scuse me?’

‘Taking part in the moon shot,’ the cat explained. ‘I read about it in the paper, Daisy Set To Be First Cow In Space. And that thing hanging out of the upstairs window is either a very small pink cow, or it’s a pig.’

‘Don’t ask us,’ replied the spoon, ‘we’re tableware.’

Snow White threw open the quaint old leaded window of her bedroom, leaned out over the sill, took a deep breath of crisp morning air and thought, Yes!

Most of the time, life’s hard for a girl living on her wits in the Big Forest. The dividing line between predator and prey blurs. Wolves wear sheepskin, fashionable sheep wouldn’t be seen dead in anything but one hundred per cent pure wolf, three quarters of the lucky breaks turn out to be menacing cracks, and come Happy-Ever-After time, you’re only ever as good as your last scam.

Not this time, Snow White reflected, giving thanks to the patron goddess of her vocation. Just this once, she’d fallen on her feet instead of her head or her butt. She had the house, in a neighbourhood where there was no chance of bumping into any of her old associates. She had the story, perfect in every detail. Most of all, she had the marks; a prime set, all complete, first editions, collector’s items every one. Seven dreamy otherworldly Orientals, gentlemen and scholars all, already eating out of her hand and doing precisely what they were told, automatically and without question. It went without saying that they were wealthy; all Japanese were. Give it just a few weeks more, time enough to reel them in without any risk of arousing the slightest suspicion, and then it’d be time for the first fleeting hints about the gold mine her poor dead uncle had just left to her and the wonderful investment opportunity it offered. Hell, fish in a barrel were the Viet Cong compared to these poor fools. It was perfect; raining Schrodinger’s cats and Pavlov’s dogs.

She left the window, with its heart-stoppingly lovely view of the glade, the clearing and the mist-wrapped treetops, and inspected the contents of her wardrobe. There was the plain white frock, the homely cute gingham with the designer patch on the left knee, the blouse-bodice-skirt combo she’d arrived in and the black leather jumpsuit that represented the last resort when the going got really tough. Not going to need that on this job, she reassured herself smugly, which was good; it was hot as hell in that thing, and wearing it always made her feel like toothpaste in a hostile tube.

She decided on the gingham, as being most appropriate for what was on the day’s agenda. So far she’d won their sympathy, their trust and their affection; now she had to launch Phase II and convert that useful groundwork into the fierce avuncular protectiveness that experience had taught her was the best preparation for the sting. When they’ve rescued you from death and Fates Worse Than a couple of times, hung around your bedside waiting for you to open your pretty little eyes and look up at them with love and trust, all that really remains is to administer the final coup de gráce while making shortlists of what to spend the money on.

She adjusted the dress in front of the mirror, straightened the neckline, lifted her skirt and tucked into her garter elastic the dainty little nickel-plated.25 automatic that had more than once proved to be a girl’s best friend in a tight spot. Not that she saw herself having any need of it here; God, but these marks were a joy to work with, so much easier than the riverboat gamblers and treacle miners she’d cut her teeth on back in the old days…

She frowned. She could remember the old days quite vividly, but only as a sort of big screen memory, all perfectly lit, beautifully framed and in needle-sharp focus. It was almost too vivid to be real, because surely memory doesn’t work that way, in sweeping panoramic shots of atmospheric saloons and archetypal levees beside a cobalt blue river. Too perfect, too perfect by half. She had the feeling that if she were to be fatally injured and have her past life flash before her eyes, there’d be an usherette with a torch to show her to her seat.

She unclenched the muscles that shaped the frown and ordered herself to quit being so damn paranoid. Everything was going to be just fine; fairytale ending.

There was a knock at her door. Quickly she shut the wardrobe, checked the line of her skirt, knocked her voice back into little-girl mode and chirped, ‘Come in.’

She relaxed. It was only nice Mr Akira, with her breakfast tray: toasted muffins, fresh milk, apple, this morning’s Financial Times. She smiled; he blushed, bowed low, nutted himself on the rustic latch and withdrew.

Once she’d had something to eat and had run her eye down the closing prices, she composed her thoughts and began to formulate her plan. In order to tighten her grip the last few essential degrees, she needed to be saved by the marks from some awful fate, preferably an aggressive act by an outside agency. Rescued from wolves? Worth a try, except that she’d never had much luck with wolves in the past; they tended to steer clear of her, though whether from fear or professional courtesy she’d never worked out. A human assailant would be better, if she could find one. Wicked stepmother? Jealous rival?

Wicked queen…

Perfect. Just the right overtones of sex and politics. No bother at all to cook up a tale about being a dispossessed orphan princess on the lam; it’d appeal to the rich vein of aristocratic snobbery that these great feudal lords undoubtedly indulged towards mere parvenu royalty. All that remained was to find one at short notice. That might present problems; wicked queens aren’t something you can express-order from the Innovations catalogue. But in a place like this, there was bound to be one within a small radius. At least one; which meant she’d be able to take advantage of good healthy commercial competition and shop around for the best deal. Even at the best of times, the wicked queen racket’s a cut-throat business.

Just in time, she remembered that she’d forgotten to do her face. With a sigh and a curse, she pulled the chair away from her dressing table, sat down in front of the mirror and dabbed at her nose with a powder puff. When she’d restored enough girlish pinkness (memo to self: lay off the radishes and the garlic bread) she paused for a moment to look at her reflection.

Beautiful.

Stunning. Breathtaking. Fabulous. Gorgeous. Out of this world.

But she knew that already. There was something else about the image that faced her in the glass this morning that she couldn’t quite place. She looked again and began eliminating the impossible.

It wasn’t her, it was the mirror itself. It was looking at her.

‘Mirror?’ she whispered.

Her reflection regarded her coolly. Its perfect lips parted.

‘Running DOS,’ it said. ‘Please wait.’

Snow White’s eyebrows shot up; their counterparts in the mirror stayed put. What was going on? And what in blazes was DOS? And why did she feel this urge to ask…?

‘Ready,’ said the face in the mirror.

‘All right.’ She drew in a deep breath. ‘Um. Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?’

The reflection’s lips flickered for a tiny moment in a mocking smile. Then it went back to the perfect stone face, and made its answer:

‘Thou, O Snow White, are the fairest of them all.’