Snow White and the Seven Samurai

Chapter 7

The knight introduced himself as Sir Agravaunt.

He explained that he’d been going about his business in a quiet, inoffensive way, hanging out his washing between two convenient trees in a shady, peaceful part of the forest.

‘Washing?’ Sis queried.

‘That’s right,’ said Sir Agravaunt. ‘And then this horrid great big dragon—’

‘Doesn’t it rust?’

Sir Agravaunt looked at her oddly. ‘How do you mean?’ he said.

‘Your, um, washing,’ Sis replied, trying not to stare at the knight’s shining armour. ‘Wouldn’t you be better off with a can of oil or metal polish?’

The knight’s forehead corrugated, then relaxed. ‘Not that sort of washing, silly,’ he said. ‘Sheets and pillowcases and table napkins and things. Anyway, along comes this tiresome dragon—’

‘You do your own laundry?’ Sis interrupted.

‘Well, of course I do. Doesn’t everyone?’

Sis, who had the same degree of passive understanding of how a washing machine worked as she had of the operation of the solar system, shrugged and said, ‘I suppose so. But I thought you people had — well, servants and things.’

The knight shook his head. ‘Not likely,’ he said. ‘Domestic service is a barbaric and outmoded institution, equally degrading for both servant and master. And besides,’ he added ruefully, ‘they’d want to be paid.’

Sis caught sight of a patch crudely spot-welded onto the left elbow of his armour and a run in a chain-mail stocking loosely botched up with fusewire, and nodded tactfully. ‘Quite right,’ she said. ‘You’re very, um, enlightened. For a knight, I mean.’

Once again the knight shot her a curious look. ‘You haven’t met many knights, have you?’ he said.

‘Well, no, actually,’ Sis admitted. ‘Not actually met them, face to face. Er, face to visor. Whatever. I’ve read about them, of course,’ she added quickly. ‘You know, the knights of the round table, that sort of thing.’

‘Round table,’ Sir Agravaunt repeated, obviously mystified. ‘Can’t say that rings a bell. Are you thinking of Sir Mordevain, by any chance? He’s got a circular Swedish pine table in his kitchen-dinette. And,’ he added with a hint of venom, ‘a bead curtain over the doorway, and a fur-fabric toilet-roll holder shaped like a cat in his downstairs loo. It only goes to show, there’s absolutely no accounting for taste.’

The wicked queen coughed meaningfully. ‘I don’t want to hurry you,’ she said, ‘but there are a few things we ought to be doing. You know, setting the world to rights, darning the fabric of the space/time continuum.’

The knight, whose eyes had momentarily lit up at the words darning and fabric, sniffed disdainfully. ‘Huh,’ he said. ‘Girl talk. I’ll leave you to it. Thanks anyway, for saving me from the dragon and so forth.’

As he clanked away into the shadows of the greenwood, Sis scratched her head. ‘That knight,’ she said.

‘Hm?’

‘Are they — well, all like that?’

‘Not really,’ the queen replied. ‘Or at least, they weren’t. Knights were bold, fearless, courteous, a little bit on the psychotic side but nothing that hiding from them in a deep cellar under a pile of old sacks couldn’t cope with. I think the word I’m looking for is manly.’

‘Ah.’

‘On the other hand,’ the queen went on, ‘ever since I can remember, knights have been exactly like that one we just met, if not more so. You want your living room redesigned or your wardrobe co-ordinated, you send for a knight. I wouldn’t mind,’ she went on bitterly, ‘if it was one followed by the other, but it isn’t. It’s simultaneous, and that’s what really makes me want to spit.’

Sis tried to make sense of it, but it was like trying to make one picture out of pieces from four different jigsaw puzzles. ‘Please explain,’ she said.

‘I’ll try. You see, there’s the way it ought to be, which is how it was before you crashed — sorry, before the system went down. All right, so far?’

‘I think so.’

‘Good. There’s also the way it is now, as a direct result of the system going down. If you care to think of it geometrically, let’s say everything’s at an angle of roughly sixty degrees to how it should be. Hence, for example, all that business with the three little pigs. I take it you know the orthodox version.’

Sis considered. ‘Let’s see. Pigs build house, wolf blows house down, pigs start again, build another one. Is that the one you mean?’

The queen nodded. ‘And sure enough,’ she said, ‘the three little pigs built a house, and it did get blown down. Or rather up. The difference is that it didn’t get blown up by the wolf, they did it themselves. Same approximate net result, different chain of events leading up to it; that’s what I meant by an angle of sixty degrees. It’s confusing and a horrid mess, but at least it ends up the same way. The narrative patterns are bent but not broken. It’s the third one that’s worrying me.’

‘Well?’

‘The third way is where things actually get swapped round with their opposite numbers, like the knight being saved from the dragon by the damsel. Now that’s not just a phase modulation shift in the epic sine-curve, that’s somebody deliberately mucking things about. And that’s why I’m worried.’

‘Oh,’ Sis said. ‘Have you any idea who it might be?’

‘Oh yes. In fact, I’m morally certain I know exactly who it is. You see, I have this bad feeling that you and I together are in grave danger of becoming Snow White.’

Sis didn’t know how to react to that. Her first reaction was to make a face and feign nausea; then it struck her that — ‘If we’re Snow White,’ she said, ‘who’s the wick— I mean, who’s being you?’

The queen grinned painfully. ‘Go figure,’ she said.

‘Snow White? Snow White’s turning into you?’

‘Logical, to the point of dreary inevitability. And the problem is, if she’s me, and she can somehow get the system working again—’

Sis swallowed hard. ‘You mean she’ll be out to get us?’

‘Of course. It’s what I’d be doing. What I probably am doing,’ she added, clenching her fists in frustration, ‘assuming I’m right, of course, and we are changing places. The nasty bit is that she’d be in complete control of the Mirrors core, which means she’d be able to change the rules. Like,’ she added, shaking her head sadly, ‘turning everything upside down.’

‘You mean she’s already started? Like with the knight and the dragon stuff.’

‘You’ve got it,’ sighed the queen. ‘And that’s where everything happening at once comes into the picture. That’s what’s complicating it so horribly, you see. It’d be bad enough if the three versions happened one after the other, but the wretched truth is that they’re all happening at the same time.’ Sis was really at a loss to know how to deal with that.

Nobody could accuse her of panicking, of falling to bits as soon as the going got weird; so far, she reckoned she’d coped admirably, largely by telling herself it was all one of those strange dreams soap-opera writers fall back on when they need to bring back to life someone who’s been dead for the last hundred episodes. But even they’d never gone this far.

‘Explain,’ she said.

The wicked queen looked at her, then giggled. ‘You should have seen your face when you said that,’ she said. ‘It was as if that bloke in Alien had had a bunch of primroses jump out of his tummy instead of the little wriggly treen. I know it sounds goofy,’ she went on, with a sigh. ‘Unfortunately, that’s how things work around here. Your friend Sir Whatsisface, the knight; somewhere or other there’s a story with him in it, right? Otherwise he wouldn’t be here, he’d be somewhere else, probably working in a library or a fabric shop. In that story, you can bet your life that he’s the one who kills the dragon, and the damsel in distress is the one who gets saved. Seem reasonable to you?’

Sis nodded. ‘That’s the way I’d expect it to be,’ she said. ‘Otherwise,’ she added, ‘why’d he be a knight in the first place?’

‘Exactly. You’re getting the hang of it now. What he is determines who he is. I must remember that,’ the queen added, ‘it’s very good. Now, then. That story must be somewhere — in a book or a film or a cartoon strip, or even just inside the heads of everyone who’s ever heard it, right?’

‘Sure. I mean, why not?’

‘So far, so good. Now think what happens when the system goes down and everything’s thrown out of synch. The stories are all still there, but somehow some of the people have got into the wrong stories. Like what happened back there, with the three little pigs somehow winding up in the story of the three bears. That’s pretty bad — a bit like a plumber suddenly finding himself doing brain surgery while the surgeon’s been whisked away and wakes up to discover he’s turned into an airline pilot. Get the picture?’

‘In a sense.’

‘Okay. Now think about someone deliberately screwing up the stories. The original story’s still there, in a book or between someone’s ears. Then there’s the sixty-degrees-skewed version; well, we know that’s running, because we’re in it. Finally there’s the deliberate fuck-ups, which seem to be precisely targeted to cause as much grief as possible. And they’re all going on at the same time. If you want proof, ask someone. You’ll find that their long-term memory’s either completely gone or they’re living with an entirely different set of memories from the ones they had this time last week. Fun, isn’t it?’

Sis made one last effort to understand what she’d heard; but it was a lot to ask, the equivalent of expecting a one-armed man to empty the Pacific into the Atlantic using a tablespoon. ‘So what do we do?’ she asked.

‘If you say that once more, I’m going to tie you to a tree and leave you there. For the last time, I don’t know. Where you get this idea that I’m some sort of extra-brainy tactician from I don’t know. What sort of bedtime stories did your mother tell you, for pity’s sake?’

‘But…’ But the wicked queen always knows what to do, Sis nearly said; or at least, she always has a plan. Then it occurred to her that she already knew what the answer would be. ‘Oh, all right then,’ she said. ‘How’d it be if we just stay where we are and wait for something to happen?’

‘What a splendid…’ The queen broke off, smiled, turned through forty-five degrees and pointed. She didn’t say anything, because there was no need.

Sis followed the line of her finger, and saw a tall, fat man with a long white beard, dressed in what looked like a red towelling-robe with furry white trim, running very fast out of a fuzzy patch of undergrowth. Since she was not entirely without compassion, she had filled her lungs with a view to yelling, ‘Look out,’ but before she could do so, the fat man ran straight into a tree and fell over. Sis started to move towards him, but the queen grabbed her arm; and a moment later, a milk-white unicorn with a silver horn appeared from the same clump of shrubbery that had produced the fat man. It caught sight of him, whinnied savagely, lowered its horn and charged; at which point the fat man woke up, saw the unicorn heading towards him, made a shrill yelping noise and shinned up the tree with a degree of skill and dexterity that made Sis want to clap her hands and shout ‘Bravo!’ The unicorn made a couple of futile attempts to climb the tree after him, then dropped back on to four hooves and squatted down on its haunches, breathing heavily through its nose.

Smiling, the queen folded her arms and sat down on a boulder. ‘About time, too,’ she said.

‘It’s all right,’ Eugene said. ‘We aren’t going to hurt you.’

Julian poked his head above the barricade of straw bales and nodded. ‘Too right you aren’t,’ he replied. ‘Not through any lack of effort on your part, but simply because I’m up here, you’re down there and I’ve got the ladder. Now bugger off before I start dropping things on your heads.’

He had, his brothers had to concede, got a point there. It was their fault for letting him get such a good head start on them; by the time they’d tracked him down to Old Macdonald’s barn, he’d had plenty of time to build himself an impromptu fortification out of straw bales.

‘You’ve got five minutes,’ Desmond said. ‘Then we’re coming in after you. Understood?’

‘It’s for your own good,’ Eugene added.

‘Yeah. And when we’ve finished with you, you’ll wish you’d never been born.’

In his straw castle, Julian did his best to stay calm. Bluster, he assured himself. Huffing and puffing. Without the ladder, there was no way they could scramble up the sides of the hayrick. After all, he was the brains of the family, always had been, ever since they were piglets together…

Why are they doing this?

‘Four minutes,’ Desmond called out. ‘Say your prayers, little brother, ‘cos we’re gonna get you.’

Piglets together… Ever since he could remember it had just been the three of them, pitting their plump little bodies and their agile wits against the lean, cold, mercifully stupid big bad wolf. And now, apparently, the wolf was dead and gone, all their troubles were over… And his brothers were laying siege to him as he cowered in a house of straw, wheedling and threatening him in turns while they prowled up and down — Hang on. Just a cotton-picking minute. Play back the edited highlights of that train of thought.

‘You think just because we can’t get up there, you’re safe,’ Desmond went on. ‘Well you’re wrong, little brother, you couldn’t be wronger. ‘Cos—’

‘Shouldn’t that be “more wrong”?’

‘Quiet, Eugene. ‘Cos if you aren’t out of there in three minutes, we’re gonna set fire to the straw and burn you out. You copy?’

‘Desmond—’

‘Shut up, ‘Gene, I know what I’m doing. Three minutes, sucker, and then it’s roast pork. You got that?’

‘Desmond—’

‘I said shut it, little brother. This is no time to get sentimental. I mean yes, you’ve got to admire his tenacity. The pig’s got balls. And quite soon they’re gonna be served in batter with sweet and sour sauce. Now then, where’s those matches?’

Extraordinary, Julian thought, with a shudder that started just behind his ears and kept going right down to the last twist of his tail. They’re not just as bad as the damn wolf, they’re worse. What is going on here? ‘Look, you two,’ he shouted back, trying to keep his voice steady, ‘what’s got into you? You’re acting crazy, both of you. Just stop and listen to yourselves.’

‘Two minutes, loser. You got any last requests? Favourite recipes?’

They won’t actually do it. It’s just bluff and bluster. Huffing and puffing — He heard the rasp of a match, then a crackle. Instinctively he twitched his wide, sensitive nose and smelt smoke. Panic hit him, like a very large truck hitting a very small hedgehog.

‘Desmond, what do you think you’re…?’ Eugene broke off in a fit of harsh coughing, as ominous blue wisps started to curl round the lip of the straw-bale barricade. Julian had heard somewhere that once straw starts burning, there’s next to nothing that can stop it; the flame leaps up inside the hollow stalk, finding inside it the oxygen it needs for a really keen burn, and even a sudden heavy downpour simply can’t saturate the straw fast enough to stop it flaring up and blazing. His trotters shaking uncontrollably, he tried to pig-handle the ladder over his head and set it down against the already smoking parapet; but the shakes were too bad, he let go — ‘For God’s sake, Julian, mind what you’re doing. You nearly brained me!’

Good, Julian thought; then, For pity’s sake, that’s my brother Desmond, last thing I want to do is drop a heavy ladder on him. There was no time to consider the paradox, however; the flames were visible now, surging up at him like a burning oil-slick on a surfer’s dream of a wave. ‘Help!’ he squealed, backing away from the fiery curtain, while at the back of his mind he thought, Nothing like this ever happened when it was us and the wolf; sure he kept blowing down the house, but it never felt dangerous, just extremely annoying. He backed away but the fire was quicker than he was, had more time and space to manoeuvre. Then, as he drew near to the edge, he put down a trotter and realised that he was standing in thin air, like the unhappy cat in a Tom & Jerry cartoon.

‘Aaaagh!’ he screamed, as the past life slideshow started up in front of his eyes. Scrolled through quickly, his life seemed to have been about as interesting as a race down a window-pane by two docile flies. Then the ground reared up and hit him.

‘There he is!’ Desmond was shouting. ‘Quick, grab the bugger before he gets…’

Julian squirmed. He’d landed on his back, cushioned somewhat against the fall by a broken-down straw bale, and he thrashed his legs in the air like an overturned woodlouse until, after what seemed like a very long time, he contrived to flip himself over right way up, find his feet and make a run for the door. It was a close-run thing, at that; he had to swerve violently to avoid Eugene’s outstretched trotters, and a pitchfork hurled by Desmond nearly kebabed him before he bounded out into the sunlight, leaving the smoke and the heat and the shouting behind him.

Odd thing was, while he was making his escape under such difficult circumstances his attention was elsewhere. He steered his narrow course between fire and assault on a combination of instinct and extremely good luck, while his brain was entirely preoccupied with a topic far more engrossing and fascinating than mere survival.

He cleared the farmyard and trotted up to the top of a low hill, from which there was a fine panoramic view of the valley, the farm, the huge column of black smoke reaching up into the clouds. He lay down in the shade of a young oak tree and tried to figure it all out.

It had been in that brief moment, no more than the slightest paring from Father Time’s toenail, when he’d been falling and (as advertised, and nicely on time) his past life had flashed in front of his eyes in a subliminal blur.

He hadn’t remembered any of it.

Oh, the memories were all exceptionally clear and strong: falling off his first ever tricycle, lying awake on Christmas Eve waiting for Santa, fishing off the end of the pier with his Uncle Joe, the first time he’d ever set eyes on Tracy — splendid memories all of them, utterly convincing, a selection you’d be ever so pleased with if you’d bought them by mail order; but not his. Somebody else’s perhaps, but not his.

In particular, the flashback had been markedly reticent on such subjects as wolves, houses and sudden, destructive gusts of doggy-breath. As far as his memory was concerned, none of that had ever happened. Except that it had.

Had it?

Below in the valley, the fire had spread from the barn to the cowsheds and, with a cluck-cluck here and a quack-quack-aaagh! there, Old Macdonald’s life work was going up in flames. Viewed from a distance it was rather a grand spectacle, though of course most of the piquant detail was lost. No sign of Eugene and Desmond, which implied that either they’d been consumed in the inferno or else they were showing signs of hitherto unexpected good sense and keeping well out of the way. Under other circumstances his heart would have bled for Old Macdonald; except that he knew for a fact that the old swindler was up to his ears in entirely justified aggravation from the Revenue, and the whole place was heavily over insured. Julian salved his sense of universal guilt by picturing Old Mac wandering round the burnt-out shell of his property with a big silly grin and a claim form, scribbling down here a cluck, there a cluck, everywhere a cluck-cluck, while the figures in the right-hand column soared exponentially.

My name is Julian. I am a little pig. All my life I’ve been terrorised by a big bad wolf, who used to huff and puff and blow our houses down; first the house of straw, then the house of sticks — Put like that, of course, the whole thing sounded absurd.

First: who’d be thick enough to try building houses out of straw or sticks? Second: there are many ways of demolishing buildings, especially buildings made out of one hundred per cent organic and biodegradable materials sourced from sustainable natural materials, but simply blowing on them isn’t one of them. Surely, therefore, those memories couldn’t possibly be true. Could they?

Well, of course not; so it was just as well that he had a second layer to the onion of his memory, a recollection of buildings massively fortified and defended, blockhouses that ought to have been able to withstand direct hits from nuclear warheads; except that that was absurd as well, since pigs, even pigs as clever and resourceful as he was, can’t do that sort of work. It’d take an army of skilled craftsmen with an open cheque from the UN two years to put together some of the structures he seemed to remember throwing together in an afternoon — only to see them going down like card houses at one mild puff from the Wolf. Impossible. And what’s impossible can’t be true. Therefore.

But I remember. I was there. It happened.

All of it.

Both versions.

I am not a number. I am a free pig.

Julian frowned and rubbed his shoulder against the trunk of the oak tree. That last bit wasn’t him either; it had seeped through from those damned synthetic memories that had somehow got into his head while he was falling — hardly surprising, seeing how vivid and evocative they were, like a hologram show inside his mind, but completely alien. He took a deep breath and allowed himself to examine them, as objectively as he could. They were fine memories, to be sure; and through them ran a convincingly logical thread; a bad case of sibling rivalry between himself, the puny but brainy younger piglet, and his two big thick brothers. He distinctly recalled, as if it was yesterday, that first tree-house their Dad built for them in the low branches of the old, droopy crab-apple tree; how Des and Gene hadn’t let him go with them to play in it, how he’d gone off on his own and built another, better tree-house in the tall sycamore, how Des and Gene had almost died of jealousy and had pulled it down and smashed it; how he’d built another one after that, which they’d also wrecked. The pattern was perfect, the way his patient perseverance had only served to infuriate them further, until one day — No, it hadn’t been like that. The hell with what’s logical and what’s possible. We’re three little pigs who built houses out of stupid stuff and had them all trashed by a wolf. The wolf blew on them and they fell down. The wolf was not my brothers. I know. I was there. — Picture of himself standing blubbering in front of his father, telling him what they’d done; and Des and Gene, red in the face and looking away. He could hear Gene’s voice in his head as clear as anything; wasn’t us, it was the big bad wolf.

And a little voice said in the back of his mind that the past doesn’t matter anyway, who can say for certain what happened in the past, because the past doesn’t exist any more, it’s only there to explain the present, and if this version explains the present better than any other version, then why the hell shouldn’t it be the past? So much easier. So much more convenient for all concerned.

Away in the distance, there was a queue of backed-up fire engines waiting at the farm gate, which was chained and padlocked; and there was Old Macdonald himself, furtively creeping round the back of the cider house with a can of petrol. In his past, no doubt, facts were quietly stabbing each other in the back, pushing each other out of twelfth-storey windows, sorting out an expedient explanation of the present that would result in the highest possible insurance payout. Here a barn full of valuable antique furniture, there a barn full of valuable antique furniture. So much more convenient.

Julian grunted. Then he stood up and went into the wood to gather sticks.

‘Completely,’ the Brother Grimm confirmed into his mobile phone, ‘and utterly. In fact, I reckon it’s getting near the point where it’s beyond salvaging… Yes, possibly, but would it be worth it? Surely it’d be simpler to start over again from. Okay, sure, you’re the boss. We’ll see what we can do. Yes, goodbye.’

He closed the phone with a snap and slid it back in his inside pocket. ‘They want us to go ahead,’ he said. ‘Bloody stupid idea if you ask me, but… why are you looking at me like that?’

His brother shook his head. ‘I’m not,’ he replied. ‘What makes you think…?’

‘Oh, come off it, you’re my brother, I know when there’s something you’re not telling me. Spit it out.’

‘Well…’ Grimm #2 spread his hands in a gesture of contrition. ‘I just thought you’d have worked it out for yourself by now, that’s all. Think about it, will you? We’ve got orders to take advantage of the present systems breakdown to seize control of the kingdom, right?’

‘His brother nodded sadly. ‘Completely unrealistic,’ he said. ‘Who do they think we are, the A-Team?’

‘Actually,’ said Grimm #2, ‘it’s not. It’ll be relatively straightforward, once we’ve re-established the Mirrors network and altered all the access codes so we’re the only ones who can operate the system.’

Grimm #1 stared at him. ‘You knew all along,’ he said accusingly.

‘Of course. And I didn’t tell you for the same reason that I haven’t recently reminded you of the fact that you have a nose. I thought you’d realised. For pity’s sake, you don’t think those three Realside kids hacked into the system all by themselves, did you?’

Grimm #1’s jaw slumped. ‘You mean to say we helped them?’

‘Naturally,’ Grimm #2 replied. ‘Obvious thing to do, use an innocent third party to bust our way in. If it works, we’re home and dry. If it doesn’t, we can claim we knew nothing about it and it was just an irresponsible act by a bunch of antisocial delinquent nerds, nothing to do with us at all. Standard operating procedure for subverting a friendly government. Don’t you ever read the tactical planning memos?’

‘No,’ Grimm #1 said, ‘you do. Look, is this all one of your jokes? I can’t believe we really do things like that. I thought it was all media paranoia and stuff.’

‘Ah.’ Grimm #2 grinned. ‘That’s what they want you to believe. But it isn’t true. It’s just—’ He hesitated for a moment and grinned as widely as the Grand Canyon. ‘Just a fairy-tale,’ he said.

‘Fairytale?’

‘Yeah, why not?’ Grimm #2 sat down on a tree-stump and lit a cigarette. ‘That’s what fairy stories are for, after all. Scare stories. Bogeymen. Give people something imaginary to be afraid of and they won’t worry about the real story, the thing we’re actually trying to cover up.’ He grimaced. ‘Works, doesn’t it? You’re so accustomed to hearing alarmist rumours about dirty tricks and cover-ups, you assume it’s just paranoia and bad craziness. And so it is, ninety-five per cent of the time. That ninety-five per cent’s a smokescreen so that nobody’ll believe we actually do the other five per cent.’

‘So those kids—’ Grimm #1 shuddered. ‘We sent them here?’

His brother laughed. ‘Good Lord no, that’d be really irresponsible. No, they came of their own choice. We didn’t suggest the idea to them, either. Absolutely no way the parents’ll be able to sue if anything goes wrong.’

Grimm #1 shook his head doubtfully. ‘That’s not right,’ he said. ‘We shouldn’t do things like that. It’s—’

‘Expedient. And efficient. And all’s fair in love and narrative. What’d you rather we did, send in the marines? And a lot of people’d have got hurt, our boys included. No, the hell with that.’

Grimm #1 scowled. ‘So why not just leave them the hell alone? What harm were they doing us?’

‘None of our business,’ Grimm #2 replied sternly. ‘Look, if you want a nice, easy answer, they’re different, see? When you’ve said that, you’ve explained everything. It’s the basis of all our fundamental policy. Different’s a threat, and so it’s got to go. Jeez, next off you’ll be asking why there’s a United Nations.’

Grimm #1 thought about it and came to the conclusion that he didn’t want to think about it. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I take it you know how to get the system back on line again.’

‘More or less,’ his brother replied. ‘Even brought our own mirror,’ he added, opening his briefcase and reaching inside. ‘Look,’ he said, holding up a small looking-glass with a grey plastic frame and a serial number stencilled on the back. ‘Latest model, state of the art. Million times better than anything they’ve…’

It was, considered with hindsight, a freak accident, the sort of thing that could have happened to anybody. The handle slipped through his fingers, did a salmon-up-a-waterfall impression and hit a stone. Crash, tinkle.

‘Neat trick,’ growled Grimm #1. ‘That’s supposed to be seven years’ bad luck, isn’t it?’

Grimm #2 stared blankly at the shiny white shards. ‘Supposed to be doesn’t enter into it,’ he whimpered. ‘And that’s seven years minimum. How the hell do you think the superstition came about in the first place?’

‘Ah well,’ said Grimm #1, ‘no use crying over bust mirrors. We’ll just have to find another one, that’s all. Come on, we’ve got work to do, and the sooner we make a start, the sooner we’ll be finished and we can go home.’

‘You think that’s all there is to it? We get here and the first thing we do is crash their mirror?’ Grimm #2 laughed wildly. ‘You think that was just an accident?’

‘It’s really got to you, hasn’t it? Look, I’m supposed to be the one with the grave misgivings about this. Are you just going to stand there watching the stalagmites grow, or are you coming?’

Grimm #2 shook his head. ‘What the hell,’ he said. ‘Yeah, let’s go and find a mirror. Doesn’t even have to be glass. A pool of water’ll do.’

‘True, but the response time’s lousy,’ Grimm #1 looked around; and, by sheer coincidence, caught sight of a quaint little cottage nestling among the trees. ‘Let’s try that house over there,’ he suggested. ‘Bound to find one there, I reckon.’

‘What if they don’t want to part with it?’

‘They will, you’ll see. Chances are it’s only some old biddy we can put the frighteners on. It’ll be easy as shelling peas.’

Grimm #2 nodded uneasily. He wasn’t sure he’d liked the rather cheerful note that had entered his brother’s voice when he’d started talking about frightening old biddies. There had been this slightly unpleasant side to his brother’s nature ever since they’d been kids. It wasn’t a nice thing to have to admit about his own flesh and blood, but there it was. For all his earlier pontificating about dirty tricks and doing the right thing, Grimm #1 rather enjoyed watching things break. His idea of shelling peas probably involved a three-hour barrage from a battery of twelve-inch naval guns.

‘All right,’ he said, ‘but let’s not get carried away.’

‘Agreed,’ Grimm #1 replied with a grin. ‘If everything goes to plan, it won’t be us getting carried away, you have my word on that.’

‘Do I? Oh good. That makes me feel so much better.’

Grimm #1 shook his head, muttered something under his breath about half-hearted prima donnas and set off for the quaint little cottage.

‘At least try asking nicely first,’ Grimm #2 puffed as he struggled to keep up. ‘Can’t do any harm, and…’

‘All right,’ his brother grunted, ‘if it’ll keep you happy. Right, door’s locked. I expect you want me to knock first.’

‘I’d have thought it’d be the polite thing to do.’

Grimm #1 reached out and tapped the door gently with the knuckle of his index finger. ‘Satisfied?’

‘Well…’

‘I knocked first, like you said, and no reply. So—’

He raised his left foot and kicked the door hard. It snapped open, swung back and slammed into the wall behind. Something yowled and scuttled away. ‘Cat,’ Grimm #1 explained. ‘And where there’s a cat, there’s always an old biddy. Damn,’ he added, ‘I knew I should have brought my brass knuckles.’

‘You know,’ muttered Grimm #2 as they walked in and looked around, ‘there’s something odd about this place. Reminds me of something, but I just can’t seem to — And what’s that funny smell?’

Grimm #2 sniffed. ‘Search me,’ he replied. ‘Boiled cabbage, probably. Come on, let’s see what we can find. You look down here, I’ll try upstairs.’

He clumped up the rickety wooden staircase and found himself in a dark, musty room with a low ceiling, most of which was taken up with an enormous four-poster bed. He was heading for the window to open the curtains and let some light in when a movement at the periphery of his vision stopped him in his tracks.

There was someone in the bed.

Burglars take these things in their stride; but Grimm #2 wasn’t a burglar. He swivelled round, lost his balance, slipped and fell backwards into a coalscuttle.

‘Who’s there?’

Old biddy voice, coming from somewhere in the heavy duty darkness behind the drapes of the four-poster. Damn, thought Grimm #2, now what? The obvious thing to do was beat as hasty and unobtrusive a retreat as possible; but with his bum wedged in a coalscuttle he was in no position to demonstrate his precision-honed Special Forces running-away techniques. A pity. All that training wasted.

‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

Then he caught sight of the eyes.

‘Help,’ said the old biddy. ‘Help help.’

That’s what she said; but anything less frightened-sounding would be hard to imagine. To judge from her tone of voice, she was marginally less terrified than a full-grown tiger in a cage full of lemmings. And the eyes.

‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Didn’t mean to frighten you. I didn’t think anybody was at home. I just wanted to, um, ask the way.’

‘Where to?’

To his dismay, Grimm #2 discovered that his brain wasn’t working. ‘New York,’ he said. ‘I think I may be…’

‘Turn left as you go out the front door, first right then second left off the main forest road till you come to a derelict water-mill, turn left past the Cat & Fiddle and carry on down about six thousand miles and you can’t miss it.

‘Ah. Thanks.’ Grimm #2 started to back away, still staring at the eyes. ‘Much obliged.’

‘Don’t mention it.’

Something buried deep in his mind, down among the silt and potsherds of childhood, told him not to say it; but he say it anyway. ‘Nothing personal,’ he said, ‘but what big eyes you’ve got.’

‘All the better to see you with, my dear.’

Fair enough, Grimm #2 said to himself. Best leave it at that and go, now. But he didn’t.

‘What big ears you’ve got,’ he mumbled, though he couldn’t see any ears in the gloom, only the two red eyes. For all he knew, she could have ears like a Ferengi or two pinholes drilled flush with the side of the head.

‘All the better to hear you with, my dear.’

‘Quite. And, um, what big hands you’ve got.’

A dry, rasping chuckle came from behind the bed curtains. ‘All the better to hold you with, my dear.’

Thanks, but you’re not my type. ‘And, um, don’t take this the wrong way, but what big teeth you’ve… Oh shit.’

The curtains billowed up like a storm-tossed sail or a cheap umbrella blowing inside out ten minutes after you’ve bought it, and there was something huge and dark and rank very close to him. He could feel its breath on his face; could smell it too, like the inside of a badly neglected fridge. ‘All the better to eat you with, sucker,’ said the voice. ‘Prepare to—’

‘Help!’ But as Grimm #2 cowered back against the door, his arms in front of his face, he still couldn’t help noticing that the thing squatting in front of him, poised to spring, wasn’t a little old lady any more. Not even a big, nasty, savage little old lady with coal-red eyes and teeth like a vampire Ken Dodd. She’d changed.

Changed into a wolf.

‘Unless,’ the werewolf went on, ‘you feel like negotiating.’

‘Um,’ Grimm #2 replied; and in the circumstances, neither Oscar Wilde nor Noël Coward could have done much better. ‘Sure,’ he added. ‘What had you in mind?’

‘Depends,’ said the werewolf, ‘on what you’ve got to offer.’

Offhand, Grimm #2 couldn’t think of anything to say, except possibly Well, that explains a lot about the story of Little Red Riding Hood. He didn’t say that, however, for obvious reasons.

‘Well?’

‘I’ve got two tickets for the Splitting Heads gig on Wednesday night,’ he ventured. ‘You could take a friend.’

‘Thanks,’ snarled the werewolf, ‘but no thanks. I was thinking of something rather more — traditional, let’s say.’

‘Traditional.’

‘That’s right. Your daughter and half your kingdom, for instance. Or a monthly tribute of oven-ready virgins, with side-salad and something from the trolley to follow?’

Grimm #2 thought for a moment. He didn’t have a daughter or a kingdom, and he doubted whether a goldfish and the kitchen and spare bedroom of his flat would be sufficiently tempting. As for monthly virgins, that was a non-starter. Even if he could get the girls from the office to co-operate, he had a feeling that some of the criteria were a bit too stringently drawn. ‘How about money?’ he suggested.

The werewolf frowned. ‘You mean the chocolate stuff with the gold foil wrapping?’ She shook her head.

‘Gives me wind.’

‘Come on, you’re the one in the hot seat. You think of something.’

Grimm #2 thought hard. He thought until he imagined he could feel his eyes getting squeezed out of his head. But nothing came, and the old lady was slowly but surely edging closer. Then inspiration struck — ‘I know,’ he said. ‘What about my brother?’

The werewolf hesitated for a moment. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Why him and not you?’

‘Taste,’ Grimm #2 answered frantically. ‘Flavour. Not to mention being high in polyunsaturates and free of artificial colourings. He doesn’t contain nuts, either.’

The werewolf looked at him contemptuously. ‘That’d go for you too, if you ask me,’ she said. ‘Where I come from, we have a saying: a man in the fridge is worth two in the bush. Besides,’ she added horribly, ‘I’ve taken a liking to you. Now then—’

‘All right!’ Grimm #2 screeched. ‘What about the secret of absolute power? Any use to you?’

‘Might be,’ the werewolf conceded. ‘What had you in mind?’

‘The Mirrors network,’ Grimm #2 panted, trying to draw breath through his nose like someone trying to suck up the last half-inch of a thick milkshake through a bent straw. ‘The operating system that runs this lousy place. You know, as in com—’

The werewolf looked at him oddly. ‘What do you mean, operating system? If by this place you mean the kingdom, it’s run by the wicked queen. Everybody knows that.’ She shook her grizzled head. ‘I should know better at my age than to waste time listening to chatty food,’ she said. ‘Now, are you going to hold still or do I have to tenderise you a bit first?’

‘It’s the wicked queen’s magic mirror,’ Grimm #2 said quickly, and the words tumbled out of his mouth like spoons from a kleptomaniac’s sleeves. ‘It’s what she runs the country with. I can, um, give it to you.’

‘You don’t say.’

‘Or at least, I could give you the power to work it. If you’ve got a mirror handy, that is.’

The werewolf sniggered messily. ‘Odd you should mention that,’ she said. ‘What with one thing and another, mirrors aren’t something I have much truck with, if you take my meaning.’

Grimm #2 tried to smile. ‘Oh, it’s not so bad,’ he said. ‘A smart suit with shoulder pads, a bit of eye shadow—’

‘They don’t work too good when I’m around,’ the werewolf explained irritably. ‘Goes with the job, I’m told. Like, there’s no point in me polishing the silver till you can see your face in it, because I can’t.’

‘Hm?’ Grimm #2’s brow furrowed in bewilderment, then relaxed. ‘Oh I see,’ he said. ‘Because you’re a…’

‘That’s right, dear.’

‘So I suppose you’re not too keen on garlic, either. Or silver bul—’

‘Boy, what a loss you were to the diplomatic service. Yes, that’s right. Though what all that’s got to do with you getting eaten…’

(Behind her, the door opened.)

‘Never mind all that now,’ said Grimm #2, holding up a hand in mild reproof. ‘You’ve just given me an idea. How’d you like to work for the government?’

The werewolf glowered at him. ‘Wash your mouth out with soap,’ she replied sternly. ‘I may be an evil old lycanthropic witch, but I’m not that far gone. Now hold still while I—’

She got no further than that, mostly on account of Grimm #1 creeping through the open door, sneaking up behind her and nutting her with a three-legged stool.

‘Thanks,’ his brother muttered. ‘I just hope to God you haven’t killed her, is all.’

Grimm #1 scowled at him, as if he’d just advised a high-class gift horse to brush and floss thoroughly after every meal. ‘Oh, I’m terribly sorry,’ he said. ‘I’d somehow got it into my muddled old brain that you might actually like to be rescued.’

As she lay on the floor, looking for all the world as if someone ought to come and paint a thick white line all round her, the werewolf was changing back into human form. On balance, Grimm #2 muttered to himself, I preferred the wolf version.

‘Or given her amnesia,’ he went on, ‘which’d be almost as bad. Oh well, only one way to find out. While I’m tying her up, nip downstairs and get a bucket of cold water.’

‘All right,’ said Grimm #1. ‘Just as soon as you explain to me why, after I’ve been to all the trouble of knocking the old bat out, you immediately want to bring her round again. What is it? Compunction? Remorse? Missed it the first time and want a replay?’

Grimm #2, who had been checking the old biddy’s pulse, looked up and grinned. ‘Because she might just be the answer to all our prayers, that’s why,’ he replied.

Grimm #1 leaned over and took a good look. ‘What on earth for?’ he said. ‘I can just about imagine a keen gardener having a use for her if he was having trouble with crows on his seed beds, but we both hate gardening. Or were you planning to set up a bespoke nightmare service for people who’re allergic to cheese?’

Grimm #2 stroked his chin. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘that’s not a bad idea. Remind me of that when this is all over. Meanwhile, though, think about werewolves.’

‘Werewolves?’

‘And witches and the undead generally, but werewolves in particular. See what I’m driving at yet?’

‘Can’t say I — oh wow!’ Grimm #1’s face lit up like a fire in a match factory. ‘As in not making a reflection in mirrors?’

Grimm #2 grinned like a dog. ‘Got there at last,’ he said. ‘Well, don’t just stand there, go fetch the water.’

Grimm #1 hurried off down the stairs, while Grimm #2 played DIY Egyptian Mummies with a dressing-gown cord and three balls of wool he found in the old biddy’s knitting basket. By the time his brother returned with the water, she looked like a ball of string with a head sticking out of one end.

‘Hold it,’ Grimm #2 said, as his brother lifted the bucket over her head. ‘Not so fast. Put that bucket down carefully and let me try something.’

Once the ripples on the surface of the bucket had died away, Grimm #2 bent over it and muttered a string of what sounded suspiciously like gibberish. It seemed to have the desired effect, however, for not long afterwards several lines of glowing green text materialised just under the surface.

‘Well?’ asked Grimm #1.

‘Message from HQ,’ Grimm #2 replied. ‘Asking us why a routine patrol exercise is taking such a long time, and why we haven’t acknowledged receipt of the latest written orders.’

‘Fair question,’ Grimm #1 conceded.

Grimm #2 shrugged his shoulders. ‘You would say that. We’d better get a move on, before they get really difficult.’

Grimm #1 nodded, and let fly with the water. There was a splash, a loud curse and a spluttering noise; then—

‘Oh balls,’ Grimm #2 muttered. ‘That’s awkward.’

‘Not nearly as awkward as it’d be if she wasn’t tied up,’

Grimm #1 replied, taking several steps backwards. ‘You sure those knots’ll hold?’

‘Here’s hoping. Any idea how we turn her back?’

On the floor before them lay a huge grey she-wolf.