Snow White and the Seven Samurai

Chapter 8

‘I don’t care about the marketing possibilities,’ snapped the Baron irritably. ‘I think it looks ridiculous, and I want it out of here now.’

Igor sighed. Ever since it had made its unscheduled and unexpected appearance, he’d become curiously fond of the little wooden puppet, with its perky smile and quaint features; in addition to which, there was no question but that in some highly unorthodox but nevertheless effective way, the thing was alive. Far too alive to be lightly thrown on the fire or buried in the compost heap. ‘Can I have it, then?’ he asked. ‘It’s not for me, you understand, it’s for my sister’s kid. She’d love to have something that actually came from the castle.’

‘So long as you get the stupid thing out of my sight and keep it there,’ the Baron replied. ‘I’m sick to the teeth of its horrible simpering expression. Its eyes seem to follow me all round the room.’

Igor knew how the Baron felt; there was something strange about the thing, sure enough. Not creepy; it was too nauseatingly cute for that. The worst it could do would be to adore you to death. Nevertheless, there was clearly more to it than met the eye. The fact that it was apparently alive, for a start.

‘Thanks,’ Igor said, scooping it up and stuffing it inside his jacket before the Baron changed his mind. ‘My nephew’ll be ever so pleased.’

‘Pleasure. I’ll stop it out of your wages.’

What with tidying up the mess left behind by the experiment and keeping well out of the Baron’s way, it was late evening by the time Igor returned to his cramped, musty little cottage next door to the formaldehyde store, and he wasn’t in the mood to examine his new acquisition closely. Accordingly he dumped it on the table, crammed a handful of stale cheese rind into his mouth and fell into bed. Not long afterwards, a snore you could have cracked rocks with shook the rafters, and the puppet decided it was safe to take a look round.

If the first day was anything to go by, he decided, Life was a bit like a frog sandwich; some parts of it were better than others. The not being an inanimate section of log, for example, was quite invigorating; likewise the bewildering flood of sensory information and the countless new experiences. The sense of being absolutely surplus to requirements wasn’t so good, and the puppet wondered if there was anything it could do about that. It had an idea that being loved might help, though where the idea came from…

Help! Help! Let me out!

…It wasn’t sure. Either it was an exceptionally quick learner, or else it’d known a lot of useful stuff before it came to life. Which was impossible, surely.

‘Hello, world,’ it said, noticing as it did so that its voice was high and squeaky, not at all as it had imagined it would be.

Please, PLEASE listen to me. I’m a human being, and I’m stuck in this horrid wooden Disney thing. Can anybody hear me?

The puppet stood very still. ‘Hello?’ it said.

Hello?

‘Hello.’

Oh, will you please stop repeating every word I say? Listen, you’ve got to help me. I can’t stay here, my mum’ll be worried sick. I’ve got homework to do, and there’s a maths test on Friday. Please?

‘Hello?’

Oh no, don’t do this to me. Look, if you help me I promise I’ll be your friend.

‘He— you will?’

Yes. Promise. Cross my heart.

‘Gosh. That sounds nice. What’s a friend?’

I really don’t have time for— no, wait, don’t go all droopy on me. A friend is someone who loves you. Very much.

‘Ah,’ said the puppet. ‘I think I’d like one of those.’

I know you would. Now then, this is what I want you to do. Over there by the window there’s a—

‘What’s a window?’

You’re doing this on purpose, aren’t you? Well ha ha, very funny. I hope you get woodworm.

‘Oh.’ The puppet slumped against a hairbrush, its joints all floppy. ‘Does this mean you aren’t going to be my friend after all?’

No, no, I really really want to be your friend, but you’ve got to do exactly what I tell you. Are you listening?

The puppet’s head lifted and dropped. ‘Hello,’ it said.

Right then. Now, I want you to stand up— can you manage that all right, because I’m not sure I can talk you through it if you can‘t.

‘Easy.’ The puppet stood up. ‘Look, no strings,’ it announced proudly. ‘What’s a string?’ it added.

Oh, I see what’s happening. Somehow you’re getting a few thoughts and turns of phrase from my mind, but your excuse for a brain can’t understand them. Well, never mind that for now. Turn your head left— sorry, forgot. Just turn your head until I say Stop. Right, are you ready? Fine. Now, start turning.

The puppet’s head started to turn, like the turret of a dear little wooden tank. ‘Am I doing this right?’ it asked nervously.

Carry on, you’re doing just fine, it’s— hey, stop!

‘Here?’

No, back a bit, you’ve gone too far. No, that’s too far the other way. Slowly now— and there, we’ve done it.

‘Oh, hooray! This is tremendously exciting, you know. Can we do it again?’

No, certainly not. You have no idea how dizzy it makes me feel when you turn that thing. Not that I’m all that fussed, mind. After all, this is your head I’m stuck in, and if I get travelsick and throw up, I’m not going to be the one with a filthy smell between his ears. Right, you see that white shiny thing, there by the empty milk bottle?

‘I think so. Bearing in mind that I don’t know what an empty milk bottle looks like.’

Don’t worry about it. You can see the big flat shiny thing?

‘I suppose so. What does it look like?’

Oh for— there, that’s it. No, back just a— stop right there. Don’t move till I tell you.

‘Of course not, Friend. Anything you say.’

Look at the shiny thing. That’s what we call a mirror. Now, can you see your reflection?

‘How should I know? All I can see is this horrible dangly thing with a funny look on its face and a very big nose.’

Don’t worry, just hold it. Now, repeat after me.

‘You sure? I really don’t like the look of—’

Oh, grow up. That’s you, you idiot.

‘Me?’ The puppet quivered slightly. ‘Gosh. Hey, I look horrible. Is my face really that disgustingly soppy?’

Repeat after me.

The puppet listened for a while; then it cleared its wooden throat and said, ‘Mirror.’

At first, nothing happened; there was only the puppet’s reflection, grinning inhumanly right deep down into the silver backing. Then—

You’ve done it, we’re in! Now, keep doing exactly what I tell you to, okay?

The face in the mirror wasn’t a cute wooden puppet any more. It was a stern, humourless, rocklike expression, more than a little reminiscent of a bust of Mr Spock done by the Mount Rushmore team. It stared out of the mirror for a long three seconds, then said, ‘Running DOS.’

Yippee! Now then—

‘YIPPEE! Now, then.’

The face in the mirror raised a sardonic eyebrow ‘Bad command or file name,’ it said.

No, not that, you idiot. And don’t say that. Don’t say that, either. God, you’re almost as stupid as my Amiga. All right, start again. Tell it — The puppet listened, then carefully enunciated, ‘C colon backslash reality. Excuse me, but what are you doing?’ Huh? Oh, I’m trying to bypass Mirrors and find a way of linking up with my PC back home, assuming my mum hasn’t pulled out the plug or switched the modem off Before I do that, though, I need to rig up some kind of makeshift Protocol. And before you ask, you don’t want to know. Really you don‘t. Ready?

‘Oh yes. This is fun.’

You really think so? Jeez. Get a life, will you!

The puppet looked confused. ‘I thought I already had one,’ it replied.

That’s what all the nerds say. Now, after me. Zed exclamation mark arrow equals backslash—

Seen from a distance, the cottage didn’t seem in the least ominous or threatening — which was odd, Fang couldn’t help thinking. There seemed to be a rule in these parts that if a place was trouble, it had to be marked as such so clearly that the tell-tale signs would be visible from orbit. This was so much an accepted way of life that the estate agents’ particulars tended to read something like highly desirable and sinister isolated hovel, set under looming lead-grey clouds riven by forked lightning, storm-gnarled dead trees at front & rear, creaking doors & floorboards, twisted chimneys, own ravens, would suit first-time wicked stepmother/DIY enthusiast, viewing essential… This place, on the other hand, broadcast cosiness and home-baked muffins; which, in a sinister-plot-twist area, was a clear breach of the planning regulations.

The door was slightly ajar, and as the handsome prince crawled up and put his ear to the crack, he could hear voices — ‘…Absolutely fucking brilliant, like having an unbreakable password. We could do what the hell we want and nobody’d be able to do anything about it.’

Another bit of odd, he reflected; my, Granny, what a deep voice you’ve got. All the better to bullshit you with, my dear. Still; you never knew with these witches.

‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’m going in. It’s probably going to be dangerous, so—’ He took a deep breath. Nobility and generosity of spirit weren’t exactly his cup of tea, and he didn’t feel confident with them. ‘So you just get lost. Piss off. Go do whatever it is you little buggers do. And, um, thanks for your help.’

‘Huh?’

‘You heard.’

The elf grinned so widely that its face should have split. ‘Am I really hearing this? Do my pointy ears deceive me? You’re really letting me go?’

‘Yes. Now scram, before I change my mind.’

‘Certainly not. Wouldn’t miss this for all the mushrooms in Thailand. Besides, you’ll probably need me to save you.’

‘In your dreams. Look, I won’t tell you again.’

‘It’s the handsome prince outfit,’ the elf commented sagely. ‘It’s getting to you. You’re starting to be nice.’

‘Say that again and I’ll splat you. All right, it’s up to you. Follow me.’

He pushed the door open and ducked under the lintel. It was pitch dark inside, and he hadn’t gone three paces when he felt something brush against his leg and there was an ear-splitting crash, as of splintering china. Tea-set, probably.

He swore under his breath. Still, nothing he could do about it now, except possibly run away. ‘Hello?’ he called out. ‘Anybody home?’

Overhead, feet clumped on the ceiling, answering his question. The springs of a bed groaned, and a wardrobe door slammed. Two of them, he guessed. At least. He gritted his embarrassingly white toothpaste-ad teeth and climbed the stairs.

‘Hello?’

In the upstairs room there was a little light; a pale smear, seeping through a crack in the heavy brocade curtains. There was somebody or something in the bed — Looked like a wolf.

Correction; it looked like a wolf in the same way a child’s drawing of a tree looks like a tree. Someone dressed as a wolf? But why?

Be that as it may; if whoever it was wanted to be taken for a wolf, it’d be diplomatic to humour them, at least to begin with. ‘Hello,’ he repeated. ‘Are you a wolf?’

‘Woof.’

‘Gosh.’ Dammit, Fang muttered to himself, this is degrading as well as silly. I’m a wolf, this is a human. Except — well, enough said. ‘What small eyes you’ve got!’

‘What? Oh shit. I mean, yes, all the, um, worse for seeing you with.’

‘Really? And what little ears you’ve got!’

‘All the worse for hearing you with.’

‘Psst!’

The figure in the bed started, then leaned its head sideways. Right, Fang said to himself, the other one’s hiding under the bed.

‘What?’

‘Say “my dear”.’

‘What? Oh, right.’ The figure sat up again. ‘All the worse for hearing you with, my dear.’

Fang took a step closer. ‘Come to think of it,’ he said.

‘What small teeth you’ve got. And other things too, but there’s no need to be gratuitously insulting.’ He reached forward and grabbed a handful of curtain, flooding the room with light; quite possibly, the first decent illumination it had ever had. For a split second the whole room seemed to blur, as if the deep shadows in the corners were being panicked into deciding what was in them. ‘Wolf my arse,’ Fang sneered. ‘You’re just a human with a wolfskin rug tucked round you. What’ve you done with the witch?’

As he spoke, he sidestepped; with the result that, when Grimm #1’s head poked out from under the bed, he was ideally placed to slam his boot into it. Which he did.

‘All right,’ he growled, grabbing Grimm #2 by the throat and squeezing, ‘that’ll do. I’m arresting you on charges of witchnapping and impersonating a Wolfpack officer. You are not obliged to say anything, but anything you do say may be taken down and retold in very simple words for the under-fives. Right, what’s going on? Who are you, and what’s with the wolf imitations?’

‘None of your business,’ Grimm #2 replied. ‘Does the expression diplomatic immunity mean anything to you?’

Fang’s brow furrowed. ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘It’s a coded message for make sure nobody ever finds the bodies. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather co-operate?’

Grimm #2 wilted. ‘It’s all just a silly misunderstanding,’ he said. ‘My brother and I were out walking in the woods and we lost our way and it was getting dark, so we knocked at the door but there was no one here, so we—’

Fang shook his head. ‘Wrong cottage,’ he growled. ‘The Three Bears are over in the south plantation. This is Little Red Riding Hood’s granny’s place. As you well know,’ he added. ‘So explain about the wolf’s disguise, before I get irritable.’

Grimm #2 shrugged. ‘You call at the werewolf’s house, you expect to see a werewolf. What’s to know about that?’

‘Were—’ Fang blinked twice, then made a faint choking sound. ‘Oh, one of those. God almighty, I should have guessed.’ He scowled, and spat.

‘You don’t like werewolves?’

‘Hah! Wolves who dress up in humans’ clothes? Disgusting, I call it…’ He tailed off, and blushed. ‘Anyway,’ he went on, ‘that still doesn’t explain who you are and what you’re doing here.’

‘Ah.’ Grimm #2 grinned feebly. ‘Good question. The truth is, we were just looking for a mirror.’

‘A mirror?’

‘That’s right.’

Fang raised an eyebrow. ‘Not wishing to be personal,’ he said, ‘but with the wolfskin rug and the mob cap and the flowery eiderdown, I think a mirror’s the last thing you need. Just take it from me, you don’t want to see it.’

Grimm #2 blinked twice in rapid succession. ‘Maybe you’re right,’ he said quickly. ‘Oh well, blow that, then. I think we’ll be going now.’

Fang looked at him narrowly. ‘You’re sure it was just a mirror you were after?’ he said.

Grimm #2 nodded. ‘Oh,’ he added, ‘and there’s a werewolf in that wardrobe over there. We’ll take that one with us as well, I think. I mean, waste not want not, and if we ever happened to find ourselves in a situation where a werewolf might be useful…’

Fang held up a hand. ‘Oh no you don’t,’ he said. ‘If by werewolf you mean witch, you can’t have her. She stays.’

‘That’s not fair,’ Grimm #2 objected. ‘I mean, we found her first. And we went to all the trouble of knocking her out—’

‘Just a moment. What do you want her for?’

Grimm #2 was about to reply; then he stopped, and smiled. ‘Come to that,’ he said, ‘what do you want her for? Don’t mind me,’ he added. ‘I’m terribly broad-minded.’

‘I want her to turn me back to my proper shape, if you must know,’ Fang replied awkwardly. ‘You see, I’m not really a handsome prince.’

‘Get away. You certainly had me fooled.’

‘I don’t want to fool anybody,’ Fang snapped. ‘And I most certainly don’t want to be a handsome prince for a moment longer than I have to. Which is why I really need that witch.’

‘Fair enough,’ Grimm #2 said. ‘If you don’t mind my asking, what...?‘

‘A wolf.’

Grimm #2 shrank back a centimetre or so. ‘A wolf?’

‘Yes, a wolf. A big, bad wolf. You got a problem with that?’

‘Me? Good God, no.’ Grimm #2 kept perfectly still and smiled broadly. ‘Nothing but the greatest respect for big, bad wolves. Fine body of, um, predators. On second thoughts, you keep her. Your need is greater, and all that stuff. And now we’ll be—’

‘Stay where you are!’ Fang growled. ‘Nobody’s going anywhere until we’ve got this sorted out. You haven’t told me what you want the witch for.’

‘Haven’t I? Oh gosh, how remiss of me. Well, it’s like this. My brother and I, we… we work for this major pharmaceuticals company, you see, in their research and development department, and we’ve got this amazing new drug we need to test.’

‘Drug?’

‘Medicine, I should have said. Anyway, we want to test it, obviously, and the government won’t let us test it on humans and the anti-vivisectionists won’t let us test it on animals, so we thought…’

Fang bared his teeth. It wasn’t quite the gesture it should have been; the only threat they posed was of being blinded by the sparkling sunlight reflecting off them. Nevertheless, Grimm #2 did a very lifelike impression of a live slug in a salt cellar.

‘You’re lying.’

‘Yes, in a sense I am, rather. Sorry. Would you like to hear the truth now?’

‘Grrr!’

‘I’ll take that as a Yes. The truth is—’ He hesitated. ‘You may have trouble assimilating this,’ he said. ‘It may sound a bit, you know, weird. You won’t mind that, will you?’

‘Get on with it, before I mistake you for a long pink dog-chew.’

‘Right.’ He took a deep breath. ‘The truth is, we’re agents of a foreign power — foreign as in from a whole different dimension or reality or whatever — and we’re here to subvert your entire civilisation and culture by gaining control of the Mirrors network. Does that make any sense to you?’

Fang pursed his lips. ‘You’re trying to tell me you’re a little green man, right? Or a bug-eyed monster?’

‘Not in so many words,’ Grimm #2 replied. ‘Although if you prefer to think of it in those terms, I expect it’s an entirely valid viewpoint with a lot to recommend it.’

‘All right,’ Fang said. ‘You’re not green or bug-eyed, but you’re still aliens?’

‘Good word. I like it. Aliens. Yes, we’re aliens.’

‘And you’re here to kidnap a witch and take over the world?’

‘Yes, I suppose you could—’

‘You’re here to take over the world, and you’re frightened of me.’ Fang clicked his tongue. ‘You know, somehow I don’t see myself losing a lot of sleep over any threat you lot might possibly pose. I’ve seen craneflies more dangerous-looking than you two. No, I still don’t believe you. I think you’re just ordinary burglars, and round here we have a traditional way of dealing with burglars that makes Islamic law look like an exercise program. Now—’

‘Hey!’

Fang glanced down. The elf was tugging at his trouser leg.

‘Well?’

The elf looked down at its miniature shoes. ‘Sorry to bother you,’ it said, ‘but we’d appear to have more company.’

‘What? What kind of—?’

A figure appeared in the doorway. It was dark, stocky, menacing…

Short…

‘Howdy,’ it said.

The queen sat down, pulled out a small flat tin box from somewhere inside her gown, and opened it. Inside was a complicated-looking brass machine, quite unlike anything Sis had ever seen before, and next best thing to impossible to describe. However; imagine that a slide-rule fell in love with a sextant, and they had a daughter who eloped with a pair of kitchen scales, and their daughter married the illegitimate grandson of a stirrup-pump…

‘Got it,’ the queen exclaimed, after a few minutes of fiddling with the thing. ‘Unless — confound it, which way’s north?’

Sis shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Can’t you work it out by looking at the sun?’

The queen shook her head. ‘Not here,’ she said. ‘Obviously you haven’t noticed, typically enough, but we don’t have your boring old sequential days and nights here. That sort of thing’s all governed by—’

‘Don’t tell me,’ Sis groaned. ‘Narrative patterns.’

‘Oh, so you do listen sometimes, then. That’s right. Also the seasons, phases of the moon, tides, all that sort of thing. And before you get all scornful and snotty about it, remember who it was who thought feet and inches were a perfectly practicable way of making sense of the world. Wasn’t us.’

‘Before my time,’ Sis replied smugly. ‘So? What’ve you found out?’

The queen twiddled a few more dials, slid the sliding thing up and down the scale a few times, counted to seven on her fingers and grinned. ‘Your brother,’ she said. ‘What did you say his name was?’

‘Carl,’ Sis replied, after a moment’s panic when she couldn’t quite remember. ‘His name’s Carl — you know, it’s the strangest thing, I can only just remember him. I think. It’s almost—’ She stopped and turned pale, with a very slight greenish tinge. ‘It’s almost as if he wasn’t a real person, just someone out of a story.’

‘Yes!’ The queen thumped her fist in the air. ‘Brilliant! Oh, I’m so relieved to hear you say that.’

Sis stared at her. ‘You are? Why?’

‘Because,’ the queen replied, fiddling wildly with the funny brass thing, ‘it means he’s still alive and still here, and he’s trying to sort things out; which is good,’ she added, ‘because he caused all these problems in the first place, so he’s probably best qualified to get them fixed again. Not,’ she added, ‘that the competition’s exactly fierce. Just out of interest, why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why in hell’s name did he bother? What on earth possessed him to go clowning around with the operating system of a dimension he knew nothing about, without any provocation whatsoever?’

Sis shook her head. ‘It’s one of those nerd things, I suppose. You know — because it’s there, and all that. The same reason why they hack into the Pentagon computers and make people think there’s going to be a nuclear war.’

The queen considered this. ‘You mean good-natured fun? Anything’s possible with your lot, given that you’re all completely random, with no narrative patterns to make sense of anything you do. Must be a really horrid way to live, though.’

‘Never mind all that,’ Sis interrupted. ‘What makes you think he’s all right? And where the hell is he?’

‘Look.’ The queen pointed at one of the dials on the Thing. ‘See? It’s reading 3945321.87.’

‘How absolutely fantastic. Ring all the church bells and declare a national holiday.’

‘Don’t be sarcastic, you aren’t very good at it. No, the point is, that’s near as dammit four. Four consecutive versions of reality. What do you call that, then?’

Sis thought for a moment. ‘Dolby?’ she hazarded. ‘I don’t know. It sounds awful.’

‘Oh it is, certainly. But the last time I checked, there were only three. Someone’s set off another one, and that’s the point. There’s the real one, the post cock-up variant, the post cock-up variant modified by someone else who’s trying to run me out of town, and now this one too. Which means,’ she explained, as Sis made a very quiet whimpering noise, ‘there’s now someone else who’s got into the system and is fooling around with it. Someone else who has at least a tiny fragment of an idea how the thing works. Go figure.’

‘You think it’s Carl?’

The queen nodded enthusiastically, her head moving like a tennis ball on a string. ‘I’m sure it is, because you’re having trouble remembering him. You have this strange feeling he’s someone in a story. Which means, God help us all, he’s become part of the system somewhere.’

‘Which means he’s still alive—’

‘Which means,’ the queen said, ‘he’s alive and operational, and he’s using that perverted little brain of his to get into Mirrors. Well,’ she concluded, ‘maybe it’s not exactly optimal, the entire future of this dimension resting in the hands of a recklessly irresponsible adolescent with an anorak and acne—’

‘How did you know that?’

‘Call it intuition. Are you sure it was just a whim on his part? He didn’t get any encouragement from outside before he started all this?’

Sis ransacked her memory, what was left of it after the mice of transdimensional entropic shift had nibbled it threadbare. ‘Well, he kept getting letters from somewhere official, because they had those printed things in the top right-hand corner instead of stamps. And I think he got lots of messages from them through the Internet as well.’

‘Quite possibly,’ the queen said thoughtfully. ‘Once they’d got him hooked, they’d have wanted to keep it all as quiet as possible, and they’ve probably gone back into his system and erased them all now. It’s like that old saying about the e-mail of the specious being deadlier than their mail. And no prizes for guessing,’ she added darkly, ‘who they are.’

‘Really? Who did you have in mind, then? You think it’s all the CIA, or is this just another of those the-Milk-Marketing-Board-murdered-Elvis theories?’

‘Really?’ The queen looked shocked. ‘I never knew that.’

‘Oh, for pity’s sake—’

‘And anyway,’ the queen went on, ‘that can’t be true, because if you’d read last week’s edition of the Dependent On Sunday, you’d know that it’s been incontrovertibly proved that Elvis is the face on the Turin Shroud.’ She hesitated, and frowned. ‘Now how in hell’s name do I know that?’ she asked. ‘Dear God, it must be something that’s leaked through from your dimension.’

Sis’s eyes lit up. ‘Carl!’ she said.

‘It’s possible,’ the queen replied. ‘Though I’d have thought he was a bit young to have heard of Elvis.’

‘I think they did him in History at school,’ Sis replied. ‘Look, is there any way of proving all this, or is it just a theory?’

The queen looked round. ‘There’s always that confounded unicorn,’ she said. ‘Go and see if it’s still there while I check these settings.’

Not long afterwards, Sis returned. The unicorn was with her.

‘Ah,’ said the queen, looking up. ‘You decided to let him go, then?’

The unicorn growled. ‘Let him go, my arse,’ it said. ‘No, this fleet of helicopter gunships flew over and pulled him out. After they’d bombed the whole glade flat and sprinkled napalm all over everything, of course. You ever been strafed from the air by Santa’s little helpers? Not recommended. It’s not so much the cluster-bombs that get to you, it’s the fact that they’re all tastefully wrapped in coloured paper and tied up with silver ribbon.’

Sis and the queen exchanged glances. ‘That sounds like Carl,’ Sis whispered. ‘He loves watching action videos.’

‘You amaze me,’ the queen replied, grinning. ‘Also of interest is the fact that while all this was going on about a hundred yards away, we didn’t see or hear a thing. I think we can safely say your brother’s on the case.’

Sis took a deep breath and let it go again. ‘Wonderful,’ she said. ‘How very reassuring.’

Julian stopped what he was doing, stared up at the sky and pulled a face. It was hot, he was sweating (appropriately enough) like a pig, and by his calculations it had now been midday for four and a half hours.

Shouldn’t be like this, he said to himself, as he stooped down to pick up another bundle of sticks. Midday should be at twelve o’clock precisely, not for as long as it takes. He didn’t know where any of these strange thoughts came from; why midday should be twelve o’clock, for example. All he knew was that he had them, and they made his head ache.

Still, it was coming along nicely. Once he’d decided to build his new fortified sty out of sticks (why sticks? Dunno. Seemed like a good idea…), he’d taken the time to sit down with a pointed twig and a flat patch of mud and sketch it all out in detail. A nearby blackcurrant bush had provided the makings of an ersatz abacus, and he’d calculated the various factors — co-efficients of stress against tensile strengths of various woods (elm 68 Newtons per square millimetre, ash 116, oak 97, Scots pine 89, making ash the obvious choice) — before drawing up a final 1/100th scale blueprint with material specs, quantities and a first draft of a schedule of works. Then it had been a long, hard slog in the woods cutting the sticks and bundling them up into sheaves, all to a standard size and weight to allow completely modular construction; and now he was on the longest and hardest stage of the job, actually fitting it all together.

He’d started off with the south-west African kraal house as his basic design concept, with heavy influence from clinker-built ships, the Eskimo igloo and the classical Roman arch. A high-stacked D-section dome constructed out of overlapping bundles of sticks tied and pinned in an upwards spiral keyed off with a single massive osier knot at the top would, he calculated, give the optimum level of structural integrity (by virtue of the counterbalancing of forces under external compression) without sacrificing the unique insulating properties of thatch. All in all, it was a very impressive piece of work; and although he still couldn’t quite see what had possessed him to build a house out of sticks when he could have strolled down to the nearest builders’ merchants and ordered a big load of breezeblocks, at least he had the satisfaction of knowing that as stick-built realty went, this was the state of the art.

Nevertheless…

He put the bundle down again and turned to face the forest; what there was left of it now that he’d cut and slashed a substantial hole. Was he imagining things, or had something flitted stealthily past just inside the curtain of leaves and brushwood? Eugene and Desmond? He hoped not. It wasn’t likely, either. His brothers had the same aptitude for stealthy flitting as a dinosaur has for brain surgery. If Gene and Des were headed this way, he’d have heard the crashing sounds hours ago.

There it was again; a flicker of movement, the flash of sunlight on some dark metal, the faintest snap! as a foot landed on a wisp of twig. Definitely someone there; and Julian, who had come to regard paranoia as his only true friend in all the world, abandoned his bundle of sticks and ran for home.

It’s not perfect, he told himself as he rolled the door-stone into place behind him (note the cunningly contrived system of balances and counterweights that makes it possible for a three-ton boulder to be effortlessly manipulated from within the house). But it’ll probably do. He peeked out through the tiny loophole in the front elevation and saw a shadowy figure looming in a gap in the trees. Right now he wanted nothing at all to do with shadowy figures, not even if they came surrounded by beautiful young sows bearing golden platters of swill to tell him he’d just won the lottery. He growled and turned up the propane burner under the big cauldron of molten lead that was simmering cheerfully away on the ledge of his lookout post.

He’d just finished adjusting the regulator of the propane bottle and was testing the tension in the ropes of the giant siege catapult when the shadowy figure stepped out of the forest into the clearing. Not an encouraging sight for a nervous pig; whoever he was, he felt the need to dress from head to toe in shiny black armour, wear a helmet with a mask visor and a huge neckpiece and carry a whacking great two-handed sword. Either the Jehovah’s Witnesses in this neighbourhood had abandoned the Mr-Nice-Guy tactic, or here came trouble.

Six more followed him, which made Julian feel a whole lot worse. They didn’t seem to be in any great hurry, and they weren’t being particularly furtive about their movements; maybe what he’d taken for stealthy flitting was just the natural demeanour of heavily armed men trying to move through dense undergrowth without tripping over and being unable to get up again. Quite possibly; and maybe the swords were just for clearing a path through the briars. But that still didn’t explain what they wanted.

‘You in the tinfoil,’ he shouted. ‘This is private property. Clear off, or I’ll set the dragon on you.’

The nearest intruder looked up and pushed back his visor. ‘Hello?’ he called. ‘Oh, there you are, I didn’t see you in all that firewood. What are you, a charcoal-burner or something?’

So that was it, Julian muttered to himself; they’re planning on burning me out. Little do they know that every single twig in this lot has been treated with the latest in asbestos-free fire-retardant. ‘You deaf or something?’ he bellowed. ‘I’ll count to ten and then I’ll turn Sparky loose. One. Two.’

They didn’t seem particularly worried, which was a pity, since the nearest thing he had to a dragon was a small beetle that had crawled down the back of his neck a couple of hours ago and was apparently building a house of its own somewhere between his shoulder-blades. He got as far as nine, then stopped.

‘I’m warning you,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to do this.’

‘Oh,’ the intruder replied. He sounded disappointed. ‘Pity. I’ve always wanted to see a dragon.’

Julian winced. ‘You reckon?’ he replied; and the sneer he’d intended to accompany the words somehow got turned into a sad little simper.

‘Oh yes,’ the intruder replied, planting his sword in the ground and leaning on it. ‘Dragons are a traditional symbol of hope and spiritual rebirth. Have you really got one we can look at?’

Some pigs, Julian reflected bitterly, have it easy. Nice quiet life, regular meals, no predators, nothing to worry about except the prospect of ending up between two slices of bread. Try to make something of yourself, and the world’s suddenly your enemy. ‘No,’ he admitted, ‘I was just trying to get rid of you without having to resort to overwhelming force. Now bugger off before I lose my temper.’

‘You sound a bit hostile,’ said the intruder, ‘if you’ll pardon me for saying so. My guess is that this comes from not being at peace with the Elements. Have you ever considered a properly structured course of meditation?’

Oink, thought Julian. ‘Go away. This is your last warning. After that, on your own heads be it.’

Maybe the phrase wasn’t familiar to the intruders; they made a big performance out of looking up, taking off their helmets and inspecting them, patting the tops of their heads and so on. Julian could only take so much of that; in a sudden spurt of rage he grabbed a handy billhook and slashed through the rope that restrained the arm of the catapult.

It was a big catapult; frame made out of the trunks of four mature oak trees, with wrought-iron fittings and the finest horsehair ropes to provide the torsion. In theory it could have shot a six-hundredweight rock over two hundred yards. Since there was no way Julian could pighandle a rock that size up on to the lookout point all on his own, however, he’d decided to use a little initiative and an alternative projectile. To be precise, three hundred kilos of well-rotted horse manure, all neatly packed in 25-kilo sacks and piled up in the throwing arm of the catapult.

Unfortunately, he hadn’t quite thought it through.

Later, he worked it out as a simple matter of relative sectional density, surface area and wind resistance; a set of equations so simple that any six-week-old piglet could have done them in its head. In the rush and bother of building the house, however, Julian simply hadn’t had the time or the patience. Accordingly, as soon as he cut the rope, the catapult’s payload rose straight up in the air until, after a stern word and a shake of the finger from gravity, it came down again, giving it plenty of that old thirty-two-feet-per-second-per-second and landing directly — On their own heads be it, he’d said. If only.

‘There’s a passage in the scriptures,’ one of the intruders said, once the last sack had landed and split wide, and the last tottering remains of the house of sticks had fallen in (Julian had known about that particular weak spot from the outset, but he hadn’t been expecting an attack from directly overhead) ‘about the man who spits at heaven. Later on, perhaps, when you’re more in the mood—’

‘A bath wouldn’t hurt, either,’ added a colleague. ‘Being one with the basics of nature is all very well, but wearing ‘em’s a different matter entirely.’

Sitting among the ruins of his house, the tattered remnants of a dung-sack festooned around his neck like a Jacobean collar, Julian groaned. ‘All right, then,’ he said, ‘I quit. You win. I’ve had enough. Ham and eggs, bacon sandwich, gammon Hawaii, sweet and sour pork balls; you name it, I’m your pig. Just get it over with, will you?’

There was a brief silence; then the first intruder cleared his throat. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘we’re vegetarians. All we wanted to know was, are we on the right road for the Hundred Acre Wood?’

Julian nodded. ‘Follow your nose as far as the next clearing but one and wait for a dramatic plot reversal,’ he sighed. ‘There’s usually one along every ten minutes or so.’

‘Many thanks,’ the intruder said. ‘If it’s any consolation, the river of predestination has many bends but few bridges.’

‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ Julian assured him. ‘And now, if you don’t mind—’

‘Carry on,’ replied the intruder. ‘Be seeing you. Strive to be at peace.’

‘Same to you with knobs on. Look,’ he added irritably, ‘it’s probably none of my business, and really I can’t be bothered with anything much right now, but who are you guys? My brothers didn’t send you here, by any chance?’

The intruder regarded him inquisitively. ‘Your brothers?’

‘Eugene and Desmond.’

‘And they’d be, um, pigs? Like you?’

‘That’s right. Unless my mum had a really adventurous time before she met my dad, all my brothers are pigs.’

‘And the sages teach us that all pigs are our brothers,’ the intruder replied politely. ‘But no, can’t say they did. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever met a talking pig before. Actually, we’re samurai.’

‘Samurai.’ Julian thought hard. ‘That’s a kind of Italian sausage.’

The intruder conferred briefly with his colleagues. ‘Not really,’ he said, ‘except insofar as all things are, at the most fundamental level, one and the same. Mostly, though, we’re warrior-philosophers, and we’re off to kill a wicked queen.’

‘Really?’ Julian, who’d never cared much for politics, backed away a little. ‘Gosh,’ he added.

‘It’s our calling,’ explained the first intruder. ‘To defend the weak against the strong, the oppressed against the oppressor, the humble and meek against the overbearing — sorry, am I boring you?’

‘No, no,’ Julian assured him. ‘I was just, er, counting you. I make it seven.’

‘Congratulations. Well done.’

Julian frowned hopelessly. ‘Yes, but seven,’ he said. ‘Seven samurai. Seven samurai defending the weak and oppressed and all that. No offence, lads, but are you sure you aren’t dwarves?’

The intruders looked at each other. ‘I don’t think so,’ said one of them. ‘We’d have noticed something like that.’

Julian shrugged. ‘Oh well, never mind, it was just a thought. Best of luck with the, um, wicked queen.’

The intruders bowed politely and strolled away back into the forest, leaving Julian alone with his scattered bundles of sticks and his aromatic artillery. Seven, he thought. Seven samurai. Seven dwarves. The Secret Seven. The Secret Magnificent Seven Dwarf Samurai Against Thebes.

Whatever.

He pulled the sack off his neck, brushed himself down and Went off to look for some bricks.