Snow White and the Seven Samurai

Chapter 9

‘My God,’ muttered Grimm #2. ‘It’s a gnome.’

Dumpy growled like a hungry tiger who’s just received a tax demand. ‘You just say something, friend?’ he hissed. ‘Or was that just my imagination?’

‘It’s all right,’ Fang said, standing in front of Grimm #2. ‘I’ll deal with this.’ He leaned forward, until he and the dwarf were almost touching noses. ‘You,’ he said. ‘No trouble, understood. You want trouble, go pick on someone your own size.’

‘He jes’ done called me a—’

‘Yes,’ Fang interrupted quickly, ‘I know. But he’s thick as a brick and foreign. Make allowances.’

Dumpy stared back. ‘Do that all the time,’ he replied. ‘Especially when they’re running, otherwise you miss ‘em behind. Nobody calls me a gnome and gets away with it, understood?’

Fang straightened his back and turned to stare at Grimm #2. ‘You,’ he snapped. ‘Did you just call this gentleman a gnome?’

‘Ye— no,’ Grimm #2 said, ‘certainly not. Wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing.’

‘See?’ Fang said. ‘And you there, in the doorway, the other short gentleman. Did you hear anybody call anybody a gnome?’

Rumpelstiltskin shook his head. ‘I wasn’t listening,’ he said diplomatically. ‘In fact, I’m morally certain I wasn’t even here at the time. I was probably somewhere else entirely. Look, can we shelve the posturing just for now and get on with the business in hand? I hate to break up a good confrontation, but we’re on a schedule.’

Fang growled a bit more. Wolfpack didn’t hold with dwarves, and a Wolfpack officer is afraid of no one; even if they’re four foot nothing and mostly made up of nose, beard and shoes — (Huh? demanded Fang’s logic centres. You know, replied the provisional wing of his memory. Dwarves. Little punk tough guys who’re always starting fights and throwing their weight around. At least, we think they’re always starting fights. We seem to remember it that way.)

‘All right,’ Fang said. ‘Say what you want and then get out.’

Dumpy made an aggressive noise at the back of his throat; but before he could turn it into words, Rumpelstiltskin interrupted. Born diplomat, that little guy. That would explain, Fang rationalised, why I don’t like him.

‘Dead simple,’ Rumpelstiltskin said smoothly. ‘We were looking for the witch, that’s all.’

‘You too?’ Grimm #2 broke in. ‘My God, she’s popular today. Sorry, but you’ll have to join the queue, because we saw her first.’

‘Since when’ve folk been standing in line for witches?’ Dumpy said, frowning. ‘Always thought the trick was stayin’ out of their way, not findin’ them. ‘Cept when there’s a new witch in town, of course, an’ everybody’s tryin’ to find out if she’s good. Like they say, a new broomstick sweeps clean.’

‘Fair enough. So what do you want her for, then?’

Dumpy muttered something and looked away. ‘We’re stuck,’ said a voice from Rumpelstiltskin’s hat. ‘He’s supposed to be rounding up seven dwarves, but we’ve only been able to find four.’

Fang blinked. ‘Four dwarves?’ he queried. ‘You can’t have looked properly.’

‘You reckon?’

‘But dwarves always come in sevens,’ Fang replied. ‘Like cans of beer always come in sixes. It’s… it’s.’

‘It’s in the story,’ Tom Thumb finished the sentence for him. ‘I know. But suddenly they don’t any more. And I for one’d like to know why.’

While this conversation had been taking place, Fang’s elf had been sitting on the mantelpiece behind a framed hand-stitched sampler, swinging her legs in the air and chewing on a hunk of ancient grey-streaked chocolate that had turned up among the fluff and broken rubber bands in Fang’s handsome-prince issue embroidered waistcoat. Now, however, she was sitting in rapt attention with a look on her face that could only have had one of two possible explanations, either chronic indigestion or a bad case of love, and as far as he knew the elf had a digestion like a cement mixer. True, it should have been the handsome prince and some generic industry-standard princess getting the treatment rather than a very small, hat-dwelling person and a maladjusted elf. Now sure enough, Fang was greatly relieved at not being in the frame; but he was puzzled as well; the same level of curiosity as a man might exhibit if he’d just walked blindfold across a minefield and not been blown up.

‘You were saying,’ he said. ‘About the witch. What’s she got to do with an apparent national dwarf shortage?’

‘We were hoping she’d agree to shrink some people for us,’ Rumpelstiltskin admitted sheepishly. ‘And turning the mole into something wouldn’t go amiss, either.’ He stopped and looked round. ‘Hell’s buttons, where’s the blasted animal gone off to now?’

‘Here,’ replied a small, muffled voice under the bed. ‘Hey, there’s beetles living under here.’ [Crunch, crunch] ‘I wouldn’t mind sticking around for a bit, unless other people have got things they want to do elsewhere. Last thing I’d want to do is’ [crunch] ‘hold anybody up.’

‘Mole?’ Fang queried. Rumpelstiltskin pulled a sour face.

‘Don’t ask.’

‘What? Oh, right. Good idea at the time?’

‘Desperation, more like. That’s why we thought we’d try the witch, see if she could help us out with a little downsizing.’

‘Sorry, guys,’ Grimm #2 said. ‘She’s spoken for. If you’re patient, there’s bound to be another one along in a moment. Narrative pat—’

He shut up quickly, aware that he’d almost made a potentially disastrous mistake. The theory was that if ever the inhabitants of this peculiar pocket universe found out that they were just characters in stories, the dramatic illusion would melt down like a fusion explosion and that’d be the end of it. Even a few of them knowing would seriously bend things…

Grimm #2 caught his breath. Maybe they already had. Which would explain — oh, all sorts of things. His fingers itched for his ambience meter, tucked inside his jacket, but he didn’t dare reach for it in present company. Nobody likes to fade away and never to have existed in the first place, which was what might happen if he gave the game away to one of the natives.

On the mantelpiece, the elf was ostentatiously looking the other way while pulling handfuls of dead leaf out of an old, dusty flower arrangement. Tom Thumb was doing more or less the same thing except that, since there were no flower arrangements inside the brim of Rumpelstiltskin’s hat, he had to be content with ripping out fistfuls of felt. Fang and Rumpelstiltskin, having noticed their respective colleagues and resisted the temptation to throw up, met each other’s eye.

‘I know,’ said Rumpelstiltskin. ‘Let’s toss a coin for her. Heads wins.’

Fang shook his head. ‘Nice try,’ he muttered; he knew, of course, that the wicked queen’s coinage had her bust on both sides, ostensibly because it was a nice bust and beauty is truth, truth beauty; really, so the local tradition went, to save her having to choose which of her two faces to put on the money.

That, of course, was when she was still wicked. Now, Fang realised, instead of regarding her with the proper degree of loathing he’d have felt this time last week, the very thought of her was enough to make him want to run out into the street waving a little flag on a stick.

‘All right,’ Rumpelstiltskin conceded, ‘some other kind of game.’

‘Five card stud,’ Dumpy said enthusiastically. The others had the good sense to refuse. Compared to playing poker with a dwarf, playing heads and tails with a double-sided coin was positively fraught with uncertainty.

‘Hide and seek,’ Fang suggested, aware that in spite of everything he still had a better sense of smell than anything that was entitled from birth to walk on two legs.

‘I spy?’ Tom Thumb chimed in, not taking his eyes off the elf. ‘Um, what do you, er…?’ he asked her.

‘Wonderful idea,’ she croaked back. ‘That was a really intelligent suggestion.’

Thumb blushed, until he looked like a stray tomato in Carmen Miranda’s hat. ‘Oh, I expect if I hadn’t suggested it, you’d have thought of it straight away.’

‘It’s very kind of you to say so.’

‘You too.’

Fang could feel the moment drifting away from him, like a dropped spanner in a space shuttle. ‘Not I Spy,’ he said firmly. ‘Hey, what about charades?’

‘Charades?’ repeated a general chorus.

‘Yeah, why not? Oh come on, try to think positive. The sooner we get this done, the better. Before,’ he added ruefully, ‘those two start chewing each other’s faces off.’

‘Don’t know what you mean,’ the elf snarled at him. ‘Some people will insist on jumping to conclusions.’

‘I hate that,’ Thumb added.

‘Oh, do you? Me too. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s people jumping to conclusions.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Gosh!’

Just then there was a groan from under the bed; not, as Fang logically assumed, the sound of someone reacting quite naturally to the show Thumb and the elf were putting on, just Grimm #1 making waking-up oh-my-head-hurts noises.

‘Dear God,’ he mumbled. ‘I really and truly hope that there was this amazingly good party last night and that’s why my head hurts. It’d be dreadful to be in this much pain without having done something to deserve it.’

‘You did,’ Fang growled, ‘but it wasn’t a party. Come out from under there. We’re about to play charades.’

‘Charades.’

‘Yes.’

‘That settles it,’ Grimm #1 said. ‘Must’ve been one hell of a party, because I’m still hallucinating. Oh Christ, I didn’t marry anybody, did I?’

‘Oh for pity’s sake,’ his brother snapped. ‘You aren’t hallucinating. We really are about to…

‘Yes I bloody well am hallucinating,’ Grimm #1 interrupted. ‘At least, I sincerely hope I am. For instance, if I didn’t know better I’d think the room was full of little short people. It’ll be pink elephants next.’

Grimm #2 replied loudly, to cover the inevitable groundswell of muttering from Dumpy and Co. ‘Shut up,’ he advised. ‘They’re dwarves, and they’re after our witch. That’s why we’re about to play charades.’

Grimm #1 cradled his head between his hands. ‘Bad party,’ he said. ‘It’s a tragedy I can’t remember it. Never could see the point in having a party so good you’ve got to rely on your friends to tell you next day just how good it was.’

‘Are you two ready?’ Fang growled.

‘No. You go first. I’m still trying to remember who I am and where I might have left my head.’

Fang thought for a moment; then he was suddenly inspired. ‘Ready or not,’ he said, ‘here we go.’

He dropped on to all fours, growled and stalked up and down the room, wagging an imaginary tail. From time to time he paused, sniffed and pawed at the ground. Finally he sat up on his haunches and howled a blood-chilling serenade to a virtual moon.

There was a long silence.

‘Is that it?’ asked Grimm #1.

‘Yes.’

‘Oh.’

Dumpy and Rumpelstiltskin conferred in loud whispers. ‘We think it’s 101 Dalmatians,’ he said.

Fang looked offended. ‘Wrong.’

The Grimms similarly compared notes. ‘What about “How Much Is That Doggie In The Window?”’

‘Wrong again.’

“‘Daddy Wouldn’t Buy Me A Bow-Wow”?’

‘You’re starting to annoy me. And no.’

Dumpy leaned over and muttered something in his colleague’s ear. ‘We think it may be “A Four-Legged Friend”.’

‘You do, do you? Well, you’re wrong.’

‘Oh.’ Both teams conferred again. ‘You sure it wasn’t 101 Dalmatians?’ Rumpelstiltskin queried. ‘Because if it wasn’t, it should have been.’

‘You don’t know, do you? Come on, admit it.’

‘Give us a bit more time,’ Grimm #2 replied. ‘I know, what about “Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer”?’

‘You’re only making things harder for yourself,’ Fang said coldly. ‘Pack it in, I’ll take my witch and get out of here. Come on, you know it makes sense.’

‘One more guess,’ Rumpelstiltskin said. ‘I reckon it must be Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.’

‘Well, it wasn’t. It was “Leader Of The Pack”. As you’d have guessed,’ Fang added savagely, ‘if you knew anything about wolves.’

Dumpy stood up. ‘Now you just hold your hosses there, stranger,’ he said, “cos I ain’t happy with that. Reckon as how you’re cheatin’. ‘Cos that weren’t nothin’ like any wolf I ever seen.’

‘Oh really? And what the hell would you know about wolves?’

‘Enough to know they don’t act anythin’ like that,’ Dumpy replied scornfully. ‘Wolves is kinda graceful and purty, y’know? They don’t stomp around the joint like flat-footed steers. Nor they don’t waggle their butts in the air, neither.’

‘I agree with him,’ Grimm #2 added. ‘It’s just conceivable that that could have been a very elderly, constipated wolf with terminal piles and thorns in all four paws, but you should have specified that before you started. Next time you’re passing a zoo, nip in and take a look at the real thing, you’ll see what I mean.’

Fang felt more or less as if he’d looked in a mirror and seen Winnie the Pooh. ‘But that’s crazy,’ he protested, ‘I know more about wolves than any man living—’ Then he clamped his mouth tight shut, while his words echoed round inside his head. I see. So you reckon you’re one of them now, do you? And maybe you’re right. ‘The hell with this,’ he said, with a slight edge of panic in his voice. ‘I need that witch. Dammit, you’re welcome to her just as soon as she’s turned me ba— done a little job for me. All we’ve got to do is take turns. In fact, if we’d agreed on that in the first place, we’d all be through by now.’

That did seem to be a fairly convincing argument. ‘All right,’ said Rumpelstiltskin. ‘You go first, then us, and then you two can have her to keep. Agreed?’

The dwarves grumbled a bit, but eventually agreed. ‘Jes’ so long as you don’t break her,’ Dumpy put in. ‘I hear as how they’re darned inflammable.’

Grimm #2 nodded towards the wardrobe, whereupon Fang bounded over and ripped the door open — ‘All right,’ he said, ‘quit fooling around. Where is she really?’

‘In the—’

But when they looked there, the cupboard was bare. So to speak.

‘Psst!’ said a bush.

Sis had thought she was way past being surprised by anything she saw or heard; just shows how wrong you can be. She jumped about two feet in the air, but the wicked queen just kept on walking.

‘Not now, Beast,’ she said. ‘We’re busy.’

‘But you’ve got to help me,’ whined the bush. ‘This time she’s going to catch me, I know it. Look, you’re supposed to be the law around here—’

‘That,’ the queen replied severely, ‘is a moot point. Moot, in fact, as all buggery. And even if I was, I wouldn’t help you. Go on, clear on out of it. Scram.’

‘But I’m desperate!’

‘So I’d heard,’ the queen said. ‘And that remark is less than flattering, if I may say so. Go away.’

The bush shook, and out from behind it stepped the ugliest, most revolting-looking creature Sis had ever seen outside of a televised Parliamentary debate. ‘He’s from Beauty and the Beast, right?’ she whispered.

‘You’ve got it. And I’ll bet you’ll never guess which one he is.’

‘I’m sure he’s very nice when you get to know him,’ Sis replied defiantly. ‘It’s in the eye of the beholder, you know.’

‘What is?’

‘Well, beauty, of course.’

‘What, that old thing? I thought you were talking about a bit of grit or a fly or something.’

Wheezing and panting like a ninety-year-old chain-smoker, the Beast waddled up to them, sighed and flumped down on the stump of a tree. ‘Thank you,’ he gasped. ‘It’s so nice finally to meet somebody who cares.’

The queen snorted. ‘You make me sick, you hypocritical bastard,’ she said. ‘Though I reckon that on you, vomit’d be a fashion statement. Get on with it; then we can ignore you and be on our way.’

‘It’s Her,’ the Beast muttered, his voice shaky. ‘She can’t be far behind me.’

The queen nodded. ‘How’d you get out this time?’ she asked.

‘Ah,’ replied the Beast, and some of the more mobile components of its face moved together in a vague approximation of a grin. ‘I dug a tunnel and got out through the drainage system.’

‘Thereby going into the record books as the first person ever to lower the tone of a sewer.’ She sniffed tentatively. ‘Well,’ she conceded. ‘It saves you having to have your bath this year. Why do you keep bothering to run away, though? She always catches you in the end.’

‘Not this time,’ replied the Beast with grim determination. ‘Whatever happens, I’m not going back. I’d rather she killed me first.’

‘Who’s she?’ Sis interrupted. ‘Not Beauty, surely?’

At the word Beauty, the Beast shivered uncontrollably. ‘Not so loud,’ he whispered. ‘You never know who might be listening. All the dear little birds and cuddly little animals in the forest are her friends. They’d grass me up to her so fast my feet wouldn’t touch.’ He calmed himself down by breathing in deeply. ‘You don’t believe me,’ he said, hurt. ‘You think I’m exaggerating. Well, you try being her prisoner for six months in that horrible castle, see how you like it.’

“Scuse me?’ Sis interrupted. ‘Shouldn’t that be the other way…?’ She checked herself and remembered. ‘Sorry,’ she went on, ‘mixing you up with someone else.’

The Beast stifled a sob. ‘Sometimes I think I’ll never get away,’ he groaned. ‘A couple of weeks ago this nice dragon came by, saw me locked up in the highest tower of the castle and tried to rescue me. She killed it, of course. She always does. Half of the furniture in the Great Hall’s got dragonskin loose covers now.’

‘All right,’ the queen admitted grudgingly, ‘so she’s a tough cookie. And maybe,’ she added, a trifle less roughly, ‘just maybe she’s more than you deserve. I don’t see why you expect us to get involved. Like I said just now, my official status is a bit blurred right now.’

‘I think we should help,’ Sis said firmly. ‘After all,’ she added, ‘if all this stuff you’ve been telling me about narrative patterns is actually true—’

‘We could boost ourselves into a better storyline,’ the queen said, ‘one we could use to get where we want to be. Not bad, girl, you’re learning. All right,’ she said, turning to face the Beast, ‘what’s she up to now? When you last saw her, I mean.’

‘That’s just it,’ the Beast said. ‘She’s gone crazy. Well, she was never exactly what you’d call a stable personality to start with. She’s got mood swings that’s make a pendulum dizzy. But ever since she got that message from her accountant—’

The wicked queen froze. ‘Did you say accountant?’

‘That’s right. Apparently he’s a little man who does sums.’

‘I know what an accountant is,’ the wicked queen said, with feeling. ‘This wouldn’t be a little gnomelike twerp—’

‘Leprechaun, actually.’

‘That’s right. Lives in the middle of a swamp.’

‘For some reason best known to himself. Yes, that’s him. Anyway, he sent her a message offering to sell her something. No idea what it was, but it must have been quite valuable, ‘cos she hired Jack and Jill to go fetch it, and they’re expensive. Anyway, ever since then, she’s been sitting in front of her mirror talking to it. And doing this weird wicked-queen laughing — oh, sorry, no offence.’

‘None taken,’ the queen replied. ‘I used to pride myself on my evil laughter.’ Something she’d just said made her suddenly thoughtful. ‘Hellfire, yes,’ she added quietly. ‘Didn’t I just. I’d forgotten all about that until you mentioned it just now.’

‘Anyway,’ the Beast went on, ‘it’s downright scary listening to her. It was bad enough when she used to talk to the furniture and the crockery. At least they didn’t talk back.’

‘Had more sense, probably,’ the queen said. ‘But the mirror does?’

The Beast nodded, and several of the floppier extremities on his face wobbled revoltingly. ‘They chat away for hours up there,’ he said, shivering a little. ‘And there’s lots of that spooky laughter. Not all of it’s her, either.’

‘Really?’ The queen stood up. ‘We’d better go and look into this,’ she said. ‘Do you know a narrative thread that’ll take us there without being seen?’

The Beast thought for a moment. ‘There’s an unresolved plot strand that comes up slap bang in the middle of the deserted east wing of the castle,’ he said. ‘Will that do?’

‘It’ll have to, I suppose,’ the queen replied dubiously. ‘But I know those UPSs. You can always tell them by the way they have these big neon signs saying TRAP THIS WAY!!! just above the entrances. Still, there’s no bucking the story. Just a minute,’ she added. ‘What the hell would you know about narrative threads and unresolved plot strands? You’re just a civilian.’

The Beast shrugged helplessly. ‘Search me,’ he said. ‘I just do, that’s all. Feels like I’ve known it all my life, except…’

The queen nodded sympathetically. ‘You don’t have to explain to me,’ she said. ‘Let’s just say there’s a lot of it about. You feel as if you can’t remember a time when you didn’t know about whatever it is you now suddenly realise you know. Which,’ she said with a sour grin, ‘is fairly close to the truth, I reckon. Lead the way, then, and let’s get this horrid chore over and done with.’

‘Thank you,’ said the Beast, rearranging the mess on his face into something smile-shaped and horrible. ‘You’ve no idea how much this means to…’

‘Shut up.’

‘Yes, of course, I’m sorry. I should have thought before I opened my mouth. Sometimes I know I can be dreadfully inconsiderate and I’m trying not to, but sometimes it can be a bit…’

The queen sighed. ‘Now can you see why I hate him so much?’

‘Yes.’

‘Slowly,’ observed Mr Hiroshige, ‘the falling snowflake—’

‘Sorry, I missed that,’ said young Mr Akira, catching up. ‘Could you start again, please?’

If the senior samurai was put out by the interruption, he didn’t show it. ‘Of course,’ he replied; then he cleared his throat and declaimed:

Young Mr Akira, who was learning to appreciate the essentially transitory nature of all material objects by carrying everybody else’s equipment, scratched his head and looked round for a landmark. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I haven’t got a clue. And besides,’ he went on, ‘didn’t you say just now that all roads are in essence the same road, and that to travel is by its very nature to arrive at all destinations simultaneously?’

‘Yes,’ agreed Mr Hiroshige, ‘but that was before my feet started to hurt. I think we should have turned left back there by the old abandoned mill.’

‘We could ask somebody, I suppose,’ suggested a small samurai at the rear of the column. ‘Although since all directions are simply facets of the same universal jewel, we might do just as well if we sit down here for a cup of tea and a smoke.’

Mr Hiroshige sighed. ‘Good idea,’ he said. ‘It so happens I have a flask in my kitbag.’

(And, since all kitbags are one universal kitbag and young Mr Akira was carrying it, he knelt down and started undoing straps and peeling back Velcro until he found it. It held just enough for six cups.)

‘This is getting boring,’ said Mr Nikko, taking off his left boot and evicting something small and energetic from it. ‘Surely it can’t be all that difficult to find a wicked queen in her own forest.’

‘Ah,’ said young Mr Akira, pouring tea, ‘but since all people are merely segments of the great orange of mankind, doesn’t it follow that to find any one person is to find all humanity, looked at from a perspective uncluttered by the foliage of sensory perception?’

‘No,’ answered Mr Miroku. ‘I don’t suppose there’s anything to eat, is there? Some of us didn’t have any breakfast.’

Young Mr Akira looked up. ‘There’s sandwiches,’ he said. ‘There’s raw fish and seaweed, fungus and bean curd, mixed raw fish or mixed seaweed.’

‘Oh. No sashimi?’

Young Mr Akira looked in the packet. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘Sorry.’

‘Sorry,’ Mr Miroku mimicked. ‘I don’t think that’s quite good enough. When I was your age, if I’d forgotten the sashimi sandwiches, I’d have been expected to disembowel myself on the spot, and no excuses.’

Mr Akira’s eyes opened wide. ‘Gosh,’ he said. ‘And did you, ever?’

‘It’s all right,’ Mr Hiroshige said quickly, before Mr Miroku had a chance to reply, ‘he’s just a bit young still. And stupid too, of course. But young he’ll grow out of.’

They sat for a while in silence (unless you count the sound of sandwiches being eaten. There were six rounds of sandwiches). Finally, young Mr Akira cleared his throat. ‘I heard a good joke the other day,’ he said. ‘How many fifth-level wizards does it take to change a light bulb?’

The samurai considered this for a moment. Two of them took off their steel gauntlets and counted on their fingers.

‘One,’ said Mr Nikko.

‘No, that’s not right,’ young Mr Akira said. ‘You’re not doing it properly.’

‘Oh. How should it be done, then?’

‘Well,’ Mr Akira replied, ‘I say how many fifth-level wizards does it take to change a light bulb, and you say, I don’t know, how many fifth-level wizards does it take to change a light bulb, and then I say it depends on what he wants to change it into. Get it?’

The silence that followed was so stony, you could have built bridges out of it.

‘Oh I see,’ said Mr Hiroshige at last. ‘You mean how many wizards does it take to change a light bulb into something else. You know, that question was rather ambiguous. You didn’t make it clear whether you meant change as in turning things into things or change in the sense of replace or renew. Now if you’d said how many wizards does it take to transform a light bulb…’

‘Better still,’ said Mr Nikko, ‘what about, If a collection of fifth-level wizards wanted to turn a light bulb into something, for instance a thousand paper cranes, how many of them would it take? Then there’d be no risk of being misunderstood.’

‘Although on a more fundamental level,’ argued Mr Hiroshige, ‘the light bulb and the paper cranes are all part of the same great nexus of concrete existence, so where’s the point? In fact, wouldn’t you say it was presumptuous to change it into something else? You’d be usurping the prerogative of the continuum. Whereas if you meditated long enough and in the proper manner, you’d pretty soon be able to see the light bulb as whatever it is you wanted it to be, which is surely every bit as good as far as you’re concerned.’

Mr Wakisashi, the smallest of the samurai, nodded eagerly.

‘It’s a pity we haven’t got a light bulb,’ he said. ‘Otherwise we could experiment.’

‘You’d need two, though, surely,’ said Mr Nikko. ‘One to be the broken one and one to be the one you replace the broken one with —’ He stopped to count on his fingers. ‘And a cauliflower,’ he added, ‘to be the thing the light bulb eventually gets changed into.’

Mr Akira looked glum. ‘If I’d known it was this complicated,’ he said, ‘I’d never have started it in the first place. It was only meant as a joke.’

‘Raises an interesting point, though,’ said Mr Wakisashi, who was one of those silent, mystic types who don’t say a word for years and then suddenly burst out with a whole lot of gibberish. ‘We could meditate until the next person we see is the wicked queen. And then, of course, we kill her.’

Mr Miroku looked down at the crusts of his sandwich.

‘I’ve tried meditating that into sashimi,’ he said, ‘but all I seem to get is tomato and onion quiche. And of the two, I definitely prefer the mixed raw fish sandwich.’

After that, the debate hotted up a little, and the samurai were so engrossed in it that they almost didn’t notice the witch as she ran past. If it hadn’t been for young Mr Akira calling out ‘Coo! A witch,’ she’d have got clean away.

As it was, Mr Miroku was the first to spin round, flip a five-sided throwing star out of the top of his boot, hurl it through the air and pin the witch to a tree by her ear. ‘…Substantially the same as the raw fish sarny,’ he continued, ‘except for the sensory perception, or should I say deception, that it’s a plate of sashimi. Whereas looked at from a totally different perspective…’

‘Eeeek,’ growled the witch; and then, ‘Woof!’ as the shock and associated adrenaline rush kicked in and triggered the transformation protocols in her DNA — (which, given that in this dimension all living creatures are constructs of the stories they inhabit, stands for Does Not Apply…) — and turned her into a wolf.

‘Stone me,’ breathed Mr Hiroshige. ‘Now if that isn’t a case in point, I don’t know what is. Pretty nifty meditation there, somebody.’

‘Wasn’t me,’ muttered Mr Nikko. ‘Wish it had been, but I didn’t even see her till you chucked the star.’

‘Wasn’t me either,’ said Mr Miroku. ‘Anybody?’

One by one the other samurai disclaimed responsibility, until only young Mr Akira was left. ‘So it must have been you,’ said Mr Hiroshige, with a slight tone of awe in his voice. ‘Well, well, well. You must be a natural.’

Mr Akira looked stunned, shocked, guilty and pleased, all at once. ‘Well it’s true,’ he said, ‘I did think to myself as she was running by, dear God, what an evil-looking bitch. And bitches are dogs, and dogs are sort of wolves. In a sense.’

‘Did it without even knowing he was doing it,’ said Mr Nikko respectfully. ‘That’s quite remarkable. And also,’ he added, ‘potentially awkward. Just as well the kid’s got a nice sunny disposition.’

The other samurai suddenly noticed that young Mr Akira had been carrying all the luggage, and that didn’t strike them as a particularly fair division of labour. Mr Miroku realised that young Mr Akira hadn’t had anything to eat and politely offered him the ruins of a raw fish sandwich, while Mr Wakisashi wondered aloud whether this highly developed innate ability of his might be harnessed into, for example, predicting the results of greyhound races.

‘Talking of greyhounds,’ said Mr Akira, ‘what about the witch? Or the wolf, or whatever. Are we just going to leave her there?’ He hesitated. He’d thought of a joke; and although his last effort hadn’t been greeted with the acclaim he’d hoped for, there was a chance that his sudden new access of popularity might change all that. He decided to risk it. ‘After all,’ he said, ‘I’ve heard of keeping your ear to the ground, but this is ridiculous.’

The samurai exchanged furtive glances. Mr Nikko mimed helpless laughter, and once the others had worked out that he wasn’t having a stroke, they took the hint. Mr Akira blushed. Meanwhile, the witch had started making whimpering noises.

‘Perhaps we ought to let her go,’ Mr Akira suggested.

‘Possibly,’ said Mr Hiroshige, thoughtfully. ‘I mean, that’s an excellent suggestion and one to which we should give serious attention.’

‘Absolutely,’ added Mr Miroku. ‘But if I could just pick you up on a small detail of interpretation, I think that what our colleague here was really saying was, we should let her go after we’ve found out if she can be useful to us.’ He turned to face Mr Akira and smiled ingratiatingly. ‘That was what you were getting at, wasn’t it?’

‘Was it?’ Mr Akira thought about it for a moment. ‘Yes, I suppose it was,’ he said.

‘I thought so,’ Mr Miroku replied. ‘Just thought I’d check, though, just in case I’d missed the point.’

‘All right,’ said Mr Akira. ‘So what do we want to do with her?’

The other samurai looked at each other. ‘Archery practice?’ suggested Mr Wakisashi hopefully.

‘We could ask her where the wicked queen is,’ Mr Nikko said. ‘After all, it’s about the right place in the narrative for somebody to tell us something. What do you think?’ he asked Mr Akira. ‘I really would value your input at this stage.’

Mr Akira shrugged. ‘Sounds good to me,’ he said. ‘Who’s going to ask her, then?’

‘I think you should,’ said Mr Nikko.

‘You’d do it awfully well,’ agreed Mr Hiroshige.

‘You really think so?’ Mr Akira enquired. ‘Gosh.’

‘Oh definitely,’ Mr Wakisashi said, with a smile so warm you could have toasted muffins over it. ‘No question about that. You’ve got the knack, if you don’t mind me saying so.’

‘Innate gift,’ confirmed Mr Suzuki, his head bobbing up and down like something in the window of an elderly Cortina. ‘Born with it. Something you’ve either got or you haven’t, and he has.’

‘All right,’ Mr Akira said, ‘I’ll give it a shot if you like. Hey, you.’

‘Wonderfully authoritative tone,’ Mr Nikko muttered under his breath.

‘Authoritative without being unfeeling,’ Mr Hiroshige amended. ‘I mean, it’s not as if he’s some kind of neo-fascist security chief. Here’s someone who really knows how to communicate, don’t you think?’

The witch tried to move her head, then winced. ‘You talking to me?’ she gasped.

‘Yes.’

(‘Good answer. Good answer.’

‘Always said he’s got a marvellous way with words.’)

‘Oh,’ said the witch. ‘All right then. If you want the wicked queen, you’ll find her up at the—’

She got no further; because at that precise moment (and it couldn’t have been more precise if they’d had all the scientists in NASA doing the calibrations) a tall, fair-haired, extremely handsome young man jumped out of the bushes just behind her with a mop-handle in one hand and a dustbin lid in the other and yelled, ‘Gerroutavit, yer ugly bastards!’

Immediately, six of the seven samurai drew their swords. The handsome prince took one step backwards, with the air of a man reassessing the situation, and raised the dustbin lid.

‘Hands off,’ he said. ‘She’s my witch. Go find your own.’

‘Excuse me,’ said Mr Hiroshige, his sword-tip held unwavering in a perfect exhibition of the classical guard. ‘Why are you waving a mop and a dustbin lid?’

It was at times like this, Fang reflected wretchedly, that being a handsome prince really irritated him. It was bad enough being outnumbered seven to one by heavily armed professional warriors when all he had to defend himself with was the mop he’d grabbed from the witch’s cupboard under the stairs and the lid off her dustbin. The bemused and blank expressions on his assailants’ faces, and the embarrassment they caused him, served to twist the knife in the wound by some forty-five degrees.

‘Aha,’ he replied. ‘Stick around long enough, my friend, and you might just find out.’

‘I know,’ suggested young Mr Akira, who had tried to draw his sword too, but had succeeded only in cutting through his own sash. ‘It’s another of those philosophy things, isn’t it? It’s to show that, in the hands of the true master of the Way, a mop-handle is every bit as effective as a twenty-six-inch razor-sharp katana and a pouch full of poison-smeared throwing stars.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘The dustbin lid’s a bit too deep for me, but I’m sure there’s a perfectly good…

‘Balls,’ Mr Nikko interrupted. ‘He’s just an idiot, that’s all. Come on, you guys, let’s slice the sucker!’

Before Fang could say a word, Mr Nikko chopped off the first six inches of the mop-handle and was swinging the sword back over his shoulder for a full-welly head-splitting slash when he caught sight of something that made him check his swing and gradually lower the sword.

‘That’s right,’ Dumpy said approvingly, as he ducked under the branches of a small gorse bush and strode into the clearing. ‘Nice and easy, keep the sword where I can see it. Same goes for the rest of you,’ he added sternly.

‘Dwarves!’ breathed Mr Hiroshige under his breath. ‘We’ve been ambushed by dwarves.’

The rest of the rescue party was out in the open now; besides Fang and Dumpy there were Rumpelstiltskin and Tom Thumb, the Brothers Grimm and the elf. Making a total of— ‘Seven,’ muttered Mr Wakisashi, who’d been counting.

‘Well, I guess we walked straight into that. I suppose a straightforward surrender would be out of the question?’

‘That’s right,’ added Mr Akira, who’d at last managed to get his sword free of the scabbard and was twirling it with enthusiasm, though not much else. ‘Throw down your weapons immediately and we might just—’

‘Not them,’ Mr Hiroshige hissed. ‘Us. And for pity’s sake stop playing with that thing, before you put someone’s eye out.’

Mr Akira’s jaw dropped. ‘But that’s silly,’ he protested. ‘There’s just as many of us as there are of them, and they’re only little—’

‘The word you’re looking for,’ Mr Nikko interrupted quietly, ‘is dwarves. Now put it down before you get us all killed.’

Mr Akira shook his head. ‘I still don’t understand,’ he said stubbornly. ‘They’re little short people, and we’re samurai. We’ve got swords and they’re unarmed. We could take them out like that.’

‘Yes, but—’ Mr Nikko hesitated. Inside his brain, the hard disk was crinkling furiously, trying to access some deeply buried path where the explanation — the perfectly simple and logical, patently and painfully obvious explanation — lay buried. He knew that there was a perfectly good reason why big, strong trained fighting men ought to be terrified of little cute people with long white beards and brightly coloured jackets with big round brass buttons. He could remember distinctly — He could remember remembering — He could remember having remembered — ‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘We could, couldn’t we?’

‘Of course,’ Mr Akira was saying, ‘that’s always supposing that we wanted to. And that’s a big supposing, because after all, they’ve done us no harm, can’t actually see how they could possibly ever do us harm, what with them being so small and weedy, so the chances of our ever wanting to take them out just like that are pretty damn small. All I’m saying is, in the unlikely event…’

He realised that nobody was listening. Instead his six colleagues were advancing on the seven newcomers, brandishing their swords and uttering strange guttural cries, while the newcomers — call them the seven dwarves, it’s easier — were backing away with that worried, sheepish look of people whose bluff has just been definitively called. He had the feeling that somehow, this shouldn’t be happening. It was a strong feeling, bordering on a conviction. Unfortunately, he hadn’t a clue how to stop it.

‘Here, you,’ he snapped at the witch, who was grinning like a thirsty dog. ‘Do something.’

‘What d’you mean, something?’ she replied.

‘Stop them, before they do something they’ll regret later.’

The witch’s eyes sparkled. ‘Not a lot I can do with this thing pinning my ear to this tree,’ she replied, reasonably enough. ‘Now if you were to pull it out—’

‘All right, all right,’ Mr Akira sighed, as Mr Hiroshige lashed out with his sword and neatly snipped off the little bobble on Dumpy’s sky-blue hat. ‘Keep still, and we’ll have you out of there in a—’ As soon as he’d prised the throwing star out of the wood, the witch sidestepped, sneaked past his flailing hands, slipped back into her human form with the practised ease of a model changing clothes behind a catwalk, grabbed the mop-handle out of Fang’s grasp, jumped on it and shot up in the air like a firework. Whatever he may have thought of the lost opportunity to get back to his real shape, Fang reacted well; he tripped the samurai with his heel, clobbering him with the dustbin lid as he went down, then snatched the sword away from him and, just before overbalancing and falling flat on his face, took an almighty swipe at Mr Hiroshige’s head. He didn’t actually connect, but Mr Hiroshige did a first-class impression of the Apollo 11 moon shot launch and collided with Mr Nikko, knocking him over. Mr Nikko knocked over Rumpelstiltskin, who tripped up Mr Miroku, who landed quite heavily on Tom Thumb, who squeaked so loudly and shrilly that Mr Suzuki, under the impression that he was under attack from behind, spun round and collided with Mr Wakisashi, who staggered backwards and trod on Dumpy’s foot, causing him to jump up and down, lose his footing on a patch of damp moss and lurch into Mr Akira, inadvertently head-butting him in the solar plexus and bringing him down on Grimm #2, who grabbed at his brother to keep himself from going under and pulled him over as well. The net result was something like a cross between the Last Judgement and a Charlie Chaplin movie.

‘Hell,’ Fang growled, as he removed Mr Nikko’s foot from his ear. ‘She got away.’

Mr Nikko tried to kick him with his other foot. ‘Idiot,’ he wailed. ‘Fine handsome prince you turned out to be. Didn’t anybody tell you you’re supposed to rescue the main chick, not the witch?’

‘But I’m not a handsome prince, I’m a big bad wolf,’ Fang almost sobbed. ‘I’m just—’

‘Filling in between engagements? Well, I suppose it beats working in a hamburger bar.’ Mr Nikko got up slowly and painfully and retrieved his helmet, which had come off. One of the sticking-out horn things had got itself bent double, and when he tried to straighten it, it snapped off. ‘And besides,’ he added, ‘you can’t be the big bad wolf. She was.’

Fang stared at him. ‘Who?’

‘The witch,’ Mr Nikko said wearily. ‘She was one of those werethingies. Didn’t you see?’ He dropped the helmet and kicked it into the bushes. ‘He meditated her,’ he added, jerking a thumb at young Mr Akira, who was trying to sort out whose leg was which with the Brothers Grimm. ‘Here, that’s a thought. Can you meditate her back?’ he asked his junior colleague. ‘Preferably with prejudice. Hideously agonising cramps in the head and stomach for choice, but a forced landing in a clump of nettles would probably do at a pinch.’

Young Mr Akira pressed together the tips of his fingers and closed his eyes. ‘Any luck?’ he asked.

‘Not so far. Come on, you can do better than that.’

‘I–I don’t think I can do it on purpose,’ Mr Akira said uncertainly. ‘It’s like when you go to the doctor and he gives you the little bottle to fill—’

Fang sagged at the knees and sat down on the ground. ‘Damn,’ he said. ‘This is starting to annoy me. Why is it, as soon as I want a witch, they’re suddenly as rare as true facts in a newspaper. Normally you can’t stub out a fag-end in this godforsaken forest without setting fire to at least one.’

‘Just a minute.’

Fang looked round, then down at ankle level. ‘Well?’ he said.

‘Couldn’t help overhearing,’ said Tom Thumb. ‘Did you just say you’re really the Big Bad Wolf?’

Fang nodded sadly. ‘Used to be,’ he replied. ‘It’s a long story. But, basically, yes.’

‘The same big bad wolf that used to blow down the three little pigs’ houses?’

It took a moment’s hard thought, but Fang located the memory file. ‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘Back in — hell, I was just about to say the good old days, but it can’t have been all that long ago, surely. Yes, that’s me. Why do you ask?’

Tom Thumb shrugged his microscopic shoulders. ‘Oh, no reason,’ he replied. ‘Would you mind waiting there just two seconds? Be right back.’

He wandered away, ducking under a dandelion and using a convenient floating leaf to cross a small puddle. While he was conferring with his colleagues, Fang looked round for his elf.

‘You and the small fry,’ he said, indicating Thumb with a jerk of the head. ‘Just now, you seemed quite—’

‘Mind your own business, you overgrown terrier.’

‘Please yourself,’ Fang replied, hurt. ‘I was just asking, trying to take an interest. Good industrial relations, that’s all.’

‘Bullshit,’ the elf replied. ‘You were going to make fun, weren’t you? Just because, after all these years, I may just possibly have found someone I can really relate to, you know, kind of respect and look up to—’

‘Look up to? Hellfire, elf, he’s even shorter than you are.’

The elf scowled. ‘There you go,’ she said sourly. ‘And anyway, that’s only true in the strictly empirical sense. Looked at through the greater perspective of the Way—’

‘Don’t you start,’ Fang muttered. ‘Hey, look, your boyfriend and his chums are all coming this way. Wonder what they want.’

The elf pursed her lips. ‘Given that they’ve borrowed a couple of swords, three bows and a big spear from the samurai and are spreading out in a classic encircling formation,’ she replied, ‘I really haven’t the faintest idea. However,’ she added, just before Dumpy gave the order to charge, ‘if I were you, at this point I might well consider—’

There was a brief struggle; at the end of which Dumpy pulled a rope tight around Fang’s neck, tugged on it, and cried ‘Gotcha!’ while his six companions clustered ghoulishly round, like commentators on election night.

‘—Running away.’

In all the excitement, Dumpy quite failed to notice that he was a dwarf short — rephrase: that he’d mislaid one of his companions. The missing person in question was Rumpelstiltskin, who had missed his footing in a clump of briars and fallen head first down a hole.

If he’d known as he fell that a few minutes previously a huge white rabbit had scurried down the same hole, repeatedly checking an old-fashioned fob watch and exclaiming ‘I’m late! Oh, my ears and whiskers!’ as it did so, it probably wouldn’t have meant very much to him. It wouldn’t have made the tunnel any less dark or steep, or the bump on the head he suffered when eventually he finished sliding any less painful. Even if he’d understood the significance of the white rabbit, it’d probably only have depressed and worried him. The fact is, there are times when it’s far better not to know.

The same goes for the fact that while he was lying in the darkness unconscious and bleeding from a shallow scalp wound, a rat, a toad and a badger, all armed with cudgels, pistols and cutlasses, stepped over him under the impression that he was a tree root, passed on round a bend in the tunnel and were never seen or heard of again.