Snow White and the Seven Samurai Read online

  Sis raised her head and scowled. ‘Well, I don’t see how you being horrid to me’s helping either,’ she said. ‘Not very constructive, is it?’

  The queen sighed. ‘Very true,’ she said. ‘I imagine it’s some sort of Pavlovian reaction, what with you being young and blondely cute and me being a wicked queen.’

  ‘Pavlovian?’ Sis queried. ‘Isn’t that ice cream and meringue?’

  The queen winced. ‘In a sense,’ she replied. ‘You’re right, though, gnawing bits off each other isn’t getting us anywhere.’ She sat quietly for a while, picking at a loose thread on her sleeve; then her face lit up like the jackpot on a complicated pinball table. ‘I’m an idiot,’ she said. ‘Water.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Bucket of water.’ She stood up, lunged across the room and came back with a heavy-looking oak pail, out of which water slopped on to her ankle and the floorboards. ‘Mother Nature’s laptop,’ she explained. ‘It’s what we in the trade call backing up to sloppy.’

  In the cartoon version, a light bulb starts to glow above Sis’s head. ‘Oh I see,’ she said. ‘You mean you made a copy, and it’s stored…’

  ‘In here.’ The queen nodded. ‘The memory’s not up to much and the response time’s lousy, but it’s better than nothing. Right then, let’s see.’ She pulled her hair back from her face, leaned over the pail and looked at her reflection. ‘Here goes. Mirror, mirror, in the bucket, are you reading me? Oh f— fiddlesticks.’ She scowled, dipped her finger into the water and fished out a tiny, struggling fly. ‘The slightest thing, and it refuses to play. Mirror,’ she repeated sternly.

  The water rippled, although the air in the chamber was still. Almost imperceptibly, the queen’s reflection began to mutate — ‘I hate it when it does that,’ she commented, wrinkling her nose. — Until it had become the image of a young man, comprising a small stub of nose sandwiched between an enormous pair of glasses and a bushy black beard.

  ‘Bad command or file na—’

  ‘Quiet,’ the queen snapped. ‘And take that gormless expression off your face, or I’ll feed you to the dahlias. Display all systems files, and look sharp about it.

  The surface of the water rippled again, and just underneath the meniscus Sis thought she could see a pair of two-dimensional fish tracing geometric patterns. ‘I know,’ muttered the queen, following her line of sight, ‘it’ll send you potty if you look at it for long enough. One of these days I’m going to replace it with something that’s not actually pernicious.’

  The fish snapped out of existence, and a thick mass of symbols and equations glowed dully blue on the surface of the water. The queen studied them for a while and then shook her head.

  ‘Doesn’t mean a lot to me,’ she confessed. ‘It could be all the little cogs and gears you managed to trash just now, or it could equally be the thing that numbers your pages for you.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Do you really think this brother of yours could make sense of this?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Sis replied. ‘He says he knows all about this sort of thing. It’s worth a try.’

  ‘Display our available options in table form, and it’d be at the top,’ the queen replied with a sigh. ‘And the bottom as well, seeing as how it’s the only one. Right, let’s give it a go. Mirror, locate— what did you say his name was?’

  ‘Carl.’

  ‘Of course. Mirror, locate Carl.’

  Ripple, ripple. A crude graphic of a frog hopped off an equally rudimentary lily-pad. Then the face came back.

  ‘Path Carl not found,’ it replied sheepishly. ‘Retry or Can—’

  ‘Oh, be quiet.’ The queen rubbed her hands together, as if trying to remove something distasteful. ‘I know what’s happened,’ she said. ‘When you bent everything, your wretched brother must have got renamed somehow. He’s out there, but the mirror thinks he’s called something else.’

  ‘Oh.’ Sis opened her mouth and closed it again. ‘So what do we do?’

  ‘I wish you’d stop asking me that,’ the queen replied. ‘I’m the wicked queen, remember. It’s hard enough for me not to be poisoning you or having you taken off to be murdered in the woods without listening to you drivelling as well.’

  ‘Queen,’ Sis said, biting her lip, ‘what do you think’s happening out there?’

  The wicked queen shook her head sadly. ‘I only wish I knew,’ she said.

  The shiny red door of the quaint little cottage in the clearing opened, and a man stepped out on to the garden path. In a sense, he struck an incongruous note, dressed as he was from head to foot in lacquered black and red armour, with big rectangular shoulder-guards and a bulky helmet decorated with a shiny black upturned crescent. He was holding a rake, with which he proceeded to mark out a delicate pattern of semicircular sweeps in the thick, evenly laid gravel of the garden path. As he worked, he chanted:

  ‘Softly blowing

  Wind-stirred leaves of maple.

  To our work we journey, Hi-ho, hi-ho.’

  Above him, a tousled head of golden hair appeared through an open casement. ‘Yoo-hoo,’ trilled a silvery voice. ‘Hello! Mr Suzuki!’

  The man looked up, saw the head and bowed politely. If there was in his eyes the faintest tinge of fear, it could only have been visible from a few feet away.

  ‘Mr Suzuki,’ the silvery voice continued, ‘have you been cleaning your armour with my dusters again?’

  The man bowed his head.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that,’ said the silvery voice. ‘Dusters are for dusting, Mr Suzuki, not that you’d know much about that, of course. If you must clean your silly old armour in the house, there’s a shoebox full of old socks and things in the cupboard under the sink. All right?’

  The man nodded, head still bowed, unable to meet her clear blue eyes.

  ‘Oh, and while you’re there,’ the voice went on, ‘I’ll just get you to nip into the hall and change the light bulb. It’s gone again.’

  (And before you ask, how many samurai does it take to change a light bulb? Easy; seven, of course. One to change the bulb, six to commit ritual suicide to expunge the disgrace of the old one having failed. In this household, however, ritual suicide’s on the forbidden list, along with Zen archery practice in the front parlour and walking on the kitchen floor in muddy wellies.)

  Having blown down the little pigs’ house, the big bad wolf glanced up at the sun, noted its position and calculated his estimated time of arrival at his next appointment. Then he dropped his head (aerodynamic efficiency) and broke into a trot.

  Grandmama’s cottage lay in a clearing in the south-western sector of the forest; a pretty hairy place for a big bad wolf to have to go into, what with the woodcutters and the Free Foresters, not forgetting the dreaded Greenshirts. Although he knew he was well behind schedule, the wolf slowed down. Any bush or briar patch in this neighbourhood could be hiding a disgruntled timber worker with an axe or a string-happy archer, or any one of a number of talking farmyard animals with an innate grudge against wolfkind. Futile to pretend he wasn’t scared droppingless, but he’d figured out long ago that true courage is the ability to throw fear out of focus just long enough to get the job done. Through these mean glades a wolf must trot, and that was all there was to it.

  When he saw the cottage, he stopped where he was and lay down under a bramble-bush, his chin on his forepaws, watching. His wet, delicate nose tasted the air, searching for traces of scent that shouldn’t be there: human sweat, the delicate tang of fresh sap on a steel blade, beeswax on a newly cleaned bowstring, fresh earth where a pitfall trap had just been dug. But there was nothing except what he’d expect — week-old human spoor and wood smoke, the stench of newly baked bread and lavender bags. Nothing unusual.

  But in field operations such as this, the unusual is so usual as to be virtually compulsory. There should be other smells, he realised: fresh squirrel-shit, the reek of newly sprouted mushrooms, a dash of unicorn pee and dissolving tree-bark. Something was wrong, a
nd although he couldn’t quite put his paw on it, he knew it was there.

  Set-up.

  Abort the operation and get out of there, his instincts screamed. But he couldn’t do that, could he? Go back to Wolfpack HQ and explain that he’d abandoned his mission because everything seemed normal. Wolves who did that sort of thing found themselves pulled off active service and assigned to retrieving foundling human babies from riverbanks before their paws could touch the ground. At the very least he had to get close enough to see what form the trap took.

  One thing they teach well at Wolfpack Academy is stealthy crawling. Gradually, his ears flat to his skull, his tummy brushing the dirt, he edged slowly forward, pausing every yard or so to taste the air. A small voice inside his head told him he was wasting his time. Elementary tactics demanded that the trap would be sprung close to the cottage, where there was little or no cover and a clear field of fire for archers hidden behind the chintz curtains of the upper storey. Between the edge of the underbrush and the front door there was an open space twenty-five yards wide that he’d have to cross, and while he was in the zone he might as well have a target-boss embroidered on his back in yellow, red and blue fibre-optic cable. Which left him with only one course of action. Stage a diversion.

  Oh yes, piece of cake. With no backup and no resources, that was an order so tall they’d have to festoon it with coloured lights to stop aircraft flying into it. In his mind’s eye he could picture his Academy instructor, wagging his tail and saying, ‘Think, Mr Fang. What would Hannibal have done?’ And never once, back in those dear long-ago days, had he pointed out the obvious fact that the recommended technique was fatuous, since Hannibal was never a wolf. Easy enough to guess what Hannibal would have done: he’d have encircled the cottage with his heavy infantry, made a feint attack with his light cavalry to draw off the enemy strike-force and then sent in the war elephants to finish the job. Simple. Problem solved. Give me a thousand legionaries, five hundred horse archers and a dozen trained elephants and I’ll be through here in a jiffy.

  Think, Mr Fang. What would you do in this situation?

  The wolf breathed in deeply, as if trying to inhale inspiration. And so he did, in a manner of speaking, because a moment later he made a lightning-fast grab with his left forepaw.

  ‘Gerroff! You’re squashing my ears!’

  The wolf eased off the pressure slightly, and the gossamer shadow under its claws stopped squirming. ‘Well now,’ the wolf growled softly, ‘what a surprise. And what’s an elf doing in these parts, so far from the Reservation?’

  The elf spat. ‘That’s Indigenous Fairylander to you, Fido,’ she hissed. ‘And you got five seconds to get your goddamn paw the hell off me, or you gonna wish you lived in a kennel and fetched slippers in your mouth.’

  ‘Easy now,’ Fang replied calmly, not letting go. ‘You don’t need me to tell you you’re in no position to make threats. Instead of trying to scare each other, why don’t we help each other out?’

  The elf sneered. ‘And why’d I want to help you, Mister Dog?’

  ‘Because otherwise I’ll eat you,’ Fang replied cheerfully. ‘Now shut up and listen. I’ve got to get in there and do a job of work, but I have the feeling I’m expected. So I need someone to stage a diversion.’

  ‘Man, you can stage a Broadway revival of Oklahoma! for all I care. I ain’t helpin’ no wolf. What’s in it for me?’

  ‘Bread,’ the wolf replied temptingly. ‘Also milk. And a chance to get one back on the Yellowhairs. Interested?’

  ‘Bread?’ the elf repeated.

  ‘Bread,’ Fang confirmed. ‘And milk. And I’m not talking about the poxy little saucerfuls they deign to put out for you every once in a blue moon. I’m talking loaves and pints here. All the bread and milk you and your people need for a month, for just five minutes’ work. And no shoemaking.’

  The elf squirmed restlessly under his paw. ‘Say, how do I know I can trust you?’ she said. ‘Wolf speaks with long pink tongue. You could be setting me up.’

  The wolf yawned, making the elf shrink away instinctively. ‘Why should I bother?’ he said. ‘Wolfpack’s got no quarrel with you guys, even if you are thieving little scum. After all,’ he added, ‘it wasn’t us who cheated you out of your ancestral lands in exchange for beads and firewater.’

  ‘All right. First, you get your paw off me. Then we talk.’

  Fang raised his paw a sixteenth of an inch; there was a faint gossamer blur, and the elf shot like a bullet into a patch of stinging nettles. ‘Shit,’ she muttered.

  ‘Happier now?’

  ‘Okay, Mister Wolf,’ said the elf, ‘you got yourself a deal. What you want me to do?’

  Carefully the wolf explained, and a few minutes later the elf broke cover and whizzed in vertiginous zigzags across the open ground. When she was ten yards or so from the front door she changed course and started running round the cottage, whooping and yelling and shooting arrows from her tiny bow. It worked; almost immediately a gang of axe-wielding woodcutters burst out of the hydrangea bushes and let out after her, swinging wildly and chopping divots out of the lovingly manicured lawn. When the pursuers and the pursued were safely out of range, the wolf got up and trotted casually to the front door, which had been left ajar. He jumped up, put his forepaws against it and pushed until it swung open. And that, of course, was as far as he got. In the fraction of a second between the searing flash of blue light and the completion of the process of turning into a frog, the wolf had just enough time to reflect that not all old women who live alone in isolated cottages deep in the forest are kindly old grandmothers.

  Chapter 2

  They called him the Dwarf With No Name.

  Where he came from, nobody knew, although since the same was true of all dwarves that didn’t really signify. Nobody cared much, either. But when he swaggered into town and strolled in under the swinging doors of the Buttercup Tea Rooms, small cuddly animals dived for cover and pixies dashed back to their workshops and started roughing out tiny coffins.

  ‘Milk,’ the dwarf growled, flinging a handful of chocolate money on the bar top. ‘Gimme the bottle.’

  Mrs Twinklenose, the elderly hedgehog who’d run the Buttercup since the first prospectors struck treacle south of the Rio Gordo, picked up one of the coins, bit it, swore, spat, took the gold foil off, bit it again and slid a pint bottle along the polished surface of the bar. Without looking, the dwarf reached a hand up above his head, caught the bottle just as it cleared the edge, stuck a thumb through the foil and drank messily.

  ‘Another,’ he muttered, wiping milk drops from his ginger beard. ‘Keep ‘em coming till I say when.’

  Mrs Twinklenose shrugged. ‘You got it, mister,’ she said. ‘There’s a couple of pigs been in here looking for you.’

  The dwarf looked up. ‘Pigs?’ he repeated. ‘I don’t know no pigs.’

  ‘Reckon they know you,’ the hedgehog said indifferently. ‘If you’re Dumpy the dwarf, that is.’

  The dwarf reached up and balanced a half-empty milk bottle on the edge of the bar. ‘I ain’t heard that name in a long while,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘In fact, I ain’t never heard it this side of the Candyfloss Mountains. Who did you say these pigs were?’

  ‘Just pigs,’ Mrs Twinklenose answered, polishing a glass against the plush fur of her tummy. ‘Never could tell them critters apart, and that’s the truth.’

  ‘Gimme another milk.’

  Business was quiet in the Buttercup that afternoon. Customers who drifted in — thirsty ladybirds with trail-dust caking their wing-cases, fluffy pink bunnies from the treacle mines, the occasional stoat and weasel newly arrived on the riverboats and looking for some action, all the regular extras you’d normally expect to find in an alphabet-spaghetti Western — tended to swallow their drinks quickly and leave as soon as they set eyes on the dwarf. The heaped plate of currant buns grew staler by the minute, and the ice-cream cake melted into a sticky pool. The dwarf didn’t take any notice; he stayed wher
e he was, slumped under a bar stool, methodically gulping down the house semi-skimmed by the pint. Several times Mrs Twinklenose tried to suggest politely that since there weren’t any other customers, she’d quite like to close up for the day, but the dwarf proved resolutely hint-proof and silent. It was nearly dark when he looked up, pushed his hood back and said, ‘These pigs.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Did they happen to mention when they’d be back?’

  Mrs Twinklenose shook her head, accidentally impaling a dozen sticky buns on her neck spines. ‘Never said nothing to me. You could maybe ask over at the hotel or the livery stable.’

  ‘Nope.’ The dwarf tilted back his head, drained the last drop out of the bottle and licked a few white globules out of his moustache. ‘Reckon I’ll stay here, in case I miss them. You got any better stuff than this? This ain’t fit to go on a pixie’s cornflakes.’

  Reluctantly Mrs Twinklenose reached under the counter and produced a pint of gold-top, the condensation misting its sides. ‘Full cream’s extra,’ she said without hope. The dwarf nodded and tossed her some more coins, but she could tell by the thunk they made on the bar top that they were phoney; solid gold, not chocolate at all. She sighed and dropped them in the spittoon.

  The dwarf sniffed, his nose wrinkling; then he drained his milk, wiped the tip of his nose and stood up. A moment later the door swung open. Trotters pecked tentatively at the floorboards. Someone snuffled and cleared his throat.

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ said the smaller of the two pigs, ‘but are you Dumpy the dwarf?’

  The dwarf turned slowly round, his thumbs tucked inside his belt-buckle, ‘Maybe I am,’ he drawled, ‘and maybe I ain’t. Who wants to know?’

  The two pigs exchanged nervous glances. ‘He’s taller than I thought he’d be,’ whispered the bigger pig.

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ his colleague hissed back. ‘And for crying out loud don’t let him hear you say…’ The pig glanced up, then down, and realised that the dwarf was staring at him. ‘I’m sorry,’ he stuttered, ‘you’ve got to excuse my brother, he’s only ever lived with pigs, he doesn’t know how to behave around regular people.’