by Tom Holt
They followed him up the path and stood at a respectful distance while he dumped the bags in the bin and put back the lid. The other two dipped their heads in respectful admiration.
‘Likewise,’ said Mr Hiroshige, ‘whereas even the most skilled worker in jade could never produce a really convincing facsimile of a leaf, with all its endlessly complex veins and textures, a tree puts forth new leaves without a conscious thought. Thank you. That was—’ He paused, took a deep breath, and let it out again slowly. ‘Beautiful.’
‘Oh. Good.’
‘And yet,’ interrupted Mr Miroku gently, ‘it would be presumptuous to congratulate him on a skill that comes not from within himself but from the essential forces of the cosmos. After all, one compliments the painter, not the brush.’ He turned and gestured politely towards the bin. ‘Would you mind terribly doing it again?’
Mr Akira raised both eyebrows. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘If you like.’ His brows furrowed for a moment like trysting ear-wigs. ‘This is a Zen thing, isn’t it? Like doing the ironing or unblocking the sink trap.’
Mr Miroku’s smile was beatific. ‘All things are Zen, my son,’ he said. ‘When you’ve truly grasped that, you will at last be one of us.’
‘Oh. Gosh.’ Mr Akira took the lid off the dustbin, pulled out the bags, put them back again and replaced the lid. ‘Did I do that all right?’ he said.
The other two nodded. ‘Remarkable,’ said Mr Hiroshige.
‘You put those bags in almost exactly the same place as you did the last time. Now if you’d tried to do that on purpose, measuring the clearances and the distances and measuring the angle at which the bags were inserted, I’ll wager you wouldn’t have achieved anything like the same level of precision.’
‘Quite so,’ Mr Miroku agreed. ‘But by subordinating your conscious self to the forces of the natural order—’
‘Ah.’ Mr Akira beamed with pleasure. ‘Now I see. There’s just one thing, though,’ he added apprehensively. ‘With the very greatest respect—’
‘Feel free to speak, my son.’
‘All right. It’s just,’ Mr Akira went on, ‘I’m probably being very dense here, but how exactly is putting out the dustbin bags and all the other housework you kindly let me do going to help me to become a superbly trained master swordsman?’
The other two exchanged a gentle smile. ‘Show him,’ said Mr Miroku.
‘No, no. You do it so much better.’
‘You’re very kind.’ Mr Miroku composed himself and closed his eyes; then, in a single fluid movement, so swift and smooth that it was almost impossible to follow, he reached to his left side, drew the great two-handed katana broadsword and brought it down with devastating force on the dustbin, slicing it into two exactly symmetrical halves without even disturbing the lid. There was a moment of sublimely perfect stillness; then he opened his eyes and gave the blade a little twitch, whereupon the two halves of the bin and the precisely bisected bags within opened like the pages of a book, slowly toppled over and slumped on to the grass.
‘Gosh,’ said Mr Akira.
‘It was nothing,’ Mr Miroku replied. ‘Or rather, it was a power so great, so universal, as to be far too vast for our weak minds to grasp. One might as well try to contain the sea in a teacup.’ He performed chiburi, the seemingly effortless flick of the wrist that shakes the blade clean, and sheathed the sword with a graceful flowing movement. ‘But please observe this, because it’s very important.’ His face suddenly became grave. ‘Because within the Way all is as one, your act of putting the bags in the bin and my act of cutting the bin in half were fundamentally one and the same act.’
‘So if anyone asks…’ Mr Hiroshige added.
Mr Akira nodded twice, very slowly. ‘I think I’m beginning to understand,’ he said, as the wind gently ruffled the pages of a precision-sliced newspaper. ‘Thank you. Thank you very much.’
Mr Miroku made a tiny gesture with his hands. ‘Think nothing of it,’ he said. ‘What nobler calling could there be than to guide another’s footsteps along the Way?’ He started to walk towards the cottage, then looked back. ‘One last thing, though.’
‘Yes?’
With the merest quiver of a single finger, Mr Miroku indicated the sprawl of garbage, which was being gradually dispersed by the gentle breeze. ‘Get that mess cleared up, would you?’
‘I don’t think it’s following us,’ the wicked queen panted, leaning against an apple tree as she caught her breath.
They looked back at the castle. There was something white and fluffy oozing out of all the upper storey arrow slits, and the moat looked like a bubble-bath. The queen breathed a sigh of relief and rested the bucket carefully on the ground.
‘I spilt some,’ she said, ‘but not too much, I don’t think.’ She peered at the surface of the water and nodded. ‘Looks like all we’ve lost is some of the naff graphics and the Spell Check.’
‘Spell—?’
‘Don’t ask. It never worked anyway. Well now,’ she went on, ‘here we both are, with the bucket and the clothes we stand up in and not a lot else. Any ideas?’
Sis just shrugged.
‘It wouldn’t be a problem if the system was still running,’ the queen went on, taking off her shoes and sitting down. ‘Normally, we’d have just enough time to catch our breath before a wizened old crone or quaintly humorous hunchback came by offering to tell us everything we need to know. Marvellous feature of the program, that was, when it was working okay.’
‘Don’t look now,’ Sis muttered, ‘but there’s two men under that tree over there staring at us.’
‘Are there?’ The queen lifted her head. ‘That’s interesting. You never know, maybe that part of the system’s still running. Let’s give it a try, shall we?’
Sis looked doubtful. ‘They don’t look terribly nice,’ she whispered. ‘Wouldn’t it be better if we—?’
‘No.’ The wicked queen stood up and waved her shoe. ‘Hello! Yes, you there. Are you Help?’
The men who’d been watching them started guiltily, looked round just in case the queen had been talking to somebody else, then slowly walked towards them. It was easy to see why Sis hadn’t liked the look of them. Where she came from their sombre grey suits, sunglasses and bulging left armpits could only mean one thing: they were some sort of Them.
‘Sorry?’ one of them said. ‘Can we help you?’
‘That depends,’ replied the queen briskly. ‘By rights, you should be a little old man with a long white beard or a gnarled old peasant woman bent double under a heavy load of firewood, which we would proceed to carry for you.’ She paused for a moment, then continued. ‘If this is making absolutely no sense to you, then you aren’t who I think you are.’
The elder of the two cleared his throat. ‘Actually,’ he said, ‘we know what you’re driving at, but we aren’t who you think we are.’
‘We aren’t even here,’ added his colleague, with a rather mimsy grin.
‘Not officially, anyhow,’ the elder man said. ‘This is supposed to be covert surveillance.’
‘Then you’re not very good at it, are you?’ the queen replied. ‘Come to think of it, I do know who you are. You’re the Grimm boys, aren’t you?’
The Brothers Grimm smiled sheepishly. ‘So much for blending into the crowd,’ said the elder. He elbowed his brother in the ribs. ‘Told you we should have dressed the part.’
‘We’d still have stuck out like sore thumbs,’ the younger Grimm replied. ‘And it’s bad enough having to tell people you collect fairytales for a living without having to dress up in all that ridiculous schmutter.’
‘I know you,’ the queen repeated. ‘You’re the official observers, aren’t you? From where she comes from.’
The Grimms noticed Sis for the first time. The younger specimen hauled out a complicated-looking scanning device, waved it in Sis’s direction and looked down at the readout. ‘Gawd, she’s right,’ he said, ‘she’s one of ours. How in hell’s name did she get
here?’
‘Good question,’ the queen growled. ‘Anyway, wasn’t it lucky I bumped into you two creeps when I did? You can take her back with you.’
Sis was about to protest, but the Grimms did it for her. ‘No can do,’ said the elder Grimm, shaking his head. ‘Not our pigeon, repatriations. We’re just—’
‘Observers,’ the queen finished for him. ‘All right, observe this. Either you can get her out of here, now, no pack drill, or else your bureau is going to be hearing from my lawyers about a claim for massive disruption to my systems caused by one of your strays hacking into it and crashing the damn thing. Now, shall I wrap her or will you take her as she is?’
But the Grimms shook their heads again; this time, more or less in unison. ‘Still not our pigeon,’ the elder replied. ‘Cost us our badges, that would. Of course, we’ll report back to Immigration soon as we get back, but that’s all we can do. Sorry.’
‘But you’ve got to help,’ Sis burst out. ‘My brother’s lost in here, somewhere, and she’s not doing anything to find him.’
The Grimms exchanged glances. ‘Awkward,’ said the younger specimen.
‘Very awkward,’ agreed his brother. ‘Don’t know what we’re going to do about that. I mean, it could be abduction, which’d be State Department business—’
‘Or mythological asylum,’ put in the younger Grimm. ‘That’d come under Political.’
‘Might even constitute an act of war,’ added the elder, ‘which’d mean bringing in the military. Sorry, no, can’t touch that with a ten-foot pole.’ He shook his head once more, just in case Sis and the queen hadn’t been looking the first couple of times. ‘While we’re on the subject, though; when you say crashed the system, what exactly…’
The queen gave him a stare you could have put in a gin and tonic. ‘Oh no you don’t,’ she said.
‘But if you’re having, um, technical difficulties,’ the elder Grimm said solicitously, ‘I’m sure our people would be only too pleased to offer technological support and backup. It’d be the least.’
‘You want me to let your spooks come poking their noses into the workings of my system,’ the queen translated. ‘Whereupon you’d download everything you think you’d be able to use back where you come from, and then bugger off. Probably,’ she added, ‘leaving behind a few little mementoes of your visit buried deep down among the cogs and wheels, all ready to go bang! and blow a hole in the operating system whenever the bunch of paranoid psychotics you work for decide we constitute a threat to your dimensional security. Oh, come on, boys, I wasn’t written yesterday.’
‘You’re being very unfair,’ muttered the elder Grimm. ‘And that’s just going to make it harder for us to repatriate our, um, errant citizen here.’ He stripped all vestige of expression from his face, and went on: ‘I do take it you want rid of her?’
The queen snarled. ‘You’re calling me unfair,’ she said. ‘And somehow I don’t believe you’d actually do that, abandon one of your own in an alien dimension. If word ever got out, you’d be flayed alive. And, unlikely as it seems, sooner or later someone’s going to wonder what’s become of this one and her two noxious siblings.’
The Grimms grinned. ‘Quite so,’ said the junior partner. ‘And guess what. Anybody who so much as suggests that the reason for their disappearance is that they’ve been kidnapped by the fairies is going to end up wearing one of those funny jackets with sleeves that don’t let you look at your watch. Forget it, your Majesty. We’ve extended the hand of friendship and you’ve thrown it back in our face—’
‘Interesting mental picture,’ the queen interrupted. ‘Sorry, do go on.’
‘You want our help with one problem,’ the elder Grimm said, ‘you’ve got to accept our help with the other. Simple as that. You think it over, and in the meantime we’ll just go about our business.’
‘Observing,’ added Junior.
‘I know, anything that isn’t nailed down., The queen breathed out through her nose in a manner that suggested a dragon or two in the back lots of her genetic matrix. ‘I’ll have you for this, don’t you worry. Not immediately, perhaps, but eventually. And when I do—’
The elder Grimm smiled placidly. ‘Tell it to the hobbits,’ he said. ‘Remember, our people know we’re here. And when we’re expected back. And right now, it doesn’t look to me like those automated defence systems of yours we’ve heard so much about are in any fit state to cope with a sudden dose of Reality. Think on, Highness. Ciao.’
The queen snorted; fortunate for her that some things don’t run in families, or she’d have roasted her own toes. But the Grimms turned their backs and walked away. When they’d gone fifty yards or so, the queen distinctly heard a snigger.
‘Wonderful,’ she said. ‘Now it looks as if I’m stuck with you long-term. All this is beginning to get on my nerves.’
Sis glowered at her. ‘That’s right,’ she said, ‘blame me for everything. If you hadn’t been so rude to those men, they might have helped us to fix your rotten system and find Carl and Damien.’
‘Oh, be quiet.’ The queen sat down again and pulled on her shoes. ‘Well, I don’t think we’re going to meet any funny old men or informative wizened crones, so we might as well make a move before those idiots think of something else to threaten me with and come back. I think I might have difficulty staying serenely regal if they were to do that.’
‘So where are we going to go? Or are we just going to drift about aimlessly carrying this stupid bucket and getting our shoes wet?’
The wicked queen scratched an itch at the very tip of her perfect nose. ‘You clearly haven’t understood how things work here,’ she said. ‘It’s a whole different attitude to cause and effect. If you’ve got a problem, you don’t go out and look for an answer. Heaven forbid. You might find the wrong one, and then where’d you be? No, you keep going till the answer finds you. It will.’
Sis wrinkled her nose in distaste. ‘Oh, really?’ she said. ‘You mean, you’ll just happen to bump into an adventure that’ll put everything right. And in the meantime, you just roam about the place smelling the flowers.’
‘More or less,’ the wicked queen replied. ‘After all, if someone’s been to all the trouble of putting us into a story, it stands to reason they’ve got work for us to do.’
‘And suppose we wander off in the wrong direction and the right adventure can’t find us? Or is there a convention, like you always wander North or something?’
The queen smiled indulgently. ‘Oh, the adventure finds you all right, don’t you worry, just like a cat can usually be relied on to find a mouse inside a small cardboard box. That’s what the system’s…’ She tailed off. ‘Was for,’ she added.
‘Exactly.’
Chapter 3
‘Before you crashed it.’
‘Yes, all right, you’ve made that point already.’ Sis sighed and sat down on what she thought was a tree-stump, though in fact it was a giant mushroom. ‘Point is, we can’t rely on this silly old system of yours. In fact, any adventures that do come along are likely to be the wrong ones anyway. That,’ she added, ‘is the law of probability. Or don’t you have it here?’
‘Not in the way you think,’ the queen admitted. ‘Around here, if you find yourself captured by a bandit chief and he’s about to slit your throat with a great big knife, you know it’s your lucky day, because it’s a dead certainty he’s your long-lost brother and you’re in for a half share of the year’s takings. It’s getting so it’s hard to find people who’re prepared to be bandits these days. Too expensive, they reckon.’
Sis sniffed, as if she could smell toast burning. ‘This isn’t getting us anywhere,’ she said. ‘Now then, think. Who is there apart from my brother Carl and your dead sorcerer who might know something about your horrid old system?’
‘Don’t think there’s — Just a moment, though.’ A smile leaked out over the wicked queen’s face. ‘There is someone who might just be able to help. Mind you, it’s highly unlikely
—’
‘Good.’ Sis nodded firmly. ‘Then by your reckoning it should be a sure thing. Which way? You explain as we go.’
‘I—’ The queen looked round. ‘To be truthful I’m not sure. Usually, you see, there’d be this little old man—’
‘Or an old crone carrying firewood, I know. Come on, think.’
‘All right, I’m doing my best.’ The queen closed her eyes, turned round three times, pointed at random and opened her eyes again. ‘That way,’ she said.
‘You’re sure?’
‘Absolutely positive,’ the wicked queen replied, freeing the hem of her skirt from a stray bramble. ‘Come on, then, don’t dawdle. And I think it’s your turn to carry the bucket.’
‘You again,’ snarled the elf. ‘Don’t you people ever give up?’
The frog dilated its cheeks. ‘No,’ it croaked. ‘It’s a little thing called duty. Not something I’d expect your kind to know anything about.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong then,’ jeered the elf. ‘I know lots about duty. It’s seventeen per cent on gin, whisky, rum and tequila, twenty-eight per cent on cigars.’
‘Forget it. Now, this time it’s going to be different.’
‘You bet,’ grumbled the elf, squirming ineffectually between the frog’s long, flexible toes. ‘For a start, I’m not having anything to do with it.’
‘That’s what you think, is it?’
The elf looked up into the frog’s round, yellow eyes. ‘Be fair,’ she said. ‘If you want to go around eating grandmothers, be my guest. Go for it. Just so long as you leave me out of it, because it’s not my war and I don’t want to get involved. When it comes to the irreconcilable conflict between man and beast, our role is strictly confined to robbing the dead. Okay?’
‘No,’ replied the frog. ‘Now, when I give the word…’
The elf planted her feet against a green toe and pushed with all the strength of her legs. It wasn’t enough. ‘Just think, will you?’ she said. ‘What makes you think it’ll work a second time? They may be woodcutters, but they aren’t stupid.’