Snow White and the Seven Samurai

by Tom Holt

  ‘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.

  Chapter 10

  ‘Squeak.’

  The other two mice ignored her. It had been a mistake bringing her in the first place, of course, but there was nothing to be done about it now.

  ‘Squeak.’

  (Roughly translated: I think this is probably the larder. There’s a strong smell of cheese. Follow me.)

  The largest of the three blind mice twitched its nose. ‘Squeak,’ it said.

  ‘Squeak,’ replied the third mouse irritably. ‘Squeak.’

  (Simultaneous translation: (a) That doesn’t smell like Camembert to me. That’s that industrial grade cheddar they put on cheeseburgers. (b) Oh put a sock in it, will you? Cheese is cheese. And besides, what d’you expect them to do, put the brand name on the labels in braille?)

  In the big four-poster bed at the opposite end of the room, Snow White slept fitfully, her dreams strangely t
roubled by an image of a little wooden puppet with a perky expression, an Alpine hat and a very long nose, which grinned out at her every time she looked in the mirror. She grunted and turned over; there it was again, dammit, smirking at her out of the polished brass doorknob, wanting to be her friend…

  ‘Squeak,’ whispered the first mouse, and he wasn’t exaggerating. The other two mice froze in their tracks until the sleeper in the bed stopped thrashing about and started to snore again, making a sound like a bandsaw grating on a concealed nail. No great risk of her hearing them over that racket.

  ‘Squeak?’

  ‘Squeak,’ replied the first mouse, suiting the action to the word. Immediately the other two followed, and with exquisite caution they tiptoed along the mantelpiece, down the tie-back on to the curtain, and dropped the last inch to the floor.

  ‘Snff.’

  ‘Squeak!’

  ‘Snif snif. Squeak.’

  The third mouse had a point, although she could have expressed her concerns in a rather less vulgar manner. They didn’t know what they were looking for; it was all very well to home in on a strong cheese smell and follow it to its logical conclusion, but in this case there were other elements that had to be factored into the equation. For example: a sleeping human, and a powerful scent that the mice weren’t to know was something as innocuous as Mr Hiroshige’s armour polish. The whole enterprise was, to quote the large mouse, completely squeak from the word Go.

  Nevertheless, mouse’s reach must exceed mouse’s grasp, or what’s a whisker for? The first mouse took a deep breath, fed the spatio-temporal coordinates of the cheese smell into his superb natural navigation computer, and scuttled across the floor…

  ‘Squeak!’ he cursed, sitting up and rubbing his nose. Without further data it wasn’t possible to say what exactly he had just scuttled full-tilt into; but it was big and made of wood, and it was standing in the middle of the floor.

  ‘Tick,’ it said.

  The first mouse ran a quick analysis. Large, made of wood and given to saying ‘Tick’ ruled out the vast majority of known predators, which was a good sign. On the other paw, there wasn’t anything about it that implied the presence of cheese. Yet it was directly in line with the source of the cheese smell. Decision time. Round, over, up or under?

  ‘Squeak?’

  ‘Squeak. Squeak squeak.’

  The first mouse’s whiskers bristled. Squeak, it muttered to itself, and that was fair enough; this was a cheese heist, after all, not a parish council meeting, and the concept of one mouse, one vote was as out of place in this context as a battleship in a milking parlour. That aside, up was indeed as good a choice as any, given that none of them had a clue where they were.

  The mice ran up the clock.

  At 1:01 precisely (the clock was a minute slow) the whole structure began to vibrate alarmingly and a terrible noise shattered the silence. ‘Squeeeeeak? wailed the mouse who ought to have been left behind; then she turned tail (what was left of it after the last time) and ran back down again, hotly pursued by her two colleagues.

  It wasn’t, unfortunately, a straight-sided clock. Instead, it had a sort of concave knee arrangement which could have been purpose-made to trip up a speeding mouse and catapult it through the air at an angle of forty-five degrees. There would, of course, be no saying where such a mouse would land; a lot would depend on how fast the mouse was going, whether he made an effort to stop in the final heart-crimping fraction of a second before his paws lost traction on the polished walnut, the effect of wind resistance and drag on the ultimate escape velocity, and so forth. One thing, though, is tolerably certain: the chances of said mouse landing in a nearby bucket of water would be effectively squeak—

  Splosh.

  Followed in quick succession by splosh, splosh.

  Maybe it served them right; certainly, successive generations of moralising mice thought so, which is where the expression away from the farmer’s wife into the bucket is reputed to come from. All in all, a pretty sorry state of affairs. But it wasn’t until the bucket burped, rippled and said ‘Running DOS’ that the mice realised the full extent of the problem. Of course, the mice weren’t to know that this was the most valuable and significant bucket of water in the whole domain, sold to its present owner by an opportunistic leprechaun accountant for rather more money than the domain’s economy actually contained at any given time.

  ‘Squeak?’ spluttered the big mouse, frantically pawing water.

  The first mouse replied to the effect that he didn’t know, but whatever the hell DOS was he didn’t plan on hanging around long enough to find out. One desperate push with the hind paws, and the first mouse was scrabbling against the sheer side of the bucket, failing to find a pawhold of any kind. No prizes for guessing what he said.

  ‘Bad command or file—’

  ‘Squeak!’

  ‘Running Help,’ said the bucket calmly. ‘Please wait.’

  It couldn’t have said anything more aggravating if it had tried. ‘Squeak!’ said the big mouse with admirable restraint. ‘Squeak squeak glug—’

  ‘Running SQUEAK. Please wait.’

  The mouse who should have stayed at home tried to say ‘?’, but since her head was an inch underwater, all that came up was a small cluster of bubbles. Fortunately, Bubbles 3.1.1. For Mirrors was included in the accessories menu. ‘Glublublububub,’ the bucket enunciated; then a small hole appeared in its side and the water started to stream out on to the floor.

  When the bucket was completely empty, the three blind mice huddled in the bottom and tried to ride out the aftermath of the shock and panic. They shivered, and their teeth clicked together. That in itself would have constituted a valid command, if it wasn’t for the fact that, with its wet drive completely splashed, the bucket was useless. Inert. Just a bundle of beechwood palings wrapped round with a couple of iron hoops.

  ‘Squeak?’

  ‘You can say that again,’ muttered the mouse who shouldn’t have come, spitting out a bit more of the water she’d inadvertently inhaled. ‘I really thought we’d had it that time; I mean, my past life flashed in front of my ears, there was this absolutely heavenly smell of Limburger cheese, and I—’

  She stopped, listening to the echo of her words. There was a moment of utter silence.

  ‘Squeak?’

  ‘Apparently,’ she replied, in a voice on the edge of hysteria. ‘At least, I think I am. But I can’t actually hear myself talking, and as far as I know I’m still thinking in Newsqueak, even if you’re right and what’s coming out is in Big. Do you think it’s something to do with the water in that crazy bucket? Only, you see, I did swallow some, and…’

  ‘Squeak?’

  ‘What’re you asking me for? Just because I can suddenly talk this godawful crackjaw language doesn’t mean I can— Oooo.’

  ‘Squeak?’

  ‘No, it’s just that I thought of something. In fact,’ the mouse added, horrified, ‘I just thought of a whole lot of things. A whole lot.’ She shuddered. ‘For example,’ she said, ‘did you know that the whole of this domain is run by a highly complex and intricate operating system that apparently was stored in the water in that bucket, which also happened to be the only surviving copy?’

  ‘Squeak!’

  ‘I don’t know how I know,’ the mouse wailed, ‘I just do. No, hang on, it’s coming through. I know because I drank some of the water, which means that I’m now a zipped database, whatever in Cheese that’s — Oh hell.’

  ‘Squ—’

  ‘I’m it,’ the mouse whimpered. ‘The operating system, I mean. It’s all inside me. Just a minute, though,’ she added, wrinkling her nose and twitching her whiskers. ‘Just a cotton-picking minute, let’s try this. All right.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Let there be cheese.’

  There was a dull thud.

  ‘Squeak!’

  ‘Because I didn’t specify which kind,’ the mouse explained crossly. ‘Obviously Gouda is the default cheese. Next time I’ll make
sure I specify cheddar. Satisfied?’

  ‘Squeak.’

  ‘So I should think,’ the mouse retorted with her mouth full. ‘Hey, this stuff isn’t half bad, for a default setting. Try some.’

  The other two mice didn’t need a second invitation. While they were busy gorging themselves, however, the mouse who shouldn’t have come sat perfectly still and quiet. Then she opened her eyes.

  ‘Look,’ she said. ‘I can see.’

  ‘Squeak.’

  ‘Squeak squeak.’

  She shrugged her sleekly furred shoulders. ‘I agree,’ she said. ‘Not what it’s cracked up to be at all, this vision stuff. Still, it’ll come in useful, I’m sure. Now shut up for a minute while I access the settings.’

  More silence. If talking to yourself is the first sign of madness, then listening to yourself must be ten times worse; the first sign, quite probably, of a burgeoning desire to go into politics. ‘Coo,’ she muttered after a while. ‘You wouldn’t believe the things I can do if I want to. For example, if I want to stop being a mouse and change myself into, let’s say for the sake of argument a beautiful princess, all I have to do is—’

  ‘SQUEEEEEAK”

  The warning came too late. By the time the mouse who shouldn’t have come realised the possible risks she’d already issued the command, or at least formulated the wish. Before she could think CANCEL she was already five feet two inches high and standing on her back paws, half in and half out of an old bucket. She looked down — And there are certain things about being a fairytale princess that just come with the territory, whether you like them or not. They aren’t pleasant, or helpful, let alone politically correct. They’re all to do with that dreadfully outmoded and patronising view of female psychology that was prevalent back along when fairytales first crystallised, an inherent part of which is that fatuous old scuttlebutt about women being terrified of mice —‘Eeeek!’

  Even as she leapt out of the bucket and scrambled up on to the nearest available chair, a section of her brain was shouting, No, this is silly; dammit, I’m a mouse too. But the quiet, calm voice of reason was shouted down by the clamour of a million preconceptions, all of them insisting that mice were horrid dirty creatures that ran up your skirts and bit you where you really didn’t want to be bitten.