Darkwood

The Darkwood Series, Volume One

Gabby Hutchinson Crouch

Dedication

For Violet and Alex

Contents

Dedication

Chapter 1: Girls Don’t Do Maths

Chapter 2: A Minor Crisis

Chapter 3: The Huntsman

Chapter 4: Pre-Breakfast Meetings Are the Worst

Chapter 5: Darkwood

Chapter 6: The Witches in the Wood

Chapter 7: Big Ogres Don’t Cry

Chapter 8: Chateau Gateau

Chapter 9: The Witch of Nearby Village

Chapter 10: Plans

Chapter 11: Hiccups

Chapter 12: Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Go to the Privy

Chapter 13: The Princess’ Heart

Chapter 14: Bin Night

Chapter 15: Battle Stations

Chapter 16: Winging It

Chapter 17: Retreat

Chapter 18: Bump in the Night

Chapter 19: Death Becomes Her

Chapter 20: Meanwhile, Nearby

Chapter 21: The Spider Who Came in from the Cold

Chapter 22: Run, Forest, Run

Chapter 23: Masks

Chapter 24: The Loveliest in the Land

Chapter 25: J’Ackuse

Chapter 26: Magic Tricks

Chapter 27: The Man Whose Back-Story Was Irrelevant

Chapter 28: Home…

Chapter 29: …Is Where The Heart Is

Note from the Publisher

Acknowledgements

About Gabby Hutchinson Crouch

Copyright

1
Girls Don’t Do Maths

You don’t go into the Darkwood. That’s one of the first lessons every child learns in Myrsina. All sorts of nasty things live out there, amongst the twisted trees and brambles. That’s where the witches and the beasties creep, and if you go in there, you’ll never come out again, or you’ll come back all wrong, and won’t be able to live with normal decent folk any more. Stay away from the Darkwood, child, don’t even go near. Unless… well… house prices are so cheap on the outskirts of the wood. Probably because it’s so accursed and there is a bit of a problem with monsters raiding the nearby villages sometimes, but seriously, for the cost of a one-bedroom hovel in the Citadel you could get a whole farm at the edge of Darkwood, as long as you invest in a decent fence and defensive systems against the marauding gangs of unnatural, misshapen beasts that have been known to crash through it, a hardworking family could fare very well there. Very well indeed.

But it is evil. So you can go near the Darkwood, children, but never actually in it. Not the other side of the fence, anyway. Not even to collect your ball. There’s a special scoop on the end of a long pole you can get these days that’ll fetch it for you. Just, generally, don’t go into the Darkwood. OK?

That ‘first lesson every child learns’ bit absolutely should be taken literally, by the way. It’s an essential part of the home education curriculum, which is the only curriculum rural Myrsina has. Take this home, for example. It’s a small farm at the edge of the Darkwood. Above the door frame into the kitchen hangs an embroidery sampler, with the words ‘Don’t go into the Darkwood’ stitched by young but careful fingers. There is nobody in the kitchen, but it is far from empty. In it are scrubbed pots and pans, half a loaf of bread, vegetables, butter and milk. A pot, soaking. Porridge was made earlier, and all leftovers hastily scraped into a pig’s trough and mixed up with cabbage to disguise the scent. Cautionary tales have made their way down from the mountain villages about porridge pots left unattended and a marauding trio of weirdly anthropomorphic bears. Nobody wants to see that sort of carnage come to their own homes. In this home, the kitchen has a table, four chairs and a warm, used feeling. There’s nothing sinister about this abandoned kitchen. It is simply that it’s half past eight in the morning and a beautiful day, so they are all outside, by the barn.

Outside the barn are a farmer and his wife. There are several piglets scampering about as a sow lazes in the sun. There is a cat, staring at a jackdaw, which is, in turn, staring at two children, who are sitting on a bench, themselves staring at a piece of slate. On the slate has been chalked ‘W IS FOR WITCH’.

‘Wuh,’ says the boy, ‘is for… witch.’ He looks at a second piece of chalked slate. ‘The… wicked… witch… lives… in… the… wood,’ he reads.

His stepmother claps her hands. ‘Well done, Hansel!’

These children are older than you’re probably imagining right now. They’re teenaged twins. It’s just that as long as youngsters around these parts have the whole ‘don’t go into the Darkwood’ thing down, education tends to prioritise animal husbandry, crop rotation and other practical skills over reading and writing. At this point, Hansel could manoeuvre a herd of startled cows out of a fast approaching thunderstorm with both hands behind his back, but he’d have difficulty with the word ‘manoeuvre’. And indeed, the words ‘startled’, ‘approaching’, ‘thunderstorm’ and, if he were feeling tired, the word ‘cows’. Still, his stepmother persists with his literacy.

‘See?’ she says proudly. ‘You’re learning your reading and, more importantly, remembering to be afeared of witches.’

‘And he’s learning geography,’ adds the girl on the bench. ‘Because witches really do live in Darkwood.’

The stepmother nods briefly in agreement, but her husband looks up from feeding the chickens in confusion.

‘Jobbing Grabby? What’s that when it’s at home, girl?’

‘It’s where things are, Stepfather.’

The boy and the girl are being raised by their stepfather and their stepmother. Nobody ever really questions why this is or how this works. It’s just the way things are.

‘Gretel.’ The stepmother’s tone is patient yet weary. ‘We know where things are. We are here. The Citadel is over there.’ She points over to a distant hilltop citadel, just about visible on the horizon in the morning haze. ‘And the horrible things are over there.’ This time she points towards the nearby wood. The jackdaw flutters its wings and continues to stare. ‘Where they belongs. You don’t need Jogging Grabbys to know that, children.’

‘Fun to say though, ain’t it?’ adds the stepfather. ‘“Do you know where the privy is, Mr Mudd?” “Yes I do, because that’s Jogging Grabby.”’

Ignoring him, the stepmother addresses the girl again. ‘Your turn, Gretel.’

‘Hooray!’

‘What’s the square root of 3,136?’

‘Oh, that’s easy,’ begins Gretel. ‘It’s fifty-si—’

‘No!’ The stepmother slaps her rudimentary ruler against the barn door in frustration, alarming the piglets and sending them into an aimless, squealing scurry, and causing Hansel to leap up after them.

‘But I’m right…’

‘I know you’re right, that’s the whole problem! The correct answer to “what is the square root of anything” or indeed any mathematical question from the mouth of a girl is an abomination, how many times do I have to tell you?’

‘I don’t know,’ cries the girl. ‘You won’t let me keep count!’

The stepmother sighs, and sits down next to Gretel while Hansel scoops up an armful of piglets, soothing them.

‘This is for your own good, Gretel, trust me.’ She tries to pet Gretel’s hair, but Gretel pushes her hand away, angrily.

‘You can’t make me unlearn maths, Stepmother. I’m good at it! And physics and engineering, I can’t help that.’

‘You are such a clever girl, poppet,’ says the stepmother. ‘And… people talk. It’s bad enough that you make all of your… contraptions…’

‘Bad?!?’ exclaims Gretel. ‘Stepfather’s using one of my contraptions right now!’

The stepfather looks up at them, slightly guiltily. In his hand is a large rod with a dozen strings hanging off the end of it. At the end of every string is a carrot and at the end of every carrot is a piglet, munching contentedly and distinctly no longer startled. The stepfather pulls a lever on the rod and little collars slip down the strings, over the carrots and the piglets’ heads, so that the stepfather can lead them back to the safety of the barn.

‘My inventions are useful,’ continues Gretel. ‘The villagers love them.’

‘If they found out it was you who built them and not your brother…’

‘They won’t care! To be honest, I imagine quite a few of them have already worked it out but just aren’t saying anything. These are our friends we’re talking about.’

‘And what would you say if one of them asked you the square root of 3,136?’

‘I’d tell them it’s fifty-six.’

‘No!’

‘It’s the right answer!’

‘It’s the correct answer, Gretel. The right answer, from you, is “I don’t know anything about that but I’m good at baking pies.” Or “My favourite flowers are daffodils.”’

‘But it’s fifty-six.’

The stepmother lets out a long, controlled breath. ‘That’s enough schooling for now.’

‘But—’

‘Go and fetch us some water, Gretel. Let your brother help you.’

Hansel looks up and smiles, still fussing over a piglet, and generally glad that the latest brewing argument seems to have dispersed for now.

‘We need a bucketful each,’ adds the stepmother as Gretel swings a yoke over her shoulders.

‘So, four buckets, then?’

‘Stop doing sums!’

2
A Minor Crisis

The children leave Mudd Farm, and walk the dirt track down to the river that provides a natural barrier between its residents and the Darkwood, and supplies the village with water, made crisp and clear by the filter system Gretel quietly set up the year before. Gretel walks sullenly, with more weighing down her shoulders than just her yoke. Hansel walks with the sun on his face and a piglet trotting tamely at his heel.

‘She means well,’ says Hansel, after a while.

This just earns him a glare.

‘It’s just that she worries people might think you’re a witch.’

‘People think any clever girl could be a witch. It happens to all of us.’

A little way downstream from where the twins are collecting water are the village’s ducking stools. There are six of them, in a row. It is very easy to end up in a ducking chair in Nearby Village. The best way to go about it is to be female and to perform one of the ever-growing lists of abominations connected to witchcraft that are disseminated across Myrsina from the Citadel on a twice-yearly basis. Since this means that half the village are constantly one misstep from a ducking, and the other half at risk of seeing their wife, sister, daughter or dear old mum strapped to the chair, certain adjustments have been made to the punishment. Duckings tend to last for a few seconds a time, after repeated shouted warnings to hold your breath, and the stools have been placed in a sun-kissed bend where the water runs lazy and warm. Ducking has actually been described by many as quite a pleasant experience and a chance for a really good wash, so much so that many of the stools have little soap trays and washcloth hooks attached and the site now sports a fancy banner, advertising ‘Duck a Witch! 1 Abomination = 20 minutes!!! Freshen Your Eternal Soul!!!’ Indeed, skipping down the path from the village comes Daisy the basket weaver’s daughter, in a bathing suit, with a towel and loofah nestled in a particularly nicely woven basket.

‘Morning,’ she greets them cheerfully. ‘Beautiful day! I’m just off for a dip – want to come, Gretel?’

‘No thanks,’ says Gretel, filling a bucket. ‘I had a bath last week.’

‘Fair enough,’ replies Daisy, before clearing her throat to attract the attention of a passing villager, then bending down to address the piglet at Hansel’s side.

‘Good morning, Mistress Oink,’ she says to the nonplussed pig. ‘How are you today?’

It takes the passing villager a moment before he realises this was for his benefit and snaps into well-practised action.

‘Abomination,’ he shouts. ‘Daisy Wicker dost commune with beasts!’

‘Get her,’ comes a rather lazy reply from further along the path.

Daisy waits patiently with Hansel and Gretel as what can just about be described as a mob forms gradually around her. This takes about a minute. Hansel coughs nervously to fill the awkward pause as the small crowd ambles over, eventually hauling her up and carrying her off to the ducking stools, one particularly helpful mob member carrying her basket of toiletries for her.

‘Whee!’ comes the bloodcurdling cry of the accused witch.

‘See?’ says Gretel as Daisy’s carried off. ‘When you’re a girl, you just get used to being accused of witchcraft; it happens all the time.’

‘It’s not the ducking stools Stepmother worries about,’ says Hansel quietly. ‘Gretel. What if someone calls a huntsman on you?’

Gretel stares at Hansel, offended by the very suggestion. ‘Who would do such a thing?’

‘I just—’

‘No, Hansel. I mean it. Who in this village do you believe could be vicious enough to ever, ever call a huntsman after one of their own? A woman could be full-on cackling into a cauldron and turning the milk sour; we’d still find another way of dealing with the problem. I mean, that’s what the ducking stools are for.’ She gestures over to Daisy, coming up from her first dunk, already lathering her hair. ‘Well. That and personal hygiene. But every dunking is reported back to the Citadel to show we’re dealing with witchcraft ourselves, and don’t need any huntsmen coming over to intervene.’

She hauls her laden yoke back over her shoulders, angrily. In the distance, she hears a member of the mob call out to the young woman in the ducking stool, demanding to know whether the temperature is all right for her.

‘Honestly, Hansel, I’m surprised at you,’ she continues. ‘Our village sticks together. Especially against—’

Her sentence is cut off by a low rumbling noise. She stops, and turns – everybody turns. It sounds like the faint rumble of a distant storm, only it’s coming from closer than that. Far, far too close.

It’s coming from Darkwood.

Gretel sees the treetops shift and sway, close to the edge of the forest. Something is moving through them. Something big. And it’s headed in their direction.

Hansel is the first to move. He sprints to the nearest alarm post. The posts are spread evenly along the village’s various defensive lines between itself and Darkwood. Each has a large horn attached to the top with a crank at the end. When the crank is turned, it draws air through the horn, creating a loud, long warning siren. They’re one of the first things that Gretel designed, back when she was so little she’d needed her stepfather to hold her up so she could hammer the prototype together. Hansel turns the crank, and the horn’s warning blares out.

‘Monsters,’ he shouts above the din, ‘monsters!’

The villagers move fast at the sound, pouring out of homes and businesses, racing to the village’s defences. The small rabble at the ducking stool rush straight over to Hansel – forgetting to release Daisy.

‘Hey!’ cries Daisy – still padlocked into her stool a good six feet above the river’s surface, covered in suds and, for the first time that day, having second thoughts about her decision to commit a duckable offence.

‘Hey!’ she cries again as an Ogre crashes out of the tree line, heading towards the village, with nothing so far in its way except the river and Daisy, who in her current circumstances can do little to deter the monster except possibly throw her loofah at it.

‘Class two Ogre,’ mutters Gretel, looking at the approaching creature as the crowd gathers around her and her brother. ‘We need type four ballistics in catapults eight, nine and ten.’

The crowd does what it always does in these situations, which is to look blankly at her for a second, fail to obey a single command she’s given, and then gaze expectantly at her brother.

‘It’s a Stomper,’ Hansel tells them. ‘Load the red slings with the turnip-sized balls.’

The villagers run off and do as they’re told, now that somebody’s done so using nice, comprehensible words like ‘red’ and ‘turnip’. Such is the clamour to achieve the task in hand as quickly as possible that nobody but Gretel notices Hansel squat down briefly in front of the piglet that’s been at his side all morning and quietly say, ‘Go home.’ Nor does anybody but Gretel pay attention to the little pig obediently turning and trotting straight back to the farm as the turnip-sized explosive balls are loaded hurriedly into three red-painted catapults, facing towards the forest.

The Ogre is lumbering at a great speed, and crashes through the fence that runs along the far bank of the river. Daisy, still in her stool, is now directly in the path between Ogre and village.

‘Guys?’ she calls with increasing urgency. ‘Guys!’

Clambering into catapult nine, Gretel exchanges a glance with her brother, nodding towards the stricken Daisy.

‘GUYS!’ cries Daisy. ‘Could somebody please— oh.’ Daisy stares down at her restraints, now mysteriously open. The undone padlock slips from its chain and falls into the river with a plop. She springs up soapily, slithers down the beam of the ducking stool and leaps off the end. Somebody who doesn’t know that much about human nature might wonder how she manages to make it over to the catapults at a confident sprint before stumbling and fluttering just before she gets to Hansel.

‘I was so scared,’ Daisy tells Hansel, squeezing his arm seemingly for support, but actually achieving little other than getting bubbles all over his sleeve.

Gretel rolls her eyes. ‘Daisy!’ she calls. ‘Take catapult ten!’

Daisy nods, then pauses, aware that there are villagers around her. She’s been rather put off her usual bathing method this morning and would rather not take a second dunking for knowing basic maths if her neighbours are going to forget to unlock her in an emergency. She turns to Hansel, who points to the catapult with a ‘10’ written on the side for her.

‘Thanks.’ She gives him the sweetest smile she can, considering the soap still dripping off her fringe is starting to go into her eyes, and gets into catapult ten.

It is, according to general consensus, probably considered an abomination for girls to operate the defensive catapults that the Mudd family have built over the past few years, but nothing specifically prohibiting it has ever been passed down from the Citadel, so the villagers just let it slide. Besides, Gretel Mudd and Daisy Wicker are particularly good shots, and better to have a girl briefly operate heavy machinery than an enraged magical monster destroy their homes and crops and leave them all cold, destitute and hungry. Again.

There’s a crack and a crunch from the river. The Ogre is wading through it towards them, chest deep. It has wrenched the ducking stool that Daisy was left locked into right out of its moorings and is using it to smash the river’s dam, angrily. The wood of both ducking stool and dam splinter into a useless, pointy confetti. A solitary rubber duck floats forlornly away from it, to a life of freedom upon the high seas. A gaggle of villagers, who only very recently had carted Daisy off to the newly deceased ducking stool, now dutifully load her catapult with Gretel’s type four ballistics. Daisy knows from experience that the trick with class two Ogres, or Stompers, is to get them as close to their eyes as possible, and as quickly as possible. Hitting them elsewhere never slows them down; it only makes them angrier.

The Ogre is on the near riverbank now; there’s nothing between it and the village except for the catapults. Daisy aims carefully with one hand, winding back the winch with the other. She steadies herself, centres herself… and stops suddenly when Gretel fires – and misses.

The iron ball from Gretel’s catapult hits the Ogre on the backside.

‘Trousers!’ shouts Gretel – one of the few words available to her that are even vaguely rude enough for her to use as a swear word but that doesn’t count as an abomination.

Trousers, indeed. The Ogre inspects its battered bottom, screams with rage and turns to lumber after Gretel.

Daisy doesn’t have time to think now. Gretel’s catapult hasn’t been reloaded and she knows she’s a much better shot than Hansel. She fires.

A direct hit, right between the Ogre’s eyes. A cloud of white explodes from the missile and envelops the Ogre’s head. The Ogre wails in discomfort, its eyes puffy and watering. It screeches at Daisy, enraged, but doesn’t approach her. The villagers quickly reload Daisy’s and Gretel’s catapults. The Ogre blinks at them through reddened eyes. Class twos are clever enough to know when to cut their losses and stand down. It wails again and, still rubbing its sore eyes, lopes back across the swelling river, towards Darkwood.

Gretel lets out a long, loud sigh as she watches the Ogre disappear towards the dank and twisted treeline. ‘Crisis over.’

‘But…’

‘Could somebody set off the “crisis over” alarm please?’ calls Hansel, as they get down from their catapults.

‘But,’ says Daisy, a little louder, ‘it smashed up the dam. We need to fix it before…’

As Daisy points, she sees a large tree trunk, uprooted by goodness knows what, float right against the stricken dam. It fits the hole so recently smashed quite snugly, certainly bolstering the dam very well for the time being.

‘No,’ says Hansel, ‘it’s fine.’

‘Oh yes,’ says Daisy. ‘So it is.’ And then Hansel puts his arm around her in celebration and she feels rather hot, and forgets why she was so concerned about the stupid dam in the first place.

The ‘crisis over’ alarm rings out, and the three youngsters carry on with their day. Hansel and Gretel get back to collecting water for the farm, and Daisy goes home for a decent condition, rinse and repeat. If you were to pull away from this scene, you’d see the whole of the village getting back to its usual routine. Just another minor crisis averted; they deal with something akin to it every couple of weeks. Nothing to get too bothered about, nothing to write home about, which is good since not all of them can write, and for most of them, home is only shouting distance away anyway.

But, if you were to pull away further…

Further…

Further still…

You’d see the image flatten, and glaze over, as if everything you’ve just seen has been displayed on a two-dimensional reflective surface. Some sort of glass. You would see the watchers, or at least you’d see the shapes of them. All seem to be human adults, but really that’s all that there is to discern about them. You wouldn’t see body shapes, or skin tones, or hair. You wouldn’t see faces. They’re dressed alike, in loose, floor-length robes, with cowls over their heads, and blank-faced masks. The masks give them an appearance of mute neutrality that makes people faced with them want to say something – anything – to fill the awkward pauses that their lack of expression create. And when people start babbling nervously, the people behind those masks hear some very interesting things, oh yes, very interesting things indeed. These are masks that say, ‘I’m listening.’ These are masks that say, ‘So you’d better start talking.’ The masked watchers look to one another, murmuring amongst themselves, nodding. An agreement has been reached. A decision has been made.

3
The Huntsman

It’s dusk. Mudd Farm is quietening down for the night. The pigs, cows and hens are in their barns, a cat watches for mice, the kitchen is bright and warm, full of the sounds and smells of dinner being cooked. Hansel finds his sister in the lean-to she’s made into a small workshop, filling new type four ballistics to replace the ones that were used against the Ogre that morning, and gazing out at the thick black line of Darkwood against the pinking sky.

‘Exciting day,’ he says, helping Gretel to pour the powder into the metal balls.

‘Was it?’ she replies absently.

‘Not everyone fights off a marauding Ogre before lunch.’

‘No.’ Gretel still seems distracted by the woods.

‘Don’t worry,’ he tells her. ‘That thing’s not coming back here any time soon. You saw to that.’

‘But something else will,’ says Gretel.

Hansel frowns. He recognises that expression on his sister’s face. It’s the look she gets when she’s been told the iron is hot, or the pond is deep, and she decides to test the scientific accuracy of the statement, usually without applying a similar scepticism to her innate belief that no matter what she does, she’ll be generally fine.

‘Something else could come crashing through those trees at any time,’ continues Gretel, ‘and we won’t necessarily know what it is, or how to deal with it. Unless…’

‘Gretel, no. Not this again.’

‘I’m just talking about a small scout party.’

‘Into Darkwood.’

‘We’d have my inventions, Hansel! I’ve got plenty of portable ones we could take in with us. And you’d be on hand to help, wouldn’t you?’

‘Not to help you go into the Darkwood!’

‘Just…’ Gretel walks out of the lean-to, arms folded, surveying the woods as if they were a particularly difficult counterweight problem, ‘there must be so much out there that we don’t even know about yet.’

‘It’s dangerous,’ says Hansel.

‘It’s dangerous here,’ Gretel retorts.

Hansel isn’t sure what to say to this. He opens and closes his mouth for a moment before replying, ‘You just mustn’t go into the Darkwood.’

‘And girls mustn’t do maths.’ Gretel walks back to the lean-to, and hauls the last of the new ballistics onto her storage shelf. ‘And yet, here we are.’

Hansel sighs. ‘I’ll think about it.’

‘You always say that!’

‘Well. I think a lot.’ He links arms with his sister. ‘We’re certainly not going in tonight. We wouldn’t be able to see a thing.’

‘I’ve got a torch.’

Hansel smiles. ‘Don’t push your luck. Come on, let’s go and have dinner.’

There are always watchmen on guard at night, just in case – one at the defensive border with Darkwood, one in the village square. Of these posts, the village square one is by far the least eventful, which is why Gregor Smithy is asleep on duty when a cowled figure, with a blank, impassive mask, strides confidently into the square at around three a.m. The figure is tall and male and well built, and is able to hoist the dozing, elderly frame of Gregor Smithy up by the front of his shirt.

Gregor wakes with a start, gazing with horror into the neutral face.

In the bedroom at the top of the farmhouse, Gretel is shaken awake.

‘Gretel,’ comes an insistent whisper in her ear. ‘Trouble!’

‘Sir!’ Gregor manages half a salute, still bleary with sleep and pulled up by his shirt onto tiptoes. ‘I was just, I, er… I…’

‘This village relies on your vigilance, Mr Smithy,’ comes a placid, patient voice.

‘Yes, sir, I know, and I was just, er…’ Smithy trails off again, suddenly aware that he isn’t wearing any sort of name badge.

‘What if I were a monster, Mr Smithy?’ asks the masked figure. ‘What would become of your friends and family? What would become of Mrs Smithy? Or your daughter Dollis? Or little Tailor and Tiler, upon whom their grandfather dotes so?’

‘It, it, it won’t happen again, sir,’ says Smithy, still wracking his brains as to some innocent reason this figure could have for knowing all those names.

‘It will not,’ says the mask, mildly. He puts Gregor back down again, next to the alarm bell. ‘You may inform the village of my presence now. I’d like a little chat,’ he says pleasantly, ‘with Gretel Mudd.’

4
Pre-Breakfast Meetings are the Worst

The whole Mudd family is awake by the time the bell begins to toll. Gretel and Hansel hurriedly dress by the moonlight as their stepparents fling food and useful tools into a knapsack.

‘You see?’ whispers the stepmother through hot, frightened tears. ‘This is what comes of knowing maths!’

‘Ain’t her fault,’ replies the stepfather, barely holding it together any better than his wife. ‘Some snake called out a huntsman. Here! Who would do such a thing?’

‘I reckon it was Old Mother Goggins,’ mutters Ethel Wicker to her neighbour as they gather together in the village square in their nightgowns. ‘Always blabbering other people’s private affairs.’

‘It was not me!’ Mother Goggins protests, affronted. Ethel Wicker hadn’t even known Goggins was within earshot, although really she should have guessed. ‘Don’t listen to Ethel,’ she tells Mrs Wicker’s neighbour. ‘She always sniffs her fingers after scratching her bum.’

Ethel gazes agape at Goggins for a moment as her neighbour snickers.

‘You see – stuff like that is why people don’t trust you, Homily Goggins!’

The blank-faced huntsman holds out his hands placatingly. ‘It matters not who called for m—’

‘All who think it were Goggins who called the huntsman say aye,’ interrupts Ethel Wicker sharply.

There is a chorus of ‘ayes’ from the congregation in the square, and Mother Goggins draws herself up, like an offended cat.

‘It matters not who called me!’ repeats the huntsman, the calm just edging out of his tone. ‘What matters is there has been word of witchcraft here, and of girls doing maths.’ He pauses. ‘All sorts of weird stuff. Where is Gretel Mudd?’

Gretel is creeping from the darkened farmhouse, her brother and fretful stepparents trailing.

‘Where will you go?’ asks the stepfather.

Gretel looks out at her choices. The only road out of the village would take her right through the currently occupied square. There’s the river, but a boat would attract too much attention, and she isn’t a strong swimmer. And then… well, this huntsman seems to think she’s a witch anyway, doesn’t he…? And where do the witches go?

‘Darkwood,’ she says.

‘No,’ chorus her brother and stepparents.

‘Gretel, it’s too dangerous, we’ve been through this,’ adds Hansel, ‘and it’s night time now, and…’

‘And I’ve got my torch,’ says Gretel, giving him the bravest face that she can. ‘And some of my inventions, and… and, we’ve got no other choice.’

Hansel looks around at the severely limited escape options. He clenches his fists resolutely. ‘Fine. But I’m coming with you.’

‘Oh, Hansel, no, not you too…’

‘We’re safer together, Stepmother,’ says Hansel. ‘We can protect one another. I can’t let her go into that place on her own.’

‘Gretel Mudd?’ says Daisy Wicker. ‘She’s not a witch!’

‘Yeah,’ adds Farrier Ned. ‘Witches commune with the beasts of the Darkwood and turn the milk bad. Gretel’s a dab hand with a dairy cow, and she helps us hold back the beasts of the Darkwood.’

‘And how does she do that?’ asks the huntsman mildly.

‘Oh,’ says Daisy hurriedly, ‘you know, just by doing basic, practical stuff. Feminine stuff. You wouldn’t understand.’

‘She keeps us safe,’ shouts little Tailor Hill, to a chorus of agreement.

‘I care not!’ snaps the huntsman. ‘Tell me where she is!’ He pauses, bringing himself back under control. ‘Why, anyone would think,’ he adds calmly, ‘that you people were being deliberately vexing to try to distract me from my hunt. Now, are you going to help me to keep nature’s law in this land, or are you going to continue to dangerously test my patience?’

There is a brief silence from the crowd. It is broken by Old Mother Goggins.

‘Do you want to see me do a handstand, mister?’

In the gloom beyond the lamplight of the square, behind a rock close to the riverbank, Gretel waits and listens, a hand aloft to tell her family to hold their positions. The quiet night wind has carried the whole conversation between the villagers and the huntsman over to where they are crouching. They can hear Old Mother Goggins struggling onto her hands to do her party trick, and the other villagers clapping her on, cheering and generally causing as much of a distraction as possible.

Gretel turns to her brother.

‘Hansel,’ she whispers. ‘You have to stay.’

Hansel just shakes his head urgently, clutching her arm.

‘That huntsman’s only after me,’ she tells him. ‘Someone has to protect the villagers when I’m gone.’

‘Gretel,’ hisses Hansel. ‘Remember the ducking stools! Remember having to do sums in secret! And still someone called a huntsman on you!’

‘Yeah,’ Gretel sighs. ‘They can be a bunch of backwards, ignorant idiots.’ She puts her hand on his cheek. ‘But they’re our backwards, ignorant idiots.’

With that, she quickly kisses her step-parents and makes a dash for the river, while the village square rings with applause as Mother Goggins goes into a full unsupported handstand for an impressed crowd and a deeply unimpressed huntsman.

‘Enough!’ shouts the huntsman.

The applause peters out a little at his cry.

‘Madam,’ he addresses Goggins, still clearly enraged. Mother Goggins stares at him from under the hem of her nightie, which has pooled around her nose. ‘Kindly stand on your two feet as nature’s law demands.’ He pauses. ‘Or at least put some drawers on.’

Goggins gets to her feet in as dignified a manner as she can.

‘Thought it were a bit breezy,’ she mutters.

‘You would not shelter a witch,’ continues the huntsman, still audibly annoyed, ‘if you knew of their true nature.’

At the newly made tree trunk dam, the brother and sister stop running. There’s nothing now but the clamber over the river and a few feet of riverbank before the hole the Ogre so recently punched through the perimeter fence to the thick line of black trees. The twins hug, wordlessly.

‘Witches,’ says the huntsman, ‘do not protect.’

Hansel kisses his sister’s forehead. Tears are already running down his cheeks.

‘Witches,’ says the huntsman, ‘feel no love nor compassion.’

Gretel wipes her brother’s wet eyes with the cuff of her sleeve. She slings the bag of supplies over her shoulders, gives him as brave a smile as she can and then scrabbles up onto the tree trunk to cross the river.

‘Witches,’ says the huntsman, ‘are filled only with hatred.’

A movement off in the darkness beyond the village square catches the huntsman’s eye. He turns, and sees a figure approaching from the path that runs along the river. It’s a young man – a teenager – his shoulders squared, his expression resolute and angry. He looks like he’s been crying. The huntsman knows this boy. He’s seen him before.

‘The witch’s brother,’ mutters the huntsman.

‘And how does he know that?’ asks Ethel Wicker, casting an accusatory glare at Mother Goggins.

‘I didn’t tell him!’ Goggins protests.

The huntsman pushes his way through the crowd, towards the approaching youth.

‘Wherever the brother is, the sister must be close…’

There is another movement, far off in the dark. The huntsman squints, curses softly, then quickly puts a pair of spectacles on over his mask. Right over the inky river, a teenaged girl is trying to scramble back to her feet after slipping on a tree trunk dam.

‘There she is!’ The huntsman pushes a child over as he starts his pursuit. The girl on the tree trunk is moving again now, crawling towards the far riverbank and the Darkwood beyond. ‘She’s trying to escape!’

In the distance, the girl drops down onto the far bank. As her feet touch solid ground, the earth beneath the huntsman begins to rumble and shake. He steadies himself and tries to sprint after the girl again. The ground lurches sharply, throwing him hard onto his backside, sending his furtive spectacles flying.

‘You see?’ he shouts, picking himself up again and trying to appear as if he’s not frantically looking for his missing glasses. ‘She tries to bring down the whole village! There’s your “protector”. There’s your “friend”.’

He gives up on getting his glasses back when he sees them being chewed by a small dog, and instead runs, stumbles and rolls as best he can across the angrily pitching earth towards the tree trunk dam.

‘Nonsense!’ calls Daisy Wicker after him. ‘S’just a bit of localised seismic activity.’

A seven-inch-high mountain suddenly juts out of the footpath in front of the huntsman, tripping him and cutting a deep, jagged scratch in his shin.

‘Very localised,’ adds Daisy helpfully.

With a furious roar, the huntsman pushes himself up again and throws himself onto the wet tree trunk. It’s cold and slippery, but he drags himself along it, on his front. He’s aware of the crowd that have followed him to watch his humiliating progress from the riverbank.

‘Go on, Gretel,’ murmurs Gregor Smithy. ‘Wash away the dam.’

‘No,’ says Ethel Wicker, at his side. ‘That’d flood the village. She’d never.’

‘She’s not a witch,’ says Hansel, with a quiet anger. ‘She isn’t doing this.’

‘Then who is?’ asks Daisy.

Hansel shrugs. The tree trunk dam rotates sharply to one side, throwing the huntsman into the freezing water.

It takes the huntsman a good minute or so to drag himself, sodden, shivering and spitting up water, onto the far riverbank, and when he does, Gretel Mudd is nowhere to be seen. Beyond the smashed fence there’s nothing but dark trees, and several different sets of broken branches and trampled undergrowth where she could have slipped through.

‘Witch!’ he shouts. ‘I’m a huntsman! You think I’m scared to chase you through a few trees?’

‘It ain’t just a few trees though,’ calls Mother Goggins. ‘It’s Darkwood, innit. No mortal ever goes in there and comes back out again!’ She notices Hansel’s expression and adds quietly, ‘Sorry, love. S’true, though.’

The huntsman pauses, wishing he could stop trembling from the cold river water. That’s all it is. He’s just cold. The Darkwood holds no fear for him. Yes, there are all those stories about it; yes, many of them he knows to be true. But he’s a huntsman, for pity’s sake! He can’t give up now. He can’t.

He takes a step forward to the hole in the fence, peering into the wood as best he can. But it’s pitch black, and his glasses are gone. He can barely see a thing in there. He certainly doesn’t see the girl, only a few feet into the forest, halfway up a nearby tree, her breath stopped, her eyes wide, clinging to a low branch in silent terror.

He can’t give up. But, as far as the villagers are concerned, has he not now rid them of the witch in their midst? As far as his responsibilities to the Citadel are concerned, has he not removed the troublemaker from anywhere that she might spread her abominable values, her dangerous inventions? He is cold, and he is wet, and he is in pain and he has lost a very expensive set of spectacles. He has officially had enough of these rural callouts to the sticks where huntsmen are not appreciated. He might apply to do a stint of clerical work when he gets home. Because he is going home. He’ll be damned if he wanders into the Darkwood. Quite literally.

He turns back to the assembled villagers on the other side of the river. ‘Then let the Darkwood keep the witch.’

There is a collective sigh from the group of villagers. It is the sound of relief, sadness and the general release of tensely held breaths.

The ground no longer shakes. When the huntsman gets back on the tree trunk dam, he finds it holds perfectly steady, and has a decent grip underfoot. He drops down onto the pathway without further incident, and stalks wetly through the throng.

‘If she ever comes back, then so shall I,’ he tells them. ‘And I shan’t be alone the next time. Count on it.’

‘Someone never got enough hugs from his mummy,’ murmurs Goggins to a miserable, drained-looking Hansel.

The huntsman turns sharply to the suddenly very innocent-looking old woman. How did the old crone know that? He should haul her back to the Citadel on witchcraft charges, that’s what he should do. Only, then… everyone would know she was right about Mummy. He weighs up his options briefly, and decides that he doesn’t have the energy to pursue the insult. He has had it up to here with this horrible little backwater and its disgusting peasants. He clambers on to his horse, still dripping, and rides away.

5
Darkwood

Gretel drops down from her branch, once she’s sure the huntsman has gone. She heard what the huntsman said about coming back with reinforcements if she ever showed her face in the village again, and if the huntsmen were to come back they could end up taking it out on more than just Gretel. Gingerly, she starts picking her way deeper into the murky wood. She can’t go back.

‘It’s going to be all right,’ she tells herself, through the terror.

‘I can do this,’ she tells herself, through the urge to curl up in a ball and cry.

‘I’ve got my wits about me,’ she tells herself, as her imagination shows her a fast-paced montage of horrific creatures that could be lurking mere inches away.

‘Oh, hey,’ she adds to herself, with a forced brightness, ‘I’ve got my electrical torch device, too.’

She gets her torch out of her knapsack and winds up the dynamo. ‘Yes,’ she continues to herself, ‘everything will look much better with some light. There’s nothing to be afraid of…’

With the dynamo now fully charged, she switches the torch on. The beam of light illuminates seven feral-looking creatures, each about the size and shape of a small child, only covered in filthy, matted hair and animal pelts, and carrying large axes, picks and daggers. They watch her hungrily from the trees, their nails and grins as huge, sharp and dirty as their weaponry. They are not scared off by the sudden burst of artificial light. Instead they blink at her and one another, chattering toothily.

‘Yummy,’ they gibber to one another. ‘Yummy! Yummy!’

Gretel switches the torch off again. No, a bit of light has quite definitely not made things better.

‘OK,’ she tells herself, her heart racing.

‘So,’ she tells herself, rooted to the spot with fear.

‘Run,’ she tells herself.

Her legs obey, in a sudden spurt that almost immediately trips her over. The ground is uneven and covered in roots to trip and brambles to scratch. Her every available path is littered with low branches that hit her in the arms, the head, the face… is that a thorn that just tore the skin on her thigh, or one of the creatures’ daggers? Are those twigs tangling up in her hair, or the creatures’ claws? She can still hear them, moving swiftly through the trees, trampling leaves underfoot, snapping branches, chattering all the time. ‘Yummy. Yummy!’

They are definitely following her. In fact, some of the voices are coming from ahead of her now. They might have circled her already. Clearly, they can make their way through the forest far easier in the dark than she can. There’s no point in her leaving her torch switched off, she decides; it’s hardly keeping her from detection. She swiftly winds up the dynamo and switches it on again as she runs.

This time, it’s a blinding glare of bright light that meets her eyes as soon as she switches on the torch. Dazzled, she fumbles to a stop, tripping and falling to her knees, shielding her eyes. She moves her torch a little and the glare fades. It was her own torchlight, reflected off something very big, and very shiny. She’s finally able to see what’s in front of her as her eyes adjust. It’s a tall figure, clad head to toe in silver armour, adorned with small animal and bird skulls. It stands poised, watching Gretel with unseen eyes, an axe in each hand and a third massive axe strapped to its back. The only uncovered part of the armoured figure to be visible are clumps of long, matted black hair hanging down from underneath a visored, blood-smeared helmet. As it watches Gretel, the cries of ‘Yummy! Yummy!’ grow louder and more insistent.

Gretel scrabbles to her feet, makes a sharp turn and runs again, keeping her torch on this time. She can’t hear the armoured figure following suit, but she does hear a distant whistle from behind her – a simple tune. She keeps on running. Suddenly, a whole colony of bats comes out of the trees, filling the air with screeching and squeaking and the flappaflappaflap of tiny leathery wings. Gretel can’t help shrieking in surprise, and is forced to turn again, such is the sheer volume of the little creatures flying right across her original path. She stumbles over a sudden drop, and finds herself half sliding, half rolling down a steep bank of soil. She slithers to a halt at the bottom on her front in a puddle of mud, which is fortunate because it’s a soft landing and the mud now on her boots, dress, shawl, skin and hair go really nicely with the rest of the mud she’s managed to accumulate since fleeing into the forest in the first place.

The bats seem to have gone. She can’t hear them any more. Nor can she hear those horrible cries of ‘Yummy! Yummy yummy!’ She pushes herself up wetly, and swings her torch around, to get a look at her new surroundings. She is at the bottom of a hollow clearing. There are a few mushrooms about, a small, trickling stream… and a house. A perfectly cosy-looking little house, just standing there.

Well, that’s not at all creepy.

The lights are off; the cottage seems deserted. But then, it is still the middle of the night. Gretel sniffs the air for traces of a firewood smoke, or yesterday’s laundry, or cooking, or…

Is that… can she smell… cake?

It’s a sugary smell, slightly stale. Week-old cake, yes, that’s what it smells like. Biscuits, too. She approaches the house slowly, stealthily. There are hints of spice to the smell as well as sweetness. Ginger. Cardamom. Cinnamon. Despite herself, her mouth waters a little. Sugar is a rare luxury in her village, and spices rarer and more expensive still. The baker who lives and works in this house must be richer than…

She pauses again, an arm’s length away from the house. The smell of sweet baking isn’t coming from within the house at all. It’s coming from the house itself. She tentatively reaches out a hand to touch the wall in the gloom. The wall of the house is soft and crumbly. Not like wood or stone or anything she’s ever known a house to be built of before. She pushes, and finds that her fingers are able to sink into it. She pulls back, and a chunk comes away in her hand. She stares at it. It looks, feels and smells for all the world like a rich fruit sponge. It’s a little dry and stale, but still has a bit of alluring stickiness to it. There are currants in there, and nuts, and bits of candied orange peel. She loves fruit cake. And she hasn’t eaten since yesterday evening. She wonders if it tastes as good as it smells…

‘Kindly refrain from eating the front porch.’

Gretel jumps, dropping the cake. She looks around desperately in the dark for the source of the friendly male voice. It seems to have come from somewhere just above the front door, although that’s impossible. There’s nobody there.

‘Who was that?’ she whispers.

The downstairs window flickers suddenly into cheery firelight. Gretel stares at the house, only managing to take a couple of stumbling steps backwards before the front door slowly swings open. Silhouetted against the firelight, Gretel sees a hunched figure. She sees a pointy hat and a lot of black. She sees a broomstick clasped in one hand.

‘Come in,’ says the figure in the doorway, in a cracked, scratchy voice. ‘Come in, my sweet child.’

‘Yeah,’ adds the friendly male voice from before, right by her left ear now. ‘Come and warm your cockles.’

Terrified, rooted to the spot, Gretel dares to take her eyes off the twisted figure in the doorway and turns her head in the direction of the male voice. Dangling from a thread, just above her left shoulder, is a large, brown house spider. It is staring at her. It is also, she notices, wearing a tiny hat, which it reaches a foreleg towards and tips at her politely.

Some deeply buried, thinly stretched tether that has been holding together Gretel’s overwhelmed mind finally snaps. She’s had about three hours’ sleep, she’s had a huntsman sent after her, she’s had to leave her home and family, she’s been chased into the Darkwood and then chased around the Darkwood by horrible little hairy creatures who shout ‘Yummy’ at her and a knight in scary armour, and she’s had bats fly in her hair and fallen down a slope into a puddle and found a creepy cake house and now there’s a witch trying to entice her in, but a friendly looking spider in a little hat is where her fortitude absolutely draws the line. She screams, and runs, scrabbling back up the muddy ascent into the dark trees.

The spider swings onto the shoulder of the black-clad figure with the broomstick as they both watch Gretel go.

The figure with the broomstick straightens, leaning against the broomstick to stretch her aching back. She undoes the tall headscarf that could look, in the low candlelight, for all the world like a pointy hat. She coughs up a mouthful of dust, and when she speaks again, is able to do so in a perfectly normal voice.

‘Oh dear,’ she says. ‘That didn’t go as well as I’d hoped.’

‘I told you to leave the sweeping up till later,’ says the spider. ‘Who sweeps up in the middle of the night, anyway?’

‘People who are expecting company do! And I told you that she wouldn’t be ready for a talking spider yet.’

If it’s at all possible for a spider to slump, this spider does so now.

‘She definitely worked out I’m a spider, then, you reckon.’

‘I think so,’ says the woman with the broomstick kindly. ‘Yes.’

The spider sighs, disappointed. ‘But I thought I’d disguised it really well. I was wearing a hat!’

6
The Witches in the Wood

Gretel runs and runs. She’s stopped caring to where she might be running. She’s just running away. Away from everything that’s happened to her since the huntsman came. She finds herself at a dead end, with a sheer, unclimbable wall of rocky outcrop in front of her. She tries to double back, but there is a familiar rumble and crash from the trees behind her. She backs up against the wall of rock. She’s seen the trees sway and snap like this before – very recently, in fact.

She’s not surprised to see the Ogre that attacked her village only the morning before smash through the trees again and roar at her. Indeed, her fear levels have now gone through even the flight or fight stage, now that she has nowhere to run to, and no way to defeat the creature empty-handed.

‘Think,’ her brain screams at her. ‘Think!’ Unfortunately, it thinks ‘THINK!’ at her so insistently that it doesn’t take a moment to realise that it, in fact, is the part of Gretel that is responsible for actually thinking of something.

The Ogre clears the last of the trees, roaring again. Gretel tries sidling along the rock face away from it.

‘Yes,’ she mutters to it, ‘I imagine you’re quite cross. But you did start it.’

The Ogre takes a heavy step towards her. She can see in the gloom that its eyes are still slightly reddened and puffy.

‘Oh!’ adds Gretel, barely aware that she’s babbling her thoughts out loud. ‘Yes. And you’re a class two Ogre, so you’re allergic to dandelion seeds…’

She pulls her supplies knapsack off her back and rummages through it with shaking hands, almost blind in the darkness. She pulls out a vicious-looking invention.

‘…and I have got,’ she announces in more confident tones, ‘a whole canister of dandelion fluff in this portable propulsion device, capable of making you sneeze yourself to kingdom come. So ask yourself. Do you feel lucky?’

The Ogre roars again, and thumps the ground by her feet, making her skitter nervously along the rock wall again.

‘Ah,’ she says, trembling. ‘I was hoping you wouldn’t feel lucky, I don’t have any dandelion, and I mostly use this thing for getting stones out of horses’ hooves.’

She flashes the Ogre a nervous smile, in a last-ditch hope that the creature might feel sorry for her and just go away. Funnily enough, it doesn’t work. The Ogre lunges for her. It is at this moment that a line of a dozen or so pine trees grows in front of her. Bearing in mind that trees usually take decades to grow to full maturity, the fact that these trees grow like sturdy wooden bars between Gretel and the Ogre in less than a second comes as quite a shock to her. It would have caused her to shriek in surprise, if she were not already screaming due to the small matter of the Ogre attacking her.

‘Cool story,’ comes yet another mysterious male voice from near her shoulder.

Gretel jumps, turns, expecting to see another spider in a hat, and then jumps again when this particular voice turns out to belong to a young man with the sort of bright smile that you absolutely should not trust with your valuables. The young man with her against the wall of rock appears initially to have come from nowhere, although Gretel notices a creeper hanging down the cliff face that suggests otherwise. What really puzzles her – apart from the fact that he’s suddenly by her side looking all cheerful in a cursed forest in the middle of an Ogre attack, and the whole thing with the super-fast-growing trees – is that, although she’s certain she’s never met him before, he looks familiar.

Now really isn’t the time, but a line of pine trees can’t buy them that much time from an angry Ogre, so they’re probably both mere moments from a violent death, therefore Gretel may as well ask.

‘Are… are you famous?’

The young man’s smile grows even wider. ‘Ooh, I hope so! I don’t get about much these days, I wouldn’t know.’

There’s a crack from the line of conveniently speedy trees. The Ogre has grabbed one and is trying to pull it up by its roots. The young man turns his head towards the sound. Gretel sees his face in profile, and the recognition clicks into place.

‘The wanted posters! That’s where I know you from! You’re Jack Trott!’

Jack gives her a proud little bow.

Jack Trott. Jack Trott the thief. The one who’d used magic beans to rob that Giant. Back when there were Giants to rob, that is. And his use of magic beans was, obviously, witchcraft by proxy and thusly an abomination unto nature. That explains why Jack ran away and stayed hidden for the past few years, supposes Gretel, but…

‘What are you doing here?’ she asks aloud.

‘Well…’ says Jack.

The Ogre manages to rip one of the trees up at the roots and comes crashing towards them again, still brandishing the luckless pine as a weapon.

‘OK,’ says Jack hurriedly, ‘long story short: in a gang of witches, hiding out in Darkwood, been watching your progress for a while, want you to join us since you’re one of us now, safety in numbers etcetera, plus we like your invention doodads.’

He reaches out to touch the invention that Gretel tried to bluff her way out of the whole Ogre situation with earlier, but the Ogre picks that moment to swing the tree at them, causing them both to duck. Gretel also takes the opportunity to clutch her invention a little tighter. Jack is a notorious thief, after all.

‘Hey!’ Jack snaps at the Ogre, irritated. ‘Talking to my new best friend here, Big Guy!’

‘What do you mean, “gang of witches”?’ asks Gretel.

Jack turns back to her. ‘I’d have thought that’d be pretty self-explanatory.’

‘But you’re a thief, not a witch…’

Jack’s grin is back. ‘What a thing to say.’

As they both shimmy along the rock away from the Ogre again, Jack gestures with a finger at the ground, as though beckoning something that’s hiding there, unseen.

‘What would a mere thief be doing out in the Darkwood? If I were just a thief I’d have found somewhere to hide out and spend my ill-gotten gains.’ He grins again, and this time Gretel notices there’s something slightly wrong, slightly manic about his cheeky smile. ‘I had to come out here when they started to work out my secret.’

A long green shoot sprouts from the soil as he beckons, growing quickly, so that it’s at face level with them both by the time he’s finished his sentence. A bright yellow flower blooms at the end of the long green sprout. A dandelion. Jack picks it, and holds it towards Gretel.

‘There were no magic beans,’ he says. ‘Just magic me.’

He winks, and the flower shrivels away to reveal a fluffy white dandelion clock.

Gretel files away her surprise at this revelation for a time when she isn’t desperately in need of some Ogre deterrent. The Ogre lunges at them. Gretel grabs the dandelion clock gratefully and blows. The fluffy seeds fly into the Ogre’s face – up its nose and into its eyes. Its roar turns into a sneeze. It steps back from them, eyes already streaming, and sneezes again. It clutches at its itching face, and moans.

‘Oh, stop whining,’ Jack tells the Ogre. ‘Wash your face, sleep it off, you’ll be fine.’ They watch it lumber away, still grasping its streaming face and groaning. ‘And next time try being a bit less aggressive!’ Jack grins at Gretel, and shrugs. ‘Ogres, eh? What are we to do with them?’

Gretel exhales shakily, relieved that, for the first time in hours, she doesn’t feel hunted or under attack.

‘Thanks,’ she says, genuinely grateful if a little concerned about the sharpness of his smile, not to mention the fact that he’s just demonstrated to her that he’s almost certainly a witch. ‘Um… let me repay you. I brought some rations…’

‘Yes,’ says Jack. ‘I know.’

He bites happily into a pork pie… her pork pie, that she’d been saving. Gretel realises her knapsack is somehow in Jack’s hands.

‘Hey!’ She tries to grab the knapsack back, but his hands are incredibly quick. Every time she swipes at it, the bag is somewhere else, out of reach. ‘That’s mine!’

‘Yeah,’ replies Jack. ‘Should probably mention – you were totally right about the thief thing.’

‘But you said you were a witch!’

‘A boy can’t be both?’ He swings the bag away from her reach again, taking another bite of her rations. ‘Mm,’ he says with a loud appreciation. ‘Pie.’

Apparently summoned by his words, a cream pie whizzes out from the darkness of the trees and explodes wetly on the side of Jack’s face, robbing him of both his smugness and the knapsack, which he drops in surprise.

Gretel scoops up her knapsack as Jack wipes away the cream irritably.

‘Buttercup! Why?’

A woman stumbles out of the trees towards them. She is dressed in black, has a spider on her shoulder and has the sort of air of wobbly bottomed, sweet-natured maternity about her that makes her look like she should be carrying a pie. Which, by happy coincidence, she is.

‘Sorry!’ cries the woman, holding the pie aloft and scanning the area. ‘I was trying to hit the Ogre.’

‘Well, you missed him,’ Jack replies, scraping custard and pastry off the shoulder of his tunic, ‘by about a minute.’

‘Oh,’ says the woman guiltily. She turns and waves awkwardly at Gretel. ‘And hello, my sweet child. I think we might have got off on the wrong foot earlier.’

Gretel squints at the woman. Is that…? yes. Yes, it’s the figure from the creepy cake house. She does not look anywhere near as menacing now, with her slightly sad smile and her soft double chin and her smell of rising muffins.

‘I’m Buttercup,’ adds the woman.

‘You…’ Gretel says quietly. ‘You were in that house…’

‘Yes,’ says Buttercup, with a forced brightness, ‘well, that’s where I live.’ The spider on her shoulder reaches out with a foreleg to touch her ear. ‘Oh! And this is Trevor.’

Buttercup holds out a finger towards Gretel for the spider to skitter along to the end of.

‘Hiyah!’ cries the spider cheerfully. ‘It’s me! We had a little chat earlier, remember?’

‘Er,’ says Gretel.

‘I thought you might not recognise me, see, because I was wearing a hat before.’

‘A talking spider,’ says Gretel weakly.

‘Mmhmm,’ replies Buttercup. ‘Best not to ask. Would you like some breakfast?’

Yes. Yes, Gretel definitely would like some breakfast. The buzz of the adrenaline has now completely worn off and she just feels drained and hollow. She remembers how good that chunk of cake she pulled off the house had smelled, and thinks about the rations she packed that are now either half eaten by a smirking Dandelion Witch Thief Man or covered in mud from being dropped.

She looks up at the pie in Buttercup’s hand… which is no longer in Buttercup’s hand. Jack has it now, and is tucking in to it.

He looks up briefly. ‘What? I had to do loads of magic tonight, saving lives from Ogres and stuff – I need calories. Besides, I got the last one thrown in my face, I may as well assume this one’s meant for me too.’

Buttercup shoots Jack a look of fond exasperation. She picks up a large stone by her feet, and holds it out towards Gretel, loosely clasped in the palm of her hand.

‘Here.’

Gretel blinks at Buttercup, confused. ‘That’s a rock.’

Buttercup smiles, and Gretel sees the stone in her hand change colour and consistency. It becomes softer, porous, beige. Little imperfections in the stone become currants. It begins to smell of sugar, spice and butter.

‘Rock cake!’ says Buttercup, very pleased with her pun. She puts it in Gretel’s hand. It really does feel for all the world like a warm, freshly baked bun.

‘Yep,’ says Jack, ‘she can turn things into baked goods. That’s her power. Beginning and end of it. Ferocious witch, isn’t she?’

Gretel sniffs the cake in her hand. It does smell delicious.

‘It’s fine,’ continues Jack, halfway through the pie, ‘they’re perfectly edible, and they never change back.’ He indicates to the pie he’s currently enjoying. ‘Here’s one she made earlier. What did this used to be, Buttercup?’

‘Dead tree stump,’ replies Buttercup, a little sheepishly.

Gretel tries a bite. It’s so good. Perfect consistency, stodgy and satisfying. She takes another mouthful, hungrily. Buttercup smiles at her again.

‘I can’t always help it either,’ admits the wobbly witch. ‘Hence the house. It’s very impractical, the birds can be a nightmare.’

A jackdaw bursts out of the undergrowth, chittering. It’s not the strangest or most alarming thing to have happened to Gretel lately by a long way, but still she blinks at the bird. It’s exactly like the one that always perches above the barn back home, bothering the cat.

She doesn’t exactly have long to contemplate this though as, following the bird, from the dark cover of the trees comes a striding, faceless figure in bloodstained silver – the terrifying knight from earlier. She drops the cake in a panic and tries to back away automatically. In doing so, she almost treads on one of the hairy little creatures that had previously stalked her. It growls and spits through pointed teeth, then joins the other little monsters, clamouring and gibbering around the imposing figure of the knight.

Buttercup responds to the horrifying spectre with a wide, friendly smile.

‘Hello, dear! We were just going to go and have breakfast, did you want to come with?’

Gretel suddenly finds herself with a spider on her shoulder.

‘Hey,’ says Trevor quietly. ‘Don’t worry about the White Knight.’

‘I’m not,’ Gretel lies, under her breath.

‘I know she looks a bit… “argh,” you know. But she’s fine. She’s with us.’ He pauses. ‘Mind you, you all look a bit “argh” to me.’

Gretel gives Trevor a quick sideways look. She’s just been accused of looking scary by a literal talking spider.

‘I look a bit “argh”? You’ve got mandibles!’

‘You’re about a thousand times my size, mate. But I’m polite enough not to make a big deal about it.’

Gretel’s attention is drawn back by a glint of metal as the White Knight lifts heavy, clanking arms to remove the skull-covered helmet.

‘Oh!’

Beneath the helmet is a young woman. She looks wild – dirty, sweaty, with matted black hair and an expression of cold irritation.

‘She’s just a girl,’ breathes Gretel to Trevor.

‘Oh, don’t call her that,’ Trevor quietly warns her. ‘She’s been living as a Dwarf for years now.’

As Trevor speaks, one of the little hairy creatures scrabbles onto the top of the White Knight’s head, and picks a flea off her. The White Knight slaps its claw away, takes the flea and eats it.

‘She’s gone right off humans, she has,’ adds Trevor.

‘You know there’s an Ogre crying back there?’ says the White Knight. Her well-spoken, clipped voice is utterly out of keeping with her dishevelled appearance. ‘Don’t suppose that has anything to do with you, Trott?’

‘It was having a right strop,’ protests Jack. ‘Ripping up trees, threatening the new girl…’

‘I’m the what now?’ asks Gretel, but Jack just steams right over her.

‘I just gave it a little allergy so it’d leave us alone.’

The White Knight takes an angry step towards Jack. He doesn’t flinch back from her, but Gretel recognises the folded arms and tilted-back head of somebody trying rather too hard to make up for the fact they’re on the back foot.

‘That’s a horrible thing to do,’ growls the White Knight. ‘It’s a creature in pain; we’re supposed to protect Darkwood.’

‘Yeah,’ replies Jack with a forced cockiness, ‘mostly from other bits of Darkwood. That Ogre was on the warpath!’

‘That Ogre has been shot.’

Jack blinks.

‘Shot?’ Buttercup gasps in horror. Gretel notices the attention turn back to her. ‘Gretel. When it attacked your village, you didn’t…’

‘We didn’t shoot it!’ Gretel exclaims. ‘We used its dandelion allergy against it, same as Jack. We never try to kill them. The way we see it, if enough monsters are able to let the others know that attacking our village isn’t worth their while, we might get a bit of peace. But that all depends on them going back to the woods alive and able to recover.’ Gretel notices the sad looks on Buttercup’s and Jack’s faces. ‘What?’

‘You’re still saying “we” when you talk about that wretched village,’ notes the White Knight. ‘You’re not one of them any more.’

‘Well, you didn’t have to put it quite so bluntly,’ says Buttercup. ‘The poor girl’s only been out here a few hours.’

‘The sooner she accepts it, the less painful it’ll be,’ snaps the White Knight. ‘And we don’t really have time to spoonfeed the child – there’s the small matter of a horribly wounded Ogre to attend to – and apologise to. Come on.’

7
Big Ogres Don’t Cry

The White Knight strides back into the forest, the hairy little Dwarves skittering ahead on the scent, and all the others fall in behind her. Gretel knows, at the back of her mind, that she’s only just met these people, that they’re all rather strange – they’re witches, one is a thief, one a spider, one lives in what could be considered a suspiciously delicious house and the other just chased her around the forest with several axes – but she finds herself following with the group anyway. She’s really not sure what other options she has right now, and besides which, there’s something about the White Knight that just seems to pull people into her orbit. Gretel read a book once about great leaders of history. Until now, she’d never understood it, since the post of village mayor had, for all her life, been a purely ceremonial role, and normally taken up by Mr Sparkles the police station cat, on the basis that he looked the most adorable in a teeny tiny tricorn hat. Gretel gets the feeling now, slipping into the White Knight’s wake with the others, that she’s finally found herself in the presence of a born leader. Albeit one who doesn’t look absolutely darling in a sweet little mayoral chain.

‘Are you sure you don’t want breakfast, dear?’ Buttercup asks as she picks her way daintily over the roots and shrubs.

The knight shakes her head. ‘Had a couple of bats with the lads earlier.’

‘Yummy!’ cry the Dwarves from ahead. ‘Yummy!’

Gretel thinks back to the colony of bats that swarmed into her earlier that night. Perhaps the White Knight and her Dwarves hadn’t been stalking her at all. Perhaps they’d just been off hunting breakfast.

‘You can’t just live off bats and rabbits,’ argues Buttercup.

‘Course I can.’

‘It’s not very healthy – where’s your vitamin C going to come from?’

The White Knight shoots a little look over her shoulder towards Buttercup, and for the first time, Gretel sees a spark of fond amusement in the knight’s eyes – a faint shade of soft humanity.

‘Certainly not magical muffins, Buttercup.’

‘Jack could rustle up some carrots,’ suggests Buttercup.

The White Knight shakes her head, the softness in her eyes hardening again. ‘Don’t trust fruit.’

‘Carrots aren’t fruit,’ say Jack and Gretel at the same time.

The White Knight stops suddenly, her hand held aloft as a signal for the others to do the same. Gretel squints into the murky clearing and sees it.

She’d remembered the Ogre as being bigger. Even thinking back to when it attacked her only a few minutes beforehand, she pictures it towering, looming. The size of a house, the size of a steeple… but, no. It’s about ten feet tall, if that, and fat, and slow, and lumbering. It always has been. Now that she sees it, hunched, moaning, hurting, she almost wonders how she ever considered it to be scary. Even when it roars at her, it’s pathetic, pained, miserable. There is an arrow lodged deep in its side. She hadn’t noticed it before, but it must have been there for days, from the state of the wound.

‘Easy there,’ says the White Knight quietly, stepping slowly towards the wretched creature. ‘We’re here to help.’

She pulls one of her axes from her belt with a small flourish. The Ogre sees the blade and shrieks, shrinking back.

‘Hold him down, lads,’ the White Knight orders the Dwarves. ‘The quicker we get that thing out of him the better.’

The Dwarves attempt to do as they’re commanded, but the Ogre roars, terrified, and swipes them away. Gretel yelps a little as one Dwarf lands hard on its head by her feet, rights itself, muttering, and scrabbles back towards the frightened Ogre.

‘You’re making it worse,’ calls Gretel.

The White Knight shoots her a venomous look. ‘Well, does anyone have a better idea?’

‘Sorry,’ mumbles Buttercup, ‘all my best plans are mostly cake-based.’

‘I could grow him a nice tomato?’ suggests Jack.

‘For the last time,’ replies the knight, ‘I don’t trust fruit.’

‘Tomato’s not a…’ Jack falters, thinking. ‘Oh wait, no, actually it is. Carry on.’

‘Well, since nobody does have any better ideas of how to deal with this problem,’ says the knight, ‘we’ll just have to do it my way.’

‘Wait!’ Gretel’s mind is racing, suggesting and rejecting solutions to the problem so fast that it feels like sheer instinct guiding her. There has to be something to hand she can use, something she can fashion, something she can engineer, something that’ll work… suddenly, the answer presents itself, clear and logical, laid out beautifully in her brain.

She gets out the instrument she threatened the Ogre with earlier that night. ‘What about this?’

‘What is that?’ asks the White Knight. ‘A weapon?’

‘It’s for getting stones out of horses’ hooves,’ says Jack.

‘Mostly,’ Gretel admits. ‘But the settings can be adjusted to accommodate something much bigger.’ She changes a couple of gears on the contraption and approaches the Ogre carefully, dodging a shrieking Dwarf sent flying past her ear.

‘It works using suction,’ Gretel explains, putting the end of the device over the arrow wound.

The Ogre screams, raising its fists, but this time Gretel holds her ground. She pulls a small lever on the device and the arrow is swiftly sucked out of the wound. Gretel darts back again quickly, before the Ogre, screeching with fresh pain, can bring his fists down on her. The Ogre wails, thrashes, clutches at the wound… and calms down. The screaming becomes a whimpering, which in turn becomes a soft grunting. It is the sound of pain diminishing, becoming manageable. It is the sound of relief.

Buttercup goes over to the Ogre. ‘D’you want a Battenberg?’

The Ogre snorts at her and, with a surprisingly gentle delicateness, takes the proffered cake from her hands, and eats.

Buttercup gives the others a small smile. ‘Cake makes everything better.’

‘It was Gretel’s doodad that made everything better,’ says Jack.

The White Knight spits at the ground between their feet. ‘Nothing “makes this better”. Not cakes, not doodads.’ She holds up the arrow for them all to see. It’s thick and black with dried blood and extremely nasty-looking. ‘Look at this,’ she snarls furiously. ‘You know what this means, right?’

Gretel looks around at the others’ expressions. The sight of the arrow itself seems to have made them much more upset than they were on seeing the Ogre in pain.

‘I don’t,’ Gretel admits out loud. ‘What does it mean?’

The White Knight’s expression, already thundery with rage, becomes positively tempestuous. ‘Talks a lot, doesn’t she?’ she says to Buttercup through angrily gritted teeth.

‘You want a clever-clogs on the team, you need to put up with being asked a lot of questions,’ says Jack.

‘I never said I wanted her on the team,’ replies the White Knight.

‘I’ve not actually said I’m on a team—’ attempts Gretel, but is interrupted by the White Knight, now in full indignant flow.

‘This,’ the Knight tells her, waving the arrow in her face, ‘belonged to a huntsman.’

‘Oh.’ Gretel tries to think about this. ‘But why would a class two Ogre have attacked an armed huntsman?’

The White Knight sneers at Jack. ‘Some “clever-clogs”.’

‘It didn’t attack any huntsmen,’ Buttercup tells Gretel gently. ‘It’s the other way around.’

‘The huntsmen have started sending scout parties into Darkwood,’ Trevor explains.

Gretel feels her breath catch and her stomach drop. ‘What?’

‘Have been for a few months now,’ continues Trevor. ‘They’re getting in deeper every time.’

‘And now they’ve started attacking the creatures who live here,’ rages the Knight. ‘For no reason! For… for sport!’

‘The huntsmen can get in?’ whispers Gretel. She’s shaking now, her breath short and her eyes itching with tears. ‘After all of this, after I left my home, after I lost everything, I’m still not safe?’

‘Oh, it’s all you, you, you, isn’t it?’ growls the knight.

‘Do put a sock in it would you, Snow?’ snaps Buttercup. The Cake Witch pulls Gretel into a sudden, soft and warm embrace.

‘What did you do that for?’ The White Knight throws up her hands.

‘What?’

‘Call me by my name; I told you not to do that in front of outsiders!’

‘Exactly! Gretel’s not an outsider, not now. You know as well as any of us that she’s proved herself, despite having a horrible night.’ Buttercup pets Gretel’s hair. ‘It’s OK. You’re one of us now.’

‘Why do you people keep saying that?’ Gretel wails. ‘Don’t I get a say in whether I’m on your “team” or not?’

‘Oh, my dear child,’ sighs Buttercup. ‘You can’t live by yourself out here. You were right, it really isn’t safe. The beasties don’t always behave, but worse than that now, there’s the problem of huntsmen coming in. Nobody survives alone out here. We all need help, especially when we’re new to the Darkwood.’ She nods towards the White Knight. ‘Even Snow.’

‘Shut up,’ mutters the White Knight, seemingly oblivious to a Dwarf grooming her.

‘Plus,’ says Trevor, ‘you know the White Knight’s name now, so if you’re not with us, she’ll probably have to kill you.’

‘It’s not pity, or charity, or anything like that,’ adds Jack, ‘it’s just… what we do. Us witches stick together. Plus, there is a two-way element to this. We could really use some of your invention doodads.’

‘We do love your doodads,’ Buttercup tells her. She squeezes Gretel’s shoulder. ‘You’re tired, and cold, and we still haven’t managed to have breakfast yet. At least come back with us for now. Have a cup of tea and some food, tour the HQ. I’m sure it’ll bring you round to us. It’s pretty nifty.’

Gretel wipes her eyes. Buttercup has a point. She is indeed cold and hungry and exhausted. Perhaps she should go with them, just for a rest, just to catch her breath, just to, maybe, see what exactly they have to offer. They seem trustworthy. Probably. A little voice at the back of her mind reminds her that she thought all of the villagers were trustworthy too, yet somebody sent a huntsman after her, but the desire for some comfort and rest is enough to overwhelm the nagging doubt for now.

She nods. Buttercup smiles, delighted, and, after Gretel and Jack have apologised to the Ogre for the dandelion incidents, she leads the way back into the woods.

Gretel follows, and finds herself thinking of all those stories she was told when she was little about wicked witches luring children off to their lairs, and about how in not one single instance had a witch enticed her prey by using the word ‘nifty’.

8
Chateau Gateau

Magic cake is not generally considered to be a decent building material when it comes to residential structures, and for very good reason. By the time Gretel gets back to Buttercup’s cottage, the sun has finally risen and she is able to see the house in the cold, harsh light of day. It looks soggy in places, white with mould in others. It leans slightly to one side. It smells more sickly than she remembers from the desperate night before. And then, there’s the birds. Oh, the birds. Pecking and picking and leaving a fairly thick layer of the house, as passed through their tiny digestive systems and dropped out of the other side, all over the roof.

‘Shoo!’ cries Buttercup, waving her arms at them to little avail. ‘Shoo!’ She looks over her shoulder at the White Knight. ‘Little help?’

The White Knight rolls her eyes with that odd flash of fondness again, and whistles a single note. All the birds fly off suddenly, in a flutter of sharp panic.

‘Blooming things,’ grumbles Buttercup, opening the door. ‘Why do they keep doing that?’

‘Because you accidentally made your house delicious to them, you great gooseberry,’ the White Knight replies. ‘You should probably do something about that.’

‘I wouldn’t have to, if you lived here with us.’

The White Knight scowls. ‘I live in a cave with my lads. Shut up.’

‘Yummy!’ agrees a Dwarf.

Inside, the house is actually much more inviting. Yes, it’s still more cakey than a home’s interior should really be, but it’s warm, and very soft. It smells fresher on the inside, too.

‘Tea?’ asks Buttercup, holding up a large kettle that almost instantly turns into a kettle-shaped scone. ‘Bother.’ She puts the scone down on a plate. ‘Never mind, that can be brekkie. Jack, would you be a love and fetch one of the spare kettles and put it on for us?’ She frowns down at her hand as Jack goes to a cupboard full of kettles and teapots. ‘Stupid fingers, at it again.’

Gretel watches the others as they potter and bicker in the kitchen. Jack puts the new, non-cakeified kettle on to boil, opens a window and holds out his hand expectantly. As he does, a tea bush defies all natural logic by suddenly blooming, shrivelling and drying, right next to the window, leaving Jack with a handful of perfectly prepared tea leaves.

‘Sugar?’ he asks, throwing the tea into the pot. ‘I can do cane or beet.’

Gretel shakes her head politely.

‘Though I’m afraid the milk options are soya or almond,’ Jack continues. He wiggles his fingers at her. ‘My magic’s strictly vegan for some reason.’

‘Can you really control any plant?’

‘Yep. Well… no.’ Jack starts brewing the tea. ‘I can get them to grow and wither and stuff, is all. I can’t make them, you know, talk, or march on the Citadel or anything. Snow does animals.’

‘Stop telling her stuff about me,’ growls the White Knight from her corner, sharpening one of her many axes. ‘Also, I want lemon in my tea, Jack.’

‘But it’s just smaller forest creatures, really,’ Jack continues, plucking a lemon from the tree branch that has handily just grown through the window. ‘Birds, bunnies, that sort of thing. Nothing we can weaponise, like a wolf or a bear.’

‘The wolves have their own witch,’ Trevor calls down from the ceiling. ‘Same goes for the bears. They’ve got their own territory to the north. We don’t ever go there.’

‘Why not?’ asks Gretel.

‘Because they’ve got wolves and bears, kid,’ Trevor replies. ‘Were you not just listening?’

‘We don’t need wolves,’ mutters the White Knight. ‘We’ve got my lads.’

There is a murmur of ‘yummys’ in agreement.

‘And,’ says Jack, ‘there’s Buttercup, who’s… you saw, with the cakes, but… you know, she tries.’

‘Hey,’ protests Buttercup weakly.

‘And also there’s me,’ adds Trevor cheerfully.

‘So what’s your magic power?’ Gretel asks him.

‘I’m a talking spider, mate. Look me in the eyes and say that’s not magic.’

‘And that’s the gang,’ says Jack.

‘We are not a “gang”,’ argues the White Knight.

‘More a community,’ says Buttercup. ‘We protect each other, and the Darkwood.’ She pauses. ‘Can’t pretend that’s not getting harder to do, though. What with the huntsmen. It’s not fair – they’re the ones who drove us all out here in the first place, now even that’s not good enough for them…’

‘So what do you say?’ Jack asks, pouring the tea. ‘Cards on the table. You definitely need us to survive, but we need you, too. Your powers, your… doodads… all the things that made you different enough for the huntsmen to chase you out here. All that stuff can really help us. Also, the small matter of Snow killing you because we’ve told you too much about her totally still stands. No pressure.’

Gretel takes a sip of the tea. It is steaming hot and refreshing and good. This is nothing like how witches are supposed to live. This is more like… well, it’s almost like home.

Home. The thought of the farmhouse, right now, of the Mudd family starting a new day without her, hits her like a kick to the stomach. She pictures the breakfast table with her place left empty, her family scrabbling around to fill in for her chores in silent grief. The sadness physically squeezes the breath from her lungs. Then she thinks about the village – the village that pleaded her case last night and helped her escape – and what could happen the next time something attacks. No fresh defensive contraptions, no properly engineered plan. So what if one villager sent for a huntsman? That’s just one out of over a hundred decent people just trying to live their own lives. She thinks about Hansel and Daisy, left to defend the whole village without her. Her sad sigh is replaced with a sharp inhalation of panic.

‘I’ll join you,’ she tells them. ‘On one condition.’

‘She gets to have conditions?’ snaps the White Knight.

‘Shh,’ replies Buttercup.

‘I’ll help you protect Darkwood,’ says Gretel. ‘But in return, you have to help me protect the human village as well.’

The White Knight’s expression twists from irritated to actively disgusted. ‘Humans?’

The Dwarves growl and snarl at the very word.

‘You want to help humans? After the way they treated you?’

‘The villagers are good people,’ protests Gretel. ‘Well… mostly good. They’re just scared. Perhaps if we help them to be less scared, things will change.’

The White Knight snorts. ‘Oh, you think so? You think the huntsmen would stop if they were less scared?’

‘I’m not talking about huntsmen! I’m talking about… about changing attitudes, writing over the huntsmen’s lies, starting small. Maybe it’ll spread, who knows? Maybe people will start to turn against huntsmen…’

She trails off, noticing the expressions of the rest of the cottage’s inhabitants. She’d had no idea up until now that spiders were even capable of looking deeply cynical.

‘Well, I think it’s worth a try,’ she says. ‘And it’s the deal-breaker for me.’

‘Fine,’ says Buttercup. She holds out her hand. ‘Deal.’ She notices Gretel’s hesitance in taking her hand. ‘Oh! Don’t worry, I can’t cakeify anything living.’

They shake hands.

‘Buttercup, are you kidding me?’ the White Knight cries. ‘We’ve got to protect those whiny villagers now?’

‘Oh, stop complaining, Snow.’

‘She’d better have some pretty amazing witch powers to make all this worthwhile, is all I’m saying.’

‘Ah.’ Gretel’s expression freezes as the penny drops. All this us versus them talk, witches versus humans. The witches automatically lumped Gretel in with them, right from the start. They must have thought… oh dear.

Gretel turns with a false brightness to the White Knight, still sharpening her axe.

‘Nice axe.’

‘Cheers.’

‘How… many do you actually have about your person, do you know?’

‘Loads.’

‘Right.’ Gretel picks up a tea tray and holds it as a sort of flimsy shield between herself and the Knight. ‘So, bearing in mind we have now just made a deal, and I did help with the Ogre, and you do like my doodads… you guys should probably be aware that I’m not actually a witch.’

‘What?’ comes a chorus of horrified voices. A very small axe clangs off the tea tray.

‘That is to say,’ continues Gretel hurriedly, ‘I’ve got no magic powers. I’m just clever. That’s why the huntsmen suspected me. But I really am good at inventions, and I can definitely be an asset to your… community, we all agreed, so no takesie-backsies.’ Gretel really hopes that the law of no takesie-backsies applies to the world of witchcraft.

She dares a glance at the others. The White Knight looks enraged. Buttercup looks bewildered. Trevor looks… again, it’s hard to picture a spider looking shocked, but somehow he’s able to pull it off. Jack looks… impressed.

‘I do believe we’ve been had, guys,’ he says, folding his arms. ‘This one’s crafty. Nice. We could do with crafty.’

‘No, but…’ Buttercup shakes her head, confused. ‘But you are a witch. We’ve been watching you. Well. Snow has.’

‘You have? How?’ Gretel pauses. ‘I mean, I get that it’d involve some kind of witchcraft, but…’

The White Knight’s only explanation comes in the form of another simple whistled tune. A jackdaw – the same jackdaw that Gretel saw in the woods and perched on the barn – swoops through the open window and lands on her shoulder.

‘The birds are your spies,’ says Gretel.

‘Not just the birds,’ the White Knight replies, slapping away the claw of an optimistic Dwarf reaching for the jackdaw. ‘I’ve got eyes everywhere, girl.’

‘Eight of them are mine,’ adds Trevor. ‘I’m the best spy. Tell them I’m the best spy.’

‘And I’ve been keeping close watch on your precious human village,’ continues the White Knight, ignoring Trevor.

‘I’m the only one who actually bothers with disguises,’ Trevor mutters over her. ‘Ever seen a chaffinch with a false moustache? I think not.’

‘The raw magical energy there has been going crazy there for years,’ says the White Knight. ‘The whole forest can sense it, it’s the most powerful concentration of magic since—’ the White Knight suddenly breaks off, as if trying to repress a momentary burst of emotion.

‘We’ve been waiting for you,’ says Buttercup gently. ‘We knew the huntsmen would come looking for you soon. You probably don’t even know what sort of magic levels you’re putting out. It’s unusual for a witch not to know of her own powers by your age, but not unheard of. We can just train you up, and—’

‘For the last time,’ Gretel tells them. ‘I’m not a witch.’

‘Yes, you are!’

‘No, I’m not!’

‘Well, how else do we explain…’

It’s Jack who blinks with the realisation first. ‘Ohhhh.’

‘What? Why are you saying “Oh”?’

‘I just worked it out,’ says Jack. ‘The witch is still there. In the village.’

Buttercup and the White Knight look at each other.

‘The huntsmen came for the wrong twin.’

Gretel nods, her eyes cast down, and for the first time in her life, says aloud the words that she’d sworn she would keep between herself and her twin.

‘The witch is my brother. Hansel is a witch.’

9
The Witch of Nearby Village

Hansel has always just known that he has magical powers. To him, they’re no less natural than running, singing or laughing. However, the cautionary tales drummed into him from infancy mean that he’s also always been aware that it’s not a good idea to let anybody know that he has them. He even managed to hide them from his step-parents, right from the start. Only his sister ever knew. His twin, his confidant, his best friend. He doesn’t even remember whether he told her or if she just worked it out, but that’s how it is… how it was. She’d protected him – helped steer the eye of suspicion away from him. It had helped that he was a boy, but sometimes things would happen around him that had required a little more by way of explanation. Gretel was inventive with the excuses she came up with for why all the pans in the kitchen became magnetic one day, for example, or the reason the privy had boiled over. The inventiveness spread. She started coming up with contraptions to back up her claims, and then… just making new contraptions for their own sake, or to help around the farm, or protect the village. Hansel would always follow his sister’s lead. He wasn’t a natural at protecting people. It’s not that he didn’t want to, he was just never the heroic type, like Gretel was… like Gretel still is.

Hansel’s good at sensing trouble ahead, and animals tend to do whatever he tells them to, which is useful on the farm, and sometimes when he gets upset things can go dark and he has difficulty stopping the ground from shaking. That, as far as he knows, is the extent of his powers in any real practical terms. Before last night, as far as he was concerned, even if witchcraft weren’t illegal, there would have been little point in making his powers public, since people might expect him to actually be able to do something with them.

But now… now what?

They’d come for the wrong twin. Gretel had managed to protect him from the huntsmen simply by being a girl who could do maths, making herself a lightning rod for suspicion over any magical irregularities in the village. He should have protected her in return. He should have been able to do something, anything better than his few pathetic attempts. He’d been able to sense the approaching huntsman and provide advance warning, and then make the ground shake to stop the huntsman following her, but to what end? She’d still been forced into the Darkwood. Exiled as a witch. She’d taken his punishment without complaint or question, and all he’d been able to do had been to usher her into it.

He stands now, in the kitchen, cold and grey in the morning light. His step-parents are out, doing Gretel’s chores as well as their own around the farm. It’s his turn to clean up from breakfast. There’s a lot of porridge left. None of them were particularly hungry and, anyway, Stepmother automatically made enough for four. He scrapes the leftovers into the bucket for the pigs, and fails to hold back the tears.

It’s not fair, he silently rants. The stupid laws aren’t fair. The way it’s always girls who get picked on isn’t fair. The very fact they go after witches isn’t fair – he’s a witch, and what harm does he do? How is happening to have magic powers worth exile? Torture? Death? How is it worth everybody living in fear, all the time?

How is it worth the loss of his sister? His twin? His other half?

A fresh wave of grief and anger washes over him. The fire in the grate and the candles dim. He sucks the light in like a deep breath, and shadows clamour to fill the vacuum. The walls and floor shrink and twist with the intake, and for a moment he feels as though he understands the moon, pulling and pushing the tides, big and powerful and… and utterly isolated, out there in the cold dark emptiness. He holds his breath, holds this little world all sucked in. He thinks about tides drawing back and back and back, leaving coastlines nothing but desert. He thinks about huge waves surging over coastal defences, seaside towns, roaring, rushing, swallowing up the land. He feels the fear, and berates himself for letting himself get worked up to this point again, and for being such a coward – such a coward that he is even scared of himself. He holds, lets the fear take control and bring him down. He exhales, shakily. The kitchen returns, as it was.

He carries on washing the dishes.

‘The boy is the witch!’ The White Knight hits the kettle-shaped scone with another axe, cutting it in two. ‘We should have known! I mean, we’ve got this reprobate right here as a reminder never to discount the male ones.’

The White Knight waves an annoyed hand in the general direction of Jack, who gives Gretel a grin and a wink. ‘I prefer “scoundrel” to “reprobate”, Snow.’

‘Look, the huntsmen were fooled too,’ says Buttercup. ‘And they’ve got the Mirror, for goodness’ sake.’ She turns to Gretel. ‘You must have done a very good job of covering for him.’

Gretel nods. ‘We protected each other. That’s just what we… wait, what mirror?’

‘And now you’ve told her about the Mirror,’ grunts the White Knight. ‘Well done.’

‘…Ah,’ says Buttercup. ‘Scone, anyone?’

‘It’s OK.’ Trevor abseils down onto the table in front of Gretel. ‘I’m head of intelligence, I can brief her.’

‘You’re head of what now?’ asks Jack.

Trevor gathers himself up importantly. ‘The Mirror is an espionage device. The huntsmen use it to keep tabs on suspected witches, areas of high magical disturbance, that sort of thing. We’ve managed to put a block on it being able to see into Darkwood, but they’d certainly have been watching your village through it.’

‘So… wait.’ Gretel blinks. ‘The huntsmen were spying on me? Directly?’

‘’Fraid so.’

‘No, that’s good.’ Gretel allows herself a small, relieved smile. ‘That’ll be why the huntsman came after me. Nobody called for one – he came of his own accord. None of my friends turned me in.’

‘I wouldn’t get too happy about them spying on your village, mate,’ continues Trevor gravely. ‘They’ll probably carry on keeping tabs there, especially if the magic levels don’t drop after you’ve left.’

‘Oh, no.’ Gretel turns to Buttercup. ‘Might they find out about Hansel after all? Might they come back after him?’

Buttercup doesn’t answer, but Gretel knows that expression. It’s the expression of someone who doesn’t want to lie, but knows that the truth is going to cause a lot of upset.

‘They found me through the Mirror,’ says Jack, ‘and I was already on the run. Different town every few nights, half a dozen fake names, had all the gold I nicked melted down before selling it on… thought I was untraceable.’ He snorts a laugh. ‘I wasn’t even worried about the huntsmen, it was the Giants I thought would end up getting me.’ He pauses, remembering. ‘It was the Giants who deserved to end up getting me. I didn’t…’

‘Yes, all right, Trott,’ snaps the White Knight. ‘It’s not all about you, you know.’

‘What are we going to do?’ Gretel asks. ‘Can we… can we possibly destroy the Mirror?’

‘No!’ cries the White Knight sharply.

‘But my brother—’

‘We just can’t,’ the White Knight interrupts.

Buttercup sits down next to Gretel and takes her hand. ‘I’ll tell you what we’re going to do. We’re all going to keep our parts of the deal. We’ll protect the forest, and the village, and in protecting the village we’ll protect your brother. We’ll all do it, together. You being with us makes us even stronger.’

‘But I can’t do magic!’

‘You can do science, engineering, maths. You can come up with plans and inventions. You can’t really think that’s less useful than turning stuff into cake?’

She pushes a plate of scones closer to Gretel. The plate also turns into scone.

‘Oh for the love of…’

‘Cakeyhands is right!’ cries Trevor, a foreleg aloft in enthusiasm. ‘We can do this together! With the power of fauna!’

The White Knight just cocks an eyebrow.

‘Flora!’ Trevor continues, unabashed.

Jack looks blank for a moment before saying, ‘Oh wait, that’s me and my plants, isn’t it?’

‘Baked goods!’

‘Hooray,’ says Buttercup weakly.

‘Applied mathematics!’

Gretel nods along.

‘And also, there’s a super-intelligent talking spider.’ Trevor claps with three sets of legs – the only individual in the room capable of creating a very small round of applause all by himself. ‘Go, team!’

In the Citadel, a huntsman rides wearily through the gates on horseback. His handling of the horse is off, as if he can’t quite see properly. He rides straight up to the castle, dismounts and climbs the steps to the ornately crafted gates. Inside, his footsteps ring out on polished marble. There were rugs on the floor here once, but they have been taken away. The intricate tapestries that used to insulate the stone walls are also gone – wicked things, they were, showing images of abomination and telling dangerous stories. The stained-glass windows have been smashed out, or else covered over with banners of the huntsmen’s insignia. Once upon a time, people called the castle ‘magical’. And, as everybody knows, to be magical is to mock the laws of nature and man.

The huntsman heads straight for a large hall, in which a fellow huntsman sits upon a… a large chair. They are not calling it a ‘throne’. Perhaps the queen used to call it the throne, but that vicious witch is gone now, and all her trappings of power diminished. So, her large chair is still made of gold and crystals, and is only ever sat upon by the Head Huntsman, but it still definitely isn’t a throne or a status symbol or anything like that. The Head Huntsman is no different from any other huntsman; he is merely in charge of delegation, organisation and planning. And he gets to sit in the large chair.

‘You did not get the girl, as requested,’ says the Head Huntsman.

The other huntsman bows low. He is not obliged to, obviously; all huntsmen are brothers and sisters in the good fight against wickedness. It just… it is polite, that’s all.

‘No, Brother,’ he replies, ‘but she has been… neutralised.’

The Head Huntsman just stares at him, the blank mask sucking more words out of him to fill its expressionless silence.

‘N-not dead,’ continues the Huntsman, ‘not as such, not executed certainly, but… she ran into the Darkwood.’

More silence. More desperate scrabbling for words.

‘Nobody ever comes out of there, she’s as good as dead. The witch will no longer be able to influence Nearby Village with her trickery.’

Still with his mask turned to face the other huntsman, the Head Huntsman walks slowly towards a covered object on a table near to the thr— the large chair. He pulls the cover off the object – it is a large mirror.

‘Mirror,’ he says, ‘show me the witch of Nearby Village.’

Nothing happens. The Head Huntsman growls softly. ‘I am going to smash this accursed thing one of these days.’ He collects himself, then says, louder, ‘Mirror, Mirror, I have pillaged, show me the witch of Nearby Village.’

There is a pause, then an electric crackle over the Mirror’s surface. The huntsman can feel the static charge in the air. It makes the hairs on his arms stand on end and his robes cling very unflatteringly to his legs.

‘I… I’m sure this is unnecessary,’ says the huntsman. ‘She’s in the Darkwood, and you know the risks of trying to look into the Darkwood with that thing…’

‘Then why,’ says the Head Huntsman, ‘is the Mirror still showing me Mudd Farm?’

The huntsman frowns, under his mask, and goes over to the Mirror. Indeed, it is showing the same view of the farmhouse that it had used to identify the source of the magic spike before. Now, however, the image ripples and fizzes with electrical distortion.

‘The family have yet to let her go, in their hearts,’ explains the huntsman. ‘You know that strong emotional ties can confuse the Mirror. That’s why we can’t use it to look into…’

The Mirror’s image goes to static. Another pulse of electricity fizzes through the room, making fibres crackle against each other, and then…

The Mirror shows black, twisted trees.

‘The Darkwood!’ cries the huntsman. ‘You see? She’s in the Darkwood, now switch that thing off!’

‘I beg your pardon?’ says the Head Huntsman. ‘Are you attempting to give me an order, Brother?’

‘No! No! Not at all!’

‘We huntsmen do not order one another to do anything, remember?’

‘Yes, of course! I… misspoke.’

‘In any case.’ The Head Huntsman turns his blank face back to the Mirror. ‘You can’t “switch this off”. It’s a cursed mirror, for pity’s sake.’

‘Yes, but… but perhaps we should take precautionary steps, in case she…’

Static in the Mirror again, and then a figure. Tall. Bloodied. A series of impossibly sharp edges. Furious.

‘…finds us again…’ manages the Huntsman weakly.

‘…to me,’ growls the mysterious figure in the Mirror. ‘Give him back! Return what you have stolen from me!’

The Head Huntsman hurriedly pulls the cover back over the Mirror. The static sucks the fabric onto the Mirror thirstily.

The other huntsman gasps in fear. ‘You see?’

‘Mm,’ says the Head Huntsman.

‘So… you are satisfied that the witch of Nearby is as good as dead in the Darkwood?’

‘Hmm,’ says the Head Huntsman.

‘“Hmm”?’ echoes the other huntsman, panicking again. ‘What does that—’

‘Apologies, Brother,’ says the Head Huntsman. ‘I must have detained you from your important work for too long already.’

Under his mask, the other huntsman opens and shuts his mouth. ‘Work. Yes. Right. Yes. Of course.’ He pauses. ‘Could I just… go through my fieldwork expenses forms with you quickly? Only, I lost my spectacles in the course of duty, and—’

‘Goodbye, Brother.’

‘Only that they were quite dear, and—’

‘Goodbye.’

‘Right. Yes. Um. Goodbye.’

Although, of course, he doesn’t need to bow, the huntsman bows again, and leaves the hall hurriedly. Bleary-eyed, he stubs his toe in the doorway.

‘Oh,’ comes the muffled cry, ‘trousers!’

10
Plans

Gretel eats, and is then shown around the rest of the cottage. It’s much like the farmhouse in many respects, only with axes lying all over the place instead of farmyard equipment, and decidedly more cakey. The kitchen takes up the whole bottom floor, and upstairs is a sleeping space, with three straw beds set out behind hessian privacy screens.

‘This one’s yours,’ Buttercup tells her, directing her towards the sleeping area at the back. ‘Snow sleeps in the Dwarf cave upriver, so it’s just the four of us up here.’

‘Four…?’ begins Gretel, cutting herself off when Trevor scuttles up into a large web amongst the rafters. Of course. She keeps forgetting about him. It’s easy to forget an arachnid on your team when you’re used to sweeping them out of corners or watching them get eaten by the cat.

‘Privy’s round the back,’ continues Buttercup. ‘There’s no water pump but the stream water’s clean enough once it’s been filtered. Bath night is Wednesday, and the bins go out on Monday.’

‘The bins…?’

‘For the Bin Men,’ says Trevor.

Gretel just stares at him, confused.

‘You never had a Bin Man come out of the wood?’ asks Trevor. ‘Oh, they’re vicious things, they are. Get very nasty if they don’t have their weekly offering. Forgetting Bin Night is one of the most terrible things that can happen, round here. And believe me, there are a lot of terrible things that can happen in Darkwood.’

‘Right,’ sighs Gretel. The exhaustion, physical and emotional, has fully caught up with her now.

Buttercup pats her awkwardly on the head. ‘Why don’t you have a little rest? Everything will seem brighter afterwards.’

Gretel nods mutely, and goes behind her screen. She flops down in the soft, warm bed. It smells of sweet hay and wool, the way her bed always did at home.

Home.

She takes in a deep breath to calm herself, but can’t help letting out a sob. The next breath is louder and more despairing still. She cries for she knows not how long, curled up into a small, sorry ball, and eventually falls into a light sleep with strange dreams that, on waking, she has difficulty separating from what has actually happened to her over the past twenty-four hours.

When she wakes, she can tell from the sun that it’s almost noon. Downstairs smells of food, again. Or maybe that kitchen just always smells of food since it’s around fifteen per cent baked goods.

She finds Jack at a steaming cauldron. ‘Hubble bubble, toil and trouble.’ He grins. ‘Vegetable soup? Buttercup’s just doing us some bread rolls.’

Buttercup comes in. ‘What did you want again?’

‘Small white rolls. What have you managed to magic up?’

‘Croissants.’ Buttercup holds out the magical pastries.

Jack just shrugs. ‘Close enough.’

‘So,’ says Gretel, as Jack ladles out bowls of hot soup, ‘these Bin Men…’

‘Don’t ask,’ says Trevor. ‘No soup for me thanks, Jack, I just finished off a smashing bluebottle, couldn’t eat another bite.’

Gretel sips at the soup. It’s the kind of messy hot slop her brother would ‘cook’, seemingly to no recipe, with various vegetables thrown in apparently at random. The memory of her brother hits hard again, but she’s able to eat the soup without crying. She’s red-eyed and all out of tears. Maybe things are looking brighter. Or maybe she’s just getting used to the new reality.

‘How are you doing?’ Buttercup asks. ‘Any better?’

Gretel can’t reply. She doesn’t know whether it’s because it would be dishonest to say she’s feeling better but rude to say she isn’t, or because maybe she is feeling a bit better, but to come anywhere near to acknowledging this fills her with guilt.

‘So, what now?’ she asks eventually, as they’re clearing up from lunch.

Jack shrugs.

‘You mean you lot don’t have a plan?’

‘Of course we have a plan,’ replies Jack. ‘Our plan is: survive today. Then make sure we survive tonight and are able to get up in the morning. After that, our plan resets to surviving the day ahead.’

‘And that’s it?’

‘It’s worked so far, dear,’ Buttercup tells her. ‘It doesn’t make sense to plan anything more complicated than that, because half the time we have to drop everything and help one of the beasties of Darkwood.’ She pauses. ‘Especially now that you’ve got us to swear we’ll look after your village as well.’

‘Right.’ Gretel folds her arms, thinking. ‘Well, I suppose that’s where I come in, then. I can come up with some plans. I’m good at plans.’

‘And inventing doodads.’

‘And that, yes.’ Gretel pulls a notebook from her knapsack and starts a list. ‘OK, so to begin with I’ll need a map of the forest, all the weak points we’ll need to defend, everything we know about the huntsmen, their invasion tactics, their weaponry…’ She trails off. The others are looking at her, nonplussed. ‘Do you have any of that stuff?’

Buttercup and Jack shake their heads.

Trevor holds up a foreleg. ‘No, but I volunteer for a dashing espionage field mission to gather it all.’

‘For the last time, Trevor, you are not a super-spy,’ says Jack.

‘But I can hide in plain sight,’ whines Trevor. ‘Also, some of those huntsmen are huntsladies. I can seduce the information out of them.’

‘Snow can probably get you a map and some information on the huntsmen,’ Buttercup tells Gretel.

‘I’ve got a dinner jacket and everything,’ mutters Trevor, ‘I can totally do this.’

‘She’ll be over at the Dwarf cave by now,’ Buttercup continues. ‘You should probably familiarise yourself with that place anyway, they’ve got a metalworking forge there. You know. For your doodads.’

‘OK,’ replies Gretel. ‘So… how do I actually get there? Bearing in mind we don’t have a map.’

‘After three hundred yards, take a left into the slightly twistier patch of trees.’

It still takes a lot of getting used to, walking through an accursed forest with a talking spider sitting on her shoulder, speaking directions into her ear, but Gretel is glad of the guidance and of the company, if not the tickle of his scuttly little legs on her collarbone and the rather unnerving sight of eight beady little eyes watching her.

‘So,’ she says conversationally, ‘are there many other talking arachnids in the Darkwood?’

‘Nope,’ he replies proudly, ‘as far as I know, I’m the only one. That’s why Buttercup brought me in for protection.’ He pauses. ‘Her protection, obviously; I’m an asset to the team. At the end of the rocky outcrop, turn right.’

‘So… is it that you’re a normal spider who can magically talk, or a man who’s been turned into a spider? Because you seem way too smart for just a spider…’

‘Wow, that’s a rude thing to say.’

‘Is it?’

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Sorry, I just…’

‘You have reached your destination.’

Gretel stops. She and Trevor are standing outside a small cave entrance, no more than three feet high and around the same distance wide.

‘Is that it?’

‘Yep. Most of it’s underground.’

‘It looks like no more than a badger’s sett.’

‘That’s deliberate,’ says Trevor. ‘They love badgers.’

‘Aww.’

‘Think they’re absolutely delicious, they do.’

‘Eurgh.’ Gretel gives Trevor an apologetic little smile. ‘I’d never have found this place without you, you know.’

‘Yeah, well,’ continues Trevor sulkily, ‘as I say, asset to the team.’

‘A talking spider always is.’ She holds a finger out towards him.

He glares at it, then grudgingly gets up onto three back legs and high fives her with the rest.

Gretel gets onto her hands and knees and crawls through the small hole, into the cave. A narrow tunnel cut into the rock leads downwards for around a hundred feet, before opening out into a large cavern. Small fires burn in various ventilated corners, casting a constantly shifting, orange light around the cave, flickering off the natural crystals that glitter from the cave’s ceiling. Gretel honestly can’t remember the last time she’s been somewhere that looks so beautiful, or smells so disgusting. The stench of rotting meat – cooked and raw – jostles for position in the foetid air with the smells of unwashed bodies, sulphur and the lack of a proper privy.

‘Yummy?’ asks a Dwarf, looking up from its task of whittling a pointy stick into an even pointier stick.

‘Um. Here to speak with the White Knight?’ says Gretel, not even sure if the creature understands her. It just looks at her, blankly. ‘Er. You know… White Knight? Boss? Tall? Armour? Angry? You know “angry”? “Aaaarghhhh! Angry!”’

‘Yummy,’ mutters the Dwarf, nodding towards one of the fires, before getting back to its stick.

‘Er. Thanks.’ Gretel hurries off in the direction the Dwarf has indicated. ‘That is what it meant, right? To go over there?’

‘How should I know?’ Trevor replies. ‘I’m not a translator. I only speak human language and spider. And spider language is all non-verbal anyway. Makes it particularly hard for an intellectual such as myself to pick up girlfriends.’ He pauses very briefly. ‘Mind you, that’s probably for the best, since in my species they have a tendency to eat the males after mating. Feisty.’

The White Knight is indeed at the fire where the Dwarf had directed them. On closer inspection, this particular fire heats a small metalworking forge. The White Knight is bashing a new iron kettle into shape.

‘What is it now?’ she asks.

‘I was hoping you could get me a map of the Darkwood.’

The White Knight raises an eyebrow.

‘And information on the huntsmen’s tactics and weaponry.’ She pauses. ‘I’m going to start making up some proper defence strategies.’

‘Are you now, New Girl?’ asks the White Knight. ‘Is there anything else you’d like from me? This forge, perhaps?’

‘I probably will need use of your forge, actually,’ Gretel admits. ‘Although not until I’ve finished my blueprints.’

The White Knight folds her arms and cocks her head angrily at Gretel.

‘Buttercup said it’d be OK,’ adds Gretel.

The White Knight’s angry expression softens at this, as if Gretel’s used a magic word.

‘I can get you a map of our territory,’ she says. ‘Bird’s-eye view and all that. The northern and eastern territories are out of bounds even to my spies, but if the huntsmen want to trespass there, it’s not our problem.’

‘That’s where the wolf and bear witches are, is it?’ Gretel asks.

‘Yep. And you don’t want to know what else. I wouldn’t send an innocent sparrow into that neck of the woods.’ The White Knight wipes her mucky hands on her tunic. ‘As for your other request, I’ve kept record of the creatures that have had run-ins with the huntsmen’s scout parties so far. You can talk to them for details. Although, the huntsmen’s attacks are always changing – that’s part of the problem.’

‘Well, I might be able to spot a pattern and anticipate their next moves,’ says Gretel. ‘I’m quite good at that.’

‘You really do still think it’ll all be fine if we just buckle down, don’t you?’

‘Maybe.’

The White Knight gives her a sad little smile. It quite catches Gretel off guard.

‘I’ll admit, I didn’t see this coming,’ says the Knight. ‘I thought we’d at least be safe here. But no. It’s not good enough that they drive us out of our homes, send us to live in the woods. They have to come for us here, too. They hate us that much. Can’t even abide for us to carry on living somewhere else.’

‘Well,’ replies Gretel, ‘we all spend our whole lives being told witches are evil…’

‘Do you?’ asks the White Knight. ‘How old are you, girl?’

‘Thirteen.’

‘Thirteen.’ The White Knight snorts. ‘So, you were a baby when it happened, you won’t remember it at all.’

‘When what happened?’

‘Things were very different when I was your age, not so long ago,’ the White Knight tells her. ‘What do they teach children about us, these days?’

Gretel shrugs. ‘That witches are evil. That you wreck everything. That you’re powerful tricksters…’

The White Knight gestures around the stinking cave. ‘Does this seem powerful to you?’

‘No. I mean, obviously it’s all a lie, I see that now…’

‘And who spreads that lie? They do. The huntsmen. They’re the tricksters.’ The hard fury is back in the White Knight’s expression. ‘They lie and they lie and they lie. Even the idea that we can be safe in this horrible forest is a lie! An illusion! They’re the ones who wreck everything, they’re the evil ones, they’re the ones who deserve to be snuffed out!’ She starts angrily stomping away, waving her hands towards the forge. ‘Use the forge, it’s at your disposal. Make something really vicious that’ll eviscerate those fruiting huntsmen!’

‘OK, thanks, but I don’t really need it right now,’ Gretel tells the departing Knight. ‘As I say, there’s the blueprints to do first, and…’

The White Knight turns and comes back, with an expression that resolutely refuses to express any sort of sheepishness. ‘Fine. Actually, you could do me a favour and deliver this kettle.’

11
Hiccups

Gretel squeezes back out of the cave and tries to shake the general stench of it from herself.

‘This is a nice kettle, this is,’ says Trevor, from the lid of the kettle slung over Gretel’s shoulder. ‘The White Knight’s outdone herself.’

‘I did wonder where Buttercup got all those spares,’ Gretel admits.

‘Now what?’ asks Trevor.

‘Reconnaissance,’ says Gretel.

‘Yay!’ Trevor cheers. ‘What kind of reconnaissance?’

‘Oh, I thought just a scout around the forest’s border. See if we can find where the huntsmen are coming in, talk to some of the creatures there.’ She thinks. ‘Some of the creatures can talk, can’t they?’

‘Oh, yeah, yeah.’ Trevor pauses. ‘That doesn’t mean, though, that they’ll necessarily want to talk to you. Maybe let me ask the questions to begin with.’

‘Because I’m an outsider?’

‘Eh… sort of,’ says Trevor. ‘Just… don’t expect to be particularly popular with some of the guys out here.’

‘But I’m trying to help them!’

‘Still. And it’s definitely best not to mention Jack. At all.’

Gretel grins. ‘Let me guess. He goes around nicking gold off Leprechauns and all sorts.’

Trevor just shoots her a worried glance, which is rather unnerving when done with eight eyes. ‘Just don’t mention him, yeah?’

‘OK,’ says Gretel, ‘fine.’

The afternoon wears on. In the village of Nearby, the day drags. The sun is bright and cheery, but faces are cast down, as if the sky were leaden with rain. Sometimes people stop and blink at the bright sunlight, their everyday tasks made strange in the merry yellow light by their shared grief. At Mudd farm, Hansel busies himself with his chores, trying to keep his mind from wandering back to the thought of his missing half, and of the things he could do, the revenge he could exact if he tried…

‘You all right, Hansel?’

He looks up from his task of shoeing the carthorse. It’s Daisy, with a sad expression and a laden basket.

‘Sorry,’ says Daisy, ‘of course you’re not all right.’ She holds up the basket. ‘Mum said to bring you this. It’s a condolence basket.’

She hands it to him. In it are a freshly baked fish and a small bunch of garden flowers.

‘It’s not much,’ Daisy tells him apologetically, ‘but the basket is the main present.’

Hansel nods. ‘It’s a good basket,’ he says quietly.

Daisy shrugs, smiling and crying at the same time. ‘It’s what we do.’ She wipes away a tear. ‘Oh. That’s set me off again, I’m sorry. It’s not like she was my sister…’

No, Hansel thinks, but she was your friend, wasn’t she?

‘Are you all right?’ he asks her.

‘Oh!’ From the way her face crumples, Hansel can tell it’s the first time somebody’s asked her this since last night. Daisy nods that she’s fine, even though an onslaught of loud sobs says otherwise.

Hansel puts an arm around her, and waits for her to be able to speak again.

‘You could have gone with her, you know,’ Daisy says eventually, fishing a hankie from her sleeve. ‘We’d have all helped take care of the farm, you know that.’ She pauses, then whispers, ‘You could still go.’

‘And what about the village defences?’

‘I can handle those.’

‘What – on your own?’

‘I could show others how to use the catapults…’

‘And then someone could come after you, too.’

Daisy contemplates this, worrying at her hankie with her fingers. ‘You think we’re still being watched?’

‘I know we’re still being watched,’ Hansel tells her quietly. ‘There’s no way this is over yet.’

Daisy shakes her head. ‘I don’t think I care any more. It’s not fair, Hansel, none of this is fair.’

‘Shhh.’

‘No, not “shh!” We had a system, Hansel! We took their stupid rules and we made them work for us, but now all of that is ruined, and that’s their fault, not— HIC!’ Daisy blinks, confused that a sudden onset of hiccups has interrupted her courageous and, if there were indeed any tattletales listening in, suicidal speech. She tries again. ‘HIC! I just— HIC!’

‘It’s OK,’ Hansel tells her. ‘I understand. I feel the same way. And that’s why I’m not going anywhere. We have a lot to defend the village from. That’s where I’m needed most, right now.’

‘I’m starting to think,’ says Daisy, ‘that we’ve been pointing our catapults the wrong way. Maybe it’s not the Darkwood we need to defend ourselves from, maybe it’s the Cita— HIC!’

‘You’re right,’ says Hansel, ‘the catapults are limited. We need some new defences too.’

‘But Gretel’s gone.’ Daisy sniffs. ‘How are we supposed to come up with new contraptions without her?’

‘Gretel’s very clever, it’s true,’ says Hansel. ‘But I’ve got a friend who’s clever, too.’

Trevor leads Gretel the long way back to the cottage, at her request, so that they can cover a couple of miles of the Darkwood’s perimeter before dusk. There are no huntsman tracks to be found so far, but they do happen upon a Fairy ring. Gretel almost steps in it before Trevor stops her.

‘Woah! I would not do that if I were you, mate.’

At first, it looks like nothing but a rotten tree stump, surrounded by a rough circle of fungus. It’s only as Gretel stands very still at its edge and watches that she sees that it’s teeming with little creatures.

They’re no bigger than insects, with translucent wings that shimmer like a dragonfly’s, and spindly grey six-limbed bodies. One could easily mistake them for a swarm of some fly or other, unless one really watched.

They have faces, and the ends of their little limbs have hands and feet. They’re dressed in blades of grass, pine needles, petals and small leaves, and they chatter to one another in high-pitched, buzzing voices.

‘Afternoon, friends,’ says Trevor cheerfully.

The Fairy swarm stop what they’re doing and look at Trevor.

‘Spider!’ one shrieks.

‘Spider!’ They all go into a whirling, buzzing panic.

‘Easy there!’ Trevor shouts. ‘Easy!’

‘I thought you said it would be better if you did the talking,’ says Gretel.

‘Yeah, but…’ Trevor sighs. ‘OK, sometimes, spiders have been known to eat Fairies. But not me,’ he adds, louder. ‘I’m on a Fairy-free diet, I swear!’

Gretel clears her throat. ‘It’s all right, he’s with me.’

‘Human!’ screams another one.

The terrified buzzing gets even more frenzied. ‘Human! Human!’

‘Why in the world would you think,’ says Trevor to her, patiently, ‘that a species scared of spiders wouldn’t be ten times more frightened of human beings?’ He calls out to the panicking Fairies again. ‘Fairies! I’m not going to hurt you! Look – I don’t have a web, and I promise I’ll keep my distance. I just want to talk.’

‘Talk?’ buzzes the swarm. ‘Talk? Talk of what?’

‘Have you seen any humans with masks pass this way?’ Trevor asks them. ‘They might have been carrying weapons.’

There is another buzz, and then, ‘Huntsmen, you mean?’

‘Yeah. You know of them?’

‘Huntsmen ripped up our nests back when we lived outside the forest,’ comes another voice from the swarm. ‘Then the other humans started copying their behaviour. Yes, we know of the huntsmen.’

‘Have you seen any actually in the forest?’ asks Gretel.

The buzzing grows anxious again. This time, many voices speak.

‘Why would we?’

‘Have they come here?’

‘Are we not safe?’

‘Will it happen again?’

‘It’s fine, it’s fine,’ says Gretel hurriedly, ‘we’re just… making sure.’ She pauses. ‘Um. If, hypothetically, huntsmen were to come in here…’

‘…which they won’t,’ adds Trevor.

‘Yes, quite, which they won’t. But… just to be on the safe side, is there anything you think would help you fend them off from your home?’

‘We protect our ring by cursing those who dare set foot in it.’

‘Well,’ says Gretel, ‘that sounds…’

‘Ask them what the curse is, though,’ says Trevor.

‘Er…’

The buzzing takes on a slightly embarrassed tone. ‘Usually a… a rash,’ admits a Fairy voice.

‘A rash,’ repeats Gretel.

‘Yes,’ says another Fairy. ‘But a pretty nasty one. Lasts for up to seven days, they’d think twice about… about uprooting a whole other Fairy colony.’

‘I see,’ says Gretel. ‘Well, good job there aren’t any huntsmen around here, then. But I might think of something you could potentially use against one. Just in case.’

The rest of the trip proves just as fruitless. They get back to the cake cottage just before dusk, and find Buttercup trying to make dinner while wearing cakeified mittens.

‘Ooh, new kettle! Snow’s such a sweetheart.’ She smiles up at Gretel. ‘How did it go? Make any progress?’

‘A little bit,’ replies Gretel. ‘I’m starting to see the scale of the task in hand, at least.’

‘Well, that’s good!’

‘Is it?’ says Gretel. ‘Because, as far as I can see, the scale of it is impossibly huge.’

‘Oh, nothing’s impossible, in the Darkwood.’ Buttercup smiles. ‘Could you do me a favour, my dear, and call for Jack? He promised he’d fetch me some greens once he’s done in the privy, but he’s been gone ages.’

‘Eurgh.’

Buttercup gives a serene little sigh. ‘You know what boys are like.’

‘I’ve got a twin brother. Of course I know what boys are like.’

Gretel turns to go back out, and Trevor hops onto her shoulder again.

‘I’ll come with!’

‘Trevor, it’s fine. I don’t need escorting to the toilet.’

‘Oh no, it’s not that. I’ve got some particularly good webs up there, I want to see what I’ve caught today. Come on, biped, giddyup!’

They walk around the outside of the cottage, towards the small outdoor latrine at the edge of the clearing. That is to say, Gretel walks, while Trevor sits on her shoulder and excitedly lists all his very favourite flies.

‘Bluebottles, now they’re always a treat, get loads of those around the privy, for obvious reasons, house flies too. Daddy-long-legs look impressive enough but there’s precious little eating on them. Dragonflies, on the other hand—’

‘I wonder why boys spend so long in the toilet,’ Gretel interrupts him. ‘Sometimes with Hansel it was because he’d run out of leaves.’

‘Leaves?’

‘For wiping. You know.’

‘Oh.’ Trevor pauses. ‘I excrete crystals, so I don’t really trouble myself with how you weirdos go about that stuff.’ He pauses again. ‘How could Jack of all people possibly run out of leaves, though?’

Gretel thinks about this, and breaks into a run.

‘What?’ asks Trevor, hanging on to her.

‘Something’s not right.’

‘What, just because he’s taking forever to—’

Trevor is cut off by a muffled, terrified scream coming from the direction of the privy. The sound is followed by strange, inhuman hisses and snarls. Gretel reaches the privy and kicks the door open, hoping to goodness that the unsettling noises aren’t just Jack suffering from a particularly frustrating bout of constipation.

12
Just When You Thought it Was Safe to Go to the Privy

What Gretel in fact sees startles her rigid for a moment. Jack’s torso is almost entirely down the hole of the latrine; he’s clinging on to the sides for dear life with hands and feet as two large eel-like creatures with sharp-toothed faces and strong, clawing arms slither and writhe over him, trying to pull him down. Man and creatures alike are absolutely covered in foul-smelling sewage.

‘Gretel!’ calls Jack, his normally cocky voice made strange with fear. ‘Help me, please!’

‘Oh no,’ says Trevor. ‘Swamp Mermaids.’

The Mermaids turn towards Gretel. They growl and snap as they try to prise Jack’s desperately grasping fingers loose.

‘What do I do?’ asks Gretel. ‘What do I do?’

‘You’re the genius,’ replies Trevor. ‘Think of something!’

‘Please!’ cries Jack. ‘They’re going to kill me!’

Mermaids. Mermaids in a toilet in a forest. She never knew you could get those; how is she supposed to fight things off if she doesn’t even know what they are?

‘Do they talk?’ she asks. ‘Maybe we can come to a reasonable agreement.’

‘Agreement?’ echoes Jack incredulously. ‘They want to kill me!’

‘I’m sure they don’t—’

‘We do want to kill this wretched man,’ one Mermaid tells her in a wet, haunted voice.

‘Oh,’ replies Gretel. ‘Er. Why?’

‘Look at us,’ hisses the other. ‘Look at all of us.’ It turns back to Jack viciously. ‘You did this.’

‘Please!’

‘You started all of this! This is your fault! We’ll kill you!’

‘I was a little kid! I didn’t know!’

‘We’ll drown you in your own filth, it’s what you deserve. Murderer!’

‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I—’ Jack cries out as one of the Mermaids bites his hand, causing him to lose his grip. The other Mermaid slithers towards the other hand, and then stops suddenly, stiff and pained. Jack looks up in surprise at Gretel, who has something tied to the end of a stick, which she’s pressing into the Mermaid’s side.

Gretel pulls it away from the Mermaid, which slips, stunned and flapping, from Jack’s body and drops into the cesspit below. The device is simply her electrical torch tied to a stick, the dynamo wound up and the bulb hurriedly removed to uncover the electrical wiring so that an unpleasant but non-lethal electric shock might be applied to a creature wet enough to conduct it. It’s not exactly an elegant solution to the problem, but since she had limited data, supplies and time to work with, it was her best shot. She waves the device at the second Mermaid, threatening it. The Mermaid snarls, spits and slips back down into the cesspit with a noise like cold baked beans glopping out of a tin. She pulls a filthy and trembling Jack up as she hears both Mermaids squelching sulkily away through the drainage system.

‘Are you OK?’

‘Few cuts and bruises,’ Jack tells her, the false bravado to his tone betrayed by the fact that he’s shaking. ‘I’ll get over it. I always do.’

‘I didn’t realise that some of the Darkwood creatures actually attack the cottage.’

‘Well…’ says Trevor, as diplomatically as possible, ‘they don’t. Not exactly.’

‘It’s me,’ adds Jack. ‘They attack me, not the cottage.’

‘Why you?’

‘Because I’m a horrible person!’

‘I’m sure you’re not… I certainly hope you’re not, I just moved in with you.’

‘You know I’m a criminal! Didn’t you hear them?’ Jack’s tone has a hint of hysteria to it now. ‘All of this is my fault. I’m a murderer.’

Buttercup rushes over to them as soon as Gretel helps the bedraggled Jack to the kitchen doorway, but stops a few steps away, overcome by the stench.

‘Oh my giddy trousers, what happened?’

‘Swamp Mermaids. Crawled up through the cesspit.’

‘Oh, you poor…’ Buttercup indicates without actually touching any of them that they are to go no further into her nice clean kitchen in their current condition. ‘Let’s get you cleaned up. Er. Outside.’

It’s almost dark again outside, and there’s a chill to the air. Gretel fills buckets for Jack from the stream and winces at the freezing temperature of the water. By the time she gets over to them, Jack’s clothes are in a sodden, stinking pile next to what she can only describe as a ‘modesty hedge’ that Jack has grown around himself.

‘It’s cold,’ she says, tipping the first bucket over him. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s all right.’ Jack doesn’t sound cocky any more, or even frightened. He sounds flat, drained, miserable. Somehow, this upsets Gretel even more than the sound of him screaming in terror.

‘I still don’t understand,’ says Gretel. ‘Your wanted posters always said you were a thief, not a murderer.’

‘I didn’t mean to do it,’ says Jack quietly. ‘I didn’t know! I’d only just learned about my powers, I was just a kid. I worked out I could grow a beanstalk high enough to reach a Giant’s cloud, but I didn’t realise till it was too late how unstable it would be. That it could just… shrivel away to nothing, with someone still on it.’

‘Oh, no,’ breathes Gretel.

‘I’d got greedy,’ Jack continues. ‘I stole too much. The Giant found out, came after me. I was scared, I messed up, I didn’t mean to! But…’ He pauses, soaping himself unhappily. ‘When they found out what had happened, the other Giants wanted revenge. Or justice, at least. Started taking it out on my town when they wouldn’t give me over to be tried. I’d made up this tall story about some mysterious stranger buying our cow for magic beans. Made myself look like the innocent, unmagical victim of it all. I’m not proud of it. As I say, I was scared. What with the make-believe magic bean man and the Giants, the town council, they… they called for the huntsmen.’

He indicates for Gretel to pour another bucketful of cold water onto him.

‘And in their defence, they couldn’t have known what would happen. The huntsmen had only been running the place a few months, everyone thought we’d just be going back to the natural order of things, magic had gone a bit too far, so humans were taking back control, we all thought it would be fair, not…’ He sighs.

‘Is this why there aren’t any Giants any more?’ Gretel asks.

‘They said they were a threat that had to be dealt with.’

‘Stepmother told me once they were all sent away.’

‘The lucky ones went away,’ says Jack. ‘Some of them tried to stay.’

‘What happened to them?’

‘What happens to witches who are caught before they can escape into Darkwood?’

Gretel casts her eyes down. ‘Oh.’

‘Soon after that, I ran away,’ Jack says. ‘I knew my story wouldn’t hold up to much scrutiny. We didn’t even have a cow! Anyway, that’s the story. That’s why they hate me here. I started the first purge. I drew the first blood. And the huntsmen don’t even mention it on my wanted posters.’

‘Because if they say that what you did was murder, then what does that make them?’ asks Buttercup softly, scrubbing down Jack’s dirty clothes, her sleeves wrapped over her hands to keep the second bar of soap from becoming as cakey as the one from her first attempt.

Gretel holds up a towel for Jack. Strange. This feels like it may well be the first time Jack’s been completely honest with her, yet still something about the story seems to not quite add up. For starters, this apparently happened at the start of the huntsmen’s administration, but as far as she knew, they’d been in charge for a very long time. Certainly for as long as Gretel could remember, and nobody in the village had ever so much as mentioned a time before the huntsmen. Sodden wet and shivering, Jack looks small and pathetic and, Gretel realises, surely no older than twenty-one. If this had happened over a decade ago…

‘How old were you?’ she asks.

Jack takes the towel and wraps it around himself. He still looks very small, very frail.

‘Seven,’ he tells her.

‘Seven?’ she echoes. ‘You were seven years old?’

Jack nods, and tries a return to the cocky smile. ‘Precocious lad, wasn’t I?’

It takes a long time for Jack to stop shivering, hunched in front of the fire, still wrapped in the towel as his clothes dry out. Buttercup dishes out dinner, but Jack doesn’t seem very hungry.

‘So that’s why Trevor told me not to mention Jack around the forest,’ says Gretel eventually.

‘Not everyone trusts witches, even out here,’ says Buttercup.

‘They’d like you a lot more if you weren’t sheltering the Giant Killer,’ adds Jack.

‘My home town would have liked me a lot more if I didn’t keep accidentally turning things into baked goods,’ says Buttercup with a forced cheer, ‘but that’s just what I do.’ She takes off her apron and throws it straight into the bin when it turns into a large chapatti.

‘But it’s so unfair,’ Gretel exclaims, ‘after you’ve spent years protecting everyone in Darkwood.’

‘We don’t do it so that people will like us more, dear,’ says Buttercup gently. ‘We do it because it’s the right thing to do.’

‘Why do you always have to make everything sound so nice?’ sighs Jack. ‘Maybe I am just trying to get back into all the beasties’ good books.’

‘Jack, that’s just not true. You always get like this, you start being too hard on yourself.’

‘I’m not! It only looks that way because you’re too soft!’

‘Guys…?’ Gretel really doesn’t want to find herself in the middle of a housemates’ squabble so soon after moving in.

Unfortunately, instead of breaking up the burgeoning spat, Gretel only manages to turn Jack’s attention on to her.

‘What about you? You just moved in with a murderer and nobody bothered to tell you. Surprise! How do you feel about that, Gretel?’

‘I feel like…’ Gretel frowns. ‘Like you were very young, and it sounds like an accident. And that maybe, if we can get the other creatures to understand that, then perhaps things will work themselves out?’

‘Oh for pity’s sake, you’re as bad as Buttercup!’

‘That’s enough, Jack,’ Buttercup tells him. She lowers her voice and mutters, ‘“Too soft”, indeed…’

There is an eerie scrabbling at the door.

‘Come in,’ calls Buttercup.

The door swings open suddenly, revealing the White Knight, surrounded by Dwarves, her foot still extended from kicking the door open.

‘Evening. Brought you some rabbit.’ She slams three roasted rabbits down on the table. ‘You never have enough meat.’ She follows this by also flinging a crumpled, bird-dropping-spattered parchment in Gretel’s general direction. ‘And here’s your precious map, New Girl. Hope it’s good enough for you.’

Gretel picks it up. It’s scratchily drawn, with lines that wobble into one another and barely legible writing. It’s incomplete as the White Knight had warned, stopping suddenly far from the northern and eastern edges of the wood, with the blank space beyond daubed with monstrous bear and wolf faces, and the words ‘NO’ and ‘BAD’. Also, the whole thing stinks like the Dwarf cave.

‘Yes,’ says Gretel diplomatically, ‘this is very useful. Thanks.’

The White Knight sits by the fire, her feet up, and starts tucking in to one of the rabbits. ‘Oh, and heads up, Trott, little birdie tells me the Swamp Mermaids are planning a stealth attack on you through the cesspit draina…’ She notices the general state of Jack. ‘Ah. Too late, I see. Never mind.’

The map, when Gretel looks at it later, shows several possible entry points, some of them only a few dozen miles upstream from Nearby Village. It is through one of these upriver points, helpfully marked on the map with a splat of ink and a scrawl that could read ‘Goblin Pass’ but looks like ‘Captain Prrr’, that a group of five masked huntsmen creep under cover of the night. They are armed with vicious crossbows and covered with black cowls and fake, calm white faces; however, the body language of all but the leader of the group suggests a general air of nervousness. All of them know better than to ask why exactly they have been sent out here to encroach upon this final refuge of the witches and the beasties. The question is left unspoken amongst them. An Ogre crashes through the trees in the gloom. They all raise their crossbows. The creature doesn’t charge them, but instead flinches and yelps and hurries away from them, knocking over trees in its haste, sending birds and Wood Sprites twittering and squawking in alarm.

‘They’re learning,’ says the leader, a satisfied smile to her masked voice.

‘Do we chase the wretch, Sister?’ asks another huntsman.

‘We are here to chart this region,’ the leader tells him, ‘not for sport.’

‘Of course, Sister…’

He is cut off by the leader’s raised hand. For a moment there is no sound, no movement but the flittering birds and Sprites, trying to reorganise their disturbed nests. Slowly, the leader walks towards a Sprite nest that has been thrown to the ground by the departing Ogre. The other huntsmen follow close behind. She crouches, and with thumb and forefinger, plucks the Sprite trying to gather its things back together by the wings, squeezes until her fingers run wet and sticky, and then flicks the crumpled little creature away. With the nest now unattended, she rummages through the mess of twigs and dry leaves, and pulls out a shiny red gem, cut into the shape of a heart.

‘What is that?’ asks a huntsman.

‘Thieving Sprites, forever stealing pretty things from humans,’ says another.

The leader holds the gem closer, inspecting it. There is a fair amount of dirt on it; it seems to have been either hoarded in a nest or left on the forest floor for several years. The gem is large, expensive, set with a gold mount for a chain. This used to be a pendant for a necklace. In fact, this used to be a very particular pendant for a very particular necklace, for a very particular person.

‘You seriously don’t know what this is?’ asks the leader.

The others shake their heads.

‘This is the Princess’ Heart.’

13
The Princess’ Heart

‘The Princess’ Heart,’ mutters the Head Huntsman, turning the jewel over in his fingers. It glints in the cold light of the castle’s not-a-throne-room.

The expedition leader bows down low, discreetly scratching a rash on the back of her hand. ‘Aye, Brother. The damage to the mount is in keeping with it being torn off by a branch – probably as she ran into the forest.’

The Head Huntsman shakes his head and sighs. ‘It was a terrible oversight by my predecessor to allow the princess to escape when we took the Citadel. To allow her to get to the Darkwood was a failing that can only be forgiven in the next life.’

‘May there be mercy upon his soul,’ mutters the expedition leader.

‘But now we have this,’ continues the Head Huntsman, gazing at the pendant. ‘Something tangible. Something precious to her. Something…’ He goes over to the Mirror and pulls off the cover. ‘Mirror, show me the…’ He stops, and starts again. ‘Mirror, Mirror, hear me say, where is the princess who ran away?’

The Mirror shows nothing but flickering static, but from somewhere far beyond its surface comes a man’s voice.

‘The princess,’ says the voice, ‘is in my heart.’

‘What?’ sneers the Head Huntsman. ‘This?’ He holds the jewel up towards the Mirror’s surface.

There is a short pause before the voice speaks again. ‘That is not a heart.’

‘It is her heart,’ replies the Head Huntsman. ‘She wore it everywhere.’

‘It is not a heart,’ repeats the voice from the Mirror. ‘It has been stolen. Hearts cannot be stolen, only given freely. That is nothing but stone and metal, a lump of carbon and gold.’

‘Show me,’ replies the Head Huntsman, his voice rising, his calm manner burning away, ‘the princess!’

‘The loveliest in all the land,’ says the voice, ‘the loveliest in all the land, the loveliest…’

‘Do you want me to smash you, accursed Mirror? Shatter you into a thousand pieces, silence that unnatural voice of yours?’

‘I do,’ replies the voice. ‘But you would not. You crave power more than we both crave peace.’

‘I do not do this for power!’ The Head Huntsman’s angry cries seem alien, muffled behind the blank expression. ‘I do this to help maintain the peaceful, natural order in this world!’

‘That is why you watch peasants? Farmers, many miles from here, minding their own business, simply exhibiting capabilities that you deem unseemly for their status, or their sex? Some still naught but children?’

‘That Mudd girl was a witch! She was dangerous!’

‘She was not. None of them were dangerous.’

‘The Cake Witch was. The Trott boy was!’

‘The Cake Witch was merely unfocused; she never did any real harm and could have been helped. The Trott boy was a thief, granted, but stole to eat and survive.’

‘He murdered a Giant,’ says the expedition leader quietly, scratching inside her sleeves.

‘Oh?’ says the voice from the Mirror. ‘Is that what you believe?’

The Head Huntsman snaps his head to face the expedition leader. ‘You are excused, Sister,’ he says.

The expedition leader bows. ‘Apologies for speaking out of turn, Brother. I was merely…’

‘Apology accepted, Sister.’ He waves her away. ‘Go and put some ointment on that Fairy rash.’

‘Be careful with the truth,’ says the voice from the Mirror. ‘You think it will bring you power to find the truths that others hide, but what of the truths you hide yourself?’

‘Truth is… malleable,’ says the Head Huntsman.

‘It is not,’ replies the voice. ‘You’re even lying about lying, which is almost impressive.’

‘Oh, you think you’re so clever,’ the Head Huntsman snarls, his false face still impassive, ‘but don’t think for a moment that I don’t know when you’re hiding the full truth from me as well! Trying to toy with me over the witch of Mudd Farm. Trying to make me doubt myself, think I sent my man after the wrong twin. It couldn’t have been the boy, he’s a soft dimwit!’

There’s no reply from the Mirror. He punches the table it rests on, making the Mirror rattle.

‘Show me the witch of Nearby Village!’

Still no reply. He screams in frustration. ‘Mirror, Mirror, on the table, show me the Mudd Witch if you’re able!’

Static again, and then the Mirror shows the black trees of Darkwood once more.

‘So it is the girl, in Darkwood.’ The image of Darkwood flickers into the shape of the figure blocking his view of the magical forest again. ‘But,’ mutters the Head Huntsman, ‘but last time you showed me the farm as well. Show me the farm again!’

The image doesn’t change. Still the twisting branches, still the faceless figure, demanding he return what has been stolen.

‘Show me the farm!’ he shouts. ‘Show me Nearby Village!’

‘I cannot do that,’ the voice replies calmly.

‘What? Just because I didn’t ask you in rhyme? Mirror, I swear…’

‘The magical spell that blocks the view of Darkwood appears to have spread to the village as well.’

‘Spread?’ echoes the Head Huntsman. ‘How has it spread? When did it spread?’

‘Since you sent that poor girl into the Darkwood,’ replies the voice. ‘I cannot say for certain how it has happened. However, does it not stand to reason that if there are more witches in the Darkwood now, they would be able to cast a blocking spell further afield, since they’d have more collective magic to harness? The Mudd girl would likely want to protect her old village; she’d still hold it dear to her heart.’

‘Hearts, again.’ The Head Huntsman sneers. ‘Is that all you ever talk about?’

‘You do not seem to understand their importance,’ says the voice from the Mirror.

‘There’s something that I do understand,’ says the Head Huntsman, ‘which is that the Darkwood and Nearby Village are now linked, somehow. I’m sure there are ways that can be used to our advantage.’ He gazes down into the Mirror’s image – the figure blocking his view now completely fills the Mirror’s glass, a distant, furious voice repeating over and over again a demand to return what has been stolen. He throws the cover back over the Mirror. ‘And something,’ he adds, ‘will have to be done about this nasty little spell.’

Days pass. The village returns to normal with a speed that rather startles Hansel. Even he busies himself with outward acts of normality. The farm still needs to keep running after all, people and animals need to be fed, the village defences need to be maintained and added to. Daisy brings her weaving to the farm every day, and goes to Gretel’s little lean-to workshop, poring over his sister’s designs, making alterations, adding new ideas of her own. It hasn’t gone unnoticed by the village, but nobody seems to suspect what it is she’s actually doing. They nudge Daisy and Hansel, make little comments about it being nice that she’s spending so much time round there, comforting the poor boy after his loss. Hansel knows what the villagers mean. It’s easier for them both if they let the village believe that’s all it is. After all – it is comforting, having somebody else about, having another mechanical mind pottering around Gretel’s workshop. It helps him keep the grief under control. He doesn’t know what would happen if he were to slip, to let that darkness he holds locked up in his heart come pouring out of him like a scream. He doesn’t want to attract another huntsman. More importantly still, he doesn’t want to hurt anybody.

He concentrates on getting through each day – focuses on the necessary, mundane chores. He milks cows and tends crops and washes up and lugs heavy wood and metal for Daisy to hammer and weld into each new contraption. He tries not to think about the times when he used to do all these things with his sister. He tries not to think about what she’s doing right now.

Gretel hauls a sack over her shoulder and follows the map to the next Fairy nest. The contents of her bag are small, but many, and it makes for a heavily laden trip. Over a hundred tiny, Fairy-sized crossbows, armed with poison-dipped needles. Toxic enough to give an adult human a very nasty, incapacitating sting, if not quite kill them – much to the White Knight’s annoyance.

‘Why can’t you let them defend themselves properly?’

‘I am.’

‘It’s not proper if you don’t let them kill their attackers.’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘You know, New Girl, one of these days you’re going to understand what sort of fight we’re actually up against, and that gentle slaps on the wrist aren’t going to work.’

‘It’s not a gentle slap on the wrist, I’m just not in the market to kill anybody.’

‘Oh, so you’re going to ask the Ogres not to hit any armed huntsmen too hard, are you? You’re going to tell the Wyvern to follow fire safety rules?’

‘We live in a forest. Fire safety benefits all of us.’

The White Knight grunts her disapproval, clanking alongside Gretel. She and the Dwarves are carrying some larger weaponry for the Ogres, Mermaids, Wyvern and Satyr they’ve found, and some attachable wheels for a Centaur they stumbled across with lame hind legs. It’s heavy work, especially since Buttercup and Jack can’t help, what with so many of the creatures they’re visiting wanting to kill Jack and Buttercup not wanting to turn any of Gretel’s intricate inventions into a particularly ornate pie.

The White Knight stops suddenly. ‘Look.’

Gretel looks. This is supposed to be another Wood Sprite nest site, but all around are trampled, torn-up trees. The Dwarves drop what they’re carrying and scuttle around agitatedly, sniffing and poking at the devastated site.

‘Somebody spooked an Ogre here,’ says the White Knight.

‘Well, don’t look at me, I’ve been inventing.’

‘I know it wasn’t you. This was huntsmen.’

‘Trousers. When?’

The White Knight removes her helmet and inspects a trail. ‘A while ago. Couple of weeks?’

‘Then we’re too late,’ Gretel sighs.

‘Oh good gracious, yes, I thought that was implicit,’ replies the White Knight, indicating around at the scene of devastation.

‘It looks like the nests have been ransacked,’ notes Gretel. ‘Who does that?’

‘Huntsmen,’ says the White Knight. ‘And… Goblins, Leprechauns, Gnomes, other Fairies, jackdaws, these lads… Oi!’ She claps her hands at the Dwarves, who have all started clamouring around one particular abandoned nest. ‘Pack it in!’

‘Hi ho!’ shrieks a Dwarf excitedly. The others join in. ‘Hi ho! Hi ho!’

‘Oh,’ sighs the White Knight wearily. ‘They found gold. The Wood Sprites hoard it, you see. All sorts of shiny things.’

One of the Dwarves scrabbles over to her, holding a tiny fragment of gold out for her approval. ‘Hi ho.’

‘Yes, thank you, that’s very…’ The White Knight stops, staring at the scrap of gold. ‘Oh!’

‘What is it?’ Gretel asks.

‘This is… this was…’ The White Knight tries to collect herself, and calls to the Dwarves, ‘This all there was, lads?’

The Dwarves nod. ‘Yummy! Hi ho!’

‘Oh.’

‘What?’

The White Knight shakes herself out of it, slipping the piece of gold into her tunic. ‘It’s nothing. A necklace I had when I escaped out here. Lost it the first night, before the lads found me. I think that was a little part of it.’ She shrugs. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

‘We could look for it?’

‘No. Waste of time. It’s not like it had any practical use, not really.’

‘Did it have sentimental value…?’ Gretel trails off, aware of just how foolish it seems to use the word ‘sentimental’ anywhere near the White Knight.

‘It was from my dad, if that’s what you mean.’ The White Knight sighs. ‘Maybe it’s best I don’t have any reminders of him after all.’

‘Did… did he die?’

‘I wish.’ The White Knight notices Gretel’s expression. ‘Not like that. My dad’s great, he’s better than any other dad, better than your dad.’

Gretel inwardly rolls her eyes and lets the White Knight carry on.

‘They’ve got him,’ the White Knight continues. ‘They took him, when I escaped. Wishing death on somebody in that sort of position is a mercy.’

‘Oh. I’m sorry.’

‘Yeah,’ says the White Knight, and punches Gretel in the arm.

‘Ow! What was that for?’

The White Knight flaps her hands vaguely. ‘I was getting all soppy.’ She picks up her sack full of weapons again. ‘We’ve got a forest to protect, and it’ll be dark soon. Come on. At least it’s not Monday.’

Gretel frowns, mentally counting off the days. ‘But it is Monday.’

The White Night blinks, counts on her fingers, then looks across at Gretel, horrified.

‘Oh, fruit. It’s Bin Night! Run!’

14
Bin Night

Back when she lived in the village, Gretel spent some time charting when the beasties would come out of the Darkwood, looking for patterns that might predict when an attack was more likely. She discovered a spike in disturbances from the Darkwood on Monday nights and Tuesday mornings. At the time, the reasons for this phenomenon were a mystery, but now she knows. Those creatures had been fleeing the Bin Men. Perhaps due to insufficient offerings being left out, perhaps because they hadn’t found shelter in time. Everyone, every thing in Darkwood, from the biggest Ogre to the tiniest Sprite, is terrified of the Bin Men and rightly so.

Why exactly the Bin Men always choose to do their prowl on a Monday night remains an enigma to Gretel, and one that can probably wait to be solved. Right now, she’s more concerned with getting safely back to the cottage before nightfall. The bag of tiny Fairy weapons still weighs her down, but she doesn’t want to drop it. The Fairies deserve to be safe in their homes as much as she does. It’ll be another week before she can replace all the tiny crossbows in her bag, and who’s to say there won’t be another huntsman incursion in that time?

The White Knight and her Dwarves manage to run ahead, laden down as they are with the heavier inventions. Gretel tries to follow close in the knight’s wake, following her expert path through the undergrowth, making use of the trampled-down trail that she leaves behind her. Nevertheless, after ten minutes of this, her legs are aching with the effort and her lungs are heaving to draw in enough breath. She wonders how the White Knight can keep up such a pace, weighed down by her armour as well as her heavy load. She thinks briefly about the story the White Knight told her earlier, of herself as a girl, alone in the wood, losing a necklace that was so dear to her, after she’d already lost so much. Gretel can barely imagine the White Knight – Snow – being so vulnerable.

The White Knight leaps over a fallen tree trunk and skids down a steep bank. Gretel follows, pausing only when the White Knight and her Dwarves fail to stop at the bottom of the bank, and head at speed straight into the large stream running through the valley.

‘Shortcut,’ calls the White Knight, already up to her waist, as Dwarves doggy paddle noisily around her. ‘Come on, New Girl! Or are you going to stay there and die? Your choice.’

Gretel has been in the Darkwood for weeks now. She’s heard the Bin Men out there, rooting through their offerings, as she and the others cower in the cottage. She runs into the freezing stream after the others, and then, wet, cold and heavier still with her waterlogged clothes, back up the opposite bank.

‘We’ll take you straight back to the cave,’ shouts the White Knight. ‘You can shelter with us tonight, there’s no time to get back to the cottage. Hard right at that tree stump!’

‘Help!’

‘I’m already helping you, New Girl. What do you want me to do – carry you?’

‘That wasn’t me,’ replies Gretel. Despite the urgency of getting to the cave before dark, she slows to a jog, craning her neck to look into the gloaming forest in the direction of the voice.

She sees it. ‘There!’ She points off to the left of the tree stump. Half hidden in the tangled trees, a small, dappled Unicorn is struggling, its leg caught in something.

‘Oh for crying out loud,’ cries the White Knight, out loud. She stomps over to the Unicorn with Gretel. ‘Why is it always us that have to deal with this stuff?’

‘Because we’re the protectors of this forest, so it’s literally our job?’

‘Yes, but why now?’

As they approach the Unicorn, Gretel sees what’s caught the Unicorn’s leg – a viciously spiked metal bear trap.

‘Oh no,’ she cries, running over.

‘Huntsmen.’ The White Knight’s face is a picture of righteous fury. ‘They’re setting traps now?’

‘Oh, yes,’ says the Unicorn. ‘Needless to say, ow.’

During the last few weeks in the Darkwood, Gretel has spoken with several Unicorns. She’s got used now to the fact that they can all speak almost perfect human. She did find this a little unsettling at first, as she said at the time to her friend, the talking spider.

The White Knight tries prising the trap open with just her gauntlets, then with a small axe, to no avail.

‘Hmm,’ says Gretel. ‘Maybe we could use some sort of hydraulic jack…’

‘Sure,’ says the Unicorn, ‘you have a little think. It’s not as if I’m in terrible pain or the Bin Men are going to get me or anything.’

Gretel doesn’t rise to it. Unicorns, she has found, are even more haughty and sarcastic than the White Knight, but are generally benign. ‘Can someone pass me one of the launchers we made for the Ogres? There’s a piece in the firing system I can use as a screw jack.’

The White Knight hands her one of the devices she made for Ogres to propel stones long distances at potential intruders. Gretel quickly dismantles the firing mechanism and inserts a small screw into the trap at the right point away from the hinge. As she turns it, the trap slowly creaks open. The Unicorn pulls its leg free, a nasty wound just above the hoof.

‘Well,’ says the Unicorn, ‘I won’t be regally galloping anywhere any time soon. You may as well just leave me out here for the Bin Men.’ It looks at them with an expression that horsily says, ‘I expect you NOT to leave me out here for the Bin Men but to help me take shelter because I am a majestic Unicorn.’

‘We’ll help you,’ says the White Knight. ‘I know of a shelter not far from here. Come on.’

‘But my leg…’

The White Knight pulls out the wheel attachment they’ve been carrying for the crippled Centaur.

The Unicorn sniffs it. ‘This is far too big for me, and it’s made out of entirely the wrong sort of wood. Eurgh, has this been built for a Centaur?’

‘Just put it on, you egotistical horn with a pony attached to it.’ The White Knight scrabbles to buckle the contraption on.

Just as the last strap is done up, they hear it – the low rumble, the clatter, the strange, rhythmic beeping noise that they make. Bin Men.

‘They’re coming,’ whispers Gretel.

‘Run!’ cries the White Knight.

They run again, the Dwarves sometimes physically pushing the Unicorn along, until Gretel trips over something large, warm and black. The Dwarves screech with hostility and draw their axes as Gretel pushes herself upright and sees what it is she’s just stumbled into.

A huntsman. Probably female, from the height and build, kneeling down in the act of setting yet another trap. The Unicorn whinnies nervously and backs away as the huntsman rises, pulling a vicious-looking knife from her belt.

‘What are you doing in our forest?’ demands the White Knight, holding her ground, the many Dwarfish axes surrounding the huntsman’s single blade.

‘My duty,’ replies the huntsman smoothly. The voice is indeed female, and sounds young.

‘Trapping innocent creatures in those horrible contraptions?’ asks Gretel.

The huntsman turns to her. ‘Oh look, it’s the Mudd Witch.’

Gretel blinks. Is that what they’re calling her now?

‘Yes, Mudd Witch,’ continues the young huntsman, ‘we are using non-lethal devices to conduct research upon the creatures here. A simple scientific mission. We were of the understanding that you liked science, Mudd Witch.’

‘That’s not science! That’s just mean!’

‘It’s still science, witch.’

‘Where’s your hypothesis, eh? Where’s your method plan? Have you even looked into cruelty-free options, or…’

‘I’m not really sure now’s the time to argue about coursework,’ says the Unicorn. There is more rumbling, more beeping from the forest. The sounds are getting closer.

‘You need to get out of here,’ the White Knight tells the huntsman. ‘Now.’

‘No!’

‘Who even sent you out here on a Monday night?’

Gretel stares at the huntsman. ‘Nobody did. She’s new. Trying to impress her superiors, get a quick promotion.’

‘Get out of my head, witch!’

‘I’m not in your…’ Gretel stops herself from getting further drawn into an argument that she has no time for. ‘We’re leaving,’ she says, nodding at the others to go past. ‘You should, too, if you want to get back alive.’

‘Are you threatening me?’ demands the huntsman.

‘No. I’m warning you.’

‘And she shouldn’t even have bothered doing that.’ The White Knight grabs Gretel’s wrist and drags her along, away from the huntsman. ‘Come on, New Girl.’

The young huntsman is still there, brushing the moss from her knees. She turns towards the sound of the Bin Men curiously. ‘Now, what manner of beastie do you suppose that is…?’

‘She’s going to die, isn’t she?’ Gretel asks the White Knight.

‘She’s a huntsman. Who cares?’ replies the White Knight. ‘We need to save ourselves and this ridiculous Unicorn.’

‘My name,’ says the Unicorn, ‘is Charles the Magnificent.’

Despite herself, Gretel turns and shouts after the huntsman, ‘You need to run! Run, and hide!’

The sound of the Bin Men is almost on them.

‘Come on,’ cries the White Knight, and they push on into the trees.

Behind her, Gretel can hear the huntsman start to scream.

‘We have to go back…’

‘Not for a huntsman! You wouldn’t catch me sacrificing myself or my lads for anyone stupid enough to deliberately stand in wait for the Bin Men, but definitely not for a huntsman!’ The White Knight’s grip is too strong for Gretel to pull free from, so she has to keep on running. There’s the sound of something approaching them through the trees from the direction they’re trying to run. The White Knight tries to turn, but suddenly they can hear something else closing in from behind them.

‘We’re surrounded,’ wails Charles the Magnificent, ‘what do we—’ He breaks off, pulls up his lip and sniffs the air. ‘Wait, that’s not Bin Men, that’s…’

The trees in front of him wilt and wither to nothing, revealing an anxious-looking Jack and Buttercup.

‘Eugh,’ says Charles the Magnificent, ‘it’s Trott.’

‘What are you doing out here so late?’ asks Buttercup, her voice tight with fear. ‘It’s Bin Night, we’ve been frantic with worry.’

‘Found this little guy,’ grunts the White Knight, indicating the wounded Unicorn.

‘“Little guy”?’ repeats Charles the Magnificent indignantly.

‘Oh, that’s adorable,’ says Buttercup, softening, ‘and so brave of you.’

The White Knight cracks the tiniest of smiles. ‘Well…’

‘Oh for the love of trousers,’ shouts Trevor from Buttercup’s shoulder, ‘Come on! We have to find shelter before it’s too—’

Too late. A figure comes sprinting through the trees, the rumbling and beeping of the Bin Men close behind.

‘Huntsman!’ cries Buttercup.

Breathing hard with exertion and fear through her mask, the huntsman flicks out her knife again as she comes to a sudden stop in front of them.

‘Get me out of here, wretches!’

‘No!’ The White Knight brandishes her axe again. ‘Why should we help you?’

‘Yeah, she didn’t even ask nicely,’ adds Trevor.

The huntsman lashes out a hand and plucks Trevor off Buttercup’s shoulder. ‘How easily could I crush your familiar here?’

‘OK,’ panics Trevor, squirming in the huntsman’s grip, ‘that’s a pretty solid argument, let’s get her out of here.’

The White Knight holds her axe up to the huntsman’s throat. ‘You hurt him, and I’ll kill you!’

The rumbling and beeping of the Bin Men is practically on them. Gretel can see the flashing orange lights of their approach through the dark trees.

‘You might not have to,’ Jack tells her. He tugs at the White Knight’s shoulder. ‘Let’s just all get out of here before we’re all dead.’

‘Fine.’ The White Knight turns away to run. ‘But if you harm one hair on his thorax…’

They run again, desperately, bumping into one another and tripping over each other in their swollen group, the flashing orange lights illuminating their terrified faces.

‘We’re not going to make it!’ Buttercup cries as she stumbles over a Dwarf that has, in turn, paused to help push Charles the Magnificent along. ‘They’re too close and we’re too slow. We’re not going to make it!’

Jack helps her up. As he does, his face is fully illuminated by a bright orange light. This is it. The Bin Men have caught up with them. ‘Oh, trousers!’ Jack shouts. ‘Hang on!’

‘To what?’ calls Gretel.

Jack grimaces, as though in pain. He claws his hands towards the ground, and then brings both fists up. Thick stalks shoot from the undergrowth, following the movement of his hands, each one springing up beneath the feet of their group, entwining them in the stems, pushing them up, up, up through the trees. Gretel clings desperately to hers, and also to the mane of Charles the Magnificent, who has found himself tangled up in the branches of her stalk and is screaming about not being able to hang on because he doesn’t have any thumbs. Up and up they erupt, twigs and leaves lashing at them as they rise, until suddenly the air is clear and still. Gretel realises she’s closed her eyes, and opens them. They have risen above the trees, out of the Darkwood. Gretel blinks around. She can see the lights of Nearby Village in the distance, and far beyond that, the Citadel. And all the towns in between, spreading out across Myrsina. All those homes. All those people, having to worry about abominations and not learning too much maths.

‘Aaaaargh,’ screams Charles the Magnificent beside her. ‘What is all of this?’

‘This is life,’ she tells him. ‘Life beyond the Darkwood.’

‘It looks awful,’ wails the Unicorn. ‘I want to get back down!’

Their stalk shakes as, below, the orange lights flicker. The Bin Men are still searching for prey.

‘I mean,’ adds Charles the Magnificent, ‘perhaps not exactly right now, but…’

On the other stalks, others are screaming. The Dwarves mainly seem to be doing so out of exhilarated enjoyment, but Jack is clearly in a lot of pain. His hands are still raised in tight fists. The White Knight has to hold tightly to his waist to stop him slipping off. His arms are trembling and his knuckles are white. He looks as if he’s holding up an enormous, invisible weight.

The huntsman is also screaming. She’s alone on a thinner stalk, which is swaying a worrying amount, but this isn’t what she’s screaming at.

‘My face! My face!’

Her face is unharmed, Gretel notices. It is merely that it’s… there, fully visible under her cowl. Gretel looks down and sees the mask dangling forlornly from a high branch of one of the trees below. It must have been ripped off as they pushed free of the forest roof. The face beneath is that of a very young woman, surely no older than Jack – delicate, big-eyed, terrified.

‘You realise,’ she snarls at Jack, ‘that nobody sees the face of a huntsman and lives. I’m going to have to kill you.’

‘Well take a ticket and wait with the others,’ Jack manages through gritted teeth. ‘It’s a pretty long queue.’

The huntsman’s stalk wobbles wildly again, and Jack sobs with sustained effort.

‘It’s too much!’ he cries. ‘I can’t keep it all going!’

‘Everyone get onto the thickest stems,’ orders the White Knight, and the others start clambering onto the three sturdier central stalks. Thankfully, Gretel and Charles the Magnificent are already on a thick stem and have nowhere they need to climb to, but Gretel can see that the huntsman is really struggling. She has to keep such a tight grip on her wobbling stem that she can barely move, and every few seconds it moves her away from where she was trying to aim herself towards.

‘Hurry!’ screams Jack, sweat rolling down his face. ‘I can’t drop anyone, not again…’

Buttercup reaches out as far as she can to the stricken huntsman, and holds out her hand.

‘Here,’ she says. ‘Jump. I’ll catch you.’

Trevor, free from the huntsman’s grasp now that she needs both hands to hold on to the stalk and manoeuvre herself, hurries across the huntsman’s shoulder and leaps gratefully onto Buttercup’s wrist, where he scuttles under her sleeve and hides.

‘Cheers, mate,’ comes his muffled, shaken voice.

Buttercup continues to hold out her hand. ‘I did mean you, too,’ she tells the huntsman.

Jack screams, ‘Do it now! Do it now! I can’t hold it any trousering longer!’

The huntsman pushes herself off her stalk and leaps towards Buttercup right as the plant she’s been holding on to yellows, withers and rots with an astonishing speed, collapsing wetly in on itself as fast as it had grown. There is a moment of held breaths as the huntsman sails through thin air, nothing but wilting vegetation beneath her…

Before Buttercup catches her, Gretel sees Buttercup scrabble to pull up the huntsman held in her grip and exhales with relief. Only then, Gretel notices exactly how Buttercup has caught her, and takes in a sharp gasp of horror again.

Buttercup doesn’t have the huntsman by the hand. She has her by the sleeve. Sleeves aren’t alive. Sleeves can be turned into…

‘No!’

Gretel sees the sleeve of the dangling huntsman change colour, change texture under Buttercup’s desperately clutching fingers. She sees the sleeve crumble and give way. Buttercup flails, screaming. The huntsman is screaming. Everyone is screaming.

The huntsman falls. And falls. She hits the canopy and disappears beneath the branches, but still Gretel hears her falling. And then there is a crunch. The orange lights below whir, the beeping intensifies excitedly. There is more crunching. The huntsman no longer screams.

Above the treetops, there is a shocked silence, broken only by the sound of a young man sobbing.

‘I’m so sorry,’ cries Jack, ‘I did it again. I’m so, so sorry.’

‘You did everything you could,’ says Buttercup softly, looking miserably at her own hands. ‘It’s not your fault.’

‘You saved the rest of us,’ adds Gretel.

‘She’s right,’ says the White Knight. ‘You did. For now.’

‘Related to that,’ adds Gretel, looking around at their predicament, ‘how exactly do we get dow—’

A bright rainbow shoots from the tip of Charles the Magnificent’s horn, almost grazing Gretel’s cheek as it rushes past her with a bright, tinny fwannnnng! noise.

‘Well, that still works, at least,’ says Charles matter-of-factly. ‘Hop on, then.’

‘What?’

‘Rainbow bridge,’ explains the Unicorn. ‘I’ve aimed it at your cottage, you can just climb down it.’

‘But… we can’t…’

‘Don’t mention it. I mean, I know usually you people aren’t worthy to cast your eyes upon a Unicorn rainbow, let alone walk across one to safety, but you lot did sort of save my life, so I’m pretty sure this would make us even.’

‘But a rainbow is just refracted light,’ says Gretel. ‘You can’t walk across one…’

‘Can’t you, though?’ The Unicorn nods at some of the Dwarves, who have already clambered onto the rainbow and are jumping around on it, shouting, ‘Yummy!’

‘Oh,’ says Gretel. ‘OK, then.’

Gretel is still certain that it makes no sense to be able to climb onto a rainbow and escape down it, but then she is in a magical forest after all, trying to get from a stalk that grew two hundred feet under her in a matter of seconds to a house that is at least sixty-five per cent cake. She gets on, carefully, and is almost pulled off her feet again straight away by Buttercup grabbing her.

‘We need to hurry,’ Buttercup tells her. ‘Jack’s drained himself almost completely – those bigger stalks won’t stay up long.’

‘But…’ manages Gretel as she’s pulled along the rainbow, away from the Unicorn, who is left precariously lodged between the leaves.

‘But…’ she tries again as the curve of the rainbow begins to angle downwards so steeply that she can’t stay upright. Buttercup yanks her again, urgently, and she stumbles onto her back, sliding now, faster and faster.

‘But what about Charles the Magnificent?’ she shouts above the excited shrieks of the Dwarves, who seem to really be enjoying the ride. ‘How is he supposed to get down?’

The cottage comes up towards them fast before anyone has a chance answer. She rolls into the landing, through the unlatched front door and inside, where she lands, surprisingly, on Charles the Magnificent.

‘But…’ she says. ‘How…?’

‘Teleportation,’ replies the Unicorn. ‘Duh.’

‘But… couldn’t you have done that earlier…?’

‘No.’

‘Why?’

‘Wasn’t ready.’

‘Is everybody in?’ Buttercup calls, attempting a quick headcount.

The White Knight counts the Dwarves. ‘Yep.’

She helps Buttercup to lock, bolt and bar the door on the approaching Bin Men. Gretel hurries around the cottage, dousing all the candles. Even the Dwarves fall silent. With all the usual Bin Night precautions taken, the group sit down quietly together around the table, waiting to hear the Bin Men arrive and take the offerings left outside. The only sound for a while is Jack’s soft snuffling.

‘It happened again,’ he whispers over and over, a horrified mantra. ‘It happened again.’

‘It’ll be all right,’ murmurs Gretel. Jack looks utterly exhausted, physically and emotionally. If he’d tried to keep up a beanstalk even taller than that while a Giant climbed it when he was only seven, it was no wonder the whole thing had collapsed.

‘A woman died!’

‘You didn’t kill her.’

‘Trott,’ says Charles the Magnificent, ‘you are a greedy little idiot and a coward, and I still blame you for your part in this war the humans are waging against us. But what happened to that huntsman tonight was her own fault.’

‘She didn’t deserve to die for it.’

‘She trapped my majestic leg!’

‘She was a huntsman,’ adds the White Knight. ‘Not worth weeping over, Trott.’

‘That’s exactly it,’ argues Jack. ‘A huntsman’s been killed, out here in the Darkwood. Do you think for a second they’re going to take that lying down?’

‘Maybe they’ll finally see how high the stakes are?’ Trevor suggests. ‘Maybe they’ll stop sending scout parties in if they know they could die here?’

The witches all look at Trevor sadly.

‘What?’

‘Oh, Trevor,’ sighs Buttercup, ‘you’re such a sweet, innocent soul.’

‘What? Don’t say that – I’m a super-spy! What did I say?’

There’s the sound of beeping outside, and the offerings bin being picked up. Everyone in the house goes completely quiet and still until the Bin Men outside decide their gifts are satisfactory and pass them by for another week.

Deep in the dark, accursed forest, around the rotted carcasses of a set of giant beanstalks, the Bin Men have moved on. There’s nothing now but their trail of devastation. Flies gather around the smears of meat and gristle left spattered around the undergrowth. Fairies and Sprites forage for scraps from the torn black cape and cowl. A Ghost floats through the trees, growing slowly in luminosity, taking shape. It starts to look like a young woman. Its pale eyes flutter open, as if the Ghost is gently waking. It looks around at its surroundings, with a sleepy confusion at first. It sees the mangled flesh and viscera on the ground and blinks in realisation.

‘Oh,’ says the Ghost. It looks down at its translucent hands, and the expression of realisation turns into one of exasperation.

‘Oh,’ it says, louder. ‘Are you kidding me?’

15
Battle Stations

The huntsmen’s search party doesn’t find the remains for about a week, but once they have, the news spreads swiftly. A death in the huntsman family, a horrible murder. A sister in the hunt against abominations, and so young, too. New to her post, full of righteous zeal. A young lady who’d realised early in life that her time and energy was better spent defending the natural order of the world than filling her head with dangerous nonsense, like fractions. The horrible details of the search party’s findings are pored over. The scattered remains amongst a rotten, collapsed beanstalk, the mask high up in the trees, the sleeve of her torn robe turned into a light vanilla sponge. Trott and the Cake Witch had a hand in this poor innocent’s death, surely. Probably the other Darkwood witches as well. Anger and outrage in the Citadel grows. The huntsmen switch to mourning masks – contorted visages with eyes half shut and mouths gaping open in frozen wails of grief. The horror at the young huntsman’s murder finds words, and the words are repeated over and over and over again, until they’re like a drumbeat in the Citadel’s heart.

‘Something must be done. Something must be done. Something must be done. Something must be done.’

On the Great Day of Mourning, the Head Huntsman takes a stand. He speaks on behalf of all huntsmen, of course, so he also speaks for their fallen sister. It is unnecessary for her parents to speak. Surely they have been through too much already to ask them to brave a public address.

He speaks about how the wretches of Darkwood are actually killing humans now. How they are attacking defenceless young women out on peaceful excursions. He asks them to remember the problem with the Giants; something had had to be done back then, and the huntsmen had risen to the challenge. This is no different. They will prevail again. It is serious now. It is life and death.

Something must be done. Something must be done. Something must be done. Something must be done.

News of the huntsman’s death barely reaches Nearby Village. There are a few murmurs, weeks afterwards, but most villagers brush it off as some exaggerated gossip or other. They have more pressing business in hand, like bringing in the harvests and getting food salted, dried and pickled to last the coming winter. Hansel and Daisy pay the gossip little heed. They already know they’re not safe. Hansel doesn’t hear the words, but he feels the drumbeat.

Something must be done. Something must be done. Something must be done. Something must be done.

The drumbeat continues. The world rolls on. Frost starts to bite at the air in the mornings. Assorted equipment starts to take Gretel’s place at the table, and it stops feeling strange that she isn’t there, although it still hurts. The loss becomes a dull, manageable ache, and the worry of what’s to come is a tickle at the back of the mind that can be pushed aside for more immediate, urgent matters. Occasionally, Hansel almost feels normal.

That is, until the day that he very much doesn’t. That morning he is woken early in a panic, as he was the night they came for Gretel.

They are coming. They are coming here. Not just one. Hundreds of them.

In the cake cottage, Gretel wakes up early, in a panic.

‘They’re coming!’

‘Wha?’ asks Trevor lazily, from his web.

‘Huntsmen!’

‘Argh!’ Trevor abseils quickly down from his corner of the ceiling, tries to bang on the side of a chamber pot to wake the others, realises he doesn’t have the necessary weight to make any sort of noise on it and so decides to just scuttle over to the sleeping Buttercup and Jack and shout, ‘Huntsmen!’ in their ears instead.

Buttercup sits bolt upright. ‘What? What is it?’

‘Huntsmen,’ cries Trevor again, waving his forelegs around wildly in alarm.

‘Huntsmen?’ Jack is already up and getting dressed. ‘Where? Here? Are they here already?’

‘They’re coming,’ mutters Gretel. ‘They’re coming to… to the village?’

‘The village?’ repeats Jack. He sits back down on his bed, sighing with relief and more than a little irritation. ‘But that’s miles away.’

‘And you all promised to help protect it,’ says Gretel.

‘Wait, hang on,’ says Trevor. ‘How do you know they’re on their way to the village? You’re not even a witch.’ He ponders this for a moment. ‘It’s not going to turn out that you are secretly a witch after turning out to secretly not be a witch after the Huntsmen thought it turned out you were secretly a witch, is it?’

‘No.’

‘Oh. That’s a shame. That would have been quite the plot twist.’

Gretel shrugs. ‘I’m not a witch, but my twin is. You all said he was really powerful. He’s always warned me when trouble’s close at hand before, maybe that’s what he’s doing again now.’

‘But if they’re coming to the village, not to Darkwood, then isn’t he the one in trouble?’

‘He’s always been good at me asking for help when he needs it too,’ Gretel tells them. ‘Although this is a problem for Darkwood as much as it is for the village. It’s not exactly going to be the huntsmen’s final port of call, is it?’

‘What do you mean?’ asks Buttercup.

‘If they’re planning on launching a big attack – I mean, a really big attack – they’d need a nearby base, for munitions, a barracks, HQ, that sort of thing. I can’t think of a more suitable location for that than Nearby Village; it’s got everything they need.’

‘Oh,’ breathes Buttercup. ‘Oh, trousers.’

Gretel nods at them, grimly. ‘Trousers.’

The White Knight and her Dwarves are already coming back from their dawn hunt by the time the witches arrive at the Dwarf Cave.

The White Knight notes the expression on Buttercup’s face straight away. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

‘Huntsmen,’ says Buttercup.

Immediately, the Dwarfish axes are drawn. The Dwarves snarl around at the word.

‘Where?’

‘They’re going to attack the Human village.’

‘Oh.’ The axes are all put back away again, with a general air of disappointment.

‘Which we all promised to protect,’ adds Buttercup.

‘Oh.’ The disappointment grows.

‘But if Gretel’s right then we get to fight, like, a whole army of huntsmen,’ Trevor tells her brightly. ‘So, you know. Every cloud.’

‘I suppose so,’ sighs the White Knight. ‘Wait, how does she know there’s huntsmen about to attack the village? It’s miles away. She’s not a witch.’

‘Yeah, we’ve just been over that ourselves,’ says Trevor. ‘Apparently it’s a twin thing, which sounds fake to me, but I can sense nearby insects through vibrations and by smelling them with my legs, so I’m probably not one to talk.’

‘So if you can sense them,’ says the White Knight to Gretel, ‘how many of them are there? What sort of weaponry are they bringing?’

‘It’s not like a magic…’ Gretel attempts. ‘I mean, it is like a magic thing, because it’s from Hansel, but it’s like an echo of his vision in my mind, like a sort of early warning system he set up for us both, and…’

‘Get on with it, New Girl! How many of them? How heavily armed?’

‘Oh! Er. Lots of them. An army, at least a hundred. And they’re bringing wagons. Heavy wagons. I don’t know what’s on them. Sorry.’

‘Are they bringing any prisoners? Anybody who doesn’t want to come?’

‘What?’ Gretel blinks at the White Knight, and then remembers the story about her dad. ‘Oh. Er. I don’t know. I can’t tell that sort of detail. Sorry.’

‘Fine.’ The White Knight turns to go into the cave. ‘Give us half a mo. I just need to pick something up. Just in case.’

They wait awkwardly outside the cave as the White Knight clatters and curses from within. The Dwarves grin at them. Jack whistles a little, to fill the awkward pause. After a while, Trevor joins in with a harmony.

‘How do you do that?’ asks Gretel.

‘Eh?’ says Trevor.

‘How can you whistle?’ she asks. ‘You don’t have any lips.’

‘Er.’

‘Just mandibles.’

Trevor shrugs his two front legs. ‘Magic, innit. Same as how you lot can all spend your whole lives on your hind feet.’

‘That’s… that’s not magic.’

‘Are you sure?’ Trevor asks. ‘Because I’ve tried, and I just fall over.’

Gretel opens her mouth to answer, but is cut off by the White Knight clanking back out of the cave.

‘Right-o,’ announces the White Knight to the group. ‘So, what are we doing? What’s the plan?’

Gretel notices that everyone’s staring at her. ‘Er…’

‘Come on, you’re the plan girl, aren’t you?’

‘Well. Yes. But I usually have more time to prepare than this.’

‘How long until they get to the village?’ demands the White Knight.

‘Few hours?’ Gretel hazards.

‘Right, well we’d better get a wriggle on, then. Lead the way.’

‘What?’

‘You’ve got the map, child! The map that my birds made for you!’

Gretel takes the map out shakily. ‘…Birds made this map?’

‘Duh! It’s a bird’s-eye view, how did you think it was made?’

As the bird flies…

Take off and fly over the Darkwood and soon you’d soar over the village of Nearby, over Hansel and Daisy, hurriedly preparing the new defensive contraptions they’ve built.

‘It’s like the old catapults,’ Hansel explains to the small crowd that has gathered around at the spectacle. ‘Only, they’re…’

‘Only, they’re not pointing at the Darkwood,’ notes Lisbet Grief, the candle maker’s wife. ‘You’ve got them pointed at the main road to the Citadel.’

‘Yes,’ says Hansel. ‘Well. Well, here’s the thing…’

‘They’re going to come back,’ says Gregor Smithy quietly. ‘Ain’t they?’

‘The huntsmen,’ breathes Ethel Wicker. ‘But that’s not fair, they chased Gretel away and she’s not come back, has she?’

Everyone turns, not to Hansel for confirmation of this, but to Old Mother Goggins, an information source more reliable than a particularly chatty torture victim.

‘Not as I know of,’ mumbles Goggins.

‘So what do they want to come back for?’ asks Mrs Wicker.

‘Absolutely sure your Daisy’s not been doing maths?’ Goggins asks her. ‘She knows how to work a catapult good enough.’

‘No!’ Ethel Wicker pulls Daisy into a tight, protective clutch against her bosom, causing the unsuspecting girl to lose her balance and stumble. ‘What a thing to say! My Daisy’s a good girl!’

‘So was Gretel.’

The group turns, and sees Hansel and Gretel’s step-parents standing at the edge of the crowd.

‘Well, yes, but…’

‘Don’t you get it?’ asks Mrs Mudd. ‘We’ll never be safe. No matter what we do, no matter how much we diminish ourselves, it’ll never be good enough for the likes of the huntsmen. They’ll keep pushing and pushing. First girls doing maths and science, then reading and writing, then speaking in public, choosing whom they marry… don’t you see? And don’t start going on about nature’s laws,’ she adds, holding up a finger towards Carpenter Fred, who hasn’t even said anything yet, ‘most of you should be able to remember when it wasn’t like this at all. And things weren’t perfect, but it was nothing like this, nothing! It started with what happened to the Giants, and all of us know it. And none of us tried to help those poor big blighters, not one!’

Goggins shakes her head. ‘Started before that,’ she says. ‘Started even before what happened in Ashtrie, or them bear raids in the mountains. People get scared of what’s different, maybe even a bit jealous, and they get small and stupid and they let that nasty feeling grow, till they’ve convinced themselves that they have to get rid of this “threat”. You know, like the way Lisbet Grief treated me at the harvest festival.’

‘You were cheating,’ shouts Lisbet Grief. ‘That was not a prize radish, that was a turnip you’d painted pink!’

‘But the Giants were a threat,’ interrupts Carpenter Fred. ‘They attacked people. Witches did, too. Not Gretel, I mean, yeah it’s probably gone too far now, but the proper witches, before we got them under control…’

‘Did they?’ snaps Mrs Mudd. ‘Because I don’t remember that happening. What I remember is there being the occasional Giant or witch or Pixie about before the huntsmen took over, and sometimes they were horrible and sometimes they were nice, but most of the time they were a bit of both, because they were just people, and that’s what people are like. ‘Well, I’ve had enough of being told to act like they’re not people.’ I’m only sorry it took them sending my girl away to make me realise. You go ahead and point the new defences towards the Citadel road, son.’ She squeezes Hansel’s shoulder. ‘And teach me how to use them.’

‘Er.’ Hansel and Daisy share a glance. ‘Thanks for volunteering, but you might have to learn as you go, Stepmother.’

‘What?’

‘The huntsmen are coming back.’

‘Yes, you said, so we have to prepare.’

‘No. They’re coming back now. An army of them.’

Gregor Smithy frowns, then hobbles over to the lookout telescope and turns it from the Darkwood to the road.

‘Flaming trousers,’ he calls. ‘They are and all! Battle stations!’

‘What are our battle stations?’ calls Lisbet Grief as the crowd starts to run about in a startled frenzy.

‘Wait,’ cries Carpenter Fred over all of them. ‘Wait! Are we really doing this? The Huntsmen aren’t perfect, but is it really them we should be fighting?’

‘Yes!’ calls Mrs Mudd, helping Daisy with one of the new catapults. ‘Didn’t you hear my speech just now?’

‘They’re heading straight for the village, Fred,’ adds Smithy. ‘Got a lot of ammo, they might take the whole place over. Including your workshop.’

‘Yeah… well…’

‘Your wife writes poetry, doesn’t she?’ asks Hansel quietly.

‘Yeah, but… that’s not an abomination…’

‘It could be,’ replies Hansel. ‘Could have changed the rules yesterday. Could change them next week. You really want to find out when they’re already in your home?’

Carpenter Fred sighs. ‘Fine.’ He grudgingly takes a handheld adapted crossbow from Hansel. ‘But, another thing… how did you know they were already on the way?’

Again, the crowd, as one, turns to Mother Goggins.

‘It wasn’t me!’

Out of the village and along the road, less than an hour’s march away now, come the Huntsmen. A blank-faced army, marching to a beat of rage. Worse than rage now, in fact. Rage can be unfocused but this army knows where it is going and what it’s going to do when it gets there. Take Nearby Village. Neutralise any remaining threats there. And then use the village as a base from which to finally purify the Darkwood of evil.

They march, with wagons of weaponry – sophisticated machinery from the Citadel, things these village hicks wouldn’t even dream of, and which will help them prevail against the wicked witches of the forest, with their powerful magic. In the middle, safely flanked by his righteous brothers and sisters in arms, marches the Head Huntsman beside a small cart covered with a sheet that crackles and sparks with a strange energy.

The huntsmen will show no fear when they arrive at the village, nor any mercy upon the witches. After all, they tell themselves and one another, the witches brought this upon themselves. They killed a young huntsman. They started this. Just like those Giants. And the huntsmen will come down on those witches – on all of Darkwood – as hard as they did the Giants. They only have themselves to blame.

16
Winging It

Still, Gretel supposes as she tries to navigate the group to a vantage point near the village, read the filthy, almost illegible bird-drawn map, and simultaneously sketch out some sort of battle plan in her head – at least she’s finally being allowed to stretch her mental abilities and strategic skills. Tell her a few months ago that she’d be able to do cartography and plan a full-scale assault against an advancing army, and she’d never have believed you. She wishes that this thought could give her more comfort, considering the fact that this is a desperate scramble to try to save her home and her brother, with no plan, a rapidly disappearing window of preparation time and nobody to help her but three witches, seven Dwarves and a spider.

It’ll probably all be fine. It’ll be fine. It’ll be fine.

Gretel leads the group to a spot a few hundred feet up the river from the point where she entered the forest to begin with. She peers through the last of the trees while the Dwarves quietly cut a new hole in the fence. The dam is still the nearest crossing from the village side, but from up here, the group will have plenty of notice if huntsmen try to storm it. This spot also has the benefit of being just out of range of the village’s defensive catapults, should it come to that…

Gretel squints at the village side bank of the river. Actually…

Actually, where are the catapults? She’d built twelve before she had to escape into the Darkwood, and all had been lined up against the forest. True, since she’s been living at the cake cottage and extended the witches’ protection to the village there haven’t been any creatures attacking Nearby that she knows of, but they should still have defences, just in case!

She takes a telescopic glass from her bag and tries to get a closer look at the spots where the catapults used to be. She can see muddy tracks, leading back up into the village. They look fresh.

‘They’ve moved the catapults,’ she says. ‘All of them. They must have positioned them to face the road.’

‘Well, that’s good,’ says Jack with a forced cheer. ‘By the sounds of it, that’s the best place for them. Looks like your friends here have the whole thing sorted, maybe we’re not even needed…’

‘Jack!’ Buttercup admonishes him.

‘Yeah, but what can we even do from here?’ Jack persists. ‘The fight’s going to be on the other side of the village to us, we’re not going to be able to see a thing!’

‘He’s got a point,’ says the White Knight.

‘Trousers,’ mutters Gretel. Jack does have a point. She still doesn’t really have a plan and now they’re all in the wrong place for any half plan she’s been considering to even work.

‘Ohhhh,’ says Trevor excitedly. ‘Ohhhhh! Strikes me that what you lot need is a—’

‘What we need is a spy,’ says the White Knight over him.

‘Yes!’ Trevor cries in delight. ‘That’s what I was about to say!’

‘Well, it can’t be Gretel, they know her,’ says Jack. ‘I’m too famous, you’re too shiny and Buttercup would stick out like a cakey thumb.’

‘Ooh!’ squeaks Trevor, raising two legs into the air like a kid in class with the answer to a problem and a desperate need for validation. ‘Ooh!’

‘I’ve got my jackdaws,’ says the White Knight. I’ll be able to see through them just fine.’

‘Oh, come on,’ cries Trevor, exasperated.

‘Snow,’ says Buttercup gently, ‘don’t be mean.’

The White Knight gives Buttercup a small smile, before finally turning her attention to the spider. ‘Oh, fine.’

Trevor’s eight little beady eyes shine with excitement. ‘Yessss!’

There is a weird calm at the roadside border of the village. They stand, weapons primed, and watch the slow advance of the huntsmen. The huntsmen don’t approach with war drums or trumpets; they show no indication that they are about to stop and fight. They show no indication that they are about to stop at all. They look like a very large group of people who are simply intending to walk straight into a place that they already own. There is something about their blankness, about the almost casual air of righteousness and ownership about them, that sends a cold prickle of rage up Hansel’s spine. He bunches his fists quietly, and feels the prickle grow into something else, into a dancing, jangling energy sparking off he knows not where, in invisible tendrils all around him.

‘Can you feel that?’ whispers Daisy, by his side.

‘Hmm?’

‘There’s something… like the night they sent Gretel away. Something moving through the ground and the air.’ She holds up her forearm for him to see. It’s covered in goosebumps. ‘My hairs are all on end. Maybe Gretel’s come back. To help us.’

Hansel shakes his head. He’s sure his warning about the approaching huntsmen got through to Gretel. She should be far away by now, the other end of the forest, making herself safe. It’s just the village now. He has to make this count. He has to.

The ground rumbles faintly, and the sky begins to darken. It seems that the morning sunlight can no longer fully reach the ground.

‘There it is,’ continues Daisy. ‘The rumbling like before.’

A jackdaw flutters to perch on a fence post next to Hansel. He glances at it briefly. It seems to have caught a spider. Hansel almost looks away again, but double takes when he realises that the bird seems actually to be quite happily letting the spider hop off its claw.

‘That’s weird,’ says Daisy, also watching what appears to be a jackdaw giving its natural prey a handy lift. Hansel agrees silently – to the scene in front of them and also to the fact that, with a hostile army about to invade their village, he and Daisy have been able to get their attentions diverted to the relationship between a bird and an arachnid. There’s something else about it – something important – but Hansel can’t put his finger on what it is just yet.

‘Is…’ mutters Daisy. ‘Is that spider wearing tiny little sunglasses?’

Oh, realises Hansel, yes, that’s what it is.

The spider faces them, and then with a foreleg extended to its face, lifts the minute, eight-lensed shades.

‘You ain’t seen me,’ it tells them in a gleeful, adult male voice. ‘Right?’

‘Wha—’ manages Hansel, before there is a distant whistling sound, followed by a screeching from the air. Birds rush to fill the sky.

To call it a flock of birds would be a massive understatement. ‘Swarm’ would be closer, although actually what it appears to be is a cloud of birds. An overcast sheet of birds. Also, flocks tend to be of the same species, but this is a mishmash of different cries, different wingspans, different colours, and all flapping and skreeing from the Darkwood behind them, straight over the villagers’ heads towards the huntsmen.

The villagers startle at the sight of the birds, and scatter.

‘No!’ cries the spider. ‘The birds are on your side. Tell them that the birds are on their side, they’ve got nothing to worry about…’ A large bird dropping splatters down from the sheet of screeching feathers, landing right in front of the bizarre arachnid. ‘…Except that, of course,’ continues the spider, ‘but that’s a perfectly reasonable by-product of an otherwise very effective initial aerial assault…’

‘How are you talking?’ screams Daisy.

‘Do you know, I’m not entirely sure,’ replies the spider conversationally. ‘I mean, magic, obviously, but when it comes to the specifics, my memory gets hazy…’

‘Never mind that!’ Hansel drags Daisy over to the fleeing villagers. ‘Stop,’ he shouts, but nobody can hear him above the cacophony of the birds and their own hysteria. ‘STOP,’ he yells again, and this time there is something about his voice that… travels. It’s no louder than usual, but it’s as if it moves through the ground and up into people through the soles of their feet. The running villagers stop, and turn to him.

‘We’re under attack from both sides,’ wails Carpenter Fred. ‘Those birds are from the Darkwood.’

‘The Darkwood’s helping us,’ Hansel explains. ‘Look – the birds are going straight over. Darkwood stands with us; we can’t give up now.’

‘How do you know that?’ Mother Goggins asks.

‘There was… a spider…’ manages Hansel.

‘A spider,’ repeats Goggins.

Hansel looks around, but the spider is nowhere to be found. ‘I can’t see him now.’

‘Well, he was in disguise,’ replies Daisy. She shoots him a small smile, before running off to man one of the catapults. ‘Come on, everybody. We’ve got backup now. We can do this.’

‘…I can do this,’ Gretel tells herself. She is crouched with the others at a bend in the river where it runs closest to the village centre. They still can’t really see much, but at least now that they’ve moved nearer, they can hear the gist of what’s going on in the village square. ‘I can do this,’ she repeats. ‘It’s going to be fine…’

Buttercup lays a hand on her shoulder. ‘It will be. We can do this together.’

A jackdaw lands on the nearest riverbank. Trevor hops off it and onto Jack’s hand.

‘Right,’ announces the spider, ‘so, so far it’s going OK, they were scared of the birds but I told this lad who looked sort of in charge not to be and he told the others and they listened, so that’s good.’

‘…good…’ echoes Gretel.

‘So…’ continues Trevor, ‘what now?’

‘Er…’ says Gretel.

‘You’ve got us all at your disposal,’ adds Trevor. ‘Cake power, plant power…’

Gretel glances at Buttercup and Jack. Buttercup is still trying her best to look brave and supportive. Jack just looks tired and scared. The river water manages to bedraggle him more than it has any of the others. He looks scrawny, the way he did after the Swamp Mermaid attack. Since that terrible Bin Night, Jack has spent most of his time alone. He’s eaten little, spoken less, and cried a lot. Gretel isn’t sure what level of magic either witch would be capable of right now.

‘And bird power,’ says Trevor.

‘Bird power’s still pretty busy right now,’ grits out the White Knight between elaborate whistles, concentrating on the flock, the patches of visible skin under her visor slick with the sweat of effort.

‘Ah. Yes, sorry,’ continues Trevor, ‘and I’ve got super-spy skills and my own private set of wings.’ His carrier jackdaw croaks with indignation. ‘So, what do I do?’

Something Trevor said earlier still gnaws at Gretel. ‘The lad you talked to… what did he look like?’

‘Just… like he was in charge. I don’t know, there was just something about him.’ The spider pauses, regarding her. ‘About your age. Same eyes as you, too… Oh! Was that…?’

‘Hansel. I think you spoke to Hansel.’ And suddenly, all the anxiety and uncertainty is pushed from Gretel’s mind. Unfortunately, it isn’t replaced by any sort of calm or clarity, just with deep sadness, and homesickness. She is filled with the ache of the absence of her twin. ‘Did he seem OK?’

‘Oh yes, considering he was on the front line defending his village from invasion, he seemed pretty chipper,’ Trevor tells her. ‘And I think he’s got a girlfriend. Nice lass, she noticed my cool spy shades.’

‘Sounds like Daisy Wicker,’ breathes Gretel. ‘Oh, that’s quite cute, actually…’

‘Trevor! New Girl!’ snaps the White Knight. ‘Now really isn’t the time. What’s the next part of the plan, because we’re running out of time and birds, here…’

There is a noise from the road beyond the village, the likes of which Gretel has never heard before. It sounds like the crack of lightning hitting a tree, mixed with a terrible earthquake, only deeper, more menacing. There’s an explosion in the village. Gretel hears masonry fall and screams rise as flames and smoke begin to lick at the sky. The Huntsmen have launched their first strike.

‘What was that thing?’ Buttercup asks, terrified.

Gretel has no idea. ‘Trevor! Get over to the huntsman army and report back on what weaponry they’re using.’

With a quick ‘Rightie-ho, boss,’ Trevor jumps back onto the jackdaw and does just that, leaving Gretel cursing herself that she didn’t think to send him to do that first of all. Over the tops of the buildings, she can see the villagers answer the huntsmen’s first volley with a series of small explosives from their catapults – likely trying to destroy the road into the village rather than take any lives.

‘What do we do?’ asks Buttercup.

That, thinks Gretel, is a very good question.

‘How’s Operation Birdstrike going?’ Gretel asks the White Knight.

‘Having less and less effect on them with every second,’ the White Knight admits.

Another of the huntsman army’s massive projectiles flies in and explodes against the walls of the village’s windmill. There is the horrible cracking and groaning of wood as the windmill collapses in on itself, followed by a further explosion as the flour ignites. Gretel turns to Jack.

‘Jack, can you grow a defensive line?’

‘I’ll try.’ Jack raises his hands, as if pulling something invisible from down below. He frowns. ‘I can’t see what I’m doing, though, I don’t know if it’s in the right place.’

Gretel sees the top of a line of oaks sprout up beyond the village, but it doesn’t seem to be quite in the right position to block the path of invaders coming from the road. Instead, one of the village’s catapulted explosives hits an unanticipated tree and bounces back towards the village’s defence system instead of striking its intended target.

‘No,’ she shouts. ‘Get rid of the trees! Sorry!’

‘Oh no, not again,’ wails Jack.

‘It’s my fault,’ Gretel frets as the trees rot away to nothing. ‘We’re in the wrong place. I’m sorry.’

‘Is there anything I can do?’ Buttercup asks.

Gretel glances at her and finds that, right now, there’s no answer she can give that would be both truthful and kind. She stares back at the burning windmill. The White Knight exhales suddenly.

‘Lost the birds. They’re too dispersed and scared to catch hold of now. Weren’t doing much good, anyway.’

A Dwarf raises its axe and looks at the White Knight expectantly. ‘Yummy?’

‘Not sure, mate,’ the White Knight tells it. ‘We shouldn’t go into the field without knowing what it looks like out there.’ She pauses. ‘What do you reckon, New Girl?’

‘Hansel,’ breathes Gretel. ‘Come on, Hansel, show me what’s going on over there.’

At his catapult, Hansel flinches back from yet another of the Huntsmen’s flaming missiles as it whizzes past him to smash into the Hill household. Dollis Hill runs from the crumbling, burning building, dragging her screaming sons with her, to the shelter of a neighbour’s home. Hansel can feel the fear and rage inside him turn into a deep, dark crackling energy in his spine once more. The invisible tendrils of magic are wilder now. He can feel them throb and thrash within him, even breaking free a little from the confines of his body. He feels them extend up through his head into the air like a halo of snakes, and down from his feet into the ground, desperate to burrow free. Desperate to push through the earth and topple everything – flip the whole thing over, huntsman army, village and all, just to make it all stop. He holds it back, draws the writhing energy back in, contains it. The strain of just doing that almost causes him to black out. He concentrates on breathing, like Gretel would tell him to do…

Gretel. The realisation hits him suddenly. She’s here. She came to help. The support isn’t coming from inside the Darkwood – they’re closer than that. He can feel it. The birds, the spider… she must have planned that. But what does she want him to do now? She’s always been the one with the big ideas. He looks around desperately for some sort of sign. If only the spider were still around. He doesn’t look directly above him, so he doesn’t see a jackdaw swerve out of the path of a piece of flying shrapnel just in time, and flap in a fluster of feathers down towards the river, where a spider swings down from its leg.

‘Not going to lie to you guys,’ says Trevor from the safety of Buttercup’s hair, ‘it’s pretty bad out there. They’ve got these massive crossbows. Powerful ones. Explosive ammo twice the size of the village’s and several times the speed. I’m not sure the catapults are any match. Quite a lot of the village is currently on fire.’

‘How much?’ asks Gretel, her heart in her mouth.

‘Four buildings that I could see,’ Trevor tells her. ‘Certainly more than is ideal, for a small rural community.’ He pauses. ‘So, what do we do now?’

Gretel opens her mouth, in the hope that it will supply some great idea that currently evades her brain, but before she can speak, a voice booms over a megaphone.

‘Cease,’ says the voice.

The witches look at one another. ‘I know that voice,’ the White Knight whispers.

‘You are outnumbered and out-armed,’ booms the voice. ‘We believe that this has now been adequately demonstrated to you. Our quarrel is not with you; we simply wish to take shelter in your village as we make the Darkwood safe again. I’m afraid that this is not optional. Surrender, and no harm will come to you. Continue to fight, and we guarantee to you that people will be hurt.’

‘But… they’re not going to surrender,’ says the White Knight, ‘are they?’

Oh, no. Gretel slumps. The villagers would look to Hansel. Hansel the worrier, gentle Hansel the risk avoider. She can already feel the echo of Hansel’s mind, telling her that he’s sorry, telling her he has to think of the villagers’ safety, telling her to run. They’ve lost.

They’ve lost Nearby.

17
Retreat

In the end, the huntsmen simply continue walking into the village, as they’d made it clear from the start they had intended to do. From their attitude, one would think they’d merely stopped briefly at a checkpoint that had opened easily at their word, rather than the bird-strafed firefight that actually occurred. The sad silence and stillness of defeat descends all the heavier, following the confusing cacophony of the battle. Buildings are still on fire. The Huntsmen make no attempt to stop the villagers putting out the fires, but neither do they help. They just walk through. Not even a march. The quiet casualness of the invasion is what really prickles at Hansel. He swallows the crackling anger within him, and helps to put out the Hills’ house. He just hopes, with the invasion and the fires to distract, that Gretel will be able to get far, far away. And whoever it was that sent the birds. And that funny little spider.

‘What are we doing?’ Trevor asks Gretel. ‘Do I… Did you want me to send another message, or…?’

‘Gretel, they’re in.’ Jack breaks off from chewing a nail. ‘They’re right in the village square.’

‘Is this part of the plan?’ adds Buttercup with a sad attempt at a hopeful expression.

Gretel shakes her head, tries to shake some thoughts out of it, tries to shake away the paralysis of horror. ‘He said to get away, he’s been screaming at me to get away this whole time.’

‘No.’ The White Knight’s voice is flat, but her eyes are dancing with rage. ‘No, you talked us into doing this, New Girl. We can’t give up now.’

‘We’re not giving up.’ Gretel pauses, still trying to think. ‘The battle’s over. A good tactician knows how to cope with a defeat, cut losses, regroup, try again… we can make this good again, everything will be fine…’

‘A good tactician?’ spits the White Knight. ‘A good tactician doesn’t just skip about reckoning everything will be fine. You’re a kid, New Girl. An ignorant, muddy little farm girl. You know nothing of the world; you’re not even magical.’

‘Snow,’ warns Buttercup in a soft voice.

‘We should never have taken you in in the first place, let alone trusted you with anything this important.’

‘Snow!’ hisses Buttercup again.

‘Don’t start, Buttercup,’ growls the White Knight. ‘You messed up too. You told us this pig herder was important.’

Buttercup looks like she’s been slapped. ‘But she is…’ she manages. ‘Her doodads. Her brother…’

‘Her inventions are useless if she can’t think anything through, and her “all-powerful” brother just surrendered his whole pathetic village at the first hurdle,’ argues the White Knight. ‘Look at them all, giving up. These are the people you had so much blind faith in, New Girl? They’re no better than any other humans. We should never have offered to help those snivelling yokels.’

‘Guys,’ mutters Trevor.

‘Well, if you didn’t want to come here in the first place, you’ll have no objection to going back before we get caught,’ replies Gretel.

She starts to wade off through the river towards the log dam and the broken fence, but the White Knight catches her wrist.

‘That would be losing,’ the White Knight tells her, ‘and I don’t lose.’

‘Really?’ To Gretel’s surprise, it’s Jack who speaks up, wrenching the White Knight’s hand off Gretel’s arm. ‘Because from where I’m standing, all you ever do is lose, Snow.’

‘Guys!’

The White Knight curls a sharp, vicious, Dwarfish grin at Jack. ‘That’s rich, Jack. Coming from you.’

‘Yeah, Snow, exactly.’ Jack’s smile is just as sarcastically manic as Snow’s, just as bitter. ‘We’re all losers! Gretel fits right in with us, oh yes. The only way she stands out is that at least she trousering well tries. At least she has some sort of faith in us, that we might be able to win something.’

‘Ha!’ the White Knight snorts. ‘Well, she’s just as stupid for having blind trust in us as she did the idiots from her old village then, isn’t she?’

‘Guys!’

‘Well, I’m sure we’ll browbeat all that hope and trust out of her soon enough, right, Snow?’ continues Jack. ‘So then she can be just as broken as… ow! What the trousers, Trevor? Did you just bite me?’

Trevor is on Jack’s shoulder, next to a suspiciously spider-bite-shaped welt on his neck.

‘Guys, we need to go,’ Trevor tells them. ‘Right now.’ He points up with a leg. Above the steep bank of the river are a group of huntsmen, moving forwards serenely, systematically. They are looking for something, and at the rate that they’re moving, are very close indeed to spotting a gang of bedraggled witches up to their chests in water, and quite a lot of waterlogged Dwarves.

With a glare towards everybody else, the White Knight wades off towards the dam, a trail of Dwarves splashing behind her like terrifying ducklings.

‘Shh,’ choruses everybody else as they follow suit. The White Knight pauses, sighs and tries to storm off through a river, in full armour and trailing Dwarves, only quietly this time. Around halfway to the dam, however, she suddenly stops and presses herself against the village-side wall of the riverbank.

Gretel’s pretty sure she’s not speaking to the White Knight any more after that awful outburst, but since they all need to get out of there in one piece in order to have the privilege of the time and energy needed for a really long, uncomfortable falling-out, she silently sidles in next to the White Knight and whispers, ‘What are you doing?’

‘Listen,’ breathes the White Knight. Above them, near the bank, two men are talking. Their voices are calm, measured, cultured. Huntsmen.

‘Has anything been found yet?’

‘No, Brother. No sign of them having come into the village.’

‘They were definitely here. You felt the magic.’

‘Aye, Brother.’

‘And all those birds.’

‘Aye, Brother.’

‘She was here.’

‘It’s him,’ whispers the White Knight.

‘Who?’ asks Gretel.

Silently, the White Knight pulls a dagger from her assorted armoury. It’s small, slim, and has a thin gold chain wrapped around the handle. Gretel stares at it. This isn’t the White Knight’s usual type of crudely bashed long-range Dwarvish weaponry. This isn’t a weapon for hefting, swinging or hurling. This is a weapon for getting up close, sliding from a sleeve and plunging silkily into a chest. The injury this dagger is designed for is personal.

‘The man I came here for,’ the White Knight tells her. ‘The man I brought this knife for.’

‘Snow, no,’ hisses Buttercup, pressing against the bank with them. ‘Not now!’

‘Yes now!’ replies the White Knight. ‘Buttercup, I have to. Let me have this at least.’

‘They’ll take you if you try,’ Buttercup whispers. ‘I can’t lose you as well.’

‘When will I ever have another chance?’

‘There’ll be another chance,’ Gretel tells her. ‘A better chance. I promise.’

From the look on the White Knight’s face, Gretel may as well have promised that her buttocks were going to turn into a fine smoked cheese on the stroke of midnight.

Above them, the men are still talking.

‘Those birds,’ says the more authoritative of the men suddenly. ‘They say she used to talk to the birds and the vermin. They were all her familiars, you know. A witch of the flea-riddled, the rats and the sparrows. A witch of pests and filth. Disgusting.’

In the river, the White Knight clutches at the dagger tighter.

‘Spread the word, Brother,’ continues the voice. ‘If any wild animal is seen in this village, or any bird flies over from the direction of the Darkwood, it is to be treated as a witch’s familiar, and killed.’

The White Knight draws a sharp intake of breath.

‘Be sure to be humane,’ adds the voice, ‘as befits the benevolence of our credo. But we can’t risk having this village overrun with a witch’s spies.’ The voice pauses. Gretel and Buttercup manage to hold the White Knight back, but she’s fit to burst with rage now.

‘My birds,’ snarls the White Knight.

‘You can make sure they stay in the forest,’ Buttercup tells her. ‘Keep them safe. You can’t help them or anyone if you get yourself killed or worse.’

‘Speaking of which,’ continues the voice suddenly, ‘I should commune with our own little spy. Have the Mirror taken to my new base of operations. It would be interesting to see if the block on this village has cleared now that we’ve taken it back.’

The White Knight’s expression changes. It’s still full of rage, but now there’s… It looks like fear. Horror. Without another word, she starts wading silently back towards the dam. Heart hammering, Gretel follows with the others. They’re not out of the woods yet. Not till they’re… well… back in the woods. What if the White Knight changes her mind and decides to charge back over there? What if they’re spotted? What about the village? She can’t believe she’s leaving the village like this…

They reach the dam, slip over to the forest side of the river, up on to the bank and into the trees, the White Knight standing at the hole in the fence ushering them all through. Gretel’s the last one in. She pauses, unsure whether to say anything – unsure what to say, even if she should. That’s when she sees, beyond the fence, beyond the river and the dam, the huntsman that was giving orders by the riverbank turn, and look straight at the White Knight. Gretel can’t see his eyes, only the mask’s blank stare, but she knows that the White Knight must be fully visible there at the edge of the forest, sticking out like a burnished silver sore thumb. The White Knight’s spotted him, too. Neither of them moves; they just stare at one another, across the river. The huntsman is the first to look away. Even though his face is covered, Gretel can sense from his body language that it’s not an act of submission, rather an act of being fully at ease with the situation. It’s a gesture that says, ‘I have sized you up, and determined you to be a small enough threat for me to take my eyes off you for now.’ It’s a gesture that says, ‘You are dismissed.’

The White Knight turns to follow the others into the forest, and as she does, briefly locks eyes with Gretel.

‘What’s he got on you?’ Gretel manages to blurt out. ‘Why are you so scared of the Mirror being here…?’

The White Knight pushes past her, and storms into the forest without another word.

18
Bump in the Night

When Gretel gets back to the cake cottage, she sits at the table with her head in her hands for some time. Buttercup asks if she can get her anything. Gretel doesn’t respond – barely even registers. Buttercup, being Buttercup, asks again. This time, Gretel does want something. Slate. And some chalk, if there’s any about. They lost the village because there’d been no time to formulate a proper plan, she tells herself. There’d been no time to properly utilise the witches. There’d been no time to bring Hansel and Daisy in on it. The huntsmen had been on the offensive. Early warning regardless, they’d taken the witches and the villagers by surprise. Well, now Gretel can be the one on the attack; she can be the one taking the huntsmen by surprise. She just needs to come up with a strategy. And fast.

Buttercup and Jack are able to source a large slab of black stone for her, and a chunk of chalk. They come in puffing under the weight of the stone that they’re lugging, Buttercup’s skirts over her hands to keep her from accidentally turning it into a very large loaf.

‘It’s a pity none of us is a stone witch,’ pants Buttercup, setting the stone down on the kitchen table. ‘It’s…’ She falters, and starts again. ‘I’m so sorry that we weren’t any help to you, Gretel. Your poor friends, your brother…’

‘It was my fault,’ Gretel says quietly. ‘But I’ll find a way to put it right. I just need some time to think.’ She takes the chalk and on the slate writes ‘PLAN’. She thinks, and adds ‘LIBERATION OF NEARBY’. She thinks again, and underlines ‘PLAN’.

As Gretel tries to work, Buttercup quietly scurries around her with her usual daily routines – sweeping this, dusting that, accidentally turning the other into a puff pastry. Usually, Gretel would find the usual pottering about the cottage comforting, but now it’s a distraction, a reminder that she’s not in her workshop back home – that she can never go back there, that it’s been taken by just the worst people in the whole of Myrsina. Jack just sits, despondent, as he has done since that awful Bin Night. Gretel can’t help thinking about what he said at the river, whether this broken surrender to despair is what ultimately awaits her too – is what ultimately awaits all witches. Even Trevor is quieter and sadder than usual. At least the White Knight doesn’t show her face. She’s pretty certain by now that she and the White Knight are officially not talking.

Gretel is still working when the others go up to bed. She’s tired, of course – she hasn’t slept since being mentally shaken awake in the small hours by the fears of her brother – but at least, she supposes, with the others sleeping she can get some peace.

She works. Her chalk scratches over the slate.

A curtain moves, faintly.

She tuts at her diagram, wets the corner of a cloth and erases a line.

A cupboard door eases open slowly, silently, unseen.

She draws a new line and nods at it approvingly.

A knife slides around the plate on which it has been sitting, spins off the counter altogether and lands with a clatter on the floor.

Gretel looks across at the fallen knife, frowning, and goes over to pick it up.

There is a breath, right behind her. She turns, startled. There’s nobody there.

‘Tr… evor?’ she asks. There’s no reply. Then, thinking, she adds, ‘Is that you, Hansel? Have you found a way to…’

She trails off. When it’s Hansel trying to contact her, she can feel it. This doesn’t feel like Hansel. This just feels… cold.

The knife that she’s only just set back on the counter flips onto the floor again. Gretel wheels round to look at it, and then she hears another noise. Not a breath this time but a whisper, like a note in the wind.

‘Wiiiiiitch.’

‘Who’s there?’

‘WitttttCCCHHHHHH!’

It’s coming from above Gretel. She looks up. On the ceiling, glaring back down at her, is the young huntsman. The one who died on Bin Night. Translucent and monochrome and very, very dead and very, very angry. Also, very, very upside-down-on-the-ceiling.

Ah. An angry Ghost. Of course. When you’ve had a day as awful as Gretel has, why not cap it off with an angry Ghost on the ceiling? Go nuts, terrible day. Go ahead and fill your terrible boots.

And so it’s with a weary sufferance that Gretel responds to the Ghost with a sigh, and a flat, ‘I’m not a witch, actually. Not that you ever cared.’

The huntsman’s hair flies wildly about her face. The knife Gretel picked up is knocked out of her hand and onto the floor yet again. ‘I died,’ rasps the Ghost, ‘because of youuuu.’

‘No,’ snaps Gretel, picking the knife up once more, ‘you died in spite of all of us. You were warned over and over, and looks like since you died in a magical forest, you got turned into a Ghost – these things happen, I’m afraid. Must be too bad for you, though. Someone who spent her whole life hating magical beings ends up having to come back as one? How the tables have t— wait, where are you going?’

The Ghost isn’t listening to her, but has walked across the ceiling to the ladder into the top floor of the cottage, where the others are sleeping. With one step, she sweeps into the floor upstairs.

‘Oh, for…’

‘Murrrrrrdererrrrrrrr,’ comes the voice of the Ghost from the bedroom, followed closely by Jack screaming in horror. Gretel slams the knife down hard back onto the counter.

‘Oh for pity’s sake, I’ve got to deal with this now?’

By the time she stomps up the ladder, the Ghost is nowhere to be seen, just Buttercup and Trevor comforting a traumatised Jack.

‘That poor girl,’ manages Jack. ‘The forest brought her back… she’s not going to leave me alone…’

‘She already did,’ replies Buttercup. ‘She’s gone again, can’t you feel it?’

Indeed, the air has lost the prickly coldness that accompanied the Ghost’s manifestation.

‘Perhaps it was just a flying visit,’ suggests Buttercup brightly. ‘You know, pop by, call you a murderer…’

‘She walked on the ceiling before that,’ adds Gretel, ‘and kept dropping the jam knife.’

‘…call you a murderer, walk on a ceiling, a little light cutlery disturbance and then back off to the afterlife she goes,’ continues Buttercup. ‘I’m sure that’s a thing that happens all the time. We’ll be fine. Won’t we, Gretel?’

They won’t be fine. Obviously, they won’t be fine; why did Gretel ever entertain the thought that they could all be fine?

‘Yeah,’ she mutters. ‘It’ll probably be fine.’

That night, they are disturbed twice more by sudden door slams and whispers, and in the light of day, Gretel’s work is disturbed by ghostly hands another four times before lunch. Trevor is dismayed that a web he’s been working diligently on for the best part of the morning has the words ‘Murdering Witch Scum’ spun into it – which he swears blind he has not done himself, it isn’t even his abdomen-writing. He then goes off to spin a new web with his name written in it to prove his point. The jam knife is thrown onto the floor so many times that everybody just gives up on picking it up after a while.

At lunch, Buttercup watches her soup spoon cartwheel through the air as soon as she tries to touch it. She sighs. ‘I suppose I could put down powder?’

The powder turns out to be mostly burnt herbs and salt, sprinkled around the perimeter of the house. The ritual is supposed to involve a candle, but Buttercup accidentally turns that into a baguette and is too tired to try again. It’s not a ‘spell’ as such – it turns out that witches generally aren’t good at actual spells; Buttercup and Jack have their natural magic and that’s all. It’s just an old remedy that was passed down to Buttercup from her grandma.

‘It’s not a hundred per cent effective as such,’ she warns them, sprinkling the last of it, ‘but we should see a marked decrease of Ghost-based problems in the house. Forty-five out of sixty haunted house owners said that they’d recommend it to a friend.’

As soon as they go back into the house, the air turns cold, Jack has a teacup thrown at him and Gretel’s chalk hovers in mid-air for several seconds before splitting in two.

‘Right,’ says Gretel.

‘That’s it,’ says Gretel.

‘I’ve had enough,’ says Gretel. ‘Show yourself! Or are you too cowardly to show your face in death, just as you were in life?’

The air freezes so much that it pinches at Gretel’s skin. The Ghost of the huntsman manifests centimetres away from her face.

‘Listen, that’s not going to work,’ Gretel tells her. ‘We’ve all been through way too much awful stuff to be scared of the likes of you.’

‘He’s scared,’ says the Ghost, nodding towards Jack.

‘Jack’s not scared of you, he’s sorry for you. Don’t mistake being a big, sad, guilty mess with fear.’

‘Well, the spider’s scared of me.’

‘True,’ admits Trevor.

‘Of course he’s scared of you – look at him, he’s tiny. He’s scared of everyone.’

‘Also true,’ says Trevor.

‘And me?’ Gretel continues. ‘I’m just trousered off.’

‘You got me killed,’ snarls the Ghost. ‘You left me out here to wander the cursed forest—’

‘Oh, boo hoo hoo,’ interrupts Gretel. ‘So you don’t like being stuck out here in the Darkwood, no longer treated like you’re a person? Join the club, mate, neither does anybody else round here. It’s not like anyone forced you to come into Darkwood, which is more than can be said for me, or Jack, or Buttercup, or Snow, or a multitude of others who are stuck here. Your lot saw to that. You pushed us out here because we were different and now you’re all acting angry that this place is full of different people. Well, guess what – you get to be one of the undesirables of Darkwood, too. And it’s not Jack’s fault, or Buttercup’s, or mine. You made your choices. Go and make peace with the consequences of them somewhere else, I don’t have time for this. I have to save my village from your faceless, cowardly little friends, before they end up like the rest of us. Go.’

The Ghost frowns. ‘Wait, what about your village…?’

‘Go, I said!’ Gretel waves her arms through the Ghost. It feels like getting her limbs stuck in ice water. ‘She’s not getting the message. Somebody tell me how I go about performing an exorcism.’

The others – Ghost included – look aghast at her suggestion.

‘What? No!’ Buttercup exclaims. ‘Gretel, you can’t do that!’

‘I know it can be done, Buttercup,’ Gretel replies. ‘Huntsmen do them all the time.’

‘Yes, but it’s horrible,’ Buttercup tells her.

‘The Cake Witch is right,’ says the Ghost. Gretel notices that the Ghost has started backing warily away from her. ‘It is horrible.’

‘Thank you, dear, but please don’t call me that,’ says Buttercup, ‘I have a name.’

‘And how would you know how bad exorcisms are?’ Gretel asks the ghost. ‘Seen many, have you? Been involved in many, with your band of bullies?’

The Ghost, to Gretel’s surprise, looks down, shamefaced. ‘Just one,’ she admits. ‘The poor thing was screaming and screaming… it looked painful.’

‘It is,’ says Buttercup softly. ‘It’s basically murder, and an agonising one at that. I’m not having that on our conscience.’

‘Well, not another one, anyway,’ adds Jack with a hollow, self-deprecating smile that flickers suddenly away under the Ghost’s gaze.

‘We were all trained to perform the ritual if we even so much as suspected a Ghostly presence was about,’ adds the Ghost. ‘We were told it was a form of pest control.’

‘I mean, you are a pest,’ says Gretel, ‘so at least that bit of logic is sound.’

‘She’s a magical creature of the Darkwood now,’ Buttercup adds, ‘which means we’re duty-bound to protect her.’

‘Oh, Buttercup, really? She’s a huntsman! Those people ruined our lives, invaded my village, and they’re going to kill us…’

‘…I’m not a huntsman.’

‘But now I’m supposed to protect one of them just because she got herself killed?’

‘I’m not a huntsman!’

Gretel cuts her rant short and stares at the Ghost.

‘Thought you people were huntsmen for life.’

‘Which is now over, thanks to Trott.’

‘It was an accident,’ murmurs Jack.

‘The cake w— Buttercup’s right again,’ says the Ghost. ‘Look at me. I’ve lost everything. Lost my face.’ She indicates to her own perfectly nice-looking face. The grotesquely impassive huntsman’s mask is nowhere to be seen on the Ghost’s form. ‘Lost my humanity. I’m just a strange thing of the Darkwood now, same as the rest of you wretches. That’s how my old brothers and sisters of the Hunt will view me. If they even see me. Chances are, they’ll fill these woods with exorcism spells as soon as they set foot here again.’

‘So, what?’ Gretel asks. ‘You’re just going to sulk around here, pestering Jack and dropping knives and waiting to be wiped out by your own side?’

‘Ugh, Mudd, would you listen? I’m saying I’m not on the same side as them any more.’

‘Ooh!’ pipes Trevor. ‘I think she’s saying she wants to join us! It’s one of those post-deathbed conversions!’

‘I’m not exactly on your side either, you know, Demon Spider…’

‘The name’s Trevor, but carry on.’

The Ghost sighs. ‘I’m declaring myself neutral. Neutralised. Permanently.

‘And we’re supposed to believe her?’ Gretel asks. ‘What if it’s all a trick?’

‘Like you joined us with a trick?’ replies Jack.

Gretel opens her mouth, then closes it again. ‘That wasn’t…’

‘It sort of was, dear,’ says Buttercup. ‘We’re still glad you joined us, aren’t we?’

‘Well…’

‘And we’d have protected you anyway. It’s what we do.’

Gretel shakes her head at Buttercup. ‘Why are you always so nice?’

Buttercup treats her to the sweetest of smiles. ‘We hang out with Snow, dear. Somebody has to be the nice one.’

Gretel looks around the group. The rest of them seem to have made up their minds about helping this Ghost as readily as they previously made their minds up about helping Gretel. She remembers how lost and scared she was when she first got stuck out in the Darkwood. She also remembers how readily she’d used to attack the poor creatures that had come stumbling out of there, back when she’d lived in the village, back before she understood that those Ogres and Beasties were probably just scared, or hungry, or in pain. She remembers how quickly she was forgiven for those times.

She points at the Ghost. ‘No more pestering us when we’re trying to sleep, or flinging cutlery.’

‘Agreed,’ says the Ghost.

‘And if I hear word of you trying to contact those huntsmen ever again, you’re out.’

‘They’d exorcise me as soon as set eyes on me,’ replies the Ghost.

Gretel nods, and sits down at the table. ‘Well, there’s one upside to this. I won’t be the new girl any more.’

‘New Girl!’ There is a crash as the White Knight kicks the front door open. ‘I need a word.’

‘Snow, would you stop doing that?’ protests Buttercup. ‘You could just knock. My poor door! It’s half digestive as it is.’

The White Knight just nods at the Ghost. ‘Your kitchen’s haunted.’

‘We know!’

19
Death Becomes Her

Gretel follows the White Knight outside.

‘Let’s go for a walk,’ says the White Knight. ‘You lads stay there.’

The Dwarves do as they’re told, loitering around the door to the cake cottage, breaking off bits of biscuity window ledge and trying to tempt wood pigeons down with the crumbs. The White Knight leads Gretel further out into the forest.

Gretel knows better by this point than to bring up yesterday’s retreat, or the White Knight’s behaviour during it. Instead, she stays quiet, and waits for the White Knight to speak.

‘Sorry about your village’, says the White Knight after a while.

‘We’ll get it back. Probably.’

‘Yes. We will. Definitely.’

They both fall quiet again for a while, but Gretel smiles gratefully down at her feet at that ‘we’. So, they’re still a team. That’s something.

‘But before that can happen,’ says the White Knight, ‘I need you to do something for me.’

Gretel frowns up at the White Knight.

‘You were right about the Mirror,’ continues the White Knight. ‘I wasn’t expecting them to bring it, but its presence in your village does change everything, as far as I’m concerned. It was one thing them keeping their dirty hands on it in the castle, but to have it right under my nose… I can’t bear it.’ She pauses, worrying her hands over one another – not the smoothest or quietest of movements when one is wearing silver gauntlets.

CLANK, worry her fingers. CLANK CLATTER.

‘I intend to go on a mission to take the Mirror from the huntsmen,’ she announces after a moment. ‘Undercover. Just me. This is a personal thing.’

CLANK, clank her hands, CLINK CLANK.

‘However,’ she adds quickly, ‘it’s going to be no good if I manage to get killed or captured or something like that. I mean, you lot need me back in one piece for a start, how are you going to re-take the village without me? So…’

‘So you’re asking for my help,’ says Gretel.

‘Just tactical backup. You know that village, after all, and… well, I’m sure you’re going to learn from your many, many mistakes yesterday and come up with some decent plans.’

‘Ooh, is that a compliment?’

‘No.’

‘I’m going to accept it as one anyway.’

‘Shut up.’

Gretel lets herself smile at the White Knight. ‘What is it with you and that Mirror? Does it have dirt on you, or something?’

‘It’s personal!’

‘I get that, I just don’t understand…’

The White Knight’s voice drops to a low, but intense, whisper. ‘It’s mine. OK? That’s all you need to know.’

‘Yours?’

‘Yes. They stole it from me, along with everything I had, before they forced me to flee for my life. When I put the block on them seeing Darkwood through it, I can hear that huntsman’s voice, demanding answers from it, making threats… it makes me sick. The Mirror’s… dear to me. I want it back.’ She clears her throat. ‘Also it would be a huge tactical advantage to us if we had a magic mirror and they didn’t.’

‘You used to own a magic mirror?’

‘I am a witch, New Girl.’

‘Yes, but you just do rabbits and birds really, don’t you?’

‘I use them to see. I used to use the Mirror to see, that’s all. None of this is your concern anyway; your concern is working out what would be the best way to…’

‘So can you still use any old mirror?’ asks Gretel. ‘Like, polish up your breastplate really well, or…’

‘No, I can’t. The magic Mirror is special. It’s got soul.’

‘Soul?’

‘Soul.’

Gretel thinks for a moment. ‘It’s really that important to you, isn’t it?’

The White Knight nods noisily.

‘So you’re going to go ahead and try to get it back whether I help you or not, aren’t you?’

Another metallic nod.

‘Well,’ Gretel sighs. ‘We should find a way to do it quickly and quietly. First, we can utilise the intelligence operatives that we already have to hand.’

The White Knight shakes her head. ‘You don’t think I’d be using my birds and animals if I could? That huntsman’s on to me, he’s going to have any creature that comes from the Darkwood killed. I’m not wasting a life.’

‘He said birds and animals,’ replies Gretel, ‘but we’ve got a secret weapon that his men won’t even notice.’

‘What?’

‘Trevor!’

The White Knight rolls her eyes. ‘New Girl. He’s nice enough, but you’ve got to learn to just ignore all of his spy fantasies. He really is just a spider.’

‘Exactly,’ says Gretel.

The White Knight ponders this, sighs and starts clanking back towards the cottage. ‘Fine.’

Gretel breaks into a trot to follow her. ‘You know what else might be a tactical idea for a clandestine undercover extraction mission?’

‘What?’

‘Quieter clothes.’

The White Knight snaps her head round to glare at Gretel, but there’s the tiniest twist of amusement to her lips. ‘You making fun of me, New Girl?’

‘Maybe a little bit. I stood up to a Ghost today, it’s made me feel all confident.’

‘Mm, I noticed that. The annoying little huntsman from Bin Night, right? What’s that all about?’

‘It was Buttercup’s idea for her to stay.’

The White Knight snorts. ‘That’s Buttercup for you. Always ready to open her door to waifs and strays. Better get used to that.’

The Ghost is lingering outside the cottage by the time Gretel gets back. The Dwarves are taking it in turns sticking their arms into her incorporeal form, which makes their hair stand on end all over their grubby little bodies. She looks like she’s surrounded by smelly grey pompoms.

Gretel ignores her and goes back inside to the kitchen table, and her plans. She sighs down at the slate. So now she has this impossible mission to plan, and a whole different impossible mission to plan at the same time. She can feel her recent confidence boost eroding swiftly away under the crushing waves of reality. She is going to need, at the very least, a bigger slate.

There’s an awkward cough from the door. Gretel glances up. It’s the Ghost. She looks back down at her plans again. Then she hears the jam knife begin an infuriatingly long, slow scrape across the kitchen counter.

‘Don’t,’ she warns.

Silence. She takes up the chalk and adds a couple of points to the map she’s sketched out.

The knife drops to the floor with an annoyingly high-pitched clatter.

‘What is it now?’ Gretel shouts. ‘I thought we had an agreement! You’re neutral, remember?’

‘I want to talk,’ says the Ghost quietly. ‘I’ve been thinking.’

Gretel rubs her eyes, exhales, and puts the chalk back down again. ‘Go on.’

‘About my situation.’

‘I didn’t really mean it about an exorcism,’ says Gretel. ‘I was just trying to scare you off. Sorry about that, it was unkind. I’ve never been dead, but it looks pretty awful.’

‘Yeah, it’s not fun,’ admits the Ghost. ‘But that’s not what I mean. I’ve been thinking about my situation before. I suppose that’s one upside to death, you get the chance to reflect on life from the new perspective of an outside observer. I was so caught up in everything, in what had been drummed into me since I was a kid… But it’s all rigged, isn’t it? The way that they make sure that the only way for a girl to get ahead in anything is by joining them. I just wanted to study science…’

‘So did I,’ replies Gretel, ‘and I never joined them.’

‘And you ended up chased from your home as a witch.’ The Ghost pauses. ‘And I ended up dead. Because I was setting out those horrible traps for Unicorns. I wanted to prove I was valuable even though I was a girl, wanted to go above and beyond in being cruel, and it just got me killed. Maybe it served me right.’

‘Gracious,’ says Gretel. ‘You’re not actually admitting you were wrong, are you?’

‘I’m admitting that the huntsmen are wrong,’ replies the Ghost. ‘I’m admitting that the whole system is wrong. Whether I was wrong or not…’

‘You were…’

‘It doesn’t matter though, does it? I’m dead, now. It’s too late for me to do anything about it.’

‘Is it, though?’ asks Gretel. ‘The Darkwood brought you back as a Ghost. Ghosts are always seeking atonement for what they did in life, it’s a well-known Ghost fact, that.’

The Ghost ponders this. ‘You think I could? If I wasn’t just neutral, if I actually tried to help? Tried to put things right?’ She sighs, frustrated. ‘But how would I even go about helping you fight the huntsmen?’

‘You’re pretty good at throwing knives on the floor,’ says Gretel. ‘That’s a start, at least.’

The Ghost looks embarrassed.

‘Look,’ says Gretel. ‘You’ve got inside knowledge of the huntsman organisation. You could be useful helping me plan out how to help my village.’

The Ghost wafts over and looks at the plans. ‘This is Nearby,’ she says. ‘The huntsmen invaded Nearby?’

‘Yep.’

‘Then they’re going into the final phase already. You… we… don’t have long.’

‘Also yep.’

She stares at the plans. ‘You’re not going to be able to defeat them, you know. Not defeat them, defeat them. But if they’re already in Nearby, it means they’re rushing their campaign. Maybe a proper pushback could cause them to slow down, possibly even retreat a little.’

‘I just want Darkwood and the village safe, for now.’

‘Well, that might be doable.’ The Ghost pauses. ‘I’ll help you, as much as I can. If nothing else, helping you avenge your village will be good practice for when I finally get round to avenging my death.’

‘Oh no, you’re not one of those death-avengey Ghosts, are you?’

‘I’m getting quite a strong urge to avenge, yes.’

‘But I thought we’d agreed you were one of those “atone for the past, find inner peace” type Ghosts.’

‘Maybe I’m both,’ says the Ghost. ‘Maybe inner peace comes through atonement and vengeance. In any case, for now, I’d like to help you.’

‘OK.’ Gretel offers her a small smile. ‘What do I call you, by the way? You’ve never mentioned your name.’

‘Huntsmen don’t use names,’ explains the Ghost. ‘It’s like our faces – we’re supposed to give up our identity to pursue the egalitarian dream of achieving true, selfless togetherness as a unified brotherhood.’

‘Or, you hide your identities and deny your individuality so that nobody seems personally responsible for all those awful things you do?’

‘That too.’ She pauses. ‘Patience.’

‘Hmm?’

‘My name. Haven’t used it in a while, but I might as well start now. It’s Patience.’

Gretel can’t help but smirk. ‘Patience.’

‘Yes.’

‘You.’

‘Yes!’

‘The one who ran off into the woods alone and ignored everyone’s advice…’

‘Yes…’

‘…is literally named Patience.’

‘Yes, I get the irony, thank you!’

‘Amazing.’

The jam knife clatters half-heartedly on the floor again.

‘Stop making fun of me,’ complains Patience. ‘I’m dead.’

20
Meanwhile, Nearby

In Nearby Village, dawn breaks on the third day since the huntsmen marched in. It is quieter than it used to be, despite being far, far fuller than it’s ever been before. A whole line of huntsmen stand guard against the border with Darkwood, and more huntsmen patrol the streets – quiet, placid, blank-faced masks sailing serenely through every public space, watching for birds or mice, or any other small creature that they can shoot from the air or crush underfoot.

None of them, however, are looking for a spider. None of them notices one scurry alone from the trees, over the dam and into the village. None of them hear an excited little voice murmur, ‘I’m doing this, I’m actually doing this,’ over and over again under its breath. Nobody hears, when the spider crawls into view of the village square, the excited muttering stop with a gasp and a despairing whisper of ‘Oh, no.’

Trevor climbs up into the eaves of a building for a better view of the square and the village beyond. As the morning progresses, a stream of villagers head from their homes silently, their faces cast down, not daring to catch the eye of any of the multitude of huntsmen roaming the streets. They don’t stop to chat in the market – there is no market, in fact. In its place is a bonfire with a stake. Thankfully, it doesn’t look as if it’s been used at all. Yet.

Trevor abseils back down to the street and begins his lengthy speed-scurry from building to building in the search for Hansel. He finds the laundry full of the village’s women, packed uncomfortably close together, washing the black capes of the huntsmen under the blank gaze of half a dozen guards. Even Trevor shrinks back a little from the damp heat of the room; the smell of starch, soap and sweat prickles at his legs. He certainly doesn’t see Hansel there, nor the girl he was with… what had Gretel called her again? Daisy?

He moves on. More women are being made to sew and to prepare food in similarly cramped and stuffy conditions. Still he doesn’t see Daisy. He eventually finds some of the village’s menfolk making weaponry at the ford, again under the eye of guards. Hansel isn’t there. Trevor hurries on. He passes several large tents with beds made up in rows. It isn’t clear to him whether these are for the huntsmen or to house villagers moved from their own homes to make way for huntsmen. In one of the tents, he finds the village’s younger children, sitting in rows. They’re chanting, along with a huntsman standing at the front. ‘Wuh is for witch. The wicked witch lives in the wood. The wood is wicked. Ex is for ex-witch. The huntsmen will exterminate the wicked.’ One of the littler ones turns his head briefly to look at a sliver of bright sky visible through a gap in the flaps of the tent, as a result of which, one of several more guard huntsmen looms over him almost immediately.

‘No, child. No distractions. You’ve been indoctrinated in permissiveness by the witch lovers; you need to be freed from that. You will listen to our sister, and you will open your mind to the truth about the evils of witchcraft.’

The boy’s lip wobbles a little at being menaced over by this towering, faceless figure. ‘I want my mummy.’

‘You will see your mummy when we see fit, not before,’ replies the guard. ‘This is for your own good, no harm will come to you. Now continue.’

‘But I want—’

‘This is for your own good,’ repeats the guard, his voice raised. ‘Now, if you want to see your mummy again at all, you will continue. Or do you want to go to where we’re keeping the bad children?’

Trevor can’t watch any more. He scuttles away. Eventually he comes across a small building with ‘Village Hall/Police Station/Fire Station/Drop-In Café (Tuesday Mornings Only)’ written on a sign above the door, and a cat in a tricorn hat and gold chain eating from a bowl decorated with the words ‘Mayor Sparkles’. Remaining vigilant about the cat, Trevor hurries around the corner, climbs a side wall and squeezes himself inside through a crack next to the window.

Once inside, Trevor feels it immediately – a strong sense of concentrated magic. He initially believes that it’s coming from a mysterious flat oval shape that is resting on a table in the middle of the room, covered in a black cloth. He crawls on the ceiling towards it, noticing that the cloth is somehow sticking to whatever’s beneath. As he approaches it, however, his magically attuned senses drag his attention towards the back of the building. He skitters silently across and through the top of the door frame to the small room at the back where a couple of holding cells stand. In one, behind a firmly locked door, twisted up into a tightly curled ball, is Hansel. As Trevor passes the bars of the cell and lowers himself gracefully towards the boy, he sees that Hansel has his eyes screwed tight. He looks in pain… Trevor can’t smell blood or see any bruises, so he doubts it’s torture. It’s more that Hansel has an expression of pained concentration, as if he’s trying desperately to keep a hold of something heavy and slippery. He looks, Trevor realises, the way Jack did when he was trying to keep those beanstalks aloft. He lands softly on the boy’s shoulder.

‘You all right there, fella?’ he asks, as quietly and sympathetically as he can.

Hansel’s eyes fly open in shock and for a second the shadows in the cells seem to thicken and take form. Trevor is sure he can sense something pre-seismic happening in the ground below for a moment, before there is a feeling of the shadows and rumbles being sucked in and contained, and the cell becomes its drab, depressing, ordinary self once more.

Hansel turns his head this way and that to find the source of the voice before his eyes settle on Trevor.

‘Oh, it’s you again.’

‘The very same.’

There’s an awkward pause before both say at once, ‘Sorry about all this.’

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ replies Trevor. ‘You surrendered to try to protect your people.’

‘Fat lot of good that did them,’ sighs Hansel.

‘Hey,’ replies Trevor gently. ‘We’re going to sort this, OK? We’re coming back for you all. It’s going to be all right. Gretel’s already working on a plan.’

‘Gretel,’ says Hansel, his eyes briefly lighting up for once.

‘Yeah,’ Trevor tells him. He pauses, watching that look of a great, crushing weight fall over Hansel’s expression again only seconds after it had lifted. ‘Are you all right, mate? Just, you look…’ He lowers his voice to a whisper, needlessly. ‘We know you’re the witch. Are you trying to conjure something too big? I’ve seen that look before, and from experience you’re never going to manage it, you’re just going to burn yourself out.’

Hansel gazes at him again. ‘You’ve got it the wrong way round,’ he replies quietly. ‘I’m not trying to conjure, I’m trying not to.’ He pauses. ‘When I get upset, sometimes things just… happen. And I’m really quite upset right now, and…’

‘Understandable,’ says Trevor.

‘And if they catch me conjuring…’

‘Yes, I saw the bonfire,’ mutters Trevor.

‘And it’s not just me,’ says Hansel miserably. ‘What if they take it out on Stepmother and Stepfather too? Or Daisy? Or the whole village?’

Trevor senses the invisible, tendril-like somethings, crackling with a strange energy, pulsing out of Hansel as he speaks, and feels the rumble growing in the ground beneath him before it happens.

‘It’s going to be OK,’ he tells Hansel, as soothingly as he can. ‘Try to stay calm, mate.’

‘I don’t know how long I can keep this up,’ breathes Hansel.

Trevor tries giving Hansel a friendly little pat on the cheek, but voices beyond startle them both. Trevor hurries off Hansel’s shoulder, back onto the wall.

‘Just hang in there for now,’ he manages, as he scuttles back on to the ceiling, ‘all right?’

Hansel just goes back to hugging his knees.

There are people in the main room of the hall/station/occasional café now – several huntsmen and two older villagers. Trevor guesses from their clothes that they’re farmers.

‘…not content with sending our stepdaughter away—’ the farmer woman says.

One of the huntsmen interrupts her. ‘Your stepdaughter was a witch.’

‘She wasn’t, she was just clever…’

‘Do you dare to deny our findings, woman?’ asks the huntsman.

The woman shrinks back a little, but the man with her takes up her cause. ‘We just want to know what the charges against our stepson are – is there to be a trial? How bad is it? What are you planning to do to him?’

‘Mr and Mrs Mudd,’ says the huntsman, ‘the charges against your stepson are very serious. He’s suspected of treason, and conspiring with witches. You saw those birds when he led the attack against us. That was magical weaponry, which is strictly prohibited.’

‘That wasn’t him…’

‘According to yourself and your immodestly unrestrained wife, Mr Mudd, it seems nothing at all is the fault of your children, rather that they are poor, innocent victims in all of this?’

‘Well,’ manages Mrs Mudd, ‘yes.’

‘Mrs Mudd, would you care to join your stepson in jail?’ snaps the huntsman. ‘Speak out against me one more time, and that can be arranged.’

Mrs Mudd draws a breath to reply, but her husband catches her wrist.

‘You can’t do any good for anybody in there,’ murmurs Mr Mudd.

Mrs Mudd exhales the expectant breath as a sigh of defeat.

‘Your son is comfortable,’ the huntsman assures them, in kinder tones. ‘He is fed and watered and safe, and shall be until he sits a fair trial to answer to the accusations against him, once we have dealt with the Darkwood. If, as you say, he is innocent, then he should have nothing to fear, should he?’

The couple pause, and then the husband, gathering up courage, blurts out, ‘And what of Daisy Wicker?’

The huntsman cocks his head. ‘Not another stepchild, Mr Mudd?’

‘Our friend’s daughter,’ Mr Mudd clarifies. ‘She hasn’t seen or heard from her since the inv— since your visit began. She’s concerned that Daisy’s been arrested too, or… or worse…’

He trails off.

‘Daisy Wicker,’ says the huntsman thoughtfully. He takes a wad of papers on a writing board from another huntsman and inspects it. It seems as if he’s reading some sort of roster, but from his vantage point on the ceiling, Trevor notices that the papers he’s looking at are completely blank. ‘She’s on laundry duty,’ he tells them, pointing to a blank spot on a blank sheet, and ensuring that nobody else can see. ‘There’s a note that says she’s also a close friend of your stepson?’

‘Yes,’ replies Mr Mudd warily.

The huntsman nods. ‘After his arrest, she offered to keep him company when she’s not on shift at the laundry. This was allowed, since patient emotional support is such a fine virtue for a young woman to develop. Very seemly. Your friend should be proud.’

‘He’s allowed visitors?’ asks Mrs Mudd. ‘May we visit him too?’

‘I’m afraid not, due to space and resources,’ replies the huntsman. ‘We can only accommodate Miss Wicker, but be assured that she certainly keeps his spirits up. We’ll be sure to pass on your best wishes to both of them in due course.’ The huntsman passes the blank papers back to the other huntsman. ‘Please, don’t allow us to keep you from your duties, Mr and Mrs Mudd. Plenty of mouths for you both to help feed.’

‘But…’

‘Plenty of mouths, Mr Mudd. Goodbye.’

Trevor watches the farmers leave, and keeps four eyes on the huntsman who was speaking with them. Those papers were blank. Plus, he remembers, Daisy Wicker wasn’t in the laundry room. He looked carefully for her. This huntsman is a big lying liar.

The huntsman walks over to the strange covered oval and rests his hands on it. Trevor can swear he can feel the thing crackle at his touch, like electricity but deeper. After a minute or two, the other huntsmen return to their guarding duties, leaving just the huntsman with his hands on the covered object. Then, abruptly, with the air of somebody not to be stopped or questioned, he strides out of the hall. Trevor scurries along the ceiling at top speed to keep up with him, lets himself drop without a safety thread in the doorway and, in the name of keeping pace with somebody walking on much, much longer legs, braves making a dash on the open street to follow the huntsman.

Trevor very quickly remembers how much he hates walking on open ground. Everything is terrifying. Huge, heavy feet that could crush him in an instant continually crash down around him, not even registering his presence. Even if they did notice him, he reminds himself, there’s a good chance that they’d deliberately smush him underfoot.

This is why spiders have such short lifespans, he tells himself. It’s exhausting.

There’s something else wrong too, he realises, after a few seconds of boot-related anxiety. Something behind him. A softer, lighter footfall, and a faint jingling. The hairs on his legs bristle with the sensation of approaching danger. He is being stalked.

That cat.

He is suddenly, painfully aware that he can’t outrun an adult cat.

He speeds up anyway. There are no walls to climb, no cracks to hide in; he’s completely in the open. He can’t die like this. Not like this. Gretel and the White Knight have entrusted him with this big, important mission; he can’t fail it because he got eaten by a cat.

He senses the cat go into a crouch behind him, then spring into a pounce, lithe muscles flexing, claws extending, gold chain jingling.

Ahead of him, the huntsman stops, and turns swiftly on his heel to face the scene of Trevor’s imminent demise.

‘What’s this cat still doing here?’ he cries.

The cat is startled, mid-pounce, by the sudden loud voice. Instead of sinking its claws into Trevor it stalls, gazing up at the white mask, its crouch more defensive than predatory now.

‘Was I not clear?’ continues the huntsman. ‘To put beasts in any clothes, let alone robes of office, is a profane mockery of the laws of this land. How dare you insult the great duties of an elected mayor with this sickening display? It’s the sort of thing one might expect to see in the accursed forest, or even in Ashtrie, under the rule of that evil tyrant, but in Myrsina? In our land? It is a well-known abomination!’

A second huntsman, who had stopped to listen at the start of the first one’s rant, leans in and whispers something to him urgently.

‘Well, put it on the list of abominations, then! It’s not exactly trepanning surgery, is it, Brother?’

All this shouting proves enough for the cat, which turns tail and flees. Trevor remains frozen to the spot, hoping that the huntsmen won’t see him, or will mistake him for a small pebble.

‘I would advise residents to relieve that cat of those obscene adornments immediately and put it to nature’s work, ridding us of pests,’ calls the huntsman, ‘lest a huntsman catch it first. I cannot guarantee that my brothers and sisters would not treat it, in its current state, as they would any strange creature that comes from the Darkwood.’

With that, the huntsman turns again, and carries on along the street. Once he’s sure nobody’s watching, Trevor follows suit.

The huntsman leads Trevor to a small building with one tiny, high, barred window and a door with a hefty lock. It must have been some sort of storage hut for valuables once. Trevor climbs up onto the door frame and, once the huntsman has retrieved a large iron key from his robes, unlocked the door, slipped inside and locked it from behind again, Trevor squeezes in through the keyhole.

Inside the hot, cramped hut, and not at the hot, cramped laundry after all, is Daisy. She’s surrounded by notes, designs and tools, as well as offcuts of wood and metal. She sits on a stool and glowers through her fringe at the huntsman towering over her, inspecting a vicious-looking contraption.

‘This is it?’ asks the huntsman.

‘This is a prototype,’ Daisy tells him, her tone one of carefully bitten back anger. ‘The real one would be three times bigger.’

‘Why isn’t this three times bigger?’

Daisy gestures around at the tiny hut. ‘Hate to commit the abomination of maths in front of you, sir, but there isn’t exactly room for me to do that in here.’

The huntsman sets the contraption down. ‘You think you’re clever?’

Daisy looks down at her lap.

‘It’s all right,’ continues the huntsman. ‘I know you’re clever. I know it was you, creating those catapults, in cahoots with the Mudd Witch. And that’s why you’re in here.’

‘You’re fine with girls doing engineering as long as it’s to create weapons for you to hurt the creatures of Darkwood?’ asks Daisy quietly.

‘You know that we accept bright girls to the huntsmen’s fraternity,’ replies the huntsman mildly. ‘Even a peasant girl like you might be allowed to take up the mask and cape.’

‘Yet I’m still to let all the other huntsmen believe that when you take me out of that cell every morning it’s to be put to work in the laundry, instead of here?’ Daisy asks.

‘You’re our secret weapon, Miss Wicker,’ the huntsman tells her. ‘Some of my brethren don’t quite understand yet that we must do anything that it takes to rid ourselves completely of those wicked witches. Anything it takes to avoid a situation like Ashtrie.’

‘What even happened in Ashtrie that was so bad that it’s worth all of this?’

‘Something too terrible to talk about!’

‘Then why even mention—’

The huntsman cuts Daisy off. ‘And you’ll do anything it takes to keep that Mudd boy safe, it seems. We all of us have causes that we’re willing to compromise elsewhere over, don’t we?’ He pats her shoulder. She flinches slightly from his hand. ‘Keep yourself useful, eh?’

Daisy keeps her eyes downcast. ‘And when I stop being useful to you?’

‘Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.’

‘And if I stopped being useful to you immediately?’

‘Then we’d kill the Mudd boy just as immediately, Miss Wicker. We’d kill him quite, quite horribly and you would be a front seat spectator for the whole long, noisy, sticky business.’ The huntsman pauses. ‘Might kill his step-parents, too. They’re rather annoying. Better for you to keep on pleasing me, while you can. And of course’ – and here the voice behind the blank expression takes on the sing-song tones of sarcasm – ‘the longer you delay the inevitable, the more time you have to come up with a plan to get your village out of this terrible pickle. So there’s that. Right?’

Daisy has no reply.

The huntsman inspects the prototype contraption. ‘How deadly would you say this was?’

‘Pretty deadly,’ Daisy tells her lap. ‘But they’re all just defensive measures, right? You’re going to try to get them to leave peacefully first, right?’

‘I’ll pass this model and your notes on to the menfolk,’ the huntsman tells her. ‘They can start building these full-scale. Do you have anything else to show me?’

‘Not yet,’ says Daisy, her face still cast down.

‘Tomorrow?’

‘I’ll try.’

‘See that you do,’ says the huntsman, taking out the iron key again. ‘Because otherwise…’ He performs a complex mime of running something up his forearm and then peeling things away from it.

Daisy frowns at the elaborate gesture, confused.

‘That’s mime for “skinning someone alive”,’ explains the huntsman.

‘Oh.’

‘Because that’s what we’ll do to him.’

‘Yes.’

The huntsman gathers himself haughtily, unlocks the door, removes both himself and the prototype from the little hut and then locks Daisy in once more.

Trevor remains on the ceiling, watching Daisy sniff, and wipe her eyes delicately on the back of her sleeve.

‘Well,’ he says quietly, after a while. ‘This is a bit of a rum do, isn’t it?’

21
The Spider Who Came in from the Cold

From Nearby Village to the cake cottage is a long walk on little legs, even when there’s eight of them. By the time he slips under the door frame back into Buttercup’s kitchen, Trevor is exhausted.

‘Your spider’s back,’ comes a strange voice from the kitchen.

Trevor looks up in the direction of the voice, and jumps a little when he sees the Ghost.

‘The house is still haunted, then.’

‘We’re protecting Patience, remember?’ Buttercup crouches down in front of Trevor, lets him crawl wearily onto her extended finger and then lifts him up onto a large web, peppered with flies.

‘Yeah, but do we have to protect her in the kitchen?’ Trevor makes a beeline for a bluebottle he prepared earlier, and takes a hefty, energy-restoring slurp of liquidised fly. ‘I’m just not sure how hygienic it is, having a dead person next to the food.’

‘Trevor, you eat in the privy,’ says Jack, from the table. ‘Sometimes while I’m using it. You make eye contact with me.’

‘I thought you enjoyed our special times together,’ argues Trevor through a mouthful of fly soup.

‘Turns out, Patience is pretty good to have onside,’ Gretel tells him. ‘She’s been helping me out. She knows lots of interesting little huntsman secrets.’

‘Plus, I don’t take up any space in your bedroom and I don’t need feeding,’ adds Patience the Ghost, a little boastfully for Trevor’s liking.

‘Ghosts make surprisingly good houseguests,’ says Buttercup with a smile.

‘Spiders make surprisingly good houseguests,’ retorts Trevor irritably.

‘It’s not a competition, Trevor.’

‘When’s the last time she sorted out a fruit fly problem?’

‘Trevor,’ warns Buttercup, with all the menace of a marshmallow.

‘I bet I could, though,’ interjects Patience. ‘I’d haunt them away.’

Buttercup accidentally turns her piece of chalk into a shortbread finger. ‘Will both of you please pack it in?’

Gretel waits until Trevor has finished his bluebottle before asking, ‘So how long do we have?’

‘Not long,’ he tells them. ‘Few days, maybe? They’re stockpiling weapons for now, but they’re going to attack us really soon. And that’s a best-case scenario.’

He tells them about Hansel, barely keeping it together in the cell, and about Daisy, secretly locked in the hut. He tells them about the laundry, and the tent with the children, and the bonfire.

The group listen in silent horror. It is only Patience who, after Trevor has finished, nods stoically and says, ‘Right. Thank you. That’s given us a lot to work on.’

‘Hansel,’ says Gretel. ‘Was he… is he…’

‘He hasn’t been hurt, so far,’ Trevor tells her. ‘But as I say, he looked… well, like how Jack looks when he’s trying to stop something big from rotting.’

‘You do realise that that does hurt me, right?’ asks Jack. ‘Physically. It’s like trying to keep a boulder held over my head.’ He pauses. ‘He’s been trying to do it for days now. Trousers, the poor kid.’

‘Oh no,’ says Patience in sickly sweet tones, ‘did it hurt your likkle arms when you killed me?’

‘For the last time, Patience, I was trying to save your life!’

‘It’s still your fault.’

‘Isn’t everything?’

‘Youuuuur faauuuuulllltttt.’

‘Buttercup, she’s doing it again!’

‘Patience,’ snaps Buttercup, ‘no haunting indoors. We talked about this.’

Before Patience gets the chance to reply, there is a familiar scrabble and bang from the door, as the White Knight kicks it open and stands, dramatically framed as usual and lightly covered in Dwarves.

‘Snow, use the handle,’ complains Buttercup, throwing away a second accidental piece of shortbread.

‘Trevor.’ The White Knight nods at Trevor. ‘A little birdie told me you’d made it back.’

‘That “little birdie” couldn’t have seen its way to giving me a lift for the last couple of miles once I was in the forest, could it?’ asks Trevor. ‘My tiny legs are knackered.’

The White Knight stomps over to his web and extends her hand for him to jump on. ‘I’d like a word. You too, New Girl.’

Patience starts wafting over, a confused look on her face.

‘Not you,’ snaps the White Knight. ‘You’re not New Girl, you’re Dead Girl.’ She points at Gretel. ‘She’s New Girl.’

‘But I’m a newer member of the team than—’

‘Don’t question my nicknames, Dead Girl.’

‘For the record, Snow,’ Gretel says, ‘I’d rather you just called me Gretel.’

‘Nobody cares what you want people to call you,’ replies the White Knight. ‘And stop calling me Snow!’

‘What is all this, Snow?’ asks Buttercup. ‘Is this about your Mirror?’

‘Oh for pity’s sake…’ The White Knight glares at Gretel. ‘Why are you people always telling each other my secrets?’

‘Because we’re a team.’

A veil of tension falls over the White Knight’s features. Her brow furrows, her jaw clenches and Trevor finds himself desperate to say something to make it go away before sharp things, and possibly little spiders, get thrown.

‘Good news, though,’ he says hurriedly, ‘I did see something in the town hall slash police station that seemed to fit what you’d described, regarding the Mirror. Big, flat, oval-shaped, they’d covered it with a cloth, but it sort of… crackled? Like there was a storm coming, but really localised.’

The White Knight’s face does indeed light up as Trevor hoped at this news. ‘That sounds like it. In the police station, you say?’

‘Yeah, right next to where they’re keeping Gretel’s brother.’

The White Knight nods. ‘OK. Right well, I’d better go, then, and—’

‘Nope.’

‘Beg pardon, New Girl?’

‘She said “nope”, Snow,’ Buttercup tells her. ‘I can’t believe you were going to go off like that on your own. Gretel’s had a better idea. It involves teamwork!’

‘This is why I told you not to say anything, New Girl! I knew this would happen…’ The White Knight trails off with a sigh. ‘You lot already have the fight for the village to deal with. The Mirror is my problem. It’s my fight. It’s personal. If you all came with me to fetch it and something happened that compromised the plan to push the huntsmen out of Nearby… or injured one of you, or… I couldn’t have that on my conscience.’

There is a pause.

‘N’aww,’ says Trevor after a moment. ‘You care.’

‘Shut up, all of you.’

‘I didn’t say anything,’ protests Patience.

‘We know where the Mirror is now,’ says Gretel, ‘and we’re going to Nearby anyway. With a thief.’

Jack waves at the White Knight. ‘Can’t really believe you were thinking of trying to nick a massive magic mirror from a police station without involving me, to be honest. I’m really good at thieving.’

‘That’s what we did wrong last time,’ adds Gretel.

‘What – not let Jack nick stuff?’

‘No, I mean, we didn’t utilise ourselves properly. You’re always going on about me trusting too much that everything will generally work out fine and so on, and yes, maybe you were right about that.’

‘I was right about that.’

‘But all of us need to have more trust, too. In the team. In ourselves. In each other. In what we can do. In the whole forest.’

‘The forest?’ Trevor asks, unsure.

‘We’re the Darkwood,’ Gretel tells them all, with a smile. ‘We’re the witches and beasties and things that go bump in the night. People are terrified of what’s in the Darkwood.’

‘That’s true,’ admits Patience. ‘And those of us who aren’t scared enough of it usually wind up dead pretty quickly. Case in point.’

‘The stories make people believe that we’re ferocious. Maybe we should believe that too. The Cake Witch. The wanted thief. The terrifying spectre of the White Knight. The vengeful Ghost of a fallen huntsman. The… spider.’

Trevor beams with pride at being included in the list.

‘…And the great and powerful Mudd Witch,’ adds Gretel. ‘I reckon I can show them a few magic tricks of my own.’

‘But you can’t do magic,’ interjects Jack.

‘Can’t I?’ asks Gretel primly. ‘Would you say someone without magic could make half a village disappear?’

Jack frowns. ‘Is this a trick question? This feels like a trick question.’

Gretel turns back to Trevor. ‘I just need an hour or two to draw up a few more plans based on your intel,’ she tells him, ‘but then I’m going to need you to get back to the village by nightfall, if possible. Do you think you can manage that, or do you need to rest?’

Trevor probably could do with a decent rest, but frankly he’s so happy to be a vital part of the plans that he’s pretty sure he can just carry on running on excitement and pride.

‘Nope,’ he tells her gleefully. ‘You get scribbling. I can just neck a couple more bluebottles and grab some new disguises and then as long as I can get another lift to the boundary fence, I’m all yours.’

‘Trevor, for the last time, you don’t need a disguise. You’re going undercover as an ordinary spider.’

‘Yes, but I went undercover as an ordinary spider last time, they know what I look like now!’

Time creeps on. In the village, the daylight dims, and the villagers are permitted to put their labours for the huntsmen’s valiant cause temporarily on hold. They are allowed to hug their spouses, parents and children again, and to eat their rations quietly by candlelight, and sleep the sleep of the physically and emotionally exhausted as, outside, huntsmen patrol and enforce the dusk to dawn curfew.

Two villagers, however, are not permitted to go home to their families, even after dark. Soon before sunset, the door to the small storage hut is unlocked once more, and Daisy Wicker is taken by the arm and led back to the town hall. Nobody is about to witness her removal from the hut, and when addressed by other huntsmen back at the town hall she corroborates, as instructed by the huntsman holding her arm, that she has been working in the laundry all day with the other women. She’s put into the cell next to Hansel. ‘A kindness to the boy,’ they say. ‘Company, to keep his spirits up,’ they say.

Daisy wonders, as she sits down against the adjoining bars, who it is they’re lying for. It can’t be for her benefit. She knows why they keep her with Hansel – so that she can’t talk to anybody else and so that she can see how much Hansel is suffering. He’s utterly withdrawn now. She knew it would hit him hard to lose the village to the huntsmen so soon after losing Gretel. He’s inconsolable. She wonders if they’re hurting him, when she’s not around. He looks as if he’s in pain.

She’s able to poke a couple of fingers through a gap in the bars, to take his hand. He doesn’t reciprocate, doesn’t look up. Instead of taking his hand, she’s just about able to brush her fingertips as soothingly as she can on his wrist.

Those huntsmen must be lying for their own sakes, she tells herself. Always telling themselves and one another that they’re doing the right thing, in spite of the evidence of their own eyes and ears and, surely, their own hearts – if they still have any.

Giving themselves permission to carry on like this.

She starts to cry again. She wishes she were strong, like Gretel. Gretel wasn’t a big crier. Unfortunately, thinking about her friend only sets her off crying all the more. She sits slumped against the bars, and strokes Hansel’s wrist, and cries until she’s too tired to cry any more, and then she falls asleep.

She sleeps, and as she sleeps, she hears from a man who has come for her, from Gretel. Everything’s going to be OK, he tells her, there’s a plan to rescue the village.

She wakes with a start. It’s still dark, and she’s still in the cell. Her heart sinks. It was just a dream. Just a cruelly hopeful dream.

‘Are you awake now?’ asks the man from the dream.

‘I’m… not sure.’ Daisy blinks in the dark. She can’t see the man at all, but she is sure she can still hear him. This isn’t one of those dreams where you keep ‘waking up’ but you’re still in the dream, is it? Daisy’s had a hard enough few days as it is; she can do without that to stress her out as well, thank you very much.

‘Well, you sound pretty awake,’ says the man.

The voice is coming from inside the cell, Daisy realises. From right above her head, in fact. She looks up and, on the wall a few inches from her head, sees a spider. She’s pretty certain it’s the same one that talked to her the day they lost the village.

‘Evening,’ says the spider cheerfully. ‘Well – morning now, technically.’

‘Are you wearing a trench coat?’

‘Yeah! D’you like it?’

22
Run, Forest, Run

Dawn breaks, and the villagers rise once more for yet another awful day of occupation. Another day of building weapons for the huntsmen and providing them with food and washing their clothes and never speaking up, never looking up into those blank faces. Another day of trudging past the bonfire that looms in the village square, menacing them with its unspoken threat.

The Head Huntsman is the one to check in on the Mudd boy, and take Daisy Wicker from her cell, as he has done every morning since the huntsmen arrived in this backwards little village. He has already explained to his huntsman brethren why it is his solemn duty to do so. What a glorious speech that was. His mind plays it back to him; a record of one of his many greatest hits.

‘Brothers and sisters.’ He remembers the hush as he lowered his tone, made it gentle, so that silence had to descend amongst his brethren, so that they had to lean in to hear him. ‘It is my obligation as the leader of our party to show myself a responsible captor and reformer. If one catches a wild dog, then one is duty-bound to train it, to make it obedient and useful. So must I make it my personal task to do so with these two collaborators, these witch sympathisers, these enemies of the people. Rather than give them straight to the cleansing flames of the bonfire, if I show individual investment in mercy and patience, the other wretched villagers who were so seduced by these traitors’ seditious rhetoric will see their leaders rehabilitated by the kindness of our righteous movement. If they see the ringleaders made meek and good, then the rest of the village will follow like lambs, with not a single drop of blood-shed.’ Here, he paused, and a couple of his brethren raised their hands to speak.

‘Obviously, that will be after the assault on the Darkwood, so not to worry, there’ll be plenty of blood-shed. Just not human blood. But that’s a definite yes on the blood spillage, people.’

He got a massive cheer for that. An almighty hurrah.

He thinks about that hurrah now, as he takes Daisy from her cell and quietly leads her, not to the laundry as he’s told the other huntsmen, but back to the shack for her to continue with her weapon designs.

He’ll have to have her burned once the Darkwood’s been cleared, of course. He can’t risk his brethren finding out that he allowed – nay, encouraged – a girl to perform the abomination of designing weaponry, let alone that he had them actually use such blasphemous creations in order to perform their greatest task. Burdened with the weighty responsibility of power as he is, he understands that sometimes one must sacrifice one’s strictest observance of nature’s laws and bend the rules, unpalatable as one might find such a prospect, for the greater good of all. It’s like how only his more senior brethren are entrusted to know about the Mirror. He understands such complex issues so that his brethren may remain innocent to them. They may not understand like he does. If such a thing were to surface, questions would be asked. Difficult questions. Much better to just burn the girl. And the Mudd boy too, to be on the safe side.

He pushes Daisy into the shack and locks the door. Behind the mask, he smiles. What a beautiful morning it is today. So still and silent. Not the song of one single bird, thanks to the sharp eyes and strong stomachs of his brethren. Beads of dew glimmer from cobwebs. A crisp autumn sun is beating away the early morning mists, just as the inescapable righteous fire of the huntsmen will scorch away the mists of magic and wickedness in the Darkwood. It’s just a pity that today is Monday. The huntsmen are almost ready to make the final push, but as any senior huntsman would know, it is always best to avoid the cursed forest until Monday night is over. Still, what’s one more day? They will be fully prepared by this time tomorrow, and then all the witches, all of their familiars and their enchanted human supporters, will burn.

Such a big hurrah. He’s going to be a hero.

No. He already is.

He strides through the village, head held high – not with pride, pride’s an abomination – but with confidence. Yes, confidence. He finds himself at the bank of the river that borders with the Darkwood. Even that wretched place looks quite lovely in the dawn light. Perhaps it is the fact that the sun is rising on quite probably its final full day. He greets the guards watching the forest with cheer. They greet him in return with considerably less cheer, which is annoying. They complain, in fact, that they’ve been on duty since dusk and their replacements haven’t yet arrived. The Head Huntsman assures them that they will soon be relieved and, for pity’s sake, surely an extra hour standing next to a river watching the sunrise is worth it in the grand scheme of things? What with them being on the brink of eradicating evil from the whole of Myrsina? Remember? Remember their quest? For the girl who got murdered in the Darkwood? Remember that?

Yes, of course they remember. Yes, they will keep watch for now and not complain any more. The Head Huntsman reminds them that complaining about their sacred huntsman duties is an abomination, and makes a mental note to have it added to the list of abominations when he has the time.

He turns and gazes serenely out at the forest again. Oh, the things he’s going to do to this place… hang on.

Does it look… closer than it was a minute ago?

There was a few feet of grassy bank and a thin wooden fence on the other side of the river before the line of trees began last time he looked, he’s sure of it. Now, the fence is invisible behind the greenery, as is a lot of the grass. Creeping tendrils of ivy sprawling from trunks and branches cover the ground right up to the water’s edge – some of it, in fact, is growing over the surface of the river, towards them.

Towards them.

Trousers!

He grabs a guard.

‘Trott!’

‘What?’

The Head Huntsman points at the river. Large sections of ivy have now grown halfway across it.

‘This is Trott’s work,’ he tells the unnerved, overtired guard. ‘He’s attacking! They might all be attacking!’

‘All of them?’

‘The whole wretched forest!’

‘The forest is attacking!’ cries another guard.

‘He didn’t mean the literal forest,’ calls a third guard as the second guard runs for the alarm.

‘I mean, it kind of is, a bit,’ shouts the fourth guard, pointing at the ivy, which is now creeping at speed over their side of the bank.

‘Oh,’ says the third guard. ‘My mistake.’

‘What?’ cries the first guard, still in the Head Huntsman’s grip, as the alarm blares out.

The Head Huntsman reminds himself to also add ‘bringing the noble calling of the hunt into disrepute by being a complete and utter idiot’ to the list of abominations.

He notices a much faster wave of tendrils growing over the bank slightly upriver from them, a little too late. Their lovely line of catapults and trebuchets stand there, still waiting to be loaded and manned, and are already being choked with weeds, right in front of his eyes.

‘The weaponry! Protect the weaponry!’

‘What?’

It takes too long, in the noisy clamour, to get a decent group of huntsmen over to the ivy-clogged catapults and start hacking and ripping the tendrils from the machinery. The Head Huntsman doesn’t remember his army being quite this stupid or easily bewildered. Perhaps it comes from being away from the civilisation of the Citadel. Perhaps being amongst the filthy, ignorant pig farmers and basket weavers of this pathetic jumble of shacks has brought out the idiot bumpkin in his brethren. Perhaps it’s the proximity to the Darkwood. This could be some sort of curse by the Mudd Witch. She did, after all, somehow manage to make the Mirror blind to the village as well as the forest. Whatever it is, it makes progress frustratingly slow. Huntsmen mill about like ants fleeing a nest full of boiling water – a multitude of them manage to keep bumping into one another, treading on one another’s robes and shouting in confusion. It’s chaos, and still the ivy keeps on growing.

‘Cut it back,’ the Head Huntsman screams over the din of the alarm. ‘Cut it all back, then load and man the catapults. The time is upon us – we attack them now!’

They do, eventually, manage to completely free some of the catapults from the still-sprawling weeds. Unfortunately, they are by then incapable of using said catapults as parts of their firing mechanisms have been mysteriously turned into particularly crumbly pastry.

Under his breath, the Head Huntsman says a word that is far stronger and more unacceptable than ‘trousers’.

‘Brother…?’ mutters a female huntsman in timorous tones.

‘Yes, I know,’ he replies, exasperated.

‘Of course.’ The nervous huntsman pauses. ‘So… what do we do about…?’

‘Mend them, obviously,’ snaps the Head Huntsman. ‘Bring the menfolk from the village to help fix them immediately.’

‘Um… that’s not quite what I…’

The Head Huntsman looks up, aware that the atmosphere of panic around him has sharply increased. He suddenly realises that not all of the sounds of urgent voices and melee weapons being drawn are coming from his huntsman brethren.

A second wave is pushing through the woods towards them. The Head Huntsman never carries a weapon – obviously, it’s vulgar, and the logic and reason of his rhetoric are always enough to make adversaries see sense. That’s why the knife always sewn into the sleeve of his cowl is very slim and discreet. He is only just able to slip it into the palm of his hand before the tree line starts vomiting forth a multitude of abominable monsters. Ogres, dozens of the big, slow, stupid, roaring beasts. Centaurs. Unicorns. Satyr. A single, very elderly-looking Manticore, with a greying mane and ragged wings. Gracelessly, these misshapen wretches splash through the river towards them. Pixies and Gnomes ride on their backs, too pathetically tiny to cross the water themselves. Fairies buzz about their heads like the worthless insects that they are. He sees the wet, lumpen shapes of Swamp Mermaids slither through the river from a rivulet downstream. There are none of those flea-ridden birds, the Head Huntsman notes, but a couple of very skinny and sickly-looking Wyvern lumber from the trees, spread their giant, scaled wings and cross the river by air.

None of this is what has set his brethren on edge. What has truly rattled the huntsmen is that every one of these worthless creatures is armed. Their weapons look modern. Spring-loaded crossbows of all sizes, handheld trebuchets, even a couple of what seem to be saltpetre and sulphur-propelled explosive instruments. They look… trousers! They look like the sort of weapons that the Wicker girl might have invented.

The Mudd Witch. This has to be her doing, somehow. He knew she was still in cahoots with her brother and the Wicker girl!

The witches… He recalls the state of the catapults. The Cake Witch has to touch the things she transforms by hand. The witches must already be here. He grabs the nervous huntsman.

‘Form a party, take half the brethren and look for the witches,’ he orders. ‘They’re here. Find them all, and bring them to me. Before the day is done, they will burn for daring to inconvenience us. Find them! No excuses!’

‘Um,’ says the huntsman, ‘well, there’s one…’

The Head Huntsman follows the path of the pointed finger.

The White Knight. He might have known. Striding through the river along with her sad little army of freaks, her filthy Dwarves splashing along by her side like dogs. She looks just as she always does in the Mirror’s projection whenever he asks to see the cursed forest – that sharp, visored figure filling the Mirror’s image, demanding he return to her what has been taken. The skulls of vermin strapped to her armour, matted locks of black hair poking out like a gorgon’s snakes from beneath the helmet, a considerable collection of axes on her back and at her side. He thought he caught sight of her that first morning they came to the village, just a glimpse, standing at the edge of the forest with the Mudd Witch, the pair of them bedraggled and broken, faint and distant in the shadows. He hasn’t seen her properly before though, in the flesh, so to speak. Not since what happened at the Citadel. She really has turned herself into a Dwarf, out there in the forest. That’s what the Darkwood does to people. Even the people who seem human at first, it twists them. The White Knight isn’t a girl any more. She’s a stinking Dwarf.

He notices that he still has a grasp on the huntsman he grabbed by the collar, and that the huntsman in question is currently trying to angle herself away from the slim, razor-sharp knife that is also in the Head Huntsman’s hand.

‘Go!’ he tells the huntsman, releasing her. ‘Do as I said.’

The huntsman still hesitates. ‘But… you really want me to take as many as half the men, Brother?’

‘Yes! Don’t you see? They’ve encroached upon the village already.’ He waves his free hand at the approaching creatures. ‘All this is a distraction.’

‘Of course, Brother, you’re correct,’ says the nervous huntsman in a small voice. ‘Just, as distractions go, it’s a pretty big one, right? And they’ve got quite a lot of weapons?’

‘So do we. And they are weak, and we are righteous. We will prevail. Do you not believe that we are righteous and will prevail, Sister?’

‘Oh no, you’re very right, we are completely righteous, and—’

‘Then do as you’re t— do as I request, Sister.’

‘Of course, Brother.’

The huntsman hurries away from him, heading for the village, collecting fellow huntsmen with her as she goes.

The Wyvern land on the village side of the riverbank just as the White Knight steps up onto dry land. They flank her, as do the snarling Dwarves, as the rest of her little army climbs the bank. The Head Huntsman will give the White Knight this – for a blasphemy, a witch and a disgusting, twisted Dwarf, she can certainly make an impressive entrance.

They are mere yards away now. The huntsmen stand their ground with him, bearing their own weapons – some of Daisy Wicker’s contraptions, but mostly old-fashioned melee weapons: swords, flails, morning stars. One knows where one is with a big club that has spikes on the end. For the Head Huntsman’s part, he remains stock still, his knife hidden beneath his sleeve. The White Knight pauses too, then reaches for two small axes.

There is the soft sound of over-wound catgut snapping, and a crossbow bolt whizzes from the waiting huntsmen into the flank of one of the Wyvern.

23
Masks

The Wyvern, disappointingly, is not killed by the bolt. To the Head Huntsman’s frustration, he sees that the creature is wearing a garment of thin beaten metal scales made to fit over its torso, leaving its wings and legs free, almost like an armoured vest. The bolt gets stuck between two of the small metal plates, and noisily so. The Wyvern looks down at the bolt and screeches – not in pain or distress, but in rage. He notes with slight relief that this Wyvern is too old to be able to spit fire any more – its sulphur sacs dangle withered and empty like jowls from the sides of its face as it lowers its head on its long neck right down to the ground. That’s when – just a fraction of a second too late – he also notes that attached to the back of the Wyvern’s armoured vest is a metal funnel, thin end pointed forwards and widening at the back into… into a sort of prosthetic sulphur sac.

‘Fire!’ he shouts, as a warning rather than an order, which in retrospect, later, he can see might have been confusing.

Pandemonium breaks out, as pandemonium is so often wont to do straight after the word ‘fire’. Several huntsmen equipped with bows and projectile weapons fire on the Head Huntsman’s accidental command at the same moment that the Wyvern’s artificial fire breath shoots in a deadly arc over the creature’s bowed neck towards the line of huntsmen. The huntsmen scatter away from the flame, towards the creatures of the Darkwood, many of which are still crossing the river. Two of the huntsmen aren’t quite alert enough, bump into one another in their attempt to get away from the flame and end up with small fires on their robes, which they are mercifully able to extinguish in the river, but still the whole messy affair ruins a perfectly good dramatic pre-battle charge, and results in half of the skirmish being fought actually in the river, and the other half on a slippery, muddy riverbank.

The whole thing is a filthy, sodden jumble, and none of it dignified. The Head Huntsman finds himself locked in combat with a centaur that is armed with an extending baton and, like the Wyvern, covered in armour. Annoyingly, his beautiful, subtle blade is able to connect only with the hard metal scales of armour and the whirling baton, and never sink itself into the hot, soft flesh of the diabolical creature. The baton strikes him with an upper cut to the jaw, throwing him back onto the riverbank, the bottom of his mask cracked, his chin throbbing with agony and his heart thrumming with rage. At least amid the chaos of battling swords and flails and Ogre fists and armoured Wyvern, nobody will have seen that happen to him, and known that it was he it happened to.

‘My Brother?’ calls an annoyingly timid and recognisable voice. ‘My… er… Head… Brother…?’

The Head Huntsman groans, picking himself up with as much dignity as he can muster. At least, if the huntsman he sent off to find the witches has returned so soon, it must be with good news. Surely no huntsman worth their cowl would dare return with nothing but a weak excuse after only a few minutes on the task. Surely.

‘My Brother…’ The timid huntsman slides to a muddy stop in front of him. ‘My Brother, I’m so sorry… they’re gone.’

The Head Huntsman manages to maintain a cool composure to his tone. ‘But Sister, you have barely given yourself time to look for them. I don’t expect magic from you – I expect the opposite, in fact. Go back and try again. Properly.’

‘Not the witches… although, we haven’t found them yet either… the villagers, Brother!’

The Head Huntsman replies with a ‘What’ that isn’t exactly a question or a request for repetition or expansion, it’s more a ‘What’ of flat outrage. It is the sort of ‘What’ that arrives seconds ahead of ‘This is simply unacceptable’ or ‘I demand to speak with your manager, young lady’.

‘We sent search parties into the laundry, the forge, the kitchens and the weaponry workshop,’ explains the timid huntsman helplessly, ‘in case traitors amongst the villagers were harbouring the witches there amongst them, and… they were all gone. Empty.’

The Head Huntsman squeezes the bridge of his nose – entirely symbolically, since his mask means that all he squeezes is a faint protrusion of smooth ceramic. ‘The villagers. Have all just disappeared?’

‘Not all of them, Brother! Just the ones in the laundry, kitchen, forge and workshop…’

‘So just the four biggest workforces we made out of all the strong, healthy, fighting-age men and childbearing-age women, then.’

The timid huntsman nods desperately. ‘Yep. All the older ones, sickly ones, children, those two fellas in the wheely chairs and that lass with the missing hand are accounted for…’ She checks a set of hastily scribbled notes. ‘Ah, no, tell a lie, the missing hand girl was good with a mangle so we put her in the laundries yesterday and no, she’s gone too.’

‘This is,’ says the Head Huntsman, ‘simply unacceptable. Where are they? They can’t just have disappeared into thin air – none of the witches of Darkwood have the power to do that, not even the Mudd Witch…’ Under the mask, he blinks. ‘Not even the Mudd Witch…’

He looks around at the battle currently raging around him. Not much seems to have happened so far. None of the creatures of Darkwood have fallen yet, which is odd considering how massively outnumbered they are by all the huntsmen. This is possibly because, even though the huntsmen’s numbers are far greater than those of the Darkwood monstrosities, none of them seems to be making much of an effort to actually kill or wound anything. Most of them, in fact, appear to merely be making it look as if they’re fighting, rather than actually fighting per se. There are distinctly more dramatic flourishes and heroic cries of effort than there would be in an actual fight to the death.

There really are a lot of huntsmen fighting at the river. Especially considering he told this huntsman to take half of them to look for the witches. If he’s being honest with himself, he doesn’t even remember bringing quite this many huntsmen with him in the first place.

‘I gave the Wicker girl a laundry pass, to keep up the pretence,’ he says under his breath.

‘My Brother?’ asks the nervous huntsman.

‘And the laundry women had access to all of our spare robes,’ continues the Head Huntsman quietly. ‘And the masks…’

‘My… Brother…?’

He grabs the huntsman by the collar again. ‘I told you it was a distraction,’ he cries, vindicated.

‘You did.’ The huntsman pauses, in his grasp. ‘Er… well done?’

He gazes into that blank, smooth face. The expressionless mask hiding its wearer’s growing anxiety as her hands claw nervously at the front of the robe he has grabbed. Her hands are little more than a girl’s. Small and youthful, but work-worn, grubby at the nails, scuffed at the knuckles and singed once or twice at the fingertips. These are not a refined person’s hands. These are the hands of a peasant. ‘Sister?’

‘Mmhmm?’

‘Take off your mask. And tell the rest of our brethren to do so too.’

‘But… why, Brother?’

‘Because I said so! If some of the villagers have escaped, they will have stolen our robes from the laundry and gone about disguised as us, so everybody must remove their masks.’

‘But, Brother, don’t you see? Our masks are the only thing that distinguishes us from the villagers. These are our faces; nobody sees what’s beneath, not even our brethren. Not even you. So how would you or any of us be able to tell the difference between a villager and a huntsman if none of us have our masks?’

‘There are other means of distinguishing huntsmen from common folk, Sister, as you should know,’ the Head Huntsman says. ‘One is that a huntsman would never dream of speaking to me like that.’

He reaches out with a swift hand and rips off the other huntsman’s mask. The girl underneath is small, scruffy, scrappy and mostly brown, like a sparrow after a fight. He’s seen her hundreds of times before, in the Mirror.

‘The Mudd Witch.’

She manages a small smile, even with his knife at her throat. ‘Well, I did manage to make half a village disappear. Ta-da!’

‘Cease!’ shouts the Head Huntsman above the cacophony of the – he is now fairly certain – largely pretend battle around him. ‘Everybody stop, or I slit the Mudd Witch’s throat.’

Through the raucous fighting rises a soft, syrupy female voice. ‘Oh no!’ it cries. ‘Gretel! Everybody, stop! Do as he says!’

The fighting stops, in an awkward, ragged fashion. Some of those in huntsman masks ignore the call and only stop fighting when they realise that everybody else has, so that there’s not much point in them continuing. The Head Huntsman suspects that those ones are the real huntsmen. There are depressingly few of them. Most, he supposes, went off on that wild goose chase after the witches, after he ordered what turned out to be the Mudd Witch herself to gather them. Oh, the Mudd Witch will pay for making a fool of him like that. He presses the knife a little harder against the Mudd Witch’s throat. No longer keeping up the pretence of timidity, the witch doesn’t flinch. Instead, she glares back at him, meeting his eyes with a quiet, cold, dark fury.

‘Unmask yourselves,’ he orders the crowd.

‘My… Brother?’ manages one huntsman – or an imposter in huntsman’s garbs, it’s impossible to tell right now. ‘All of us? Our faces?’

‘All of you!’

‘But our faces are sacrosanct…’ comes another voice from the crowd.

‘All of you!’ he bellows. ‘Right now! Or you can join this witch on the pyre!’

Hesitantly, the masks start to come off, revealing an array of faces displaying various different shades of unhappiness. Many he recognises from the village. The eyes that he saw fill with tears when he organised the separation of the adults from their children. The brows that he saw slick with sweat when he observed work at the laundry or the forge. The mouths that he saw grimace at the sight of the bonfire in the village square. There is another face that he recognises too, only not from the village. The Cake Witch is amongst them. He knows what she looks like anyway, from when the huntsmen had sent her and her troublemaking away into the Darkwood, years ago, back when he was a junior within the movement. Even if he hadn’t remembered her, the game would have been rather given away when her mask turns into a flatbread the second she reaches her hand up to pull it away. She lets it fall to the floor with a muted slap, and sighs. There’s a spider in her hair. Disgusting.

He turns his attention back to the Mudd Witch, who is managing to look at him with an actual air of amusement, even though she’s still caught at the end of his blade. He’s seen this all before, of course – the fake bravado, people showing insolence because they believe they have nothing left to lose. They soon learn. Everybody has a lot more left to lose than they think.

‘Aren’t you going to unmask too?’ she asks. ‘Everyone else is doing it – it’s fun.’

‘I don’t need to unmask,’ he growls. ‘I know who I am.’

‘I don’t,’ replies the Mudd Witch. ‘You ruined my life, ruined all these lives, but I don’t know who you are, or why you hate us so much. Who are you?’

Under his mask, he smiles. ‘I’m the one with the knife to your throat.’

He pulls her tight to him, pushing the knife even further, so that it nicks the skin.

‘Gretel!’ cries the Cake Witch.

The Mudd Witch sucks through her teeth as the knife scores her throat. It only raises the thinnest line of blood, but still, it must hurt. This is just an opener, of course. The tiniest pain entrée in the veritable banquet of assorted agonies that he has planned for her. For all of them, in fact. Oh yes, these rabble-rousers always learn. They’re always sorry, by the time he’s done with them. Always sorry.

‘Leave her alone,’ continues the Cake Witch frantically. ‘We did what you said, we unmasked.’

‘Drop your weapons,’ the Head Huntsman tells them.

All of the unmasked huntsmen do so.

‘Not you, obviously,’ he barks at the real huntsmen, whose faces he doesn’t recognise. ‘I was talking to the enemies. The witches and these traitors from the village.’

Some of the huntsmen sheepishly pick their weapons up again.

The Head Huntsman glares at the gang of grotesques from the Darkwood. All have stopped fighting along with the others and, instead of retreating back into the forest, remain in and around the river watching the scene, their monstrous eyes anxiously on the knife at the Mudd Witch’s throat. Amidst them, standing stock still, axes in hands, is the White Knight.

Well, well, well. The White Knight.

‘You Darkwood filth, too. Your weapons. Drop them. Or I start gutting this witch very, very slowly.’ The Ogres, Fairies and other beasties drop their weapons. Even the Wyvern shake off their flame-thrower vests. Still, the White Knight doesn’t move.

‘I said all of you Darkwood filth!’

‘Snow,’ says the Cake Witch fretfully. ‘Please.’

There is a pause. Then there is a scrape, and what the Head Huntsman can only describe as two reluctant plops as the White Knight drops the axes in her hands down into the mud.

‘And the rest,’ the Head Huntsman tells her. ‘Snow.’

The White Knight bows her head a little, and two of her attendant Dwarves scrabble up her armour to unstrap the rest of the axes from her body.

After a few seconds it becomes clear to the Head Huntsman that this process is going to take a while, so he may as well fill the pause with a little ritual humiliation, to get his captives nice and dispirited before the real fun begins. ‘So, you told them your name, Snow?’ he asks.

Scrape, goes an axe. Plop, goes an axe.

‘You told them who you are?’ he continues. ‘I wonder if they were impressed.’

Scrape. Plop.

‘I suppose, when one is as pathetic as a creature of the accursed forest, any leader will do – even one who’s fallen as far as you.’

Scrape. Plop.

‘And now,’ he says triumphantly, ‘you will kneel before me.’

Scrape. Plop. The White Knight makes no move, does not kneel.

‘…Once you’ve been fully disarmed,’ adds the Head Huntsman, quickly saving face.

Scrape. Plop.

‘I notice that you have not unmasked,’ he tells the visored face. ‘Ashamed, are you? Or are you still trying to protect yourself, trying to make out that you’re different somehow, some sort of fearsome creature, to be admired and followed unquestioningly?’

Scrape. Plop. Trousers, how many axes can one woman carry?

‘But we huntsmen destroyed that pretence of yours long ago, didn’t we, Snow? We showed that people like you bleed, and weep, and beg, just like everybody else. The huntsmen have seen what you are, Snow. Covering yourself in armour and axes won’t change that.’

Scrape. Plop.

‘You’re the witch of rats,’ says the Head Huntsman, indicating to the skulls on her armour. ‘The witch of rabbits and jackdaws. The vermin witch. That’s your leader, everybody! That’s who’s led you to this defeat, and believe me, this is total defeat, for which you will all pay painfully.’

Scrape… Plop.

‘Yummy.’ With a nod to one another, the Dwarves scrabble back down off the White Knight, now completely relieved of her axes, and stand ankle deep in the pile of weaponry. Still with one hand grasping the Mudd Witch and the other holding the knife to her throat, the Head Huntsman approaches the disarmed White Knight.

‘Why did you lead them to this disaster, Snow?’ He cocks his head. ‘Did you come for your Mirror? Did you think you could create a distraction here and slip away to get it?’ He pauses. ‘You did, didn’t you. Well, you failed. Take a look, everybody! Take a good look at your White Knight, your mighty leader, kneeli… standing disarmed at my feet.’ He stands, mask to visor with her now. He swaps the knife over to the hand holding on to the Mudd Witch and reaches out to the White Knight with his free hand. ‘Take a good look at what has become of your Princess Snow.’

‘Princess?’ asks the Mudd Witch, taken aback.

‘The princess?’ echo a handful of older villagers, bewildered.

‘There was a princess?’ asks a younger villager.

‘There was,’ replies the Head Huntsman, ‘once. A witch princess, daughter of a wicked queen. But now, all that’s left of her is this…’

He rips the helmet right off the White Knight’s head. Villagers and huntsmen alike recoil in horror.

A very hairy, matted face grins back at him, with snaggle fangs. ‘Yummy!’

24
The Loveliest in the Land

‘What…’ says the Head Huntsman.

‘Is…’ says the Head Huntsman, after a moment.

‘This?’ manages the Head Huntsman in a small voice, after another moment.

‘Yummy!’ repeats the Dwarf poking out of the neck of the armour.

‘Yummy!’ agrees a voice from the breastplate area, of the Dwarf on whose shoulders the top Dwarf sits, working the empty arms with a series of pulleys, just as Gretel showed it.

‘Yummy!’ adds a muffled and rather strained voice from the lower abdomen of the armour, of the Dwarf at the bottom of the stack, working the long legs using a couple of Gretel’s hydraulic stilts.

That’s the thing about Dwarves – people rarely count them, literally or figuratively. Gretel had calculated that amongst the many problems they were hitting the Head Huntsman with at the same time, he would barely pay attention to the White Knight’s constant gaggle of Dwarves, and that even if he had ever taken a moment to count them before, four Dwarves in a skirmish could easily make themselves look like seven.

Gretel really wishes she could let herself be smug about that right now, but there are various far more pressing matters, one of which being the blade of the Head Huntsman’s knife still cutting into the skin of her neck. It’s not cut deep into her, so she isn’t bleeding much right now but, frankly, it still actually really hurts, plus she’s horribly aware that it would only take a fraction of a second of rage or lapsed concentration from the Head Huntsman for his hand to slip in a manner that would be quickly fatal for her, and also… princess? Did he say ‘princess’? Yes, he did say ‘princess’.

Princess.

Gretel always assumed that Snow carried herself as if she was born to rule just because she was kind of stuck up and haughty. She never stopped to wonder whether Snow’s stuck-up haughtiness might have been trained into her from a young age due to her having been literally born to rule.

Princess.

So, what Snow said about her dad… what she mentioned about the time that had gone before the huntsmen… poor Snow.

What did the huntsmen do to the royal family when they took over, to leave themselves in charge and a young Princess Snow running scared through the Darkwood, at the mercy of the Dwarves? What did they do to her family to make her all but turn her back on humanity altogether? And how did the Mirror relate to all of this?

Princess, though. From what she’s been taught, princesses were archaic things. Wisps of fragrant, fragile, useless prettiness, to be used and abused by wicked witches until a big strong man turned up, slayed the hag, married the girl and got her pregnant with lovely, fat, normal and distinctly unmagical babies. All in the bad old days when witches had free rein, of course. It was never explained in the stories why the princesses were gone as well as the witches. But then, the stories were lies, weren’t they? Witches didn’t lock princesses in towers; they invited them into their cake cottages for tea, and smiled indulgently at them, and cracked jokes at them, and grew tomatoes for them that the princesses turned their noses up at, and the princesses weren’t floaty, delicate decorations, they kicked in doors and had fleas and spat and swore and ate bats and… and were also the witches…

OW!

She’s pulled sharply away from her contemplation of the news about Snow’s heritage by a sudden, painful reminder of the knife at her throat. She shoots a sideways glance at the Head Huntsman, still holding her tight to him. Even this close by, she can’t make out any of his expression, can’t even see his eyes through the mask, but she can feel from the tension in his arms and shoulders that he’s angry. Possibly even angry enough to dig the knife that crucial sliver too deep, either deliberately or accidentally – the effect on her lifeblood would be the same. On the positive side, she knows that there’s yet another surprise waiting for the Head Huntsman that will likely change the situation.

On the negative side, he almost certainly doesn’t need another surprise in his life right now, and now that she has a blade actually at her throat, she isn’t feeling as optimistic as she could be that the change to the situation will be one that’s terribly beneficial to her personal health.

‘My Brother!’ A couple of huntsmen from the party that has been searching the village come running over to the standoff at the riverbank.

‘Oh my Brother,’ cries one, ‘terrible news!’

‘What is it this time?’ grits out the Head Huntsman, his arm around Gretel tightening even further.

Gretel will give Snow this – when she’s not clanking around in armour, she can be quiet as a prowling cat. Even Gretel doesn’t hear the dagger slip out from under the robe. The Head Huntsman certainly doesn’t spot it until it’s against his own throat. It’s only when the dagger is against the tiny patch of exposed skin between the Head Huntsman’s mask and cowl that she notices the tiniest little jingle of a thin chain of metal on bone – a gold necklace chain, wrapped around the dagger’s handle.

That’ll all be down to Snow’s princessly training, Gretel supposes. Is one generally taught to handle a blade with utmost stealth and precision at princess school? She’ll have to ask, if she survives the next few seconds.

Snow pulls off the huntsman mask and cloak. Gretel can hear the self-satisfied sneer in her voice.

‘I’m afraid,’ says Snow, ‘that you’ve fallen for the same non-huntsman-in-a-huntsman-mask trick twice in the same few minutes. And the old three-Dwarves-stacked-on-each-other’s-shoulders-dressed-as-one-human routine. You absolute parsnip.’

‘If I feel that blade bite a fraction further,’ replies the Head Huntsman, ‘I’ll slit this girl’s throat. None of you have healing powers; you’d have to watch her die.’

The second ‘huntsman’ who came running from the village unmasks. ‘I can grow aloe vera,’ he ventures. ‘That sort of counts?’

‘Jack Trott?’ One of the laundry women nudges a kitchen worker in the ribs. ‘Here, Betty, it’s that Jack Trott off of the posters.’

Jack gives them a small, but charming, smile. ‘Girls.’

‘You want to watch your purse round him, Betty, he’s a thief.’

Jack gives the young women a slick little ‘yep, got me bang to rights’ shrug.

‘Jack Trott?’ The Head Huntsman scoffs in a loud voice. ‘Fallen in with the witches and beasties of Darkwood? After all that horrible business with the Giants?’

Jack swiftly loses his cocky smile, and turns his gaze down to the ground.

‘It seems that thieves have no honour after all,’ continues the Head Huntsman, ‘nor gratitude. He should fit in well with the rest of you traitors.’

‘He can fit in with me any day he likes,’ comes a quiet voice from amongst a clutch of forge workers.

A titter runs around the assembled crowd. Jack raises his head slightly, and nods appreciatively at the gang of forge workers with another small smile. ‘Boys.’

‘Jack, stop it,’ says Buttercup. ‘Now isn’t the time to make this one angry.’

Gretel agrees silently. She can feel from the Head Huntsman’s stance that he means every word about slitting her throat. Thankfully, Snow also seems to judge that to be the case. Her dagger doesn’t fall, but her tone becomes more steady and serious.

‘I’m not going to kill you, Huntsman. Not today.’

‘Please,’ replies the Head Huntsman. ‘You knew I’d recognise that necklace chain around your knife. You brought it especially for ending me. I’m the one who keeps all those shiny things the wicked royal family used to have. I’m the one who took the Princess’ Heart.’

‘Oh, that? That wasn’t my heart, it’s just an old necklace of mine that got snapped in the Darkwood, although a little birdie told me you have a bit of it that broke away. You really should give that back, you know. To keep it would be stealing, and I’m pretty sure that’s an abomination.’

‘You want your pendant back, is that what this is all about?’

‘And if you wouldn’t mind releasing my friend?’

‘Friend’ now, is it? Gretel is surprised to find herself rather touched by that.

‘Fine,’ grumbles the Head Huntsman. He pushes Gretel away from him slowly, keeping her grasped at an arm’s length until Snow has removed her own dagger to a safer distance, then giving her one final shove towards Buttercup and Jack. He pulls a red jewel out of a pouch tied to his belt and tosses it to Snow. ‘And take your stupid pendant – it’s useless anyhow.’

‘Course it is,’ replies Snow, ‘it’s just a ruby pendant. I’m not really a believer in magical stones. I mean, is anyone round here? Great sentimental value though, so cheers for that.’ She slips the jewel into her robe. ‘Oh, and leave this village, you and your army. It should be pretty obvious even to the likes of you that you’ve been well and truly defeated, your weapons are wrecked and your prisoners have all broken out, armed themselves and outnumbered your divided men.’ She nods over at the genuine huntsmen, still standing around in the river and very aware that they are definitely surrounded. The fact that reinforcements haven’t arrived from the village suggests that Daisy has managed to play her part and organise a similar coup against the search party. ‘Off you jolly well slink,’ continues Snow, ‘tail between legs and whatnot. Don’t worry, I’m prepared to allow your humiliation to be your only painful reminder of this whole sorry affair.’

The Head Huntsman doesn’t move. ‘This isn’t over,’ he growls. ‘You’ll regret this, you mark my words. I still have other hostages.’ He points at Gretel. ‘Your brother, Mudd Witch. I have the key to his cage right here – I can get to him before you would have a chance. What should I do to him, I wonder?’ He turns back to Snow. ‘And you! Mark my words, I’ll see to it that that magic mirror of your disgusting witch of a mother is smashed to smithereens!’

‘Oh!’ Snow says. ‘Yeah. Turns out it’s a bit late for that particular threat to have any bite. Sorry.’ She opens up the standard-issue huntsman’s pouch attached to the belt on her own cowl. Tiny shards of shattered mirror fall out of it. Seriously, wonders Gretel, how did Snow manage to carry all of that so quietly? Do you get special lessons when you’re a princess, like when you have to walk across a room with a book on your head, only it’s a tray of silverware and you’re not to make it rattle, or what? Gretel’s full of questions.

‘How?’ asks the Head Huntsman.

‘Well, obviously the suit of armour was a distraction, you prize carrot,’ says Snow, ‘so I could sneak off with a handy thief and find where you’d left it. Didn’t take us long. Village hall isn’t exactly the world’s most cunning hiding place, you know.’

‘But… how could you?’ continues the Head Huntsman. For some reason, his voice taking on a tone of shocked concern sickens Gretel even more than his usual air of cold hatred. ‘That mirror housed the soul of the king!’

Another gasp goes around the assembled villagers and huntsmen. Even a few of the Darkwood creatures look at one another in alarm.

‘Your own father, Snow,’ exclaims the Head Huntsman with affected horror. ‘You just killed what remained of your own father!’

‘You just said yourself you were about to do it anyway.’

‘I think the huntsmen’s feelings for the witch queen and the rest of her royal family have been made perfectly clear,’ replies the Head Huntsman, ‘but you. Your own father, your own blood.’

‘Oh yes,’ replies Snow. ‘I do know your feelings for my family. What you people did to my mother, what you did to me… so when I found out you’d taken the Mirror and intended to keep him, I mourned for my father, more than I mourned when sickness took him… more than I mourned for my mother, even, because at least her suffering ended quickly. With Dad, I knew you were never going to let him have peace, never let him have any rest from the misery of forced servitude. Oh, I imagine that somebody who hates us as much as you do must have taken great pleasure in reducing the king himself to no more than a tool, without a by-your-leave, but he was more than a king. He was a person. He was my dad. And shattering him was a kindness that I’ve owed him for thirteen long years. So, I’m sorry but the huntsmen are going to have to do without their secret weapon – magic weapon no less, I’m sure that irony isn’t wasted on anybody here – but I’m afraid a magic weapon is something he never wanted to be. He just wanted to be a father and a husband. It wasn’t me who took all that away from him, it was you.’

The gasps and murmurs of disapproval amongst the crowd have died down completely by the time Snow has finished speaking, and the accusatory glares have shifted from Snow’s direction to the Head Huntsman. A couple of the assembled huntsmen are actually looking sheepish.

Snow really is a very good orator, thinks Gretel. Probably another Princess School thing. Even Gretel finds herself moved by Snow’s speech, and Gretel knows it’s all absolute rubbish.

‘Once upon a time,’ says the magic Mirror, ‘there was a man. A king, by chance. His family had employed magical courtiers for generations – they’d always believed it added to the strength of the kingdom – and when this king was a young man, he fell in love with a powerful witch in his court, and asked her to be his queen. She consented, and made him the happiest man. A few years later, she gave him news that made him happier still – she was with child. The baby was born healthy. A girl, with hair and eyes as dark as the blackest wood. She was born on a winter’s morning when the whole kingdom was dusted with a fresh, clean layer of snow, and the king and queen looked out at the beauty of it all; the fields, the forests in the distance, the rooftops all sparkling and soft and quiet, and they named the child after the snow.’

In the cell, where the magical Mirror sits, fully intact and largely ignored, it manages a small laugh to itself.

‘The baby grew into a fine little girl; rarely sparkling, barely ever soft and almost never quiet, yet as beautiful and unique as a flake of snow. She was strong, and so very clever. And, the king and queen discovered to their joy, she too had some magical abilities. Life for the king was perfect. His happiness was absolute and, for a while, he believed that it could never end. Little did he know how wrong he was.’

The Mirror pauses, unsure whether to carry on to the sad part of the story – unsure even whether its audience is listening. The boy into whose cell he was hurriedly shoved a few minutes ago sits hunched, his arms wrapped around his knees, his knuckles clenched white. His eyes are screwed tightly shut, as if in pain. The Mirror already knows this boy. He is the Mudd Witch. The true Mudd Witch, and even the Mirror doesn’t really know what powers the Mudd Witch has, only that they are extremely strong, and that he is clearly having trouble containing them. ‘See what you can do to help him,’ the Mirror was told, which is a nice enough sentiment, but when you’re a magic talking mirror, your options for offering a distressed teenaged boy any sort of practical help are somewhat limited. Generally, magic mirrors can do all of two things – show stuff that’s happening and talk – and the Mirror feels that showing this boy what’s presently going on beyond the walls and bars of the dark cell are going to do nothing to calm him, so that just leaves him with storytelling. The Mirror just wishes it had a happier story to tell. It decides to continue, in its most soothing and fatherly of tones.

‘One winter,’ continues the Mirror, ‘the king got sick. Physicians and magical healers alike were called, but some sicknesses are too powerful for medicine or magic, and the king’s body began to die. As he lay dying, he found himself with two heartbreaking regrets – that his time with his wife had ended up being so short and, worst of all, that he would now never get to see his daughter grow up. In desperation, he asked his wife to transfer his soul from his dying body into a new vessel, from which he could be with her, and watch their daughter grow. The queen had the powers to do this, but she resisted, telling the king that it would be a diminished existence, barely a life at all. Still, the king insisted. He begged, his dying wish. She relented eventually, agreeing to put his soul into a vessel that could easily be smashed the instant that he no longer wanted to continue inside it. She put him into her bedside mirror, so that he could still be with her while she slept, and gave him the power to see all of his kingdom, so that he could watch over his daughter wherever she went. And so, the Mirror existed – no longer king, no longer living, no longer “happy” as such, but as content and as comfortable as it could be, in death.’

The Mudd Witch still hasn’t looked up, still hasn’t moved at all. His face is still ground into his knees, his hands are still tensely clenched fists. The Mirror helplessly carries on.

‘Every day, when the queen woke up and brushed her hair in the Mirror, the soul of the king within would tell his wife that she was the loveliest in all the land, with one exception – their daughter – and she would smile. Their daughter was indeed growing lovelier every day and, under the tutorage of her mother, was learning to control her magical influence over small animals and birds… nothing bigger than a badger, for some reason.

‘But… things were starting to go wrong, outside the castle walls. Some factions of the kingdom’s population feared being ruled by a witch queen, and news that the next in line to the throne was also exhibiting the powers of witchcraft fuelled that fear even further. Fear mingled with resentment that they were to be ruled over by witches for at least the next two generations. The Mirror could see the growing fear and hatred but, fool that it was, it chose to ignore the issue, or at least to tell itself that the whole thing was a minor gripe amongst a tiny section of the citizenry, that their irrational hostility to witches and magic would be dismissed and ridiculed by the majority and would quickly blow over. The hostility did not blow over, however. It grew, and the Mirror watched it grow and still ignored it. Things became really bad when news started to spread from the neighbouring kingdom of Ashtrie.’

The boy opens his eyes. ‘They had a witch queen in Ashtrie,’ he says quietly. ‘A wicked enchantress. Her subjects overthrew her and sent her away to live in the forest that grows between Myrsina and Ashtrie. They say she’s the one who cursed it. They say she cursed both kingdoms, too.’ The boy relaxes his tense position a little, dropping his hands and staring at his knees. ‘Stepmother taught me that out of a special scroll the Citadel sent. She said it was history. I always suspected she was lying.’ The boy frowns. ‘But a special kind of lying, like… lying to herself at the same time? Trying to teach herself that the lie was true?’

‘The huntsmen sent out a lot of propaganda about it afterwards,’ the Mirror tells him, ‘but in some ways it was true. The queen of Ashtrie was a witch, and they say she did terrible things before the Ashtrians deposed her. In a way, she did curse Darkwood and Myrsina, because her story added to the poison that already festered through the land. It started to bubble up, little pustules of hatred. A child goes missing, and a nearby cave of Ogres is blamed, so the cave is set on fire. A Fairy ring is kicked over, and then half of the local youths wake up with a terrible skin rash, so they go out kicking over more Fairy rings as a reprisal. A girl can’t stop turning things into baked goods when she touches them. It doesn’t do anybody any harm, but it’s a nuisance and it’s magical, so the townsfolk call for a new group that have set up as self-appointed vigilantes for “nature’s law”. They find the girl guilty, not of any crimes as such, but of going against the natural order of things, and as a punishment she’s banished. An innocent girl is sent away from her home forever, but nothing gets turned into sponge any more, so the townsfolk actually celebrate. That sort of thing. Sometimes the vigilante group wouldn’t be able to find a magical creature or a witch to blame for whatever had gone wrong, so they’d pick on a human woman who lived on her own, or read a lot, or behaved in some way that they considered unbecoming. Their power grew. By the time the Mirror and the queen finally forced themselves to take it seriously and try to counter it, it was too late. It was everywhere. The vigilante group quickly turned into a militia, and suddenly the Mirror found that when it looked at the kingdom’s own army and police force, it could see that bubbling hatred even in many of those hearts. It had wasted so much time looking only at beauty and love, and ignoring ugliness and hate. It should have been able to warn them. It should have been able to save them. But it still had the arrogance and ignorance of a king. It has paid for that arrogance since.

‘The militia became an army, in cowls and horrible blank masks. They took the castle. They killed my wife.’ The Mirror breaks off, surprised to find his… no, its voice; it is not a ‘he’, not any more. Still, its voice cracks at those words. Those words have not been spoken aloud for many years. It composes itself. It’s supposed to be telling a story in soothing tones, for the boy.

‘They killed the queen,’ the Mirror continues. ‘They were going to kill the princess too, but she got away, with the help of the last of her mother’s magic as well as some of her own. The birds came. A great flock of them, with some bats besides. They plucked her right up off the execution platform, and carried her off to the Darkwood. A group of huntsmen chased after her, but were too afraid to go into the Darkwood. They allowed word to go around Myrsina that she’d been killed, but it was a lie. She lived. She lived out there for thirteen years.’

‘At least you were able to watch her grow up,’ the boy says.

‘No,’ the Mirror tells him, glad that the boy’s starting to engage a little, but rather dejected that he’s drawn out a further unhappy element to this miserable story. ‘The huntsmen took me along with the rest of the castle’s treasures. I’m compelled by the spell that binds me to this mirror to show any image requested of me in rhyme. Snow knew that. She had to protect herself. Many witches have a strong psychic link with loved ones; I don’t know if you’ve noticed that yourself, at all…?’

The boy doesn’t react to this, just keeps on giving a pained expression to his knees.

‘Snow was able to use that magical link to put a block on me showing anybody the Darkwood. It’s kept the huntsmen from spying on her and her friends there for years. If they try to make me show them the forest, all they see is Snow in her fearsome armour, demanding they return me to her. Likely, the block’s saved her life and other lives countless times. But as a result, it means I haven’t been able to see her myself. My Snow.’ The Mirror pauses again, then forces itself to add in what it hopes is a more encouraging tone, ‘Did you know that, recently, the block was extended to your village as well?’

The boy finally looks over at the Mirror. ‘Is that why the huntsmen invaded us? Because they couldn’t spy on us any more?’

‘The block was probably extended at the request of Gretel Mudd,’ adds the Mirror hurriedly. ‘It began not long after she went into the Darkwood.’

‘Gretel,’ whispers the boy. ‘Oh, Gretel, poor Gretel, they sent her away… what if I never see her for another thirteen years?’

Great, thinks the Mirror, watching helplessly as the boy begins to snuffle out miserable, frightened tears, it’s gone and made things worse. It may be an all-seeing Mirror and former king, but that doesn’t mean that it’s got people skills.

25
J’ackuse

‘Look at yourselves,’ barks the Head Huntsman to the assembled muddy throng at the riverbank ‘Allowing yourselves to get caught up in the web of lies this witch has spun!’

‘Nothing wrong with spinning webs,’ calls Trevor from somewhere in the crowd. ‘It’s a very skilled manual job – some might call it an art.’

‘Her own father was in this mirror,’ continues the Head Huntsman over the voice, snatching a shattered mirror shard from Snow. ‘Her last surviving parent! And she smashed him rather than allow him to work with us!’

‘But you said the Mirror was a hostage and you were going to smash it,’ says Jack.

‘That’s a lie, filthy thief!’

‘No it isn’t,’ adds a villager. ‘We all heard you.’

‘You heard what the witches wanted you to hear,’ replies the Head Huntsman, his snarl audible beneath his mask. ‘These shards of mirror expose the real truth about these disgusting witches: they’re so far removed from what it is to be truly human that they don’t even feel love, or duty, or honour any more. They don’t even grieve for their own family. They kill. They are senselessly violent. No wonder that thief Jack Trott found such a good home amongst them.’ He pauses. ‘Did you want to tell these good people about the violence of your crimes, Trott?’

The crowd looks to Jack, who, with less than his usual eloquence, says, ‘Uh…’

‘When our search party set out to look for our murdered sister, they found a withered beanstalk near what remained of her clothes,’ adds the Head Huntsman. ‘Was that your doing too, Trott?

‘Uhhhh…’ manages Jack.

‘It wasn’t his fault,’ cries Buttercup, putting a supportive hand on Jack’s shoulder. ‘He was trying to help her!’

‘Trying to help her become emancipated from all her valuables, or just trying to help her die?’

Buttercup draws breath to reply, but the Head Huntsman steams on over her.

‘Let us not forget, brethren, what prompted us to action in Nearby – the murder of a young huntsman, a female, no less, barely out of girlhood. This poor, innocent young girl was out on a scientific expedition when she was viciously hurled to her death by none other than Jack Trott here.’

In the crowd, the unmasked huntsmen’s expressions harden. Hands turn to fists. Weapons are gripped.

‘Aided and abetted,’ continues the Head Huntsman, ‘by these witches. Look at the guilt written all over his face. Admit to your crime, Trott!’

‘I’m sorry!’ cries Jack. ‘I’ve already said that I’m sorry.’

‘It wasn’t his fault,’ persists Buttercup.

‘It was my fault,’ says Jack, hanging his head. ‘It was my fault but it was an accident, I promise. It was the same thing all over again. Same as that poor Giant. I wasn’t strong enough. I killed them both, but they were accidents and I’m sorry.’

A new murmur goes around the villagers in the crowd. ‘Giant?’ goes the general gist of it. ‘But they always said it was Giants attacking humans, not the other way round. They always said Giants just wanted to grind our bones to make their bread. But a human thief actually killed a Giant? That would certainly make their hostility at the time a lot more understandable.’ And then there’s a lot of generic muttering about hoarded wealth in castles in the sky, singing harps, golden geese and whatnot.

‘Yes, Trott killed a Giant,’ shouts the Head Huntsman. ‘And yes, that was the first blow in what turned into a terrible war which, thank goodness, we eventually won.’ He points at Jack. ‘And how did you kill him?’

‘I’d grown a magical beanstalk to rob him, but I wasn’t strong enough to keep it steady…’

‘He killed the Giant using witchcraft,’ exclaims the Head Huntsman triumphantly. ‘He killed the Giant because he’s a witch! You see? They’re all violent, all heartless, dangerous animals. When the Giants retaliated, this cowardly witch hid amongst humans. Was it any wonder that the Giants took their ire out on us? We huntsmen had no choice but to defend humanity from those poor, deluded, but deadly Giants. And how does this wretched witch respond to that? By running again to hide in the Darkwood, and then, when he happened upon an innocent young girl in the forest, by killing again!’

‘Murderer!’ shouts one unmasked huntsman, clutching a rather muddy flail.

‘Coward,’ hisses a Mermaid from the river.

‘Even the monsters of the Darkwood see him for what he is!’ The Head Huntsman is practically crowing by now. ‘And yet, these witches just let it happen. Even your Princess Snow – some princess she’s turned out to be, right? Snow helped to shelter this murderer for year after year until our poor, dear sister paid the ultimate price. Our brave young warrior who gave her life to the pursuit of justice and natural order, who had that oh-so-promising life cut tragically, violently short, who—’

‘What was her name, then?’ interrupts Gretel. ‘If you’re so devastated about her, what was her name?’

‘You expect me to know the names of all my brethren?’

‘It’s all right, your friends can help,’ replies Gretel. ‘One of you – shout out this poor dead huntsman’s name.’

None of them do. Most of them just look confused.

‘Huntsmen give up their names and identities when they join the calling,’ the Head Huntsman replies, stepping slowly towards Gretel. ‘“Brother” and “Sister” are the only names we need. Even her closest of companions within the huntsmen would not have known the name she was born with. This is a cheap trick, and we have no time for it.’ He stops, uncomfortably close to Gretel, his mask looming over her, the knife invisible under his sleeve again but still definitely present.

Gretel stands her ground, folds her arms. ‘But you’d have found out her name after she died,’ she argues. ‘Informed her family. Had a funeral – did you not have a funeral for her?’

‘We mourned her for days! Weeks! The Citadel bells tolled with our collective grief for—’

‘Then what was her name?’

There is a pause.

‘When I lived in the Citadel,’ says Snow, ‘we used to sit together and tell stories about the person’s life the night after they died. We used to stay up till dawn the next day toasting everything they’d done. We’d write their name in flowers and in sweets and then carve it out in stone.’

‘Aye, we still do that here,’ a villager adds. ‘Myrsinan tradition, innit. Everyone does that.’

‘Then you should know her name,’ continues Gretel, ‘since you spent weeks writing it out in sweets and flowers.’

‘Her name is irrelevant; she was one of us.’

There seems to be a whisper on the breeze. ‘What was my name?’

‘You didn’t hold a funeral for “Generic Young Female Huntsman”, did you?’ Gretel continues.

‘Whaaaat was my naaaaame?’ whispers the air about them all again, louder this time.

The huntsmen that so recently brandished their weapons at Jack’s admission of guilt are looking distinctly less sure of themselves at the sound of that voice in the wind. Their weapons either hang idle by their sides as they look around, trying to discern the source of the noise, or else they’re poised ready to protect themselves from whatever new and invisible assailant this might be.

‘The voice is another of the witches’ tricks,’ warns the Head Huntsman. ‘Close your ears to its lies, brethren.’

‘How can it be lying?’ Snow asks. ‘It’s just asking you a question.’

‘A question to which you do not deserve an answer!’

‘Then maybe you’d rather answer another question,’ says Gretel. ‘Like, why wasn’t she properly warned about going into the Darkwood on a Monday night? You’d sent enough reconnaissance parties and spies to know about the Bin Men by then.’

‘What was my naaaaame?’

‘And why,’ continues Gretel, ‘didn’t you send out any search parties for her until it was much too late? We genuinely tried to save your girl – where were you?’

‘What was my NAAAMME?’ It’s more of a stage whisper by now, and a loud one at that.

‘Silence,’ screams the Head Huntsman.

‘No,’ says the invisible voice in the air, losing its spooky quality for a moment, and just sounding annoyed.

‘These are tricks,’ continues the Head Huntsman, ‘sent to confound and demoralise us, to try to force us to surrender our final great push…’

‘Oh, I thought you’d already surrendered,’ says Snow with a smile. ‘None of you have tried fighting back since we all unmasked – we’ve just been standing around talking. I assumed we were all just going to say our piece and then you lot were going to shuffle off in defeat.’

The Head Huntsman turns to the unmasked huntsmen. ‘You all hear the arrogance of this witch? She doubts your resolve! She doubts the tenacity and aptitude of the huntsmen! The time for talk has passed, brethren; it’s time to show this filth what we’re made of!’

‘What was my name?’

Not many huntsmen move. A couple brandish weapons half-heartedly. One puts his hand up.

‘Um. Brother? Why didn’t we send a rescue party for her? Just… I was in that research group and we noticed she was missing at dusk, but when we told our captain, he said we couldn’t go into the woods that night.’

‘What are “Bin Men”?’ asks another. ‘Did that mirror tell you about them?’

‘Why did we have a magic mirror?’ asks a third. ‘What with it being… you know… magic?’

‘What…’

‘Stop.’

‘…was…’

‘Stop!’

‘my…’

‘Stop, I said!’

‘NAME?’

The Head Huntsman makes his move. He shoves Snow hard out of the way and pulls Gretel tight to him again, the blade right up against her skin once more.

‘Abomination!’ he cries. ‘These witches have stolen our poor fallen sister’s voice to sow discord amongst us, don’t you see? This whole village is infected by their wickedness! The whole village.’

He turns on his heel and starts marching towards the centre of the village, dragging Gretel painfully along with him.

‘What are you doing?’ Buttercup, Jack and Snow hurry in his wake, along with assorted villagers, Darkwood creatures, huntsmen and one worried spider, hiding in Buttercup’s hair.

‘If you’re retreating now, you can’t take our New Girl with you,’ adds Snow.

‘No sympathy this time,’ growls the Head Huntsman, ‘no mercy. The whole village has fallen under the spell of Darkwood. Years of close proximity to that accursed forest must have infected Nearby long before we had the chance to cleanse it with anything other than fire. The whole village will burn along with its neighbour the Darkwood. And this little witch will be the kindling. This one, and two more…’

The procession rounds the still broken windmill, turns a corner and floods into the village square, where the remainder of the huntsmen are sitting around playing cards and sneaking bits of breakfast under their masks.

One huntsman stands at their arrival and, addressing the Head Huntsman, cheerfully says, ‘Congratulations, Brother – just as planned.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘We were searching for the witches and missing villagers as per orders, but then we got your message to stand down because you and your squad had caught them by the river, so we were to wait for your triumphant return…?’

‘For he’s a jolly good fellow,’ sings one of the card players.

Others quickly join in. ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow.’

‘What message?’ asks the Head Huntsman.

‘For he’s a jolly good fe-he-llow! Aaaaand so say all of us!’

‘What message?’ screams the Head Huntsman, causing the singing to suddenly stop except for that inevitable one poor soul at the back who hasn’t quite cottoned on yet and manages a single, thin, ragged line of the next verse, which slows to an awkward halt.

‘And so say… all… of… us…?’

‘You… sent a messenger?’ says the first huntsman.

‘And how could you tell it was from me?’

‘She… said she was? She was a sister. A fellow huntsman.’

‘They’ve stolen our spare uniforms, you idiot!’

‘Oh.’

‘All of you, unmask!’

‘But…’

‘I am not having this argument again!’

‘We had to do it too,’ an unmasked huntsman tells the group in the village square.

The huntsmen in the village square unmask as the Head Huntsman peers around the crowd. He indicates towards a figure near the back, trying to slowly sidle away towards an alley.

‘That one! There! Get her!’

There is a scuffle, but three of the unmasked huntsmen manage to grab the small figure and drag her over to the Head Huntsman. He pulls down the hood of her robe and rips off her mask. The girl underneath is in her early teens, pretty as a wildflower, and smiles a glad smile at Gretel, despite the circumstances.

‘Gretel! Hi!’

Gretel manages a small smile back. ‘Morning, Daisy.’

26
Magic Tricks

‘You two are going to burn.’

The hands of many huntsmen clasp around Gretel’s shoulders. She sees another gang of huntsmen descend on Daisy before her own grasping captors start manhandling her towards the village square’s bonfire.

‘No! Our girl!’

Gretel can’t see anything but the press of shrouded bodies around her, but she can hear her step-parents wailing from somewhere back in the crowd.

‘You’ve got no right!’ That voice belongs to Mrs Wicker. ‘The girls did nothing wrong! Daisy was helping you!’

‘Both of these wicked creatures have performed many abominations,’ comes the Head Huntsman’s voice. ‘And the Wicker girl knew far too much, she must have been a spy for the Darkwood all along, or else she’s been consulting with the witches’ familiars.’

‘Do something,’ screams Daisy’s mum. ‘Come on, there’s more of us than there are of them, we’ve got all beasties and Dragons and… what are you?’

‘My name is Charles the Magnificent and I am a majestic Unicorn. And by the way, Mavis is not a Dragon, she’s a Wyvern. Big difference.’

‘I don’t care if you’re a… Blue-Nosed Water Wraith, just help me!’

‘Wraiths don’t even have noses,’ attempts Charles the Magnificent, but from the throng beyond, Gretel can hear weapons being drawn.

Suddenly, there is an explosion, and screams. Gretel is certain from the sound of it that it’s one of the huntsmen’s siege missiles, fired over the crowd’s heads into what’s left of the windmill. A warning shot. Nobody badly hurt. However, it means that in the village itself, the huntsmen still have some pretty nasty weapons working at full capacity, and quite soon people could start getting very badly hurt indeed.

The many hands that have been tugging and jostling her on now lift her up by the arms and hips, onto a platform around three feet high. She feels loose wood underfoot and although she’s pushed up out of the throng of tightly pressed huntsmen so that at least she’s able to see again, there are another few huntsmen already on the platform, to grab hold of her, pull the huntsman’s robes off her and drag her backwards to an upright wooden rack in the middle of the unlit bonfire.

The cloud of smoke and dust from the latest assault on the poor old windmill still fills the air, so Gretel isn’t able to make out much of the crowd, although she can still hear her step-parents and Mrs Wicker shouting for somebody to help them stop this. Daisy is hauled up onto the platform with her. The waiting huntsmen drag Daisy to the other side of the rack, and shackle both girls to it by the wrists and ankles, so that they stand back to back in the middle of the pyre.

‘You all right?’ murmurs Gretel to Daisy, in spite of the evidence to the contrary.

‘I’ve had better days,’ admits Daisy. ‘That lad who picked the lock of my hut’s nice, isn’t he?’

‘Jack, you mean?’ Gretel squints through the dust cloud, trying to spot one of the witches in the crowd. ‘Daisy, he’s really old, he’s twenty or something. And I thought you liked Hansel.’

‘I meant more for you.’

‘Urgh, no, not interested. He’s way too old and he snores.’

‘You will notice,’ calls out the Head Huntsman, climbing up onto the platform, ‘that none of the other witches offer to take the place of either their newest recruit or the simple basket weaver’s child they led astray – not the murderer who just admitted his guilt on two counts, not the Cake Witch, supposed by false rumour to be so very kind and giving… not even your princess. Yet again, they prove themselves to be utterly lacking in honour or compassion.’

‘And what does that make you?’ asks Daisy, loud enough for him to hear.

He glares at her from beneath his mask.

‘Oh, what are you going to do?’ she asks. ‘Burn me?’

‘I can still make sure that your suffering is maximised,’ he tells her quietly.

‘…trousers,’ mumbles Daisy.

Still Gretel peers through the dust, searching the faces amongst all the dark cowls.

‘You good to go, mate?’ asks a familiar voice by her ear.

Gretel sees the gossamer-thin line of web from the rack, down off the platform and running with the faintest of silken shimmers over to a smaller section of the crowd to one side. She exhales gratefully, and nods.

‘Let’s do this.’

‘Right.’ Trevor leaps back onto his bridge thread and half scuttles, half slides back down it at full speed. It’s a good bit of webbing – all his webbing is good – but it’s hastily spun and thin. What he really needs everyone to do right now is not move between one end of it and another at all because it’s going to be very easy to snap, and… and a woman – Daisy Wicker’s mum, he thinks it is, darts forward, begging the crowd to defy the huntsmen’s weapons and help to save her daughter. The web strand snaps against her extended arm and Trevor goes into freefall. He angles himself so that he is able to land on a nearby human’s sleeve. The human notices and screams, but Trevor wasn’t exactly planning on hanging around anyway. He attaches webbing to the human’s sleeve, drops and swings onto a second person, then again onto a third, then, with one giant swing, onto the leg of a fourth. He runs up this person’s body. This is knackering – why are people so big? Now on the human’s shoulder, he’s able to catch the eye of Snow, standing behind his latest host, trying to stay out of view from as many huntsmen as possible.

‘Go,’ he tells her.

Snow nods, closes her eyes and quietly says, ‘Mirror, Mirror, in the cell, Now the boy’s fears must rise, not quell. Show him the village square this hour; Make the Mudd Witch release his power.’

In the cell, the Mirror stops talking suddenly. Hansel looks up at it.

‘What is it?’ he asks. ‘What’s happening?’ He can feel the panic starting to crackle all over him again, the dark tendrils thrashing inside him, desperate to get out. ‘Something’s happening, I know it is, I can feel it. Something really bad. Are they hurting people? Are they hurting Daisy? Are they…’

The Mirror’s surface fizzes with magical energy, and then, through the fuzz, an image forms.

The village square. They’ve built a bonfire on it.

The tendrils thrash; his head practically hums with a desperate, hot energy.

There are people tied to the bonfire. Two girls. The huntsmen standing around honestly look like they’re getting ready to light it. They’re going to burn two human beings alive!

The humming gets louder. He can barely think any more; everything he sees goes straight to his gut. He can feel the cell changing, the light being sucked into him, the shadows pulsing outwards into the void.

The image is clearer now. He can see… Daisy! That’s Daisy chained to the bonfire!

His head is nothing but white-hot pain, a silent scream. The tendrils, unseen, break free a little and find the nearest ground as thirstily as thunderbolts.

And the girl on the other side… on the other side… on the…

That’s the last conscious thought Hansel is able to have. The shock and distress at seeing his sister chained to the bonfire fills the swirling pandemonium of his head and the magical panic bursts out. A dam somewhere within him has been destroyed, and this time there are no handy nearby logs with which to fill the gap. It’s too much, far too much, and everything comes spilling forth. The dark tendrils burrow thickly into the ground like the roots to a tree of shadow and pain. He is nothing but an unthinking torrent of fear and sadness and rage – everything that he’s had to keep locked down deep within himself since Gretel was driven from home. His body has become a tiny, fragile aspect of a huge, furious, thrashing thing that surges through the air and the ground, constantly spreading, eating the light wherever it goes, unstoppable, driven by an anguished wail.

‘LEAVE THEM ALONE!’

‘LEAVE THEM!’

‘LEAVE!’

Over at the village square, the dogs begin to bark. At first, it’s just a few, off in the direction of the police station, but more join in, in an unsettling, noisy wave of canine anxiety. Amongst the Darkwood creatures, the Centaurs, Unicorns, Satyr and Manticore stamp nervously. Even the Wyvern whine.

‘Uh oh,’ says Charles the Magnificent.

Then comes the rumbling from the ground. It’s the same type of sensation that the villagers bore witness to the night Gretel escaped into the Darkwood, but that time it was tightly localised around the huntsman. This time it’s everywhere, and it’s not stopping. Instead, it grows. The rumbling becomes a great, deep roaring from below, and the ground begins to shake. Everybody’s paying so much heed to this new development in the ground that it takes a moment for anyone to cry out, ‘The sun’s going out!’

It’s a darkening of the sky that could easily be put down to a cloud passing in front of the sun, were there any clouds in the sky to do so. Instead, as the few people who’ve managed to tear their eyes away from the chaos going on beneath their feet and look up at the fresh horrors going on in the sky can attest, the sun itself has dimmed considerably in the cloudless sky. No stars come out in this gloomy blue sky, no moon. It’s as if there’s an invisible shadow all over them. Somehow, yet, the shadow has shadows – thick shadows that slither soundlessly out of corners and grasp at the huntsmen’s robes. Shadows that grow solid like cornflour as they press against the huntsmen’s bodies.

‘’Tis witchcraft!’ screams one huntsman, recoiling from a shadow and losing his footing on the furious ground at the same time.

‘Of course ’tis witchcraft,’ shouts the Head Huntsman. ‘We’re literally fighting witches!’

‘Not used to real magic,’ sneers the voice of Patience in everyone’s ears, ‘are you? Not the same as attacking frightened girls, is it? I wasn’t used to real magic either, when I was killed.’

‘Let those girls go,’ calls Gregor Smithy, ‘and leave us be. All this’ll stop once you do – it did before.’

‘Never!’ the Head Huntsman cries back. ‘My brethren are no cowards! This is a calling! They have faith that we can bring back the natural order, and they’re prepared to pursue it even to their deaths!’

‘Why couldn’t we send a rescue party after that young sister until it was too late?’ another huntsman shouts over the clamour of terrified voices, rumbling earth and barking dogs.

‘And why,’ shouts Snow, ‘is he still wearing his mask after ordering you all to sacrifice your own?’

‘You’ll shut up, witch!’

‘Why are you still masked, though?’ shouts a voice from the chaos of the village square – it’s getting hard to tell again amongst the shadows, tumultuous ground and general air of hysteria who are huntsmen, who are villagers and who are witches or other more human-looking Darkwood creatures.

‘That is irrelevant!’

Gretel wishes that he had unmasked earlier. It would have given Patience and Snow one less detail to undermine him over, but at least she would be able to see his expression at this moment – this sweet moment – when the Head Huntsman realises that he’s lost the crowd. A tumbling snowflake of doubt, as soon as the Darkwood attacked and the huntsmen actually started losing for a change, became a rolling snowball by the time he demanded they remove their precious ‘faces’, and he’s only managed to see the avalanche now that it’s bearing down upon him. Gretel settles for the satisfaction of seeing his body language become tense and defensive.

‘Remember why we came here!’ he shouts. ‘Don’t you dare walk away!’

And yes, Gretel can just make out a handful of huntsmen stumbling and dodging away from the thrashing ground and solid shadows, and heading away from the village square entirely, towards the road back to the Citadel.

‘We came here to avenge the death of a murdered huntsman! Murdered by one of Darkwood’s filthy witches, you all heard him confess to it!’

‘No,’ roars the voice of Patience. ‘No, that’s not why you’re here! Admit it yourselves, and take my death from your mouths. It was MY death! You don’t get to have it! You don’t get to abuse it! You don’t get to try to make more death out of it! Leave this place!’

‘LEAVE!’

The word isn’t spoken in Patience’s voice, but comes from the ground and the sky itself. It’s the voice of a lightning bolt. It’s the voice of writhing rocks.

This is evidently the last straw for many of the huntsmen. They squirm away from the grasping shadows, trip and stumble over jutting shards of stone to hurry away from the village square, joining the early leavers who are already setting off on the main road.

‘Traitors,’ screams the Head Huntsman.

Another huntsman on the platform puts his hand on his shoulder. ‘This day is lost, Brother. It is clear that this village has rejected our offer to redeem it, and has fallen in with the Darkwood. We will regroup at the Citadel, to fight wickedness another day.’

‘No! We fight them here and now! That’s an order!’

A handful of huntsmen have indeed tried to start a fightback against the villagers and Darkwood inhabitants, but they’re utterly outnumbered now, and can barely stand on a ground that churns beneath them like an angry sea.

‘Huntsmen do not give their brothers orders,’ the other huntsman reminds him, with affected politeness. ‘The Head Huntsman is a servant to his brethren. Perhaps you have endured this yoke for too long, Brother. It’s weighing heavy on you.’

‘No!’

The other huntsman hurries down the swaying platform steps to the confused melee.

‘Come, brethren. It’s time to pursue new avenues in our fight.’

‘Sorry, Brother,’ manages one huntsman up towards the platform as he scrambles away, ‘they’ve got Dragons and everything.’

‘They’re just Wyvern!’ calls the Head Huntsman after them.

He looks out over the scene in the village square for a moment, his shoulders heaving. Gretel can hear his hard, shallow breaths, and realises that this is because the rumbling of the ground has died down to practically nothing. With nobody left to fight, the assembled crowd have also grown quiet. Even the dogs have stopped barking, and Charles the Magnificent has stopped loudly demanding to have a word with ‘whoever’s doing this to the floor’. A hush has descended.

‘It’s over,’ Snow calls. ‘You can leave now.’

The Head Huntsman hesitates for a moment, and suddenly it’s utterly clear to Gretel what he’s going to do.

‘The wicked must be purified,’ he announces. He grabs the already burning torch that was to be used to light the bonfire and rams it into the pile of wood beneath Gretel’s and Daisy’s feet. There is a collective gasp as the bonfire sparks into life. Gretel coughs loudly, pulling hard against the rack with her right arm and leg.

Some villagers try to rush the platform with fire beaters and a tin horse trough of water. The Head Huntsman blocks off the top of the stairs, waving his knife at the approaching villagers. ‘Stay back! This is for your own good! I will purify this land by fire or by steel, or—’

He is cut short by a swift kick from behind him, to the back of the knee. His leg folds involuntarily and he hits the platform in a clumsy kneel.

Again, Gretel wishes she could see his face when he half turns and sees the two girls he had but seconds ago left to burn to death now standing over him, plucking the knife from his surprise-slackened fingers, and a completely demolished rack standing empty on the merrily flickering bonfire.

‘How…?’

‘Magic.’ Gretel smiles.

She wonders if Daisy might tell the Head Huntsman how they’d really done it – that Gretel had used Trevor’s description of the huntsmen’s rack in the village square to come up with designs for quickly, quietly administered, subtle alterations that would make it come apart with one good tug, and had then sent Trevor back with the plans to Daisy, who had snuck out in the night disguised as a huntsman charged with guarding the pyre, to cut through a strut here, loosen a bolt there and so on. When Trevor had returned to them an hour before dawn with the all-clear, he’d been particularly proud of having found and stolen a spare cell key, unlocked Daisy and then locked her back in afterwards and returned the key. He’d been pleased about having done ‘some proper spy stuff’. Gretel had just been impressed that he’d managed all that without any thumbs.

Daisy does not, in fact, tell the Head Huntsman any of this. She just smirks at him and adds, ‘Yeah.’

Maybe it’s better that way, ponders Gretel. One more magic trick to annoy him on his way home.

‘You witches have no shame,’ growls the Head Huntsman. ‘To mock me like this!’

‘You’ve been terrorising people for years,’ Daisy tells him. ‘You’ll forgive us for thinking it’s funny when you lose.’

‘Besides which,’ calls Buttercup from the crowd, ‘excuse me – “no shame”? You drive people away from their homes, force them to live in whatever hovel or cave they can find out in the woods, and you don’t think that shames them? You keep telling everyone we don’t feel feelings – of course we do! What about you? What about the huntsmen? Don’t you feel ashamed?’

The Head Huntsman gets back up onto his feet with as much dignity as he can muster – unarmed, with no remaining leverage and surrounded by witches, magical creatures and ordinary humans standing side by side, as equals. He looks out at the scene, and takes in the feeling of peaceful human-and-magical coexistence, the first time such a moment has existed in over thirteen years.

‘No,’ he says. ‘No, I’m right, and you’re all disgusting.’

There is a burst of cold air, a frost that bites through even the heat of the bonfire, and from nowhere, the Ghost of Patience is standing in front of the Head Huntsman, Ghost nose to mask nose. To the Head Huntsman’s credit, he only recoils back in fright a little bit, and recovers from the surprise rather well. Gretel imagines he’s becoming rather desensitised to weird things happening to him by now.

‘Patience Fieldmouse,’ Patience tells him. ‘That was the name I was told to forgo when I joined your army. That was the name that none of you could even be bothered to remember.’ She points to her face. ‘This is the face I was told to cover, “for protection against hexes”, they said, and, like the names thing, to remind us that we’re all equal. But we were never equal, were we? You hoarded the Mirror to yourself. You knew about Monday nights. You knew about Snow. You knew about the Giants. You know a lot of things that you just don’t tell people, or else you misinform them, because being a huntsman is all about power.’

The Head Huntsman draws a breath to reply.

‘Don’t you dare even try to deny it,’ continues Patience over whatever he was about to say. ‘I’ve been a huntsman, remember? I know. I remember the thrill of that power a huntsman has over other people; it must get really addictive over time. You’d sacrifice anything in return for that power, even your own humanity, and that’s what the deal with the names and the masks is really about, isn’t it, Brother? We make out that witches aren’t real people, but we pretend that we aren’t people, either. Because, if we can convince others and ourselves that we’re not really people, then we can let ourselves get away with committing some really inhuman acts.’

She pauses, but this time, the Head Huntsman doesn’t try to respond.

‘I lost my mask before I died,’ Patience says. ‘This is the face I died with. Having my face and my name back helped me regain a little perspective. That and, you know, being dead. I’m going to do you a favour, Brother. I’m going to give you back a tiny bit of your humanity.’

Patience reaches out an icy, translucent hand. It sinks in through the Head Huntsman’s mask. Beneath it, the Head Huntsman gasps. Then, she pulls her arm back in a swift blur, and the calm white expression of his false face shatters outwards into tiny fragments of porcelain.

27
The Man Whose Back-Story Was Irrelevant

His name is John Rosier, and before becoming a huntsman, back in the early days when they were more of a grassroots vigilante group, he was a textiles merchant, and came second in the election for mayor of Goldenharbour. There was no single, terrible event that pushed him to become a huntsman, no altercation with a magical being that left him physically or emotionally scarred, no dead fiancée or wife or daughter. The only real tragedy about his back-story is that it has led him here, to this moment, and to this level of hatred. Nobody in the village square knows any of this, and frankly it doesn’t really matter that they don’t, because where he came from and what he did twenty years ago before dedicating his life to hunting what he sees as abominations don’t particularly matter.

What Gretel and the rest of the crowd see, as he scrapes the last few particles of shattered mask from his face, is a perfectly ordinary-looking man of about fifty, vaguely handsome in a bog-standard sort of a way.

‘How can one person look into a mirror for all those years and never even see himself?’ asks Patience.

‘How can you stand there and say that,’ asks the Head Huntsman in a low, angry voice, ‘after you have been turned into what you hated the most – an abomination of the cursed forest? I should have you exorcised right here and now.’

The act of destroying the mask has drained Patience considerably, Gretel can see. The Ghost is much more translucent than usual. Chances are, she’d be too weak to escape an exorcism attempt if the Head Huntsman were indeed to try one. Still, she stands her ground. An exorcism can’t be performed by one person alone, and the Head Huntsman has no allies left to help him.

‘You would as well, wouldn’t you?’ Patience replies. ‘You’d put me through another painful death. You, the man who marched an army out here and claimed it was for my sake. You’d kill me again, just because you don’t like what I am.’

‘What you are—’

‘What you are is an abomination!’ Patience interrupts. She still hovers close to the Head Huntsman, flickering somewhat, as if trying to make herself appear more opaque. ‘What the huntsmen do is wrong! You must know that, deep down. You must see yourself attacking ordinary people – attacking children. Breaking up families with your hatred. Making people live in fear and pain. You must see that and think, “This isn’t right, this isn’t me, not really’’. You must! You’re a human being.’

‘But you’re not,’ growls the Head Huntsman. He gestures towards the creatures assembled in the village square. ‘These monsters are not human.’

‘So? We just want to be left in peace. Please. If you like, I can ask you as a fallen sister to the cause. The cause is wrong. Take a moment. Look into your own life, unmasked, and you’ll see it. You don’t have to stay on the same path, after what you’ve seen today.’ Patience nods out at the crowd – Centaur standing next to baker, standing next to witch, standing next to farmer, standing next to Unicorn, standing next to midwife. ‘Look at it, Brother. Look at this new togetherness. We can have this, everywhere, and you can help us change it.’

The Head Huntsman stares again at the crowd, then at Patience. He meets her eyes. He leans towards her a little.

He spits.

It passes straight through Patience. She continues to regard him, coldly.

He speaks slowly and deliberately. ‘I will see Darkwood burn. I will see this whole place burn, with all of you in it, and then I’ll return with an exorcism team to have your Ghosts sent to the void where they belong.’

‘Well, that’s not very nice,’ says Trevor from somewhere in the crowd.

The Head Huntsman takes a step back. ‘In fact,’ says he, ‘wasn’t it thoughtless of you witches to bring all of Darkwood’s army out of the forest to come to the aid of this little village?’ He takes another step back, still watching the crowd, an expression of horrible triumph on his blandly handsome face. ‘Whom, I wonder,’ he continues, ‘is left there to defend it now?’

He takes another step back, then quickly turns. He reaches towards the bonfire for a bit of burning wood he can use as a torch.

‘Wait,’ cries Daisy.

‘Stop,’ adds Gretel.

‘Those cowls are flammable, you idiot,’ shouts Patience. ‘When’s the last time you had a health and safety refresher?’

It’s too late. The flames of the bonfire have already bitten into the large, trailing sleeve of the Head Huntsman’s cowl and are cheerfully gobbling it up at speed as he screams.

‘Somebody put him out,’ shouts Daisy.

‘Drop and roll,’ Gretel advises him.

The Head Huntsman doesn’t drop and roll. He screams and fights his way out of the burning cowl, leaving it for Gretel and Daisy to stamp out. The villagers with the horse trough of water are already up on the platform to help by this point and, on finding themselves without a burning man to put out, hurl the trough full of water at him anyway, just to be on the safe side. Unharmed but singed, soaked and shivering with fury as well as the cold, dressed now only in a fire-damaged, horse-water-drenched undershirt and breeches, he storms straight through Patience, down the stairs and pushes through the crowd in the direction of Darkwood.

‘You’ll be sorry,’ he cries, ‘you’ll all be sorry!’

‘Should somebody stop him?’ asks Daisy. ‘Isn’t he right about there being nobody left to defend the forest?’

‘He hasn’t got a torch,’ Gretel points out.

‘He’d have had a tinder-box,’ adds Patience, ‘but huntsmen always keep theirs in their cowl, which…’ She nods at the smouldering remains of his cowl.

‘Doesn’t have his knife any more either,’ adds Snow, watching him reach the river and wade through furiously. ‘What’s he going to do to the trees – bite them?’

‘Guys, trust me,’ replies Daisy. ‘I’ve been his prisoner for days. He’s single-minded and he’s vicious. If you leave him to his own devices in your forest for too long, he’ll find a way to cause untold suffering, and…’

‘Oh, he won’t be on his own for too long,’ Snow smirks.

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s Monday.’

28
Home…

‘Hansel. Hansel? Hansel, it’s me, it’s Gretel. Hansel?’

Gretel looks up from her unconscious brother, worried.

‘He won’t wake up.’

‘He isn’t dead,’ the Mirror tells her. ‘I’d be able to tell.’

‘What happened? What did you do?’ She pauses. ‘You did get told the plan in full? You were to explain the whole situation to Hansel and then when the time was right, you were going to encourage him to finally let go of all that pent-up magical energy. You got that message, right?’

‘Er…’

‘Look, Jack and I didn’t have long to do the switch, get the Mirror safely in Hansel’s cell where nobody would look, smash up a decoy mirror and get back to the river,’ Snow grunts. ‘I only had time to tell him the basics – don’t you think after thirteen years I’d have liked to have had a longer conversation with my dad?’

‘That was you?’ asks the Mirror in surprise.

‘I still had the block on you seeing me, just in case,’ Snow tells him. ‘Plus I was in disguise. Anyway, nice to have you back, old man.’

‘You too, poppet.’

‘Your various Majesties, I’m very pleased for you, but my brother won’t wake up. What “basics”? What happened here?’

‘Well,’ says the Mirror, ‘I might have misinterpreted “tell Hansel the situation” to mean, you know, tell him my situation. Generally.’

‘So he didn’t know about the plan.’

‘No. But he still released his magic at the right time, didn’t he? When Snow removed the block and told me to go for it?’

‘And how did you do that?’

‘Well, I showed him you were being put on the bonfire, as per the plan.’

‘Oh, for… that was supposed to be a visual aid to help him focus his energy, he wasn’t supposed to think it was real!’

‘Yes, at the time I did wonder why you were deliberately making him so upset. Anyway, he went all sort of trance-like, a ridiculous amount of magic poured out of him and then he… passed out.’ The Mirror pauses. ‘But he’s not dead!’

‘Ah.’ Snow nudges Hansel’s foot a little with the side of her boot. ‘When we came up with that bit of the plan I forgot about Dad’s people skills.’

Gretel sighs. ‘Are you sure you two are related?’

‘I think it’s adorable,’ says Buttercup, by Hansel’s side. ‘All these families, reunited. And it was so lovely to meet your step-parents, Gretel. They were so obviously moved at seeing you alive and well, all that crying…’ She wipes a small tear from the corner of her eye. ‘There I go again.’

‘Well, I think they’ll be a lot less weepy once we’ve woken Hansel up and got him out of here.’

‘Hmm.’ Buttercup finishes checking him over, and sits back. ‘Well, we can certainly get him out of here, but it’ll be straight to bed, I’m afraid. Waking him up isn’t going to happen any time soon.’

‘Oh no.’

‘Oh, he’ll be absolutely hunky-dory in a few days, don’t you worry, Gretel. He’s just used up an awful lot of magical energy in one go. Lots, lots more than any of us could ever use at a time, so he’ll need a lot of recuperation. I expect that his body will need to sleep it off for a full day and a night at least. Maybe two.’

Gretel runs her hand tenderly over her unconscious brother’s face.

‘I suppose we can tell the others that the huntsmen gave him a sleeping drug, or something.’

‘You’re not going to tell them the truth?’ asks Jack. ‘He just swung the whole fight and sent the huntsmen packing, saved the day…’

‘…using very strong magic,’ adds Gretel.

‘But the huntsmen have abandoned Nearby,’ Trevor argues. ‘I don’t think they’re coming back, you know. They may not even see the village as their territory any more – more part of an alliance with the forest.’

‘I wouldn’t be so certain that that means witches will be perfectly safe here for ever after,’ says Snow, not unkindly. ‘New Girl’s right to be cautious for now.’

‘The whole point of keeping Hansel safe in the cell during the fight was to let him release his magical powers without anyone finding out they came from him,’ Gretel reminds them. ‘We don’t know how all the villagers would react to finding out how much Hansel can do. We don’t know how Hansel would react to people finding out – he’s a worrier, love him. Even if everyone turns out to be fine about it, it’s not our place to tell everyone – it’s his.’

‘You’ve thought about this a lot,’ says Trevor, ‘haven’t you?’

‘I’ve been keeping his secret my whole life, I’ve had ample time to think about it.’

‘You told us about him though, didn’t you,’ notes Snow.

‘That was different! You’re witches, you knew there was a witch at Mudd Farm, you were angry that it wasn’t me and you kept throwing axes at me!’

‘Only little ones!’

There is a pause. Gretel takes one of Hansel’s hands between both of hers.

‘You said we couldn’t be certain witches will be safe in the village, even with the huntsmen’s retreat,’ she says to Snow.

Snow gazes at her. ‘You want to know if you can go home.’

Gretel nods, and is surprised to find herself welling up with tears.

‘They thought you were a witch before; they’ll be certain of it now that they’ve seen you pull off those magic tricks. Even the huntsmen that work out the truth of you will consider you a threat to their power, and you’ve seen what they do to those.’

‘But if I just stay in the village, and carry on with my life… What if Trevor’s right, and the huntsmen do never come back here?’

Snow puffs dramatically, like a plumber estimating the scale of a call-out job.

‘Dad?’ she asks. ‘Can you still project hypotheticals?’

‘Only if you ask for them in rhyme,’ replies the Mirror.

‘You don’t need the request to rhyme, Dad.’

‘It’s traditional!’

‘Fine.’ Snow pauses, and thinks. ‘Mirror, Mirror, show the ways the village fares if Gretel stays.’

There is a crackle of electricity over the surface of the Mirror, and an image forms. A walled city with great, sloping streets leading uphill to a castle’s towers. Gretel’s only ever seen those walls as a tiny detail on the horizon. The Citadel.

Snow sighs at the vision. ‘Been a while since I’ve seen that old place.’

Gretel watches as huntsmen, cowled and masked once more, roam and gather in the Citadel’s streets.

‘They regroup,’ she murmurs.

‘Of course,’ replies Snow. ‘They’ll get a new leader, come up with new tactics. They may be even more dangerous now that we’ve bruised their collective ego.’

The Mirror shows word getting to the Huntsmen that the Mudd Witch has come back to live on her farm in Nearby village. The huntsmen, remembering their humiliating retreat, become enraged. They formally declare Nearby to be collectively guilty of crimes against Myrsinan rule of law, and are swift to follow with fiery vengeance from weapons even worse than the ones they had brought before.

This is only a hypothetical, Gretel is told. The Mirror shows her further potential outcomes to the huntsmen hearing that she’s living in the village. In some, their reaction is that if Nearby harbours witches, then its residents are to be treated like Darkwood creatures. In some, they coolly and rationally decide that it simply sets an unacceptable precedent to allow a known witch to live in a human village. Either way, the results are the same. Almost every projection ends with a fiery attack, and this time the huntsmen do not take the risk of allowing the vanquished villagers to live as captives.

When Snow asks the Mirror to show some projections of how events could pan out were Gretel to stay in the Darkwood instead, the images initially appear the same – the gathering huntsmen in the Citadel, wondering what to do about their defeat – only this time there is no word from the village that its witch has returned there, so there’s no moment of outrage to galvanise them. They’re still never particularly happy with the village, but often they simply leave it alone, keeping an eye on it from time to time and occasionally making things difficult for the villagers in more low-key ways – an extra tax on produce here, a poorly maintained trade route there. In a couple of projections they attack en route to the rest of Darkwood anyway, but it occurs far less frequently than in the visions where she comes home.

‘Do you need to see any more?’ asks the Mirror after the tenth hypothetical scene.

Gretel shakes her head, eyes downcast. Frankly, she already cried herself dry about halfway through all those images of her village burning. She wants to cry again now.

‘I can’t go home.’

‘Not yet,’ says Snow, with a surprising softness. ‘But we can work on that.’

‘What?’

‘What – you think we’re done? Oh, New Girl, you’re such a small-town hick. There’s hundreds of towns and villages just like Nearby, and hundreds of thousands of lives just like your friends’, in fear, in subjugation. Your little village isn’t that special – why should it be the only one to get liberated?’

‘But to do that for the whole country would mean…’ Gretel stares at Snow. ‘You… you want us to bring down the huntsmen? All together?’

‘I didn’t think it was possible,’ admits Snow, ‘until today. I suppose I owe you my gratitude for that, Gretel.’

‘You called me “Gretel”!’

‘Yes.’

‘Not “New Girl”!’

‘Yep.’

‘Awww! Is this your way of telling me that we’re friends?’

‘Shut up, no, I don’t have any friends.’

‘Snow, just admit that Gretel’s your friend.’ Buttercup leans in to Gretel conspiratorially. ‘She thinks the world of you, really.’

‘My little girl,’ coos the Mirror, ‘all grown up, with proper friends and everything.’

‘For the love of trousers,’ seethes Snow, ‘would you all please stop?’

29
…Is Where the Heart Is

At least Gretel gets to spend some time with her stepparents, and Daisy. Hansel is gently carried back to Mudd Farm, where he can recuperate in his own bed. Luckily nobody asks too many questions about their ‘sleeping drug’ line. The vet is called, in lieu of a medic, who backs up their claim that he’s basically fine and should be awake again once he’s slept whatever it is off.

In the village, work has already begun to rebuild what was broken during the huntsmen’s invasion and occupation. It is, everyone agrees, a pity that none of the witches have the power to magic up a new windmill, but at least this way Mason the mason will get a nice big job in his nominatively determined career, and stop having to moonlight as Mason the gardener in order to pay the bills. The villagers are impressed, however, by Buttercup’s ability to turn a piece of rubble into a giant meat pie – even if what she actually was going for was a three-tier chocolate cake.

Other food joins Buttercup’s pie, on a makeshift table in the square. People bring out what good cheeses, pickles and wines the huntsmen didn’t manage to get their hands on. Others bring out fiddles and drums, and the general sense of elation and togetherness births a party in the square.

‘Turnip for your thoughts?’ asks Daisy, next to Gretel.

‘It just seems all so strange,’ says Gretel. In the midst of the party, Coriander the village midwife laughs her way through a very clumsy attempted dance with a Centaur. Elsewhere, a Dwarf hungrily eyes up Mr Sparkles, who is freshly back in tiny mayoral chains of office and in turn making predatory eyes at her friend Trevor the magical talking spider. Part of Gretel still can’t quite believe that all of the Darkwood creatures came to their aid when they were called for. Perhaps it was the imminent threat to their own homes. Perhaps it was because Snow had been the one going around doing the asking, and people of all races and species tend to do what she says as an automatic reaction. Perhaps, just perhaps, it was partially down to a new atmosphere of trust and sharing that her groundwork and inventions had helped to spread. Whatever it was, it had worked, and the main upshot of it right at this moment is that she gets to bear witness to Rory the Manticore giving the gleefully squealing Tailor and Tiler Hill a gentle ride on his back, like a doting grandfather made out of bits of lion, scorpion and bat.

‘It does seem a little bit strange,’ says Daisy, ‘but only because we’re not used to it yet. Perhaps this sort of thing will feel normal as market day, in time. Perhaps this sort of thing will become normal everywhere, for everyone.’

‘Perhaps they were always meant to be normal,’ adds Gretel. ‘Perhaps we’ll look back on the years of the huntsmen and wonder what we’d even been thinking.’

‘I hope so.’

‘Me too.’

She sits, and soaks up as much of the feeling of home as she can, while she can. The monthly dried goods caravan is due to arrive the next morning, and all of the Darkwood residents have agreed to return to the forest at dawn to avoid being seen by the merchants, in case any turn out to be the talkative type. Gretel is to go with them, to the cake cottage. Hansel is unlikely to wake up before then.

She sighs.

No. No, she’s not going to let that ruin this. There will be another time for a proper reunion with her twin. For now, she’s home, and everybody is happy. She scans the crowd. Buttercup is cheerfully discussing pastry with Bracken the baker, as Trevor hides amongst her hair from Mr Sparkles. Snow is deep in conversation with the Mirror. Jack is a little harder to spot, but Gretel finds him in a corner, letting Mave from the cheese shop talk at him. His smile is turned to full Jackish charm as the young cheesemaker chats, probably about rennet, knowing Mave. He nods, hands Mave a freshly grown rose, then lets his façade fall the second that she turns away. His expression takes on that cast-down guilty quality that Gretel has come to know very well. Patience, Gretel notices, has not yet made an appearance at the party.

‘Say that again,’ comes Snow’s voice loudly. ‘Tell everyone. No, hang on, I’ll get them all to listen.’ She hauls herself up onto the table and bangs two tin trays together for attention.

‘Shut up, everyone!’

The crowd, more or less, do as they’re told.

‘I’ve got something important to say.’

‘You’re going to take back your rightful place on the throne of Myrsina?’ calls Mother Goggins hopefully.

‘What? Er… not that.’

‘We’ll help restore your crown, Your Majesty,’ adds Gregor Smithy. ‘Long live Queen Snow!’

‘Long live Queen Snow,’ chant several other elder residents of the village.

‘Shut up! No!’ Snow shouts. ‘That’s… a conversation to have another time, we’re nowhere near to a stage where we can think about that sort of thing yet, OK? And drop the “Majesties”, yeah? It feels sarcastic, somehow.’

‘D’you hear that?’ mutters Mother Goggins, pleased as punch. ‘The queen herself told me to shut up. Me! Homily Goggins, personally shutted up by the actual queen. She’s so regal.’

‘Dad has something to show us all,’ Snow announces. She holds up the Mirror.

Nothing happens. She coughs expectantly.

‘Ask properly,’ says the Mirror.

‘Seriously?’ She sighs. ‘Mirror, Mirror, be compliant, show us the truth about Jack and the Giant.’

‘What?’ Jack’s head jerks up, with an expression of alarm. ‘No, please. They don’t need to see it…’

‘They do,’ Snow tells him, ‘and so do you.’

The Mirror’s surface crackles, and then flickers to show a desolate-looking rocky scrubland. A small, skinny boy in a pauper’s ragged clothes raises his fists to the sky, and a large stalk erupts from the poor soil, lifting the boy on a thick leaf and carrying him swiftly, precariously up towards a particular low-floating cloud. The cloud seems… not quite right. There’s something odd about its colour, as if there’s something solid up there.

‘No,’ begs Jack, ‘I can’t watch this.’ His eyes, however, remain locked in horror on the Mirror’s image.

The Mirror flickers. The boy is on the cloud now, running towards a huge mansion that, against all logic, is prettily nestled amongst the cloud’s marshmallowy mounds. The boy’s arms are still held aloft and he’s sweating with effort. The scene flickers again. The boy is in the oversized mansion, one arm still trembling upwards, the other stuffing fistfuls of gold into a knapsack.

Still desperately watching, Jack doesn’t bother to wipe away the tears.

Another flicker. The boy is trying to climb back down again, but is struggling. The bag of gold strapped to his back is heavy, as is the invisible magical weight pressing on his one upwardly thrust arm as he scrambles down as fast as he can with only one free hand. The boy looks up in a panic. At the edge of the cloud, an outraged Giant is pointing and yelling at him. The Giant shouts. The boy clambers. The Giant gets onto the beanstalk to chase him. The boy slips. The last twenty feet or so of the boy’s journey to the ground happens in a fall that he’s just about able to control by grabbing stems and leaves to slow his descent. Several of the stems rot instantly in his hands. He is using both hands to catch himself. He no longer has any fists in the air. He hits the ground, rolls painfully onto his feet, takes one look at the quickly rotting beanstalk and panics even more. He tries raising both fists again, but it doesn’t work. The rot has already gone too far. He shouts up a warning to the Giant, but the main stalk is already collapsing on itself. The boy runs, and runs, and doesn’t look back. The beanstalk collapses, with the Giant still on it. The great figure falls down into a pile of the beanstalk’s grey-brown mush.

‘Why?’ whispers Jack, through the tears. ‘I confessed, I apologised, why show it all again?’

‘Because of this,’ says Snow.

Amongst the rotten vegetable slop, something stirs. The Giant reaches out a massive hand and pushes himself into a sitting position. He is visibly furious, in pain and covered in beanstalk slime. He is also, notably, still very much alive.

‘What?’ asks Jack flatly.

In the Mirror, the Giant tries to get up and continue chasing after the boy, but he has to sit down again suddenly, wincing and clutching at his ankle.

‘The fall only sprained his ankle?’ asks Jack. ‘But… but that doesn’t make any sense. The other Giants found him dead.’

The Mirror flickers. The Giant is limping towards a local huntsman outpost.

‘What’s he doing?’ murmurs Gretel.

‘Back in them days, when the huntsmen had only just taken over, outside of the Citadel they still presented themselves sort of like a police force and judiciary combined,’ her stepfather tells her quietly. ‘Your local unit was who you’d take a dispute to if you couldn’t sort it out privately – especially if the person you were in a dispute with was magical in any way, because they’d always take the non-magical one’s side… poor big beggar, with his life up in the clouds… he couldn’t have known what they were really like. Must have thought they’d just uphold the law, catch the little thief for them.’

The Mirror flickers again. The Giant is arguing with a group of huntsmen. He’s growing more and more agitated.

‘Oh no,’ breathes Gretel.

In the Mirror, the Giant thumps the ground in frustration. The huntsmen automatically reach for their weapons.

‘Oh no…’

Injured, unarmed and in shock, the Giant doesn’t stand a chance against the barrage of crossbow bolts, swords and flails. Two huntsmen come running out of their outpost building wheeling a much larger weapon, like a crossbow but several times the size. Gretel realises that it must be specially made for attacking Giants and Ogres – they had already planned something like this, and had prepared for it in advance. The monstrous weapon’s huge bolt hits him in the neck and he falls. A huntsman climbs onto the Giant’s chest as he lies bleeding. The huntsman is brandishing a large broadsword.

‘If you kill me,’ croaks the felled Giant, ‘there will be a war. Is that really what you want?’

The huntsman speaks, and Gretel recognises the voice of the man who leaned into her with a knife and chained her to a rack only too well.

‘Frankly,’ he says, ‘yes.’ He pushes the sword deep down between the Giant’s ribs, hitting the heart.

They don’t need to be shown the rest – not the huntsmen dragging the body back to the rotten beanstalk so that it looked as if they had nothing to do with it, not the Giants’ furious reaction and the following bloodbath, not the huntsmen’s retelling of the story to make the Giants the aggressors, not Jack going on the run in terror, only to be pursued by huntsmen into the Darkwood to ensure his silence, not the huntsman who had killed the first Giant using that moment as a jumping-off point for his career progression to the post of Head Huntsman. The Mirror simply flickers and crackles again, and then all the crowd can see in it are their own reflected faces once more.

Somebody coughs. Another person puts up his hand.

‘Um, why did you go to all that trouble to get Giant gold? It’s like… I get that you were poor, but couldn’t you have just lived off the beans?’

‘He was seven,’ hisses Buttercup. ‘What seven-year-olds do you know who’d use their new-found magical powers to live off veg?’

‘I… didn’t kill him,’ manages Jack. ‘I didn’t kill him.’

‘Turns out no,’ says Snow. ‘Not directly, at least, although you did sort of start off the chain of events that led to his death, so…’

‘Shush, Snow.’ Buttercup lays a gentle hand on Jack’s arm. ‘You didn’t kill him. You didn’t start this trouble after all. The huntsmen did it, and they let a scared little boy take the blame.’

Gretel glances over to the tin trough where the two Swamp Mermaids have been enjoying the evening’s revelries. The creatures look thoughtful. They mutter amongst themselves. They certainly aren’t giving Jack their usual hateful glares. Amongst many of the Darkwood creatures, in fact, the atmosphere towards Jack feels as if it’s shifted away from its usual barely contained hostility. Some of the Ogres are even looking at him with an expression of sympathy.

There is a sudden, sharp pocket of cold directly between Gretel and Jack, into which the form of Patience manifests. She’s clearly already regained some of her strength. She’s looking much less translucent than she did after her showdown with the Head Huntsman.

‘Patience!’ Trevor waves at her excitedly. ‘Wow, you’ve just missed a massive moment. Turns out—’

‘Yes, I saw.’

‘But, you came to tell me that even if I’m not to blame for the Giant’s death, you still blame me for yours?’ Jack gives Patience a tight smile. ‘Right?’

‘Not everything’s about you, Trott. I was having a rest but I didn’t want to miss the whole party. I was integral to the whole plan – you lot all owe me a debt of gratitude, frankly.’

There is a half-hearted chorus of ‘Thank you, Miss Ghost,’ from a handful of villagers.

Patience rolls her eyes. ‘However, if you were hoping that being absolved of that Giant’s death absolves you of mine, you have another think coming. I certainly didn’t sprain my ankle when you dropped me. I went splat.’

‘Oh come off it, Dead Girl,’ snaps Snow. ‘I was there. You were warned. Repeatedly.’

‘You trapped my majestic hoof,’ calls Charles the Magnificent from somewhere in the crowd.

‘Yes, we know, Charles, stop banging on about it.’ Snow turns back to Patience. ‘We tried to save your life.’

Patience opens her mouth to reply.

‘And in any case,’ continues Snow over whatever Patience was about to say, ‘there were Bin Men hot on your heels. I’ve been in the Darkwood long enough to know what they do to people they take alive. Trust me – compared to that, an instant death is a mercy.’

‘And that’s supposed to make me feel better about dying, is it?’ Patience asks her.

Snow gazes at the Ghost plainly. ‘Yes.’

Patience huffs. ‘Fine, Trott. I will accept some of the blame for my death. I should have turned back. And… sorry about your hoof, Charles.’

‘My majestic hoof!’

‘Your majestic hoof, then.’

‘Does that mean you’re going to stop haunting me, then?’ Jack asks.

‘Um.’ Patience blinks, and suddenly looks rather lost. ‘I… suppose. I’m not sure what Ghosts actually do besides haunt, but there must be something…’

‘Did you know,’ says Buttercup suddenly, ‘that haunting doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing? Lots of haunted houses actually have a friendly Ghost, sometimes it can really add to the character of a place. Why don’t you try that? We’ve got plenty of room for an incorporeal one.’

Patience looks from Buttercup, to Gretel, to Jack. ‘Are you inviting me to move in? Permanently?’

‘Dearie, we already live in a house that’s deep in a cursed forest and partially made of cake. I really don’t think it’s going to make any difference to any of us if it’s haunted.’ Buttercup pauses. ‘As long as it’s haunted quietly.’

‘Of course.’

‘And no more flinging cutlery.’

‘Deal.’

The celebration continues until dawn. Gretel dances with her step-parents, and with Daisy, and with Jack. Jack dances with everybody, with the body language of a man from whom a great weight has been lifted. Even Snow dances, on the condition that it’s just with Buttercup and absolutely nobody is allowed to bow or curtsey at her.

At sunrise, when the Bin Men have finished their deadly sweep of the forest, the creatures of Darkwood begin to drift back over the river and home to the woods.

Gretel makes one last trip to Mudd Farm, and Hansel’s bed. He’s still asleep.

‘He looks so peaceful,’ says Daisy. ‘He’s going to be upset that he missed you.’

Gretel kisses his forehead. ‘I’ll come home, eventually. I promise.’

Daisy wipes away a tear. ‘When you do, I’m going to make you the nicest basket.’

They return to the cake cottage, and although it may not be home-home, there’s something about the warm, sweet-smelling kitchen that’s almost as good. Before they all bed down, Gretel offers to help Snow carry the Mirror back to her cave.

‘So, what now?’ she asks, hefting the Mirror awkwardly by herself. This was not what she meant by ‘help’.

Snow clanks ahead of her, her mended necklace sparkling around her neck, carrying three exhausted Dwarves and dragging along the rest – including one nursing several scratches and a bruised ego, having comprehensively lost a fight with Mr Sparkles.

‘Now,’ Snow tells her, ‘we rest. None of us have had any kip in at least two nights, with the exception of your lazy brother.’

‘Hey.’

‘Fine. Your very special and magical but prone to fainting brother, then.’

‘And then what?’ Gretel asks. ‘We’re not just going to stop now, are we?’

‘No. No, I meant what I said. I intend to bring down the Huntsmen, one way or another. But there are still a lot of them. It’ll take time. We’re going to need help.’

Gretel smiles. ‘We’ve got all the help we need now. The other creatures, the village, Hansel…’

‘We’ll need more than that, New Girl. Taking on the Citadel is going to be very different to liberating one village.’

‘Do you already have particular help in mind?’

‘Yes,’ says Snow. ‘But it’s not going to be easy. This is a big forest, New Girl, and mark my words, we live in the safest corner of it. I sent my birds out as far as they dared go to make that map for you, and it barely covered a third of the Darkwood.’

Gretel shivers a little. ‘The bear and wolf witches.’

Snow nods. ‘In the mountains of the north.’

‘Could they be reasoned with, you think? Might they join us?’

‘Like I said, it won’t be easy,’ Snow tells her. ‘But it’s a better shot than trying to forge alliances with what’s in the eastern woods.’

‘What’s in the eastern woods?’

‘You don’t want to know.’

‘Clearly, I do.’ Gretel pauses. ‘Isn’t the eastern edge of the forest technically part of Ashtrie?’

‘Yep.’

‘I was taught terrible things about Ashtrie, you know. Probably all huntsman lies though, right? Like their lies about the Giants?’

Snow gives Gretel an odd look. ‘You’re asking far too many questions for this time in the morning of our third day awake, New Girl.’

‘Sorry.’ Gretel pauses again, then grins. ‘So, you’re a princess, eh?’

‘Shut up.’

‘Well, technically the queen now, I suppose.’

‘Shut up.’

‘Can you feel peas in your bed?’

‘I’ll pee in your bed, if you’re not careful.’

‘Well, that’s not very regal, is it?’

They pick their way past a patch of broken thicket, strewn with tattered scraps of a man’s undershirt and breeches. Smears of blood and meat, shards of bone and clumps of hair lie forlorn amongst the wreckage. The Bin Men have been.

‘Hello? Hello?’

Whether they ignore him on purpose or whether he’s just too weak to be heard he’ll never know. The Ghost of John Rosier calls one more time, but the Mudd Witch and Snow don’t look back.

Fine.

He doesn’t want charity from those disgusting witches anyway. He turns, and drifts off into the trees.

Do not go into the Darkwood, children. It’s a cursed place, and so big and so dangerous that once you go in you’ll never come out again. You’ll become just another lost creature, aimlessly wandering amongst those black and twisted trees forever. Even the dead aren’t safe in the Darkwood. Nobody is safe.

Nobody is safe…

Hansel winces in his sleep. Even the oblivion of unconsciousness following his magical exhaustion isn’t peaceful for him. Dreams squirm fitfully through his sleeping mind. The dreams show something coming, some dark, unseen monster, intent on devouring the whole of the land. Darkwood, Nearby, even the Citadel itself. He whimpers and opens a sticky, blurry pair of eyes.

‘Hansel!’ His stepmother rushes over to him. ‘Hansel’s awake!’

Blearily, he hugs his relieved step-parents. He hears them quickly rattle off that the village is safe again, Darkwood’s safe now, even Gretel is safe.

He gives them a small smile, but the sensations of dread from his dreams don’t fade on waking the way the feelings from a normal dream would do.

His step-parents are wrong. He doesn’t say so now, but they’re dead wrong. Nobody’s safe. Something’s coming.

Note from the Publisher

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Acknowledgements

Thanks to Nathan Crouch, Jess Mersky, Dom Lord and Abbie Headon for all their support and help.

About Gabby Hutchinson Crouch

Gabby Hutchinson Crouch (Horrible Histories, Newzoids, The News Quiz, The Now Show) has a background in satire, and with the global political climate as it is, believes that now is an important time to explore themes of authoritarianism and intolerance in comedy and fiction. Darkwood does so in a funny, engaging way that never loses the warmth of humanity, even as its villainous Huntsmen try to dehumanise their victims as well as anonymising and dehumanising themselves. Drawing on inspiration from other satirical stories set in a magical universe such as Shrek and the Discworld novels, Darkwood creates a world where readers can enjoy more grown-up versions of fairy tales, while also holding up a mirror to our own society.

Born in Pontypool in Wales, and raised in Ilkeston, Derbyshire, Gabby moved to Canterbury at 18 to study at the University of Kent and ended up staying and having a family there.

This edition published in 2019 by Farrago, an imprint of Prelude Books Ltd

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www.farragobooks.com

Copyright © Gabby Hutchinson Crouch 2019

The right of Gabby Hutchinson Crouch to be identified as the author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events other than those clearly in the public domain, are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

ISBN: 978-1-78842-143-0

Version 1.0

Cover design by David Wardle