Such Big Teeth
The Darkwood Series, Volume Two
Gabby Hutchinson Crouch
Dedication
For Alex and Violet
Contents
Dedication
Chapter 1: Here Be Monsters
Chapter 2: Over There Be Monsters, Too
Chapter 3: And All That Other Bit Be Monsters As Well
Chapter 4: Into the Unknown
Chapter 5: Such Big Teeth
Chapter 6: Fur and Feathers
Chapter 7: Lodgings
Chapter 8: Fighting Talk
Chapter 9: The Cold Shoulder
Chapter 10: Green
Chapter 11: Buttercup and her Big Cake Hole
Chapter 12: Seduction in Spades
Chapter 13: In Which Hansel Is Having a Worse Night than Jack
Chapter 14: Something in the Wood Shed
Chapter 15: The Hydra
Chapter 16: That’s a Suspiciously Large Oven
Chapter 17: Do Not Disturb
Chapter 18: Et Tu, Sausages?
Chapter 19: Witching Hour
Chapter 20: Bear With Us
Chapter 21: Flapjacks
Chapter 22: A Spot of Bother
Chapter 23: Taking Flight
Chapter 24: The Breakfast Run That Never Was
Chapter 25: The Mudd Witch
Chapter 26: Everybody Hates Big Cave
Chapter 27: Afternoon, Morning
Chapter 28: Secret Weapon
Chapter 29: Oi
Chapter 30: Home, At Last
Note from the Publisher
Also Available
Acknowledgements
About Gabby Hutchinson Crouch
Copyright
1
Here Be Monsters
The land of Myrsina lies nestled snugly beneath the Great Mountains, with the kingdom of Ashtrie to its east and an expanse of western coastline twinkling with the Golden Sea. If you were to measure its area, you would compare it closely to Wales, because that’s roughly how big it is, but also because for some reason Wales is the standard unit for measuring landmass, in the same nonsensical way we always measure dinosaur size in double-decker buses. Myrsina doesn’t have either dinosaurs or double-decker buses, but its soil is reasonably fertile, its climate reasonably clement, and its people are very, very happy with the way it’s being run, by a benevolent collective called the huntsmen, who keep the populace on the path of natural righteousness and continue to purge the land of witches and other magical beasties. No, really, the people love being governed by the huntsmen, ask any one of them, and they will tell you how wonderful life under the huntsmen is, or at least, they will if they know what’s good for them.
On the border between Myrsina and Ashtrie, running north all the way to the mountains, stands the cursed forest of Darkwood, where all those terrible witches and beasties slink away to hide when the huntsmen come for them. Over the years, the Darkwood has become a haven to magical beings of all kinds, and death itself to any human who dares enter its twisted thickets. Why, two huntsmen were killed out there in separate attacks only a matter of weeks ago, and then of course there’s what happened to the village of Nearby, at the Darkwood’s edge. A whole human village, bewitched and brought under the influence of the wicked wood, to the point that they actually turned their backs on the rulers of their land and drove the huntsmen from their streets, right in the middle of a good old-fashioned witch burning. Dreadful scenes.
Past the very wicked and ungrateful village of Nearby is a river with a log bridge, and just beyond that is Darkwood itself. There used to be a perimeter fence in front of the line of trees, but this has recently been taken down. Even so, the humans from the village still don’t actually venture into the Darkwood. If they were to go in there, they could end up wandering lost until they dropped dead from starvation and exhaustion, or they could be swiftly killed by one of the many dangers of the forest… or they could find themselves in a clearing in a hollow, where a little house stands alone and incongruous in its cosy appearance. It’s not just the cheery warm firelight at the windows that seems out of place, or the pretty roses around the door or the neat little vegetable garden to the side; there’s also the fact that the house’s exterior is almost entirely made out of cake, biscuit and rather stale and grubby pastry. Don’t be fooled by its charming, delicious aspect. Witches live in this house. With a spider. Oh, and it’s haunted.
If you were to escape that sweetly scented house of horrors alive, and trek for ten minutes upstream, you would find a small opening in a hillock, around the size of a badger’s sett. From out of this small and unassuming hole pops a head. It is the size of a human child’s, but utterly covered in tangled, filthy hair, with eyes not unlike those of large cat, and a mouth split wide with viciously sharp, twisted teeth.
‘Yummy,’ it says, quietly, and pulls itself out of the hole. The rest of its body isn’t any sort of improvement on the head. It stands upright, covered from top to toe in the same matted grey hair. It wears a couple of leather belts adorned with small, hand-beaten axes, and what serve as its fingers end in large, sharp claws.
If that’s not bad enough, out of the hole in the ground emerges another creature just like the first, then another, then another… until seven in all stand around the hole, waiting. These are the Dwarves, and they’re waiting for the witch who lives in their cave with them to appear. After a moment, she does – a tall, dark woman in her late twenties, dressed in filthy armour that has been gruesomely adorned with the skulls of small birds and rodents. Getting out of the cave entrance is clearly more difficult for someone of such stature and impractical dress than it is for the Dwarves. Once she’s out, she makes it yet harder for herself by turning around and delicately pulling a large wall mirror from the hole, utilising two grooves dug into the sides of the opening so that it will just about fit. That done, she asks the Mirror if it’s OK, hefts it onto her back and sets off, trailing Dwarves behind her like a chattering, hairy cloak.
This witch, terrible in her armour, is known to many as the White Knight, the spectre of the forest who protects its beastly inhabitants using brute force and a wide selection of deadly blades. Her real name is Snow.
You wouldn’t think from the state of her that she was once a princess. You wouldn’t think that she’s now the rightful heir to the throne of Myrsina.
You wouldn’t think from how ferocious she and her party of Dwarves appear that they’re actually all just off for lunch in the cake cottage downstream.
Inside the cake cottage, life is… OK. It’s fine, it’s passable. It would be better if it weren’t raining right through the roof. Turns out, shortbread isn’t particularly waterproof. Several buckets and pans, half filled with rainwater and wet biscuit, litter the floor. One of the pans is accidentally a large pie case, which isn’t doing anyone any favours.
The whole ‘house made of cake’ situation is extremely impractical, any one of its residents would be quick to admit that. It’s certainly not a deliberate architectural choice, it’s just that its owner is Buttercup, a witch whose only known magical power is that she can turn anything that isn’t alive into baked goods – and almost always accidentally so, at that. Buttercup has given up on trying to put out pans for the water now, due to the situation with the pie case on the floor, which was very recently a skillet pan. She is, instead, gazing in irritation at her fingers as Jack Trott and Gretel Mudd rush about emptying pails of water.