She says something to him, but he can’t hear.
‘What?’ He can’t even hear himself speak.
She repeats herself. At least with the mask off, he’s able to read her lips to help make her out.
‘Smash it,’ she shouts, grinning wonkily. ‘It’s OK. Stamp on it. I want you to.’
‘Er…’ His head feels too full to even so much as process her simple request. The monster is coming. He agreed to do this so he could warn them about the monster. He needs to warn them about the monster. He needs to…
Daisy steps forward, hitches up her skirt to the knee and stamps down hard on Morning’s mask. The porcelain shatters under the heel of her boot. The crowd reaches a frenzied volume. Morning, the hood of her cowl pushed back, framed by a halo of messy hair, flings her arms wide once more.
‘My name,’ she screams, surely still inaudible to all but the first few rows, ‘is Morning Quarry. I was born and raised in Slate. I joined the huntsmen to make a positive difference. This is what I look like. I’m the green candidate for the position of head huntsman, and if you think that the system needs changing, then I believe I’m the candidate for you.’
She steps back towards Hansel and Daisy again, the broken mask crunching under her feet. Once more, she takes their hands in hers. She lifts their hands together triumphantly.
The monster, thinks Hansel, the monster. He has to warn them. He fights to hold back the squirming magical terror within him as the image fills his mind. He can see it. A Hydra. So many heads, so many mouths, so many teeth, filling the streets, destroying buildings, destroying homes, destroying lives. So many voices, filling the whole land with a thousand screams.
‘Muh…’ he manages. He tries to pull his hand away from Morning’s, but her grip is too tight.
‘Almost done,’ Morning tells him through the gritted teeth of a winsome grin.
The platform, the crowd and the Citadel beyond seem to melt away. There is nothing except Hansel and the Hydra. There is no Daisy, and no Morning. The Hydra fills everything.
‘Please leave them alone,’ he whispers to it, inside his head. ‘Please don’t come here. You’ll hurt them.’
The Hydra whispers back to him in countless voices. ‘Stupid little farm boy,’ it tells him, ‘I am already here.’
No.
The magic crackles through him. It wants to shake the ground and suck out the stars and create shadows thick as lard. He can’t do it here, not here… desperately, he holds it in, but in doing so manages to push the contents of his stomach out. He’s vaguely aware of the front row reacting in revulsion as vomit surges up, stinging his throat, landing with a disgusting splatter on the platform, as well as several huntsmen’s masks and robes. The last dribble of it runs miserably down his chin and soaks into his shirt.
How embarrassing, one small, painfully alert and rational part of his mind tells him, as blackness descends over his eyes, his head spins and his knees buckle. Eurgh, I hope we don’t land in the sick, adds the last part of his brain to make any sense, before that too switches off, and he is left in a cold, hard oblivion.
14
Something in the Woodshed
‘I am charming though, aren’t I?’ Jack asks, for the fourth time. ‘Like, I know there’s better-looking fellas and all that, but I do have the gift of charm…?’
‘Is that a euphemism or something?’ asks Trevor. His voice is muffled, coming as it is from beneath an upturned tin cup on a shelf.
‘For what?’ Jack asks.
‘For being able to do magic,’ replies the Trevory cup. ‘You know, how you charm the vine and so on.’
Jack contemplates this. ‘That is quite an impressive way of describing what I do,’ he says. ‘“Charm the vine”. I’m going to start using that in the future. Cheers, Trevor.’
‘You’re welcome,’ comes the muffled reply.
Quietness falls throughout the group again. Gretel gently exhales in relief. It isn’t that Jack’s not great and all, it’s just not ideal to be tied up next to him in a locked woodshed when he’s just had his ego mildly bruised.
‘Although that wasn’t what I meant,’ adds Jack. At the other side of the shed, Snow rolls her eyes wearily. ‘None of you would have suggested I try charming Hex if you didn’t think I was already good at being charming, right?’
‘Well, Hex is a bit quiet, isn’t he?’ Trevor replies. ‘Bit of a frosty reception there. You should try charming Scarlett instead; I like Scarlett.’
‘It was Scarlett who put you in that cup,’ Snow reminds him.
‘Yeah, but only because she was told to. And she was lovely and gentle with me, poked a little air hole in the side, made sure not to hurt my legs.’
‘You like her because she didn’t deliberately try to maim you?’ asks Gretel.
‘When you’re a little spider, the pool of people who haven’t tried to maim or kill you is surprisingly small. Even Patience tried to kill me before she died, and we’re mates now, aren’t we, Patience?’ Trevor pauses. ‘Is she agreeing with me? I can’t see.’
On the shelf next to Trevor’s crockery prison is Patience, still tiny and translucent beneath the glass jar, a circle of salt and sage ash around the rim. She sits slumped in the middle of the jar, tired and defeated, so diminished by the Ghost trap that she’s rendered mute behind the glass.
‘Ironic, innit, Patience,’ adds Trevor, conversationally and without malice, ‘how the first time we met, you identified me as a weak target and took me hostage to make the others do as you said, and this time… well. Just goes to show, what goes around comes around, as my old mum used to say.’
Behind the glass jar, Patience pulls a face at the tin cup.
‘Wait, not my mum,’ continues Trevor, ‘I never knew my mum, I just sort of hatched. Who do I mean…? Buttercup! Like Buttercup used to say. And still does say, in fact, just not this time because she doesn’t have to say it this time, because I’m the one saying it.’
In her corner of the shed, Buttercup, her hands tightly wrapped in cloth and tied together, still hasn’t said a word. Gretel glances over in concern. Buttercup gives her a small, tight smile. Gretel gets the feeling that this is less for her sake and more so that Buttercup can carry on steadfastly refusing to meet Snow’s ongoing, searching gaze.
‘It’s just that none of you lot are very charmable, so I don’t get much practice in,’ says Jack, his lament falling into every awkward silence in the shed like spilled tomato sauce rushing to find new bits of white clothing.
‘Well,’ says Gretel. ‘This isn’t ideal.’
‘Agreed,’ replies Snow. ‘I mean, sitting us on log piles. Not very comfortable.’ She lowers her voice. ‘So, when are we escaping? Because I don’t know about the rest of you, but I could break us all out of here incredibly easily.’
Even with hands tied behind his back, Jack is able to beckon a couple of thin creepers through the crack beneath the shed door. ‘Door would be a piece of cake. Mind you, if we get Buttercup untied, it could be a literal piece of cake.’
The cloths and ropes around Buttercup’s hands turn to thin pastry that comes apart at her slightest tug. ‘I don’t need untying, thank you,’ she says quietly, picking pie crust from her fingernails, and shaking the life back into her limbs. ‘I was waiting for Gretel.’