‘And I was waiting for one of them to come in and stand guard over us,’ Gretel admits in a low whisper, in case of keen Werewolf ears, ‘but it’s been about an hour now. Somebody must have decided to guard the shed from outside, instead. I wasn’t expecting that.’
‘Maybe they all fancied some peace and quiet,’ murmurs Snow meaningfully.
‘What,’ asks Jack, clocking Snow’s expression, ‘is Trevor talking too much, again?’
‘Hey,’ Trevor replies resentfully, just as Buttercup reaches up to his shelf and releases him from the cup. ‘Oh! Thanks, mate.’
Buttercup carefully lifts the glass jar off Patience next, and sweeps the ring of salt and sage away. The jar turns to marzipan and most of the salt becomes hundreds and thousands. Patience’s tiny, diaphanous form flickers, fizzles and is suddenly full size again, hovering gently in a seated position above the shelf.
She stretches, relieved, then snaps her focus back on the rest of the group.
‘Jack, will you shut up; Birdbrain didn’t fancy you – it’s not the end of the world.’
‘Hey.’
‘I’ve been wanting to say that for ages,’ adds Patience.
Buttercup squats down between Gretel and Jack, and starts seeing to their ropes.
‘Um,’ says Gretel. ‘While we’re on the subject of things we’ve been wanting to say for a while… Sorry, for lumping you in with the huntsmen.’
Patience shrugs. ‘I was a huntsman; I’m not asking anyone to ignore that. It does also mean I understand them in ways you don’t, you know.’
‘OK.’ Gretel starts munching on the bonds around her wrists, which have turned into some sort of delicious pretzel. ‘I still don’t think trying to kill people is the answer, you know,’ she adds, her mouth full.
‘You could at least consult me a little more,’ Patience tells her.
‘Hmm.’ Gretel swallows another mouthful of pretzel-rope. ‘No more advocating for killing, though.’
‘No promises.’ Patience nods at Buttercup, who has turned her attention to trying to free the Dwarves – not an easy task, with them all fast asleep in a hairy huddle. ‘Besides, it looks like I’m not the only one whose feelings and opinions have gone ignored lately.’
Buttercup doesn’t say anything. Clearly convinced that she’s done enough to untangle the Dwarves, she looks across at Snow. Snow, for her part, has very nearly finished sawing through her own wrist ties, using the beak of one of the bird skulls decorating her armour as a handy blade. Buttercup sighs faintly.
Gretel breaks free of the last of her bready bonds and gets up for a stretch. ‘Well, that’s more comfortable, at least.’ She cracks her knuckles. ‘So I take it from the fact nobody’s heard what we’re doing and come in that Scarlett isn’t on guard out there; we’re probably just being guarded by Hex right now, which is a pain because he’d be quite easy to overpower.’ She gazes around at the witches in the woodshed. ‘Could you all try only overpowering him a little?’
Jack raises a questioning hand.
‘No attempting to charm him, Jack. We just need to do a sufficiently bad job of escaping so that they catch us and tie us up again with a bit more care.’
‘Oh, what now?’ huffs Patience. ‘I’m not going back in that jar!’
‘Just for a little while,’ Gretel reassures her, ‘to buy us a bit more persuasion time. I reckon we’ll be done by morning. We were starting to win them over.’
Jack raises his eyebrows at her. ‘Really?’
‘Oh… maybe not on your part, sorry, Jack, and Gilde’s a lost cause, but I seemed to be making some headway with Scarlett at least.’
Jack frowns down at his feet. ‘Oh.’
‘If we escape now… well, we just escape,’ Gretel reasons.
Somewhere out in the mountains, a bear roars.
‘Or,’ adds Trevor, ‘get mauled by bears.’
Gretel nods thoughtfully. ‘Or get mauled by bears, yes.’
Patience still looks unconvinced. ‘Those elections will be soon, you know. Time’s running out.’
‘They’ll still be in disarray after the elections,’ mutters Snow. ‘Cementing power takes time. Growing our army needs to be the priority for us right now. We mustn’t be hamstrung by their deadlines.’
Patience frowns at Snow. ‘Are you stalling?’
Snow snaps the last few strands of rope fibre, gets up and marches towards the locked door. ‘Don’t worry about the door, Buttercup, I’ll get it.’
Buttercup, one hand already extended towards the door, has to swiftly flinch out of the way when Snow pushes past her and kicks the door down.
‘Snow! Will you stop kicking doors to open them? I have asked you politely a hundred times!’
‘There’ll be time for that later,’ says Gretel, nudging the still-sleeping Dwarves with her boot to try to get them up. ‘Come on, Hex will be here any second; we need this escape to look convincing.’
Snow drags a complaining Dwarf up by the scruff of its neck. ‘Look lively, lads.’
Gretel tries to help by grabbing two Dwarves herself. Both of them react by making themselves go floppy, like cats that don’t want to move. It manages to make the already fairly heavy creatures feel even heavier, like hairy sacks of wet sand.
Buttercup, Jack and Patience, for their part, do their best job of ‘escaping’, even though that’s limited to just going through the splintered doorway into the cold night outside, and then loitering about a bit.
‘Oh no,’ cries Trevor loudly from his perch on top of Buttercup’s head, ‘the prisoners are escaping!’
‘Um,’ says Patience.
‘Gretel?’ calls Jack. ‘Snow? There’s no one here.’
Gretel stumbles out past the kicked-down door, panting under the weight of two uncooperative Dwarves. ‘What?’
She looks about. There is a chair outside the woodshed, but it’s empty. The boughs of the trees above are empty. There is, indeed, nobody watching the building. Nobody has been guarding them, all this time. Not even Hex. Not even a little bit.
‘I think they all went to bed, dear,’ says Buttercup.
Snow arrives in the doorway, lugging the rest of the Dwarves. ‘Huh. They don’t think much of our capabilities, do they?’
A wolf howl goes up nearby. Gretel is aware of canine eyes watching her once more.
‘Well, at least they’ve got the perimeter alarmed,’ notes Trevor cheerfully.
The back door of the nearby cottage opens, and Scarlett appears, halfway through a huge, toothsome, dog-like yawn.
‘M’coming,’ she mutters sleepily, ‘what’s the…’ She stops, and takes in the scene at the doorway of the woodshed. ‘Oh for pity’s sake,’ she whines. She indicates to the broken door. ‘Who did that?’
Jack, Patience and even Buttercup all point Snow out as the culprit.
The Werewolf shakes her head. ‘Princesses.’
15
The Hydra
Hansel becomes aware of daylight, and the stale smell of the city. He also becomes aware of terrible pain throughout his body.