‘For the last time, Daisy, that spider friend of yours is not the aficionado on espionage that he makes himself out to be – hats only draw even more attention.’
‘A hood, then.’ Daisy folds her arms. ‘I’m going, Mum. We have to. Hansel was sent a vision from the Mirror.’
Behind Daisy, Hansel gives Ethel Wicker an awkward little smile. ‘Sorry again about all this, Mrs Wicker.’
‘But the Mirror wants you to actually protect the Citadel? After what they did?’
‘The Citadel’s not just huntsmen,’ says Hansel quietly. ‘I think if I’ve been warned about an attack, maybe it’s my duty to go.’
‘Besides,’ says Carpenter Fred, from the doorway, ‘you can’t just condemn all of the huntsmen just because they’re huntsmen.’
‘I can and I will, Carpenter Fred,’ snaps Mrs Wicker. ‘Question is, why won’t you? They took the whole village! Smashed up the windmill! Separated us into work teams and – and I can’t believe I’m having to bring this up yet again – tried to murder Gretel Mudd and my Daisy!’
‘Yes, I was there, and that was definitely going too far, but we dealt with it, and we can’t have it going too far the other way.’
Mrs Wicker puts down her weaving. Daisy and Hansel instinctively take a step back.
‘Our Gretel still can’t come home, Freddery, and the huntsmen are still in charge. How exactly is any of that even in danger of “going too far the other way”?’
‘I just don’t want us going like Ashtrie did,’ says Fred.
‘Nobody even mentioned Ashtrie!’
‘Yeah, well,’ mutters Fred. ‘I’m just saying. Not all huntsmen are like that.’
‘Do you want this basket or not, Freddery?’
Fred pauses. ‘Yes’m.’
‘Do you think it might be an idea to go and wait for it somewhere quietly instead of telling us your opinions about how we should be nicer to the people who tried to kill our girls?’
‘…Yes’m.’
Carpenter Fred shuffles away. Mrs Wicker shakes her head, and then takes up the weaving again. ‘To be fair to him, it was horrible what happened in Ashtrie, but that don’t mean the huntsmen are any better or deserve the benefit of the doubt.’
‘What did happen in Ashtrie?’ asks Daisy.
‘Nothing that matters any more,’ her mother tells her. ‘What matters is the here and now, and the huntsmen have gone back to leaving us alone, and—’
‘And that could all change again, if the Mirror’s warning comes true,’ argues Daisy. ‘We saw how they reacted when one huntsman was killed in the Darkwood; what do you suppose would happen if a monster came and actually attacked them, in their base? Killed loads of them – killed civilians, too? How do you reckon the huntsmen would respond to that? What they’d do to the Darkwood, to our new friends, and Gretel, and the princess…’
Mrs Wicker presses her hand to her chest with a small sigh. ‘Oh, that poor princess. You should have seen her, Hansel, she was so… regal.’
The very regal Princess Snow is busy picking a really good scab out from under her tangled hair by the time Gretel comes downstairs at dawn with her knapsack packed for the excursion north.
‘Everyone ready?’
‘Hang on,’ says Buttercup. ‘Just showing Henrietta the ropes.’ She points to a series of cords bolted to the ceiling. ‘And finally, Henrietta, these are the ropes. Please don’t touch them, at the moment they’re all that’s keeping the chimney on.’
Henrietta, a pleasant piebald Centaur, frowns. ‘Why’s your chimney falling apart?’
‘It’s currently mostly Battenberg,’ admits Buttercup. ‘Long story. Thanks again for agreeing to Mirror-sit.’
‘This is humiliating,’ complains the Mirror. ‘I used to be king!’
‘And now you’re a large, breakable household object that we can’t possibly take on an expedition,’ Snow tells it gently. ‘You can’t even show us the mountains, you get too fuzzy.’
‘I think it’s the altitude,’ mutters the Mirror. ‘But I can be useful in other ways.’
‘You’re no use to any of us smashed,’ says Snow. She lays a hand on it. ‘Especially after I only just got you back, Dad. Stop being silly.’
‘I love you too, poppet.’
‘Aww,’ coos Buttercup.
Snow huffs at her.
‘What?’ Buttercup asks. ‘It’s sweet.’ She boops Snow on the nose – a small gesture that would likely have resulted in anybody else losing their booping finger. Instead, Snow bites down a smile and boops her back.
They leave Henrietta clopping around a kitchen that was not even remotely designed with somebody of Centaur proportions in mind. As they shut the door, they hear the clatter of her accidentally knocking her haunch against a work surface and sending pans flying.
‘Trousers,’ comes the muffled voice from within. ‘Sorry!’
‘Couldn’t have chosen someone with only four limbs to housesit, then, Buttercup?’ asks Jack, already waiting for them outside.
‘Henrietta’s nice,’ replies Buttercup, with a worried backward glance towards the cottage. ‘I can trust her to remember to put the bins out of a Monday.’
‘Besides which,’ adds Trevor from Buttercup’s hair, ‘limb numbers are not a good indicator of ability, and I would thank you to avoid passing such bigoted comments on the matter in future.’
‘Sorry, Trevor.’
Patience manifests next to them. ‘Aren’t you always making fun of that spider in the bracken with the seven legs, though, Trevor?’
‘Because he’s a bore,’ replies Trevor, ‘not because his leg’s off. Can’t even say how he lost it! Just wants to spin bigger webs than me. I hate that guy.’
Snow affixes the last of her many, many axes and gives the Dwarves a quick headcount.
‘All accounted for. Off we go! You’ve got the map, New Girl.’
Gretel gets out the smelly map, and her compass. She should at least be able to plot out a route for the first few hours of the hike, before the information on the map comes to an abrupt stop. She sighs at the blank section of the map.
‘Here be monsters,’ she mutters.
‘Everywhere be monsters, potentially,’ adds Jack. ‘It all just depends on who you ask.’
Gretel watches the others head off into the woods – Dwarves using their long, sharp claws to clamber through the branches, Patience simply fading through trees rather than go around them, Snow hacking at foliage with one of her axes, so that Buttercup won’t get her hair or the talking spider in it tangled with twigs. ‘Yeah,’ she says, ‘fair enough.’
4
Into the Unknown
‘Didn’t I tell you? Didn’t I say that all we’d have to do to make Mum change her mind was mention the chance that the princess might end up in danger?’
Hansel shifts the weight of his side of the cart to the other hand again. ‘I didn’t ever say that that wouldn’t work. Just… I wish we didn’t need to.’