‘Bear,’ Gretel manages, her voice tight.
Her half-wound dynamo still clasped in her hand, she wonders if it’s worth even trying to use it against this huge brown bear, should it take a swipe at her. Thankfully, the bear doesn’t try to attack. Instead it stands over her, watching her with its huge, dark eyes, muzzle curled up slightly against its massive teeth, its breath hot and stinking. Gretel shuffles back a little on her knees, feels a hand clutch at her shoulder. It’s Buttercup. She helps Gretel to her feet.
‘You stay away,’ warns Buttercup, brandishing a curiously knife-shaped pasty at the bear.
‘Really wasn’t worth you packing a weapon, was it?’ mutters Gretel.
Buttercup shakes her head. ‘I did try to say so at the time, dear.’
‘They’ve stopped attacking,’ says Patience. ‘Why have they stopped attacking?’
‘Maybe,’ suggests Trevor, cheerfully, ‘they can see they’re outnumb— oh hang on, no, wait.’
The four wolves have started circling them slowly. Out of the thicket prowls a fifth wolf, far bigger than the others, with bright red fur. It is joined by a second bear, which draws itself up to its hind legs, watching them. Above, there is something in the branches, a huge, black shape that Gretel can’t make out. These animals may be just about outnumbered but they are in no way outmatched. They are, right now, the ones in charge.
‘What do you suppose they want?’ Jack asks the others. ‘Besides, you know. Dinner.’
Still, the animals circle, and watch.
‘We’re the witches of the south-western territory,’ Snow announces to the menacing menagerie. ‘I’m the White Knight, you may have heard of me, these are my lads…’
‘…yummy…’
‘These guys are Buttercup of the cake cottage, Jack Trott the so-called Giant Killer, but he’s been exonerated of that, before you start…’
‘I mean, why did you even have to bring it up?’ complains Jack softly.
‘…The little scruffy one’s actually the Mudd Witch, they say she’s pretty powerful, and we’ve also got a Ghost and Trevor, who is a magical talking spider.’
‘How do?’ asks Trevor from the safety of Buttercup’s hair.
‘We’ve come into the northern wood to offer an allegiance. The whole of Darkwood has been put under threat recently. We believe that the forest would be stronger and safer if we worked together.’ She pauses, watching the circling animals. ‘What say you?’
A voice comes from somewhere in the murky undergrowth, unseen. It’s thin, female, delicate and frail, and speaks using odd, old-fashioned terms.
‘I say beat it, lady, if ye please.’
The animals growl and snarl. Snow scrunches up her face.
‘Aww, but we came all this way. Come on, what’s an invisible territory line in the forest between fellow witches?’
‘Beat it, I said! This is our patch, and we don’t be wanting not none of your reckless battle with the outsiders around thisaways, sure as taters ain’t turnips.’
‘Our reckless battle?’ Jack calls incredulously. ‘I think you’ll find they started it.’
A second voice speaks up. This one is younger, and male, and, for as yet unknown reasons, coming from the high branches.
‘Didn’t you start it all, Jack Trott? With the Giants?’
‘No! Turns out it was all the huntsmen, the Mirror said so, there was a whole thing!’
The wolves start circling a little closer.
‘Admittedly,’ adds Jack, ‘you guys didn’t see that, but the White Knight did just tell you about my exoneration only a couple of minutes ago. Er. Could we maybe speak with the actual people here, and not a load of creepy voices while wolves make faces at us? Feels a bit one-sided.’
‘You’re trespassers here, mister,’ says the first voice. ‘We’re just asking you very sweetly to vamoose.’
‘“Very sweetly?”’ echoes Snow. ‘You set wolves on us!’
‘And you brought a whole hill of naughty axes,’ says the first voice.
‘What, these little things?’
‘Wait,’ says the second voice, from up in the trees, ‘where’s the Ghost?’
Gretel clutches at her dynamo-on-a-stick. Here they go, then, with Operation ‘Keep Them Talking Until Patience is Able to Fade to Nothing and Then Take Them By Surprise’. It’s a fairly simple plan that they hashed out during the trek, in the event that the northern witches proved violently uncooperative. Had she known just how early into the voyage north they’d need it, she wouldn’t have put off coming up with a better name for it.
Patience suddenly appears out of nowhere in the middle of the wolves.
‘Boo!’
The wolves yelp with alarm and all but the ginger one cringe back.
Yeah, in retrospect, as plans go, this isn’t a particularly elegant one. Perhaps it never really deserved a better name after all.
Snow takes advantage of the moment of fear and confusion in the beasts. She takes a step in the direction the first voice was coming from.
‘Show yourself! We just want to talk! We come in peace!’
‘You’re still holding two axes, lady!’
Snow looks down at the large axes in her hands. ‘Oh yeah…’
‘Phooey, you’re all flannel. No deal!’
The bears, clearly less spooked out by Ghosts than wolves are, take lumbering steps towards the group. The group scatters out of the way of the bears. One of the bears tries chasing after the Dwarves, which, even with the Dwarves in their unusual state of high anxiety, turns out to be a bad idea. The Dwarves scrabble over one another in a snarling, spitting, toothy confusion, leaving the bear swiping at empty space near the ground.
The other bear goes for Gretel. She’s able to very courageously and gracefully squeak ‘nope’ and duck sideways out of the way just before it’s on her. She tries to turn and run, but the ginger wolf is worryingly close in the other direction. The bear raises a paw. Gretel screws her eyes shut and lashes out the dynamo-on-a-stick. The exposed electrical wires push into the soft carpet of fur on the bear’s belly. There are sparks, the sound of an electrical charge and the smell of burning fur. Gretel opens her eyes again. The bear is just staring down at the dynamo as it makes a small burnt patch on its belly. The bear looks across at her. It doesn’t look in pain, or in any way incapacitated. What it looks to be is simply annoyed.
Ah.
So, that didn’t work either, then.
Still locked into eye contact with the bear, Gretel wonders what to do next.
She starts by saying, ‘Sorry.’
It doesn’t have much effect.
Luckily, at that moment, an unseasonal rose bush grows between herself and the bear, and as the bear wrestles with the unexpected thorns, a cheese scone hits it on the nose.
Jack grabs Gretel’s shoulder and drags her back into the tighter huddle with himself and Buttercup, away from the bear.
‘Maybe if we keep them running around for a while, we can tire them out,’ suggests Trevor, from Buttercup’s shoulder. ‘It’s getting close to winter, they’ll want to hibernate, won’t they?’
‘Not from running around a clearing for a few minutes, they won’t,’ replies Gretel. ‘And anyway, you know what they need to do before hibernating? Eat. Loads.’