The Book Of Lost Things

Number Three.

The dwarfs started marching back down the ditch on the other side of the road, following a rough trail that led into the trees.

“Excuse me,” said David. “I don’t suppose I could stay with you for the night, could I? I’m lost, and very tired.”

Comrade Brother Number One paused.

“She won’t like it,” said Brother Number Four.

“Then again,” said Brother Number Two, “she’s always complaining that she has nobody to talk to. Might put her in a good mood to see a new face.”

“A good mood,” said Brother Number One wistfully, as though it was a wonderful flavor of ice cream that he’d tasted a long, long time ago. “Right you are, comrade,” he said to David. “Come with us. We’ll see you straight.”

David was so happy he could have skipped.

While they walked, David learned a little more about the dwarfs. At least, he thought that he might be learning more about them, but he didn’t quite catch everything he was being told. There was a lot of stuff about “workers’ ownership of the methods of production” and “the principles of the Second Congress of the Third Committee” but not the Third Congress of the Second Committee, which had apparently ended in a fight over who was going to wash the cups afterward.

David had some idea of who “she” might be as well, but it seemed polite to check, just in case.

“Does a lady live with you?” he asked Brother Number One.

The buzz of conversation from the other dwarfs instantly ceased.

“Yes, unfortunately,” said Brother Number One.

“All seven of you?” David continued. He wasn’t sure why, but there was something slightly odd about a woman who lived with seven little men.

“Separate beds,” said the dwarf. “No funny business.”

“Gosh, no,” said David. He tried to wonder what funny business the dwarf could be referring to, then decided that it might be better not to think about it. “Er, her name wouldn’t be Snow White, would it?”

Comrade Brother Number One stopped suddenly, causing a minor pileup of comrades behind him.

“She’s not a friend of yours, is she?” he asked suspiciously.

“Oh no, not at all,” said David. “I’ve never met the lady. I might have heard about her, that’s all.”

“Huh,” said the dwarf, apparently satisfied, and started walking again. “Everybody’s heard of her: ‘Ooooh, Snow White who lives with the dwarfs, eats them out of house and home. They couldn’t even kill her right.’ Oh yes, everybody knows about Snow White.”

“Er, kill her?” asked David.

“Poisoned apple,” said the dwarf. “Didn’t go too well. We underestimated the dose.”

“I thought it was her wicked stepmother who poisoned her,” said David.

“You don’t read the papers,” said the dwarf. “Turned out the wicked stepmother had an alibi.”

“We should really have checked first,” said Brother Number Five. “Seems she was off poisoning someone else at the time. Chance in a million, really. It was just bad luck.”

Now it was David’s turn to pause. “So you mean you tried to poison Snow White?”

“We just wanted her to nod off for a while,” said Brother Number Two.

“A very long while,” said Number Three.

“But why?” said David.

“You’ll see,” said Brother Number One. “Anyway, we feed her an apple: chomp-chomp, snooze-snooze, weep-weep, ‘poor Snow White, we-will-miss-her-so-but-life-goes-on.’ We lay her out on a slab, surround her with flowers and little weeping bunny rabbits, you know, all the trimmings, then along comes a bloody prince and kisses her. We don’t even have a prince around here. He just appeared out of nowhere on a bleeding white horse. Next thing you know he’s climbed off and he’s onto Snow White like a whippet down a rabbit hole. Don’t know what he thought he was doing, gadding about randomly kissing strange women who happened to be sleeping at the time.”

“Pervert,” said Brother Number Three. “Ought to be locked up.”

“Anyway, so he bounces in on his white horse like a big perfumed tea cozy, getting involved in affairs that are none of his business, and next thing you know she wakes up and—ooooh!—was she in a bad mood. The prince didn’t half get an earful, and that was after she clocked him one first for ‘taking liberties.’ Five minutes of listening to that and, instead of marrying her, the prince gets back on his horse and rides off into the sunset. Never saw him again. We blamed the local wicked stepmother for the whole apple business, but, well, if there’s a lesson to be learned from all this, it’s to make sure that the person you’re going to wrongfully blame for doing something bad is actually available for selection, as it were. There was a trial, we got suspended sentences on the grounds of provocation combined with lack of sufficient evidence, and we were told that if anything ever happened to Snow White again, if she even chipped a nail, we’d be for it.”

Comrade Brother Number One did an impression of choking on a noose, just in case David didn’t understand what “it” meant.

“Oh,” said David. “But that’s not the story I heard.”

“Story!” The dwarf snorted. “You’ll be talking about ‘happily ever after’ next. Do we look happy? There’s no happily ever after for us. Miserably ever after, more like.”

“We should have left her for the bears,” said Brother Number Five, glumly. “They know how to do a good killing, do the bears.”

“Goldilocks,” said Brother Number One, nodding approvingly. “Classic that, just classic.”

“Oh, she was awful,” said Brother Number Five. “You couldn’t blame them, really.”

“Hang on,” said David. “Goldilocks ran away from the bears’ house and never went back there again.”

He stopped talking. The dwarfs were now looking at him as if he might have been a little slow.

“Er, didn’t she?” he added.

“She got a taste for their porridge,” said Brother Number One, tapping the side of his nose gently as though he were confiding a great secret to David. “Couldn’t get enough of it. Eventually, the bears just got tired of her, and, well, that was that. ‘She ran away into the woods and never went back to the bears’ house again.’ A likely story!”

“You mean . . . they killed her?” asked David.

“They ate her,” said Brother Number One. “With porridge. That’s what ‘ran away and was never seen again’ means in these parts. It means ‘eaten.’ ”

“Um, and what about ‘happily ever after’?” asked David, a little uncertainly. “What does that mean?”

“Eaten quickly,” said Brother Number One.

And with that they reached the dwarfs’ house.

XIV. Of Snow White, Who Is Very Unpleasant Indeed

“YOU’RE LATE!”

David’s eardrums rang like bells as Comrade Brother Number One opened the front door of the cottage and cried, very nervously, “Coo-ee, we’re home!” in that singsong voice that David’s father had sometimes used on David’s mother when he got back late from the pub and knew he was in trouble.

“Don’t ‘we’re home’ me” came the reply. “Where have you been? I’m starvin’. Me stomach’s like an empty barrel.”

David had never heard a voice quite like it. It was a woman’s voice, but it managed to be both deep and high at the same time, like those huge trenches that were supposed to lie at the bottom of the ocean, only not quite so wet.

“Ooooooh, I can ’ear it rumbling,” said the voice. “’Ere, you, listen to it.”

A big white hand reached out and grabbed Brother Number One by the scruff of the neck, lifting him off his