The Brothers Grimm smiled sheepishly. ‘So much for blending into the crowd,’ said the elder. He elbowed his brother in the ribs. ‘Told you we should have dressed the part.’

‘We’d still have stuck out like sore thumbs,’ the younger Grimm replied. ‘And it’s bad enough having to tell people you collect fairytales for a living without having to dress up in all that ridiculous schmutter.’

‘I know you,’ the queen repeated. ‘You’re the official observers, aren’t you? From where she comes from.’

The Grimms noticed Sis for the first time. The younger specimen hauled out a complicated-looking scanning device, waved it in Sis’s direction and looked down at the readout. ‘Gawd, she’s right,’ he said, ‘she’s one of ours. How in hell’s name did she get here?’

‘Good question,’ the queen growled. ‘Anyway, wasn’t it lucky I bumped into you two creeps when I did? You can take her back with you.’

Sis was about to protest, but the Grimms did it for her. ‘No can do,’ said the elder Grimm, shaking his head. ‘Not our pigeon, repatriations. We’re just—’

‘Observers,’ the queen finished for him. ‘All right, observe this. Either you can get her out of here, now, no pack drill, or else your bureau is going to be hearing from my lawyers about a claim for massive disruption to my systems caused by one of your strays hacking into it and crashing the damn thing. Now, shall I wrap her or will you take her as she is?’

But the Grimms shook their heads again; this time, more or less in unison. ‘Still not our pigeon,’ the elder replied. ‘Cost us our badges, that would. Of course, we’ll report back to Immigration soon as we get back, but that’s all we can do. Sorry.’

‘But you’ve got to help,’ Sis burst out. ‘My brother’s lost in here, somewhere, and she’s not doing anything to find him.’

The Grimms exchanged glances. ‘Awkward,’ said the younger specimen.

‘Very awkward,’ agreed his brother. ‘Don’t know what we’re going to do about that. I mean, it could be abduction, which’d be State Department business—’

‘Or mythological asylum,’ put in the younger Grimm. ‘That’d come under Political.’

‘Might even constitute an act of war,’ added the elder, ‘which’d mean bringing in the military. Sorry, no, can’t touch that with a ten-foot pole.’ He shook his head once more, just in case Sis and the queen hadn’t been looking the first couple of times. ‘While we’re on the subject, though; when you say crashed the system, what exactly…’

The queen gave him a stare you could have put in a gin and tonic. ‘Oh no you don’t,’ she said.

‘But if you’re having, um, technical difficulties,’ the elder Grimm said solicitously, ‘I’m sure our people would be only too pleased to offer technological support and backup. It’d be the least.’

‘You want me to let your spooks come poking their noses into the workings of my system,’ the queen translated. ‘Whereupon you’d download everything you think you’d be able to use back where you come from, and then bugger off. Probably,’ she added, ‘leaving behind a few little mementoes of your visit buried deep down among the cogs and wheels, all ready to go bang! and blow a hole in the operating system whenever the bunch of paranoid psychotics you work for decide we constitute a threat to your dimensional security. Oh, come on, boys, I wasn’t written yesterday.’

‘You’re being very unfair,’ muttered the elder Grimm. ‘And that’s just going to make it harder for us to repatriate our, um, errant citizen here.’ He stripped all vestige of expression from his face, and went on: ‘I do take it you want rid of her?’

The queen snarled. ‘You’re calling me unfair,’ she said. ‘And somehow I don’t believe you’d actually do that, abandon one of your own in an alien dimension. If word ever got out, you’d be flayed alive. And, unlikely as it seems, sooner or later someone’s going to wonder what’s become of this one and her two noxious siblings.’

The Grimms grinned. ‘Quite so,’ said the junior partner. ‘And guess what. Anybody who so much as suggests that the reason for their disappearance is that they’ve been kidnapped by the fairies is going to end up wearing one of those funny jackets with sleeves that don’t let you look at your watch. Forget it, your Majesty. We’ve extended the hand of friendship and you’ve thrown it back in our face—’

‘Interesting mental picture,’ the queen interrupted. ‘Sorry, do go on.’

‘You want our help with one problem,’ the elder Grimm said, ‘you’ve got to accept our help with the other. Simple as that. You think it over, and in the meantime we’ll just go about our business.’

‘Observing,’ added Junior.

‘I know, anything that isn’t nailed down., The queen breathed out through her nose in a manner that suggested a dragon or two in the back lots of her genetic matrix. ‘I’ll have you for this, don’t you worry. Not immediately, perhaps, but eventually. And when I do—’

The elder Grimm smiled placidly. ‘Tell it to the hobbits,’ he said. ‘Remember, our people know we’re here. And when we’re expected back. And right now, it doesn’t look to me like those automated defence systems of yours we’ve heard so much about are in any fit state to cope with a sudden dose of Reality. Think on, Highness. Ciao.’

The queen snorted; fortunate for her that some things don’t run in families, or she’d have roasted her own toes. But the Grimms turned their backs and walked away. When they’d gone fifty yards or so, the queen distinctly heard a snigger.

‘Wonderful,’ she said. ‘Now it looks as if I’m stuck with you long-term. All this is beginning to get on my nerves.’

Sis glowered at her. ‘That’s right,’ she said, ‘blame me for everything. If you hadn’t been so rude to those men, they might have helped us to fix your rotten system and find Carl and Damien.’

‘Oh, be quiet.’ The queen sat down again and pulled on her shoes. ‘Well, I don’t think we’re going to meet any funny old men or informative wizened crones, so we might as well make a move before those idiots think of something else to threaten me with and come back. I think I might have difficulty staying serenely regal if they were to do that.’

‘So where are we going to go? Or are we just going to drift about aimlessly carrying this stupid bucket and getting our shoes wet?’

The wicked queen scratched an itch at the very tip of her perfect nose. ‘You clearly haven’t understood how things work here,’ she said. ‘It’s a whole different attitude to cause and effect. If you’ve got a problem, you don’t go out and look for an answer. Heaven forbid. You might find the wrong one, and then where’d you be? No, you keep going till the answer finds you. It will.’

Sis wrinkled her nose in distaste. ‘Oh, really?’ she said. ‘You mean, you’ll just happen to bump into an adventure that’ll put everything right. And in the meantime, you just roam about the place smelling the flowers.’

‘More or less,’ the wicked queen replied. ‘After all, if someone’s been to all the trouble of putting us into a story, it stands to reason they’ve got work for us to do.’

‘And suppose we wander off in the wrong direction and the right adventure can’t find us? Or is there a convention, like you always wander North or something?’

The queen smiled indulgently. ‘Oh, the adventure finds you all right, don’t you worry, just like a cat can usually be relied on to find a mouse inside a small cardboard box. That’s what the system’s…’ She tailed off. ‘Was for,’ she added.

‘Exactly.’