‘So being up that tree is causing you unhappiness, yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘And another word for unhappiness,’ the queen continued, clapping her hands together joyfully, ‘is distress. So that’s all right,’ she added, sitting down and making herself as comfortable as the circumstances allowed. ‘Now all we have to do is wait.’

Sis stopped yelling and shot her an unpleasant look. ‘Wait?’ she said. ‘What, for the tree to die and fall over? Or are you expecting a herd of kindly giraffes?’

‘Stop wittering and use your brain,’ the queen replied sternly. ‘In distress. A damsel. You. Someone ought to be along—’ She paused, looked up at the sun, and calculated. ‘Any minute now,’ she concluded cheerfully. ‘And with any luck, that’ll carry us on to the next stage in the story. Credit where credit’s due, my less-than-stoical little friend, just for once you’ve done something useful.’

‘What are you—? Oh, I see.’

The queen nodded. ‘Narrative patterns,’ she said. ‘Every time there’s a damsel in distress, there has to be a hero to rescue her. Newton’s second law, as modified for a narrative environment. The only conceivable way it might not work is for you to fall out of that tree before he gets here, so for pity’s sake keep still. Though,’ she added confidently, ‘even if you were to fall out of the tree, you’d be sure to break your leg, which would also qualify as distress, so it wouldn’t be a complete disaster, at that.’

A quarter of an hour later, the queen said, ‘Won’t be long now.’

Half an hour later, the queen said, ‘He’ll be here any minute, I’m sure. The hold-up must be something to do with the systems being down…’ Her words tailed away as the painfully obvious flaw poked its head up through the hole in her logic and stuck its tongue out at her.

‘Absolutely,’ Sis said. ‘The systems are down. More than that, as far as I can see most of them are back to front. Which means,’ she went on, ‘that somewhere out there in the forest there’s a knight in shining armour standing on a kitchen table waiting for us to come along and shoo away a mouse. It’s all cocked up, isn’t it?’

‘Not necessarily,’ the queen replied, with rather more optimism than conviction. ‘There’s really no way of knowing. All we can do is be patient and…’

At the dreaded word patient, Sis began to squirm and wriggle, more from half an hour’s backlog of fidgets than any sincere belief that it would help. As she did so, two things happened: the spur of branchwood that was supporting her weight gave way; and a knight in shining armour, galloping out of the trees and into the clearing in headlong flight from a small but compact dragon that was gaining on him fast, shot under the tree and flashed past the wicked queen like a stainless steel lemming over a cliff top. Accordingly, when the spur snapped off and Sis plummeted out of the tree, there just happened to be a nice bouncy-necked dragon directly underneath her to break her fall.

Her fall wasn’t all that got broken, either.

‘Now look what you’ve done,’ groaned the wicked queen. ‘You’ve killed it. Oh hell, that’s all we needed. You’ll just have to pretend it was worrying sheep or something like that. Look out, here comes the wretched thing’s owner. You’d better leave this to me.’

She stood up and did her best to assume an indignant-livestock-owner expression; but she needn’t have bothered. The knight, who had reined in his steed at the edge of the clearing, rode straight past her without even noticing she was there, vaulted off his horse and knelt beside Sis, who was still lying across the thoroughly dead dragon and watching a spectacular virtual-reality fireworks display. The knight doffed his coalscuttle helmet, laid it down on the grass beside him, and tenderly lifted Sis’s hand to his lips.

‘My heroine,’ he murmured.

‘You must be kidding,’ Rumpelstiltskin whispered in horrified fascination.

Dumpy gave him a long, hard stare. ‘Do I look like I’m kidding?’ he growled, as he slammed the knocker against the brightly painted door.

‘No,’ his colleague admitted, ‘but you know me, a born optimist. You can’t really be going to recruit a — well, one of them,’ he added, in a low voice. ‘It’s just not—’

‘Shut up.’

‘All right,’ Rumpelstiltskin said meekly. ‘Just don’t blame me, that’s all.’

Dumpy ignored him and lifted the knocker, then checked his hand as the door swung open, revealing a small, furry, whiskery muzzle bracketed by a pair of bright and hostile round black eyes. ‘Children and animals,’ Rumpelstiltskin mumbled under his breath, but Dumpy pretended not to have heard.

‘Howdy,’ Dumpy said, extending a hand. The mole looked at it, sniffed and shrank back a little.

‘I mean,’ Rumpelstiltskin went on, ‘whatever else he is, he isn’t a dwarf, no matter how you look at it. And I thought the whole point of the exercise, assuming it does have a point…’

‘I said shut up,’ Dumpy snarled. ‘Say, partner,’ he continued to the mole, who was looking at him quizzically, as if speculating as to what on earth he was meant to be for, ‘I’m looking for the mole. Would that happen to be you?’

The mole twitched its snout and scuffled with its claws in the soft, fine earth. Rumpelstiltskin let out a deep sigh.

‘It can’t talk, you idiot,’ he said. ‘It’s an animal, can’t you see that? And animals can’t talk. Well-known fact, that.’

‘Ahem. Excuse me!’

‘Don’t interrupt,’ Rumpelstiltskin snapped; then he realised he’d just been talking to the mole. He did a quick double-take, then stooped down. ‘You just talked,’ he said accusingly.

‘All right, so I talked,’ the mole admitted. ‘So did you.’

‘Yes, but…’ Rumpelstiltskin made an effort to keep his mind clear, or at least on the translucent side of opaque. ‘I thought you couldn’t talk,’ he said.

The mole twitched its nose at him. ‘Didn’t have anything much to say,’ it replied meekly. ‘Except help! but I sort of got the impression that that wouldn’t cut much ice with your friend here. What is it we’re all going to do, exactly? If you don’t mind my asking, that is. This is all terribly exciting.’

‘We’re gonna save three little pigs from the big bad wolf,’ Dumpy replied. ‘If’n you want to ride with us, we’ll be glad to have you.’

‘Why, for God’s sake?’ Rumpelstiltskin interrupted. ‘Look at it, it’s pathetic. Oh God, it’s started to cry now.’

‘I’m s-sorry,’ the mole snuffled. ‘And you’re quite right, of course, I’d probably only be a hindrance to you. It’s all right, really, I quite under—’

‘It can dig,’ Dumpy said firmly. ‘Reckon that might just come in handy. Now, are we gonna stand around here all day jawing, or are we gonna get on and do the job?’

‘Oh, why not?’ Rumpelstiltskin sighed. ‘After all, it isn’t as if I had a living to earn or anything better to do.’ He hesitated and thought for a moment; it was true, he hadn’t. ‘After all,’ he added, slightly more cheerfully, ‘who’s afraid of the big bad wolf?’

‘Well, actually—’

‘Let me rephrase that. Apart from the mole, who’s afraid of the big bad wolf? Anybody? Right. Let’s go get the sucker.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Right.’

‘Well, if you’re all going to go…’

‘That’s decided, then,’ said Rumpelstiltskin. ‘So let’s—’

Dumpy scratched his chin thoughtfully. ‘Just a minute,’ he said. ‘There should be seven of us. What about the other three?’

Rumpelstiltskin shrugged. ‘Knowing our luck,’ he said, ‘we’re bound to pick up three more dea— I mean, three more colleagues on the way. And if we don’t, we’ll just have to deputise the pigs. Make them honorary dwarves.’

‘We could saw ‘em off at the knee,’ Thumb suggested. ‘That ought to bring them down to our level.’

‘Quite,’ Rumpelstiltskin said. ‘What’s the loss of a few limbs compared to companionship and solidarity? I’m sure they’ll come round to our way of thinking if we threaten them enough. And then we can go in there, get the job done and then,’ he concluded, with his eyes closed, ‘go home.’