‘Exactly. You’re getting the hang of it now. What he is determines who he is. I must remember that,’ the queen added, ‘it’s very good. Now, then. That story must be somewhere — in a book or a film or a cartoon strip, or even just inside the heads of everyone who’s ever heard it, right?’

‘Sure. I mean, why not?’

‘So far, so good. Now think what happens when the system goes down and everything’s thrown out of synch. The stories are all still there, but somehow some of the people have got into the wrong stories. Like what happened back there, with the three little pigs somehow winding up in the story of the three bears. That’s pretty bad — a bit like a plumber suddenly finding himself doing brain surgery while the surgeon’s been whisked away and wakes up to discover he’s turned into an airline pilot. Get the picture?’

‘In a sense.’

‘Okay. Now think about someone deliberately screwing up the stories. The original story’s still there, in a book or between someone’s ears. Then there’s the sixty-degrees-skewed version; well, we know that’s running, because we’re in it. Finally there’s the deliberate fuck-ups, which seem to be precisely targeted to cause as much grief as possible. And they’re all going on at the same time. If you want proof, ask someone. You’ll find that their long-term memory’s either completely gone or they’re living with an entirely different set of memories from the ones they had this time last week. Fun, isn’t it?’

Sis made one last effort to understand what she’d heard; but it was a lot to ask, the equivalent of expecting a one-armed man to empty the Pacific into the Atlantic using a tablespoon. ‘So what do we do?’ she asked.

‘If you say that once more, I’m going to tie you to a tree and leave you there. For the last time, I don’t know. Where you get this idea that I’m some sort of extra-brainy tactician from I don’t know. What sort of bedtime stories did your mother tell you, for pity’s sake?’

‘But…’ But the wicked queen always knows what to do, Sis nearly said; or at least, she always has a plan. Then it occurred to her that she already knew what the answer would be. ‘Oh, all right then,’ she said. ‘How’d it be if we just stay where we are and wait for something to happen?’

‘What a splendid…’ The queen broke off, smiled, turned through forty-five degrees and pointed. She didn’t say anything, because there was no need.

Sis followed the line of her finger, and saw a tall, fat man with a long white beard, dressed in what looked like a red towelling-robe with furry white trim, running very fast out of a fuzzy patch of undergrowth. Since she was not entirely without compassion, she had filled her lungs with a view to yelling, ‘Look out,’ but before she could do so, the fat man ran straight into a tree and fell over. Sis started to move towards him, but the queen grabbed her arm; and a moment later, a milk-white unicorn with a silver horn appeared from the same clump of shrubbery that had produced the fat man. It caught sight of him, whinnied savagely, lowered its horn and charged; at which point the fat man woke up, saw the unicorn heading towards him, made a shrill yelping noise and shinned up the tree with a degree of skill and dexterity that made Sis want to clap her hands and shout ‘Bravo!’ The unicorn made a couple of futile attempts to climb the tree after him, then dropped back on to four hooves and squatted down on its haunches, breathing heavily through its nose.

Smiling, the queen folded her arms and sat down on a boulder. ‘About time, too,’ she said.

‘It’s all right,’ Eugene said. ‘We aren’t going to hurt you.’

Julian poked his head above the barricade of straw bales and nodded. ‘Too right you aren’t,’ he replied. ‘Not through any lack of effort on your part, but simply because I’m up here, you’re down there and I’ve got the ladder. Now bugger off before I start dropping things on your heads.’

He had, his brothers had to concede, got a point there. It was their fault for letting him get such a good head start on them; by the time they’d tracked him down to Old Macdonald’s barn, he’d had plenty of time to build himself an impromptu fortification out of straw bales.

‘You’ve got five minutes,’ Desmond said. ‘Then we’re coming in after you. Understood?’

‘It’s for your own good,’ Eugene added.

‘Yeah. And when we’ve finished with you, you’ll wish you’d never been born.’

In his straw castle, Julian did his best to stay calm. Bluster, he assured himself. Huffing and puffing. Without the ladder, there was no way they could scramble up the sides of the hayrick. After all, he was the brains of the family, always had been, ever since they were piglets together…

Why are they doing this?

‘Four minutes,’ Desmond called out. ‘Say your prayers, little brother, ‘cos we’re gonna get you.’

Piglets together… Ever since he could remember it had just been the three of them, pitting their plump little bodies and their agile wits against the lean, cold, mercifully stupid big bad wolf. And now, apparently, the wolf was dead and gone, all their troubles were over… And his brothers were laying siege to him as he cowered in a house of straw, wheedling and threatening him in turns while they prowled up and down — Hang on. Just a cotton-picking minute. Play back the edited highlights of that train of thought.

‘You think just because we can’t get up there, you’re safe,’ Desmond went on. ‘Well you’re wrong, little brother, you couldn’t be wronger. ‘Cos—’

‘Shouldn’t that be “more wrong”?’

‘Quiet, Eugene. ‘Cos if you aren’t out of there in three minutes, we’re gonna set fire to the straw and burn you out. You copy?’

‘Desmond—’

‘Shut up, ‘Gene, I know what I’m doing. Three minutes, sucker, and then it’s roast pork. You got that?’

‘Desmond—’

‘I said shut it, little brother. This is no time to get sentimental. I mean yes, you’ve got to admire his tenacity. The pig’s got balls. And quite soon they’re gonna be served in batter with sweet and sour sauce. Now then, where’s those matches?’

Extraordinary, Julian thought, with a shudder that started just behind his ears and kept going right down to the last twist of his tail. They’re not just as bad as the damn wolf, they’re worse. What is going on here? ‘Look, you two,’ he shouted back, trying to keep his voice steady, ‘what’s got into you? You’re acting crazy, both of you. Just stop and listen to yourselves.’

‘Two minutes, loser. You got any last requests? Favourite recipes?’

They won’t actually do it. It’s just bluff and bluster. Huffing and puffing — He heard the rasp of a match, then a crackle. Instinctively he twitched his wide, sensitive nose and smelt smoke. Panic hit him, like a very large truck hitting a very small hedgehog.

‘Desmond, what do you think you’re…?’ Eugene broke off in a fit of harsh coughing, as ominous blue wisps started to curl round the lip of the straw-bale barricade. Julian had heard somewhere that once straw starts burning, there’s next to nothing that can stop it; the flame leaps up inside the hollow stalk, finding inside it the oxygen it needs for a really keen burn, and even a sudden heavy downpour simply can’t saturate the straw fast enough to stop it flaring up and blazing. His trotters shaking uncontrollably, he tried to pig-handle the ladder over his head and set it down against the already smoking parapet; but the shakes were too bad, he let go — ‘For God’s sake, Julian, mind what you’re doing. You nearly brained me!’

Good, Julian thought; then, For pity’s sake, that’s my brother Desmond, last thing I want to do is drop a heavy ladder on him. There was no time to consider the paradox, however; the flames were visible now, surging up at him like a burning oil-slick on a surfer’s dream of a wave. ‘Help!’ he squealed, backing away from the fiery curtain, while at the back of his mind he thought, Nothing like this ever happened when it was us and the wolf; sure he kept blowing down the house, but it never felt dangerous, just extremely annoying. He backed away but the fire was quicker than he was, had more time and space to manoeuvre. Then, as he drew near to the edge, he put down a trotter and realised that he was standing in thin air, like the unhappy cat in a Tom & Jerry cartoon.