‘You were saying,’ he said. ‘About the witch. What’s she got to do with an apparent national dwarf shortage?’

‘We were hoping she’d agree to shrink some people for us,’ Rumpelstiltskin admitted sheepishly. ‘And turning the mole into something wouldn’t go amiss, either.’ He stopped and looked round. ‘Hell’s buttons, where’s the blasted animal gone off to now?’

‘Here,’ replied a small, muffled voice under the bed. ‘Hey, there’s beetles living under here.’ [Crunch, crunch] ‘I wouldn’t mind sticking around for a bit, unless other people have got things they want to do elsewhere. Last thing I’d want to do is’ [crunch] ‘hold anybody up.’

‘Mole?’ Fang queried. Rumpelstiltskin pulled a sour face.

‘Don’t ask.’

‘What? Oh, right. Good idea at the time?’

‘Desperation, more like. That’s why we thought we’d try the witch, see if she could help us out with a little downsizing.’

‘Sorry, guys,’ Grimm #2 said. ‘She’s spoken for. If you’re patient, there’s bound to be another one along in a moment. Narrative pat—’

He shut up quickly, aware that he’d almost made a potentially disastrous mistake. The theory was that if ever the inhabitants of this peculiar pocket universe found out that they were just characters in stories, the dramatic illusion would melt down like a fusion explosion and that’d be the end of it. Even a few of them knowing would seriously bend things…

Grimm #2 caught his breath. Maybe they already had. Which would explain — oh, all sorts of things. His fingers itched for his ambience meter, tucked inside his jacket, but he didn’t dare reach for it in present company. Nobody likes to fade away and never to have existed in the first place, which was what might happen if he gave the game away to one of the natives.

On the mantelpiece, the elf was ostentatiously looking the other way while pulling handfuls of dead leaf out of an old, dusty flower arrangement. Tom Thumb was doing more or less the same thing except that, since there were no flower arrangements inside the brim of Rumpelstiltskin’s hat, he had to be content with ripping out fistfuls of felt. Fang and Rumpelstiltskin, having noticed their respective colleagues and resisted the temptation to throw up, met each other’s eye.

‘I know,’ said Rumpelstiltskin. ‘Let’s toss a coin for her. Heads wins.’

Fang shook his head. ‘Nice try,’ he muttered; he knew, of course, that the wicked queen’s coinage had her bust on both sides, ostensibly because it was a nice bust and beauty is truth, truth beauty; really, so the local tradition went, to save her having to choose which of her two faces to put on the money.

That, of course, was when she was still wicked. Now, Fang realised, instead of regarding her with the proper degree of loathing he’d have felt this time last week, the very thought of her was enough to make him want to run out into the street waving a little flag on a stick.

‘All right,’ Rumpelstiltskin conceded, ‘some other kind of game.’

‘Five card stud,’ Dumpy said enthusiastically. The others had the good sense to refuse. Compared to playing poker with a dwarf, playing heads and tails with a double-sided coin was positively fraught with uncertainty.

‘Hide and seek,’ Fang suggested, aware that in spite of everything he still had a better sense of smell than anything that was entitled from birth to walk on two legs.

‘I spy?’ Tom Thumb chimed in, not taking his eyes off the elf. ‘Um, what do you, er…?’ he asked her.

‘Wonderful idea,’ she croaked back. ‘That was a really intelligent suggestion.’

Thumb blushed, until he looked like a stray tomato in Carmen Miranda’s hat. ‘Oh, I expect if I hadn’t suggested it, you’d have thought of it straight away.’

‘It’s very kind of you to say so.’

‘You too.’

Fang could feel the moment drifting away from him, like a dropped spanner in a space shuttle. ‘Not I Spy,’ he said firmly. ‘Hey, what about charades?’

‘Charades?’ repeated a general chorus.

‘Yeah, why not? Oh come on, try to think positive. The sooner we get this done, the better. Before,’ he added ruefully, ‘those two start chewing each other’s faces off.’

‘Don’t know what you mean,’ the elf snarled at him. ‘Some people will insist on jumping to conclusions.’

‘I hate that,’ Thumb added.

‘Oh, do you? Me too. If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s people jumping to conclusions.’

‘Really?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Gosh!’

Just then there was a groan from under the bed; not, as Fang logically assumed, the sound of someone reacting quite naturally to the show Thumb and the elf were putting on, just Grimm #1 making waking-up oh-my-head-hurts noises.

‘Dear God,’ he mumbled. ‘I really and truly hope that there was this amazingly good party last night and that’s why my head hurts. It’d be dreadful to be in this much pain without having done something to deserve it.’

‘You did,’ Fang growled, ‘but it wasn’t a party. Come out from under there. We’re about to play charades.’

‘Charades.’

‘Yes.’

‘That settles it,’ Grimm #1 said. ‘Must’ve been one hell of a party, because I’m still hallucinating. Oh Christ, I didn’t marry anybody, did I?’

‘Oh for pity’s sake,’ his brother snapped. ‘You aren’t hallucinating. We really are about to…

‘Yes I bloody well am hallucinating,’ Grimm #1 interrupted. ‘At least, I sincerely hope I am. For instance, if I didn’t know better I’d think the room was full of little short people. It’ll be pink elephants next.’

Grimm #2 replied loudly, to cover the inevitable groundswell of muttering from Dumpy and Co. ‘Shut up,’ he advised. ‘They’re dwarves, and they’re after our witch. That’s why we’re about to play charades.’

Grimm #1 cradled his head between his hands. ‘Bad party,’ he said. ‘It’s a tragedy I can’t remember it. Never could see the point in having a party so good you’ve got to rely on your friends to tell you next day just how good it was.’

‘Are you two ready?’ Fang growled.

‘No. You go first. I’m still trying to remember who I am and where I might have left my head.’

Fang thought for a moment; then he was suddenly inspired. ‘Ready or not,’ he said, ‘here we go.’

He dropped on to all fours, growled and stalked up and down the room, wagging an imaginary tail. From time to time he paused, sniffed and pawed at the ground. Finally he sat up on his haunches and howled a blood-chilling serenade to a virtual moon.

There was a long silence.

‘Is that it?’ asked Grimm #1.

‘Yes.’

‘Oh.’

Dumpy and Rumpelstiltskin conferred in loud whispers. ‘We think it’s 101 Dalmatians,’ he said.

Fang looked offended. ‘Wrong.’

The Grimms similarly compared notes. ‘What about “How Much Is That Doggie In The Window?”’

‘Wrong again.’

“‘Daddy Wouldn’t Buy Me A Bow-Wow”?’

‘You’re starting to annoy me. And no.’

Dumpy leaned over and muttered something in his colleague’s ear. ‘We think it may be “A Four-Legged Friend”.’

‘You do, do you? Well, you’re wrong.’

‘Oh.’ Both teams conferred again. ‘You sure it wasn’t 101 Dalmatians?’ Rumpelstiltskin queried. ‘Because if it wasn’t, it should have been.’

‘You don’t know, do you? Come on, admit it.’

‘Give us a bit more time,’ Grimm #2 replied. ‘I know, what about “Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer”?’

‘You’re only making things harder for yourself,’ Fang said coldly. ‘Pack it in, I’ll take my witch and get out of here. Come on, you know it makes sense.’

‘One more guess,’ Rumpelstiltskin said. ‘I reckon it must be Cat On A Hot Tin Roof.’

‘Well, it wasn’t. It was “Leader Of The Pack”. As you’d have guessed,’ Fang added savagely, ‘if you knew anything about wolves.’

Dumpy stood up. ‘Now you just hold your hosses there, stranger,’ he said, “cos I ain’t happy with that. Reckon as how you’re cheatin’. ‘Cos that weren’t nothin’ like any wolf I ever seen.’