‘Eeeek,’ growled the witch; and then, ‘Woof!’ as the shock and associated adrenaline rush kicked in and triggered the transformation protocols in her DNA — (which, given that in this dimension all living creatures are constructs of the stories they inhabit, stands for Does Not Apply…) — and turned her into a wolf.

‘Stone me,’ breathed Mr Hiroshige. ‘Now if that isn’t a case in point, I don’t know what is. Pretty nifty meditation there, somebody.’

‘Wasn’t me,’ muttered Mr Nikko. ‘Wish it had been, but I didn’t even see her till you chucked the star.’

‘Wasn’t me either,’ said Mr Miroku. ‘Anybody?’

One by one the other samurai disclaimed responsibility, until only young Mr Akira was left. ‘So it must have been you,’ said Mr Hiroshige, with a slight tone of awe in his voice. ‘Well, well, well. You must be a natural.’

Mr Akira looked stunned, shocked, guilty and pleased, all at once. ‘Well it’s true,’ he said, ‘I did think to myself as she was running by, dear God, what an evil-looking bitch. And bitches are dogs, and dogs are sort of wolves. In a sense.’

‘Did it without even knowing he was doing it,’ said Mr Nikko respectfully. ‘That’s quite remarkable. And also,’ he added, ‘potentially awkward. Just as well the kid’s got a nice sunny disposition.’

The other samurai suddenly noticed that young Mr Akira had been carrying all the luggage, and that didn’t strike them as a particularly fair division of labour. Mr Miroku realised that young Mr Akira hadn’t had anything to eat and politely offered him the ruins of a raw fish sandwich, while Mr Wakisashi wondered aloud whether this highly developed innate ability of his might be harnessed into, for example, predicting the results of greyhound races.

‘Talking of greyhounds,’ said Mr Akira, ‘what about the witch? Or the wolf, or whatever. Are we just going to leave her there?’ He hesitated. He’d thought of a joke; and although his last effort hadn’t been greeted with the acclaim he’d hoped for, there was a chance that his sudden new access of popularity might change all that. He decided to risk it. ‘After all,’ he said, ‘I’ve heard of keeping your ear to the ground, but this is ridiculous.’

The samurai exchanged furtive glances. Mr Nikko mimed helpless laughter, and once the others had worked out that he wasn’t having a stroke, they took the hint. Mr Akira blushed. Meanwhile, the witch had started making whimpering noises.

‘Perhaps we ought to let her go,’ Mr Akira suggested.

‘Possibly,’ said Mr Hiroshige, thoughtfully. ‘I mean, that’s an excellent suggestion and one to which we should give serious attention.’

‘Absolutely,’ added Mr Miroku. ‘But if I could just pick you up on a small detail of interpretation, I think that what our colleague here was really saying was, we should let her go after we’ve found out if she can be useful to us.’ He turned to face Mr Akira and smiled ingratiatingly. ‘That was what you were getting at, wasn’t it?’

‘Was it?’ Mr Akira thought about it for a moment. ‘Yes, I suppose it was,’ he said.

‘I thought so,’ Mr Miroku replied. ‘Just thought I’d check, though, just in case I’d missed the point.’

‘All right,’ said Mr Akira. ‘So what do we want to do with her?’

The other samurai looked at each other. ‘Archery practice?’ suggested Mr Wakisashi hopefully.

‘We could ask her where the wicked queen is,’ Mr Nikko said. ‘After all, it’s about the right place in the narrative for somebody to tell us something. What do you think?’ he asked Mr Akira. ‘I really would value your input at this stage.’

Mr Akira shrugged. ‘Sounds good to me,’ he said. ‘Who’s going to ask her, then?’

‘I think you should,’ said Mr Nikko.

‘You’d do it awfully well,’ agreed Mr Hiroshige.

‘You really think so?’ Mr Akira enquired. ‘Gosh.’

‘Oh definitely,’ Mr Wakisashi said, with a smile so warm you could have toasted muffins over it. ‘No question about that. You’ve got the knack, if you don’t mind me saying so.’

‘Innate gift,’ confirmed Mr Suzuki, his head bobbing up and down like something in the window of an elderly Cortina. ‘Born with it. Something you’ve either got or you haven’t, and he has.’

‘All right,’ Mr Akira said, ‘I’ll give it a shot if you like. Hey, you.’

‘Wonderfully authoritative tone,’ Mr Nikko muttered under his breath.

‘Authoritative without being unfeeling,’ Mr Hiroshige amended. ‘I mean, it’s not as if he’s some kind of neo-fascist security chief. Here’s someone who really knows how to communicate, don’t you think?’

The witch tried to move her head, then winced. ‘You talking to me?’ she gasped.

‘Yes.’

(‘Good answer. Good answer.’

‘Always said he’s got a marvellous way with words.’)

‘Oh,’ said the witch. ‘All right then. If you want the wicked queen, you’ll find her up at the—’

She got no further; because at that precise moment (and it couldn’t have been more precise if they’d had all the scientists in NASA doing the calibrations) a tall, fair-haired, extremely handsome young man jumped out of the bushes just behind her with a mop-handle in one hand and a dustbin lid in the other and yelled, ‘Gerroutavit, yer ugly bastards!’

Immediately, six of the seven samurai drew their swords. The handsome prince took one step backwards, with the air of a man reassessing the situation, and raised the dustbin lid.

‘Hands off,’ he said. ‘She’s my witch. Go find your own.’

‘Excuse me,’ said Mr Hiroshige, his sword-tip held unwavering in a perfect exhibition of the classical guard. ‘Why are you waving a mop and a dustbin lid?’

It was at times like this, Fang reflected wretchedly, that being a handsome prince really irritated him. It was bad enough being outnumbered seven to one by heavily armed professional warriors when all he had to defend himself with was the mop he’d grabbed from the witch’s cupboard under the stairs and the lid off her dustbin. The bemused and blank expressions on his assailants’ faces, and the embarrassment they caused him, served to twist the knife in the wound by some forty-five degrees.

‘Aha,’ he replied. ‘Stick around long enough, my friend, and you might just find out.’

‘I know,’ suggested young Mr Akira, who had tried to draw his sword too, but had succeeded only in cutting through his own sash. ‘It’s another of those philosophy things, isn’t it? It’s to show that, in the hands of the true master of the Way, a mop-handle is every bit as effective as a twenty-six-inch razor-sharp katana and a pouch full of poison-smeared throwing stars.’ He rubbed his chin. ‘The dustbin lid’s a bit too deep for me, but I’m sure there’s a perfectly good…

‘Balls,’ Mr Nikko interrupted. ‘He’s just an idiot, that’s all. Come on, you guys, let’s slice the sucker!’

Before Fang could say a word, Mr Nikko chopped off the first six inches of the mop-handle and was swinging the sword back over his shoulder for a full-welly head-splitting slash when he caught sight of something that made him check his swing and gradually lower the sword.

‘That’s right,’ Dumpy said approvingly, as he ducked under the branches of a small gorse bush and strode into the clearing. ‘Nice and easy, keep the sword where I can see it. Same goes for the rest of you,’ he added sternly.

‘Dwarves!’ breathed Mr Hiroshige under his breath. ‘We’ve been ambushed by dwarves.’

The rest of the rescue party was out in the open now; besides Fang and Dumpy there were Rumpelstiltskin and Tom Thumb, the Brothers Grimm and the elf. Making a total of— ‘Seven,’ muttered Mr Wakisashi, who’d been counting.

‘Well, I guess we walked straight into that. I suppose a straightforward surrender would be out of the question?’

‘That’s right,’ added Mr Akira, who’d at last managed to get his sword free of the scabbard and was twirling it with enthusiasm, though not much else. ‘Throw down your weapons immediately and we might just—’