When the bucket was completely empty, the three blind mice huddled in the bottom and tried to ride out the aftermath of the shock and panic. They shivered, and their teeth clicked together. That in itself would have constituted a valid command, if it wasn’t for the fact that, with its wet drive completely splashed, the bucket was useless. Inert. Just a bundle of beechwood palings wrapped round with a couple of iron hoops.
‘Squeak?’
‘You can say that again,’ muttered the mouse who shouldn’t have come, spitting out a bit more of the water she’d inadvertently inhaled. ‘I really thought we’d had it that time; I mean, my past life flashed in front of my ears, there was this absolutely heavenly smell of Limburger cheese, and I—’
She stopped, listening to the echo of her words. There was a moment of utter silence.
‘Squeak?’
‘Apparently,’ she replied, in a voice on the edge of hysteria. ‘At least, I think I am. But I can’t actually hear myself talking, and as far as I know I’m still thinking in Newsqueak, even if you’re right and what’s coming out is in Big. Do you think it’s something to do with the water in that crazy bucket? Only, you see, I did swallow some, and…’
‘Squeak?’
‘What’re you asking me for? Just because I can suddenly talk this godawful crackjaw language doesn’t mean I can— Oooo.’
‘Squeak?’
‘No, it’s just that I thought of something. In fact,’ the mouse added, horrified, ‘I just thought of a whole lot of things. A whole lot.’ She shuddered. ‘For example,’ she said, ‘did you know that the whole of this domain is run by a highly complex and intricate operating system that apparently was stored in the water in that bucket, which also happened to be the only surviving copy?’
‘Squeak!’
‘I don’t know how I know,’ the mouse wailed, ‘I just do. No, hang on, it’s coming through. I know because I drank some of the water, which means that I’m now a zipped database, whatever in Cheese that’s — Oh hell.’
‘Squ—’
‘I’m it,’ the mouse whimpered. ‘The operating system, I mean. It’s all inside me. Just a minute, though,’ she added, wrinkling her nose and twitching her whiskers. ‘Just a cotton-picking minute, let’s try this. All right.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Let there be cheese.’
There was a dull thud.
‘Squeak!’
‘Because I didn’t specify which kind,’ the mouse explained crossly. ‘Obviously Gouda is the default cheese. Next time I’ll make sure I specify cheddar. Satisfied?’
‘Squeak.’
‘So I should think,’ the mouse retorted with her mouth full. ‘Hey, this stuff isn’t half bad, for a default setting. Try some.’
The other two mice didn’t need a second invitation. While they were busy gorging themselves, however, the mouse who shouldn’t have come sat perfectly still and quiet. Then she opened her eyes.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘I can see.’
‘Squeak.’
‘Squeak squeak.’
She shrugged her sleekly furred shoulders. ‘I agree,’ she said. ‘Not what it’s cracked up to be at all, this vision stuff. Still, it’ll come in useful, I’m sure. Now shut up for a minute while I access the settings.’
More silence. If talking to yourself is the first sign of madness, then listening to yourself must be ten times worse; the first sign, quite probably, of a burgeoning desire to go into politics. ‘Coo,’ she muttered after a while. ‘You wouldn’t believe the things I can do if I want to. For example, if I want to stop being a mouse and change myself into, let’s say for the sake of argument a beautiful princess, all I have to do is—’
‘SQUEEEEEAK”
The warning came too late. By the time the mouse who shouldn’t have come realised the possible risks she’d already issued the command, or at least formulated the wish. Before she could think CANCEL she was already five feet two inches high and standing on her back paws, half in and half out of an old bucket. She looked down — And there are certain things about being a fairytale princess that just come with the territory, whether you like them or not. They aren’t pleasant, or helpful, let alone politically correct. They’re all to do with that dreadfully outmoded and patronising view of female psychology that was prevalent back along when fairytales first crystallised, an inherent part of which is that fatuous old scuttlebutt about women being terrified of mice —‘Eeeek!’
Even as she leapt out of the bucket and scrambled up on to the nearest available chair, a section of her brain was shouting, No, this is silly; dammit, I’m a mouse too. But the quiet, calm voice of reason was shouted down by the clamour of a million preconceptions, all of them insisting that mice were horrid dirty creatures that ran up your skirts and bit you where you really didn’t want to be bitten.
It was at that moment that Snow White woke up.
Possibly it was wave-echoes in the operating matrix, or a freak flash of telepathy, or the effects of the last-thing-at-night cheese sandwich whose pervasive smell had brought the three blind mice here in the first place. Whatever the cause, its effect was that Snow White awoke out of an entirely appropriate dream and demanded, ‘Who’s been standing in my bucket?’ Then she noticed the ex-mouse.
‘What the—?’ she began.
‘M-m-mouse,’ the ex-mouse gibbered, pointing at the bucket.
‘Eeeek!’
Fortunately there was another chair just beside the bed. With a single chamois-like leap, Snow White hopped on to it, gathered her nightdress tightly around her and whispered, ‘Are you sure?’
‘C-c-course I’m sure. I am one.’
‘Eeeek?’
‘Long story. Look, can you call someone? A big strong man, for instance?’
‘I—’ Snow White began; then she swore. ‘Useless bunch of pillocks,’ she went on, ‘I sent them out to do something for me and they aren’t back yet. Look, who are you?’
Then the significance of the empty bucket hit her. Thanks to her newly augmented mental powers, the ex-mouse-who-shouldn’t-have-come didn’t need to be told. She knew. ‘I’m most dreadfully sorry,’ she said. ‘It was an accident, honest.’
‘You stupid cow!’ Snow White screeched. ‘Have you any idea what you’ve done?’
The ex-mouse nodded. ‘Oh yes,’ she said. ‘But you see, it’s all right, because I drank some of the water, which makes me a sort of honorary mirror. I can make it all work, you see, and—’
‘You can what?’
‘I can make it work,’ the ex-mouse repeated. ‘That’s how come I can see. And why I’m a girl instead of a mouse. In fact,’ she added, with a strange edge to her voice, ‘I think I can do anything I like.’
‘Oh.’ A substantial degree of her former belligerence faded out of Snow White’s voice. ‘Then why don’t you get rid of the mice?’ she added, reasonably enough.
‘They’re my brothers.’
Snow White considered this. ‘So?’ she said.
The ex-mouse hadn’t thought of it in those terms before. It was a seductive argument for the only girl in a family of a hundred and six. A whole string of memory-related convincing arguments, some of them dating back to her very earliest recollections, added their weight to the proposition. ‘Well…’ she said hesitantly.
‘Not permanently, necessarily,’ Snow White continued. ‘You could always bring them back later.’
‘That’s true.’
‘Much later, if you decided you wanted to.’
‘Hmmm.’
‘And it’d teach them a lesson, wouldn’t it?’
‘It’d do them good to be taught a lesson,’ the ex-mouse agreed. ‘Sorry, we haven’t been introduced. My name’s Souris, but you can call me Sris for short.’
‘Snow White,’ Snow White replied. ‘Go on, then. I dare you.’
Souris grinned. ‘All right, then. Boo!’
At once, the two mice in the bottom of the bucket vanished. Where they went to, only a highly trained folklore engineer could say. Possibly they found themselves pulling thorns out of the paws of lions, or drawing a pumpkin coach, or hiding under the bed until Mr Aesop had stopped prowling around and gone off with Uncle Remus for a swift half. The practical effect was that, with the threat they posed safely removed, Snow White was able to jump off her chair, snatch up the three-foot long daïsho that Mr Nikko had left lying about in the potting shed and take a savage swipe at Souris, whose instincts as a persecuted domestic pest only just saved her from spectacular decapitation.