David was so happy he could have skipped.
While they walked, David learned a little more about the dwarfs. At least, he thought that he might be learning more about them, but he didn’t quite catch everything he was being told. There was a lot of stuff about “workers’ ownership of the methods of production” and “the principles of the Second Congress of the Third Committee” but not the Third Congress of the Second Committee, which had apparently ended in a fight over who was going to wash the cups afterward.
David had some idea of who “she” might be as well, but it seemed polite to check, just in case.
“Does a lady live with you?” he asked Brother Number One.
The buzz of conversation from the other dwarfs instantly ceased.
“Yes, unfortunately,” said Brother Number One.
“All seven of you?” David continued. He wasn’t sure why, but there was something slightly odd about a woman who lived with seven little men.
“Separate beds,” said the dwarf. “No funny business.”
“Gosh, no,” said David. He tried to wonder what funny business the dwarf could be referring to, then decided that it might be better not to think about it. “Er, her name wouldn’t be Snow White, would it?”
Comrade Brother Number One stopped suddenly, causing a minor pileup of comrades behind him.
“She’s not a friend of yours, is she?” he asked suspiciously.
“Oh no, not at all,” said David. “I’ve never met the lady. I might have heard about her, that’s all.”
“Huh,” said the dwarf, apparently satisfied, and started walking again. “Everybody’s heard of her: ‘Ooooh, Snow White who lives with the dwarfs, eats them out of house and home. They couldn’t even kill her right.’ Oh yes, everybody knows about Snow White.”
“Er, kill her?” asked David.
“Poisoned apple,” said the dwarf. “Didn’t go too well. We underestimated the dose.”
“I thought it was her wicked stepmother who poisoned her,” said David.
“You don’t read the papers,” said the dwarf. “Turned out the wicked stepmother had an alibi.”
“We should really have checked first,” said Brother Number Five. “Seems she was off poisoning someone else at the time. Chance in a million, really. It was just bad luck.”
Now it was David’s turn to pause. “So you mean you tried to poison Snow White?”
“We just wanted her to nod off for a while,” said Brother Number Two.
“A very long while,” said Number Three.
“But why?” said David.
“You’ll see,” said Brother Number One. “Anyway, we feed her an apple: chomp-chomp, snooze-snooze, weep-weep, ‘poor Snow White, we-will-miss-her-so-
but-life-goes-on.’ We lay her out on a slab, surround her with flowers and little weeping bunny rabbits, you know, all the trimmings, then along comes a bloody prince and kisses her. We don’t even have a prince around here. He just appeared out of nowhere on a bleeding white horse. Next thing you know he’s climbed off and he’s onto Snow White like a whippet down a rabbit hole. Don’t know what he thought he was doing, gadding about randomly kissing strange women who happened to be sleeping at the time.”
“Pervert,” said Brother Number Three. “Ought to be locked up.”
“Anyway, so he bounces in on his white horse like a big perfumed tea cozy, getting involved in affairs that are none of his business, and next thing you know she wakes up and—ooooh!—was she in a bad mood. The prince didn’t half get an earful, and that was after she clocked him one first for ‘taking liberties.’ Five minutes of listening to that and, instead of marrying her, the prince gets back on his horse and rides off into the sunset. Never saw him again. We blamed the local wicked stepmother for the whole apple business, but, well, if there’s a lesson to be learned from all this, it’s to make sure that the person you’re going to wrongfully blame for doing something bad is actually available for selection, as it were. There was a trial, we got suspended sentences on the grounds of provocation combined with lack of sufficient evidence, and we were told that if anything ever happened to Snow White again, if she even chipped a nail, we’d be for it.”
Comrade Brother Number One did an impression of choking on a noose, just in case David didn’t understand what “it” meant.
“Oh,” said David. “But that’s not the story I heard.”
“Story!” The dwarf snorted. “You’ll be talking about ‘happily ever after’ next. Do we look happy? There’s no happily ever after for us. Miserably ever after, more like.”
“We should have left her for the bears,” said Brother Number Five, glumly. “They know how to do a good killing, do the bears.”
“Goldilocks,” said Brother Number One, nodding approvingly. “Classic that, just classic.”
“Oh, she was awful,” said Brother Number Five. “You couldn’t blame them, really.”
“Hang on,” said David. “Goldilocks ran away from the bears’ house and never went back there again.”
He stopped talking. The dwarfs were now looking at him as if he might have been a little slow.
“Er, didn’t she?” he added.
“She got a taste for their porridge,” said Brother Number One, tapping the side of his nose gently as though he were confiding a great secret to David. “Couldn’t get enough of it. Eventually, the bears just got tired of her, and, well, that was that. ‘She ran away into the woods and never went back to the bears’ house again.’ A likely story!”
“You mean…they killed her?” asked David.
“They ate her,” said Brother Number One. “With porridge. That’s what ‘ran away and was never seen again’ means in these parts. It means ‘eaten.’ ”
“Um, and what about ‘happily ever after’?” asked David, a little uncertainly. “What does that mean?”
“Eaten quickly,” said Brother Number One.
And with that they reached the dwarfs’ house.
XIV
Of Snow White, Who Is Very
Unpleasant Indeed
“YOU’RE LATE!”
David’s eardrums rang like bells as Comrade Brother Number One opened the front door of the cottage and cried, very nervously, “Coo-ee, we’re home!” in that singsong voice that David’s father had sometimes used on David’s mother when he got back late from the pub and knew he was in trouble.
“Don’t ‘we’re home’ me” came the reply. “Where have you been? I’m starvin’. Me stomach’s like an empty barrel.”
David had never heard a voice quite like it. It was a woman’s voice, but it managed to be both deep and high at the same time, like those huge trenches that were supposed to lie at the bottom of the ocean, only not quite so wet.
“Ooooooh, I can ’ear it rumbling,” said the voice. “’Ere, you, listen to it.”
A big white hand reached out and grabbed Brother Number One by the scruff of the neck, lifting him off his feet and yanking him inside.
“Oh, yeph,” said Brother Number One, after a moment or two. His voice sounded slightly muffled. “I can hear iff now.”
David allowed the other dwarfs to enter the cottage ahead of him. They walked like prisoners who had just been told that the executioner had a little extra time on his hands and could fit in a few more beheadings before he went home for his tea. David cast a lingering glance back at the dark forest and wondered if he shouldn’t just take his chances outside.
“Close that door!” said the voice. “I’m freezin’. Me teeth are chatterin’.”
David, feeling that he had no other choice, stepped into the cottage and closed the door firmly behind him.
Standing before him was the biggest, fattest lady that David had ever seen. Her face was caked with white makeup. Her hair was black, held back by a brightly colored cotton band, and her lips were painted purple. She wore a pink dress large enough to house a small circus. Brother Number One was pressed hard against its folds, the better to hear the strang
e noises that the great stomach beneath was currently making. His little feet almost, but not quite, touched the ground. The dress was decorated with so many ribbons and buttons and bows that David was quite at a loss as to how the lady could remember which ones actually released her from the dress and which were merely for show. Her feet were squashed into a pair of silk slippers that were at least three sizes too small, and the rings on her fingers were almost lost in her flesh.
“Who are you, then?” she said.
“He’ph comfany,” said Brother Number One.
“Company?” said the lady, dropping Brother Number One like an unwanted toy. “Well, why didn’t you say you were bringin’ company?” She patted her hair and smiled, exposing lipstick-smeared teeth. “I’d have dressed up. I’d have put me face on.”
David heard Brother Number Three whisper to Brother Number Eight. The words “anything” and ‘’improvement” were barely audible. Unfortunately, they were still too loud for the lady’s liking, and Brother Number Three received a smack across the head for his trouble.
“Careful,” she said. “Cheeky sod.”
She then extended a large pale hand toward David and gave a little curtsy.
“Snow White,” she said. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, I’m sure.”
David shook hands and watched with alarm as his fingers were swallowed up in Snow White’s marshmallow palm.
“I’m David,” he said.
“That’s a nice name,” said Snow White. She giggled and buried her chin in her chest. The action created so many ripples of fat that her head looked as if it was melting. “Are you a prince?”
“No,” said David. “Sorry.”
Snow White looked disappointed. She released David’s hand and tried to play with one of her rings, but the ring was so tight that it wouldn’t budge.
“A nobleman, maybe?”
“No.”
“Son of a nobleman, with a great inheritance waiting for you on your eighteenth birthday?”
David pretended to think about the question.
“Er, no again,” he said.
“Well, what are you then? Don’t tell me you’re another one of their booorrrring friends come here to talk about workers and oppression. I warned them, I did: no more talk about revolutions, not until I’ve had me tea.”
“But we are oppressed,” protested Brother Number One.
“Of course you’re oppressed!” said Snow White. “You’re only three feet tall. Now go and get me tea started, before I lose me good humor. And take your boots off. I don’t want you lot puttin’ muck on me nice clean floor. You only cleaned it yesterday.”
The dwarfs removed their boots and left them at the door along with their tools, then lined up to wash their hands in the little sink before preparing the evening meal. They sliced bread and cut vegetables while two rabbits roasted over the open fire. The smell made David’s mouth water.
“I suppose you’ll be wantin food an’ all,” said Snow White to David.
“I am rather hungry,” David admitted.
“Well, you can share their rabbit. You ain’t ’avin’ any of mine.”
Snow White plopped herself down in a big chair by the fire. She puffed her cheeks and sighed loudly.
“I ’ate it ’ere,” she said. “It’s so booorrrinnng.”
“Why don’t you just leave?” asked David.
“Leave?” said Snow White. “And where would I leave to?”
“Don’t you have a home?” said David.
“Me dad and stepmum moved away. They say their place is too small for me. Anyway, they’re just booorrinnnng, and I’d rather be bored here than bored with ’em.”
“Oh,” said David. He wondered if he should bring up the subject of the court case and the dwarfs’ attempt to poison Snow White. He was very interested in it, but he wasn’t sure that it would be polite to ask. After all, he didn’t want to get the dwarfs into any more trouble than they were already in.
In the end, Snow White made the decision for him. She leaned forward and whispered, in a voice like two rocks rubbing together: “Anyway, they ’ave to look after me. Judge told them they ’ad to, on account of how they tried to poison me.”
David didn’t think he’d want to live with someone who had already tried to poison him once, but he supposed that Snow White wasn’t worried about the dwarfs trying again. If they did, they’d be killed, although the look on Brother Number One’s face made David suspect that death might almost be welcomed after living with Snow White for a while.
“But don’t you want to meet a handsome prince?” he asked.
“I’ve met a handsome prince,” said Snow White. She stared dreamily out of the window. “He woke me with a kiss, but then he ’ad to leave. He told me he’d be back, though, once he’d gone off and killed some dragon or other.”
“Should have stayed here and taken care of the one we have first,” muttered Brother Number Three. Snow White threw a log at him.
“See what I have to put up with?” she said to David. “I’m left alone all day while they work down’t mine, and then I have to listen to them complain as soon as they get home. I don’t even know why they bother with that all that minin’. They never find anything!”
David saw the dwarfs exchange some looks when they heard what Snow White was saying. He even thought he heard Brother Number Three give a little laugh, until Brother Number Four kicked him in the shin and told him to be quiet.
“So I’m going to stay ’ere with this lot until me prince returns,” said Snow White. “Or until another prince comes along and decides to marry me, whichever happens first.”
She bit a hangnail from her little finger and spit it into the fire.
“Now,” she said, bringing the subject to a close, “WHERE’S. ME. TEA?”
Every cup, pot, pan, and plate in the cottage rattled. Dust fell from the ceiling. David saw a family of mice evacuate their mouse hole and leave through a crack in the wall, never to return.
“I always get a bit shouty when I’m ’ungry, me,” said Snow White. “Right. Somebody ’and me that rabbit…”
They ate in silence, apart from the slurping, scraping, chewing, and belching coming from Snow White’s end of the table. She really did eat an awful lot. She stripped her own rabbit to the bones and then began picking meat from Brother Number Six’s plate without even a by-your-leave. She devoured an entire loaf of bread, and half a block of very smelly cheese. She drank tankard after tankard of the ale the dwarfs brewed in their shed, and polished it all off with two chunks of fruitcake baked by Brother Number One, although she complained when a raisin chipped one of her teeth.
“I told you it was a bit dry,” whispered Brother Number Two to Brother Number One. Brother Number One just scowled.
Once there was nothing left to eat, Snow White staggered from the table and flopped down in her chair by the fire, where she instantly fell asleep. David helped the dwarfs to clear the table and wash the dishes, then joined them in a corner where they all began smoking pipes. The tobacco reeked as if someone was burning old, damp socks. Brother Number One offered to share his pipe with David, but David very politely declined the offer.
“What do you mine?” he asked.
There was some coughing from a number of the dwarfs, and David noticed that none of them wanted to catch his eye. Only Brother Number One seemed willing to try to answer the question.
“Coal, sort of,” he said.
“Sort of?”
“Well, it’s a kind of coal. It’s stuff that used to be, sort of, in a way, coal.”
“It’s coalish,” said Brother Number Three helpfully.
David considered this. “Er, do you mean diamonds?”
Seven small figures instantly leaped on him. Brother Number One covered David’s mouth with a little hand and said, “Don’t say that word in here. Ever.”
David nodded. Once the dwarfs were sure that he understood the gravity of the situation, they climbed off him
again.
“So you haven’t told Snow White about the, er, coalish stuff,” he said.
“No,” said Brother Number One. “Never, um, quite got round to it.”
“Don’t you trust her?”
“Would you?” asked Brother Number Three. “Last winter, when food was hard to come by, Brother Number Four woke up to find her nibbling on his foot.”
Brother Number Four nodded solemnly to let David know that this was nothing less than the truth.
“Still have the marks,” he said.
“If she found out the mine was working, she’d take us for every gem we were worth,” continued Brother Number Three. “Then we’d be even more oppressed than we are already. And poorer.”
David looked around the cottage. It wasn’t very much to write home about. There were two rooms: the one in which they now sat, and a bedroom that Snow White had taken for her own. The dwarfs slept together in one bed in a corner beside the fire, three at one end and four at the other.
“If she wasn’t around, we could do the place up a bit,” said Brother Number One. “But if we start spending money on it then she’ll get suspicious, so we have to keep it the way it is. We can’t even buy another bed.”
“But aren’t there people nearby who know about the mine? Doesn’t anybody suspect?”
“Oh, we’ve always let people know that we make a little from mining,” said the dwarf. “Just enough to keep us going. It’s hard work, mining, and nobody wants to do it unless they’re sure of getting wealthy from it. As long as we keep our heads down and don’t go wild spending money on fancy clothes or gold chains—”
“Or beds,” said Brother Number Eight.
“Or beds,” agreed Brother Number One, “then everything will be fine. It’s just that none of us is getting any younger, and now it would be nice to take things a bit easier and perhaps treat ourselves to some luxuries.”
The dwarfs looked at Snow White snoring in her chair, and all of them sighed as one.