The Book of Lost Things [50]
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