The Book of Lost Things(38)

“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.