The Book Of Lost Things

“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.