They found the carcass barely ten minutes along the path the old woman had been following and she hadn’t lied. It lay beneath a willow tree on cool ground. The meat was in good condition. More than that, with its heart cut out, it was clearly the deer the huntsman had killed to trick the queen. ‘We have to take it,’ Grouchy said. ‘It’s evidence that Snow White is still alive. We can’t have the Queen’s Guard finding it, and find it they will before long.’ They roped its legs with vines and Dreamy used his axe to hack down a long branch from a tree which they could strap it to. When the dead animal was secured, Grouchy took one end and Dreamy the other, leaving Stumpy to carry their tools as best he could, and by the time they were back at the crossroads and heading home Dreamy’s misgivings about the crone had passed. She’d been a blessing as it turned out. They would all eat well and the princess’s survival would stay secret. He smiled and even joined in as the other two began to hum a working tune.

Finally a thin, barely visible line of worn ground branched off from the main path and the dwarves turned on to it. Their cottage was only twenty feet or so away but was still completely invisible to the naked eye. Even if the crone had been of wicked intent she’d have walked right past it. He shook his head slightly and laughed at his own nervousness. No one ever found dwarf cottages, and theirs had become considerably better protected in the past twenty-four hours. The forest had a tendency to wrap itself around dwarf cottages. Bushes and trees were thicker and heavy roots broke the ground’s surface ready to trip any passer-by who came too close. Branches hung so low that anyone taller than a young child would have to duck to find their way through, and Snow White aside – because everyone, even the forest, could see the goodness in her – would then find themselves tangled in and stabbed at by errant twigs they hadn’t noticed were there. Brambles would creep out and dig into skin until finally any curiosity would be overwhelmed and the interloper would back away, no longer interested in the hints of life they’d spotted through the bushes. It wasn’t that the dwarves wanted to hide, it was just that they liked what little privacy they had, and nature respected that. Nature was a magic in itself. It took care of those who loved it.