The Garden Is a Trap
Christopher could hear in Anya’s voice that something was urgently wrong, but Jacques hadn’t listened. He was about to bite.
‘Dragon! Halt!’ She spoke like the princess she had once been, and the dragon responded like a soldier, snapping to attention.
‘It’s poisoned!’ she said.
Jacques dropped the apple and launched himself into the air, coming to rest on Christopher’s shoulder. ‘How do you know?’
‘It’s a trap,’ said Anya. ‘This whole garden: it’s a trap.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘The ones at the beginning – they’re just to lure you in. The snake is only part of the guard on the trees. It’s the apples themselves! Some of them are deadly. I recognise that one. It’s an arsenapple.’
‘What’s that?’ said Christopher.
‘You’ve heard of Snow White? That was the apple she bit into. If she’d swallowed even a shred of it she’d have died.’
Christopher stared around him. ‘So what now? There’re still hundreds left! How can we know which ones are deadly?’
‘If my father was here, he’d know! Even the snake knows! But I don’t!’ She put her head in her hands, her fingers tugging at her mass of hair, her face screwed tight. Then, very slowly: ‘Christopher?’
He recognised the look on her face. He had seen it before. ‘You’ve got a plan?’
‘Yes. But you won’t like it.’
‘Why?’
‘We’re going to have to free the snake.’
Ratwin stared at her. ‘That,’ she said, ‘is nots a things I am comfortables-delighteds by.’
But Anya was starting to glow. ‘Listen! We untie it, and then we run for our lives – yes, or fly, Jacques – in four separate directions across the orchard. The snake can’t go after all of us.
And its job is to protect the golden apples.
So – I think it has no choice but to go to the tree, and protect it by staying close. ’
‘And we’ll know which one it is!’ said Christopher. ‘But what happens when it’s at the tree? Because what we’ve got then is a venomous man-eating snake that we’ve really, really annoyed.’
‘Yes,’ said Ratwin. ‘Sureslies, we’ll thens be devoured.’
‘Not,’ said Anya, ‘if we offer it something else. The Bestiary says it longs for the apples but it’s not allowed to pick the fruit itself. So this is what we do.’ They leaned together as she spoke.
‘Are you sure about this, Anya?’
‘No. Not at all. Let’s do it.’