‘We’re in luck,’ whispered a mouse. ‘Silly bitch has left the power on.’

All three mice twitched their noses. ‘Are you ready for this?’ one of them hissed. ‘We could get ourselves in a lot of trouble.’

The other two treated the coward to a look of distilled, matured-in-oak-vats scorn. ‘Pull yourself together, will you?’ squeaked the mouse who’d spoken first. ‘After everything we’ve been through to get here, this is hardly the time to get cold feet.’

‘Paws,’ interrupted the third mouse. ‘Come on, guys, stay in character. Just out of interest,’ it added, ‘why mice for pity’s sake? I hate mice.’

‘Because it was the only way to get in. Look, either we’re going to do this or we aren’t. Let’s have a decision on that right now, before we go any further.’

‘Fair enough,’ muttered the apprehensive mouse. ‘I’m not saying we shouldn’t, I’m just saying we should think about it.’

‘I’ve thought about it. Come on, Sis, where’s your sense of fun?’

‘In this costume, there isn’t room. And before you ask whether I’m a man or a mouse, I’m neither, remember?’

The other two pointedly ignored that last remark. ‘Come on,’ said the first mouse, ‘let’s get it over with. Show of hands?’

‘Paws.’

‘Show of hands. All in favour? Right, Sis, that’s two to one. We do it.’

‘I still don’t see why it had to be mice, though,’ the third voice whispered in the gloomy silence. ‘Yes, I know we had to hotwire a nursery rhyme or a fairytale or something like that in order to feed ourselves into the system. But why couldn’t we be something a bit less — well, small. And furry. And, come to think of it, completely and utterly defenceless.’

The first mouse sighed impatiently. ‘Not just any nursery rhyme,’ it explained. ‘Had to be an appropriate one, something with sneaking furtively about and getting into forbidden places. So, fairly obvious choice, three blind mice—’

‘Three blind mice? Now just a damn minute…’

‘It’s all right, I fiddled the code a bit, so now we’re three colour-blind mice. A small price to pay, I thought…’

For a brief moment the mice were perfectly still, as if composing themselves. Then the first mouse reared up on his hind legs, waggled his forepaws like a small furry boxer and squeaked, ‘Mirror.’

They waited breathlessly until the cotton-wool effect slowly began to extend inwards from the corners of the glass. The head appeared.

‘Too easy,’ muttered the mouse called Sis. ‘I think we should…’

The head opened its eyes and stared straight ahead; then it frowned, looked from side to side; then, its frown deepening, downwards.

‘Um, hello.’ The first mouse twitched his nose twice, unhappy with the way the face was looking at him. He could feel tiny spores of panic beginning to germinate in the back of his mind, but for some reason he found it impossible to say anything else. The head’s eyes seemed to be dismantling him, taking the back off his head and probing around in the circuitry.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ Sis whispered urgently. ‘That thing’s examining us and you’re just sitting there doing paperweight impressions. Say something to it quick, before it eats our brains.’

‘I can’t,’ the first mouse hissed back. ‘I think it knows who we really are. Sis, I’m frightened.’

‘I can see that,’ Sis snarled. ‘Get out of the way and let me handle this.’ She pushed past him and sat up. ‘Mirror,’ she said.

The head looked at her, and she imagined that she could feel icicles forming on her whiskers. ‘Mirror,’ she repeated. The head studied her for a moment, during which she realised just how long a moment can be, namely three times as long as a life sentence on Dartmoor and not quite so nice.

‘Running DOS.’

The head vanished and was replaced by the spider; only it wasn't the friendly, cuddly little spider the queen had summoned. Instead it was big and black and hairy, one of those particularly unpleasant South American jobs that eat small mammals and move faster than a photon that’s late for an appointment.

‘It’s different,’ muttered the first mouse. ‘It wasn’t like that when she did it.’

‘It’s not sure it likes us yet,’ Sis replied, trying to sound matter of fact about it all. ‘Once it’s decided we’re friends it’ll be all right, you’ll see.’

The other two mice didn’t seem so sure; at least, they shuffled round behind her, forming a short, fluffy queue. She ignored them and carried on looking straight at the mirror. Inside, of course, she was absolutely petrified, which shows that she still had the sense she was born with.

‘Look,’ breathed the third mouse behind her shoulder. ‘He’s back.’

Sure enough, the head was there again. He didn’t look appreciably less hostile, but he nodded. Sis took a deep breath and curled her tail tight around her back legs.

‘Mirror, mirror, on the wall,’ she managed to say; then she dried. Because it was all a bit of fun, because they’d never expected to get this far anyway, they’d never got around to working out what it was they were actually going to do, once they’d hacked their way into the wicked queen’s magic mirror and all her incalculable powers were theirs to command. This is embarrassing, Sis muttered to herself. She knew she had to say something, or otherwise the mirror would get suspicious again. She didn’t know what it was capable of doing to them if it finally came to the conclusion that they had no right to be there, but she was prepared to bet that it went rather further than the threat of legal action. On the other hand, breaking into the palace and hijacking Mirrornet just to play a couple of games of Lemmings seemed somehow rather fatuous. Think of some magic, quick, she commanded what was left of her brain.

She thought of something. It was nothing special, but it was all she could think of, ‘Mirror,’ she said, in as commanding a voice as she could muster, ‘show me the man I am to marry.’

The head looked at her as if she had chocolate all round her mouth. ‘Bad command or file name,’ it sneered. ‘Please retry.’

‘You’re a mouse, idiot,’ the first mouse whispered in her ear. ‘You can’t marry a man if you’re a mouse. Think about it.’

‘Oh right. Mirror, mirror, on the wall, show me the mouse I am to marry.’

The head’s brow creased. ‘Bad command,’ he said doubtfully, as if he wasn’t quite sure of himself. ‘Error. Incorrect format. Ignore or Cancel?’

‘Cancel,’ Sis replied firmly. Somehow she felt better now that she’d seen the head looking worried. She decided that the only way to deal with this was not to let the wretched thing see that she was afraid of it; no, there was more to it than that. The answer was not to be afraid of it at all. It was, after all, only a Thing, and she was a — Mouse. Well, a mouse strictly pro tem. For the first and last time a mouse. Even if she was a mouse right now, that was still several dozen rungs further up the evolutionary ladder than a sheet of silver-backed glass in a plaster frame. ‘Mirror,’ she said calmly, ‘listen to me. I want you to—’

‘Bad command or file—’

‘Shut up,’ she said; and when the head promptly stopped talking, somehow she wasn’t surprised. ‘I want you to turn us back into human beings. Now,’ she added sternly.

‘Sis,’ the first mouse hissed furiously, ‘what do you think you’re…?’ Before he could complete the sentence, he wasn’t a mouse any more. He was a teenage boy, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and sitting, rather to his surprise, on a mantelpiece several inches too narrow for his backside. He slid off and landed on the floor.

‘Ouch,’ said his younger brother. ‘Damien, you’re sitting on my leg.’

The three ex-mice untangled themselves, and as soon as he was sure which arms and legs were his, Damien scrambled up and scowled horribly at his sister.