§ § § -- September 26, 1999

Nobody said anything till the dwarves had finished their lunches; then, when they started shoving back chairs preparatory to leaving, Bashful released a loud moan of agony that stopped everyone in their tracks. "What's wrong with you?" demanded Grumpy.

"I feel terrible," Bashful groaned, clutching his gut and grimacing. "I don't know how it happened…just came on all of a sudden. You fellas go on. I don't think I can make it."

"What're we gonna tell the supervisor?" Sneezy wanted to know.

"Tell him he's sick, stoo-pid," Dopey said, rolling his eyes.

Sneezy started to glare at him, but was sidetracked by another of his endless namesakes and had to devote himself to his latest fit. Sleepy, speaking through a huge yawn, complained, "Hey, I'm going back, and I didn't get my nap, you know. How do you know he isn't faking it?"

"That's something Grumpy would do," Happy said, smirking. Grumpy thwacked a fist into his upper arm, but Happy's grin merely got bigger.

Bashful suddenly made a strange noise and sat up straight, his eyes popping and his cheeks puffing out as he clamped his mouth shut. "Maybe you better make tracks," Caroline suggested nervously. "I think he's about to lose his lunch."

"Gah," squawked five voices, and all the other dwarves except for Doc scrambled out the door and galloped down the path into the woods. Doc merely eyed Bashful suspiciously, watching as the latter seemed to regain control over his rebellious stomach.

"Go ahead, Doc," croaked Bashful. "You'll be late for afternoon shift."

Doc shook his head. "Like Sleepy said, how do we know you're not faking it? Maybe you need some medication for that belly."

"Are you kidding? In that bag of tricks? Cryin' out loud, Doc, you can't even find a remedy for Sneezy's sneezing," Caroline scoffed.

"You stay out of this," Doc ordered in irritation. "Get over it, Bash. That sick act's wearing thin. In spite of what our annoying guest here says, I do have some stuff in my bag here. Namely a couple of nice big syringes and some cod-liver oil. Or I could squirt some ipecac syrup down your throat. Wouldn't that be fun?"

Bashful lurched out of his chair and staggered over to Doc, grabbing him by the shirtfront. "Listen, you quack, when I say I'm sick, then dammit, I'm sick. Now you've got a choice here. Either you get your substantial behind out of here and tell the supervisor I've got nausea, or you're gonna be the one who needs whatever you really have in that black bag of yours, because I'm going to pick an essential bone and break it in about thirteen places. You got me?" he growled.

Doc and Bashful stared each other down for a long forty-five seconds, neither one budging; then Bashful went pale and clapped a hand over his mouth, his eyes bugging out again. Doc broke. "All right, all right, just don't barf all over me!" he yelled and fled out the door. Bashful grinned widely, watching him go, looking quite healthy all of a sudden.

"Oh my God," Caroline said, blowing out her breath. "You really were putting on an act, weren't you? For a couple minutes there, I thought I gave you the potato with the green spots instead of Grumpy."

Bashful laughed. "I'd have given him a green one myself if I'd thought of it—him and Doc both! So…you're in the middle of a Snow White fantasy, are you?"

Caroline gawked at him, stunned beyond words for a moment. When she found her voice again, all she could do was stutter. "H-h-h-how'd you…?"

Bashful chuckled and said, "Because I'm doing the same thing. You gave yourself away yesterday when you mentioned Mr. Roarke. My name's Andy Holloway, from the lovely little city of Katy, Texas." He offered a hand.

"Wow," Caroline blurted, shaking it, "this is amazing. I'm from Corpus Christi, and my name's Caroline Shaw. Sure is nice to meet you, Andy."

"Likewise," Andy said cheerfully.

"I can't believe your fantasy was to be one of the seven dwarves," Caroline said, eyeing him with curiosity. "What made you do it?"

"Not so much 'what' as 'who'," Andy explained, grinning a little sheepishly. "My niece Tessa is ten years old and has been dying to be the title character in 'Sleeping Beauty' for ages. I finally stepped in and gave her the fantasy as a birthday present, but of course I had to go along, since her parents couldn't get off work. Unfortunately, if you remember your fairy tales—which I didn't—there aren't any dwarves in 'Sleeping Beauty'. So Mr. Roarke suggested I take a role in this one. I figured, heck, at least I'd have company. I just didn't realize all the other guys were gonna be about three hundred years older than I was. You saw how Doc acted just now—treating me like a kid who was trying to get out of going to school by playing sick."

"True," Caroline said thoughtfully, "very true. So what do you do in real life?"

Andy laughed and said, "I'm a chemist, actually. Remember yesterday morning when Grumpy told you I have a brewery in the cellar? I do…but there's also a terrific chemistry lab there that I managed to set up over a couple days. Tessa's fantasy's taking a week because of the alleged hundred-year sleep and all that, so I had time to put it all together. I supposed Snow White would show up sooner or later, and I thought I could figure out what kind of poison the Grimm brothers had in mind when they wrote this story."

Caroline's eyes were enormous with impressed respect. "No kidding! So then, you want to figure it out now? I had no idea saving that apple as evidence would actually pay off." She plucked the apple off the counter and handed it to Andy.

"Sure. Come on down with me and we'll have a couple cold ones," he offered.

"Oh man, a frosty beer. You don't have to ask me twice," Caroline exclaimed and followed Andy down to the basement. Sure enough, there was a small but well-equipped chemistry setup there, plus a corner devoted to brewing beer. Andy popped the tops on two bottles, handed one to Caroline and took a long draft. Caroline thanked him and followed suit. "Ahhhhhh…that's fantastic," she said. "This is really great stuff!"

"One of my hobbies," Andy said, putting his bottle on a nearby table and examining the apple. "Holy cripes, look how red this thing is. That's gotta be food coloring or something. Never heard of any poison that would have an effect like that."

"Maybe it's something indigenous to Fantasy Island," Caroline suggested. "I've always heard there's a whole slew of weird plants and stuff here that can't be found anywhere else in the world."

"There are," Andy agreed absently, "including a few I've analyzed just to pass the time this week…but I can't see the queen having enough smarts to know what any of them would be. I think it's something conventional. Let me get a sample of this thing, and we'll give it a look." Caroline watched him as he worked, slicing the apple into eight even sections with a pocket knife and putting aside the ones that contained the marks from Caroline's bite. "Obviously those aren't poisonous, or we wouldn't be standing here having this conversation," he said with a quick grin at her. "By the way, you're damn lucky you bit into an unaffected part of this thing."

"It wasn't luck, it was forewarning," said Caroline, "thanks to Leslie."

"Aha," said Andy. "So that was it. Now the trick here is to find out exactly how much poison there is in this, and what kind it is—just in case there's a law on this island that prohibits that particular poison."

"You're really sure there's poison in that?" Caroline asked uneasily. "I mean, I know the queen's supposed to want Snow White dead, but…it's only a fantasy, right?"

Andy paused long enough to study her. "I'm assuming you got the standard lecture from Mr. Roarke about how everything in the fantasy is real while it lasts. Tessa and I both did, so it stands to reason you did too."

"Oh, yeah, I did," Caroline admitted in a small voice, feeling her face grow hot.

Andy grinned again and returned his attention to the apple; presently he inquired with a light casualness to his tone, "So what possessed you to step into Snow White's dainty little shoes, Caroline Shaw?"

Caroline wondered how red her face must be by now. "Nothing you'd be interested in hearing," she tried to demur.

"I'd be interested in hearing anything," Andy said. "Gorgeous as you are, my sweet, I can see you're no college kid. You have a little experience with life, don't you? So what possesses a mature woman to step into what ought to be a little girl's dream come true?"

She eyed him sidelong for some time before hedging, "Promise not to laugh?"

"I would if I thought I could keep it," Andy said, and she sighed. Figured. Well, at least the guy was honest. Giving up, she hitched herself onto the corner of a table and cleared her throat at some length.

"Well, I'd be grateful if you could exercise a little restraint at least," she said. "Fact is, I did this to find a man. This fairy tale comes complete with handsome prince, and I figured a romance was a sure thing, till I actually met the guy. Let me tell you, Andy, he is so stuck on himself, he could be the one Carly Simon's singing about in 'You're So Vain'." Andy burst out laughing. "Hey, you promised," Caroline protested.

"No I didn't," Andy chortled. "Anyway, that wasn't what I was laughing at. It was your description of the handsome prince. You can't be serious. You did all this just so you could find a man? I didn't think women were that desperate anymore."

"I'm thirty-eight, and I've never been married," Caroline said. "I'm just tired of coming home to an empty house after work every night."

"So get a cat," said Andy, primary attention on testing an apple section.

"I have five already," Caroline retorted, earning another laugh from him. "I'm well on my way to becoming the local crazy cat lady, thanks very much. Trouble with cats is, they don't engage you in conversation. I mean, they have a way of losing all interest in you once you've fed them, and even if they could talk, they'd just tell you to find someone who cares and go sleep in the windowsill or something. I'd like somebody human to talk to, you know?" She drank some of her beer. "I think this is the first intelligent conversation I've had with anyone in months. My friends are all married and all they do is complain about their husbands or their kids."

"Isn't that supposed to make you feel lucky you're still single and you don't have to deal with the old man channel-surfing on the couch or the kids fighting over who gets the red one and who gets the blue one?" Andy asked humorously. "Now, don't get me wrong, I have nothing against marriage myself. But man, it's all but impossible to find the right woman—and being a short person, that just makes it ten times harder for me. I guess you could say it's turned me into a cynic. I eventually got to where I figured, if they can't see past my height and appreciate my personality, then they can go roll in a pile of manure." Caroline laughed, and he half-grinned. "Almost done here. Give me another five minutes or so and we'll have the answer to the burning question."

"Wait till that mirror tells her she still isn't the best-looking female in the realm," said Caroline, her mind abruptly jumping tracks. "She'll probably come around looking for some other way to bump me off. I don't know what in heck that woman's got against me in the first place. I mean, I don't even know her. Come to think of it, she's almost as bad as the prince when it comes to vanity. I wonder how jealous she'd be if he turned out to be better-looking than she is?"

"Sounds like a match made in heaven to me," Andy commented, grinning. "Okay, here we go." Caroline focused on him; she had no idea what he'd been doing, but if he had the answer, that was good enough for her.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Hemlock," said Andy. "Concentrated, too…and enough of it in here to knock off the prince's purebred steed, never mind a mere human being. You're luckier than I thought, Caroline." His face was serious. "This stuff's for real, fantasy or not."

Caroline flinched. "Oh my God. I guess I should've taken Mr. Roarke's warning more seriously. I'm telling you, Andy, I really think that cannibal queen's out to get me. She's gonna keep on trying to murder me till this fantasy ends, and I don't even know when that's gonna be. And I can't keep on outwitting her by myself."

"No problemo, compadre," Andy said whimsically. "You've got me. And I have a funny feeling I'm all you have, because it really looked to me like Grumpy and Doc are in cahoots with the…" He hesitated as if something had just occurred to him. "Did you say 'cannibal queen' a minute ago?"

"Yeah, on account of her wanting to snack on my heart," Caroline clarified.

Andy's face cleared. "Aha, that's right. I forgot about that part. In that case, let's see if we can come up with a way to outsmart her."

"Could we possibly give her a taste of her own medicine?" Caroline asked.

Andy gave her a wary look and said dubiously, "You mean kill her? Something tells me Mr. Roarke wouldn't be too happy with that."

Caroline shook her head impatiently. "No, no, I'm not looking to stoop to her level. I just want to give her a good scare, that's all. Is there something we can do to put her out of commission for a couple hours or so, without doing any permanent damage?"

Andy considered it, "hmm"-ing to himself as he did. After a while he mused, "I might be able to whip up something. The problem here is how to apply the punishment to the subject, if you get my meaning."

"I'll work on that," Caroline said. "You worry about the toxins, since that's your field of expertise anyway. Oh, and hey, Andy…thanks. I really appreciate this."

Andy grinned at her. "What're friends for? Come on, let's see what we can do here."