“Drive! Drive! Drive!”

Blackflower thumped the side of the car for good measure as he flung himself in through the passenger side, almost falling across the seat. Quite to his consternation and dismay, and quite contrary to his expectations, the vehicle did not speed away, but sat there sedately, the driver looking out the window as if he hadn't a care in the world.

An imperious voice answered him, its tone that of one addressing someone far below their rank. “How dare you speak to one thus?” the voice snapped, coming from the backseat of the car. “One will have your head if you're not careful, pixie! We go nowhere,” the voice went on in a tone that brooked no argument, “until one has verified the merchandise.”

Blackflower bit back a retort. He had directed his shout at the driver, of course, but unfortunately the Prince had decided that it was he who was being yelled at, and that was not good. One did not shout at the Crown Prince.

“Yes, of course, Your Highness,” he fawned, hating himself for having to verbally prostrate himself before this foppish dandy, but knowing that if he did not, he would be prostrating himself before someone else entirely, and that person was armed with a heavy axe. He could feel the rough wood of the block beneath his neck, and he began to sweat even more. “I meant no disrespect,” he assured the Prince. “But you see, I'm afraid I might have tripped the alarm back there.”

The steady whooping that issued from the bank, from which he had just exited so expeditiously, backed this assumption up. The Prince seemed unmoved. But then, the Prince always seemed unmoved.

“The merchandise.”

He was not in the habit of repeating himself. It irritated him, and that irritation showed in his voice. Blackflower dutifully dropped something shining into the Prince's outstretched hand, then turned towards the driver, who had not turned around. Making certain that there was no mistaking as to who was the object of his ire this time by banging the driver on the shoulder, he hissed
“For the love of – wake that old duffer up, will you? We have to go! Now!”

The Prince ignored them both, betraying no signs of being in a hurry whatever. As if he were back home in his castle and not sitting in a cramped '67 Dodge Charger with bad brakes and one broken window, he extracted an eyeglass and pushed it into his eye, examining the necklace intently. The driver turned around, reached behind him and gave the old man who occupied the seat next to His Highness a gentle shake. This did not prove sufficient to wake him, and he continued snoring, his hat down over his eyes, his gnarled old hands folded peacefully over his stomach, giving him the appearance of being at ease with the world. Of the four of them, only Blackflower seemed agitated, but seeing as how he was the one who would have to carry the can if they were caught, this was not that surprising.

The Prince spoke again, his voice sharp and shrill. Had you heard it, you might have laughed, and you might then have regretted that outburst on your way up the scaffold. “That really is a most frightful row, pixie!” he snapped, indicating with a jerk of his head – though keeping his eye firmly on the necklace – the continuing klaxon-like blare that howled into the street. “Really, one finds it most difficult to concentrate. This is very precise work, you know,” he assured anyone who would listen, looking up for one moment and arching an eyebrow, which had the unfortunate effect of dislodging his eyepiece. He picked it up with a sigh and replaced it, adding another sigh for effect. “One really must have peace and quiet. Can you do something about that noise?”

Blackflower's eyes widened – well, as much as the close-set, slanted eyes of a pixie can, anyway. He shouldn't have been surprised, he told himself: the Prince always gave the impression that the world was just there, often in his way, and not really to be taken any real notice of. One day, he told himself blackly, the reality of life will make itself painfully apparent to that stupid – But aloud he said “I'm afraid I can't stop it, Your Highness. Perhaps it might be best were we to, as it were, go?”

He voiced the suggestion in the same way one might venture to opine that, the sea being full of hungry sharks, it might not be a bad idea to get back in the boat. Had the Prince been in this unlikely position though, Blackflower knew, he would have expected the sharks to wait until he had finished bathing to his satisfaction and was quite ready to climb out of the water.

“Not until,” insisted the Prince, wrinkling his forehead in a way his courtiers would no doubt have insisted made him only look more regal, “one is sure that this is the genuine article”.

All the while, two sounds impressed themselves on the mind of Blackflower, neither of which did anything to improve his mood or calm his nerves. One was the gentle snoring of the old man, who lounged in the backseat beside the Prince, his head on the royal shoulder (something that irritated the Prince, but even he tended to agree with the old maxim that it is generally best to let sleeping wizards lie) not a care in the world, and the other was blaring of the bank's alarm. He cursed himself; he had been very careful, but accidents happen, especially when you're in a hurry and only six inches tall. He had reverted to normal size on exiting the bank - it would have been very embarrassing to have ended up being stood on by a passerby or one of his compatriots - but the damage was already done.

He decided to take matters into his own hands. “Oi! Grandad! Wakey fucking wakey!”

Startled out of his sleep, the old man jumped, (jostling the arm of the Prince, who only managed to contain his annoyance) blinked, cast about as if unsure as to where he was. Quickly collecting himself, he frowned at the one who had woken him.

“That's Grampor, to you,” he sniffed. He frowned again. “Shouldn't you be inside the bank?” he asked Blackflower, who swore again. The peal of bells was in his ears, and it wasn't anything he was suffering from. Any moment now those bells would be joined by sirens, and their escape route would be cut off. He wasn't in the least fond of wizards – no pixie was – but he knew they needed this one in order to get away. He forced his voice to remain calm, tried to remind himself that this guy was somewhere on the order of four hundred years old, and forgot things and got confused easily.

“We've done that bit,” he told the old man, again casting a look down the street. So far, no sign of the filth. “Now we need you to do yours.”

Grampor looked blank. Blackflower sighed. Why did he undertake these jobs? They never went smoothly. Maybe he was just a thrillseeker at heart. Though another possibility suggested itself: maybe he was just greedy. After all, the harder and more unlikely the job, the more it paid. Still, he reflected darkly, no recompense would be worth getting caught here, having to spend time in their jails, eating their food ...

He hastily turned his thoughts away from such unpleasant matters, and back to ones equally unpleasant but more immediate. The blue flashing lights of three squad cars became visible at the crest of the hill. “Grampor?” he hinted. “Now would be a good time.”

Grampor blinked, nodded, then seemed to catch sight of something. As the pixie's frustration and panic rose, while in the back the Prince stared at the necklace Blackflower had turned over to him, the wizard remarked “What's that doing here?” There was no mistaking the distaste in his voice, and the pixie knew why.

Blackflower clamped his hand over his eyes, trying to control his temper. Never, ever a good idea to anger a wizard, especially one as old and powerful as Grampor. He might seem like a foolish old man until you were suddenly catching flies and checking out lilypads, planning for your unexpected new life. That was, if you were lucky and he was in a good mood.

He allowed a sigh to hiss out from between his teeth, and replied slowly.

“Because they're cheap and stupid, and they keep their mouths shut.”

“Well of course they do,” agreed the wizard testily, “but not out of choice. Everyone knows teddy bears can't talk.”

“Which is all the more reason why they make great getaway drivers,” Blackflower went on, his gaze nervously flicking towards the police cars, which had almost reached them. Despite the danger, he found himself wondering why it was that the Reals loved Cuddlies so? It wasn't just teddy bears – though they were definitely the favourite – ever since Wild Wood, certain of the Toys had been greeted with, in some cases literally, open arms by the Reals.

Who could resist a stuffed cat or dog or rabbit, after all? The perfect pet: they never needed feeding, never needed a litter tray or their cages cleaned, and they could talk to you. Dolls had not fared so well. Pretty to look at, certainly, but when they can talk back and give you their (usually disapproving) remarks on what you consider fashion sense for them, well, most little girls didn't seem to like that. They also made a hell of a row if someone pulled off their arms and legs. So Dolls were destined not to find a home in the world of the Reals – except those few who managed to appeal to a certain section of the Real populace, and plied their trade on street corners, down back alleys and in seedy motels.

Golliwogs probably had it the worst. They took the most awful racial abuse, not from the white Reals, but the black ones, who seemed to take their existence as a slur on their ethnicity and history, and chased them out of every town and city they tried to settle in. Tin soldiers, too, found their outdated weapons and stiff gait had no place in the modern army, and after all, where else were tin soldiers supposed to find employment?

Bears of course everyone loved. There was just something almost primal in the way people reacted to the teddies, and Blackflower often wondered if these creatures had some sort of magic, perhaps something they weren't even aware of, something they were born with, that attracted Reals and put them at their ease. Nobody felt uneasy in the presence of teddy bears, and as they didn't speak, this probably added to their appeal. Bears were the only ones of their kind that could walk the streets of the Real world with impunity, even if they were too dumb to realise how lucky they were.

Overall though, the bears notwithstanding, Toys had it better than they did, the ones the Reals called, annoyingly and quite disparagingly, Fairies, even though most of them were nothing close. Technically, he was forced to admit, Blackflower came from the same genus, but pixies, elves, goblins and gnomes, to say nothing of all the other sub-species, all thought of themselves as separate to the actual fairies. As they all basically sprung from the same source, though, the phenomenon the Reals called Fairy Tales, they all got lumped together. In his experience, Reals liked to label things, and categorise them.

He realised the wizard was looking at him, impatiently waiting for an answer. He had to remind himself that at his age, Grampor easily forgot things, even if they had taken place only the previous day. He also reminded himself sharply that wizards did not like to wait, and when they didn't like things, they did something about it. You did not want to be there to find out what that might be.

“People just think they're cute and never suspect them. For a pot of honey a bear will do just about anything. And,” he dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, forcing his heart to beat slower, trying to ignore the rising hysteria that threatened to claim him - the cops were getting out of their cars, their hands going to their holsters as they approached the Dodge - “if we have to leave him behind us, he can hardly spill, now can he?” He placed his finger alongside his nose and winked.

Grampor winked back. The man was a notorious Toy-hater, and was known to have a special contempt for teddies. It had been hard enough to get him to agree to work with one, but it had been pointed out that one would be the least likely to arouse suspicion, and he had eventually acquiesced.

“Oh ho!” he chortled. “I get you now. A fine plan. So, where do we dump him?”

Again Blackflower covered his eyes, as if trying to force the black look that coursed across his face back. “We're not actually going to dump him, Grampor,” he explained slowly, as if talking to a child. “If it should happen, we can explain it away, but I'd rather not be up before a Toytown tribunal unless I have no choice, if it's all the same to you.”

A languid, bored voice issued from the back seat as the Prince drawled “This all appears to be in order. Can we leave now?” he asked. Well, demanded really. Prince Jarman never asked anything. Princes seldom do. It's possible they only know two ways of addressing people, at least, people beneath them (which is just about everyone): commanding and demanding.

It was the permission they had been waiting for. Prince Jarman might be just another nobody, here in the world of the Reals, but back in Storytown, he could, and would, take a very dim view of anyone who did not obey him, or who went against his wishes, which meant they had to wait in frustration until he gave the all-clear.

Which he had now done.

One of the cops was shouting something through a loudhailer. Blackflower regretted never having taken the time to learn the strange, guttural language the Reals spoke. Or, given the scowl on the cop's face, perhaps not. A sudden bang impacted the windscreen of the car, driving directly into the soft head of the teddy bear, who gave not the least indication that he had even noticed, just jerked very slightly with the impact. The bullet buried itself in the seat behind him. Blackflower swore again, turned to the wizard, urgency in his tone threatening to top out into blind panic.

“Thank you, Your Highness,” he forced his voice to remain calm. “We'll have you back directly.” His tone became sharper. “Any time you're ready, Grampor.”

“Well, get on with it then!” snapped His Highness, in his most commanding tone. “What's the delay?” As he spoke he gave no impression that he even noticed the cop firing again, the bullet zipping this time towards the passenger seat. Blackflower ducked, but the slug, instead of penetrating the glass, bounced off it.

“No delay, Your Highness.”

This was Grampor, who knew that the Prince held the power of life and death over all of them, and despite having lived as long as he had, had no wish to truncate his life at this point. Having already cast the spell that protected the car, he sat up straighter, made some complicated passes in the air, and the Dodge Charger shuddered, spat, and slowly rose up off the ground, ascending into the sky. The cops, quickly dwindling to specks below them, fired ineffectually at the car, their bullets again bouncing off the shield the wizard had created around it.

As they sped off towards home, Blackflower couldn't resist waving to the cops, a cheeky grin on his pale green face.

"Yeah!" he yelled, even though he knew the cops were too far below him to hear his whoop of triumph. "Ocean's Eleven can eat it! Only took four of us! Kiss my lime-green pixie ass!"

And then they were gone.

“Call up air support!”

On the ground, the lead cop was furious. Not having dealt with Fairies before, he had been caught unawares by the use of magic, and it both embarrassed and worried him. How could they hope to fight such a power? His second, echoing his thoughts, shrugged.

“What's the point, Chief?” he asked resignedly. “They'll be halfway to Storytown by the time we can get anything mobilised. Did you see the speed of that thing? Even our fastest copter couldn't catch it.” His face became thoughtful as he looked towards the bank. “I wonder what it was they stole?”