Back in Tale Town, Ella, Rapunzel and Wolfie were looking in the window of a pop-up shop that had opened that morning. It only sold glass slippers, and you couldn’t even get a pair. You had to buy one and then wait until someone with the other one wanted to come along and marry you.

‘Glass slippers!’ said Ella with a snort. ‘Have you ever heard of a more ridiculous thing? Imagine how uncomfortable they’d be? What if they broke? Besides, who’d marry someone just because of the shoes they have?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Wolfie, his nose pressed up against the window. ‘I think it’s romantic . . .’

‘We haven’t heard from Red and the others yet,’ Rapunzel interrupted with a worried frown. ‘You’d have thought they’d have some news by now.’

‘Exactly!’ said Ella. ‘But we’ve heard nothing! What if Fitch’s men have got them? Anything could have happened!’

‘I’m sure they’re fine,’ said Wolfie soothingly. ‘They’re probably still trying to find the troll boy’s home, but even so, perhaps we should do a little –’ he lowered his voice – ‘spying? You know, see if Fitch does know anything? If we can get into his office without being seen, then we might find out something useful.’

‘Great idea!’ exclaimed Rapunzel. ‘That sounds like a job for Hansel and Gretel.’

As a patrol of Fitch’s guards filed out of the Town Hall, none of them noticed the two dark figures that clung to the shadows behind them. That’s because they were too busy noticing the noisy (but rather ineffective) fight that was happening between a scruffy young girl and a much neater young wolf.

‘Help!’ squealed Rapunzel, in her best I’m-a-princess!-What-are-these-ruffians-up-to? voice. ‘They won’t stop fighting!’

As the guards rushed over to break up Ella and Wolfie, Hansel and Gretel slipped out of the shadows and crept into the Town Hall.

One good thing about having been left on your own in the woods a lot is that you get extremely good at looking after yourself.

Hansel and Gretel could hunt, climb, swim, run and do pretty much anything that they needed to do, silently and without anyone noticing. They could also communicate just by looking at each other, which was very handy on occasions like this.

Hansel twitched one eye slightly and waggled his left ear.

Gretel nodded. Of course it was going to be easy! All they had to do was get past Fitch’s guards, sneak into his private office, find evidence of his evil plans and then get out again without being seen. She moved her jaw in a small side-to-side motion to say, ‘And if we see any guards?’

Hansel narrowed his eyes, which Gretel knew could only mean: ‘Sleep on sight!’

Lily the Sea Witch had given them some tiny magic capsules containing the concentrated essence of ‘It wasn’t like this when I was young!’. This powerful spell was made up of the complaints of older people, who were always moaning that ‘It wasn’t like this when I was young!’. It was one of the most boring things you could ever hear and would make anyone fall asleep immediately.

Armed and ready to go, with their blowpipes loaded with magic capsules, the twins tiptoed through the building towards Fitch’s office. Five minutes later, having left a trail of sleeping guards behind them, they eased open the office door. No one was inside, so they slipped in to see what they could find. But there was nothing, apart from ordinary paperwork to do with the running of Tale Town. According to reports, sales of magic beans were down and a young girl with golden hair had been spotted breaking into people’s houses, vandalizing their property and eating their breakfast. But there was nothing about the troll child at all.

Gretel scratched her chin to say: ‘We know Fitch is up to no good. Where does he keep all his private papers?’

Hansel blinked twice, meaning: ‘Remember when we were here with Wolfie returning the Sacred Shiny Story-Snipping Shears and we found that secret cupboard? Let’s look in there.’

Gretel nodded. Behind Fitch’s desk was an ugly old painting.

She gently tilted it to one side and a section of wall swung open, leading into a small chamber. Inside were the two sections of the ‘Long Live the Story Tree’ poem on stone slabs, just as they’d found them before – but nothing else.

Gretel frowned in disappointment and slumped heavily against a railing as Hansel crowded into the cupboard beside her. She screwed up her nose to say, ‘There’s got to be something else . . .’ when with a sudden lurch the secret door swung shut behind them and the whole chamber began to sink into the floor.

Hansel looked over at Gretel with wide eyes that said, ‘Uh-oh!’