Page 217 - Nuts to You - The Nutcracker Retold

a tiny puff. She looked satisfied and very devious, and very, very dangerous.
Pirlipat slipped back a bit away from the Mouse Queen, which was absolutely the wrong thing to do. For the Mouse Queen immediately looked at her, frowned, swung Krakatuk, and lightly tapped her princess-turned-troll on the shoulder.
Pirlipat thought she was a goner, iced like Coffee. But no, she was shrinking, changing – oh joy of joys! – she was going back to human form. She was becoming herself again! But no, this was not her body, these were not her fingers – they were the rich mocha of coffee. In fact, as Pirlipat looked at her reflection in the iced folds of Coffee’s veil, she realized she was a perfect duplicate of Coffee! Un-iced.
Then the Mouse Queen started to pipe, and Pirlipat-as- Coffee started to dance. And the more she tried not to dance, the more she had to dance. This was worse than being a troll, Pirlipat realized. Now she had no say in what she said or did. She was no more than a puppet being piped to do – who knows what!
The Mouse Queen knew what, and she was gloating inside, thinking that her little bit of trickery with Pirlipat was perfect. When the Sweeties saw Coffee dance into their hideout, they wouldn’t suspect a thing. And even if they did, the split second it took them to suspect something was wrong - would make it too late to do anything about it. The pipe would already have done its magic, wrought its worst, and spun its spell – and the entire camp of Sweeties would be a slave to the music.
203