by A. G. Howard
I shade my eyes to look up at Morpheus, an angry knot forming in my chest. Jeb was right. All he can do is mislead us. “You lied.”
His smile fades as Gossamer peeks out from under his hair. “I was misinformed,” he says.
Jeb’s entire body visibly tenses. “‘Misinformed’? You sent Al out here, into danger, on misinformation?”
I clamber off the table, fingertips resting on his bunched-up back muscles to calm him.
Morpheus grins again from his perch atop the tree—regal and pompous with his wings spread high, a backdrop of sleek satin shading his pale complexion from the sun. “It was foolish, I know. Taking hearsay for fact. I was in my cocoon when little Alice escaped with the sword. I didn’t see for myself what happened. I’d heard through the rumor mill that she came here with it. But now I’ve learned the truth. The sword has been hidden all this time in the Red castle itself … guarded by the bandersnatch.”
“Right.” Jeb’s voice is choked with strained self-control. “And we’re just supposed to take your word for that.”
“My spy only learned of it today. Alyssa believes me, don’t you?” Morpheus trains his gaze on me.
I don’t answer. Truth is, I don’t trust him.
“Take her silence as a no, bug for brains.” Jeb stays focused on the canopy.
“Neither of you is even curious about the battle I waged to keep you safe? Pity the ingratitude.” Morpheus straightens his gloves while Gossamer flutters around his jacket, checking for snags. His clothes are rumpled and ravaged, even sooty in places. He’s lost his hat and his hair’s a shock of wild waves. “Had to torch the dining hall to smoke them all out. But they’ll soon be spreading over Wonderland in search of you. Queen Grenadine has a dinner party planned, and she’s determined to unveil a new pet to entertain her guests.”
Jeb’s shoulder blades fidget beneath my palm. “Pet?”
“Grenadine has wanted a replacement for Alice for decades. A caged bird, as it were.” Having dropped that bomb, Morpheus takes a graceful leap and glides to the tabletop, landing next to Hattington and crew. “Good to see you fellows again. How was the nap?”
The three netherlings greet Morpheus with hugs and handshakes.
I grab Jeb’s hand, my pulse racing. “Do you remember the psych report? Alice told the therapist she’d been in a birdcage for seventy-five years in Wonderland. But she must’ve come back. She got married and had a family. Or else I wouldn’t exist. Right?”
He pulls me close. “I don’t know what’s happening. But we need to get you out of here quick.”
“Now that the curse is broken,” I say, although I don’t feel any different.
Morpheus seems oblivious to our urgency. He pats Hattington’s conformateur. The blank-faced little man comes only to his thigh. “Splendid to have you back among the living, Herman. I’m in dire need of a new Cajolery Hat.”
“Can do!” The lid flips closed on the hatmaker’s contraption. His bone structure and skull contort and crack into place as the metal pins squeak and mold around his head until he and Morpheus look like a matched set of nesting dolls.
That’s why he’s the best hatmaker in the realm. He becomes his subject’s head and face until he finishes a project, making for the perfect fit. What would that be like? To never have an identity of your own? No wonder they call him mad.
“Mayhap you’d like a derby style?” Hattington says as he feels his temporary cheekbones. “I have some fine red felt back home.”
“Hmm …” Morpheus brushes soot off his lapel. “I was thinking one of buckram might be nice.”
“Hey!” Jeb slams a fist on our end of the table. The group turns to us. “Al’s in danger of becoming someone’s human parakeet. She’s finished what she came to do. Fulfilled the requirements to break the curse. Now we need to get back to our world. Like yesterday.”
“Yesterday, you say?” the hatmaker warbles in his bouncing timbre. “Yesterday is doable.”
Guffawing, the hare slaps a knee and adds, “Although two yesterdays would be impossible.”
The Door Mouse snickers, slipping back into his uniform. “No, no! You can retrogress as many yesterdays as you please. Simply walk backward the rest of your life.”
They all bend at the waist, holding their ribs as they laugh hysterically. Their lack of sobriety stuns me, and Jeb looks like he might snap at any minute.
With a flick of his wings, Morpheus lands on the grass beside us. Gossamer nestles in his hair. “There’s more bad news, as per your leaving here.”
Jeb narrows his gaze. “How can it get any worse?”
“When the Red army raided my home, they found the jabberlock box and stole it back again. It is no longer under my protection, and without the Ivory Queen, her portal will remain closed. That makes it ever more imperative we get the sword and defeat Grenadine and her king.”
Jeb inches closer to Morpheus. “And how do you propose we defeat them when the sword is at their castle under the keep of some mutant watchdog?”
I grip his shoulder from behind, reminding him to use restraint. Morpheus is our only ally, however infuriating his tactics are.
“All is not lost,” Morpheus says. “Chessie can subdue the bander-snatch since his other half resides within.” He tickles his sprite’s tiny swinging feet with his finger. “You will get Chessie’s head for me. He’ll have full control, and I can steal the sword and defeat Grenadine, then send you both home via whichever portal you like, Red or White.”
“No!” Jeb lunges in a move so swift, it almost jerks my arm out of its socket. He catches Morpheus by his lacy shirt and lifts him onto tiptoe so his wings drag on the ground. Gossamer dangles from a strand of blue hair. “This is all a ploy to get Al to do another ‘task.’ Right? Another test. What I want to know is what she’s being tested for. What happens when she passes them all?”
Smug, Morpheus taps Jeb’s fingers, one by one, as if he were playing a flute. “Ah. Gossamer’s been running her little pretty mouth again, aye? Jealous little nymph.” The sprite scrambles off his shoulder and flitters into the tree overhead. “You know, you should never trust a woman with green skin. Just ask any man who’s had a hangover from absinthe.” Morpheus gazes at me. “All I’ve ever wanted is to free Alyssa and return her to her proper place.”
“And where would that be?” Jeb moves his head in front of me so Morpheus has to look at him.
“Her home, of course.” The jewels at the edges of Morpheus’s tattoos turn clear and sparkle like liquid, mimicking the sincerity of real tears. “I’d like nothing more than to get Chessie’s head myself. But, because of our misunderstanding over the moth spirits I harbor, the Twid Sisters and I aren’t on the best of terms. They’ll not let me set foot nor wing anywhere close to their gate.”
“Wait.” I step up. “What does this have to do with the cemetery?”
“That’s where Chessie’s head resides,” Morpheus answers. “Because he’s technically ‘partly’ dead, he was able to find solace there. So the solution is simple: Save the cat to subdue the bandersnatch, free the Ivory Queen with the sword, and then you get to go home.”
“What a load of crap.” Jeb shoves Morpheus away. His netherling wings swipe wide, maintaining his balance before he crashes into a chair. Gossamer drifts down from the leaves, hovering over him.
Jeb takes my hand. “Let someone else go after the cat. Al’s in danger out here. We need to hide until we can get home. She’s done everything you asked. The curse is broken, right?”
Morpheus looks at me, not Jeb. “What good is breaking the curse if you never go home? If Alison never sees her daughter again, she’ll be worse off than she is now. Her insanity will no longer be an act.”
I shudder. Morpheus is right. Alison would never forgive herself if I was lost for her sake.
Morpheus glances over his shoulder toward where the tea party crew argues over who gets to drink the mouse’s bathwater from the hare’s boot. The edge of his mouth curls. �
�The inner garden is hallowed to our kind. We’re forbidden to walk upon those grounds. You’re the only ones I can send.”
I squeeze Jeb’s hand, hating what I’m about to say. “We have no choice, then. We’ll go.”
Jeb presses my knuckles to his chest. “No. I’ll go. You fly back with bug snot.”
“Of course,” Morpheus interrupts, his voice edged with something between sarcasm and suggestiveness. “I’ll be happy to take Alyssa back with me. We can pick up where we left off in my bedroom, right, luv?”
I scowl at him.
Jeb pushes me aside and snaps out the Swiss Army knife, the blade pressed against Morpheus’s sternum. “Better idea. Give Al her wish—now.”
My stomach turns. “Jeb, I won’t leave without you.”
“It won’t come to that.” He slides the blade up to Morpheus’s throat. “You can wish you never came at all. You’ll still be the subject of the wish, and it’ll get us both out of this. I never would’ve come if I hadn’t seen you leap into that mirror.”
He’s right. That would work. The only problem is, I’ll have done this for nothing: Alison will still get shock therapy and my family will be cursed again because I’ll have never come to fix things.
“Give it to her,” Jeb says, “or she’ll have a king-size moth to use in her next masterpiece. Got me?”
Gossamer flies in Jeb’s face in a frenzy of wings. Her distraction gives Morpheus a chance to catch Jeb’s wrist and hold him back. “I don’t have the wish,” he seethes. “It fell out while I was trying to save your bloody little lives, and now it’s in the hands of Rabid White.”
Jeb twists his arm free. “Lies.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Morpheus answers, watching Jeb warily. “Alyssa wouldn’t use her wish so lightly. Elsewise, her family will forever suffer the curse she risked life and limb to break. “
The heat from Morpheus’s knowing gaze is a thousand times worse than the spotlights on the miner’s caps at Underland, and there’s nowhere to hide my bared soul. “He’s right.”
Jeb glares at me. “You’ve gotta be kidding. Your mom wouldn’t want you in danger!”
I look down at my boots. “Why are we talking about this? He said he doesn’t have the wish, anyway.”
Jeb’s laugh has a bite of venom behind it. “That’s amazing. You just keep playing into his hands.” His face hardens. “You know what I’d do if I had a wish? I’d wish you would trust me like you used to. The way you trust him now.”
The insinuation cuts deep. He can’t really believe that. Can he?
Jeb turns to Morpheus, brandishing the knife’s blade again. “Anything goes wrong—she gets even a scratch—and I’ll gut you from head to toe.” Forcing himself to pull back, he turns to retrieve our backpack.
“Get directions to the graveyard,” he says to me before he moves to the edge of the hill, stopping at the border of the chessboard desert. He snaps the army knife closed and looks off into the distance with all the patience and composure of a wild, caged animal while Gossamer flutters around him.
“Your boyfriend has some real trust issues,” Morpheus baits.
“Shut up. He had a rough childhood.”
“He should be grateful he had one at all.”
“Stop fishing for sympathy. You had a childhood. I was there, remember?”
The black marks around Morpheus’s eyes crinkle in a snide grin. “No, Alyssa. It was poor little Alice I was referring to.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You will need a weapon.” Morpheus sidesteps the question. Reaching a gloved hand into his jacket, he digs around in an inner pocket and draws out a small, thin cylinder of wood. He turns it, revealing holes in the body and a mouthpiece at one end.
“A flute? How’s that supposed to protect us?” I ask.
Morpheus steps closer and tucks the cylinder into my blouse. He slides it against my bare skin until it fits snugly in my cleavage. Gossamer must be distracting Jeb, or he would’ve already thrown the jerk off the hill. Personally, I’m considering shoving the instrument up his nose.
His gaze holds me in check. Somewhere behind the fathomless black glitter is sincerity, maybe even concern. My heart pounds against the flute’s cool, smooth wood.
“Let us hope you remember those music lessons your mumsy had you take.” Morpheus leans his hip against the table. His wings relax behind him. “A cello should suffice for knowing the musical scale. You’ve played one instrument, you’ve played them all, aye?”
For the first time, it hits me point-blank. “You’re the reason she wanted me to play.”
“Even though she hoped with all her heart you would never come here, she still prepared you, just the same. And thus far, you’ve proven yourself gloriously capable. How proud she would’ve been of your antics upon the table earlier.”
A blush creeps hotly into my cheeks. Did he see my dance? Or maybe he’s referring to my barbaric race to eat the Door Mouse. The possibilities are equally unsettling. “You were watching?”
“By the by …” He glances at Jeb’s back and leans closer, murmuring low. “Tumtum juice alters a person’s inhibitions, magnifies their hunger. But it’s not hunger for food. It’s experiences they crave. Had it been me instead of your toy soldier, I would’ve found a means to slake your ravenous hunger without resorting to berries.”
His arrogance simmers my blood. “You don’t have the equipment to satisfy anything. Moth. Remember?”
He laughs, dark and soft, under his breath. “I am a man in every way that counts. Just like you are a woman, even if some people believe you’re nothing more than a scared little girl in constant need of saving.”
I ignore the barb. “Of course. You’re an expert on women.” Ivory’s lovesick ogling from behind the glass plane bobs to the surface of my thoughts. That strange, possessive pang follows, but I suppress it.
“Do I sense jealousy?”
“As if.”
He smiles, dragging a wing over his shoulder to preen it. “I’ve been in this form for some time. I had to get some practice in. But only one lady is my equal in every way. Intellectually, physically, magically.”
“It’s all about her, isn’t it?” My envy is almost palpable. “You’d endanger anyone to have her in your arms.”
“Absolutely, I would.”
“I hate you.”
“Only because of the way I make you feel.”
My fingernails eat into my palms. “Only because you bring out the worst in me.”
“Oh no, luv. I bring out the life in you.” His intense gaze pulls me in. The lullaby trills through my blood, carrying my pulse on its rhythm: “Little blossom in peach and gray, grew up strong and found your way; two things more yet to be seen, until at last you’ll …”
The ending to his verse—that final puzzle piece—still drifts just out of my reach. I squeeze my temples to shake him from my head. My fingertip grazes my hairpin, and it pinches. “Just stop it!” I snap at him. “Where is the cemetery?”
Gossamer comes back to light on Morpheus’s shoulder as he points down. “After the abyss … just there.”
He indicates a drop in the chessboard sands at the edge of the dune, not too far from where Jeb’s standing. It’s hard to make out from here, but it appears to be a fissure in the earth.
“There’s an abyss?” I ask, more doubtful by the second.
“It separates the desert from the valley—a bit too wide for a mortal to leap across. The cemetery is on the other side. It’s cloaked in a thicket of vines and ivy that protects the spirits from sunlight.”
My courage does an about-face at the thought of trudging through some dark thicket filled with ghosts—netherling or otherwise—but I rein in my fears. Jeb will be there; I won’t be alone.
“Unless you can find a way across the chasm,” Morpheus continues, “you will have to hike on foot. Take the upper ridge that winds around it.”
The ridge’s sands seem to stretch on forever.
If we go around, it could take a day. Maybe two. We don’t have that kind of time if we’re going to stop Alison’s treatments. I’m about to object when the Door Mouse shouts out: “Jubjub birds!”
Gossamer tunnels into Morpheus’s hair as he flaps his wings hard, taking to the sky. The back draft rushes through me on a licorice-scented gust. The tea party crew scrambles into the hare’s cottage and slams the door shut. Puffs of black-and-white dust rise in the distance.
The dust clouds clear to reveal an army of card guards riding birds. Huge ones, built like ostriches with peacock tails and the heads and wings of giant grasshoppers. Although the birds can’t seem to fly, their long legs cover the distance between us with ease. It’s like a swarm of mutant grasshoppers coming to devour us.
I’ll never kill another bug as long as I live …
Heart striking my ribs like a gong, I yell up at Morpheus, “Help us!”
“Beware the shifting sands,” he shouts back. “Use the flute if you need to gain ground. Assuming you make it to the valley, head straight for the cemetery gate. The army won’t follow you within.” He swoops away in the opposite direction of our attackers. Gone. Just like that.
Assuming we make it? I’m so outraged, my eyes burn. “You swore you wouldn’t leave me again! Your wings are going to shrivel up, you coward!” I scream.
But you aren’t hurt … yet.
It’s his voice, though I’m not sure if it’s from my memory or if he’s still in my head. Either way, I’d forgotten about the stipulation to his life-magic vow. He’s the master of technicalities.
A hammering shatters the air. I turn to see Jeb pounding the wooden tea wagon against the tree trunk. Before it even registers what he’s doing, he’s separated two of the shelves from the frame. He pushes his bangs out of his face and flips the boards over to study the bottoms. They’re smooth and seamless with a slight upward curve on the ends.
He holds one out to me. “Let’s go!”
I take the piece of wood, confused.
Jeb shoulders the backpack, sprints to the edge of the dune a few feet away, and places his shelf on the ground at the border where the sandy slope begins. With one shoe on the wood to tilt it downward, he turns to me. “Now, skater girl!”
