Splintered

by A. G. Howard

  The cacophony surges through my eardrums. I clutch my ears.

  Their murmurs rise to a harrowing screech, as if someone has taken a cello’s bow and scratched it across a chalkboard—back and forth, again and again—feeding the vibrations through subwoofers turned full blast in my brain. I fall to my knees, screaming.

  “You’ve gained a square.” A woman’s singsong voice cuts through the chaos. As she scurries by, a rustle of skirts touches my sleeve.

  Her long, pale fingers tug on the web that surrounds the shattered rose, playing the anchor lines with the mastery of a harpist. The other blossoms—still trembling and murmuring—grow quieter until their whispers are tolerable again.

  I look up into her face, eyes sky-bright blue and lips the lavender of November dusk. Her skin is so translucent, she’s like a drawing on a piece of tracing paper—shimmery and gauzy, with hair the color of pencil shavings. A red and white striped dress, fitted at the bodice like a candy striper’s uniform but with a long, flowing hoop skirt, gives the illusion she’s from the Regency era.

  I stand, shaky, and back away. She follows. The lacy hem of her skirt kicks up and sweeps fog from around her feet. If she had ankles and shins, they’d be showing. Instead, eight jointed limbs, black and shiny like a spider’s, glide underneath. It’s as if someone took her torso and snapped it into place atop the thorax of a black widow.

  I swallow a groan. The hoop skirt must hide a globule abdomen along with the spinnerets used to make this tunnel of web. I suppress the urge to run for my life. Wouldn’t do any good. The roof’s too low for me to use my wings, and there’s no way I can outrun that many legs.

  “Sister One?” I croak, surprised I can get anything out of my compressed voice box.

  “How do you do?” She offers an open palm for a shake. I can’t bring myself to reciprocate, for fear she’ll spin me up and tuck me away for a late-night snack.

  Her hand drops. “You gained a square but lost the queen.” She grows taller in one smooth motion, as if raised up on a mechanical platform. “That was not in my bargain with Morpheus.” Her hands settle on her waist.

  “Morpheus?” Suspicion defeats horror. He’s the reason she had me dragged here? Was it to ensure I’d find Chessie’s head? But he said she was holding a grudge, so why is she helping him?

  “Have you stolen the queen? Or is she on the loose?” Sister One’s blue eyes glimmer, her feathery black lashes narrowing.

  “Um.” I shoot a sideways glance at the rose I ruined, now splintered like the mirror in my room. And then it hits me why the smoky white silhouette looked familiar. “That was Queen Red!” The netherling who cursed my family. “I didn’t know she was dead …”

  “Yes, was.” Sister One leans down to wave a finger at my nose. “And this was not part of the bargain.”

  The roses on the web start to shake again, more volatile this time. The movement rocks my equilibrium, as if I’m spinning inside some carnival ride. Sister One holds out her palms to me.

  “You woke them! You must help me lull them back to sleep!” She starts to sing a familiar tune … not Morpheus’s lullaby but something else from my childhood.

  “Ring around the rosy …”

  Her eight feet tap to the rhythm, waiting for a dance partner. Trying not to think about the spinnerets beneath her skirt, I take her hands. Her skin is smooth and smells of sunlight and dust.

  Soon we’re whirling in a circle like children. One scene in Lewis Carroll’s version of Wonderland comes to mind … when Tweedledee and Tweedledum danced with Alice to the tune of “Here We Go ’round the Mulberry Bush.”

  But Sister One is partial to the rosy song—for obvious reasons. Though it’s a different version than I heard growing up:

  Ring-a-ring-a-roses / The body decomposes.

  Hush! Hush! Hush! Hush! / You’ll all tumble down.

  Down, down, into the deep / Give the Twids our souls to keep.

  Silent slumber on a web / Ne’er to raise a restless head.

  If we wake the First will come / And sing us back to sleep as one.

  Hush! Hush! Hush! Hush! / We’re all slumbered down.

  We turn in dizzy circles beneath the bouncing web. I lift my chin and laugh, actually starting to enjoy the clamor around me. It’s so freeing, my wings whirling like clouds, soft and silky when they bat my head and shoulders. We spin and spin and spin until finally the roses stop their uproar and join our chant. Sister One releases me to face her spirit charges. I lean my elbows on my knees and catch my breath.

  The flowers’ voices converge to finish the final verse. Sister One leads them, her arms raised and snapping in time like a band conductor:

  If we fail to find our rest / Sister Two will raid our nest.

  She’ll make us live as broken toys / Discarded by the girls and boys;

  And there will no more slumber be / For we’ll be locked in misery.

  Hush! Hush! Hush! Hush! / We’ll all tumble down.

  At the end, stillness falls over the garden. The only sound is the swish of grass slapping Sister One’s sticklike legs as she moves about the web to tuck the flowers into the clingy gauze.

  Euphoria fades as I’m taken back to a time when Alison would tuck my blankets around me and kiss my head good night … moments before I’d drift off to sleep to meet Morpheus. The memory swirls to a blur, like food coloring dropped into water.

  I can’t remember how long I’ve been here … minutes, days, weeks?

  I have to find Jeb.

  Sprinting for the archway, my bare feet crush the grass with each step.

  “Wait!” Sister One screams from the tunnel’s far end. “You must get the smile I stole for you!”

  Ducking my head, I leap over the chain and rope I dropped earlier and keep going. Fear has taken up residence inside my heart, and I don’t know how to send it packing.

  Skirts rustle behind me as the spider gives chase.

  I skid onto a pathway and pick up speed. My lungs ache from panting. The drag of my wings slows me down. I reach behind and draw them around me like a shawl.

  Coming to the only archway left, I plunge through. One look around, and I fall to my knees.

  Just like in the Alice nightmare … I’m as good as dead.

  I kneel, too horrified to move.

  I’ve stumbled into Sister Two’s lair of despondent souls. That’s the only explanation for the moans and wails rattling my spine. A chill hangs on the air and clings to me like a second skin—dry and stale, softened with a hint of snow.

  Clenching my hands, I force myself to stand. The cries and laments silence. Every hair on the back of my neck grows rigid. Drifts of white powder, grainy with bits of ice, coat my naked feet and pack between my toes. It’s cool but not biting like the snow at home.

  The passage widens to a vast hollow filled with dead weeping willow trees—branches drooping sinuous and thin, all the way to the ground, each one bare and slick with ice. The thicket’s roof reaches high and filters what little light there is. It gives the scene a brownish tinge. At first glance, it could be the front of a sepia Christmas card, complete with ornaments hanging from the serpentine branches.

  Only these aren’t ornaments. An endless array of teddy bears and stuffed animals, plastic clowns and porcelain dolls, hang on the branches from webby rope. In the human realm, we’d call them love-worn and threadbare—playthings that were hugged and kissed by a child until the stuffing fell out or the button eyes popped off. Toys that were loved to death.

  I reach up and tap the leg of a ragged stuffed lamb who’s missing an ear. The toy sways on a noose of spider silk. The movement is so silent and tranquil, it’s disturbing to my core.

  Tranquil. That bothers me … the fact that the instant I stood up, everything hushed. Bone-deep quiet. After all those years of yearning for silence, why is it that I seem to feel more at home amid mayhem and noise now?

  Finding a sleepy doll that’s eerily similar to one I loved as a little girl—co
mplete with time-yellowed vinyl skin and moth-eaten lashes over eyes that open and close—I touch its foot. The leg swings, hanging by a thread to the stuffed body.

  The doll’s eyes snap open, sucking my courage away. Something in its empty gaze begs for escape … something that’s trapped, unhappy, and restless, aching to get out. The toy is harboring a soul. They all are.

  I wait, mouth drained of all moisture—for the doll to scream or to weep out all the pain I see in its eyes. But the movement slows, and her eyes close once more.

  A rustle stirs behind me. Prickles of awareness clamber up my spine, spreading through my shoulders and all the way to my wing tips.

  Maybe Sister One followed my footprints in the snow.

  Please be the nice one … please, please, please be the nice one.

  Reluctantly, I turn on my heel. A shadowy face bends down to mine.

  “Why ye be standing on this hallowed ground?” The voice—like branches tap-tap-tapping a frosted windowpane in the dark of night—rushes over me. Her breath smells of freshly dug graves and loneliness, sending shivers of terror from my toes to my fingertips.

  “I can explain,” I whisper.

  “Dandy that would be.” She draws back. Her clothes, body, and legs are duplicates of her sister’s. But on her face, scars and fresh lacerations dribble blood. On her left hand, a pair of gardening shears takes the place of fingers. She must have caused the cuts herself.

  Compared to her, Sister One is the sugarplum fairy.

  My odds of getting out with my head intact just plummeted to almost nil. “I—I took a wrong turn.”

  “I’d say ye did.” Her other hand eases out from behind her hoop skirt, covered by a black rubber glove. She carries a trio of ragged toys on a web like fish on a line. Her scissored deformity edges close to my neck—snip, snip. Puffs of air graze my skin as the blades open and close. “Ye don’t belong here.” Snip, snip, snip.

  “I don’t want to belong here.” The stuffed atrocities in her hand cause fresh dread to bubble up in my chest. I step backward and nearly slip on the snow. Spreading my wings low, I catch my balance.

  “Well, ye won’t. So long as ye’re still breathing.”

  “Right,” I answer, gasping to assure myself I am.

  “It’s when ye stop breathing that ye’re mine.” Her scissors rake my sleeve’s shoulder seam. “Once I cut out yer lungs, ye’ll belong then.”

  Self-preservation kicks in, and I back up two more steps, breaking through a curtain of branches to get closer to the trunk of the tree. Heavy with decrepit toys, the limbs bow over me almost to the ground, like a morbid parasol dimming the light.

  Sister Two’s silhouette moves on the other side, scuttling around the circumference. Taking strained breaths, I turn with her, keeping her in my sight through openings between branches.

  The instant she parts the curtain to come inside, I fold my wings around me, watching through a translucent shell.

  She laughs—a grinding, hollow sound. “The pretty butterfly is now the cocoon. Isn’t that backward from the natural way of things?”

  As if anything is natural here. I ease against the tree trunk to protect my back.

  The point of her blades nudge the juncture where my wings hide my windpipe. Even through the gossamer layers I can feel the cold metal compressing my air passage.

  “Ah, yer wings are yet young. Thin as paper. I can chop them into little pieces and dance in yer confetti. Face me, or suffer that fate.”

  She steps back. Considering how much it hurt just to step on my wings earlier, I let them fall to my sides and stand against the tree trunk.

  Smiling, she snips at the air in front of my face, blowing sharp wisps around me. “Now. Ye’ve stolen something from me. Give it back, or I’ll bleed ye like a pig until ye squeal.”

  “I haven’t stolen anything!”

  The scissor-like tips drag down to my abdomen, trailing a chilling line through my clothes. Wings folded around either side of the trunk, my spine grinds into the icy bark and my stomach rolls over.

  Her face leans closer—a bloody and horrific sight. “Tell me what ye did with Chessie’s smile.” Snip, and a strand of red lace falls from my tunic onto my bare feet.

  My heart nearly stops. “I—I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Liar.” Snip, snip, and a rain of tattered fabric gathers around me as my baby-doll tunic peels open at my waist, leaving only my blouse covering me. “Yer lungs have to be in here somewhere,” she says, digging around the fabric.

  Growling, I jut out a knee, knocking her hoop skirt lopsided and unbalancing her. Her eight legs regroup before I can escape, and she rams forward until our noses touch.

  The cold, sharp point of her blade crimps the bare skin above my throat. “I know why ye’re here. Ye seek the next square. The one that will win ye the crown.”

  Square? Crown? My mind bounces back and forth, caught between confusion and the will to live. I swallow, and the tip of the shears bites deeper into my skin. “No,” I whisper, slipping my fingers around her bladed hand to alleviate the pressure. I push against her. “I won’t make this easy for you.”

  “Good. I like a challenge.” Her bumpy tongue rakes over her lips as she snakes the blades toward my sternum, pushing harder against my resistance. “Less’n ye wish to watch me hull out yer heart like a nut’s meat, ye will tell me where ye hid the smile … now.”

  I close my eyes, willing my erratic pulse to calm, to become steady and confident. There’s only one way out of this. Only one thing I can rely upon.

  Pandemonium.

  I envision the branches around us filling with rabid sap—a snarling, feral energy sweeping through each branch. The movement jostles the toys awake, and they let out a mournful howl. Every branch on every tree across the lair joins in and twists, restless spirits awakened and angry.

  “Devil’s child!” Sister Two screeches and lifts her scissored hand to stab me. Trapped between her and the tree, I scream and raise my arms to protect myself from the blow.

  The doll I roused earlier swoops between us and grabs the shears, wrestling Sister Two.

  Seeing my chance, I break through the swaying branches. Snarling toys claw at me as I make my way out, tugging my hair and wings. I burst through and sprint for the entrance, colliding with Sister One.

  She shoves me behind her as her twin crashes out of the tree, a bloodthirsty scowl on her marred face. “Move out of my way! The little thief is mine.”

  “Wait!” Sister One says, out of breath. “I took the smile!”

  I wither in relief, panting and slumped against the back of her hoop skirt.

  “What do ye mean, ye took it?” Sister Two asks. “Ye’re not to touch my wards!” She waves the stuffed toys in her good hand, effectively stilling the trees all around us as the spirits cower in fear.

  “Morpheus gave an oath,” the good twin explains. “If I should help the girl get into the garden and cross off the last two squares, he’ll relinquish the moth spirits into my keep.”

  “Ye never use any sense, nohow!” the murderous sister screeches. “I told ye to stay out of it. It be none of our concern.”

  “Contrary that! We must have the spirits. One spirit in exchange for a thousand. ’Tis fair price to keep the dead contained here, so they’ll not possess the living. ’Tis our sworn purpose, after all!” Sister One pushes me through the archway back into the labyrinth.

  “Where ye be taking her?” Sister Two asks, her blue eyes aglow with suspicion and fury.

  “To the looking glass.” Sister One cups my elbow and leads me down the path. I nearly slip once in the snow, but she steadies me. “She yet has a game to win. And you have a queen to catch.”

  Sister Two follows, her eight legs sifting through the powder as her long skirt leaves drag marks behind her. “What mean ye by that?”

  “Queen Red has escaped her slumber. She’s on the loose and restless. Best to hurry before she finds a way to the castle
.” Having said that, Sister One guides me back into the maze, leaving her twin screaming in outrage. The spirits join the tantrum, wailing once more.

  I shut it all out. Queen Red was dead and imprisoned, but now she’s on the loose. That means I released the witch who put a curse on my family nearly a century ago. What will she do to us now that she’s free? “Will you be able to find her?” I ask, swallowing against the knot in my larynx.

  “She’s of no consequence to you.” Sister One slides her grasp to my wrist, whipping around turns through the maze with such speed, I can barely keep up. “The queen’s always been trouble. I’m glad to be done with her. My sister is responsible now. She’ll capture the restless soul and contain her—permanently.”

  The wails and laments from Sister Two’s lair fade with the distance. “Why are there so many unhappy souls in Wonderland?” I ask.

  “Some had unfinished business or lost loves. But the unhappiest died imprisoned by the curse of their name being spoken.”

  “But I’ve said Morpheus’s name many times.”

  She laughs, and it sounds like the warble of a songbird. “Morpheus is not his true name. He is glory and deprecation—sunlight and shadows—the scuttle of a scorpion and the melody of a nightingale. The breath of the sea and the cannonade of a storm. Can you relay birdsong, or the sound of wind, or the scurry of a creature across the sand? For the proper names of netherlings are made up of the life forces defining them. Can you speak these things with your tongue?”

  A blur of green hedges rushes by. I pump my legs to keep up. My feet, which had been washed clean by the snow, gather more grass stains by the minute. “Can anyone?” I ask.

  “Only a netherling at the end of his or her life can speak the language necessary. It must be spoken upon a dying breath.”

  “Language …” The description on the back of Alice’s lab report. “Deathspeak,” I whisper, unbalanced and confused.

  “Aye, it is a volatile thing,” Sister One answers. “The victim utters Deathspeak along with a challenge that the one who wronged her must meet. Any netherling who dies under the Deathspeak curse, unable to meet the challenge, is left as a broken spirit, eternally unhappy and seeking escape. Until Sister Two puts a stop to it.”