by Eva Chase
A row of chandeliers overhead, their crystal fixtures shaped into hearts and roses, lit the long empty hall. Gold leaf gleamed all through the flowery wallpaper, the thorns drawn around the roses so pointed I wondered if they’d prick my fingertips if I touched them. The smell of the garden’s roses lingered even here inside.
We passed a few paintings with heavy gold frames: a man with a doughy face, a red robe, and a plump crown on his white hair; a skeletal old woman with fierce eyes and an even bigger crown, and then a sort of family portrait.
Somehow I knew at a glance that the woman sitting in the throne there was the current Queen of Hearts. Her coppery hair looped in coils from her face to beneath her crown; a smile that looked sharp enough to cut stone curved above her square jaw. Her wide-set eyes, which shone with an eerie golden sheen that matched the frame, bored into me in an instant.
A man with pasty skin and a matching crown stood beside her throne, his shoulders stooped as he rested one hand on its side. And at the woman’s feet, his head tipped against the satin draped over her knees, a little boy sat with a gold circlet of his own, only a little brighter than his tawny brown curls.
Was that the prince who’d been murdered? He’d already been a boy, then, when this painting had been hung before time had frozen. Doria had said he’d been thirteen when he was murdered, but I couldn’t stop my mind from picturing that toddler’s head lying in a pool of blood. My stomach lurched, and I yanked my gaze away.
Theo pointed to a door. Hatter dropped down in front of it, the hairpins spinning in his fingers. With a jiggle and a click, he’d popped the deadbolt.
The door swung open into a room like an over-crowded gallery, mahogany frames pressed together all across the walls. As we stepped inside, I realized they weren’t any kind of artwork. They were doors themselves, dozens of them in every shade of wood, fit up against each other from floor to ceiling. Most of them I could have fit through by crawling, a few by standing, but the smaller ones scattered the spaces between those, a child would have struggled to fit through.
Theo tapped his foot against the smallest, a tiny oak door barely the size of my hand, with an even tinier lock. Hatter had to hunker down on the floor to prod its keyhole. Theo turned to me.
“You’d better prepare. He’ll have it open quick.”
I nodded, my mouth gone dry. I urged a little saliva onto my tongue as I reached for the pieces of mushroom Dee and Dum had brought us.
Right pocket smaller, left pocket larger, I reminded myself. Dear God, this had better work again. All the Spades, all of Wonderland, was counting on my spark of untested inspiration.
I placed one slice from my right pocket into my mouth and chewed. A prickling sour flavor coated my tongue. I swallowed the whole thing, clutching a second piece in case I needed it. A jolt ran through my body.
I blinked and found my gaze at the height of Theo’s chest and falling. My legs were dwindling under me, my chest contracting. I gasped a breath, and dropped to the height of his hip. My pulse raced frantically through my shrinking veins. I held on to my composure with an iron grip.
This had all been part of the plan. My plan. I could do this, for all the heads that had rolled, for the Caterpillar’s leers and the cut on my arm, for the freedom I’d thought I’d found here that should have belonged to everyone.
My descent halted around the level of Theo’s knees. Hatter muttered to himself as he worked at the lock. I still wasn’t going to fit through that passage once he got it open. I popped another half a slice into my mouth, hoping that wasn’t too much.
My body plummeted in on itself with a lurch. The floor came into sharper view, the bits of dust clinging to the thick red carpet suddenly large as pebbles.
With a squeak, the little door swung open. I didn’t wait for any command. The way was clear. With my hands clenched tight, I dashed through the doorway.
The red-walled passage on the other side was even narrower than the door. I hurried along it, feeling as if I were racing down an artery churning blood. My stomach was certainly churning.
Then I stumbled out into a bare red room. The space looked enormous to me at my current size, but judging from the size of the passage, it was probably only a few feet high and around. It held nothing but a wooden platform a little taller than I was, on which loomed a curved glass case that contained a closed brass pocket watch.
“I found it!” I called back, not sure how well my equally tiny voice would carry. Now I just had to get the watch out. The case wouldn’t fit through the narrow passage, and I sure as hell couldn’t break it while I couldn’t even reach the top of the platform it was perched on.
I grabbed a piece of mushroom from my left pocket and ate half, and then another quarter, until I’d shot up to the low ceiling. I aimed one foot at the case and gave it a solid kick.
The case smacked against the wall with a thump but not a single crack in the glass. Frowning, I grabbed it and bashed it against the floor, against the side of the platform. The cut on my arm throbbed with the effort, and the watch jostled around inside, but the thick glinting surface held.
“Lyssa?” Theo said, and at the same time another sound reached me. A distant shout that couldn’t possibly be one of our people. My pulse hiccupped.
“I just have to break the case,” I said, fighting to keep my voice steady. I slammed the glass structure into the wall with all the strength I had. It bounced off and rolled on the floor, solid as ever.
A door in the other room rattled as someone tried the knob. Panic shot through me. I snatched up the case again, and my thumb caught on the corner, right on the spot where the ring’s ruby had pierced it this afternoon.
Mirabel’s voice echoed through my head. You found the key and brought it with you. Could she have actually meant…?
I dug the ruby ring out from under my shirt. Maybe this was a ridiculous idea, but it was the only one I had left. I popped open the filigree shell and pressed the gem to the side of the glass case, scraping it as hard as I could down the whole length.
The stone sliced into the smooth surface. Not all the way through, but with a crack that spidered around the edges as I dug the ruby in even harder. A victory cry catching in my throat, I hurled the case at the floor one more time.
It shattered apart. The watch tumbled amid the shards. Someone was banging on that outer door now, and beyond the thud of that fist and the muffled hollering, a raw throaty voice cut through the air like a machete, with all the authority of a queen.
“Break it! Break it now!”
A cold sweat broke out on my back. I snatched up the pocket watch and pushed at the clasp on the cover. It was made of several tiny bits of metal, and none of them shifted.
Theo had said it might not open easily—that he’d handle it if that was the case. With a shaky breath, I tossed the watch down the passage toward the other room as far as I could fling it. Then I stuffed one of the shrinking mushrooms into my mouth.
My body shot back to the floor so fast my head reeled. I threw myself past the suddenly boulder-like chunks of glass toward the little hallway.
Theo’s hand swept down to meet me. I clung to his thumb as he caught me up. “Get down,” he ordered, tucking me into his shirt pocket. Then he wrenched the shuddering door open and tossed one of those egg-like devices at the guards on the other side.
It burst open with a billow of black smoke. He ran into the haze, Hatter right behind us. As I ducked down within the white linen fabric, a shriek pierced my ears, vibrating with shock and rage.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Theo
T he Queen’s scream sliced through my nerves as painfully as the smell of the roses would have without my mask. My stomach turned over with a queasy shudder, but determination kept my feet steady.
Her guards had fallen back in the wake of the smoke bomb. I tossed another and grabbed the sleeve of Hatter’s jacket, yanking him with me through the doorway across the hall. Lands willing, it would still be a gue
st bedroom and unoccupied.
The guards charged after us with a roar, just a few steps behind us. Lyssa, in her tiny state, had curled into a ball in my shirt pocket, her body a spot of warmth on my chest. The pocket watch bumped against my thigh as my carry pouch jostled. I intended to get both out of the palace and off its grounds safely.
Just before we reached the window at the other end of the room, I flung a skitter cube behind me. It crackled into a hundred slippery slivers scattering the floor. Bodies thumped as the guards skidded and toppled.
Letting them get this close hadn’t been in the plan. But then, my plan had needed a lot of reworking in the last couple days.
I snapped the hooks out from my steel-wound rope and snagged them on the window ledge. “Come right after me,” I said to Hatter as I scrambled out the window. “It’ll hold us both.” Then I tossed one more smoke bomb into the room for good measure.
Hatter coughed as he clambered down. The string sped through my fingers. I leaned to the side away from my shirt pocket to make sure I didn’t bump the wall at the wrong angle.
The second Hatter’s feet hit the ground next to mine, I detached the rope with a jerk of my hands.
“Still okay, Lyssa?” I asked. She nodded, a whisper of movement against my chest.
Dee caught up with us as we raced through the gardens. A ripple of leaves along the side of a hedge told me Chess had rejoined us too, invisibly. “Sally?” I said.
“I don’t know,” Chess said without reappearing. “I heard a little yelling from that end of the garden. She’ll find her way out if she’s able.”
“She wouldn’t want us hanging back waiting for her,” Dee added, his breath coming rough.
The garden’s lights had brightened into spotlights that swept across the bushes and benches. We ducked low to dodge one, my hand coming up to protect Lyssa’s hiding place. Shouts were echoing all across the grounds now.
The wall came into view. Dee pushed ahead with a fresh burst of speed and readied his arms to vault us over. I motioned the other three past me and spun to take in the grounds.
Footsteps thundered somewhere near us, but the Queen’s prized rosebush shielded us from sight. For now.
“White Knight,” Dee called. The others were already over. I bounded off his arms onto the top of the wall and hooked the rope there for him to climb after us.
Compared to the lights washing over the garden, the forest was pitch black. We hustled over the hill and across its downward slope to the stand of chittering trees. With the rose bushes far behind us now, I tugged down my mask to drink in the fresh night air.
A few of our fellow Spades were waiting there in a pool of moonlight, their expressions tight. Relief washed over their faces when we dashed into their midst.
“You got it?” Dum asked.
I nodded. “Let’s end this.” But first I slid my hand into my pocket so Lyssa could cling on. I set her carefully on the ground. “I’m sure you’d like to get back to regular size.”
“Thank you,” she said in a wisp of a voice. She must have had a slice of mushroom at the ready, because an instant later her body started shooting up among us.
I tugged the pocket watch from my pouch. Power thrummed through it, tingling against my palm. For a second, I could only stare at its tarnished brass surface.
My entire life, I’d gone without Time. I was about to experience its proper passage as I never had before.
The latch that held the cover shut was a multilayered one, but I’d seen enough of the Queen’s toys to find the pattern. My thumb slid and pressed against the notches. A hush fell over our little group as my companions watched.
The latch clicked apart. I held the watch out into the space between us. “We will be bound no longer,” I announced, and flipped the cover open.
A whistling rushing sound louder than the chittering leaves whirled around us. The wave of contained power whipped past our faces, licked over our clothes and hair, and streamed out across the landscape. The second hand on the watch started to tick along.
Time had returned to Wonderland.
My people caught their breaths with a collective gasp. We couldn’t feel the change in any major way yet, but a glitter of hope had come into their eyes—more hope than I’d seen in the entire time I’d moved among the Spades and Clubbers before now. The twins beamed at me. Even Hatter looked delighted.
I’d done what I’d come here to do. I’d put this one very wrong thing right. It wasn’t enough, and I still had a lot of work ahead of me, but it made every hard choice I’d been faced with undeniably worth it.
My gaze found Lyssa, who was just taking a tiny nibble of mushroom to shrink her a couple inches back to exactly her regular height. She tossed the rest of the slice away and turned to me, her face so bright with joy that my heart stuttered.
I hadn’t known how much her smile would mean to me. When she’d come to me a couple nights ago, I’d been glad to hear that she was playing the field, that I wasn’t the only man on her mind. We’d indulged in what had felt like simple mutual attraction and admiration without my having to worry that I was taking advantage of her in a much more cruel fashion than I’d ever wanted to. Not to mention that multiple points of attraction meant more ties to draw her back here.
And yet right now, I found myself wishing she’d save that smile only for me.
“You were amazing,” I said honestly. “We couldn’t have done it without you.” I turned to the others. “We should get moving before the guards extend their search this far. As soon as we’re back in the city, they’ll have no proof we had anything to do with that theft.”
As we all started walking, I fell into step beside Lyssa. Her fine pale hair was mussed from all the shrinking and growing and running around. I couldn’t stop myself from brushing a stray lock back behind her ear. She eased a little closer to me at my touch, aiming a small but equally bright smile at me. It set off a glow in my chest.
This woman was something special, wasn’t she? In more than one way. In the back of my mind, my Inventor’s instincts were already spinning through the possibilities of how we could use her presence and her Otherlander quirks to serve the rebellion in other ways.
I didn’t think persuading her to stay with us would even be that hard. Lay on the admiration and the awe, let her absorb the exhilaration of being a hero, and I wouldn’t need more than a nudge.
Perhaps that was the right thing to do if we were judging right by the greatest good to the greatest number of people, regardless of what it meant for Lyssa. But, Hearts take me, the thought of continuing down that road made me queasy. As if she’d taken a piece of my heart as her own.
I had missed her, those days when she’d been gone. I’d missed that smile and her easy candidness and the sense that she might have understood a lot more of who I was than anyone else around me if I’d been able to let her in.
If I pushed her too far and the horrors of this place broke her, I wasn’t sure the knowledge of what I’d done wouldn’t break me too.
“You saw us through our mission,” I said. “Your mission, I should probably say. What do you want to do now?”
“What are my options?” Lyssa asked. “The guards were still searching the city for me. Is there any chance I could get home right now?”
If I delayed her even an hour, most likely not. The words wavered on my tongue. I worked my jaw and forced them out.
“Everyone in the city was reset back to their starting points a half hour ago. If we head for the club right now, I’d imagine we can get you through.”
“Really? I think…” She exhaled shakily. “I’m not saying I wouldn’t want to come back. There’s a lot in this place I’d miss. But I’ve already caused kind of a commotion in the Otherland and here, so maybe it’s better if I go back home and let things calm down in both lands before I make the trip again.”
I traced my fingers down her forearm to twine with hers. “I do hope you make it again.” I meant that honestl
y too, and not just for the cause.
“As you should be able to tell by now, it’ll take more than a mad queen and her army of guards to stop me.”
“Then to the club it is.”
Her smile came back, wider than before. I might have righted two wrongs tonight.
When we reached the edge of the city, I waved my companions off. “Get home, get to bed like you’re meant to be. I’m taking Lyssa to her path home, and then I’ll be making my way to mine.”
Hatter’s head snapped around. “You’re leaving?” he asked Lyssa, with a hint of hesitation.
“Just for a little while,” she said. “I’m planning on coming back. There’s still an awful lot I’d like to do here.”
A faint flush colored his neck as he grinned back at her. I’d never seen Hatter smitten before. It was rather extraordinary. No doubt we had to thank Lyssa for his assistance tonight too.
“If you don’t mind the company,” Chess said to me in his languid voice, “it seems to me that three might be better than two should any obstacles present themselves.”
“And one more even better?” Hatter suggested.
A chuckle slipped out of me. “Come on, then, before those obstacles multiply beyond even the capabilities of four.”
The streets were always quiet at this time with so many Wonderlanders tossed back into sleep no matter what they’d been doing. Dum was woken by a falling branch shortly after midnight every night, so he’d been able to rouse those few Spades to be ready if we needed additional help, but everyone else slumbered. For this last time.
Tomorrow, they’d get to decide where they slept and where they woke, because of me. Because of us.
A movement near the club caught my eye. I held out my hands to stop the others. A figure loped away from the club—a palace guard by his uniform, the moonlight catching on the pleated stripes. Where was he going?
