by A. G. Howard
Their small, shadowy forms slip and slide into each other on the wet cement. They grumble in mass confusion. It would be comical if it weren’t so ominous.
“Get the supplies!” Jeb shouts.
Morpheus takes to the air, his crown falling to the floor with a metallic clatter. I swoop up behind him. He’s a floating mask, doublet, and ruffled shirt skimming toward the buffet; everything else, his hose and wings, are too dark to see. Jeb and Mom follow on the ground, a hovering dress and a glowing periwinkle mask. All those years of balancing on a skateboard are paying off. Jeb does an impressive job of sliding along the drenched floor while also keeping Mom from falling.
There’s nothing but static coming over the intercom and speakers now. Flapping my wings, I scan the darkness below. It’s broken up by fluorescent platforms in the middle, murals, and ghostly trees to the north that will soon come alive, and, just a few yards perpendicular, the arcade. I cringe. It’s like looking down on a nightmarish pinball machine. As I glance at the pool tables and the glowing balls that look like marbles, an idea starts to take shape.
Morpheus interrupts my thought process, shouting over his shoulder, “Red?”
My hair blows in the gusts coming off his wings. “She’s overturned on the floor, bound and coughing up dirt.”
“That won’t last.” For once he doesn’t have a joke.
And he’s right to be serious. I only managed to keep the humans out of her path and bought us a little extra time. She wants my body back and Morpheus on a platter. She’ll figure out a way to make those two things happen. At least for now she’s incapacitated, which makes finding Sister Two top priority. I shiver, remembering Morpheus’s reaction to her sting. A human, without magic to fight off the poison, doesn’t stand a chance at survival.
Morpheus and I reach the buffet first. He lands expertly on the floor and slides to a stop. I alight clumsily on the table, my left boot squished inside a soggy fluorescent cupcake.
“Practice, luv. It’s all in the ankles,” he says as he drags out the duffel bags.
I shake off the wet cake and hop down, using my wings for balance so I don’t wipe out on the slick floor.
Jeb and Mom arrive after taking a detour so Jeb could short-circuit the elevator. Now he’s in full battle mode. “Al, let me have your shawl,” he says upon seeing me, whipping off his jacket.
I take off the brooch. “Jeb,” I mumble as he spins me around to unwrap the netting from the base of my wings while Mom and Morpheus unload stuff a few feet away, their backs to us.
“Yeah,” Jeb says, concentrating.
“Those trees, they swallow things. Then they either spit them out as mutants, or the things are lost in—”
“AnyElsewhere. Your mom told me on the way over.” His fingers keep working at the netting.
“And Sister Two is here.”
He pauses.
I look over my shoulder at him, a knot forming in my throat. “Your plan is brilliant, but this isn’t your war. You aren’t equipped to fight these things.”
His wounded gaze penetrates, even through his mask. “But he is, right?”
I look over his shoulder at Morpheus. His wings block him and Mom as they untangle the nets.
I turn, concentrating on Jeb. “No matter what you think happened between the two of us, I love you. We share battle scars and hearts. I don’t want to lose that.”
He studies my necklaces and the soldered clump of metal at my neck. “Yeah, I see how well you took care of my heart.”
I wince at the honesty behind the dig.
“But you should know by now that I never give up without a fight.” He catches the necklace, jerks me close, and presses his lips to mine—a counterclaim to Morpheus’s kiss, marked with Jeb’s flavor and passion. When he releases me, his jaw is set stubbornly. “You and me? We’re far from over.”
I’m too shell-shocked to respond.
Our moment is cut short as the undead toys awaken the trees. Wide mouths yawn open on the trunks, and their serpentine limbs palpitate. Like Red, they’re limited to the pots and soil they’re in. But I remember the snapping retractable teeth and gums I saw on the tulgey shelves in my memory. If the toys can round us up into the forest, we’re all as good as eaten.
After waking the trees, the toys disappear into the shadows once more. The intermittent sounds of sloshing water and gruesome whimpers and moans are the only indications of their whereabouts. Other than a silhouette here and there, they’re impossible to see, being so small and close to the floor.
Without another word, Jeb rolls the netting into a strip to make it stronger and fashions a makeshift harness around his chest and shoulders. He digs out the night-vision goggles and tears off his mask to slide them into place. Then he snags a paintball gun and shoves all the boxes of paintballs into one duffel that he hangs on his shoulder.
He steps up to Morpheus, catches his arm, and turns him around. “Think you’re man-bug enough to give me a lift?”
Morpheus snorts. “Child’s play. Although I can’t promise a safe landing.”
The threat doesn’t faze Jeb. He turns so Morpheus can ease his arms through the back of the harness.
“Morpheus.” I shoot him a meaningful glance, trying to get his assurance he’ll play nice. But neither guy looks my way. I hope they can manage to work together without killing each other.
“We’ll tag them.” Jeb looks down at us as Morpheus hoists him up, his powerful wings flapping hard enough to stir up gusts. “And you two bag them.”
Mom hands me a net as the guys rise toward the ceiling. Jeb’s shirt is a streak of glaring purple in the shadows. The thought of Sister Two lurking gnaws at the edges of my heart, but I have to keep it together. I can’t let my fear for Jeb get the best of me, or it will prove Morpheus right: that Jeb’s my downfall.
I won’t let that be true. He’s my partner, just like he was in Wonderland. Even if I have lost his trust.
A splatting sound erupts as Jeb blasts paintballs into the darkness. Creepy toys clamber out of hiding places, growling and groaning. Spatters of paint mark them—smears of neon light scuttling to and fro.
Mom and I bob and duck, sway and slide, as gnashing teeth and angry snarls attack from all directions. With the wet floor beneath us, we can barely stay upright to fight them off, much less capture them in nets.
“If we’re going to get the upper hand,” I shout over the commotion, knocking a few undead toys away with a pool cue, “we’ll have to go aerial.” My wings itch to take flight and I climb onto the table.
Mom looks up at me, a hint of reservation behind her mask. “I’m not that great at the flying thing.” She looks scared, just like I was when Jeb and I skated across the chasm in Wonderland on a sea of clams. But Jeb persisted, and we made it out. I’ll be just as strong for Mom.
A half dozen neon-smeared toys tumble our way, panting and rabid.
I drag her up onto the table next to me. “Now, Mom.”
Biting her lip, she nods. There’s a whoosh as she releases her wings—almost exact replicas of mine. After tonight—seeing her Wonderland wildness set free—I don’t think she’ll ever have any problems with my miniskirts again.
A trance-techno dance song bursts out of the speakers, and wicked laughter echoes through the intercom. Some toys have found their way to the sound booth.
Mom and I launch into the air—nets in hand—as several restless souls scramble onto the table. A mildewed teddy bear and a pink kitten with only one eye tug at my arms and hair, trying to pull me toward the waving, yawning trees. I slap away the toys with my pool cue as I rise.
Mom’s not gaining altitude fast enough. A worm-eaten vinyl doll clamps onto her ankle, biting her. She screeches and sinks a few feet. Blood trickles down her shoe to the table below.
Diving toward her, I slam the doll with the pool cue, sending it into the darkness. The toy yelps, and I follow its soaring white reflection as it hits the top of the skate bowl and slides down th
e orange incline, coming to a stop at the bottom. It tries to climb out but keeps slipping down again. The enclosed concave, combined with the moisture from the sprinklers, makes it impossible to escape.
The partially formed idea from earlier hits me fully now.
“Zombie pinball,” I yell to Mom, both of us high enough that our wing tips nearly brush the overhead black lights.
She looks down at the layout, not quite getting it.
To demonstrate, I focus on a pool table, imagining the balls are tumbleweeds caught by the Texas wind. They begin to spin, then roll, dropping off the table’s edge like rainbow-fluorescent waterfalls.
They capture some toys in their spin, and I guide the mobile mass with my mind and imagination, herding it toward the skate park, hitting the tulgey trees and other fluorescent obstacles along the way but coaxing it along. From our altitude, the glowing scene looks like a hundred pinball games playing at once.
Mom catches on and uses her magic on another pool table, until the floor is covered with glowing balls and off-balance toys. We combine our powers and send all of the balls and toys siphoning into the skate bowl. Mom’s white teeth beam at me across the shadows, and I smile back. We’re winning.
In the distance, Jeb and Morpheus catch the corner of my eye. They’re close to the arcade. A steady buzz of paintballs rains down. They’re going after Red. I push my concern out of my mind, trying to stay emotionless, and keep working with Mom until we’ve piled most of the toys inside the tall bowl. The few remaining ones scamper into the tulgey forest.
I fashion a giant scoop, using my net and cue. Descending close to the skate bowl, I lower it. The toys clamber dumbly inside. I’m able to snag at least fifteen on my first try. Their wiggly weight works as a counterbalance to help me cinch the top closed. I drop the net off on my way to the buffet table for another one. I grab two pool sticks, handing one off to Mom as she hovers close. She swoops away, and I reach under the tablecloth for the last duffel bag.
Something slices my wrist through my glove. I yelp and jerk my arm back, blood drizzling across the floor. Garden shears rip through the tablecloth from the other side, and Sister Two scutters out, rising to her full height and lashing at me, stingers bared.
Gasping, I block Sister Two’s venomous hand with a pool cue.
She screeches as one of her poison-tipped fingernails gets stuck in the wood. I ditch the stick and run, heart slamming with every slippery footstep.
No one can see me through the waving white tulgey trees—Red, the guys, or Mom—but I see them. Jeb and Morpheus have landed and are rounding up the toys they marked—the ones that got by me and Mom. Morpheus uses blue magic to walk the zombies like puppets toward Jeb, who then swings a golf club, driving them into a net they’ve propped open. Leave it to guys to make a game out of a life-and-death situation. They’re almost to the arcade’s door—and Red.
Mom’s in the distance, scooping up toys from the skate bowl, as oblivious as the guys. I start to lift off so I can get to her, but Sister Two’s scissors hack into my right wing.
A fiery agony shoots from my shoulder blade to my spine. My knees fold under, slamming me to the wet cement. I attempt a scream … to warn the others … but the pain gores deep and sucks the air from my lungs, locking my voice box.
Sister Two scutters over, eight feet tapping in morbid synchrony across me. My wing is in tatters. Jeweled pieces fall around me like snow at midnight, reflecting brilliant white under the black lights.
“I told ye, that day ye trespassed on me hallowed ground, that I would make confetti of ye. Be glad I’m stopping at this.” She stabs my wing with the cue, then drops it next to me as I curl up in agony. “Since ye gathered my runaway souls and brought Red back to my keep, I’ve decided to let ye live. Yer mortal dreamer and yer mother … that’s all I need for restitution. Ye may consider yer debts paid.”
I struggle to move. No. Please don’t take them. My chest swells with the plea, voice trapped inside, banging around like a caged bird.
She sends a web into the air and lifts away, obscured and lethal in the darkness. She flashes in and out of my vision, so high she’s virtually impossible to spot.
Red’s wicked cackle booms through the cavelike expanse, and I wrench my neck to check out the arcade door. Her floral form is taller than Morpheus now. The toys must’ve helped her escape my binds. She uses her snaky arms to propel herself along, lifting her pot and swinging it, reminding me of an orangutan. One of her extra limbs slinks out to catch Jeb. Morpheus encases Red in his blue magic as if in hopes of controlling her like he did the undead toys, but she’s too powerful, and she captures him, as well.
I cry out, sound finally ripping from my throat.
Resolved to help, I wrestle against the agonizing spasms in my back and wing and almost stand but drop down to my stomach again as a prickly hot rush pierces through my vertebrae. Is this how it felt for all those bugs I used to stick with pins?
I whimper—a sorry excuse for a queen, for a daughter, for a girlfriend and a friend. Icy hot spasms travel from my torn wing to every nerve center, shuddering through me in a shock wave. I shiver, my muscles jerking. Water squishes all around me, making me even colder.
My mind numbs. I’m being sucked into unconsciousness, like when the mud swallowed me days ago in my dream. I remember Morpheus’s voice as I was being pulled down. How he told me to find a way out, that I wasn’t alone. And when I reached out to the bugs, I was rescued.
When we arrived at Underland, the insects promised their loyalty and their aid. Call us, they said. So that’s what I do now … I reach for them in my mind, beg them to reawaken the wraiths, because that’s the only way to salvage the human realm.
There’s a whisper of affirmation, barely audible under the loud music, as if bug scouts have been waiting inside Underland for my signal all along. Relief floods me. The ants will fix it. The wraiths will come and take everything back that belongs in Wonderland.
A bitter realization hits. They’ll capture Morpheus, too. He’ll be swept into Wonderland alongside Red. He’ll still be in danger.
“Oh, no,” I mumble and drag myself to a crawling position, shutting out the pain.
High overhead, Sister Two swings stealthily toward Mom’s hovering form.
“Mom!” I yell, but the spidery gardener shoves her off balance before Mom sees her.
Mom plummets toward the pile of haunted toys in the skate bowl, her dress a beautiful cascade of luminous pink against her purplish black silhouette. The crazed toys descend on her.
“Get off of her!” I scream.
A cacophony of wretched, wailing screams drifts from the dance floor, louder than my voice, louder than the static now playing over the intercom. Through the white trees, a portal has opened in one of the mirrors on the wall, and it glows against the darkness. Black oily sludge oozes from the rabbit hole, seeping into our realm. In a blink, they split into phantoms, siphoning into the air like smoke.
They race over me and sniff, their wails splintering through my bones, shaking my wings. They leave their oily marks behind as I cry out and push forward, toward Mom piled under the undead toys. I can’t let the wraiths think she’s one of them. But Jeb and Morpheus need my help, too.
I make the mistake of looking toward the arcade. Red still has the guys wrapped within her leafy arms as Sister Two faces her down. Red uses her extra vines to drag herself toward the tulgey wood, and Sister Two skitters after them—a spider chasing a flower, just like in my mosaic. I gasp, realizing before it happens what Red’s planning to do. Just as Sister Two casts out a net of web to catch Jeb, her prized soul, Red dives into a tulgey tree’s yawning mouth, taking Jeb and Morpheus with her.
They’re gone.
I drop to my stomach, propped on my elbows, slammed with disbelief. Fighting back tears, I stare and wait. “Please don’t come out again … please don’t,” I mumble, unable to fathom a world where Morpheus and Jeb are twisted and mutated like the looking-glass
rejects.
Seconds pass by as long as hours. I clench my eyes closed, fighting against looking. On the inside of my lids I see their faces looming, nightmarishly deformed.
I struggle to breathe.
Driven by the screeches of the wraiths, I open my eyes and exhale. The tree’s mouth has stayed closed. Jeb, Morpheus, and Red are nowhere to be seen. But dread nips at the heels of my relief. Both of them have been accepted at the gate, which means they’re trapped in AnyElsewhere along with thousands of Wonderland criminals.
The wraiths dip and rise overhead, the air so thick with them it’s like a swarm of giant locusts. I can’t undo the horror of Jeb and Mopheus’s fate. I resolve to help them later, promising myself there’s a way—somehow.
For now, my mom’s still in danger.
Heartsick, I creep toward the skate bowl’s edge, unable to see her for all the toys clambering inside. Plucking up the cue she dropped in her fall, I poke at the restless souls. They snarl and part, revealing Mom. Her dress is torn and her mask askew, but she’s conscious. She shoves aside the toys clawing at her and reaches up to catch the stick. Her weight tugs my shoulder, and I grit my teeth against the ripping sensation in my back.
An instant before her hands grip the skate bowl’s edge, she’s caught in a funnel of wailing wraiths swirling around us, sending bloodcurdling screeches and harsh, cold wind over me.
“Stop!” I scream, arms covering my head for protection. “She belongs here!” They ignore me and touch down, funneling into the bowl. I force myself to stand against the agonizing pain.
“Take me, too!” I plead.
The twisting, wailing cloud sucks up everything but me: the glowing tulgey trees, the undead toys holding on to Mom, Sister Two and her spinnerets. I limp toward the mirrored wall as the cyclone filters through the portal, leaving only oily streaks behind.
Hoping to dive inside the glass before the portal closes, I throw myself into the mirror, but it’s too late. I slam the glass just as it’s closing, and the mirror cracks, slicing me, cold and unyielding. All I can do is bleed and watch the nightmare I conjured play out through the broken reflections.
