by Eva Chase
“People of Wonderland,” I said steadily but gently. “Remember what matters to you. Remember yourselves. Come through the fog and back to me.”
The ruby’s glow grew, filling my eyes and spilling out across the street. My breath caught with the energy streaming through that light. Gasps and startled cries sounded all down the street.
When the light faded, I peered, blinking, at the Clubbers it had touched. They were staring around, bewildered but present, like the woman I’d woken up by the jabberwock. A rush of triumph filled my chest. As the Spades started answering their barrage of questions, I spun around to face the three men who’d followed me this far.
“Is there somewhere we could get to quickly where we could ambush just a few guards?”
Chess’s eyebrows leapt up. “And where will you go with them after you get them?”
Theo considered my scepter, his gaze going thoughtful. When he spoke up, I knew he’d guessed my intention. “Is there any particular kind of guard you want to ambush?”
I dropped my voice, not wanting to get any hopes up outside our small circle in case this gambit didn’t work. “I want to see what this scepter’s magic can do for a pearl-head.”
Hatter stared at me for a second. “You think—” He shook his head. “No. Their minds are gone. There’s no one there to save.”
“Maybe not, but we won’t know that for sure until we try. Do you have any idea how pearling even works?”
“There’s some kind of magic to it, but no, I’ve got no idea how it all comes together,” he admitted.
“Then there’s a chance I can help them,” I said. “And even if I can’t bring back any of the people they used to be… at least I can try to wipe the Queen of Hearts’ influence from their minds. Free them from serving her.”
Theo nodded. “It’s worth a try. It could make a huge difference in our plans. Come on. I think I know a spot where they’ll be stationed. We don’t want to lose much time to this.”
The Queen’s deadline was hanging over all our heads, but mine especially, if I wanted to make sure my mother and my best friend kept their heads. I dragged in a breath. “You show me the way. Chess, why don’t you come too in case we need help grabbing the one I’m going to try to wake up? Hatter, can you see if we can equip the people still willing to fight for us with some better armor in the meantime? You’ve got to have some good helmet techniques up your sleeve at least.”
Hatter’s mouth quirked upward. “I might have an idea or two. Don’t get up to anything too exciting without me.”
“I’ll be right back.” I stepped in to give him a quick kiss as if to make those words a promise.
Chess set off with a bounce in his step as if he was eager to get back into action. “Where are we off to, Whi—ah, Theo?”
“Through the forest,” Theo said with a sweeping motion. “I know some of the favorite posts outside the palace grounds.”
We stayed quiet as we moved between the trees. When we got close to the spot Theo expected to find guards on the look-out, he sent Chess ahead invisibly to scope out the lay of the land. Chess returned after a few minutes with a smirk.
“Three of them,” he murmured to us. “One a pearl-head. What are we going to do with the other two while our queen is working her magic on him?”
Theo smiled. “I’m sure between the two of us we can come up with something.”
“Don’t hurt them any more than you need to,” I reminded them. “We’re trying to set the opposite example from the current rule.”
Chess saluted me, and Theo pulled a length of metallic rope from his pocket. The two of them set off ahead of me. I trailed along behind, waiting for my turn to play a part. Stealthy attacks didn’t seem to correspond with any of my queenly powers. I guessed it’d be a little much if I had the magic to handle every situation in the world.
Was it possible my scepter might bring back the people who’d lost their heads and then been pearled? Hope fluttered through my heart. If I could manage that, then all the innocent people the Queen had ordered taken and killed for her use—I could restore them to the friends and family they’d been stolen from. I could give them their lives back.
Theo and Chess sprang forward. There was a thump and a grunt, followed by a brief rustling. When I reached the guard post, two men who looked fully conscious sat against a tree trunk, gagged and wrists bound, another loop of rope around their chests tying them in to the tree. Other than a red mark on the verge of a bruise on one’s forehead, they didn’t appear to have suffered much damage.
Chess was holding the arms of the pearl-headed guard, his hand clamped over the man’s mouth. From the puff of the young guy’s cheeks, he was trying to yell anyway. His gaze floated dimly over us, his body jerking with a repetitive attempt to dislodge his captor.
My throat constricted. He barely understood what was happening, clearly—he was simply following the orders the Queen had given him as well as he could. No thought seemed to pass behind those glazed eyes. He might as well have been an actual pearl for all the independent consciousness he showed.
There was no point in prolonging his distress. We led him several paces away where the other guards couldn’t observe us. Then I drew out my scepter and held the ruby level with his eyes. All the longing in me to undo the damage the Queen had done to him radiated through me into the warm wood in my hand. The ruby lit up with its soft glow.
“What the Queen of Hearts said, it can leave your mind,” I said. “You don’t need to follow her orders or those of her men. You can be who you were before. Follow who you want to follow. Everything they told you, everything they commanded you to do, let it fall away.”
The pearl-headed man’s body gradually relaxed. Chess eased up his hold, and the guy stood there without any resistance. He pursed his lips but didn’t speak when Chess removed his hand. His eyes still looked glazed, but not quite as blankly as before. Or maybe that was just my wishful thinking.
“Hey,” I said, lowering the scepter to my side. “Do you know who you are? What’s your name?”
The man’s eyelids twitched. He focused on me as if he were seeing me from a great distance away. “Name,” he repeated slowly. “I— Who are you?”
“I’m the Red Queen,” I said. “The rightful ruler of Wonderland.”
His face brightened. “You are the one I should listen to. I hear it—I feel it.”
He still sounded pretty vague. My stomach tightened. “I’m not going to order you to do anything. I just wanted you to be free. The Queen of Hearts was treating you like a slave. Do you remember anything from before? You probably lived in the city once…” I didn’t know whether he was one of the recent people she’d snatched or someone who’d served her for a while.
His head drifted from one side to the other. “I saw a yellow house,” he said dreamily. “I liked it. And there was… chocolate?” A pleased chuckle escaped his lips.
Theo and Chess exchanged a glance. My heart sank. Maybe there were a few fragments of the man this guy used to be that had survived the pearling process, but no more than that.
I wasn’t bringing anyone back, not really.
But I’d still broken him from his subservience to the Queen. He was no longer her slave. And if I could do that with him…
“Come on,” I said, giving him a gentle nudge. “Let’s get you someplace safer.”
“You accomplished the most important part,” Theo said as we started walking. “He is free.”
“And I can free the others. A lot of the Queen’s army is made of pearl-heads now.” How far could the scepter’s glow reach? I guessed I was going to find out. “That’ll make the battle easier, but it doesn’t solve all of our problems.”
“No,” Theo said. “But it’s given me an idea. And seeing you with the jabberwock gave me another one. Let’s see if I can’t invent our way to victory one last time.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Hatter
“It doesn’t seem quite right th
at you all have turned out to be more mad than I ever was,” I said, eyeing the beast that Theo had just presented me with on the outskirts of the city.
Jabberwocks weren’t the most reassuring sight on the best of days. The creature’s red and gold feathers ruffled as it shifted its considerable weight, its searing violet eyes watching me from far over my head. I caught a whiff of its sour, meaty breath. But the worst part about the sight in front of me was the broad, metal-framed strips of fabric that Theo had slid over the creature’s stumpy natural wings and strapped around its broad chest. It flapped them tentatively as I watched.
“The line between brilliance and madness is rather thin, in my experience,” Theo said with a crooked smile. “It doesn’t seem to mind.”
“Do the wings actually work?” I asked, even though I found it hard to believe we’d be standing here discussing this in the first place if he hadn’t tested and confirmed as much already. “Can the beast fly?”
“We took a few trial runs over the mushroom stands once it got dark,” Theo said. “I’m not sure how long the contraptions will last, but we don’t need it to fly a marathon. Maybe ten minutes to fly to and around the palace, a matter of seconds to pull off the rescue—I expect it to go off without a hitch.”
“Easy for you to say when you’re not the one who’ll be riding on it,” I muttered. I would have asked why me, but I already knew that too. I was Hatter of the nimble fingers. If anyone was going to snatch Lyssa’s loved ones to safety in time, it was me.
I just hadn’t been counting on doing it from the back of a monster that had only just discovered proper flight.
“There are additional straps attached to the ones holding the artificial wings in place.” Theo pointed. “You can wrap them around your legs to keep you secure, so you won’t have to worry about falling when you let go with your hands. The loose straps at the back are for your passengers. Lyssa has told the jabberwock to listen to you. The rest of the plan is as we discussed with the group.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and eyed the creature. “You’re going to let me be the boss, huh?” I said to it. “Even without a fancy scepter? Let’s see that head of yours down here where I can look at you face to face, then.”
Even though I’d seen how well Lyssa could persuade the creatures, my pulse leapt with a hint of surprise when the jabberwock lowered its snout to my level. It cocked its head to one side and clicked its jagged teeth together with a sound that wasn’t exactly reassuring.
“Good… boy,” I said, and patted it on the muzzle the way I’d seen Lyssa do. “We’ve got an important job to do for our queen. We’ll make sure we pull it off, you hear?”
The jabberwock emitted a huff that suggested it thought I was a lot more likely to screw this mission up than it was and hunkered down on its belly, ready for me to clamber on.
We had to get going soon. The sliver of a moon was high in the night sky, the air cooling around us. Only two hours remained before the Queen of Hearts’ deadline.
If we couldn’t pull this attempt off, we weren’t going to get another chance.
“We should be ready to move out in ten minutes,” Theo said. “If you’re ready.”
I made myself nod. I’d be ready. This was what Lyssa needed from me. And maybe it wasn’t all that much madder than some of my exploits way back when.
“I suppose this is payback for turning my back on you and the Spades for the last twelve years,” I said, raising an eyebrow at Theo.
He gave me that crooked smile again. I trusted it more than the smooth, confident one he’d always put on in his role as the White Knight. A princely smile, it’d been—I must have sensed it even if I hadn’t known enough to consciously recognize what it meant.
“You’re the best man for the job, Hatter,” he said. “And even if I did think from time to time that you’d made the wrong decision by backing away from the Spades… that wasn’t really my call to make. I didn’t understand the position you were in.”
I wasn’t sure what to make of that admission. “And you do now?”
Theo glanced toward the city. “Until recently, I never had anyone that mattered to me as much as Wonderland did. I couldn’t imagine putting anything else first.” His gaze slid back to me. “Now I know what it’s like to want to protect someone with all of your being. I’m not going to tell you that being a great father was less important than being a great Spade.”
There was no denying the earnestness in his words. If I’d had any lingering doubts about his intentions toward Lyssa, they disintegrated in that instant.
I tipped my head in acknowledgment. “And sometimes, on the other hand, what or who you care about means you end up taking some crazy risks trying to make things better for them. It’s easier for me to see now why you felt so much urgency about setting Wonderland right.”
“Yes. I suppose we both know a lot more than we did back then.”
The jabberwock shifted its weight impatiently. I looked up at it, and my throat constricted. “If this goes wrong somehow, you’ll watch out for Doria? I know she doesn’t need someone at her heels every second, but just, in general…”
“Of course,” Theo said, sounding honestly startled. “You don’t even have to ask that.”
I exhaled. “Okay. Good.”
He clapped me on the back and wished me luck before he left, and that felt just about right. I patted the jabberwock’s neck and pondered whether I wanted to get settled on its back just yet or to wait until the last minute when the signal came. I hadn’t quite decided when the rasp of footsteps sounded on the cobblestones.
Lyssa emerged from one of the side streets, sword at her hip and scepter at her back, the rubies on her armored vest gleaming as bright as her blue eyes. So much power emanated from her stride that my heart skipped a beat, watching her approach. I tugged at my hat with a fidgety twitch of my fingers.
“Shouldn’t you be off preparing for your part in this grand battle?” I said lightly.
“I think we’re as prepared as anyone could be,” Lyssa said. “You didn’t know exactly what you were signing up for. Are you okay with this?” She nodded to the jabberwock.
Did she really think I was going to say no at this late hour? The idea seemed absurd, and yet at the same time I was sure she’d accept it if I did. I forced a smile.
“I’ve got to remind everyone why I’m Mad Hatter, don’t I?”
I obviously hadn’t completely erased my nerves from my voice. Lyssa peered at me in the dim glow that seeped from the lamps on the streets behind her. “All you have to do is scatter the guards around the hostages and get the three of them onto the jabberwock, and then get the hell out of there. We’ll take care of the rest. I’ll have your back.”
Those last words reminded me of Chess’s comments. My smile relaxed a little. “And I’ll have yours.”
She stepped closer, her hand coming up to curl around my tie the way she’d grasped it the first time she’d kissed me, the way that made my heart thump harder in an instant. “I also remembered that the last time I kissed you for good luck, things turned out pretty much perfectly. Let’s see if we can pull that off again.”
I didn’t need more invitation than that. I slipped my arm around her and tugged her to me, and for a few seconds everything was her fresh sweet smell and the hint of the tea we’d drunk during that last meeting, sharp and hot on her lips. Hearts take me, I’d ride a hundred jabberwocks if I got moments like this in between.
She pulled back reluctantly. “I’d better get back. I’ll see you after it’s over.”
“Let’s make that a promise,” I said.
When she’d jogged back to where the rest of our sort-of army was preparing, I finally gathered my courage and scrambled up to my perch between the jabberwock’s extended wings. The straps Theo had pointed out weren’t hard to fix in place. I secured my legs, trying not to think of the possible negative consequences of being strapped to a deadly fire-breathing monster.
“F
ucking wow,” a voice murmured as I finished up. Doria eased out of the shadows where she must have been lurking. Her eyes were round as she took in me and the beast I was perched on. “I thought they were kidding. You’re really topping your old exploits, aren’t you, Pops.”
My fingers tightened around the feathers between my mount’s shoulders. “I wouldn’t get too close, Mouse.”
She let out a faint laugh. “I’m good here. I just wanted to see… And I figured someone should tell you to be careful. Since that strategy always worked so well with me.”
I couldn’t contain a laugh of my own. “So it did. Worried about your old man, are you?”
She crossed her skinny arms over her chest, hugging herself. “I’m allowed to, right? It can go both ways.”
How long had she been watching—and listening? Had she heard my comment to Theo about watching out for her?
“Doria,” I started.
“I’m going to do that,” she said before I could go on, with a familiar defiant raise of her chin. “I’m going to worry about you too. And… maybe sometimes it’s nice to know you’re around to worry about me, even if it bugs me in the moment. Okay?”
I wished I wasn’t up here in this ridiculous saddle so I could have hugged her if she’d let me. I had to settle for smiling with all the fatherly fondness I had in me. “I’ll remind you that you said that the next time you complain.”
She wrinkled her nose at me, but she was smiling too.
The first chime rang out. Doria glanced toward the city where the others had assembled and back at me. “I’ll see you out there. Good luck!”
“To you too,” I called after her as she darted away. I’ll only take as much as you can spare. Then I tapped the jabberwock’s shoulder, and it pushed onto its feet. “Almost our time.”
It answered with a little snort and a puff of smoke.
