by ERIN BEDFORD
I frowned at Mop’s pessimism. What kind of ruler would put the blame on the wrong party just so there was someone to blame? I liked the prince less and less.
“So, the symbols are binding him to this place? Who put them there?” My eyes stared out into the darkness surrounding us, ready for anything that might pounce.
“The Queen did.” Mop handed me the lantern as he climbed over a fallen log.
“The Queen? You mean his mother? That’s horrible!” Even my mother for all her faults wouldn’t stoop so low. At least, I hoped not.
“Not our queen. The Seelie Queen.” Mop scoffed like I should have known.
“But why?” I handed the lantern back to him.
“His highness made a mistake, his highness did. His highness is being punished, he is. Just like Trip and Mop are being punished.” Trip’s tail drooped down, his face crestfallen and pathetic.
“What did he do?” I thought back to the despair that lingered on the striking prince’s face. What had made him so sad? Was being trapped here so bad?
“How am I supposed to know? I’m just a brownie, not his royal confidant.” Mop placed his hands on his hips and scowled. “If ye want to know so bad, ask him yer self.”
I so didn’t want to do that. The less time I spent in his royal haughtiness’s presence the better off I would be. My head was hurting from the contradicting information I was getting.
I had a cursed prince. A queen that may or may not be crazy, but not their queen. And not to forget the possibility of losing my head, which was a fate worse than death. Just a typical day in Wonderland – or Underground, whatever this place was.
Bringing my thoughts together, I remembered something else the nasty prince had said. “What day is it?”
“Thursday,” Mop grunted.
I rolled my eyes at his avoidance to my question. “You know what I mean. What did he mean today of all days? What’s so special about today?”
“Oh, that.” The brownie mulled. “It be the anniversary of the princess’s death.”
“And that means?”
“The whole Underground be in a state of mourning.” Mop snorted. “Like we haven’t been mourning for the last century. Life goes on.”
“So, it’s like a national holiday?”
“No, Lady.” Trip tugged on my hand. “No holiday. It’s like…like.” He trailed off, his face scrunched up hard.
“Don’t hurt ye self, Trip,” Mop interrupted. “The whole Underground be under lockdown. We ain’t supposed to be havin’ fun, workin’ or even leavin’ the kingdom.” He glared at Trip for the first time, showing his disapproval of his friend’s adventures in my garden.
“Trip is sorry, Trip is.” The white-furred creature’s ears wilted under Mop’s gaze.
Mop rolled his eyes as if he was used to hearing Trip’s apologies. “Anyway, his highness only be worried ‘cause the queen be blamin’ us UnSeelie for her daughter’s death.” Mop snorted. “Like we be havin’ any say in the matter.”
“How’d she die?”
“Ye’d have to ask his highness that one. It not be my place to tell.” The brownie paused by a tree, looking around for a moment before turning to his left.
“Why’s that?” I hurried to stay close to him. I didn’t want to get lost in the woods. Not that Mop and Trip counted much for protection, but they were all I had and beggars can’t be choosers.
Before Mop could answer there was a loud outcry of laughter over the next brush. Not at all bothered by the insanity we were hearing, Mop lifted his shoulder in a matter-of-fact way. “She be his betrothed, of course. Or was.”
“Of course,” I murmured to myself.
It made sense. The prince would know how his fiancé died, but what didn’t make sense was why the Seelie Queen thought it was the UnSeelie’s fault? Did the prince kill her? With his temper, I could see some kind of domestic abuse going on.
I didn’t understand women who got themselves into those situations. If a man ever tried to hit me he’d have a head full of lead and one less appendage for the afterlife.
I almost ran into Mop when he stopped before a collection of bushes. The laughter around us grew louder and seemed to be coming from beyond the bushes. I was afraid to ask my next question, knowing the answer was probably worse than my imagination.
“Who’s that?”
“Trip’s cousin, it is!” Trip hopped ahead of us, his ears and tail whipping around him. “Come Lady! Hare will help. Yes, Hare will.”
“Hare?” My brow furrowed.
It couldn’t be, could it?
I had all but given up on the idea of Wonderland, especially after Mop’s vicious denial. But if Hare was there, I had no doubt what would be on the other side of those bushes. Nothing good ever came from that scenario.
“Come on before Trip hurts himself.” Mop waved me over to the brush.
I hesitated as another round of maniacal laughter filled the air. A sense of foreboding washed over me. What was I getting myself into?
6
Have Some Tea
THE MOMENT I pushed through the bushes the manic laughter came to a screeching halt. It was quiet enough that I could hear my own heart beating in my chest. After a moment of intense observation, the crazed laughter began again as if I had never interrupted it.
The laughter was coming from the tea party’s three occupants. Though, the rest of the woods were covered in a dense fog, it seemed to cut off right at the edge of the dimly lit dining table. There were eight chairs around the table, all mismatched and looking very much out of place in the middle of the forest.
Trip and Mop stopped next to the head of the table where a creature who could have been Trip’s twin, save for the bloodshot eyes and red-tinged fur, sat on the right hand side. I had to assume the doppelganger was Trip’s cousin, Hare.
The other two occupants of the table were just as bizarre as my own companions. A child-sized bat with wings that twinkled in the light sat at one end of the table. He had a clawed pinky up in the air as he sipped from a cracked tea cup. Curious eyes watched me as I moved around the table. I found it oddly amusing that the bat felt the need to show such decorum at a tea party full of mismatched cups and a moth-eaten, stained tablecloth. Who was he trying to impress?
The bat’s neighbor had no such illusions of grandeur. Next to the bat, at the end of the table, was a mouse the size of a full-grown bulldog picking its nose. It twitched said nose at me before opening a blue door latched to the front of its body. Its heart visibly thudded as he scratched his small intestine with one of his paws. A small alarming sound came out of me when he reached between his stomach and diaphragm to pull out a cup and saucer. His little black eyes glinted as his companions and he cackled at my horror.
Letting out a shaky breath, I plopped down in a chair next to Hare. My stomach gave an unhappy grumble. I’d never been one for blood and guts. My friend’s delivery room was as close to carnage as I had allowed myself, and that had been pushing it.
“So you two are cousins?” I let out a nervous laugh, trying to distract myself from what I’d seen. “What exactly are you anyway?”
Unlike Trip, whose demeanor was more child-like, Hare couldn’t have been more different. There was something disturbing about the way his bloodshot eyes gazed at me like he was wondering what my insides tasted like.
“Trip and Hare is opalaughts.” Trip’s tail swished back and forth behind him. I couldn’t see Hare’s tail to see if he was as happy as Trip was to see him, but if it was anything like his partially chewed ears, I didn’t think I wanted to.
“Hop-a-lots? Because you’re like rabbits?” My eyes questioned the unusually quiet Mop, who only shrugged his small shoulders and slumped down further into his chair. What was his problem?
“No, no. Not hop-a-lots! Opalaughts. And Trip not like rabbit at all, Trip is not.” Trip crawled into the chair across from me and grabbed a moldy looking sandwich off the table.
Seriously? Didn’t they ha
ve any normal food? My stomach rolled as Trip munched on his sandwich. Red goop that vaguely resembled blood oozed out of the sides. On second thought, even if they did, I didn’t think I could eat any of it. The thought of eating alone made me want to hurl.
Holding back the bile that had built up in my throat, I choked out, “But you eat carrots like rabbits.”
“Not the same.” When Hare smiled, his sharpened canines peeked out of his mouth. He pushed a plate of sandwiches toward me.
I gave into the urge to lift the edge of the sandwich and immediately wished I hadn’t. The red ooze coming out of Trip’s sandwich was indeed blood. It was gelled around chunks of some kind of raw meat. What kind of meat? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, but my stomach decided it had had enough. I covered my mouth and dashed for the bushes, the door mouse and bat chattering behind me.
“Oh, what a shame.”
“Not very tame.”
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, pulling my hair off of my neck. Still a bit shaky, I walked back to the table and grabbed the nearest chair, which ended up being at the head of the table. Before I could even sit down, Hare jumped up on the table, his grungy fur standing on end as he hissed at me.
"No! Not there."
"Hatter's chair!" The door mouse growled, gripping his edge of the table.
The bat didn’t seem very interested but said his part anyway, "It's not really fair."
"Okay." I drew out the word holding my hands up in defense. "I'll just go sit back over there." All the rhyming was making my head hurt. Once I was seated again, Hare nudged a cracked pink tea cup and saucer toward me.
"Here, have some tea."
I held the cup between my fingers and sniffed its contents. It smelled like normal tea, but then again, nothing here was normal. I brought the cup to my lips but paused when the other two didn’t pipe in. Their eyes were focused on the cup in my hand as if waiting for something. I sat the cup back down on its saucer, suspicion rearing its ugly head.
The door mouse took a sip of his own tea and gestured to mine. "It’s really lovely tea!"
"So sleepy you will be." The bat yawned beside me.
There it was. The little cretins were trying to roofie me! I shoved the cup as far from me as possible while trying to keep my anger under control. Keep calm. Don’t antagonize the animals, Kat.
"No, thank you," I said through clenched teeth.
"No, no. You must have some tea!" Hare pushed the cup toward me again, his eyes demanding me to do as he said.
"It'd be rude, you see!"
"Eaten you will be!"
Mouse and Hare glared at the bat. Who yawned and ate a sandwich from one of the plates, unaware of his companions’ ire.
"Stop it, ye rhymin' buffoons." Mop finally jumped in, shoving Hare away. "She don't want no stinkin' tea. She just needs the key. Blast it! Now I be doin' it!"
“What key?” Hare went back to sipping his teas as if they hadn’t just tried to poison me.
“Not that key?” Dubious eyes glanced at one another around the table.
“Where could it be?” The bat barked out laughing, causing the other two to join him until the entire clearing was filled with that uncanny fanatic laughter.
There was no question they were all mad. No way did I trust their word on anything. Unfortunately, I was out of my element and didn’t have much choice but to follow Mop and Trip’s lead. So if Mop said I needed a key, then I was going to get that key.
I grabbed Hare by the ears, startling the opalaught into silence. Giving him my best scowl, I brought him up to eye level. This was my ‘I wasn’t going to deal with anymore of his bullshit’ glare that I liked to use on the pre-teens at work when they started to get too obnoxious. It worked like a charm. I just hoped it worked as well on Fae as it did thirteen-year-old teenagers.
“We need that key.” I gnashed my teeth at him.
“We don’t have the key.” Hare glared back at me, not at all intimidated. Maybe my scowl needed some work.
“Key’s not here, you see.”
“I know,” I interjected before the bat could jump in with his part. “You said all that. If it’s not here, then where is it?”
Hare exchanged a look with his tablemates as confusion filled their faces. “No key since she.”
“Yes, she had the key!” Mouse waved his chipped cup in an exaggerated manner.
“Alice! Alice! She be!”
“There’s that damn name again. Do ye wanna lose ye heads too?” Mop’s warning had the opposite effect on the demented Fae around us.
“Head! Head! Alice lost her head!” Hare threw his body so he swung back and forth in my hand, making my arm hurt enough to drop him.
“Who needs a head?” Mouse cackled.
“Maybe he’ll take yours instead!”
“What do we do now?” I grabbed my hair in my hands, yanking on it. “We can’t just stay here.”
The forest wasn’t particularly homey, and I couldn’t imagine staying here with these loons. It was worse than my sister’s sorority house. I would rather roofie myself.
“Now hold ye horses. We just need to be findin’ her to get the key.” Mop plopped down in a chair with a thump.
“Her? But I thought she lost her head? How is a dead girl going to help?” I had a horrid thought. “We aren’t going to rob her grave are we?”
“Don’t be stupid. No one said she was dead.” Mop sniffed.
“Where I come from you can’t be alive without a head.” I pointed out to them, the very thought of a headless Alice gave me the creeps.
Trip giggled in his seat. “Lady forgets where Lady is. Lady is only human in Underground, Lady is.”
“Only human!” Hare giggled, his companions following along.
“We like human!”
“Taste nice with cumin.”
“Is ye stomach the only thing ye can think ‘bout?” Mop paused when a hoot broke through the trees and Mr. Blue Eyes landed on a branch near us. “He already knows she be here. We need to get her outta here before the queen be findin’ out too.”
Without warning, Mop jumped up onto the table and grabbed the tea pot. I could feel the air around the party thicken as Mop held the pot high above his head. Bloodshot and beady eyes alike pinned to the kettle in Mop’s hands.
“Tell me where she be or ye will get no more tea!” Mop grimaced when his words once again came out in rhyme.
A collective outcry was heard around the table as they all began talking at once. It would have been funny except for the wildness that appeared in their eyes at the thought of losing their precious tea. I thought I was addicted to caffeine.
“Hold on, hold on! Don’t be talkin’ all at once!” Mop held the pot in one hand and pointed at the bat. “You! Twinkle!”
Of course. Why wouldn’t a bat be named Twinkle? I couldn’t help but snicker at the name, earning me a glare from Twinkle.
“Yes?” If his eyes were not focusing on the pot with such intensity, I would have said he was bored.
“Where be…” Mop lowered his voice, his eyes looking back and forth for eavesdroppers. “…Alice?”
“We don’t know.”
I waited for the chime of the rhyming that usually followed but was disappointed when there was none. Maybe it was only a game? Were they only serious when there was something to lose?
“Fartnarkles.” Mop let out an aggravated breath.
We weren’t getting anywhere. I leaned on the arm of my chair, my eyes wandering around the table. Finally, they landed on the largest chair at the head of the table – Hatter’s chair.
“Where’s the Hatter?”
My question caused Hare’s grungy ears to perk up at my question. “He knows! He knows!”
“Who? The Hatter?”
“Yes, yes!” The Hare bounced onto the table, eager eyes on the pot in Mop’s grasp.
“Well, where’d he go?” Mop tightened his grip on the pot at the opalaught’s presence. His dark eyes fille
d with panic when the other two party goers joined him on the table. They stalked Mop, their eyes becoming fiercer the closer they came.
“To get some more tea!”
“Yes. He had to pay the fee!” Mouse licked his chops as they closed in on the brownie.
“Got lost in the foggy sea!” Twinkle exclaimed just before they pounced.
I cackled at the scuffle on the table. Small legs and arms were thrown everywhere as they tried to get a hand on the tea pot. I should have stopped them, I really should have, but instead I found myself laughing at the sight.
“Get off me ye rodent!” Mop shoved them back while trying to keep the tea pot out of their reach. His desperate eyes pinned on me. “Whatcha smilin’ at? Help me!”
Smiling?
I frowned as I realized I had been smiling. It wasn’t amusing. I didn’t find other’s suffering funny. For just a brief second I found myself wondering what would happen if I let them have him. Would they eat him up? String him by his feet as they drained him of his fluids to make their precious tea?
I frowned harder, shaking my head. Those weren’t my thoughts. What was wrong with me?
“Lady.” Trip pulled on the sleeve of my sweatshirt. “Lady needs Mop to find the Hatter, Lady does.”
Uncrossing my legs, I sighed. Though I was weirdly enjoying their fighting over the mysterious tea, I still needed the grumpy little man. I reached a hand into the pile that had become their bodies and grabbed a hold of the first red clothes I could see.
I pulled Mop out of the pile of hissing creatures and set him down on the ground. Mop swept up his hat that had fallen off in the fray and tugged it back onto his head. The rest of the pile never even noticed his absence. They were too busy playing a game of tug of war over the tea pot. It seemed like the door mouse was going to win before Hare snatched it away and hopped back to his seat.
“My tea!”
“Almost my tea!” The door mouse sulked back to his own chair, his rhyme less enthused than it was before.
“Curses on thee!” Twinkle glared at Hare, who sat in a triumphant glow, stroking the pot with a paw.
