Elizabeth took a deep breath and stood up. She tried very hard not to think of the brightness of her blue dress or the very golden strands of her hair, because if she did she might suddenly become more conspicuous.
Ah! That’s it!
She didn’t need to make herself invisible. She only needed to make sure no one noticed her, and that wasn’t the same thing at all.
Most of the activity in the square was on the opposite side from the fruit cart. There were two possible exits—a cobblestoned road that led away to Elizabeth’s left, and a narrow alley opening almost exactly across from her. The alley was set diagonally from where she stood, so she couldn’t see into it or see how long it was.
The road would leave her dangerously exposed if the spell wore off. The route to the alley would put her directly in the thick of the crowds, and Elizabeth did not fancy getting trapped in another tunnel. What if there was no exit at the other side?
No, she would have to risk the road. At least she knew there would be somewhere to run—if running became necessary, which she sincerely hoped it would not, for Elizabeth felt she’d had her fill of running for one lifetime. She was not, she decided, a running sort of person. She was a sit-quietly-with-tea-and-cakes sort of person.
It was good to know what sort of person you were, she reflected as she eased around the fruit cart and stepped out onto the road. It helped you save a lot of fuss and bother trying things that you wouldn’t like in the first place.
As she walked Elizabeth thought, You can’t see me, you don’t notice me, there’s nothing here but a bit of air.
And it did seem that it was working. Not one of the many people gathered in the square appeared to see her at all.
“Be careful,” the mouse whispered. “Be so very careful.”
She didn’t respond because she thought it might draw attention to her, and if someone noticed her voice they might notice her self. It was quite irritating, the way the mouse kept presuming to instruct her on things she already knew. And she half suspected that it had spoken only because it knew she wouldn’t speak back just then.
Two men suddenly broke away from the pack, shouting and laughing. Elizabeth saw them out of the corner of her eye, reeling along and leaning on each other.
Clearly they’ve overimbibed spirits, she thought disdainfully. She wasn’t entirely certain what spirits were, but she knew that they made people smell terrible and do uncharacteristic things.
She’d overheard one of the kitchen maids, Fiona, talking about “my Bert” and the things he did when he had too many glasses of spirits. Bert was one of the stable boys—well, stable men, if Elizabeth was truthful, though they were always referred to as “boys.” Elizabeth had snuck into the kitchen to see if she could wheedle an extra cream puff from the cook.
She’d come upon Fiona and Cook sitting at the large table where Cook made pies and cakes. Fiona was crying and she had a black bruise around her eye and Cook was holding her hand and saying soothing things. Elizabeth had decided that was not the correct time to ask for an illicit snack and quietly retreated before either of them noticed her.
The two drunken men staggered about in a crooked line, and Elizabeth had a job avoiding them. Every time she thought she’d gone past them they seemed to reappear beside her, leaning this way and that. She didn’t want to run—for she was not a runner, as she had decided, and also because the heels of her shoes would make quite a lot of noise—and she was trying to balance brisk walking with silence.
One of the men reached out, gesturing wildly, and his fingertips brushed against the ribbons tied in her hair.
Elizabeth gasped—she couldn’t help it—and then thought quickly, You don’t see me, you can’t see me, there was nothing there, only your imagination.
The man staggered to a halt, so Elizabeth hurried on ahead of him. She heard him say to his friend, “Thought I touched something just now. Like a girl’s hair,” and his friend responded, “That’s wishful thinking, Ed.”
“But I heard her,” Ed protested. “She made a little noise, like.”
Elizabeth didn’t stay to hear the remainder of the conversation. The important thing was to get away.
The street that Elizabeth followed didn’t seem to be that much better than the square she’d just left. There were a few more-respectable businesses—pubs and bookshops and tailors and things—but just as many of those were houses where women lurked in their smallclothes and gazed at everyone passing with eyes that lured.
There was another odd thing, too—the street seemed to be stained red, especially along the curbs.
Almost as if a river of red had run along there, and left evidence of itself behind.
This thought was followed immediately by I must get home, where the only red things are my mother’s roses or the red ribbons for my hair.
She walked along, growing increasingly desperate. She didn’t think she’d gotten that far away from the New City but the towering structures of this place made it impossible to see what direction she ought to go in. It seemed far too risky to ask someone for help, and she hadn’t seen anything resembling a cab.
If she didn’t find her way out of here soon then she would still be in the Old City when night fell, and Elizabeth knew enough to know that would Not Be a Good Thing.
Just then something snagged her attention, made her stop in the middle of the street and turn her head.
“What is it?” the mouse whispered. He had been silent for some time.
She didn’t answer. She was trying to see if she’d only imagined the thing she thought she saw.
It was purple, whatever it was, and it was at the end of a little alley that she could see into from where she stood. The object seemed to sparkle, to wink, to wave at Elizabeth, but she couldn’t quite bring it into focus. The alley was shadowed, though not as dark as the tunnel that had trapped her. Elizabeth could clearly see the T-junction at the end of it, so even if she went into the alley there would be a way out.
And she did want to go in the alley, despite her previous conviction that it would not be a good idea to find herself trapped again (once was really enough for one day). The purple sparkling thing seemed to call her. It tugged under her ribs, made her move toward it without any sense of why she would do such a thing.
“Elizabeth!” the mouse said.
She didn’t pay the mouse any mind, because she thought the creature was chiding her for heading off course.
Then the man’s arms closed around her, vines that twined and pulled tight and his breath was hot and crooning in her ear.
“Look at this prize I’ve found just for me. Look at this lovely creature so sweet, so sweet, just waiting to be soured.”
He picked her right up off the street like she was nothing but a bit of flour-sacking and he squeezed her so hard that the scream in her lungs was choked away.
What happened what happened how did he see me how did he know oh I know I think that my magic wore off because I was distracted just like a silly magpie by shiny things
(Panic won’t help you, Elizabeth.)
There it was again, that big-sister voice. And it was so firm and clear that Elizabeth calmed immediately. Once she was calm it was easier to think how to escape.
First she needed to get out of the man’s grip. Then she had to run away fast enough that he couldn’t catch her again.
Oh, running, I’d rather not run again, all I’ve done since I left the Great Square is run.
The man paused, shifting her in his grip. Elizabeth kicked back and the hard soles of her shoes connected to his soft flesh. He cried out in anger, but he didn’t drop her, as she’d hoped. Instead his arms seemed to pull tighter, like a noose closing around her.
“Try that again and you won’t like what I do, my lovely creature.”
Elizabeth would not like anything he did—she was very certai
n of that. And she had a feeling that once she was inside his hidey-hole that she would be gone forever, just a foolish little girl who went following her curiosity and came to a bad end.
She had to force him to release her. She’d done it before, when she was in the tunnel. The man who’d grabbed her then had screamed that she’d done something to his hands. The only trouble was that she didn’t know what she’d done and it was hard to think while this other man held her so tight and her head was bouncing all around.
Hurt him.
This wasn’t the big-sister voice, or the other Voice, or even a whisper from the mouse in her pocket (who seemed to have gone quiet now that she was in actual peril, or perhaps he’d just fallen out and been crushed by someone’s boot). This was Elizabeth’s own thought, and as soon as it occurred to her that thought scorched through her like a flame.
A flame, yes, I’m a burning flame and the fire doesn’t hurt me but it hurts him, it’s making him smoke and burn.
And then she could smell it, the horrible stench of cooking flesh, and the man screamed and dropped her to the ground. She fell heavily and rolled to her side, hurting all over and trying to catch the breath he’d just about squashed out of her.
The man danced in place, flames rising from his arms where they had held her tight and licking over his torso where he’d pressed her against his chest. A crowd had gathered, people pouring out of the buildings nearby or clustering around him from the street. None of them seemed to notice her lying on the ground and she rolled away to avoid their feet.
Elizabeth scrambled up, trying to get her bearings. She didn’t think the man had brought her very far but it was vital that she not simply dart off in any direction. If she did that she might end up back in that horrible square and she didn’t think she had it in her to make the invisibility spell again.
The smell of the man burning alive made her feel sick and confused. Elizabeth knew he meant to hurt her, that if she hadn’t stopped him he would have done something terrible to her and she had every right to stop him from doing that.
But he was dying now, dying because of her, and that wasn’t a very comfortable feeling for a small girl to have.
She couldn’t see him through the tangled mass of people but she could hear him and suddenly his screams were no longer simply shrieks of pain but words.
“You’re not a lovely creature at all! Not at all! And no prize but a punishment! You’re a very naughty, naughty little girl!”
Strangely, his words made her feel better. No prize but a punishment. Yes, Elizabeth found she rather liked the idea of being a punishment to any man who dared treat her like a doll to be collected.
I’ll remember that, she thought fiercely. I’m nobody’s prize, and I never will be.
And then she heard the calling of the sparkling thing again. For a moment she hesitated, resisting. What good would it do to find out what the thing was? How could it help her get home again?
It might, though. You might walk toward it and discover that the path back to the New City is just around the bend of that alley, and the sparkling thing your guide, like the North Star.
If Elizabeth were truly honest with herself she’d admit that she just wanted to know what it was, just like she’d wanted to know what the bird-man looked like. She couldn’t help it. If she turned away from the call of the winking purple object at the end of that alley it would only haunt her endlessly, become a scabbed-over wound that she’d worry and pick at in her mind.
This was her weakness. She needed to know. She could never be content with not knowing.
But it felt different now, less like the call was luring her into a trance, as it had before. Elizabeth was very confident that this was her choice.
She felt more confident altogether. She didn’t fear the gaze of the adults that brushed past her, because if one of them touched her she would set them on fire like she had the man who’d tried to kidnap her. Yes, she would do that. She wasn’t afraid.
I am a lovely creature, she thought. A creature made of bone and gold and flame, and no one can harm me.
I’m not like that man in the tunnel said. I’m not an Alice at all.
“Where are you going?”
The question startled her, for at first she thought it came from one of the many people passing her, but then she remembered the mouse. Elizabeth glanced down at her pocket and saw the mouse glaring up at her with those disconcerting colored eyes. Mice shouldn’t have eyes like that. Mice probably shouldn’t talk, either.
“I thought you wanted to get out of the Old City,” the mouse said.
“I do.”
“Then you are certainly going the wrong way,” the mouse said. “That way is back to the square you just came from.”
“I know.”
“Where are you off to then, little Alice?”
“I’m not Alice,” Elizabeth said, but absently. She was listening for the singing call of the sparkling purple thing. She thought it might be a jewel. Only jewels glittered like that.
Then the alley was there before her—an innocuous-looking path between two buildings.
Just like the one in the New City, where you saw the man with the bird-tail.
The man with the bird-tail seemed so far away now, a thing that had happened long ago to another girl called Elizabeth.
She was vaguely aware that she was drawing attention now. There were eyes on her, eyes that contemplated and coveted.
Those eyes did not concern her. Elizabeth wasn’t going to be captured again. The only concern of her heart and mind was finding that sparkling purple jewel. And unlike the man with the bird-tail it couldn’t run away from her.
Elizabeth stepped into the alley.
“No, I don’t think you ought to do that,” the mouse said, and there was a definite note of alarm in his voice. “That is nothing a little girl should want to meddle with.”
She heard the mouse’s words, but the sense of them rolled off her and fell to the ground. The alley was cool and shadowed but not as deeply dark as the tunnel. Elizabeth could see the shapes of the bricks in the walls, the faint grey-white mortar that held them together. There was no one in the alley except her.
The jewel would belong to Elizabeth alone.
The noise of the street faded away almost instantly as she walked toward the purple object. It wasn’t just singing to her now—it was waving, almost frantically. It was sending a signal that only she could decipher.
No one can hear it but me. Nobody knows about it except me.
But that assertion was disproved immediately, because the mouse said, “You stay away from that thing, Elizabeth Violet Hargreaves.”
Names have power, especially when you’re only nine years old. Whenever Elizabeth heard someone say her whole name with that kind of authority something inside her would quail, because it usually meant she’d done something wrong and a grown-up had discovered her perfidy.
When the mouse said all of her names it made her halt in the way nothing else could have done. It broke the spell of the song.
She was very angry then, and when she spoke to the mouse she couldn’t hide her temper.
“And what do you know of it, little mouse?”
“I know more than you think, little girl,” he said, and he didn’t sound very mouse-like at all, just then. “I know that Alice defeated it, and she hid it away in a jar, and she took it out of the City altogether. So it shouldn’t be here at all now, calling to you.”
“Alice again!” Elizabeth shouted. “I’ve had enough of Alice and I’ve had enough of you. If I want to see what that jewel is then you can’t stop me. You’re only a little mouse.”
Elizabeth scooped the mouse out of her pocket then and placed it on the ground—though not roughly, she didn’t want to hurt it, only to make it stop annoying her. “Run away now, mouse. I’m sure someone has lef
t some crumbs out for you to eat.”
She spun away from it, ignoring the indignant squeaks coming from the vicinity of her shoe-buckle. Elizabeth felt a tiny prick of regret—the mouse had tried to help her, after all—but then decided she wasn’t going back for the creature. She was so very tired of all this Alice business.
(and the mouse wasn’t even nice all the time, he said that Mama and Papa only had you to replace Alice and he made it sound like they threw Alice away with the litter in the first place and of course that was all a lie)
The sparkling thing was getting closer and closer. It wasn’t at all like the white-tailed bird-man, who seemed to disappear into the distance no matter how she tried to catch up to him.
Elizabeth felt a little shiver of anticipation. Even though she’d only discovered the existence of this purple jewel less than an hour before, she felt that her mind had been preoccupied with it for even longer. It was like the knowledge of it had always been in her mind, lurking somewhere behind the best places to hide a sweet bun in her bedroom so Mama wouldn’t find it and how to get revenge on Polly for telling Mama about the last hiding place.
As she approached it more details came into focus, like Elizabeth was peering through a spyglass. The sparkling thing was in what appeared to be a glass jar, a very small one with a sealed top. The jar was directly in the center of a little wooden table. But she still couldn’t quite make out what was underneath the glass.
A thrill of excitement filled her. Soon she would see what had been calling her, what glittered and winked and waved at her. And she would put it in her pocket and take it home, and it would belong to her forever.
Something made her stop then. Something that wasn’t quite right, a little nagging something in her mind like the princess’s pea under all the mattresses.
This isn’t right, not at all. Why is there a table and a jar right out here in the open where anyone can see it? Is it a trap?
Her footsteps slowed.
What if the bobbies are trying to capture thieves by luring them with this object? And as soon as I pick it up they’ll throw a net over me and put me in jail.
Looking Glass Page 6
