The thought of returning to her prison made bile rise up in her throat. At the same time, she found something inside her would not let her accept Hatcher’s offer. She’d never lived properly, and could not so willingly agree to the promise of death. Not yet.
“Thank you. I will consider it,” Alice said.
Hatcher nodded, and returned to his task. Bess returned to the room carrying a leather belt in one hand and something red that sparkled on a silver chain in the other.
“I almost thought I’d lost this,” she said by way of apology for the long wait. “Took more time than I expected to find it.”
Alice took the belt Bess handed her, absently wrapping it around her waist and pulling the pants tight. The sparkly thing glittered in the firelight, fascinating her.
“This is for you,” Bess said. “It was from my great-great-great-great-grandmother, who was a true Magician, long ago before the Purge. It will keep you safe.”
She held it out to Alice, who hesitated. “I should not take a family heirloom.”
Bess snorted. “I’ve no family left, save Nicholas here, and you’re the closest thing to a bride he’s ever brought home. If you don’t take it, it will only be stolen when they find me dead here, and that day is coming soon.”
Alice thought that Seeing must be a terrible gift if you could see the hour of your own death. She saw Hatcher’s hands still in his task as the old woman spoke so casually of her passing. So he was not entirely unaffected, then. Perhaps a small part of Hatcher did remember Nicholas, and the grandmother who had done her best by him.
Bess offered the chain to Alice again, a little impatiently, and Alice took it, peering closely at the jewel that sparkled in her palm.
“It’s a rose,” she said, and suddenly she felt like she was drowning, drowning in memory, rows of scarlet roses marching through the garden, rows of roses on the dress she wore the day she snuck away with Dor.
“My mother . . .” she began, and for a moment felt she might swoon again. “My mother loved roses. She grew them like magic. No one’s roses were as lovely as hers, and she would hardly permit the gardener to help her.”
She did not say the other thing, the other memory that had leapt to the fore, but kept it in her secret heart. Her hand, very small and fat, in her mother’s slim and elegant one, the sun behind her mother’s head lighting up her golden hair so she looked like an angel, and her face smiling down at Alice, cooing, My little rose Alice, my blooming rose.
What had happened to that woman, that loving mother? Why had she not loved Alice when she was hurt and scared? Why had she sent Alice away, away to the most horrible place in the world?
She thought she’d cried out the past already, but here it was again, rising up in her chest, making it hurt, making tears prick in her eyes.
Bess watched her with the same patient gaze, and after a moment Alice scrubbed at her eyes with her knuckles.
“Thank you,” she said, and lifted the chain over her head.
As the rose settled on her chest it began to glow, as if lit by candle fire from within. Bess gasped, and grabbed Alice’s chin, turning her face so the smaller woman could look into her eyes.
“You. You,” she said.
Then Hatcher stood suddenly, his face white to the lips.
“He’s near,” he said, and his eyes rolled back in his head before he collapsed to the floor.
CHAPTER
4
“The two of you,” Bess tutted as Alice wrenched away from her. “Falling all over the place, both of you. I don’t know how you’ll get by if you’re fainting all the time.”
Alice rolled Hatcher to his back. His lids were closed, but she could see his eyes darting back and forth underneath.
“Hatcher,” she said, shaking his shoulders. “Hatcher.”
Bess shook her head. “There’s no use in that. He’s in the grip of the Jabberwock, and won’t wake up until that one finishes his work.”
“I don’t want him there,” Alice said, remembering the dream she’d had just before she woke up to the hospital on fire. “I don’t want the Jabberwock to take him from me.”
“Then you’ll have to get rid of the monster, won’t you?” Bess said, a little gleam in her eye. “A stronger reason than fate, I imagine.”
Alice stared helplessly at Hatcher’s bloodless face, his twitching eyes. “What power do I have?”
Bess looked at the rose around Alice’s neck and said, “More than you think. You needn’t flutter over him so. The boy will come out of it soon. The Jabberwock is almost finished feeding.”
“How do you know?” Alice asked.
“I can feel him too,” Bess said, and her voice had a singsong quality. “He’s close, and he’s nearly sated. He spent the night hungry, anticipating the taste of blood. He knows folk expect horror in the night, so he waited till day. Till it was so terrible that he could swallow the fear whole.”
“Why don’t you have a fit, like Hatcher?” Alice asked.
“The boy lived close to the Jabberwock for years, listening to him whisper. His power was blocked then by whatever prison held him, but Nicholas knew he was there. That connection is not broken though both have been loosed from their cages. Now the Jabberwock’s power courses through that link with nothing to halt it. And every drop of blood, every ounce of fear, sustains it, makes it stronger, makes the shadow deep and wide.”
Alice felt the task before them must be impossible, that they— two broken children that they were—could not overcome such a thing. If every murder only made the Jabberwock stronger, he only had to kill until he could devour the world.
“Don’t despair,” Bess said. “There is still time. He is seeking something, and until he finds it he will not reach his final form.”
“What does he seek?”
“Something a Magician stole from him,” Hatcher croaked.
Alice put her hand to his cheek. There was no color there, and his eyes were a little wild. “Be still.”
He shook his head, rising until he was seated. He exchanged a glance with Bess. “He’s looking for something. Could you See it?”
The old woman shook her head. “But I felt his desire for it.”
Hatcher shivered. “As did I.”
Alice looked from one to the other. “The Jabberwock—he can be stopped? Unless he finds this object?”
Hatcher nodded. “But it will not be easy, and we need some things ourselves. That’s why you’re sending us to see Cheshire.”
“Yes,” Bess said. “He’s forgotten more than you or I will ever know. He knows of the history of magic and Magicians. He may be able to tell who trapped the Jabberwock before, and how. You should leave when night falls, so darkness will cover you.”
“What about the Jabberwock? What if we encounter him before we’re prepared?” Alice asked. She wasn’t ready to leave. She wanted to feel safe and warm awhile longer.
“He’s moving away now,” Hatcher said. “He came near here, but now he’s searching for the thing he needs. I can feel him approaching. We will be able to avoid him.”
Hatcher was up now, finishing the work he’d begun before he’d fainted. Bess moved into the kitchen and returned with a wrapped loaf of bread and some apples. Hatcher tucked them in the bag with his other things.
Alice watched all this helplessly, twisting her fingers together for lack of anything else to do. Bess beckoned for her to follow into the kitchen. Alice expected the other woman to give her more food to pack, but was surprised when she was instead presented with a little dagger, no longer than her hand. It was sheathed in worn leather.
“What am I to do with this?” Alice asked, although as she said that, she had another flash of memory—a knife slicing through flesh, and hot blood on her hand. She had used a knife once to save herself.
“Protect yourself,” Bess said. “The boy is tied to the Jabberwock. He may not always be able to keep watch over you.”
It was a terrifying thought. Hatcher mi
ght fall to the ground in the middle of the street, helpless against any attack, leaving her helpless as well. Or worse, he might not faint at all. He might be possessed by the spirit of the Jabberwock, and turn on her.
Bess watched her as she thought these things, and nodded, and Alice knew her worries were plain upon her face.
“That’s why you must keep that, and be prepared to use it.”
Unspoken between them was the truth that Alice did not want to face—that she might have to use it on Hatcher.
“Put it in your pocket now,” Bess urged.
Alice reluctantly tucked the little knife in her jacket. If the time came, she hoped she’d have courage enough to use it.
Once all the preparations were made, there was nothing to do but wait. Bess settled in a chair by the fire, and set about knitting a shawl.
His task completed, Hatcher paced back and forth through the flat like a tiger in a zoo. Alice had seen a tiger only once, for her mother thought zoos were common.
There was a governess, when Alice was six or seven, whose ignorance of this dictum had resulted in a forbidden outing. Alice recalled the pushing crowds, pointing and gasping at gorillas and snakes from the deepest jungle, the musty smell of animal fur, the sweetness of a lemon ice on her tongue. The ice was another forbidden treat, but Alice was not about to correct her governess, not when she so willingly provided things Alice was not to have.
The novelty wore off by midday when the beating sun and pressing throngs conspired to give the governess a headache, which resulted in her being much more short and cross than at the outset. She was dragging Alice along by the wrist toward the exit when Alice caught a glimpse of stripes and pulled her wrist away from her minder.
She’d darted between grown-up legs, trees made of wool and muslin, smelling of tobacco and perfume. She squeezed up to the bars that kept the people separated from the animals.
The great beast stalked from one side to another, paws as large as her face, the claws sharp and cruel-looking. Its eyes captured her, green and full of mystery and malice and the wild heart the zookeepers tried to beat out of him. As she watched she felt her own wild heart pounding in her chest, thrumming like a rabbit caught in a hunter’s gaze. Then she heard “Alice!”—a sharp admonition there in her name—and her governess’ tight grip was on her shoulder, dragging her away.
Alice drowsed in front of the fire, lured into a half sleep by the rhythmic click-clack of knitting needles and the methodical footsteps moving back and forth across the floor.
A rabbit caught in a hunter’s gaze. And cake. There was a rabbit and there was cake.
Cake. She was thinking of cake, the soft crumbly sweetness of it on her tongue. She had not eaten cake for years. There certainly was no cake at the hospital, only thin grey gruel, thin as the faces that delivered it morning and night.
There used to be cake with tea, before the hospital. A plate piled high with fat wedges of yellow cake with different icings—pink and blue and violet. Her mother would pour out the tea and then Alice would be permitted to choose one small slice, only one, for her mother did not approve of sweets.
It wasn’t like that other tea party, the one where the Rabbit told her she could have all the cake she liked. Alice had tried not to be too greedy, but she had been unable to disguise her pleasure. She sat at the table with Dor and the Rabbit and . . . another. There was someone else there, some shadow.
Alice could not see his face as she crammed cake in her mouth, and the Rabbit laughed and stroked her braid with his white hands, saying, Pretty little Alice. We’ ll make you fine and plump, won’t we, pretty girl? Pretty Alice.
Alice. Alice.
His hand on her braid, wrapping around it, pulling her head back so she could look into his eyes, his blue-green eyes so angry (though they really ought to be pink, you know, like a proper rabbit’s), eyes snapping, hand pulling her hair until she cried, his voice cracking like a whip, Where do you think you’re off to, pretty Alice?
Alice. Alice.
“Alice, wake up.”
Hatcher’s voice, impatient, his hands at her shoulders, shaking her, but not hard enough to hurt. Not cruel. Hatcher was never cruel to her. Not like the Rabbit. She opened her eyes and sat up a little, her hand automatically going to the back of her neck to touch her braid and feeling her bare nape instead.
“We have to go, Alice,” Hatcher said.
He’d already stood, adjusted the placement of all the weapons in his coat, slung the pack of supplies over his shoulder.
“You shouldn’t call me Alice,” she said, trying to shake the dream away, standing carefully until she was sure of where she was. “I’m supposed to be a boy.”
The cap that completed her disguise was in her pocket, and she pulled it on. She felt the weight of the little dagger in her jacket as she tucked the rose charm beneath her shirt.
“What shall I call you, then?” Hatcher asked, frowning.
“Alex,” said the old woman. “’Tis close to her real name, and if you call her the wrong one, folk might simply think they misheard.”
“Alex,” Hatcher said, like he was trying out how it felt in his mouth. His nose wrinkled slightly. “It doesn’t suit you, even with the cap and the short hair.”
“It doesn’t suit her to be taken by a trader just because you don’t like the idea of her as a boy,” Bess said tartly. “Now, put those cloaks on. It’s time.”
The cloak was thick and scratchy, but when it settled over her, Alice felt she was someone else, someone who could disappear into the shadows.
Bess came to Alice and took her hands. “There is more to you than you know. Remember that.”
She leaned forward and kissed Alice’s cheek. Alice wanted to thank her, but tears were choking her, tears of gratitude and of fear. Bess moved away before she could speak.
The old woman stopped in front of Hatcher. He stared down at his grandmother, the woman who’d done her best by him, and as Alice watched, something passed between them without a word spoken. Bess put her arms around his neck, and Hatcher let her, though he did not return the embrace. After a long moment Bess stepped back and away, wiping her face with her apron.
“Mind the Jabberwock,” she said.
Hatcher nodded, and moved toward the door. Alice was frozen in place. Her heart pulled her toward Hatcher; her brain told her to stay, stay here where it was safe. Hatcher pulled open the door and looked back over his shoulder, his face a question.
“A lice?”
She glanced at Bess, who stood where Hatcher left her, tears flowing freely down her face. She seemed smaller and frailer than a moment ago. She did not return Alice’s gaze, nor turn to see Hatcher go, but stood with her back to him so he could not see her tears.
“Alice?” he asked again.
She lifted her hood so her face would be hidden in shadow. “It’s Alex,” she said, and followed him into the night, closing the door behind her.
“Stay close to me,” Hatcher said.
“How far is it, to Rose Way?” Alice asked.
“A day’s walk, likely two,” Hatcher said. “We’re going into the heart of the Old City, and we can’t walk there in a straight line.”
Alice had already noted the meandering crooked paths that stood in for streets, and the maze of alleys that connected them. She mentioned this to Hatcher and he gave a little laugh. “It’s not the streets that are the problem, love. It’s who owns them.” “You mean—like bands of ruffians?” Alice asked.
This was not a world she was familiar with, even before the hospital, although she recalled her father complaining of gangs of thieves roving the edges of the Old City. They would dart into the New City, past the patrols, rob the rich folk, and slip back into the Old City before an alarm could be raised.
But that was long ago, Alice thought. Ten years ago. The world had changed even if Alice herself had stood still.
Thinking of this, she said, “Will things be as you remember them? It’s been a lon
g time.”
Hatcher shrugged, the motion barely visible under the cloak. “I don’t remember, not really. But Bess told me a bit of what to expect, and it seemed to remind me.”
He fell silent then, and Alice knew him well enough to know he was brooding on something. He was unpredictable in this mood, so she let him be. The night was cold, and were it not for the cloak, Alice would be shivering. Even with the cold, the air felt close and still, like everything in the City was hushed and waiting.
Alice thought she knew that that was about. The Jabberwocky had struck, and no one knew when he would strike again. Even if nobody except her and Hatcher and Bess knew what the Jabberwocky was, even if nobody knew he was a monster from nightmares, he had obviously done something terrible. It wasn’t difficult to draw that conclusion, based on the things Bess said and on the state of Hatcher when it was happening. Still, most folk in the Old City would know something was out there, something unusual, something horrifying.
Even with that the streets were hardly empty. There was plenty of business of a furtive nature being conducted, and more than one gaze followed Alice and Hatcher, assessing.
The first time they passed a couple of tough-looking characters, Alice tucked her head and hurried past them, afraid that if they saw her face they might take her for a girl, and then what happened before would happen again. The bruises on her body seemed to throb in fear, anticipating more pain to come. But nothing happened, except that once they were out of sight Hatcher grabbed her elbow and made her look at him.
“Don’t scurry like a mouse,” Hatcher said, his voice harsh. “You’ll draw them to you quick as flame if you do.”
“I thought—” Alice said.
“I know what you thought, and you could hardly be blamed for thinking it. But if you go on like that you’ll attract every trader we pass. And while I can defend you—and I will—I’d rather save my energy for what lies ahead.”
Alice nodded, feeling chastened. “I need to defend myself.”
“Start by holding your head high,” Hatcher said. “You’re only a mouse if you let them make you one.”
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