Alice

by Christina Henry

  “Alice?” His hands were at her shoulders, shaking.

  “I saw the blade,” she said, and opened her eyes. Hatcher’s face was before her, and behind that, the cave ceiling. “What happened?”

  “You touched that coil, and there was a spark,” Hatcher said, helping her sit up. “And then you went white and fell backward.”

  “I saw the blade,” she repeated. “The one we have to find, the one the Rabbit has. We have to get to it before the Jabberwock does. All these other things happening made me half forget. We’re here underground, and the Walrus might be rampaging but the Jabberwock is stalking, stalking, stalking. Once he finds the blade he will destroy it, and take his lost magic, and then we won’t be able to stop him.”

  Hatcher nodded. “Yes. We need to think of the Jabberwock and not our own troubles.”

  “Though our own troubles seem to mesh with our quest for the Jabberwock, at least a little,” Alice said. “Still, the blade is the important thing.”

  “Then which way to go?” Hatcher asked.

  “I still don’t know for certain,” Alice admitted. “Let’s try the left. And go cautiously.”

  “And if we catch a whiff of the Walrus, then I finish the job I should have finished long ago,” Hatcher said.

  They entered the left-hand door. As with the middle door, Alice was disappointed to find there was no guard. A guard could be persuaded to give up information. It was almost as if all those who used the passages completely trusted the other three.

  That may have been so, Alice considered. The Caterpillar and Cheshire were friends, as were the Caterpillar and the Rabbit. The Rabbit tolerated the Walrus for the sake of the Caterpillar.

  But the rats had said that now that the Caterpillar was gone, the Rabbit would side with Mr. Carpenter against the Walrus. If that was so, then a direct passage to the Walrus’ place seemed like an easy way to rid yourself of an enemy.

  After another long walk (all we do is walk and fight to break up the walking, Alice thought) they came upon another door. This door was guarded, though on the other side. Alice and Hatcher heard voices through the wood, though they couldn’t make out what was said.

  “Which?” Alice whispered in Hatcher’s ear. “The Walrus or the Rabbit?”

  “We’ll have to take a chance,” Hatcher said. “It sounds like there are two of them. You silence yours, and I’ll question the other one.”

  What a terribly civilized way of putting it, Alice thought. “Silence” him. Not “cut his throat open with your knife,” which is what Hatcher is actually asking me to do.

  They opened the door quickly, surprising the guards. Both men were at their ease, eating a meal from pails. Alice was upon her man before he was able to reach the spear that lay at his side. She silenced him, as Hatcher had asked her to do.

  The second man was quicker off the mark, and gave Hatcher a moment of trouble. The result was that Hatcher lost his temper and the guard lost his head, and they had no one to question.

  Alice wrinkled her nose at Hatcher. “I thought you wanted to question him.”

  “I saw—”

  “Red. I know,” Alice said. She pushed the first man’s legs out of the way with the toe of her boot. That was when she noticed the way the guards were dressed—exactly like the men who’d attacked in the tavern. “These are the Walrus’ men.”

  Hatcher swore. “Damn. It’s a long walk back to the other doors.”

  Alice hurried back to the door and pulled on it. It wouldn’t budge. She turned the knob again, tried pushing. It still would not move. She stared at Hatcher, her eyes wide.

  “We can’t get out,” she said.

  The first thrumming of panic had started in her chest. She did not want to meet the Walrus. He frightened her much more than the Rabbit, whom she felt, somehow, she was able to best. She had beaten him once, escaped him once, and she had survived much on this journey already. The Rabbit was a bogeyman, but an old bogeyman, familiar and comforting in the predictability of his evil. The Walrus was a horror not yet seen, a nightmare that she did not want to experience.

  She did not want to be eaten alive.

  Hatcher nudged her to one side, put some force into the door. Nothing.

  “If I break it down it will make noise. That might attract others,” he said.

  Alice nodded. The tunnel curved almost immediately to the left after the small entryway where the guards had been eating. She cautiously approached the curve and peeked around the corner.

  There was a set of steps that led upward a few feet from the turn. She tiptoed along, wincing each time her boots scraped the dirt or knocked tiny pebbles against the cave wall. At the top of the steps was a trapdoor.

  She returned to Hatcher and described the situation.

  “You’d best stand just past the bottom of the stairs, where nobody can see you,” Hatcher said. “You might be able to take one or two by surprise.”

  “Just how many soldiers do you think I can fight on my own?” Alice asked.

  “As many as necessary,” Hatcher said. “I believe in you, Alice.”

  She felt for the first time that she wanted to kiss him, that she wanted to know what it was like when she chose it. So she did.

  His lips were soft and she could taste his surprise, and then his pleasure. He did not put his arms around her, or try to hold her to him. She put her hands on his shoulders to steady herself as she pulled away, for she felt dizzy from her toes to her eyelashes.

  Hatcher smiled at her, and she smiled back. It was nice, Alice mused, to remember that there was a purpose to living besides madness and death. Then she took up her place at the bottom of the stairs, and Hatcher set himself to work.

  There was a great deal of noise as Hatcher threw his body against the door with increasing amounts of force. With every blow Alice was certain that a dozen men would stream down the steps with murder in their eyes, but no one came.

  After a time it became clear that Hatcher was not going to break the door down. Alice went to him, put a hand out to stop him.

  Hatcher next took his axe from his jacket. The first blow left no mark on the door but took a chip from the blade. Hatcher tucked the axe away without a word. Alice knew he wouldn’t risk any more harm to his favorite weapon. “We can’t get out that way,” she said.

  She saw that he had come to this conclusion already but that he still tried, perhaps driven by the thought of what might occur if the Walrus discovered their presence.

  “We have to go up, Hatch,” Alice said. “We have no choice. We can’t stay down here and wait for the changing guard to discover us.”

  “How did the rats get out?” Hatcher said, panting from the exertion. “They couldn’t have come this way. But this way is the only way that we saw.”

  “We must have missed something,” Alice said. “A secret turning.”

  “Rats that size did not crawl from any tunnel that we missed,” Hatcher said.

  Alice was inclined to agree. Still, the mystery of the rats’ escape hardly mattered. Their own escape was paramount.

  Hatcher took the lead up the stairs. When he reached the trapdoor he listened hard for any sound of movement above. Alice didn’t hear anything, and after a moment Hatcher slowly opened the trap.

  The smell hit them first, so overwhelming that Alice coughed, bile rising in her throat. She hastily covered her mouth with her arm. Hatcher’s lips pressed together as he slowly eased the door up and climbed out. He hurried away from the exit, waving his hand to show that Alice should stay. She presumed he was checking the room for people who might object to their sudden appearance. As always, his boots made hardly a sound. For such a large man he walked very light.

  Soon enough he returned and gestured for her to follow him.

  “I’m not certain you want to see this,” he said. He looked as though he wished to unsee it himself.

  “I can hardly walk about with my eyes closed,” Alice said as her head cleared the trap and she saw what was i
n the room.

  The stench hit her harder then, and she ducked her head under so she was sick on the stairs.

  Well, if Cheshire did poison the sandwiches, then they’re out of me now, Alice thought. She was trying to desperately to think about anything other than what she could see.

  Alice had killed four times now. Always it was in defense of herself or someone else—to save Hatcher, to save Nell and Dolly, to stop a guard from sounding the alarm. She did not think she would ever enjoy it, as Hatcher seemed to, but she’d quickly grasped the necessity of it in the Old City. Here, you made someone else suffer before they did you.

  What was in this place was not done in defense of a life. It was carnage, pure and simple.

  They were in some kind of storage room, and everywhere they looked, there were bodies of girls. Alice could tell they were girls only because they were naked. All of their faces had been gnawed off, ragged bits of skin remaining where the Walrus’ teeth had missed. There were bite marks elsewhere too, but Alice did not want to look too closely. She did not want to look at all.

  “What kind of a man does this?” she said. She fought the impulse to hide her face. The time for hiding was over, she realized. She must see the monster for what it was.

  “He’s not a man,” Hatcher said. “No man would do this.”

  Hatcher was angry, Alice realized. Much angrier than he’d been on any occasion before, and that did not bode well. When Hatcher was angry he tended to be more . . . spontaneous.

  “There’s Dolly,” he said, and pointed to a body at the top of one of the piles. “That stupid girl. That stupid, stupid girl.”

  Alice wasn’t certain how he could identify the thing as Dolly, but she would take Hatcher’s word for it.

  “Yes, she was foolish,” Alice said. “She thought she would be rewarded for telling him about me. And you.”

  There was one exit other than the trapdoor. Hatcher went to the door and listened.

  “There are people out there,” he said. “Sounds like quite a lot of people, actually.”

  Alice joined him. It did sound as though there was a great deal of activity on the other side of the door. She heard that buzzing murmur that happens when a large group has gathered in one place—the shuffling of feet, the ebb and flow of small conversation, the occasional shout to a friend or the jostle that results in an indignant cry.

  “What do you think?” Alice asked.

  It didn’t seem wise to rush in with the intention of hacking their way through a crowd of people. They might be the Walrus’ soldiers, in which case Alice and Hatcher might remove a few while surprise was on their side before they were overwhelmed. Or they might not be soldiers, but innocent people, and Alice did not want to harm any innocents.

  Though really, she thought, anyone who is near the Walrus can’t possibly be innocent. He’s a criminal. At best they are men come to use the girls that the Walrus didn’t eat. At worst they work for him, stealing those girls from their lives, keeping them here when they would try to escape.

  “Wait,” Hatcher said. “Listen.”

  Alice concentrated on the noise through the door. The crowd had quieted, and an announcement was being made. She couldn’t quite make it out, but the crowd roared in response, cheering and clapping. A moment later they quieted again, and the same procedure repeated.

  “It’s a fight ring,” Hatcher said, pulling his ear away from the door. “Alice, this is perfect. We only need to slip into the crowd and then follow when they leave. There must be an exit nearby for such a large group to be present.”

  Alice hesitated. “What if they are simply those who work for the Walrus, not men from outside? There’s no assurance of an exit then.”

  “We know there is no exit from here,” Hatcher said. “And we’d best leave this room before the guard changes and we’re discovered.”

  “What happened to your cap?” Hatcher asked.

  Alice rubbed the short hair on top of her head, surprised to find the hat missing. “I must have lost it somewhere. I didn’t notice. There have been so many strange things happening.”

  “Your face is so distinctive,” Hatcher said. “Take mine. It’s easier to cover your scar with it. If we are fortunate, the room will be hidden in shadow.”

  Alice pulled the cap low over her eyes. The plan was very risky, but it did seem they had no other option available. They must leave this room before they were cornered.

  The crowd roared on the other side of the door, and Hatcher judged it time to slip inside. His choice was a good one, as the men standing just on the other side of the door were preoccupied with the action below in the ring. Hatcher immediately scuttled along the edge of the horde, distancing them from the door to the underground tunnel. Alice’s scarred cheek faced the wall, which was lucky, because anyone who glanced at her would not be able to see the distinctive mark.

  The room was arranged like a round arena, with wooden benches stacked on risers above an open center. It reeked of sweat and tobacco and desperation as men shouted themselves hoarse in favor of the fighter they’d bet on. Girls in various states of undress roamed through the crowd offering trays of refreshment for sale. And a peek of the other merchandise on offer, Alice thought angrily as several of the girls were groped by drunken men.

  In the fight ring was a skinny man, ropy with muscle and wearing only an eye patch and a pair of ragged pants. His opponent was— Alice stopped and stared. Hatcher realized she was no longer behind him and went back to her side.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “A rabbit,” she said, and pointed.

  The skinny man’s opponent was, indeed, a rabbit—a large white rabbit with pink eyes. His fur, probably once fluffy and soft, was matted and covered in copper stains like faded blood.

  Hatcher frowned. “Not the Rabbit. The one we’re looking for.”

  “No,” Alice said, shaking her head. “He must be another poor creature given Cheshire’s growing potion, like the rats.”

  The man danced and spun and struck the rabbit, who returned the blows only halfheartedly. Even from this distance Alice could see the sad, broken expression in his eyes.

  Then the whip came out of the darkness, striking the white rabbit on the back, and she saw the man who held it.

  He was, indeed, monstrous, though not in the way Alice expected. Dolly’s description had given her an impression of someone so enormous they could not move, a massive bloated blob without form or feature. The Walrus was not like that.

  The Walrus was very tall and powerfully built, a mass of muscle slightly gone to seed. His belly was large, reflecting his appetites, but his arms were twice the size of Alice’s legs put together, and his legs were twice his arms. His face was partially hidden in shadow, though Alice thought his eyes glinted in cruel amusement as the rabbit fell to the ground.

  Now she could see the striped marks of blows old and new on the rabbit’s back, and her heart ached. The throng of men shouted for the rabbit to rise again, and as he did the skinny man punched his pink, twitching nose. The rabbit’s whiskers, Alice noted, were broken to many different lengths and his front right tooth was cracked down to a very small nub.

  “We can’t leave him here,” Alice said, as Hatcher put his hand on her elbow and pulled her along again.

  “We can’t sneak a giant white rabbit from the ring directly under the Walrus’ nose,” Hatcher said. “Besides, what will we do with him after? Take him with us to meet the other Rabbit?”

  Alice wrenched her arm free. “We can’t leave him here,” she repeated, mulishly. “He’s an innocent creature.”

  “The world is full of innocent creatures,” Hatcher snapped, drawing close to her ear so no one would overhear them. “You were one yourself once, and no one saved you.”

  “You saved Hattie,” Alice said.

  “She wasn’t innocent by the time I found her.”

  “Yet you still saved her.”

  “What about all the girls we left behind
in the Caterpillar’s? What about the other screaming inmates of the asylum that we let burn?” Hatcher asked. “There was a reason we didn’t save them. We can’t save everybody.”

  “No,” Alice said. “We can’t save everybody. But we can save somebody. And I don’t want to leave the rabbit behind.”

  “Why?” Hatcher asked. “Why now?”

  “He’s helpless,” Alice said. She felt she couldn’t fully explain what the rabbit represented to her, the way the sight of him made her heart ache. “He doesn’t belong here. He belongs in a field, nibbling dandelion greens. I don’t know, Hatch. I just can’t leave him. I can’t bring myself to leave him.”

  Hatcher sighed, his grey eyes full of some unidentifiable expression—something like amusement and frustration and love and anger all mixed together.

  “I knew one day you would find your line, Alice,” Hatcher said. “I just didn’t think it would be right now.”

  “My line?” Alice asked.

  “The line that you won’t cross. You won’t leave the rabbit. You won’t cross that line.”

  Hatcher folded his fingers together and cracked the knuckles. “I suppose this has been coming for some time. I didn’t follow my own advice.”

  “What advice?” Alice asked.

  “To finish him off,” Hatcher said. “That was my mistake, and I should fix it. Stay here.”

  He pushed his way through the mob until he was almost to the bottom bench. Then he kicked a man in the back so that he fell forward on his chin, knocking into the man in front of him. Hatcher climbed on the bench as his victim struggled to get to his feet, tangling with the other drunks around him. Everyone’s eyes went to the scuffle in the crowd, including the Walrus’.

  Hatcher took his axe from his coat and raised his voice loud above the murmuring crowd.

  “GRINDER!”

  CHAPTER

  15

  Alice’s heart was in her mouth. She had not intended this, that he would declare himself before the Walrus and all the gathered throng. Her mind had been concocting plans of secrecy, spiriting away the poor rabbit in the dark of night.