“You remember it all now,” Hatcher said, and it wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” she said. She was beyond weeping for the child she once was. “It is, more or less, what you would expect. Except for the part where I escaped. Nobody expected that.”
The door at the bottom of the steps opened and a woman emerged. She spoke quietly to the soldiers, who disappeared inside. She was not the sort of woman Alice imagined seeing in a place like this. The girls who danced for hooting patrons in the Caterpillar’s lair—that was the kind of woman she expected.
This woman was hunched with age or care, and her hair was the color of Hatcher’s eyes, grey like iron. She wore a grey shawl over a grey dress, and walked in tiny steps. Altogether she gave the impression of an oversized mouse, and when she lifted her gaze to Alice, her eyes glittered out of a narrow lined face.
“Dor?” Alice said.
Of all the things she’d seen, this shocked her the most. Her friend, her young and pretty friend, was gone forever. They were both twenty-six, but Dor looked like a careworn grandmother. Her hands were knotted with protruding blue veins.
“He said you would come back. He’s been waiting. This morning he woke and he told me that today was the day his Alice would return,” Dor said. Her voice was just as ancient as the rest of her, and bitter. “Always his Alice, you are, despite what you did to him.”
Alice walked slowly down the steps. She’d lost her cap and her jacket, and the little knife she carried was visible in the rope looped around her waist. She looked like what she was—a very tall girl with a scar on her face and short hair, not disguised as a boy anymore. She towered above Dor, whose eyes flashed as she glared up at her old friend.
“What right have you to be angry with me?” Alice asked. “You, who tried to sell me as though I belonged to you? You, who would have seen me eaten alive by a monster who wanted my magic?”
“You left me here,” Dor said. “You escaped, but you left me here.”
“As you would have done to me,” Alice said.
She wished she could feel sorrow. She remembered playing with Dor from the time she was small, hiding behind her mother’s rosebushes and giggling with secrets. This girl had been her constant companion, but she changed, and Alice had not seen it. Dor’s reward had been the same fate she would have wished on Alice. There was only one thing she wished to know.
“Why?”
“After all this time, that is what you say?” Dor said. “Where is your anger?”
“I am not angry with you,” Alice said. “I just wish to know why.”
It was true. She wasn’t angry. Dor had been punished. There was nothing Alice could do to make it worse.
“‘Why’ is a girl’s question, and we are no longer girls,” Dor said, and turned away. “He’s waiting.”
Just inside the door was a long wide hallway. On each side were the Rabbit’s soldiers, standing at attention. Each held a weapon—a knife or a sword or an axe—and all of them watched Alice with eager, cruel eyes. They hated her, she realized, hated her for what she had done to their master.
Dor had ensured that they knew who Alice was, and Alice was certain that they would also make sure she did not escape the Rabbit’s warren twice.
Hatcher smiled when he saw the men waiting to cut them down.
Dor shuffled ahead, her footsteps slow. Alice expected to be taken deep inside the Rabbit’s lair, into the maze that had nearly trapped her once before. But Dor led them to the end of the main hall, to a large carved entry fit for a king, and inside they found the Rabbit.
Again, he was not as Alice expected.
In her memory he was strong and vital, his hands hard and bruising. This man could not have hurt her if he wanted.
His left eye was covered with a gaudy gold patch, decorated with emeralds and rubies. His body was shriveled, a memory of what it once was, and the large silk robe he wore could not hide this. He sat in a chair (just like a throne) in the center of the room. Alice was certain he could not move from it without help, and that it must have been her doing that made him so. When the knife plunged into his back, she had broken something, something that could not be repaired.
His ears were, in fact, long and white, as was the hair on his head. The backs of his hands were also coated in white fluff.
“Alice, my Alice,” he said.
(Pretty Alice) It wasn’t even the same voice coming out of the same mouth. His face was heavily powdered, white as the hair and the ears. His one blue-green eye shone out of that pale face. This broken, shrunken creature was her nightmare?
They were the only four in the room, and the door was shut. There was nothing but the chair and bare walls and floor, the color of fresh snow.
“You’ve come back to me at last,” he said. “And who is this you’ve brought with you? Nicholas?”
“What happened to your ears?” Hatcher said. He couldn’t seem to stop staring at them. “They weren’t like that before.”
“One of Cheshire’s potions,” the Rabbit said. “He thought it would be amusing if I more closely resembled my name.”
The Rabbit’s tone told Alice that he did not find this as amusing as Cheshire.
“Where’s Jenny?” Hatcher said.
“I thought you might want to discuss her,” the Rabbit said, looking crafty.
“You broke your promise to me,” Hatcher said.
“I made no promise,” the Rabbit said.
“You did,” Hatcher said, and there was no room for argument. “Now tell me where you sent her.”
“Her beauty is legendary,” the Rabbit said dreamily. “I have heard, often, from my friend in the East, and she has legions of admirers.”
“Tell me his name,” Hatcher said.
“No, I don’t think so,” the Rabbit said. “But I will tell you hers. They call her Sahar, and he tells me it means the time just before dawn, for her hair is like the night before the sunrise, and her eyes as cool as the moon.”
“Her name is Jenny,” Hatcher said.
“Not anymore. I wish we had some tea and cakes. Wouldn’t that be lovely, Alice? So we could all have a tea party, like we did so long ago.”
The Rabbit was behaving like a grandfather meeting his wayward grandchildren for the first time in many years. He held out his hands to Alice, who frowned at him.
“I think you’re confused about why we have come,” she said.
“Why, you’ve come to finish me off, have you not?” the Rabbit said, and his eye flashed. “Come to take vengeance for what was done to you. And Nicholas, I am certain, will ensure the job is done correctly. He has a way with axes.”
Alice stared at the Rabbit, and then at Dor, who’d knelt at his side with her head bowed like a supplicant.
“You want me to kill you,” she said slowly. “No one else will do it, and you’ve been waiting for me to return.”
“I expected you to come blazing in with a sword and a halo of golden hair, like an avenging angel,” the Rabbit admitted. “Instead you look rather underfed, and all your beautiful hair is gone, and you don’t even have a sword with you at all.”
“Where would I get a sword?” Alice asked.
“You’re an enterprising girl,” the Rabbit said. “If you want one, you would have it. Still, that knife you have will do the job nicely.”
He tilted his head back and showed his throat, which was powdered like his face. Alice approached him then, though she did not take the knife from her waist. He watched her, his remaining eye slitted.
She reached her hand out and swiped her fingers down the side of his cheek, brushing away the powder.
All of his veins showed black underneath the skin, like cracking marble. Alice stepped back, staring. Her fingers felt burnt where they had touched him.
“Yes,” he snarled, his face suddenly contorted with anger. “Do you see what you have done to me? Do you see what you have wrought? You left me a half-alive thing, magicless and broken. And now it is only rig
ht that you finish it.”
“Magicless?” Alice asked. “I took your magic?”
“Of course you did, you stupid girl,” he snapped. “That knife you stole was made by a Magician, and it draws power from those like us. I’ve hidden my weakness from the others all these years, but now it can be over. No one else has the courage to free me.”
“You deserve no such courtesy from me,” Alice said faintly, though she hardly heard her own voice coming out of her mouth. All she could hear was, That knife you stole was made by a Magician. “The knife. Hatcher, the knife.”
Hatcher had his axe in his hand, ready to throw it if the Rabbit had moved when Alice approached him. “Which knife?”
“The knife for the Jabberwocky,” she said. “The Magician’s knife.”
Hatcher looked from Alice to the Rabbit. “That was the knife you used on his eye.”
She nodded.
“What happened to it?”
“I threw it in the river,” she said. “It melted.”
The Rabbit stared at her. “You threw a priceless Magician’s artifact into the stinking river?”
“Yes,” Alice said. “And now the Jabberwocky rampages through the City, and only the blade could stop him.”
The Rabbit threw his head back again, and mirthless laughter poured forth. “Then it matters not if you will have mercy on me, for we are all dead.”
Fear returned then, sweeping over her like the Jabberwocky’s shadow. They had nothing to be afraid of as long as there was the hope of the blade. But that hope was gone, disappeared in the river ten years before, and none of them had known it. Not even the Jabberwocky.
“Why didn’t he feel that his magic was destroyed?” Alice asked.
“For that matter, why didn’t I?” the Rabbit asked. “My own power was inside that blade, and I never felt its loss.”
His remaining eye narrowed, considering Alice.
“Perhaps the magic wasn’t in the blade,” he said, and his smile went very wide and dangerous. “Perhaps it went into the one who used it.”
She saw his hope flare, a dangerous hope, the chance to recover what she had taken from him.
“Dor,” the Rabbit said. “Go and fetch Samuel and Gideon for me.”
Dor stood slowly, and it seemed to Alice that she was lost in a dream. She tilted her head at the Rabbit, moved close to them so that their faces nearly touched.
“Do you think you’ll get your magic back from her?” Dor asked.
“Yes,” the Rabbit said.
Alice thought the Rabbit assumed much. Hatcher would bury his axe in Dor’s head before she crossed half the length of the room.
“If you do, what use would you have for me?” Her voice was flat, expressionless.
“I would still need you, of course, my little Dor-mouse,” the Rabbit said. “You have cared for me all these years, kept my secret. If my power returns, you will be rewarded.”
He was salivating now, the taste of his magic practically on his tongue. He would promise anything, say anything, Alice knew.
And Dor knew too.
She kissed him, and her arms went around his neck. No, Alice thought. Not her arms. Her hands.
Once upon a time it would have been impossible for Dor’s little hands to surround his throat. Now they just fit, and she was stronger than the Rabbit. Much stronger.
His eyes bulged, and his hands drummed against the chair. Alice could not see Dor’s face, only her hands, white with exertion.
When she was done, she turned to Hatcher and Alice. There was no sadness or relief, only expectation.
“Good-bye, Dor,” Alice said.
“Good-bye, Alice,” Dor said.
Hatcher swung his axe.
CHAPTER
18
Dor’s head rolled away across the floor. Fractures appeared in the walls, and the ground trembled. The men in the hall outside cried out in alarm.
“Is it like the Caterpillar?” Alice asked. “Now that the Rabbit is dead, his place will fall to pieces?”
Hatcher shook his head. “He had no magic left, remember? I think it’s something else.”
“The Jabberwocky,” Alice said. “Hatcher, we don’t have the blade. It’s gone forever.”
“But we don’t need it,” Hatcher said, and grabbed her hand, pulling her toward the door.
“What do you mean?” she said.
The trembling ceased, as if a giant creature had paused in its pursuit, and was perhaps devouring its prey.
“The magic we need is in you. The Rabbit said so,” Hatcher said.
“The Rabbit said a lot of things,” Alice said. “He didn’t tell you how to find Jenny, though.”
This Alice regretted almost as much as the fatal accident of throwing away the magic blade. The Rabbit was the only person who knew Jenny’s fate, and now he was gone.
“He told us enough,” Hatcher said. “She’s gone to the East, and her beauty is legendary, and she is called Sahar. It is enough to go on.”
The East, the mysterious land of deserts and jinnis and magic lamps and rugs that flew through the air. It seemed like a dream, a dream that they would never fulfill because the shadow of the Jabberwock stood in their path as it always had.
“And how will we get there?” Alice asked. She did not say that Jenny was no longer a child, and that even if they found her she might not wish to see him again.
“You have no faith, Alice,” Hatcher said. “You never have.”
This was true. Hatcher always believed they would escape the hospital. He had prepared for that day. Alice never thought about was around the bend, only what was before her. Perhaps that was how Dor had led her so easily to the Rabbit in the first place.
“You say you know you’re a Magician, but you’ve never really believed it,” Hatcher said. “I told you, and Bess told you, and Nell told you. The Caterpillar said it was true and the Walrus said he was going to eat your flesh ten years ago to take your power. But you still did not believe, not entirely.
“You knew Cheshire’s story of the good Magician and his lost friend. You set the roses afire, and you frightened the Jabberwocky away. The only reason you met me in the first place, through that mouse hole, was because Dor knew you were a Magician when you were a child, and sold you to the Rabbit. You must have shown something even then, though you don’t recall it.”
“Don’t you think my parents would have noticed if I were a Magician?” Alice cried. “Don’t you think I would have?”
Her mother’s eyes, wide and frightened, twisting Alice’s wrist.
She was five or six, playing in the garden on the first warm spring day, and she’ d wanted some butterflies, but it was too early for butterflies. She danced in a circle, thinking of pretty butterflies, pink and yellow and blue and green and purple; she wished all the little buds of spring on the trees were butterflies, and suddenly there were butterflies everywhere. Their wings brushed her ears and her eyelashes and she laughed and laughed and laughed, until her mother came out of the house and grabbed her.
“What did you do, Alice?”
“Nothing!” She hadn’t. She was dancing, and then there were butterflies.
“What did you do?” She’ d never heard her mother like this before, desperate and afraid.
“I only wished,” Alice said. “I wished for butterflies, and then there were. My wish came true.”
“Alice,” her mother said, and she turned her face from the butterflies as though the sight made her ill. “You must be careful when you wish. You never know who might be watching.”
“Because a wish is a secret,” Alice said. “It won’t come true if you say it aloud.”
“Yes, darling,” her mother said, and pulled her tight in her arms. “You must never say your wishes aloud, or even think them out in the sunlight. Only at night, before you fall asleep. That’s when you wish.”
“Why didn’t she tell me?” Alice said. “Why? Why did she let me go on thinking I was normal, that I wa
s just like everyone else?”
“She wanted you to be,” Hatcher said. “You said she was the one who told you the story when you were young. Your mother was likely a Magician too, but she learned to hide it.”
It was hard to think of her beautiful, proper mother as a Magician. It was hard to think that if her mother had magic, she had denied that magic in herself; she had tried to crush it in her child.
The ground shook again, and an unearthly roar echoed through the hall. It was the sound Alice imagined a dragon would make, the sound of death on wings.
“How will we survive this?” she said. “Cheshire said only the blade could defeat the Jabberwock. Even if I have that magic inside me, I don’t know what I would do with it. Wave my hands about? Say a spell? I don’t know what to do. I don’t know the words.”
A wish has power.
Alice didn’t know whether she heard the word inside her head, or whether it floated on the air. Hatcher’s face twitched, so she suspected he might have heard it too.
“Cheshire?” Alice asked.
Wish.
“When I was a little girl my mother told me to only make my wishes in the night, when no one could see them,” Alice said. “The night we escaped from the hospital I dreamed of fire. Hatch, I think I set the Jabberwocky free.”
“You set us free as well,” Hatcher said.
A red river running through the middle of the street, and bodies beyond counting lying still and silent.
“Is all the blood he spilled on my hands?” Alice asked. “Am I responsible?”
“He would have escaped sooner or later,” Hatcher said. “I felt him rising. Alice, you cannot be responsible for what he is, or the choices he made when he was human.”
“I can be responsible for my own,” she said.
“Yes,” Hatcher said. “You can. You can do what you were made for. You can destroy the Jabberwocky. Alice, you won’t be alone.”
Alice nodded, and tried not to think panicking thoughts. Cheshire said to wish. What should she wish? What could she wish? Wish to turn the Jabberwocky into a butterfly like she did those first tightly curled buds of spring? If she wished the Jabberwocky would disappear into a puff of smoke, would that happen?
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