Red Queen (18 page)

“Pen?” Alice called.

There was nothing, no sound of giant footsteps, no clatter of falling rocks as Pen climbed.

She called the giant's name again, and the word echoed in the night air.

Now what?
Alice thought. The giant had disappeared, a fact that Alice didn't think was even possible. Her stomach jittered nervously. Whatever could remove Pen could remove her
without taking half a breath. The giant had seemed unbreakable, and Alice knew she was very breakable indeed.

The wolves seemed to be gone as well, at least for now. Should she investigate? Perhaps Pen had been injured by one of the wolves.

But if so, why didn't he respond when I called?
Alice hesitated. Even if Pen were hurt, he would answer if he was able. If he was not able, then Alice didn't think there was anything she could do for him. It seemed very cruel to leave him to possibly bleed to death, but there it was. Hatcher had taught her not to worry on those who could not be saved.

And truth be told,
Alice thought, a little guiltily,
I'm relieved not to have to pretend that I trusted him.

Still, Pen may have saved her life, if the wolves were truly out to get them. If so, then she was grateful. If not, if he had disappeared along with the animals as part of some spell of the Queen's or the goblin's—well, then Alice was wise not to look back.

She continued on, worried that she might pass the great oak in the darkness. The anxious feeling was growing in her belly, a feeling of urgency. She must reach the tree before the sacrifice was to be taken by the Queen. The first purple and orange fingers of dawn were emerging when she finally caught sight of the tree. She wondered that she thought she could pass it accidentally, even in the dark.

The oak was much, much larger than it had been in her dream. The trunk was so big around that Pen could have just touched his fingers if he wrapped his giant's arms around it. What seemed like hundreds of branches reached into the sky.

The whole position of the tree was so strange that Alice didn't wonder that the villagers thought its presence was magical. There wasn't another tree anywhere for miles, and hardly even any plants taller than Alice's knee. Had the White Queen—the first White Queen—planted this tree? Or had it appeared from some other magic?

Alice had heard no more of Pen or the wolves in the night, though she had twice stopped because she thought she'd heard the scrape of a footstep behind her. Each time she had turned, heart pounding, afraid that she would see the grasping fingers of the goblin. Each time there had been nothing except empty air and her own fears.

Now that the sun was rising and she had reached the tree, Alice suddenly felt the exhaustion she'd been denying. The worry and the fear and the uncertainty washed over her until she staggered, falling to her knees. She had only a moment to think that perhaps it was not safe just because it was daylight, and then her head smashed against a large protruding tree root and she thought no more.

Alice opened her eyes and found she was nestled in the roots of the trees like in the arms of her mother. The ground beneath her body was warm, warm and rich and pulsing, like a vein with ripe red blood running inside it. She touched the roots on either side and they shivered beneath her fingers, like a cat seeking affection from its owner.

There was something different about the tree, Alice thought as she drifted in a sort of dreamy half-awake state. The branches were different. Then she noticed that there were leaves on the branches, lovely green leaves as bright as jewels. There had been no leaves when Alice arrived, which made sense if it was spring and the branches hadn't started budding yet.

(The only reason you think it is spring is because of that boy and his goose, the goose that was supposed to be nesting. You don't really know what time of year it is. In fact, Miss Alice, if anything is clear from this trip it's that you don't know very much at all. You've been stumbling about in Hatcher's footsteps ever since you left the hospital, and when his footsteps were not there anymore, you stumbled around in circles. There's not much to you, Alice, though Cheshire seems to think there could be.)

The ground beneath her pulsed again, and she began to get a funny feeling. A funny feeling that there was something underneath that was trying to get out.

If there is something underneath, you probably don't want to be lying just there,
a voice said, a voice that sounded more like Cheshire's than like Alice's.

Alice would normally be very cross at Cheshire's interference, but what he said was sensible. She
ought
to move before something terrible happened, like this pulsing earth opening up to swallow her.

She rose, but very slowly. Somehow even the thought of being eaten by the mountain couldn't seem to work up any urgency. Thick knots of pollen drifted from the tree above, landing
softly on her face. She swiped at her cheeks and found she was entranced by the glittering stuff on her fingers.

Move along, move along.

“Oh, very well,” Alice said.

She didn't particularly want to move along, but the ground was acting very funny. Waves rolled along beneath her feet, lifting her up momentarily and then setting her down again.

“This is really all very strange,” Alice murmured. “One of the strangest things I've seen, and I have seen lots that is strange. More than my fair share, as a matter of fact.”

A shadow fell over Alice, and she looked up to see Pen standing there. The giant shrunk down to a normal-sized person while Alice watched in amazement. Quite a handsome person, in fact, with somber green eyes and thick brown curls and the ropy muscles of a farmer.

“Pen,” Alice said. “What happened to you?”

“She crushed my heart,” Pen said, very matter-of-factly. “I was fighting off those wolves and thinking it was nothing to crush them with the rocks, and then suddenly I heard her voice in my head again. So angry, she was, calling me a traitor and saying I was her creature. I said I didn't belong to her anymore, not after what happened to my brothers. And she said, ‘Well, if you're going to be like that about it.' Then I felt something horrible in my chest, like her hand was wrapped around my heart, squeezing it tight. Then I was all gone. Now I'm here, and, Miss Alice, I'm awfully sorry I left you alone.”

“That's all right,” Alice said, feeling terribly guilty that she had suspected Pen wasn't trustworthy. “Thank you for saving me from the wolves.”

“Of course,” Pen said. He gestured at something behind Alice. “You'd best move along. I think it's going to open up now.”

Alice turned, and saw a split form in the trunk of the tree, just as if it had been sliced open with an axe. Thick red sap oozed from the cut, and the ground beneath made a wet sucking sound. The roots gurgled as they pumped (
whatever it was
) into the tree.

The crack in the tree deepened and lengthened. Alice shuddered as the bark broke apart, blood (
for of course that was what it was, not sap at all
) spewing from the body of the tree.

The cut seemed to shape itself into two doors, and each door opened out from the tree. Alice felt drawn there, as though some inexplicable (
magical
) force pulled her as the tree slowly opened and revealed what was hidden beneath.

A woman lay there, her skin white and waxy in death and hair as black as a raven's wing and wearing a dress the color of the blood that ran all around her. The trunk held her like a coffin.

“The Red Queen,” Pen said behind Alice. “There hasn't been a Red Queen in a long time.”

Alice noticed that there was a slender silver circlet nestled in the Red Queen's dark curls, a crown that looked like woven tree branches. In the center was a small red jewel.

“The Red Queen is supposed to balance the White, and the White to balance the Red,” Pen said. “But the White Queen did not want anyone to check her. She killed her red sister long ago, before she turned me and my brothers into giants, back when there was no City but only a village on the side of a river. The White Queen buried her here and planted a tree over her, so no one could steal the Red Queen's magic and she would be forgotten.”

“You seem to know an awful lot about it,” Alice said absently.

She wished to touch the crown, to take it from the Red Queen's head and place it on her own.

“I know a lot more now that I'm dead,” Pen said. “Don't wait until you're dead to learn all that you need to know.”

“What do I need to know?” Alice asked.

Her fingers reached for the crown, brushed against the Red Queen's black hair. It was downy soft, like the glittering pollen that fell from the tree.

“The way to the White Queen's castle,” Pen said.

His words arrested Alice's motion, broke the fever that was upon her. Was she really about to steal a crown from a corpse? She drew her hand back, repulsed.

No, you need that,
Cheshire said.
It will be harder to get later.

Alice ignored Cheshire and turned to Pen, resolutely putting her back to the Red Queen and the bleeding tree and the gleaming silver crown with its shining jewel.

“What is the way to the White Queen's castle?” Alice asked.

Pen pointed behind her. “Through the tree, of course. You
must leave a little something for the Red Queen, though I think you have already done so.”

Alice touched her head, just under her fringe. The place where she had smashed against the tree root was sticky.

“I must go on now, Miss Alice,” Pen said. “My brothers are calling me.”

She felt a sudden affection toward the former giant, and a little bit of fear. She didn't want to be alone again. “Don't go.”

Pen smiled gently. “I must, and you must go on, for it is not yet time for you to rest.”

“I want to rest,” Alice said, and she meant it with all her heart. “Once I lived in a cage, and before that a different kind of cage. I tried to break free from the first one and they put me in one that was much, much worse. All I want is to find the place I have dreamed of, a little cottage in a green field by a lake.”

“That cottage is far from you still,” Pen said. “You have a long way to go, but you will never get there unless you go through the door.”

“Of course,” Alice said, and tried very hard not to cry. Crying would do no good. Crying never fixed anything.

“My brothers are calling me,” Pen said again.

Alice opened her eyes.

She was flat on her back beneath the giant oak, and the tree branches above her were bare, with not even a hint of bud. Slowly
she sat up, rubbing the new sore spot under her hair and reflecting that she needed to stop leading with her head, for it had taken much abuse these past weeks.

She faced the trunk of the tree and her pack lay on the ground beside her. There were a few drops of blood on the tree root where Alice's head had lain. The droplets seemed to melt into the root, and a split appeared in the bark of the tree.

Alice gasped a little and rose to her feet, drawing the fur cloak around her as a sudden chill took her. She expected the bark to shape itself into doors, and it did. Then she expected to see the white waxen face of the Red Queen and the winking silver crown, and she did not know if she could resist it a second time.

But when the doors of the tree opened wide, the Red Queen was not there. There was, however, an impossible tunnel, impossible because there should not be tunnels inside of trees. There certainly should not be tunnels that went past the back of the tree and on into the distance.

“You'd better start believing in the impossible, Alice, for the impossible will keep happening,” she said, and she had a vague memory of saying this once before, except that it hadn't stuck that time.

Alice didn't really want to go into the tunnel, for she was a little anxious of small spaces, and while the tunnel was long, it looked like it would be close. But there was nothing for it. Pen had told her that she must go on, and she knew herself that she must go on, for the children and Hatcher and the White Queen—