Red Queen (27 page)

Alice approached the bed, but the wolf did not stir. It breathed steadily, the thick fur of its back and chest expanding and contracting at a regular rate. This was the first time she'd gotten a close look at Hatcher since he'd changed.

He was exceptionally large for a wolf, or so Alice thought, having never seen a wolf before. She knew they were larger than the dogs that ran in packs in the Old City, and certainly much bigger than the toy-sized dogs that some rich ladies kept in the New City. Hatcher as a wolf seemed to be built still roughly on Hatcher scale; that was, he was larger than most people when he was a person, and Alice thought that translated into a larger wolf also. The fur was black with white peppered throughout, like Hatcher's hair, and the wolf's muzzle was grey like Hatcher's beard.

He looked peaceful, his tail curled around his body, in a way that Hatcher-the-man never looked, or almost never. Alice stopped when her legs hit the side of the bed. The mattress shifted, and the silk hangings shook a little, but the wolf did not wake.

Hatcher.

Her mouth moved, making the shape of his name, but her voice would not come to her, would not make the sound that meant her beloved.

Hatcher.

She reached for him, hands outstretched, and sank them into his fur. He did not move, did not seem to feel her there at all.

An enchanted sleep,
Alice thought.
One more task set by the Queen, one more hoop to jump through, one more circle to turn while the hurdy-gurdy plays for the clapping crowd.

Alice did not want to dance to her tune. Now that she was here, now that Hatcher was so near, all she wanted was to go to sleep. She was so tired. It had been a long time since she'd slept, and her sleep was always so full of dreams that she woke up exhausted instead of rested.

It won't hurt to put my head down, just for a little while.

But she shouldn't be sleeping now. There were things to do, stairs to climb, queens to battle.

So very tired. It's all right to rest, to be near Hatcher for a while, to rest. Queens can be battled another day.

Alice stretched across the bed until she was beside the wolf. She curled her arm around his middle just as she did when she and Hatcher slept, and tucked her legs beside his. The velvet was soft against her cheek and the wolf's body was warm. She breathed the smell of him, forest and earth and wind. Alice knew she was safe.

She closed her eyes, matching her breath to the wolf's, and
soon she was asleep. She slept, and Hatcher slept, and they dreamed together.

He was running, running like he had never run before; four legs were better than two. His nose was full of loam and flower and root, and the little things that scurried before him, little things that did not want to be eaten.

One of them was before him now, a brown rabbit leaping over the dead leaves, but it was no match for him and soon he would have it in his teeth. Saliva dripped from his open jaw, his nails dug into the ground and then he had it.

He clamped down hard on its neck and it kicked its last breath out and the blood was warm on his tongue and in his throat and it made him feel alive, so alive to make this little thing dead. He ripped out its insides and the bones crunched in his mouth and it was too delicious, but soon enough it was gone and he was still hungry, so hungry, he always felt so hungry. But the forest was full of little things, and sometimes big things, big things with antlers that could leap away much faster than a rabbit, but if you were smart and careful you could catch them anyway and oh, then you could feast and feast, so much blood and flesh.

He took off running again, but slower now, sniffing the air for something good to eat. Another little thing scampered away but it was too small to trouble with, one of those chittering little ones that barely made a mouthful. No, he wanted a big one now;
he was thinking about his face buried inside all that muscle and fat and running blood, so he could wallow in it.

Something strange up ahead now, something different, and he slowed. He did not want to meet up with a roaring one, those big ones that stood sometimes on their back legs and sometimes on all fours, and their claws were long and sharp. They would take away your kill if they came, for they were bigger than you and could hurt you, and they wouldn't go away no matter how you barked and growled.

This didn't smell like a roaring one, but it didn't exactly smell like something good to eat either. There was a scent he knew, had encountered before, but he couldn't remember what it was. Something so familiar, and maybe it was good to eat, but he had to be careful, so, so careful. Creeping now, on silent paws, his bloodied mouth closed and the taste of the rabbit lingering on his tongue and the smell in his nose getting stronger as he got closer. Something about that smell lodged deep in his brain, something he knew but couldn't quite recall, something he wanted so much.

Yes, he wanted it. He was trotting faster now, no longer quite so cautious because he wanted it so much, wanted to open it up with his teeth and his claws and crawl inside it and stay safe there forever and forever.

Then it was there, the thing he chased now and in his dreams, but it did not see him. It was stumbling along, so noisy and foolish he could leap upon it now and wrap his teeth around its neck before it even knew he was there.

It was high off the ground and walked on two legs but it was funny, not like the other animals of the wood, for you couldn't see its feet or any of the fur except on its head, and that was yellow and there was hardly any of it at all. All the rest was covered with the skin of others, the skins of plants and animals made to look like something different but he could still tell what they had been before.

Still, for all of that he could smell the smell of it through the dead skins, could smell the heat and the blood, and he wanted it, wanted it, wanted it. He wanted to kill it and eat it and something else too, something he didn't quite understand.

It stopped walking and looked around, and he could see its eyes so frightened of what hid in the woods, things like him, things that wanted to take it for their own. He could see, too, the shadow that followed this silly, noisy thing that smelled so familiar, a shadow that reached for it with long, long fingers.

He felt a growl building deep in his throat at the thing with the long fingers. It was smart; it kept the noisy, silly one from smelling it and hearing it but he could see it following and what it was going to do to that girl.

Girl. Yes. It was a girl; though it didn't look quite like a girl, he knew that it was. The shadow wanted the girl but it couldn't have her because
she belongs to me
.

Belongs to me, belongs to me, belongs to me, and her name is Alice.

Yes, Alice, and that shadow wants her and it can't have her
because she is mine now and always. I ran from her and she is looking for me. I got mixed up for a while with the smells and the blood and forgot about her, but she is mine and now I will go back to her, because she is lost in the woods and that shadow will try to take her. I must make the shadow go away first, the creature with the long fingers.

He bounded through the wood, silent and swift, so the girl called Alice would not see him, for he thought that she would cry if she did and he did not want to see her cry; he wanted to see her smile. He stopped for a moment, because he couldn't remember why a smile was nice. It was strange that girls would show all their teeth, and it was supposed to make you feel warm instead of scared. He wasn't scared of anything, though, not this creature in the forest who stalked his Alice nor the lady in white who'd promised him blood, all the blood he could want if he only stayed with her. But he couldn't stay with her—his Alice needed him—and now he stopped again, his mind so confused, because there was a little girl too, a little girl with grey eyes and he was looking for her. He wasn't supposed to eat her, though something about her was mixed up with blood on the floor, blood all over the cottage and his own voice howling and howling and howling to the sky. There was something in his hands, something sharp and wickeder than any claw or tooth, something that bit and sliced and oh, the blood, it was beautiful and it was terrible and it was all around him, but there was something wrong too because she was gone, not Alice but the other one; they took
her away and the rabbit promised he wouldn't. That was so ridiculous because rabbits couldn't take any person away. There was nothing to a rabbit. They were little scampering things that got eaten up by animals like him, and now he couldn't remember what he was doing again. He was looking for something tasty, something to eat up, something big and delicious not scrawny like that rabbit.

He trotted on, the shadow and the girl no longer there in his mind, only the smell of the earth and the wind and the sound of hooves in the distance, the sound of deer cropping plants, and he was hungry, so hungry.

Alice woke to the sound of the wolf growling, and her body was not curved around his warm one anymore but was flat with the wolf's paws on her chest and his hot breath only an inch from her nose.

She could not see his eyes, Hatcher's grey eyes, and she knew Hatcher was in there somewhere for her dream told her that he had remembered her when he was a wolf, if only for a moment. Then it had gotten confused with Jenny and all the men he'd killed the night his daughter was taken from him, and it was too much for him and so he'd gone back to being a wolf and had forgotten all about Alice again.

“But you're in there,” she said softly.

The wolf growled again, snapped at her face in warning, but
it did not bite her. It could have. It could have killed her before she woke, drained her blood without her ever knowing, but instead it held her in place and snapped and growled, almost like it was trying to remember, like her scent was familiar and it didn't know why.

“Hatcher,” she said, and put her arms around his ruff.

His claws dug in deep, making her shoulders bleed, the weight of him bearing down on her body and his hackles rising as she touched him.

“Hatcher,” she said again.

The crown was quiet and cool, and so was Alice's own magic. This was not something that could be undone by a spell. She couldn't push against the Queen's magic with some trick of her own. She had to make him remember.

“Hatcher. Your name is Hatcher. You are not a wolf but a man.”

He snapped again, and this time his teeth grazed her scarred cheek. She felt the blood rise there, and knew that the smell of her blood would make him forget, for Hatcher the man and Hatcher the wolf both dreamed of blood, and she must overcome that, must make him remember the Alice that he loved.

“You are a man,” she repeated. “You run on two legs and not four, and at night you sleep beside me. My name is Alice, and for ten long years you loved me through a mouse hole and I . . .”

She hesitated, for it was a strange thing. She had thought it so many times but she had never said it, never said the words out
loud. She'd been afraid to, afraid that it would mean something would change between them.

Something
would
change—she knew that now—but it was not a change to fear. She would be a woman, not a girl. She would look him in the eye, Alice to Hatcher, and stand beside him instead of crouching behind.

“I love you, Hatcher. Hatcher, come back to me,” she said.

Alice still could not see his eyes for his nose was pressed to hers and he growled, his teeth right there so close to her throat. She wrapped her arms tighter, pulled him closer, dancing right along the edge with death but she wasn't afraid.

She wouldn't cower. She wouldn't be afraid anymore. There were monsters in the night but there were monsters in the day too, and monsters inside people who smiled and showed you all their teeth like they were nice.

There were monsters inside Alice, but they only had power if she gave it to them, and other things had power too, like the laughter of children enjoying a picnic together and like the love she had for this terrible, wonderful, imperfect man, this man who hid inside the body of a wolf because he thought that was where he belonged.