Red Queen (29 page)

The sight of her eyes took Alice's breath away. They were Hatcher's eyes exactly, the precise shade of grey, but there was nothing of Hatcher's personality. There was hate, fierce and unyielding. That hate burned with an energy the Queen's body no longer had. The hate was the only thing keeping her alive.

The White Queen opened her mouth. Her teeth were almost all gone, just a few broken stumps remaining. Her breath exhaled and Alice smelled death.

“Y-y-y-you,” the White Queen said. She drew a deep lungful of air, working up to her next words. “I-it w-w-was y-y-your f-fault.”

Alice's brows knit together. “What was my fault?”

The Queen gestured to her haggard appearance. She put her tongue between her teeth, closed her eyes and seemed to draw up a great effort of will. “This,” she finally spat out.

Alice looked at the Queen, at the tumbledown room. “All this was my fault? You aged like this because of me?”

The Queen struggled to speak, her mouth working soundlessly before she managed to get the words out. “Cracked . . . the . . . barrier. Cracked . . . the . . . magic.”

So merely by entering the enchanted tree unbidden, Alice had made all the White Queen's dominoes fall. The magic was that unstable. No wonder there had not been soldiers to attack Alice or more spells to bar her way. There might have been those things before, but Alice had destroyed them. Just by coming here she had destroyed them.

The White Queen caught a glimpse of the crown on Alice's head. Her face split in a gruesome parody of a smile. Alice shuddered inwardly. It was the smile of a dying thing, one without contentment or happiness.

“C-c-come for m-me, then?”

Alice knelt before the White Queen, wished she could see more of Jenny in that twisted face, wished that Hatcher's daughter had not come to this end.

Alice put her hand on the White Queen's hand, and a moment later she was not Alice any longer. The Red Queen came forth—

(only for a moment)

—and Alice felt her strong and true and burning in every part of her body. She burned into the White Queen and there was no need to chase the magic this time. The White Queen's power knelt before the Red Queen's, bent its head in submission.

It was strange for Alice, for she could feel the Red Queen's sorrow and rage as her own. She felt the need to punish her sister, understood the necessity of revenge. But she also felt the hollowness of the victory, that her real sister had been killed long before, and all that remained was the bit of her still in the crown.

All this mingled with Alice's own sorrow, that Hatcher and Jenny's story would come to this end, that there was no joyful reunion, no happy ending.

The Red Queen stood before her sister, the one who had killed her, and flicked her hand.

Alice thought she heard a voice, very far away, almost like an echo of a memory in the far distant past, or maybe something that was only imagined.

Off . . . with . . . her . . . head.

The White Queen's head separated from her body, clean as if Hatcher had swung his axe. It disintegrated into dust almost immediately, as did the rest of her, as if she had only been waiting for this moment to collapse. Soon there was nothing but a pile of rags and ash and a silver crown on top, the blue jewel winking at Alice.

Alice took the red crown from her head, expecting some resistance, but there was none. The Red Queen had done what she set out to do. Alice felt the Queen receding, fading now that the balance of life and death had been righted. She would not stay with Alice. She did not want to go on now that her sister was gone.

Alice placed the red crown beside the blue crown. For some it might have been painful to give up the temptation of so much magic, but for Alice it was not. She didn't want magic that was not her own. She'd seen the price, and she was not willing to pay it.

The ground beneath her feet shifted and Alice stumbled a little before righting herself.

“The tower is going to come down,” Hatcher said behind her. His voice was strangely subdued, almost passive.

Alice turned to him. His face was white and waxy, and he stared at the place where Alice had left the two crowns.

“We have to go,” Alice said.

She reached for him, then dropped her hand away when he turned his face to her. His eyes were dazed, but just underneath there was something else, something directed at her. Anger.

“I thought you didn't want to kill her,” Hatcher said.

“I didn't,” Alice said. She felt a thrum of tension, just a little tickle on the back of her neck. His face wasn't quite right, and he'd never looked at her that way before.

She felt the tower vibrating all around them, very subtly. In a few moments it would crack. They had to get out. Not for themselves, but for the children. She couldn't leave the children to perish in this dying castle.

“Then why did you?”

Each word was a blow, but a blow Alice could not feel or acknowledge right now. The castle was on the verge of collapse.

“I didn't,” Alice said, inching around Hatcher toward the door. “It was the Red Queen.”

“The Red Queen,” Hatcher said through his teeth. “You put some crown on your head and now you're the Red Queen, so you're not responsible for what happened to my Jenny.”

“Hatcher,” Alice said, and her voice was steady and betrayed none of the fear she felt, or the hurt that he would have forgotten her like this. He wasn't thinking right. “We have to leave.”

He hadn't moved, not yet, but she recognized the quality of stillness in him. It was the calm before the explosion. She needed to stay out of his reach, not for her own sake but for his. Hatcher was strong. If Hatcher got hold of her, he would try to hurt her.

He wasn't supposed to hurt her. Hatcher would never hurt her. But Hatcher wasn't supposed to miss with his axe, either, and he had in the woods. And he wasn't supposed to turn into a wolf and leave her, and Alice remembered the look on his face just before he darted away, the feeling she'd had then that he might gobble her up.

He wouldn't be able to hurt her, because her magic would protect her. Alice wasn't helpless anymore. But he would regret trying to harm her later, when he came back to himself, and she would regret it if her magic injured him. It wasn't supposed to be this way, and they didn't have time for this. The castle would be on their heads in a moment.

Worst of all, Alice understood why he was angry. He had only just remembered his daughter, had lived with the regret of not saving her so many years ago. Now he'd finally found her again and Alice had killed her—or so he thought.

“Hatcher,” she said. She slid behind him. She saw his back now, his hunched shoulders, his hands balled into fists. “The White Queen used Jenny. She had eaten up all that Jenny was. There was nothing left of her.”

“So you say,” Hatcher said, and turned on her.

His eyes were mad, and Alice ran.

The tower shook in earnest now. Alice sprinted down the stairs, barely touching the steps. Hatcher roared behind her, but she heard him stumbling, barely able to keep his feet as the tower cracked and crumbled.

Please don't let him get hit by a piece of falling masonry,
Alice thought. His anger would pass, and he would be Hatcher again. She believed it. She had to believe it. He was not Hatcher right now, not the Hatcher who loved her. He was a mad thing, a wild thing, an animal in the grip of his grief and lashing out at the thing he could see, the thing he thought had caused it—Alice.

In the meantime they all needed to get out of the castle. If Alice had to make him chase her to do so, then so be it. He could chase her, and she would have to run very fast.

(Scurry, little mouse; don't let the cat catch you, run, run, run.)

She reached the bottom of the stairs, ran down the passageway to the place where the children picnicked. When she threw open the door she found them all calmly lined up, waiting for her.

“We're going now?” Ake asked.

“Yes,” Alice said. She didn't want to scare the children, as they'd had more than enough to scare them already. She glanced down the passageway, saw Hatcher's shadow approaching the bottom of the tower stairs. “Follow me.”

The stairs were crumbling away by the time they reached them, and Alice could see a huge crack in the ballroom beyond. “Hurry, hurry, carefully, now.”

She did not look back to see whether Hatcher still followed, or what state he was in if he did. Alice picked up the smallest one, Alfhild, who looked like a little blond fairy and was just as light. The other six children crowded close to Alice, each one with a small hand on her pant leg or sweater hem, as chunks of plaster fell from the ceiling and the ground rumbled beneath them.

There was a great sound above, a screech like a dying monster, and Alice knew the tower was falling away into the chasm below. She did not look left or right or behind, did not see anything except the door at the opposite end of the ballroom. Alfhild tucked her face into Alice's shoulder. Alice made a mental note of all the points of pressure on her clothes, so if one went missing she would know.

They passed through the ballroom and Alice heard the stairs collapsing.

Please, Hatcher, get through. Get through and get out and come back to me.

But she did not look back for him. Hatcher was not her responsibility now. She must take care of the children.

They hurried through the dining room with its great tapestries, and through the kitchen where the pots and pans swung and clattered in a great unmusical din. Finally they were in the cellar, the very earth around them crumbling.

“I remember this place,” Ake said in wonder. “There's a tunnel made of ice on the other side of that door.”

“Yes,” Alice said, panting and sweating from the run. “It will be a lovely slide for you to go down now, won't it? The longest one you've ever been on, I expect.”

The children all looked at her as though she'd promised them a day out at the fair. One of the older children ran for the door and threw it open.

The tunnel appeared intact still, though Alice did not know how long that would last. She also wasn't entirely certain where it would empty at the bottom. The goblin's former lair, or somewhere else? Would the enchantment inside the tree hold now that the White Queen was gone?

The children climbed into the tunnel, one after another, whooping and hollering with glee. Alice placed Alfhild down.

“Go on,” she said, giving the little girl a gentle push. Alfhild gave her a luminous smile and clambered onto the ice slide.

The castle was making terrible rending noises now, thrashing in its death throes. Alice couldn't look back. They'd spent a few moments in this cellar as the children went down one by one, and Hatcher had not appeared.

Now is not the time to grieve,
Alice thought.
You're not safe yet.

She stepped into the ice tunnel and, feeling a little foolish, sat on her bottom. Straightaway she started to skid along, first slowly and then faster and faster. The walls whipped by in a blur of white, and far below the echoes of childish laughter drifted back to her.

Much sooner than she expected, she crashed into a pile of
giggling children, rolling about like little puppies, poking and tickling one another. They howled with delight as she tried to extricate herself from them, clinging to her arms like baby monkeys and climbing on her chest and stomach and making all of the air whoosh out in a gush.

They were in a little anteroom that hadn't been there earlier. There were three doors in front of them. Alice thought one of them must lead to the goblin's former lair. She had no wish to pass through that place again, though the goblin and all his dolls had fallen away. Besides, the doorway into that cavern was hidden, and Alice didn't think they had time to search for it.

The crumbling castle was impossible to hear down here, though the ground held a faint pulse that made Alice nervous. Magic made these tunnels, and that magic was fading. They needed to be out in the open air before that happened.

“All right, all right, that's enough,” Alice said, though her authority was undermined somewhat by the laughter in her voice. One of the children had found a spot near Alice's ribs and was energetically tickling it, making her gasp and giggle and try to pry the child away so she could stand up and make decisions properly.

“No, really, that's enough,” Alice repeated, trying and failing to make her face look very sober.

The others had joined in now, little fingers wiggling, and Alice knew they must leave but she did not want to take their joy away, not even for a moment.

“That's enough, she said,” a man's voice growled.

They all stilled, twisting around to stare at the intruder. Hatcher stood just a few feet behind them, his head scraping the roof of the ice tunnel.

All the children scampered off Alice, who stood to face him. The little ones huddled behind her, glancing up at her face, unsure what to think of this new person.

“Hatcher,” Alice said. She couldn't properly see his eyes. Was he still in the grip of his madness and sorrow?

He moved closer, and Alice backed up a step, the children shuffling behind her. He stopped, and she saw then that there was blood in his hair, and his eyes said he was sorry. His eyes were Hatcher's eyes, a little mad and much sadder than before, and also eyes that loved her.

A great relief washed over her then, because Alice was a little mad and much sadder than before and she loved him. They were two broken things that belonged together to make one whole, and she knew that Hatcher had only forgotten that for a moment.

“It's all right now,” Alice said to the children.

Alfhild gave her a doubtful look. “He looks scraggy.”

Alice choked on a laugh, and Hatcher smiled in return. “He always looks like that. He's a wolf.”