Red Queen (8 page)

The fear had suffused her, like a poison that spread from the place where the goblin had almost touched. She felt cold all over, cold in her bones, and her hands shook so hard she closed them in fists in her pockets so that Hatcher would not see.

Alice could not have explained why the goblin scared her so, scared her more than anything else she had seen—more than Cheshire, more than the Walrus, more than even the thing that she was not supposed to think about because she was going to
forget it. All she knew was that as the shadows lengthened and the faint sunlight disappeared, she wanted to hide under her cloak until the sun rose again.

Hatcher, however, had a different idea. The darkness drew out the predator in him, and as the creatures of the forest settled into their nests and burrows, his teeth gleamed like a wolf's.

Alice heard Liesl's voice in her head, that nurserymaid from long ago who came from the high forests.
Grandmother, what big teeth you have.

Hatcher was no wolf in an innocent's clothing. He was a wolf in a man's form, a killer forced to pretend that he was civilized. And now, in this raw and uncivilized place, his nature could finally find its full bloom.

She sensed the shift, felt the expectation that built in him. And then she saw the goblin, and felt her heart stutter and her blood halt.

It was just ahead of them, on the path, a silhouette that did not quite fit into the shape of the trees. Alice was faintly surprised she could recognize anything at all with the sun gone. She realized the night was not entirely black, that there were differing qualities of darkness that made monsters loom where once had been only forest.

She squinted, not certain that the goblin was there after all. Perhaps it was only her imagination, and the crooking of a tree branch, for it wasn't before them now.

Hatcher was muttering beneath his breath as he stalked, a
single phrase repeated over and over that grew louder with every step. Alice leaned closer to hear.

“The night is alive and so am I,” he said, and his voice came from somewhere that was not his throat, but deep in his belly. “The night is alive and so am I. The night is alive and so am I.”

Alice felt chill all over at the sound of that voice.
I can't lose him,
she thought.
Hatcher, stay with me.

She reached for him, not knowing what she would do, not knowing the words to keep him with her, to keep him human.

And then the night was alive.

All around were the sounds of trees expanding against their bark, the flexing of branches, the brushing of leaves against one another. A hissing sound rose, the singing of a thousand snakes. Far behind them was the crashing of something huge, something moving through the wood with dangerous intent. A wolf howled, and then another, and another.

Alice stared around, unsure which threat was most dire. Were the trees about to snatch her from the ground? Would a wolf pack descend on them and tear them to pieces? Or would the goblin arrive to finish its business?

Then a wolf howled very close to her ear. She turned slowly, full of dread, expecting the glint of yellow eyes and sharp white fangs. The only eyes she saw were grey ones, full of blood and mischief, and teeth bared in a murderer's smile.

“The night is alive, Alice,” Hatcher said. “And so am I.”

She felt a thrill of fear, a fear that surprised her. First, she'd
been in a heightened state since the goblin appeared. She didn't think she could be more scared, but there she was. And second—well, Hatcher had never frightened her before. Not directly. Alice was secure in her certainty that he would never hurt her. Or at least, she had been secure.

Now he looked like the wolf she'd imagined him to be, a wolf once trapped and now free.

“The night is alive, Alice,” he repeated, and he drew his face close to her still one.

She did not move, barely daring to breathe. Her body was still but her mind was moving rapidly through a series of horrifying images, things that might happen to her if Hatcher snapped. Things that involved leaving her on the forest floor in many small and bloodied pieces.

He would regret it tomorrow; of that she was certain. But whatever happened would be done, and Alice would not be there to reprimand him.

The huge crashing thing continued in their direction. Alice heard it approaching, brush and branches giving way before it, the rush of small creatures as they squealed away from its tread. It would crush them in a moment, and it wouldn't matter if Hatcher had gone mad—or, rather, madder than he was before.

Hatcher seemed not to hear the giant thing. He was listening to something else, something that spoke only to him.

Alice saw movement out of the corner of her eye as the forest broke in pieces before the marauding creature. Several small animals with long tails ran over her feet. It amazed her that even
in this moment, when she was fairly certain that she would either have her throat cut or be squashed by a giant, she could think how much she hated rats, and shudder inwardly at the feeling of their tails dragging over the toes of her boots.

Then Hatcher leaned into her face, bit her nose—but gently, very gently—and ran away into the woods.

Alice wanted to be astonished (
he left me
) but the giant monster was upon her, and now she needed to run too.

She couldn't possibly follow Hatcher. The darkness had swallowed him too quickly. Away from the path she would get lost; there was no doubt of that. But the other creature, the roaring, crashing monster, was coming straight down the path.

Up, you silly nit.

Alice reached blindly toward the nearest tree, scraped her boots against the bark and pulled herself up, and up, and up. Even a short time ago she wouldn't have had the strength to do this, but a full belly went a long way, and their adventures had made Alice much fitter than she'd been in the hospital. And fright was a powerful motivator.

All she could think was that she needed to get out of the giant's reach. She didn't know how tall it might be—it sounded huge—so she kept going up, ignoring the angry squirrels that chittered at her and the birds that flew off, squawking in irritation. She climbed, sweat beading on her face and making her hands slippery, until her head spun and she knew she could not go any farther.

Alice glanced down, and only then did she realize she was
much, much higher than she intended to be. The forest floor was not visible, and the darkness below her seemed an abyss ready to swallow her in its maw.

And the creature, whatever it had been, was gone. The crashing, banging, breaking noise had passed on, fading away from her, and Alice had been so consumed by her terror and shock that she hadn't noticed.

She was so high her stomach turned sickeningly. What on earth had she been thinking? How was she to get down from this great height? Where had Hatcher run off to, and how would she find him? And what was she to do if she
couldn't
find him again? Should she go on without him? Or back to the City?

No, there was no future for her in the City. She knew that. Her family would not be pleased to discover she was alive. And if she did not return to her family, what then? There was only Cheshire, and Alice had no wish to be a cat's-paw for Cheshire.

She squinted below her, trying to find a safe foothold down. Everything was soft and blurry and impossible to distinguish. Now she realized that there was some faint star and moonlight trickling in through the canopy above, which had allowed her to climb upward with a surety she did not have going down.

Her hands were wrapped around a particularly thick branch, and she thought she might be able to sit on it. Staying in one place seemed the smartest notion. Alice could not see clearly below her, Hatcher was missing and the goblin could be anywhere. Blundering through the wood was about the most foolish thing she could do.

She struggled to pull her whole body up, and once she was there she realized the branch, while thicker than many of the others, was hardly wide enough to accommodate her narrow seat. Her hands trembled as she gripped the branch with her legs like she was astride a horse and tried to find a comfortable resting place against the trunk. It was not comfortable at all, especially with her pack in the way.

Alice twisted her pack so that the straps still went over her shoulders but the pack itself nestled in front of her, like a mother's pregnant belly. She was taking no chances that she might accidentally drop the pack below, where a certain something she was supposed to forget might fall into strange hands.

Moving the pack only made her uncomfortably aware of the bark scratching the back of her neck, and the fact that she was perched in a tree like some demented bird. She wanted very much for her feet to be on solid ground, where they belonged. She wanted very much for Hatcher to return to her, preferably in a calmer state. She wanted, and she was slightly ashamed to admit it to herself, for their quest to be over.

They were traveling east in search of a vague rumor. Hatcher's daughter might not be where they thought she was. Jenny might not be alive at all. And if she were alive, who was to say she would remember him, or care? What if Alice and Hatcher were crossing this forest and the mountains and the desert for nothing?

And there was something else too—that conversation that Alice might have heard, or might have dreamed. The conversation
of three enormous shadows in the night, who talked of “her,” and the source of the light that Alice and Hatcher had seen as they passed through the scorched land.

Alice found there were too many worries, too many unknowns that may or may not affect their journey. Her sharp fear (of both the goblin and Hatcher) had faded, leaving her drained and exhausted. Her head nodded forward on her chest and she jolted upright, terrified of falling from her insecure perch. She could not drift off to sleep here. It was not safe.

She listened to the settling forest, all the animals and birds and trees quieting down for the night. Her own heart quieted as she peered up at the stars, the few little specks of light that she could see through the leaves. The breeze was cold, and though she was slightly disoriented by their time on the path, she thought it came from the mountains.

It will be cold there,
she thought.
There is snow on the peaks.

Alice had never seen snow like they got in the northern countries. In the City a few flakes would fall occasionally, hardly enough to blanket the street before turning into a grey, slushy mess. She wondered what it would be like to walk through thick carpets of snow, and perhaps see a snow bear, like in the stories.

A bear that would turn into a prince,
she thought, and then smiled sadly to herself. Her prince was not a bear, but a madman. Alice had learned that you could not choose whom to love. If royalty appeared out of nowhere and offered her a future, she would have to turn away from it, because Alice could never love
any other but the one with grey eyes and bloodstained hands. Was he thinking of her right now, wondering why she had not followed him? Or was he lost in the thrill of the hunt, not to remember her until morning and regret set in?

She shivered as the wind blew again, and wrapped her arms together, hunching her shoulders.

Cold. So cold.

Her eyelids drifted downward; her breathing was smooth and even. Her eyes snapped open again, and she adjusted herself on the branch.
I can't fall. I can't fall. I must stay awake.

But it was cold, and the cold made her sleepier than she already was.

Cold. So cold.

Alice stood before a palace made of glass, perched on the highest peak of the highest mountain. Her hands shook so hard she could barely feel them and when she glanced down she saw her fingertips were blue. She could not feel her feet inside her boots, and her teeth clattered together.

The palace glittered in the sunlight, more beautiful than any building Alice had ever seen. But it was a cold beauty, and something was wrong here. Something very wrong. She cocked her head to one side, listening. The wind blew shards into her ear that sang an icy song, but underneath that sound there was something more. A long, high laugh, a woman's laugh that held no joy.

And there was screaming. The children were screaming.

The sound was so terrible, so full of heartbreak, that Alice
grabbed her ears and covered them, trying to block it out, trying to pretend she had never heard such a noise.

The screaming wound inside her ear and up into Alice's brain, lodging itself there, deep inside so that it permeated her bones and blood and flesh so that she would always hear it, sleeping and waking, as long as the children were screaming.

They were screaming for her.

No,
she thought.
No.

And she ran, and was heedless of where her steps carried her, and her boots skidded on the ice and she went over the edge of the peak, the highest peak of the highest mountain, and felt herself falling away into nothing, but the screaming followed her all the way down, so that even in death she would not escape those terrible cries.

Her eyes opened, and she was falling, really falling. Despite all her precautions she had drifted off to sleep while perched on the branch and now she would pay for it. She could still hear the screaming from her dream, an echo that followed her into wakefulness.

The wind whistled in her ears. Her back arced toward the ground as her limbs curved upward, grasping for the sky. She had only a moment to brace herself for the hard crash of ground beneath her, for the blossoming of pain as her bones shattered.

But that did not happen. Instead she hit something leathery and tough and very,
very
smelly, like a sulfurous swamp. She had a glimpse of an enormous face—bulbous green eyes, hairy nostrils under a giant potato nose—and then everything went dark
as fingers closed over her and a rumbling voice shouted in triumph, “Got you!”

Her body was breaking now, though not the way she'd expected it to when she was falling. The creature's grip was crushing her, but more than that she couldn't breathe. The hideous stink of its skin was overwhelming. She was choking, gagging, and in a moment the hand that held her would snap her ribs and the splintered pieces would pierce her heart and she would be dead.