Red Queen (13 page)

“She's scared of him,” Pen said, and there was a great deal of relish in his voice. “She thought she could make him a toy in her playroom, like everyone and everything else. Only he wouldn't play the way she liked, and she tried to throw him away when she found him tiresome. But he wouldn't be thrown, that one.”

Alice found she had quite a lot of sympathy for this man, despite his habit of burning everything in his path. Someone had called her a toy once, too, and expected little of her.

And the men of the City want him too,
Alice thought, remembering the strange flying machines chasing through the air, and the light in the desert that could only be fire. Those machines had never returned.

Then, too, she remembered Pipkin and the girls they'd saved from the Walrus, blackened husks under a merciless sun, and her compassion receded. However much the White Queen had wronged this man, the innocent should not have to pay the price.

“But, Miss Alice, how is it that you are here at all? I thought . . .” He trailed off, his face a mixture of guilt and relief.

“You thought I should be dead, or taken by the goblin—is that it?” Alice asked.

“It wasn't . . .” Pen began.

“I've no doubt you were forced to take me to that cottage,” Alice said, holding up her hand to stop his protestations.

Pen hung his head. “When she orders me, I must obey.”

“Yes, I understand,” Alice said, though she really didn't.

“She sent a crow while you were asleep, and told me to leave you in that place.”

“So you never really did search for Hatcher, did you?” Alice asked. He could still be somewhere out there in the forest, looking for her.

“No,” Pen said. “But I didn't need to look for him.”

There was something in his voice that made her look up at him sharply. “You know where Hatcher is? Where?”

Pen shook his head. “I don't know where, exactly, but I know what happened to him.”

He paused, like he wasn't sure he wanted to tell Alice, like he was afraid of how she would respond.

“What happened?” Alice demanded.

“Well,” Pen said. “Remember as how I told you I followed his scent to a clearing and then it just stopped? And I pretended to be sort of bewildered by that?”

“Yes,” Alice said, restraining the urge to shout at the giant so he would hurry up and tell her what she wanted to know.

“Well, his scent stopped because your man changed. And it's a certainty that she changed him.”

“Changed him?” Alice said. “Changed him into what?”

For a terrible moment she thought,
Not a giant. Not a hideous monster like you.
It was cruel, she knew, to think this, for Pen was only hideous to look upon. His nature, when given free rein, seemed sweet and human enough. But she did not want her
Hatcher to become like the cursed creature before her. She simply did not.

“She changed him into a wolf,” Pen said.

A wolf.
Not human anymore, not even close. An animal that would run and bite and howl, all the wildness in Hatcher's heart finally given its freedom.

Alice might have adjusted to that, might have concluded that perhaps it was better for Hatcher to run in the woods than pretend to be something he was not, even if her heart ached and wept that she lost him. Then Pen spoke once more.

“Your man is her creature now, and he'll never belong to himself
again.”

Alice and Pen stopped just as the village came into view. It was a real village this time, Pen assured her, no more tricks or traps.

She nodded wearily. Alice would stay here one or two nights, and sleep in a regular bed, and eat something besides stale bread and cold mushrooms and hard sour berries. It had been fortunate, she supposed, to have those things at all. If not for the giant's presence she would have swallowed something poisonous and died choking in the woods, for he had warned her away from plants that would kill.

Yes, the giant had been helpful. But he was also alternately furious (with the Queen) and anxious (for Alice) and the constant swing of to-and-fro emotion was exhausting. She ought to be grateful, and somewhere deep down she was. But mostly she was tired and heartsick.

Hatcher was a wolf, under the spell of the Queen. It was entirely possible that the barking and growling Alice heard during the night she passed in the cottage had come from Hatcher, no longer himself.

Alice had a scream lodged in her throat, and if she gave vent to it she would never stop. So she didn't scream or weep or tear her hair or pound with her fists until they were bloody, though she wanted to do all those things. Instead she grabbed on to one thought and wouldn't let it go—
every spell can be undone.
She had to believe this, though she had no evidence of its truth. She had to believe that she could get Hatcher back.

Pen hovered beside Alice, who'd stopped walking and stared at nothing. He spoke, his voice hesitant. “I'll see you in a day or two, Miss Alice.”

“Yes,” she replied.

“At the other side of the village.”

“Yes.”

“And then we'll go on to the castle and take vengeance for my brothers and your man.”

“Yes.”

She said yes, though how this was to happen, Alice did not know. Somehow, though she had tried her hardest, everything had gone wrong. Through all of the horror and sadness, Alice had had just one certainty—that Hatcher would always be with her. And then suddenly he wasn't. Hatcher wasn't even Hatcher any longer.

And you are a Magician who can't even change sand into bread. How will you change a wolf into a man?

“All spells can be undone,” Alice muttered.

She must believe that. She must. But this wasn't a problem that could be remedied by courage or love or determination or even by wishing. It could only be solved by magic, real magic.

Alice came to herself again and realized Pen lingered there, waiting for some sign from her.

“It's all right, Pen,” Alice said. “I remember what to do.”

“If you say so, Miss Alice,” the giant said doubtfully.

“I do.”

He looked as though he would like to say something else, but thought better of it and turned away from her.

And then Alice was alone again. No giant lurking over her or goblin lurking behind her. No Hatcher talking through the mouse hole, no Cheshire talking in her head. She was alone, at least for the length of time it would take her to walk from here to the outbuildings of the village. The night before, being alone had seemed a frightening prospect. Now it was relaxing. She could stop pretending to her companion that she was fine when she was most decidedly not.

The village was about a quarter mile from where Alice stood. The forest ended in an abrupt line, as if someone had come along and told the trees where to stop. Between the forest and the village was a field of tall grass, yellow-gold in the slanting rays of the afternoon sun and Alice-waist-high.

Wood smoke rose from the chimneys of the little houses, and the wind caught the heavy scent of pig and cow and attendant slop. There was also meat cooking on someone's fire, and the pleasant smell of sun-warmed vegetation and turned earth.

Alice tipped her face toward the sun, reflecting for a moment on the loveliness of just seeing the sun properly for the first time in—how many days had she walked in that terrible wood? It seemed a lifetime.

And if you do not wish to spend another night out of doors, you must move yourself along, Miss Alice.

So she trudged forward, for there was nothing else to do and nowhere else to go.

The village had been built at the point where the open field ended and the mountain sloped upward, so that one end of the main street was lower than the other. It seemed an odd choice to Alice, to deliberately choose to make your home in a place that tilted sideways. How was one to have tea when all the tea things constantly slid off the table?

She giggled a little, and recognized both this and her silly thoughts as signs of increasing hysteria. She needed time to collect herself, to gather her strength for the ordeal ahead, and for the possibility that she might fail.

Perhaps she would not be able to free Hatcher from the curse. She could, at least, free him from the Queen. They could roam the countryside together, and folk would tell stories of the tall girl and the grey-eyed wolf who seemed to love her.

When they found Jenny (which might be much easier, Alice
thought, if Hatcher were a wolf, for he would be able to track her with his nose) Alice would simply explain that her father was under a spell, but could Jenny come away with them anyhow, please?

“Hysterical,” Alice said to herself. Her thoughts were getting sillier by the moment.

She passed the edge of the settlement, her mind only half on her surroundings so the goose she startled had flown in her face, squawking and scattering feathers about, before she really noticed its presence.

“Come away with you, stupid bird!” a boy's voice rang out.

Alice backed away from the furious creature, waving her hands to keeps its snapping beak from her face but to little avail. She felt the snip and snap of it at her hands and in her hair, and she cried out.

A moment later was the sound of pounding feet, and then a pair of dirty hands grasped the goose around the middle.

“Sorry about that, miss!” the boy said. He was all arm and leg and bone and freckles, with a thatch of messy brown hair on top. “She's nesting right now and is very particular about who comes near.”

Nesting?
Alice thought.
Isn't that something birds do in the spring? Does that mean it's spring?

She realized she had no idea of the season, or even how much time had passed since she and Hatcher had left the hospital.

“Eigar, you come away, now!” a woman's voice called.

Alice touched her head, felt a wet stickiness there. She looked
from her bloody hand to the direction of the calling voice. A woman aged by care and worry stood on the stoop of one of the small stone houses, her hair covered by a cloth and her blue eyes angry and suspicious and glaring at Alice.

“Sorry, miss,” the boy said, and gave her a kind of half bow before running home, still wrestling with the angry goose.

Alice watched him go, watched his (
mother? grandmother? aunt?
) gather the boy and the bird inside and firmly shut the door.

So much for the kindness of strangers, Alice thought. The woman could have at least offered Alice a wet cloth for her head. It was their bird that had caused the injury, after all.

Alice tore a strip from the end of her shirt and tried dabbing at the cuts. She looked a fright, that was certain, and that even before her face was bloodied. It was no small wonder the woman on the stoop had looked at Alice askance.

Perhaps there was a public well or trough in the village where Alice could wash her face. She trudged along, her mind half on her messy appearance (
the blood plus my scar hardly equal an appealing figure
) and half on her surroundings.

Most of the houses were closed up tight, the shutters pulled on the windows, the doors decidedly closed. If anyone was about, they would only glance at Alice before quickly looking away, almost as if they thought she would disappear if they ignored her.

Alice, walking slowly and trying not to feel too conscious of the way she looked, wondered if it would be best to buy some
food and move on. It didn't seem that this would be a pleasant place to spend the night.

Then she noticed there was a symbol burned into some of the doors, blackened and charred in the wood. She paused, peering closer, and something shifted in her memory.

Hatcher, caught in a fever of Seeing, carving shapes into the sand. A large pointed star surrounded by seven smaller ones.

“The Lost Ones,” Alice said.

Her path, then, would have inevitably come here, for her fate—and Hatcher's—were somehow tied up with these Lost Ones. There could be no passing through this village for Alice. She must find out more about the Lost Ones.

The thought of a purpose made her feel stronger, less despairing than she had felt a moment before. Hatcher and Alice were meant to be here. And that, Alice hoped, also meant that there was a future for Hatcher yet.

Her chin lifted and she coolly met the gaze of two middle-aged men—farmers, from the look of them—who gave her suspicious stares as she passed. Hatcher's voice echoed in her head (
Don't scurry like a mouse
).

He was right, of course. Alice might not be much of a Magician, but she was a Magician. She had survived things that would surely have broken others. She was not helpless. Believing this made it so, and stiffened her spine.

The center of the village was arranged much in the same manner as the false settlement at the edge of the plain. An assortment
of shops—baker and butcher and so on—framed an open square. Of course, this place was perched on the upward slope of the mountain, so everything was oddly tilted.

At the center was a well, but unlike the other village's, this water appeared safe to drink. A small knot of people were collected around, filling buckets to carry home. Alice noted that while all were polite, there was none of the friendly camaraderie one might expect from a small town.

There were no calls of familiarity, no jokes, no laughter. Above all, there were no children, and there ought to be. There ought to be children running and squealing and being scolded by partly attentive mothers, but the only child Alice had seen was the boy with the goose.

She fell in with the group of people around the well, hoping to refill her waterskin and wash her face without attracting too much notice. As soon as she joined the few people waiting their turn, however, what little conversation there was immediately ceased.

All eyes turned to stare at her—cold and suspicious. Alice put what she hoped was a friendly smile on her face and held up her waterskin. Perhaps the fading light would disguise the blood on her face as dirt or shadows. “I wonder if I might share in some of your water. I've walked a very long way today and I'm awfully thirsty.”

“Here, now, where did you come from?” an old man barked. He was withered as a dried apple and just as brown, with gnarled hands that spoke of a lifetime of work.

Alice was about to say “the City” and then thought perhaps these folk might not believe that. The City seemed very far away from here, both in miles and in mind.

“The forest,” she said, pointing behind her and down the mountain.

Several mutterings began at this, and Alice definitely heard the word “liar” more than once.

“No one comes from the forest,” the man said.

“Well, I did,” Alice said.

She hadn't expected a warm welcome, but neither had she anticipated total disbelief. Where else would she have come from? She hadn't fallen from the sky, though their expressions indicated she might as well have.

“Then you must belong to the White Queen, and that means you are not welcome here,” the old man said.

“Hush, Asgar,” a younger man said, his eyes frightened as he glanced at Alice. “Don't insult the Queen.”

“I'll do as I wish, Gunnar,” Asgar cried. “She's taken enough from us, and more than enough. If this creature would punish me in the Queen's stead, then so be it, but I would not willingly give one drop of water nor anything else to her.”

Some of the people backed away during this speech, as if fearful Asgar's words might taint them.

“He doesn't mean anything by it, miss,” Gunnar said, his expression pleading for mercy, for understanding. “It's only his granddaughter was—”

“Don't you talk about my Asta!” Asgar bellowed, his face
purpling. He stepped toward Alice, shaking his fist. “That witch— That witch—”

He crumpled suddenly, his shoulders shaking, his face covered by his hands.

“I am not from the White Queen,” Alice said. “And I have as much reason to dislike her as you. She took the man I loved and turned him into a wolf, and she set her goblin upon me as I passed the night in the woods.”

Gunnar narrowed his eyes at her. “If you are not her creature, then how did you survive the goblin's assault?”

Alice explained how she had spent the night in the cottage, and how the goblin tried to trick her into coming out. Several villagers frowned, and one woman asked hesitantly, “But why would the goblin not enter the cottage?”