Red Queen (25 page)

“I am really quite sick of this,” Alice said, standing slowly and painfully.

All of her fresh bruises and cuts screamed as she did so, and she was certain she'd never longed for a bath so much as she did now. The spell that had seized her in the ballroom was broken now, and she could see that she'd been very foolish. Hatcher was not, as Bjarke said, the man she knew before. She would have to find him again, but the way to do that was decidedly not by petting him while he looked as though he was contemplating her value as a meal.

The hole had led her to a room, a round room dug into the earth, and at the far end there was another tunnel.

I have become a rabbit,
Alice thought.
I spend all my life tunneling through warrens.

She automatically crossed to the entrance at the other side,
certain there would be more delay and danger, and then she stopped.

“Why should I play her game?” Alice said aloud.

Finally,
Cheshire said.

“No, really, why? She wants me to march through this passage so I can experience more horrors, so that the goblin can come back to life or some such nonsense. Well, I won't do it. Do you hear me?” Alice banged one hand on the side of the earthen tunnel. It didn't make very much noise but it was satisfying all the same. “I won't do it.”

Very nice,
Cheshire said. Alice heard the faint sound of applause.
Now that your performance is concluded, what will you do to get yourself out of this mess?

“You're one to talk about performance,” Alice muttered.

It was all very well to talk about not staying here and not playing the Queen's game, but unfortunately Cheshire was right. Alice needed to find a way out, one that didn't involve the tunnel or attempting to climb up the steep hole she'd just fallen through.

She wondered very briefly whether she might be able to fly or float up, if she only concentrated hard enough. Part of her thought this might be possible, but another part suspected that this was absurd—or, at least, as difficult to do as making food appear out of thin air.

But you made the glass ball appear out of nothing,
she thought. So while she might not be able to fly, to make herself float without any visible aid . . .

A vision of the strange flying machines that had passed over
the scorched plains appeared in her mind and she dismissed it almost immediately. That machine was far too complex and difficult for her to attempt. But something like it . . . something simple . . .

A noise roared out of the tunnel, a sound like a great monster rampaging toward her. Alice deliberately turned her back to the noise and crouched on the ground, sketching out a little idea of a flying machine with her finger.

The monster roared, whatever it was, and galloped into the room, but still she would not face it, would not make it true by acknowledging it was there.

She was figuring things out now, realizing a truth she should have known all along. So much of what Alice had seen and experienced since entering the Queen's realm was false—illusion, trickery. It was up to Alice not to believe in it, and now she chose not to. She chose not to trudge through the tunnel or fight the monster that dripped hot saliva on the back of her neck. If Alice swiped at the stuff, she would find it wasn't there at all. She couldn't be bothered, though. She was getting some things sorted, and had no time for silly queens and their silly toys.

“It's not even her magic, anyway,” Alice said. “She stole it.”

She paused, thinking of Bjarke and how the stolen magic inside him had eaten him alive. That must be what the White Queen's magic was doing too—eating her alive, for she was only a vessel for something older and more powerful than she. It was the magic that led to the madness, to the dying kingdom.

“And to the children,” Alice breathed. That was it.

That was why the Queen needed the children. She could not possibly hope to hold on to such wild and old magic without it destroying her utterly, as it almost had Bjarke. So she used the children, and their young, strong bodies, to carry the weight of her magic, keep it from sucking her dry.

But how? The Queen still needed to control it, for the children must not be able to wield her own power against her. She also needed some kind of conduit to draw the magic to her when she wanted it, and send it back into the children when she was done.

No wonder the children screamed. The magic did not belong to them but it moved inside them, came and went against their will. If the borrowed magic acted as it had in Bjarke, then it slowly drained them of life.

And that meant, Alice realized with a pang, that Brynja's daughter Eira was most certainly dead. Eira had been one of the first to be taken.

Alice stood, no longer thinking about the flying machine. She noted absently that the monster was gone, having failed in its purpose to frighten her (and also, she thought, having failed to eat her alive, which meant it certainly was not real). But this truly was madness. The Queen was slowly draining the village of its children. Soon there would be none left for her to take, and what would she do then?

Well,
Alice supposed, pacing the room and swatting at the figure of the goblin that appeared out of the tunnel as the rampaging monster had a few moments before,
she would look to the City, or someplace like it.

The goblin fell backward, breaking into wooden doll parts. Alice hardly noticed.

It would be nothing to convince traders to bring her children, especially if she offered them enough money. She could go on indefinitely that way, with a supply of bodies to sustain her.

The Walrus appeared from nowhere, seeming to walk out of the cavern wall, his mouth drenched in the blood of the girls that he devoured. Alice shouldered him aside and he dropped the plate of cakes that he carried. The cake ground into dust beneath her boots.

Surely Cheshire could do something, exert his influence? That would be the least he could do after trailing around Alice and causing trouble and (only sometimes) helping. Even if she could convince him to do so, the City wasn't the only place in the world where children were taken. Hatcher's own daughter had been taken from the City and sent to the harems of the East, and Alice was certain that girls were taken from their homes in the East just as they were in the City. There was a whole wide world of children out there, waiting for someone like the Queen (or the Rabbit, or the Caterpillar) to come and take them away and replace their dreams with tears.

No, Alice must find a way to extract the magic from the Queen as she had with Bjarke, though she did not think it would be quite so easy.

Hatcher was beside her suddenly, his grey eyes wild and his axe in his hand. In the goblin's lair this vision had nearly made her heart stop. Now she sighed. He was just another of the Queen's horrors, the fourth or perhaps fifth by Alice's count.

“Go away,” she said. “You're not Hatcher.”

And he did, fading like smoke.

The first problem was separating the children from the Queen. Without the vessels her power would be more unstable, and hopefully easier to extract. The Red Queen's crown warmed on Alice's wrist, as if in approval of Alice's plan. Or perhaps to remind her that it was there, and that she would need it in the end.

Alice knew that this was true, had known it almost from the moment she'd taken it from the wall. The White Queen's magic was much older than Alice, and the only one who could truly stop her was her sister. The White Queen—the first White Queen—had killed her sister and buried her so none could find and use that power.

The Red Queen was wiser than the White, even in death,
Alice thought. The crown had been upon the Red Queen's head, and when Alice did not take it in the dream, it had followed her, wriggling through the dirt like an earthworm until Alice retrieved it.

If Alice put the Red Queen's crown on her own head, then the Red Queen's power would move through her, the way that this White Queen took the power of the old one. But Alice thought there was something else too—it wasn't just the power of each queen that was in the crowns. There was some of their personality, their spark and their soul, for the Red Queen longed to take vengeance on her sister. And while Alice wanted help from the Red Queen, she did not want to be possessed by her. She did not want to become like the White Queen.

Some semblance of the original White Queen still resided inside the present one, and this must contribute to her madness, for two souls should not mingle inside one body and one mind.

Alice put aside these concerns for the moment. She had to separate the children from the White Queen. Before she could do that she had to get her own self out of this place.

What if she wasn't in the rabbit hole at all? What if this was just another illusion like the monster and the Walrus and the goblin and Hatcher? What if she was actually still in the ballroom, and the black tile wasn't a hole in the floor but just a black tile?

And of course, as she realized this the dirt walls faded around her and the ballroom melted back into view. She had never fallen into a hole at all. This time, though, the veil of glamour (such as it was) over the room had fallen. The room looked much more decrepit, the walls cracked and the glass in the windows broken so that the icy cold blew in from outside.

Alice shivered. Bjarke was gone—possibly searching for his daughter or perhaps lost in his own illusion. Hatcher was gone too. Alice could hear a high, thin sound, a sound that had been disguised by the Queen's magic.

The sound of children screaming.

It was real, Alice was certain. The Queen wouldn't be able to fool Alice any longer now that she had seen through the trickery. Alice climbed the stairs of the ballroom two by two, an energy she didn't know she'd had propelling her upward. At the top of
the stairs was a long passageway with several doors. Everything was painted white—the floors and ceiling and doors, even the doorknobs. The screaming filled the air up here, making it difficult to tell where the source was.

Alice opened the first door. There was a cradle in this room and a white blanket inside the cradle, but no baby. She wondered whether this was where the White Queen's child had slept, and if Bjarke had found the baby. He could be stealing away from the castle at this very moment, his child swaddled in his arms. If that was so, Alice sincerely hoped that he had the strength to carry the babe down the mountain, and to keep her safe.

The next room had nothing but a pile of grey rags on the floor, like someone had made them into a nest for sleeping.

In the third room she found the children.

There were seven of them, sitting on the floor with their backs pressed against the wall and their legs straight out in front, like automatons at rest. All had their eyes and mouths open, though the eyes were blind to anything before them. Now that Alice was in the room with them, the screaming was no longer audible. The only sound coming out of their mouths was the long, slow exhalation of their dying breaths.

The children were in various stages of starvation. All looked thin, but the ones who had been there longest appeared nothing more than skeletons with skin draped over them. Their eyes bulged; their hands were nothing but wisps of bone.

Worst of all, Alice could see nothing that obviously kept them
in this state. She'd been hoping (rather childishly, she thought now) for an object to break. This always happened in stories. There was a crystal or a jewel or some such thing, and if only the hero would find it, all would be well. She thought when she found the children that there might be something that tied them to the Queen and she would be able to slash it with her knife, or that there would be something made of glass that she could shatter on the ground.

She crawled along the floor in front of the children, shaking them, waving her hand before their eyes. They did not respond, did not notice in the least that she was there.

The crown on Alice's wrist warmed again. Of course. She'd forgotten that she would need the Red Queen. This was the White Queen's magic that Alice must break, after all.

She slid the crown from her wrist and looked at it, at the red jewel that seemed to beckon to her.

“I'll still be Alice,” she said, and did not know if she was trying to convince the Red Queen or herself. “No matter what we do together, I will still be Alice, won't I?”

Yes, of course you will,
the crown whispered.

Alice hesitated. The Red Queen, of course, had reason to lie, reason to trick Alice, for if the crown was worn again, then the Queen could once more have a body. Strangely, though, Alice felt she believed her. The Red Queen would not try to take away her Alice-ness.

Alice slowly lifted it to her head, lowered it over the shorn boyish
locks. For a moment she only felt foolish, and she imagined that she made a ridiculous appearance, with her scarred face and men's clothes. This crown did not belong on someone like Alice.

Then the circlet around her head warmed once more, and soon the heat grew painfully uncomfortable. Alice cried out and fell to the floor, writhing. She reached for the crown, wanting to tear it off, but when she tried to touch it, her fingers burned and it would not be loosed from her head.

Then there was a fire in her blood, a fire that started in her brain and sank through her body, a fire that scorched all the blood and muscle inside her. This fire did not destroy like the fire that had burned the plains. It cleansed, made everything stronger and more whole than it had been before. And it found something, something that Alice hadn't realized was inside her.

Once, long ago, she'd taken her freedom from the Rabbit. She'd taken a knife from him and stabbed out his eye, but she hadn't known that the knife was magical nor that she took the Rabbit's magic when she did it. Some of the magic in the knife had gone into Alice when she used it, and the knife's magic was partly from the Jabberwock (who'd been the knife's first victim, so very long before) and partly from the Rabbit. The knife took some power from each of them, and because Alice had grasped the knife and used it with intent, that power went into her.