Wonderland (Intergalactic Fairy Tales Book 1) (6 page)

She paced down the length of fence and kept one eye on the guards, thankful for the poor lighting. It would be a tough squeeze, but if she could just get inside, she was sure she could get her ship outside through one of the large openings in the side of the building that the ships passed in through.

Alice sucked in a deep breath and pushed into the gap. She had a moment of panic where she thought she would have to shout for help from the guards to get back out of the fence. After a lot of wiggling and some pretty nasty scrapes, she popped through and tumbled to the concrete floor.

CHAPTER SIX

The ships in the queen’s special section of the docks varied greatly. Most of them were much more ostentatious looking than The White Rabbit, but as far as Alice could tell, none of them were alive. One small ship looked like it was designed to carry a single passenger and was very sleek and sharp. It was strikingly familiar. Alice was certain that she’d seen something like it before. Once she got close enough, she spotted a Nedran flag on the nose of the craft. It was a Talon! One of the brand new fighter ships designed to fight off the Colarians. It didn’t make any sense for it to be in the red queen’s collection, but there it sat, looking beautiful and deadly. It was tempting to try to take a look inside, but Alice reminded herself that she already had a ship and she could be caught by guards at any moment.

Just when her nerves started to get the best of her and she was about to head back through the gap in the fence, The White Rabbit came into view at the back of the garage. To Alice he looked sad and lonely. She knew just what to do about that.

“Hello, Rabbit,” said Alice, trying to keep her tone down.

The White Rabbit didn’t respond.

“Are you sleeping, Rabbit?” she asked, wondering if he was actually able to close his eyes, if in fact the clear spots on his rabbit-like face actually were eyes.

Still, The White Rabbit said nothing and made no move to indicate it knew of her presence. It was still hovering off the ground, so being asleep didn’t seem likely.

Alice stepped closer and wrapped gently on the ship’s white hull with her knuckles as if she were knocking on a door. “Are you in there, Rabbit?”

“Now that’s just a ludicrous question,” snapped Rabbit. “Of course I’m ‘in here’. If I weren’t I would literally have to be out of my mind. Hmph.”

“Then why didn’t you respond when I spoke to you before? Were you asleep?”

“No, I wasn’t asleep. I don’t sleep, not that it should concern you,” hissed Rabbit. “What should concern you is the fact that I’m not happy with you and I was choosing to ignore you until you decided to go wrapping on my hull and asking the stupidest question I’ve ever heard. Now, kindly go away and leave me to my boredom.”

“Please, keep your voice down,” whispered Alice. “I don’t want to get caught in here. Those guards out there didn’t look to be very nice people, if they were people at all.”

“You mean you didn’t even get permission to come back here and talk to me?”

Alice looked all around her, her eyes peeled for any movement. Rabbit’s voice was still unreasonably loud, but she didn’t want to ask him to keep quiet again. It just seemed to make him more angry. “I had no intention of just coming back here to talk to you, I planned on taking you out of here. Somehow I didn’t think that the queen would think too highly of me stealing a ship right out of her own palace.”

“Right you are on that account.” Rabbit laughed. It was a strange whistling snort that made Alice smile, even if it did seem to be at her expense. “But what makes you think I would ever leave this place with an intolerable brat such as yourself?”

Alice took a step back, her brow furrowed in confusion. “Why would you say such a mean thing to me?”

“Because you are treating me like property,” sniffed Rabbit, sounding wounded.

“But, I don’t understand. You are property,” said Alice. “It clearly even says so on the signs around this very spot.”

“Just because the queen says I’m her property and treats me as such, doesn’t mean that I am. I am a person, just the same as you, and I will not tolerate children who think they can give me a name and then claim they own me. At least the red queen can provide me with a proper shelter to keep me out of the wet even if she does threaten to have me beheaded from time to time. Could you provide me with such a thing?”

“Well, I hadn’t thought—”

“Of course not,” chided Rabbit. “You hadn’t taken the time to think about how I might feel about being stolen and made to serve your purposes instead of my own. How typical.”

“I—I’m sorry,” stammered Alice. Her head turned down to the floor and her cheeks burned with shame. “I just got carried away. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. I think you’re a very lovely person. You deserve much more than to have to serve a mean old woman who threatens to cut off your head.”

“You don’t think that I know that? If it weren’t for the tracking device I would have struck out on my own a long time ago.”

“I could try to help you get rid of that,” said Alice cautiously. “It’s the least I could do for treating you like property.”

“Hmmm,” said Rabbit, as if he were thinking very hard. Alice could tell that he was being coy because he wasn’t sure if he wanted to forgive her. “Very well. I doubt you’ll be able to help, but I’m willing to let you try.”

“Halt!” came a shout from just down the row of ships. One of those strange looking card men was charging toward her, his axe waving menacingly. “Halt in the name of the queen!”

“Run,” hissed The White Rabbit.

Alice bolted down the row of ships, turning as soon as she was out of sight of the guard. She turned left a couple of times, hoping she could circle back to The White Rabbit. She was certain he’d forgiven her and would help her out of this mess if only she could get back to him. Her heart was hammering in her ears and her breath was coming in ragged gasps.

There was no way to escape the fenced in area. She only had two options: hide, or get on a ship and fly out. A shout came from just off to her right, so Alice turned left again. How could they be tracking her so well? She hadn’t seen a guard since the first one charged at her. Then, over her puffs of breath, she realized she could hear the loud clacking of her hard soled shoes hitting the concrete floor. They were as good as a homing beacon. Alice skidded to a stop, but overbalanced herself and tumbled forward. The floor rushed up to greet her, but the impact never came.

Strong arms lifted her to her feet, none too gently. Alice shook her blonde hair out of her face and found herself staring at a chest decorated to look like a five of hearts. “By the authority of the queen of hearts, you are under arrest and will be jailed until her majesty reviews the charges against you and passes sentence.”

Alice reached for the sword at her waist. “Not if I have anything to say about it,” retorted Alice, drawing her sword. Before the guard could react, she slashed out and whacked him in the shin. The blunted blade didn’t draw any blood, but it was plenty heavy enough to cause pain.

Alice crowed in triumph and ran the other direction, the guard shouting obscenities behind her. Adrenaline surged through her veins, giving her an extra burst of speed. Maybe she would actually get away and find her way back to The White Rabbit and off of this mad planet.

Maybe not.

At top speed Alice plowed into another card guard that jumped out in front of her. They went down in a tangle of limbs, mostly Alice’s. His were too short to really get tangled. They weren’t, however, too short to grab hold of her and shake her sword loose from her hand. It tumbled to the concrete floor with a metallic clatter and took Alice’s hopes of escape with it.

A few moments later the other guard arrived, limping slightly. Alice grinned while the other guard manhandled her to her feet. The limping guard stepped forward and viciously swung the metal club he carried at her ribs. Pain exploded through her chest like nothing she’d ever felt before. That wasn’t any ordinary club. She’d taken her share of falls and even broken a rib before on a particularly nasty one. The pain was terrible, but so very different from the bite of that club. It clawed through her body like a rampaging animal, bent on destroying everything in its path. All thought was impossible. The world was a red-hot blur. Her vision blurred with hot tears and her ears ached from a piercing shriek.

After what felt like an eternity but was probably only a few seconds, the strange clawing pain of the club’s magic dissipated, leaving only the dull ache of its relatively weak physical blow. She would only have a bruise for a couple of days. Alice found her mouth was open and her throat was raw. The shriek hadn’t been something caused by the club’s magic, it had been her own howling voice.

The guards each rubbed their ears and then gestured with their clubs for her to walk in front of them. Alice wasted no time complying. She only spared a glance for her fallen sword, apologizing mentally to her father for its loss. She’d do anything to avoid the pain promised by those horrible metal clubs.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Red Palace holding cells weren’t at all what Alice imagined they would be. She’d pictured something dark and dank in a basement, with iron bars and stone floors. In short, she’d expected a dungeon. Instead, Alice was led by two of the cards to an elevator and taken to the fortieth floor. Neither of them spoke and Alice was too frightened to ask questions.

They ushered her off the elevator with gentle nudges from the clubs they held in their hands. Alice lunged away from them, not wanting to feel their awful pain again. The guards laughed at her awkward wriggling. There was no pain to accompany their touch this time. It must have been something they could turn on and off. Alice turned and stared at the guards and their clubs. She noticed there was a round red button on the handles.

One of the guards caught the path of her eyes and reached up to press the button. A wicked hum filled the elevator and he stepped forward. Alice turned around and hurried down the hallway. The guards laughed again and Alice wished for her lost sword. Clubs or not, she would make them pay for her burning humiliation.

After a couple of turns down nondescript beige hallways, they turned into a room lined with clear plastic cells. Most held miserable looking occupants who didn’t bother to look up. It was nothing like the jails Alice had seen in the movies, where the prisoners all hooted and hollered, banging on their bars, shouting their innocence. The air in the jail room seemed heavy and oppressive. It made Alice’s skin crawl and her shoulders slump. She looked in at every prisoner as she walked past and found each of them staring blankly into the distance, except for one.

That prisoner sat on his cot, arms wrapped around himself while he rocked slowly. He looked Alice directly in the eyes, but never stopped chanting. “Off with his head, off with his head.”

That’s when Alice realized what she was feeling in the room that made her skin crawl: hopelessness. She’d only ever seen it in one person before. There had been a picture of a man in the news. He’d suffered some sort of mental break and been arrested for trying to jump off an overpass and into traffic. That same look was mirrored in all the faces around her. Not a single one of the prisoners expected anything good would ever happen to them again.

“Open cell two thirty-seven,” called one of the guards. The other one gripped her upper arm tight enough to bruise.

A loud buzz sounded and the clear plastic door slid up into the ceiling. Alice pushed back away from the door, but the guard was ready for that. He’d obviously done this task countless times before. Her panic level rose along with her pulse. Her vision started to go dark at the edges and her knees grew weak. Without missing a beat, the guard dropped his club to hang from a strap around his wrist and propped her up with his other arm.

“In you go,” he said, almost sounding like a father putting an unwilling child to bed.

“Stop!” called a cool, crisp woman’s voice from the end of the hall.

The guard released his grip on Alice’s arms immediately and snapped to attention. Alice stumbled a few steps into the cell before she caught her balance and turned around. The door was still open. The jail had gone eerily quiet except for the click of heels on the marble floor. The guards that had escorted her stared down the hallway, sweat pouring down their faces that wasn’t there just a moment before.

Alice tried to look down the hall through the clear cell walls, but all she could see was a blurry red shape through the thick plastic. After what felt like an eternity of clicking a woman appeared in front of her cell. She was tall, even without the heels, much taller than Alice’s mother, and possibly taller than her father. And she was strikingly beautiful, with skin as perfect as a porcelain doll and full red lips that pouted into a heart shape. Her eyes were a deep emerald green that practically sparkled. Her hair was pulled up into a neat bun and topped with a crown of diamonds and rubies.

There was no one feature that made her particularly intimidating, other than her height. If you focused on her eyes, or mouth alone, she might even appear pleasant. Taken as a whole, from head to toe, she exuded fierceness like a lioness. It wasn’t a facade that was put on and could be discarded any easier than a lioness could discard her large teeth and jaws. It was her nature.