Alice (11 page)

“Alice,” he said, like he only just remembered who she was. His look sharpened, seemed to focus on her mouth. “Alice, I haven’t had a woman in such a long time.”

She feared then that he might give her away, that he might try to kiss her. Worse, he might try to kiss another girl, or take what was so freely offered throughout the room. She couldn’t bear the thought of Hatcher acting like these other men, these animals so insensate of their own surroundings.

“It’s not the time, Hatch,” she said.

She didn’t know what else to say. They needed to see the Caterpillar. They needed to leave before Hatcher did something he couldn’t take back.

As they picked their way through the cheering, drinking, smoking crowd, another terrifying thought occurred to Alice. Had Cheshire sent them here to prove that she was nothing but a man’s toy, as he said? Had he expected Hatcher to lose his mind, to treat her as the Rabbit had done?

If so, it was all the more reason to escape this place as soon as possible. Hatcher would regret anything that happened here. She was certain of that. But she was not confident she would be able to stop him.

The door to the Caterpillar’s special room was just beside the last platform. As they reached it, the butterfly inside pressed herself against the glass and pushed one of her fingers inside her body. Alice resolutely turned her head away. She would never be able to sleep well again. Some might think this place full of wonder, but to her it was a house of horrors. Hatcher closed his hand around her elbow just for a moment, squeezing hard. She didn’t know whether he was trying to reassure her or to keep himself under control.

The guard at the door gave Alice and Hatcher the same disdainful look as the naked girl who’d solicited Alice’s attention. He was built on the same large scale as the guard at Cheshire’s cottage. There was a resemblance in the face as well.

“Off with you,” he said.

“You even sound like Theodore,” Alice said, though she had not meant to say it. She hadn’t really thought about what words she would use to convince him to let them in.

The guard’s brows drew closer together, if that was possible. “Theodore? You know my brother?”

That explains many things, including how Cheshire knows so much about the Caterpillar, and perhaps how he knows of others as well. Anyone who enters this room is under this man’s eye,
Alice thought.

“Yes, we met him at Cheshire’s cottage. What is your name?” Alice said, just as if she were in her parents’ drawing room making a new acquaintance.

As long as she kept thinking like that, it was easier to ignore what went on behind her, to shake away the sight of girls on display like slabs of meat at the butcher’s shop. She didn’t look at Hatcher, but she hoped that he was not staring around like a wide-eyed child. She would prefer the dangerous Hatcher, the one who killed a man because that man touched his shoulder.

The guard narrowed his eyes at her. “Theobald. Are you friends of Cheshire’s?”

Alice wished she knew what the correct answer was. Did this man like or dislike Cheshire? Would he be more likely to allow them to enter if she said yes or no?

“I would not precisely call him a friend,” Alice said. “We went to him for advice.”

“He advised you to see the Caterpillar,” Theobald said. He seemed smarter than his brother.

“Yes,” Alice said. She sensed that the less she said, the better. Let Theobald draw his own conclusions about their business.

“The Caterpillar doesn’t like to be disturbed when he’s entertaining guests,” Theobald said. “However, there is no one special with him this evening.”

He did not immediately move aside, so Alice waited expectantly. “Your names?” Theobald asked. He held his hands crossed together in front of him. As he said this, he opened one palm and held it flat.

Alice stared at his hand, confused for a moment. Fortunately Hatcher knew what to do. He drew a single piece of gold from his pocket and put it in Theobald’s hand. The guard’s eyes gleamed.

“Tell the Caterpillar my name is Nicholas,” Hatcher said.

He didn’t offer a name for Alice. The gold piece must have been sufficient not to warrant further pursuit, though, for Theobald nodded at them and slipped into the room. He moved so quickly and efficiently that Alice did not catch a glimpse of the room behind.

Now that the guard was out of sight she realized her heart pounded in her chest and her legs trembled. She was scared, scared that the Caterpillar would realize she was a girl and put her under glass like his other butterflies. Alice would never get away, not without Hatcher and the things Cheshire had sent in the sack. Her boy disguise had fooled only those who didn’t look at her very closely.

“Don’t be afraid,” Hatcher said in a low voice.

She glanced at him. He seemed much more alert than before, more like the Hatcher he’d been since their escape. Hatcher always had changeable moods. Alice never realized when they were in the hospital how difficult those changes would be for her. In her own room she could let him rant or walk or pound the walls and it wouldn’t really affect her, particularly since she took the powders, which made everything dull around the edges.

Out here the world was bright and sharp and full of hungry mouths waiting to eat her up. She couldn’t afford Hatcher’s instability, and she wouldn’t leave him either. They were bound together by love and need and other feelings she didn’t entirely understand.

I’ve never been a woman,
she thought. She didn’t mean it like a woman who is a wife and performs wifely duties (like the ones the butterfly girls offered the men who entered the club), but a woman who sat in adult company, who saw the world through an adult’s eyes. Her body had grown older but her mind was still trapped at sixteen, still unsure of how to act and how to be. She loved Hatcher, but it was a girl’s love for her savior.

Would she have loved him if they’d met at a garden party, or at a ball? Would he have worn a high collar and starched cuffs, like her father, and told her about his work as a clerk in his father’s law office? And would she have laughed at all of his attempts at humor, even when he wasn’t very funny, and looked up at him with shining eyes when it was time for dancing? For a moment it was almost as if she could see them there, dressed like they belonged in the New City, spinning in circles together, like it was a memory of the past and not the ghost of a future that never was or could be.

Theobald returned then, and beckoned them inside. He returned to his post outside once they closed the door.

Like Cheshire’s cottage, the Caterpillar’s special room was extraordinary. It was long on two sides and short on the ends, and so stuffed with objects that Alice was surprised anyone could walk through the space.

The walls were lined with shelves from the floor right up to the ceiling. Every shelf teemed with
things
. There were boxes made of gold and silver and iron, encrusted with pearls or rubies or emeralds or sapphires or diamonds. There were chalices and cups and leather-bound books, fabrics that glittered and shone, tall glass jars filled with powders and unguents of various colors and consistencies. Caps of different shapes were stacked messily next to piles of exotic-looking feathers, taken from the tails of birds that never lived in the City. Every type of sword, dagger, axe, mace or hammer imaginable was there too, and brightly colored rugs were piled all around, strewn with fat, tasseled cushions.

It looks like the room of a sultan,
Alice thought. Her mother had told her those stories when she was young, adventures in the faraway desert with magic lamps and flying carpets. At the opposite edge of the room lay a man in repose on several of the cushions, further adding to the impression that they were in the room of an eastern prince.

The man—who could only be the Caterpillar—inhaled from a long hookah, occasionally expelling smoke in thin clouds from his nostrils. There was something of the caterpillar about him, though Alice thought the name must have come from his use of “butterflies.” He was long, very long and lean, and completely relaxed, his eyes drowsy. He stared at two large glass enclosures before him, and did not indicate he noticed their entrance at all. Hatcher moved a little ahead of Alice. His hand was tucked inside his coat, though he did not take a weapon out. Alice patted her pocket, assured that her knife was still there. The Caterpillar did not appear threatening at all, but something had raised Hatcher’s hackles, else he would not be so ready to swing the axe. Alice could not clearly see what the Caterpillar was so interested in, though she imagined it must be more “butterflies.” She heard a splash of water, and a fluttering noise like the beating of wings. Her curiosity was roused, and she peeked through the glass as they approached the Caterpillar, ready to look away quickly if she saw more of what she’d seen outside.

It was not more of the same. It was much, much worse.

CHAPTER
11

Alice approached the glass, her stomach roiling though she was unable to look away. Behind the glass of one enclosure was a naked girl with iridescent pink butterfly wings. She was very thin, so thin Alice saw her ribs protruding through her white skin. Her eyes were violet, a startling color,but dull and ringed by black hollows. When she saw Alice she stretched her hands toward the glass in supplication, her eyes pleading.

The wings were not attached to her shoulders by straps. The girl’s back had been cut from the top of her shoulder to the bottom of her rib cage on both sides of her spine. The beautiful butterfly wings were neatly sewn into the exposed muscle. As the girl flexed her shoulders, the wings would beat.

Alice pressed her hand against the cage—for that was what it was—and the butterfly matched her palm to Alice’s. She moved her face close to the glass so the Caterpillar would not see her. Her lips moved slowly, mouthing two words to Alice.

Kill me.

Alice knew suddenly how Hatcher felt, why he showed his love for her by offering to shoot her instead of letting a criminal take her away. She wanted very much to end this woman’s pain, to give her the release she desperately needed.

The girl turned her face away, and Alice then noticed that she moved with only her arms. Her legs were twisted at the knee, clearly broken by the hand of a human, so that she could do nothing except sit in a jar and flutter her wings for the Caterpillar’s pleasure.

Alice was half-afraid to see what was in the next case, but she also wanted to know.

The second cage was a tank half-filled with water, and an angry mermaid swam in circles inside, occasionally surfacing to glare out at the assembly. Her lower half was comprised of silver scales and fins, and her upper body was that of a woman. Her hair was long and dark and rippled in the water. Alice leaned close to the glass, almost certain that there would be a row of stitches attaching the shiny scales to the woman’s waist. But there was nothing that she could see. The mermaid seemed to be exactly that, but that was impossible. Everyone knew there were no such things as mermaids.

No such thing as magic either, or monsters that live in boxes beneath the hospital. No such thing as a cake that makes you small and a drink that makes you big.

She must start believing in impossible things, for impossible things kept appearing before her eyes.

“She’s real,” the Caterpillar said. His voice was lazy. “My friend and yours found her for me, in that maze of his.”

“He’s no friend,” Alice said, and her voice was harsh.

She spun to face the Caterpillar, and the knife was in her hand. She wanted to leap upon him and stab out his eyes, make certain he’d never see his precious collection again.

The Caterpillar made a gentle tutting sound. He seemed wholly unconcerned by the knife.

“I think he would be disappointed to hear you say that. He delivered you to my door, did he not? And gave you the means to enter my private kingdom? For you would not have been able to enter without my permission otherwise.” He took a long inhale from the hookah and continued. “It’s quite extraordinary, is it not? The things that Magicians left lying about. The mermaid came from a lake in the center of a maze. She would seduce men and inspire them, give them dreams so they could go out into the world and inspire others. Now she belongs to me, and she does as I say, when I say it.”

Alice glanced back at the mermaid, who was close to the glass now, her fingers curled like claws and her face white as death, but her eyes burned with hate. She knew that the mermaid did not seduce men by choice now. This beautiful, extraordinary creature was nothing but a tool for the Caterpillar, an oddity to be taken from her tank and presented to the highest bidder.

“Cheshire replaced her with another creature I found, something very unique that was trapped in a bottle. She was very happy to be set free, and Cheshire ensures she is fed regularly.”

“Not any longer,” Alice said, and was pleased to see the surprise in the Caterpillar’s eyes.

“You went through the maze? And survived the creature? Interesting. Interesting.”

Alice felt she hated that word. “Interesting” meant that you attracted the notice of men who would hurt you to possess whatever they found “interesting” about you.

“She was not as lovely as my mermaid, I admit. I was happy to trade her to Cheshire. Mermaids and vorpal blades.” The Caterpillar’s voice drifted off, repeating the words over and over. “Mermaids and vorpal blades, mermaids and vorpal blades.”

“A blade is why we are here,” Hatcher said. Alice noticed he had his axe in his hand and his knuckles were white around the handle. He didn’t care for this any better than she, and he was riding the edge of his temper.

“Oh, I know why you’re here,” the Caterpillar said.

“Cheshire told you,” Hatcher said.

“No,” the Caterpillar said. He sat forward suddenly, his eyes bright and sharp and much more aware than Alice thought. “I knew as soon as I saw her. Pretty Alice.”

(
A hand in her hair, pulling her head back. “Pretty little Alice, pretty little Alice.”
) Her heart seemed to fall away, her stomach pushed into her throat. She looked at the Caterpillar’s hands, but they weren’t right. They were not large like the man in the shadows, the man at the tea party from her nightmares. The Caterpillar wasn’t that man. But how did he know? Why did he use those words?

The Caterpillar stood, unfolded himself to a giant height, towering over both Alice and Hatcher. “You want to know how I know, why your boy’s disguise does not fool me. It is because of this. The Rabbit is a friend of mine. We share so many friends, you and I, little Alice.”

He reached toward Alice’s face, to touch the scar on her cheek. She was frozen by her fear, by the tangle of half-formed memory, by the growing terror that nothing would keep her safe from the Rabbit, for he had marked her so that everyone would know her. His fingers never reached her. Hatcher’s axe swung, and the Caterpillar’s hand was gone. For a moment she was certain that Hatcher had taken that hand from the wrist, but the tall man stood before her, a terrible smile on his face and both hands folded in front of him.

Hatcher appeared bewildered, as though his blows had never missed their aim before, and Alice thought that was probably true. “Yes, one must be quick around the Hatcher of Heathtown,” the Caterpillar said, and gave Hatcher a nod of acknowledgment. “No one has ever used an axe so deliciously as you, Nicholas. She is yours, or so you think. I understand.”

Alice did not wish to have another discussion about who owned her. It might be safer, she realized, to drop the boy disguise and let those they encountered think Hatcher was her caretaker. In the Old City there were very few ways for women to stay alive, and all of them involved a man. She did not, however, need to listen to the Caterpillar tell her what Cheshire already said.

“Don’t tell me that I belong to the Rabbit,” she said. “He may have marked me, but I am not his.”

The Caterpillar’s smile widened. His face was extremely thin and so the smile was ghoulish. “It will be very amusing to see you tell him so—again. Will you take his other eye and leave him blind, as you wish to do to me?”

She must stop feeling surprised, or at least stop showing it on her face. How did he know what she was thinking? Then
she
knew, with complete certainty.

“You’re a Magician,” she said. “And Cheshire, as well.”

The Caterpillar gave her a little bow, his eyes gleaming. “We recognize our own, do we not?”

It was a strange place and a strange time to recognize the truth of what Hatcher had tried to tell her. Yet in this house of horrors, with this hideous grinning monster before her, she knew it
was
true. She was a Magician. There should have been a sense of wonder or delight or even surprise. But the idea had been working away in the back of her mind ever since it was first presented to her. A Magician, and so the reason why Bess said she and Hatcher must find the Jabberwocky and defeat it, for no one else could.

Only that is not quite true, is it? There were other Magicians, so it was not a question of could, but would.

Alice was a Magician, but one who did not know how to find or use her magic, so she might as well not be at all. The Caterpillar and Cheshire, they used their magic to further their own aims. Nell had said, with tears in her eyes, that the return of the Magicians would mean the end of darkness and suffering. She did not know— nobody did—that some Magicians had never left, and they were the
cause
of that darkness and suffering.

Alice didn’t know whether the Caterpillar could read her face or whether he used his magic to read her mind, so she pushed her busy thoughts away and tried to make her brain still. She thought of clouds on a summer’s day, the way they drifted across the painfully blue sky, and made those clouds drift across her mind.

The Caterpillar watched her closely. He nodded. “Very nice, Alice.”

Alice frowned. She did not want his approval.

The Caterpillar laughed. “I know you don’t care for my approval. That one shot right out from between your eyes, you know. Like an arrow.”

“So you can’t really see all my thoughts,” Alice said.

“Only those that are pointed in my direction,” the Caterpillar said. “Including those you would try to hide, for hiding makes them shine all the brighter.”

He gestured at the mermaid. “She wishes for my death hourly. When my friends come and lay between her thighs she thinks of how she will gut me with one of my many swords, how she will rip me open bit by bit, how I will scream and beg for mercy when she slices off my member or drives the sword through my asshole and out through my mouth.”

Alice shuddered. She did not disagree with the sentiment, for she felt it was certainly deserved, but it made a horrible image.

“Yes, horrible,” the Caterpillar agreed. He pointed at the butterfly. “This one also only thinks of death, but the death she wishes for is her own. Every day she hopes that I will break her neck as I broke her legs. I couldn’t do it the same way, you know. I used hammers on her legs, and that would be a very inefficient way of breaking a neck. Much better to twist it, make it quick.”

“Why don’t you?” Alice asked, and tried not to think anything he might see. The clouds drifting in her mind became a thick batch of storm clouds, grey and protective.

“There are some men who like a girl who cannot get away,” the Caterpillar said. “Not that any of them can get away, really, but I cater to all tastes. One paid extra to watch me break her in the first place.”

A wrinkle appeared between his brows. “You’re quite good at that. I shouldn’t have told you how it worked. I can’t see a thing now. And him—” He jerked his thumb at Hatcher. “His mind is like the New City square on Giving Day—all noise and lights and people running in every direction. It gives me a headache just to be near him.”

Giving Day. Alice remembered going with her mother to the square to receive their gift from the leaders of the City. Everyone dressed in their very best, and there were fireworks and sweets and jugglers. All the children of the New City would be given a small wrapped box in return for good citizenship.

Inside there was always a silver coin, stamped with the year and the symbol the City leaders chose for that year. One coin had a wolf, another a tree, another a bear. All the symbols were meant to mean something about the path the City was taking that year, though Alice never really understood these.

She thought these things, but she was careful to keep the clouds in the forefront of her mind, so the Caterpillar could not have her memories. Cheshire must not be so adept at reading thoughts, else he would have plucked the fragmented memory of Alice taking the Rabbit’s eye from her as she sat in his rose parlor.

“I am not interested in your
business
,” Alice said, allowing her disgust to show. She’d had quite enough of listening to bad men speak. She wanted only to know where to find the blade so they could leave this place. “Do you have what we are seeking?”

The Caterpillar walked to the enclosure where the butterfly was kept. He stroked his fingers against the glass, musingly.

“I wish I did. Yet, in a way, I am glad I do not, for then
he
will not come seeking it here.”

“Do you know where it is?” Hatcher asked. His voice was rough, and the skin of his face was pulled tight.

Alice felt a moment of alarm. The Jabberwocky must be working on him. It would be terrible if he had a fit now. She might be able to defend herself from the Caterpillar, but if he called Theobald in to help him . . .

She glanced at the girls in the cages. She would turn her knife on herself, chew out her own tongue, whatever was necessary. She would not allow the Caterpillar to put her in a tank for his own enjoyment, and then trade her to the Rabbit (for she knew that was what he would do) for someone more “interesting.”

The Caterpillar continued to stroke his fingers over the glass, gazing at the girl he’d broken inside. “With the only one who could have it, since you are meant to find it.”

It was always moving toward this. She knew that now, for how would she ever be free until she saw him again?

“The Rabbit,” Alice said.

The Caterpillar nodded again. “How I will enjoy his face when he sees you again.”

“It’s nothing to do with you,” Alice said. “Why would you be there?”

“The fastest way to the Rabbit’s warren is underground,” the Caterpillar said. “My paths can take you there. It will be so lovely for you to be reunited with your friend Dor, will it not?”

Dor? Alive?
Alice realized she’d never contemplated the idea that Dor might not be dead. There was a blank hole in her memory— first Dor was there, at the tea party, and then she was gone. But if she was alive, then that could only mean her fate had been worse than death.

“Yes, little Dor,” the Caterpillar said. “I hope you will forgive her now. She was supposed to take the money and leave you behind, but you took the Rabbit’s eye and left her behind instead. Now she scurries like a little mouse, to and fro, at the Rabbit’s bidding.”