Alice (3 page)

“May I . . . ?” he asked, and he mimed putting his arm around her shoulder.

Everything inside her clenched and cried
no
. Then the moment passed, and she remembered how he had stared at her bare legs but turned away instead of falling on her like a ravening wolf. She nodded, and saw relief on his face.

His arm went around and pulled her tight to his body for a moment, so she could feel the coiled strength in him. Then he loosened enough so she could walk, but did not let go. They returned to the place where the ogre had attacked. Alice saw the body of the larger man there. He still breathed shallowly through the broken mess where his teeth used to be. Nearby on the ground was the club he had used on Hatcher. It was actually just a thick rod of wood with a slightly oversized end. It was broken in two pieces. “We must get inside somewhere,” Hatcher said.

“Where can we go that’s safe?” Alice asked. “Does this place seem familiar to you?”

“It does,” he admitted. “Though I don’t know why. From the moment we stepped inside the Old City, my feet have been leading us someplace.”

“Someplace safe?” she asked. The cold was in her bones now, making her tremble all over despite the warmth of Hatcher holding her close. She was hungry and tired and more scared than she could ever remember being. For a brief moment she longed for the certainty of the hospital, the security of four walls around her.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s been many years since I’ve been here. Some places look the same. More the same than you’d think. And others seem much different, though I can’t put my finger on why.”

“I don’t think your memory is as gone as you think it is,” Alice said. “You remember things like the time of Magicians. And that men like that sell girls like me. And you know the City. You’ve only forgotten who you are.”

“No,” Hatcher said. “I know who I am now. I’ve forgotten who I was before. Probably for the best. You might not like who I was then. I might not either.”

Alice remembered who she was before. She just couldn’t recall what had happened to that girl to make her this girl. And given the flashes she’d just seen, that was probably for the best. Hatcher was right. Maybe not remembering was better.

She shook under his arm. He rubbed his shoulder with his hand, fruitlessly trying to impart heat.

“I can’t get warm,” she said.

“We’re nearly there.”

“Nearly where?”

“I don’t know. It’s where my feet are leading us. It’s someplace safe.”

Alice noticed they’d emerged from the maze of alleys into a thoroughfare. It wasn’t packed, but there were plenty of people going about their morning’s business. Women with their heads wrapped in scarves against the chill, carrying baskets of eggs and cabbage and fish wrapped in paper. Men leading donkeys laden with coal or firewood, or making quiet trades on the sly. Boys in ragged caps and bare feet pinching apples from carts when the proprietor wasn’t looking.

Everyone who saw Alice and Hatcher averted their eyes and veered away, but the two of them did not seem to cause sufficient alarm that the police were called, for which Alice was grateful. None of these folk would want the authorities sniffing around, for she was certain that more than fruit and coal were being sold off those carts. Every person made it clear that no help was to be found there, but no hindrance either.

“When we arrive,” Hatcher said, “there will be an old woman, and she will know me, and she will let us in.”

Alice wondered who this old woman was, and why Hatcher was so sure she would help. She wanted to ask, but Hatcher probably would not know the answer, anyway. And her stomach was starting to churn, even though there was nothing in it. If they’d still been in their rooms, the morning porridge would have come hours ago. Alice coughed, and tasted something foul in the back of her throat.

“I feel sick,” she moaned.

“Nearly there,” Hatcher said, steering her around the corner of a storefront selling healing potions and down another alley.

“I won’t make it,” Alice said, and broke away from Hatcher to heave against the wall.

Her stomach wrenched upward, her throat burning, but all that came out were a few thin drools of bile. Alice leaned her aching forehead against the cool brick and winced when the rough surface scraped against the scabbed knot given her by the man who would have raped her. The nausea had not passed. Instead the outburst had only made her feel worse.

“Just a little farther,” Hatcher said, tugging at her hand, her shoulder. “It’s the powder making you sick.”

“I haven’t had my powder today,” Alice said.

“Precisely,” Hatcher said. “How many years have you had a powder with breakfast and supper?”

“Ever since I went to hospital,” she said.

It was a terrible struggle to put one foot in front of the other. She could barely lift her leg from the ground. Her toes curled under and scraped along the stone, the skin there peeling away and leaving it raw.

Hatcher badgered and dragged her the last few feet. When finally they reached the plain wooden door tucked in a notch halfway down the alley, Alice was on the verge of collapse.

Hatcher pounded on the door with his fist, his other arm keeping Alice from folding up in a heap on the ground. The door opened and a very small woman, knotted and ancient, appeared in the opening. She wore a blue dress covered by a faded red shawl. Her hair was white, and her eyes were as grey as Hatcher’s. She took one long look at him, and Alice thought she heard a little sigh.

Then the woman said, “Nicholas. I’ve been waiting for you for three days.”

CHAPTER
3

She moved aside so they could enter. Hatcher showed no sign of recognition at being called by this name, but he crossed the threshold as though he belonged there nonetheless.

“What happened to the girl?” the woman said, crossing to stoke the fire at the edge of the room.

Alice shook off Hatcher’s arm, staggering toward the flame, that lovely warmth, and fell facedown on the rug. She never heard Hatcher’s answer, for after that there was blessed darkness.

When she woke again she was in a soft bed on a feather pillow, covered by a blanket of scratchy wool. It had been years since she’d slept in a bed or had a blanket, and for a moment she just luxuriated in the feeling of being comfortable for a change.

A candle guttered on a small table across the room. There were no windows. There was a pitcher and bowl beside the candle. Alice felt sore all over, but clean, and her head was strangely light. She put her hand there and found her hair was gone, and gasped. Her fingers went from the nape of her neck to her crown. The knotted tangle had been neatly sheared away, leaving silky straight strands barely the width of two of her fingers.

She touched her forehead, the place where her head ached, where pain radiated through her skull. Someone had cleaned the wound and tied it together with thread. She could feel the neat little stitches going up in a line. Alice was glad she had slept through that.

She lifted the blanket, and saw a clean but worn muslin nightgown. The muck and blood had been washed away. She pulled back the sleeves of her gown and saw purple bruises at her wrists.

“The boy said he did that, though he did not mean to,” a voice said.

Alice looked over her right shoulder and saw the old woman had pulled aside the curtain at the entryway. She held a plate in one hand, as though she had known Alice would wake at that moment and be hungry.

She walked slowly, like she was hobbled by stiffness, to Alice’s side and handed her the plate. There was brown bread and a hunk of crumbly yellow cheese. Alice took the plate and murmured, “Thank you.”

“Eat slow,” the old woman advised. “Nicholas said you’ve been ill.”

Alice laughed, a short barking sound that surprised her. She could not recall the last time she’d laughed.

“Yes, you could say I’ve been ill,” she said, and suddenly she was weeping, weeping in a way she had not since she was a child.

All the years of walking only the square walls of her cell, of being pushed and pulled by attendants who saw her only as a task to be completed. All the nights she’d woken in terror from a nightmare that would not leave her, all the nights no one had been there to soothe or comfort away that fear. All that had happened since the hospital had begun to burn—the smoke and the terror and the man’s hand pushing between her legs. All these things had been stopped up inside her, blanketed by the comforting haze of the powders they dumped in her food every morning and night. The world was abruptly sharp and clear, too clear, and too alive. It was terrible beyond words.

The old woman did not hold her or offer false words of comfort. She waited, with patient and compassionate eyes, until Alice had cried herself dry. Then she offered a worn handkerchief, which Alice used to dry her face. Her hands stopped on her left cheek, realizing with horror that her scar was now completely exposed by her shorn hair.

“Why did you cut my hair?” Alice asked. It wasn’t what she meant to say. She meant to say,
Thank you for washing and feeding me and binding up my wounds
, but it had come out differently than she’d intended.

“You were crawling with vermin,” the old woman said matter-of-factly. “You and the boy. It’s likely been years since you noticed it. ’Twas easiest to cut off as much as we could and scrub the rest out. Besides, Nicholas seemed to think you might be safer dressed as a boy. Considering what he told me happened along the way here, that might be true. You’re thin enough to pass for one, and tall too, for a girl. Though your face is a mite too pretty, even with that scar you’re so concerned about. And in certain places boys are just as much at risk as girls. Still, Nicholas will be with you.”

“Who are you?” Alice asked. “To Hatcher, I mean?”

She couldn’t bring herself to call him by the name this woman called him. It didn’t fit with the man she knew.

“My name is Bess, and he’s my grandson, though he doesn’t remember it,” she said. “His mother was my daughter. She left me when she was nineteen, and then came back three years later with him, and left him with me, still wrapped in his swaddling clothes. Considering the way her eyes looked, that was likely the best thing.”

“How did her eyes look?”

“Like she was soaring somewhere above the City, like those flying machines the New City folk ride about it. She was not tied to the same earth as the rest of us anymore.”

“So you know what happened to Hatcher, then? Why he was in the asylum?”

Bess shook her head slowly. “Until yesterday I had not seen Nicholas’ face for twenty-three years. When he was seventeen, he took to running with a bad lot. I told him I’d have none of that nonsense beneath my roof, and he left. ’Twas like his mother all over again, and it seemed I’d made the same mistakes twice, though I’d tried my best both times.”

She paused here, and Alice saw her regrets as clear as if she’d spoken them aloud.

“I did not hear word of him after he left here,” Bess continued. “Then four nights ago I had a dream, a dream that he would return. There’s a bit of Seeing in our blood, enough to know that our visions are true things. Nicholas has it too. That’s why he speaks of the Jabberwock.”

“I thought it was some dream of Hatcher’s,” Alice said.

The old woman looked at her sharply. “Did you not see the creature in the fire? Do you not believe the truth of your own eyes?”

“No, I don’t,” Alice said. “Once, I saw a Rabbit, who was also a man, and everyone said I was a liar.”

Bess hissed at the mention of the Rabbit. “Oh, aye, he’s real enough, and as bad as they come. You stay away from him, girl, you hear? If you were lucky enough to crawl out of his hole once, you won’t be so lucky a second time.”

Alice was taken aback by the old lady’s vehemence, and also by her words. “You know of the Rabbit?”

“I told you to stay away from him,” she repeated. “Don’t let your curiosity lead you down the garden path. That, I imagine, was what got you into trouble in the first place.”

“Yes,” Alice said quietly.

Bess was right, of course. Nothing good would come of being curious about the figure that had haunted her nightmares for years. But there was a small place inside her that glowed with triumph, for they had all said she was mad, talking of a rabbit-man, but she’d been
right
. She was right.

“Heed me,” Bess said. “Do not go seeking the Rabbit, else you wish for more death and madness.”

Alice shook her head. “I won’t. I promise.”

The old woman looked at her closely, peering into Alice’s eyes. She nodded her head, as if satisfied by what she saw there.

“Good,” she said. “You’ll have no time in any event. You and the boy must find the Jabberwock.”

“Us? But why?” She’d hardly believed in the monster in the first place, but if it was real she didn’t think it any wiser to go seeking it than the Rabbit.

“You are the only ones who saw him loosed—saw and knew what you were looking at, that is. He’s already begun hunting again, and the blood he drinks only makes him crave more.”

“Surely the police will catch it, if it is that bad,” Alice said. “Or soldiers from the New City.”

“No ordinary human could catch the Jabberwock,” Bess said. “The police would not even know rightly what they were looking at. He can pretend he’s a man if he wishes, and often does, for it allows him ease of passage. And soldiers, as you well know, do not come into the Old City for anything. If the Old City were nothing but monsters and riots, the soldiers would not come. Their task is to keep the filth of the Old City out of the New, to keep the New City clean so the fine ladies there don’t trail their hems in the dirt.”

This was so like what Hatcher had said to Alice the night before that she flushed in shame. The old woman, sharp-eyed even in the meager light, noted this and cackled.

“Not from around here, are you, dearie? Still, you survived the Rabbit, so you must not be as dainty as your kin. And my dream told me the two of you must find the Jabberwock. There must be something inside you, something you haven’t shown yet.”

The old woman peered at Alice closely, and Alice turned her face away from the other’s scrutiny. She felt a sudden burning resentment against this woman, this woman who had cared for her though she had no obligation to do so.

Who was she to say Alice must do this or that? For ten years she’d been told what to do—ten years and more, for when she’d been her parents’ daughter they had always been commanding, always correcting, always,
No, Alice, you must not do that. It is unseemly. You must not keep that friend. She is not appropriate.

She had never had freedom, freedom to be whom she liked and do as she chose. And now here was this strange person telling her that she still had no freedom. She did not have to seek out a murdering nightmare if she did not wish it, and no grandmother—seer or not—would tell her otherwise.

The old woman put her fingers on Alice’s chin and turned the girl’s face toward her. “Nay,” she said. “Do not think you can turn away from your fate. I have Seen it, and once foretold, it cannot be undone. If you go chasing your freedom your fate will only follow you there, and drag you back.”

Alice’s cheeks were wet again. “It’s not fair.”

“Fair or not, it is what it is,” Bess said, standing. “You’ll go and see Cheshire, up in Rose Way. He’ll help you, point you where you ought to be. Nicholas will be back soon. You should dress.”

She pointed to a bundle of clothes hanging from a peg just next to Alice’s bed.

“Where did Hatcher go?”

“To fetch some things for me that I usually have to pay a boy to carry. He needed busyness, Nicholas did. Near lost his mind when you fainted like that, and sat staring at you sleeping until I chased him out.”

Bess left, and Alice sat staring at her hands. She held the plate of bread and cheese, having taken only a bite of each. The old woman’s words still rang in her ears.

If you go chasing your freedom your fate will only follow you there, and force you back.

Why was she, Alice, the one who must find the Jabberwock? There was nothing special about her. And what were she and Hatcher to do when they did find him? Hatcher might have a gift of Seeing, but he was no Magician, and neither was Alice.

She took another bite of bread as she thought. The bread was good, far better than any food she’d eaten at the hospital. Her hunger was abruptly overwhelming, and she jammed the rest of the bread in her mouth, unable to chew fast enough.

She was so hungry. She had never been so hungry. The bread disappeared in the blink of an eye. When she looked at the cheese, her stomach suddenly heaved like the day before. She dropped the cheese to the plate, threw off the blanket and ran to the table.

The bare floor was cold against her bare feet. The pitcher was half-filled with water, as she’d hoped, and she lifted it to her lips, guzzling down as much as she could swallow. The water was so icy that it burned her parched throat, made her chest cramp from the cold. She stood, leaning on the table with her hands, breathing hard through her nose until the cramping and nausea passed and her body seemed normal again.

Alice shivered, for now that she was out of the cocoon of the blankets, she was aware of how chilly it was. She thought of the fire, which she could smell crackling away in the next room, and hurried to dress so she could go out and put her whole self as close to it as possible.

The bundle of clothes was revealed to be a man’s wool pants, a rough white pullover shirt and a grey jacket and cap. Alice spread all these things on the bed and tried not to think of the fine dresses she used to wear before, when she lived in the New City.

That life is gone. And anyhow this is better than what you wore at the hospital.

She pulled the nightgown over her head, and paused, getting a good look at the state of herself. There was a large purple bruise around the slight curve of her right breast, and abrasions down her stomach and thighs. There were matching purple finger marks on the sides of her legs, and the tops of her feet were scraped raw.

Her ribs and hip bones showed through the skin, so pale as to be nearly translucent, and everything hurt from the exertions of the day before, even if you could not see that on the surface. It had been years since she had walked so far, and she had certainly never jumped out of a third-story window into the river.

She looked up, her eye attracted by some movement, and found a strange man had pulled aside the curtain and was staring at her. Her heart seemed to stop beating for a moment, and she opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out.

His hair was black, sprinkled with white, and cut very close to his head. His face was clean-shaven, revealing hollow cheekbones and a sharp chin. He was dressed in the same sort of rough pants and shirt that Alice had just unbundled. Her voice worked its way up to her throat, and then she remembered his eyes. His iron grey eyes, burning like she had never seen them before.

He approached her, pulling the curtain shut behind him, pinning her in place with his eyes. Her heart fluttered in her chest, a moth captured in a net. He stopped before her and his hand moved to her cheek, the one that had been flayed open so many years before.

He cupped her face, and she had never noticed before how large his hands were, or how tall he was, much taller than she. At this distance she could see a multitude of faded white scars all over his face that had been hidden by his beard.

His hand left her face, and he sank to his knees, laying his cheek against her stomach so gently that she wanted to weep. His arms went around her hips, not so tight as to hurt, but just enough so she knew he would not let her go. His skin seemed to melt into hers, like he was trying to crawl inside her.