Splintered (21 page)

Drooling, I scramble on top of the table.
“Eep!” The mouse’s voice is a high-pitched squeak as he scuttles out from his hiding place.
“Al, stop. We need his help.” Jeb tries to grab my ankles, but I’m too fast.
Shoving platters and plates aside, I crawl after the mouse as he skitters toward his friends, fuzzy tail jouncing behind him. He skids to a stop when he sees their condition. Whiskers drooping, he twists to look at me.
“Miss Alice, you must wake them!” he squeaks. Hesitant, his tiny feet patter backward. “You’re not Miss Alice.” He pats the edges of his eyes while staring at mine. “You’re much more—”
“Hungry.”
Now I understand the octobenus’s preoccupation with his stomach—intimately. I smack my lips and veer to the left to escape Jeb’s attempt to snag my waist. My palm lands in a pastry, and I fling off the squished crust. I’ve got my sights set on live bait.
The mouse backs up, squeaking nervously. Tiny clawed hands reach for his whiskers, drawing them down under his chin. He’s close to tripping into the broken crust that I landed in earlier, and I’m rooting for that to happen. I could really go for a slice of mouse pie right about now.
Jeb steps onto a chair and climbs from one to the next to follow me. “Listen, little guy.” He talks softly to the mouse. “I’ll keep her from eating you if you’ll help us wake the others. Do you remember how Alice put you to sleep?”
The mouse wraps his tail around himself, hugging it. “She dropped the watch into the teacup.” He studies me warily from the middle of the table, stepping closer to the purple pie.
Sitting up on my knees, I gouge my fingernails into my kneecaps to distract myself from my stomach. Eyes shut, I concentrate on the book. The story’s details are hazy, but I remember an argument over the inner workings of the Hatter’s pocket watch. Something about the hare buttering—mmm . . . butter. Butterscotch candy, buttercream icing, butter cookies.
I growl and pound my fist on the table, rattling silverware and plates and sending a jolt of pain up my arm, which gets my brain back into gear.
Gear!
That’s it—the hare buttered the gears with a bread knife and mucked up the insides with crumbs. In the
Wonderland
book’s version, that’s why the March Hare dropped the watch into his tea—to rinse it off. But maybe he wasn’t the one who dunked the watch at all. He must’ve been trying to get it out. By submerging it, Alice suspended the mechanism and froze the guests in time. That’s what I have to fix. The gears. I just need to dry them off and start them up again.
I open my eyes, and Jeb’s way ahead of me, book in hand. He’s already next to March Hairless’s place setting. Jeb tilts the teacup, careful not to break off the rabbit’s frozen paw. I crawl over as tea sloshes across the pastries on the plate. The pocket watch glides out, dragging its chain behind it. Jeb flips the lid open. “It stopped on six o’clock.”
“Teatime!” the Door Mouse chirps excitedly, clapping. His enthusiasm knocks him backward into the broken pie.
My focus lasts only long enough for me to take the watch from Jeb, blot the gears dry, move the hands to one minute after six, and rewind the clock. I lose all train of thought after that, because the mouse clambers onto the edge of the pie pan, eating berries and dripping with purple syrup.
Luscious purple syrup
.
Saliva trickles from the edges of my lips. The insatiable hunger I’ve been fighting explodes. My surroundings disappear. In my mind, the Door Mouse is that roasted duck from the banquet, which makes him fair game.
I chuck the watch, barely even hearing the clank of metal. Jumping to my feet, I give chase. My prey dives behind pastries and tunnels through breads, managing to elude me each time I almost have him. I skate past dishes, slip over platters, and skid through cakes. I don’t even realize Jeb’s on the table until he catches me and slams me down, his solid weight flush across my back. “Al, stop! Have you lost your mind?”
Like an animal, I growl and claw at the tablecloth until it snags on my fingernails.
“Al.” Jeb’s breath is hot on my neck. “Come back to me. Be my skater girl again.”
My skater girl.
The tender entreaty almost brings me back.
Only almost.
Maybe it’s the adrenaline, or maybe it’s whatever demon possessed me when I fell into that pie and tasted that purple junk . . . but something gives me enough strength to thrust Jeb aside like he’s a twig. He rolls off the table with a grunt and I snag the screaming, sticky, mousey delicacy. Purple syrup oozes through my fingertips and down my gloves. I’m just about to bite his head off when I’m tackled from behind, and he escapes.
“Let me up!” I snarl, my momentary burst of superhuman strength all but gone.
Someone flips me onto my back and pins me in place. My vision blurs, and I can barely make out the two forms bent over me.
“She’s sampled berry juice from the Tumtum Tree,” the silhouette wearing the hat-cage says in a voice that bounces between tenor and alto. “She must eat the berries whole, else she’ll go mad.” The speaker then bursts into giggles so loud and absurd, he sounds like a hyena on a pogo stick.
“Oh, now . . . being mad’s not all bad,” the shadow with two long ears intones, adding his giggles to the mix. “We could let her eat
us
. Hold her mouth open, and I’ll climb in. I’ve always wanted to see the inside of a stomach.”
A paw stuffs itself into my mouth and gags me, nearly cutting off my breath. I chomp down. The intruder jerks free and I spit out the taste of scorched flesh.
“She bites!”
Laughter and howls explode all around.
“Get away from her!” Jeb’s outburst shuts them up. He strokes my hair to soothe me. It has the opposite effect. Being close to him makes the hunger pierce my gut—like a thornbush taking root deep inside.
There’s nothing funny about the way I feel now. “Jeb, please! I’m so hungry! Feed me or I’ll die!”
“Okay, okay—” His voice cracks, and I realize that I’ve brought him to his knees, after all.
My intestines blaze as if fire ants are gnawing through them. I close my eyes to block out the light but can still smell the food— everywhere.
After a pause that seems to take forever, something cushiony and cool nudges my lips. I open my mouth, greedy, and take every plump berry that can fit inside. They burst on my tongue, juicy and succulent. Gulping, I beg for more.
Five mouthfuls later, I can concentrate with no more pain.
I sit up, blinking at the tea party guests who have settled at the other end of the table. The rabbit’s preoccupied with the pocket watch, dabbing it with a napkin and doling out apologies to Father Time. His white eyes sparkle like marbles as he smiles, his lipless mouth revealing three crooked yellow teeth. The Door Mouse is taking a bath in a teacup, his teensy stained uniform laid out on the saucer. And Hattington—he really is faceless. He keeps flashing from the mouse’s likeness to the hare’s, as if someone’s switching channels between them.
Jeb leans over the table. “You all right?” He looks worried.
Guilt slashes through me for the way I wanted to punish him. “I was . . .”
“Uninhibited and impulsive. In a big way.”
I look at the broken plates and crushed food around me. “I have another side to me, Jeb. And I’m not sure it has to do with the curse. I think maybe it’s always been there.”
He joins our hands. “It’s okay that you have a little bad inside. So do I. We’re a great match like that.” He helps me off the table, folding his arms around my waist. As he kisses my forehead, his labret presses between my eyebrows, cool and comforting.
I pull back. “So, you weren’t faking that you want to be with me and not Taelor. This . . . us . . . is real?”
His thumb and forefinger pinch my earlobe gently. He’s so quiet and thoughtful, I’m afraid he’s not going to answer.
Taking a breath, he looks down. “I dated Tae . . . to try not to think about you. Hoping that it might get you out of my system. Just like with the pencil and sketchbook, it didn’t work. Then I wasn’t sure if you felt the same way. And if you did, I was afraid of . . .” Jeb studies the cigarette burns on his forearms through the sheer black stripes of his sleeves.
“Go on . . .” I press.
“Of unloading my baggage on someone as sweet as you.”
I can’t keep the smile off my lips. “Oh, wow.”
“What?”
“I guess we’re both oblivious. That’s the same reason I kept running from my feelings for you.”
“Because I’m sweet?” That dimpled, boyish grin flashes over his face.
Running my fingers through his messy hair, I giggle. “I didn’t want to pull you into my family’s madness.”
A clatter of dishes shakes the other side of the table where the mouse and hare wrestle over a spoon, both trying to see their reflections in the silver.
Jeb cups my jaw, recouping my attention. “Listen, I never meant to hurt Tae. She gets enough crap from her dad. But when she came to pick me up for prom, we had it out. I told her it was over . . . that we should break up. I was just going to keep it quiet for the dance because she asked me to. She’d already bought her dress, and I’d rented a tux, you know? But she knows the truth. That you’re it for me, Al. Only you.”
They’re the most beautiful words I’ve heard in my life. My stomach feels wonky, like when I was a kid and the merry-go-round at the playground finally stopped spinning and I just lay there facing the swirling sky—dizzy and blissful and exhilarated—until the world came back into perfect clarity. “Oh, Jeb.”
He raises my hand and kisses my knuckles. The labret on his lip glistens in the light, reminding me of Morpheus’s jeweled eyes. I hate that I let him put doubts into my head about the most devoted guy I’ve ever known. I can’t let Morpheus get to me like that again— ever.
“You’re it for me, too.” I link my fingers with Jeb’s. “I’m sorry for the things I said to you in the Hall of Mirrors. And that I lied to you about Taelor’s purse . . . and stealing—”
“Shh.” He leans down to kiss me, so tender-sweet, it chases away everything but his touch. “Let’s forget it all. Except one thing,” he whispers against my lips. “When we go home, can you keep the chain trick? That table dance was very hot.” He growls. I laugh, shivering at the sultry vibration in his chest. He laughs, too, then pulls my hips close and kisses my ears, my temples, my lips—immersing me in a thousand different sensations, each so delicious, I almost forget what I have left to do.
I break our embrace. Jeb’s half-lidded expression looks back at me, questioning. “Be right back,” I say. I peel off my soiled gloves, cast them aside, and scramble onto the table, stopping beside Hattington. “The vorpal sword. Alice brought it to you, before you were frozen. We need it.”
The flat screen of his face blinks, flashing between a reflection of mine and Alice’s. The effect is creepy, like a movie screen snapping between two different eras. Jeb steps closer, waiting.
“Sword?” Hattington glances at his two companions. “Either of you remember anything about a sword?” They all burst into chuckles—a sound that rattles me.
“Perhaps you swallowed it, Herman,” the hare says between snorts. “Open your mouth, and let’s have a look.”
“Better take a flare gun,” the mouse squeaks. “It’s dark and wide as a canyon in there!”
More snorts and giggles.
Jeb grabs the hare by the ears and holds him above the table, ending the laugh-fest. He points to Herman and the mouse. “A little cooperation would go a long way toward you two keeping your hides.”
Hattington’s face flashes to Jeb’s image. “You’re barking up the wrong tree, woodchuck.” He glances at the mulberry overhead. “Someone sent you on a wild duck chase. Wonder who?”
The leaves rustle, and Morpheus appears at the top of the canopy. “That would be me,” he answers, a smirk on his face.

His smile fades as Gossamer peeks out from under his hair. “I was misinformed,” he says.
Jeb’s entire body visibly tenses. “‘Misinformed’? You sent Al out here, into danger, on
misinformation
?”
I clamber off the table, fingertips resting on his bunched-up back muscles to calm him.
Morpheus grins again from his perch atop the tree—regal and pompous with his wings spread high, a backdrop of sleek satin shading his pale complexion from the sun. “It was foolish, I know. Taking hearsay for fact. I was in my cocoon when little Alice escaped with the sword. I didn’t see for myself what happened. I’d heard through the rumor mill that she came here with it. But now I’ve learned the truth. The sword has been hidden all this time in the Red castle itself . . . guarded by the bandersnatch.”
“Right.” Jeb’s voice is choked with strained self-control. “And we’re just supposed to take your word for that.”
“My spy only learned of it today. Alyssa believes me, don’t you?” Morpheus trains his gaze on me.
I don’t answer. Truth is, I don’t trust him.
“Take her silence as a no, bug for brains.” Jeb stays focused on the canopy.
“Neither of you is even curious about the battle I waged to keep you safe? Pity the ingratitude.” Morpheus straightens his gloves while Gossamer flutters around his jacket, checking for snags. His clothes are rumpled and ravaged, even sooty in places. He’s lost his hat and his hair’s a shock of wild waves. “Had to torch the dining hall to smoke them all out. But they’ll soon be spreading over Wonderland in search of you. Queen Grenadine has a dinner party planned, and she’s determined to unveil a new pet to entertain her guests.”
Jeb’s shoulder blades fidget beneath my palm. “Pet?”
“Grenadine has wanted a replacement for Alice for decades. A caged bird, as it were.” Having dropped that bomb, Morpheus takes a graceful leap and glides to the tabletop, landing next to Hattington and crew. “Good to see you fellows again. How was the nap?”
The three netherlings greet Morpheus with hugs and handshakes.
I grab Jeb’s hand, my pulse racing. “Do you remember the psych report? Alice told the therapist she’d been in a birdcage for seventyfive years in Wonderland. But she must’ve come back. She got married and had a family. Or else I wouldn’t exist. Right?”
He pulls me close. “I don’t know what’s happening. But we need to get you out of here quick.”
“Now that the curse is broken,” I say, although I don’t feel any different.
Morpheus seems oblivious to our urgency. He pats Hattington’s conformateur. The blank-faced little man comes only to his thigh. “Splendid to have you back among the living, Herman. I’m in dire need of a new Cajolery Hat.”
“Can do!” The lid flips closed on the hatmaker’s contraption. His bone structure and skull contort and crack into place as the metal pins squeak and mold around his head until he and Morpheus look like a matched set of nesting dolls.
That’s why he’s the best hatmaker in the realm. He becomes his subject’s head and face until he finishes a project, making for the perfect fit. What would that be like? To never have an identity of your own? No wonder they call him mad.
“Mayhap you’d like a derby style?” Hattington says as he feels his temporary cheekbones. “I have some fine red felt back home.”
“Hmm . . .” Morpheus brushes soot off his lapel. “I was thinking one of buckram might be nice.”
“Hey!” Jeb slams a fist on our end of the table. The group turns to us. “Al’s in danger of becoming someone’s human parakeet. She’s finished what she came to do. Fulfilled the requirements to break the curse. Now we need to get back to our world. Like yesterday.”
“Yesterday, you say?” the hatmaker warbles in his bouncing timbre. “Yesterday is doable.”
Guffawing, the hare slaps a knee and adds, “Although two yesterdays would be impossible.”
The Door Mouse snickers, slipping back into his uniform. “No, no! You can retrogress as many yesterdays as you please. Simply walk backward the rest of your life.”
They all bend at the waist, holding their ribs as they laugh hysterically. Their lack of sobriety stuns me, and Jeb looks like he might snap at any minute.
With a flick of his wings, Morpheus lands on the grass beside us. Gossamer nestles in his hair. “There’s more bad news, as per your leaving here.”
Jeb narrows his gaze. “How can it get any worse?”
“When the Red army raided my home, they found the jabberlock box and stole it back again. It is no longer under my protection, and without the Ivory Queen, her portal will remain closed. That makes it ever more imperative we get the sword and defeat Grenadine and her king.”
Jeb inches closer to Morpheus. “And how do you propose we defeat them when the sword is at their castle under the keep of some mutant watchdog?”
I grip his shoulder from behind, reminding him to use restraint. Morpheus is our only ally, however infuriating his tactics are.
“All is not lost,” Morpheus says. “Chessie can subdue the bandersnatch since his other half resides within.” He tickles his sprite’s tiny swinging feet with his finger. “You will get Chessie’s head for me. He’ll have full control, and I can steal the sword and defeat Grenadine, then send you both home via whichever portal you like, Red or White.”
“No!” Jeb lunges in a move so swift, it almost jerks my arm out of its socket. He catches Morpheus by his lacy shirt and lifts him onto tiptoe so his wings drag on the ground. Gossamer dangles from a strand of blue hair. “This is all a ploy to get Al to do another ‘task.’ Right? Another
test
. What I want to know is what she’s being tested for. What happens when she passes them all?”
Smug, Morpheus taps Jeb’s fingers, one by one, as if he were playing a flute. “Ah. Gossamer’s been running her little pretty mouth again, aye? Jealous little nymph.” The sprite scrambles off his shoulder and flitters into the tree overhead. “You know, you should never trust a woman with green skin. Just ask any man who’s had a hangover from absinthe.” Morpheus gazes at me. “All I’ve ever wanted is to free Alyssa and return her to her proper place.”
“And where would that be?” Jeb moves his head in front of me so Morpheus has to look at him.
“Her home, of course.” The jewels at the edges of Morpheus’s tattoos turn clear and sparkle like liquid, mimicking the sincerity of real tears. “I’d like nothing more than to get Chessie’s head myself. But, because of our misunderstanding over the moth spirits I harbor, the Twid Sisters and I aren’t on the best of terms. They’ll not let me set foot nor wing anywhere close to their gate.”
“Wait.” I step up. “What does this have to do with the cemetery?”
“That’s where Chessie’s head resides,” Morpheus answers. “Because he’s technically ‘partly’ dead, he was able to find solace there. So the solution is simple: Save the cat to subdue the bandersnatch, free the Ivory Queen with the sword, and then you get to go home.”
“What a load of crap.” Jeb shoves Morpheus away. His netherling wings swipe wide, maintaining his balance before he crashes into a chair. Gossamer drifts down from the leaves, hovering over him.
Jeb takes my hand. “Let someone else go after the cat. Al’s in danger out here. We need to hide until we can get home. She’s done everything you asked. The curse is broken, right?”
Morpheus looks at me, not Jeb. “What good is breaking the curse if you never go home? If Alison never sees her daughter again, she’ll be worse off than she is now. Her sanity will no longer be an act.”
I shudder. Morpheus is right. Alison would never forgive herself if I was lost for her sake.
Morpheus glances over his shoulder toward where the tea party crew argues over who gets to drink the mouse’s bathwater from the hare’s boot. The edge of his mouth curls. “The inner garden is hallowed to our kind. We’re forbidden to walk upon those grounds. You’re the only ones I can send.”
I squeeze Jeb’s hand, hating what I’m about to say. “We have no choice, then. We’ll go.”
Jeb presses my knuckles to his chest. “No. I’ll go. You fly back with bug snot.”
“Of course,” Morpheus interrupts, his voice edged with something between sarcasm and suggestiveness. “I’ll be happy to take Alyssa back with me. We can pick up where we left off in my bedroom, right, luv?”
I scowl at him.
Jeb pushes me aside and snaps out the Swiss Army knife, the blade pressed against Morpheus’s sternum. “Better idea. Give Al her wish—now.”
My stomach turns. “Jeb, I won’t leave without you.”
“It won’t come to that.” He slides the blade up to Morpheus’s throat. “You can wish you never came at all. You’ll still be the subject of the wish, and it’ll get us both out of this. I never would’ve come if I hadn’t seen you leap into that mirror.”
He’s right. That would work. The only problem is, I’ll have done this for nothing: Alison will still get shock therapy and my family will be cursed again because I’ll have never come to fix things.
“Give it to her,” Jeb says, “or she’ll have a king-size moth to use in her next masterpiece. Got me?”
Gossamer flies in Jeb’s face in a frenzy of wings. Her distraction gives Morpheus a chance to catch Jeb’s wrist and hold him back. “I don’t have the wish,” he seethes. “It fell out while I was trying to save your bloody little lives, and now it’s in the hands of Rabid White.”
Jeb twists his arm free. “Lies.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Morpheus answers, watching Jeb warily. “Alyssa wouldn’t use her wish so lightly. Elsewise, her family will forever suffer the curse she risked life and limb to break. ”
The heat from Morpheus’s knowing gaze is a thousand times worse than the spotlights on the miner’s caps at Underland, and there’s nowhere to hide my bared soul. “He’s right.”
Jeb glares at me. “You’ve gotta be kidding. Your mom wouldn’t want you in danger!”
I look down at my boots. “Why are we talking about this? He said he doesn’t have the wish, anyway.”
Jeb’s laugh has a bite of venom behind it. “That’s amazing. You just keep playing into his hands.” His face hardens. “You know what I’d do if I had a wish? I’d wish you would trust me like you used to. The way you trust him now.”
The insinuation cuts deep. He can’t really believe that. Can he?
Jeb turns to Morpheus, brandishing the knife’s blade again. “Anything goes wrong—she gets even a scratch—and I’ll gut you from head to toe.” Forcing himself to pull back, he turns to retrieve our backpack.
“Get directions to the graveyard,” he says to me before he moves to the edge of the hill, stopping at the border of the chessboard desert. He snaps the army knife closed and looks off into the distance with all the patience and composure of a wild, caged animal while Gossamer flutters around him.
“Your boyfriend has some real trust issues,” Morpheus baits.
“Shut up. He had a rough childhood.”
“He should be grateful he had one at all.”
“Stop fishing for sympathy. You had a childhood. I was there, remember?”
The black marks around Morpheus’s eyes crinkle in a snide grin. “No, Alyssa. It was poor little Alice I was referring to.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You will need a weapon.” Morpheus sidesteps the question. Reaching a gloved hand into his jacket, he digs around in an inner pocket and draws out a small, thin cylinder of wood. He turns it, revealing holes in the body and a mouthpiece at one end.
“A flute? How’s that supposed to protect us?” I ask.
Morpheus steps closer and tucks the cylinder into my blouse. He slides it against my bare skin until it fits snugly in my cleavage. Gossamer must be distracting Jeb, or he would’ve already thrown the jerk off the hill. Personally, I’m considering shoving the instrument up his nose.
His gaze holds me in check. Somewhere behind the fathomless black glitter is sincerity, maybe even concern. My heart pounds against the flute’s cool, smooth wood.
“Let us hope you remember those music lessons your mumsy had you take.” Morpheus leans his hip against the table. His wings relax behind him. “A cello should suffice for knowing the musical scale. You’ve played one instrument, you’ve played them all, aye?”
For the first time, it hits me point-blank. “You’re the reason she wanted me to play.”
“Even though she hoped with all her heart you would never come here, she still prepared you, just the same. And thus far, you’ve proven yourself gloriously capable. How proud she would’ve been of your antics upon the table earlier.”
A blush creeps hotly into my cheeks. Did he see my dance? Or maybe he’s referring to my barbaric race to eat the Door Mouse. Either possibility is equally unsettling. “You were watching?”
“By the by . . .” He glances at Jeb’s back and leans closer, murmuring low. “Tumtum juice alters a person’s inhibitions, magnifies their hunger. But it’s not hunger for food. It’s experiences they crave. Had it been me instead of your toy soldier, I would’ve found a means to slake your ravenous hunger without resorting to berries.”
His arrogance simmers my blood. “You don’t have the equipment to satisfy anything.
Moth
. Remember?”
He laughs, dark and soft, under his breath. “I am a man in every way that counts. Just like you are a woman, even if some people believe you’re nothing more than a scared little girl in constant need of saving.”
I ignore the barb. “Of course. You’re an expert on women.” Ivory’s lovesick ogling from behind the glass plane bobs to the surface of my thoughts. That strange, possessive pang follows, but I suppress it.
“Do I sense jealousy?”
“As if.”
He smiles, dragging a wing over his shoulder to preen it. “I’ve been in this form for some time. I had to get some practice in. But only one lady is my equal in every way. Intellectually, physically, magically.”
“It’s all about her, isn’t it?” My envy is almost palpable. “You’d endanger anyone to have her in your arms.”
“Absolutely, I would.”
“I hate you.”
“Only because of the way I make you feel.”
My fingernails eat into my palms. “Only because you bring out the worst in me.”
“Oh no, luv. I bring out the
life
in you.” His intense gaze pulls me in. The lullaby trills through my blood, carrying my pulse on its rhythm
: “Little blossom in peach and gray, grew up strong and found your way; two things more yet to be seen, until at last you’ll . . .”
The ending to his verse—that final puzzle piece—still drifts just out of my reach. I squeeze my temples to shake him from my head. My fingertip grazes my hairpin, and it pinches. “Just stop it!” I snap at him. “Where is the cemetery?”
Gossamer comes back to light on Morpheus’s shoulder as he points down. “After the abyss . . . just there.”
He indicates a drop in the chessboard sands at the edge of the dune, not too far from where Jeb’s standing. It’s hard to make out from here, but it appears to be a fissure in the earth.