necessary, familiarize himself with intercity routes, pass across borders like a phantom. His promise to
Genevieve, the queen he’d left behind, demanded it.
Under the blanket of darkness, he made his way up and down streets, starting at one end of the city and working his way across it. And now that he had an opportunity to notice, Hatter saw that some people had a glow about them. Supposing them suffused with the luminescence of imagination, he followed one glowing man down the rue de Rivoli to a modest shop with a wooden sign in the shape of a top hat hanging over its door. It could have been a station for the Millinery men and women of the city. Perhaps he would find camaraderie and assistance here. He followed the man into the shop. It was filled with every variety of hat: derbies, bowlers, tams, fezzes, berets-an array of headware that impressed even Hatter. He picked up one of the top hats and flicked it, but it held its innocent shape.
A diminutive gentleman with a wispy mustache approached. “Bonjour, monsieur. Est-ce-que je peux vous aider?”
“I come from Wonderland,” Hatter said. “I oversee the Millinery there.” He waited, hoping the meaning, the import, of this would make itself felt to the shopkeeper.
“Cela est un bon chapeau,” the man said, pointing to the top hat.
Hatter set down the item. “I am searching for Princess Alyss Heart of Wonderland. She has landed somewhere in this world, as I have, through a portal and…”
But the shopkeeper’s eyes showed no recognition at Alyss’ name, no understanding of what Hatter was saying. When the man tried to show Hatter the merits of a certain beret, Hatter left the shop. He would try others, however. He trusted those who dealt in headwear more than he trusted anyone else.
A few doors down, three men emerged from a cafe, tipsy with drink. They stopped in bleary-eyed surprise at the sight of Hatter, his odd-looking clothes.
“Je n’aime pas des etrangers,” one of the men said.
Hatter didn’t have to understand French to hear the hostility in his voice. The man pretended to punch
Hatter and his companions laughed.
Hatter didn’t flinch. “I don’t want to fight you,” he said. “Non?”
“No.”
The man shoved Hatter, who stood his ground, an exemplar of restraint. “Qu’est-ce qu’il y dans le sac?” the man asked, indicating Hatter’s backpack. “Donnez-moi le sac.” The man took a step toward Hatter, reached for the backpack.
Only an enemy would try to take Hatter’s weapons. Activating his wrist-blades, the Milliner flipped backwards to give himself some space. He reached into his backpack and let fly with a handful of daggers. Thimp! Thimp! Thimp! The daggers pinned the men to a wooden cart by their shirtsleeves: a feat of martial skill Hatter hoped would show that he could kill all three of them if he so desired.
More men appeared, spilling out of the nearby cafes, alarmed. They surrounded Hatter-fifteen of them. One of them aimed a pistol at his head.
Hatter vaguely recognized the pistol as something invented by a Wonderlander during his boyhood. To reacquaint himself with its capabilities, he eyed the man and said, “Boo!”
Panicked, the man fired.
A round steel bullet shot toward Hatter, but with the speed of a jabberwock’s tongue, he ducked and it whizzed past.
Hatter punched a button on his belt buckle and a series of curved saber blades flicked open along the surface of his belt. But before the blades sliced into action, the group scattered, each man running as far from Hatter as he could get, which didn’t stop them from later reporting that they had witnessed the menacing figure kill upwards of twenty innocent civilians with his elaborate weaponry, themselves living to tell about it only by the grace of God.
The sabers on Hatter’s belt retracted. He snapped his wrist-blades closed and allowed himself a brief smile, relieved that he hadn’t had to kill anyone. He didn’t see the large, elaborately decorated rug closing in on him, held up from behind by six of Paris’ bravest carpet salesmen. The rug knocked him down and the men rolled him up tight in it. His backpack weaponry poked through the thick pile, but his arms were pinned to his sides; he was unable to reach his belt buckle or flick his wrists to activate his deadly bracelets.
Hoisting the rug-cocooned Hatter onto their shoulders, the men hauled him off to the Palais de Justice. But as he breathed in the rug’s fibers, Hatter’s concern wasn’t for his own safety, but for that of Alyss Heart, a lost princess in a hostile world.
CHAPTER 14
T HE CAT stood at the edge of the cliff and stared down at the foaming, rippling spot where Alyss and Hatter had splashed into the water. Lightning flashed, thunder broke overhead, and rain fell in sheets. If there was one thing The Cat didn’t like, it was water. Rain, showers, baths, it didn’t matter which; he hated getting wet. He turned and stalked back into the forest with the scrap of Alyss’ dress in his fist.
“You let them get away,” a voice said. The Cat stopped, tense.
“They escaped,” said another.
He spun round but saw no one. The forest was talking to him, the trees and plants and flowers. “What’s the matter?” asked a nearby lilac bush. “Afraid to take a dip in the water?”
The forest had a good laugh at that, but The Cat didn’t appreciate the teasing. He bent down and tore the lilac up by its roots and threw it on the ground. The forest fell silent. The Cat walked up to a tree.
“Were you talking to me?” The tree said nothing.
The Cat glanced to his left, then right. “I don’t see anyone else here, so you must have been talking to me.”
Still the tree said not a word. It didn’t matter. The Cat raked his claws down its trunk, skinning off the bark.
“Aaaaahowwww!” the tree cried.
The Cat reentered the Crystal Continuum through the forest looking glass (its guard, the tight-lipped shrub, now more tight-lipped than ever) and reemerged in Genevieve’s sitting room. He hulked through the destruction of the sitting area and down a heart-shaped passage to the South Dining Room, stepping over dead card soldiers and guardsmen as if they had never been alive at all, never beings who laughed, cried, rejoiced, or had loved ones waiting for them at home.
Notwithstanding the blast that had rocked the palace, the bodies splayed in all manner of death on the tables and floor, the South Dining Room was a scene of celebration. Redd’s soldiers helped themselves
to wondercrumpets, fried dormice, and whatever other delicacies they could find, and none too delicately shoved them into their mouths. Not being much interested in tea, they’d raided the palace’s wine cellar, and now flooded their bellies with goblet after goblet of the queendom’s finest wine.
“To the health of Queen Redd!”
“To the death of Queen Genevieve!”
These toasts were one and the same to Redd, who was lounging in a chair, wearing the bloody crown. “Well?” she said when she saw The Cat. “Where are their heads?”
One didn’t admit failure to Redd and get away with it without suffering pain or worse. The Cat held up the shred of Alyss’ dress. “This is all that’s left of them. I’m sorry, Your Highness. I couldn’t control myself.”
“It’s unwise to control yourself in a situation like that,” Redd said. “Well done.”
But a scheming, dishonest mind such as Redd’s always suspects others of scheming and dishonesty. She tried to see Alyss in her imagination’s eye, to discover the truth for herself: nothing. Imagination could not penetrate the Pool of Tears, which was lucky for The Cat.