CHAPTER 42
T HEY TREKKED single-file along a volcano’s narrow ridge, their noses and mouths covered with cloth torn from Bibwit’s robe to protect them from airborne ash. It was too hot to speak, almost too hot to breathe. No one had said a word since they first emerged onto the Volcanic Plains and Dodge had suggested they smash the exit portal just in case. Redd’s diabolically inventive mind was not to be underestimated; any remnant of the Crystal Continuum might cause her to reconstruct it in its entirety, providing her with the means to reach the plains that much sooner. Now Redd and her armies would
have to travel on foot or by beast.
“The looking glass must have been used by jabberwocky poachers,” Bibwit Harte had said. “Lucky for us, it was over-looked or we’d still be…” He’d shivered with the thought of the void.
“If Redd saw us in the Continuum, she might still be watching us,” General Doppelganger had observed. “Can’t be helped,” Hatter had said.
Dodge had been impatient. “Then let’s stop standing around and get to where we have to go.”
So Bibwit, who carried detailed maps of the queendom within his bald head, led them toward the Valley of Mushrooms. Picking their way along the rocky, irregular ridge, they constantly had to look down to be sure of their footing, all the time reminding themselves of how high they were and how dangerous their passage.
“Ah!”
A hardened chunk of lava hit General Doppelganger on the shoulder. The Alyssians paused, looked up. Another chunk of lava rock fell. Another and another.
The volcano’s moving.
Not the entire volcano, just the topmost layer of rock and earth on the steep slope above them. The ridge gave way, crumbling beneath the Alyssians’ feet, and they tumbled and rolled down into a gorge at the base of the volcano. General Doppelganger was half buried in earth and rubble. Bibwit came to rest completely upside down, his feet in the air, but he quickly righted himself, coughing and spitting, before he was suffocated. Alyss, being the lightest among them, had bounced down the volcano’s craggy lower slope and slid to a stop on a bed of gravel. Hatter and Dodge stood wiping lava crud from their coat sleeves as if surviving a landslide was something they did every day.
“Everyone all right?” asked General Doppelganger. “Alyss?” Dodge’s voice, concerned.
“I’m okay.” She didn’t want the others to think she considered a few scrapes and bruises serious injuries. She was supposed to be strong enough to defeat Redd. “Someone’s watching us,” she said.
A pair of yellow-green eyes were peering at them from the black mouth of a nearby cave. Before anyone could speak, the giant reptilian head of a jabberwock thrust forward from between two boulders. Its long tongue lashed at Bibwit, scorching a swath through the sleeve of his robe to his delicate skin.
“Yaow!”
Even in the heat of the plains, Alyss and the others could feel the hotness of the jabberwock’s breath, fouled by the stink of carcass meat. The creature opened its slobbery mouth impossibly wide, as a cobra does to swallow a rabbit-a display of menace quite uncalled for, since the jabberwock could have easily fit two full-grown Wonderlanders in its jaws with any old everyday chomp. The Alyssians backed toward the cave. The jabberwock lurched toward them, shot a spitball of fire at Alyss. She dived to the ground and the fireball flared against the gorge wall, but in its brief explosion of light the Alyssians saw
that the yellow-green eyes in the cave belonged to a miniature jabberwock surrounded by gnawed bones:
a newborn.
“She’s protecting her baby,” Bibwit said.
The mother jabberwock rose up on her hind legs, preparing to charge, and in a single swift motion, Hatter took off his top hat, flicked it into blades, and hurled it at the rock overhanging the cave entrance.
Thwink-thwink-thwink-thwink!
Rocks loosened and fell into a pile, blocking the mouth of the cave. Hatter’s blades were still boomeranging back to him when the mother jabberwock let out a pained wail and, ignoring the Alyssians, scratched and scrabbled at the fallen debris, clearing it away to save her baby, as Alyss and the others escaped unharmed along the gorge floor.
Each of them knew without saying it aloud: As long as they were on the plains, the threat of jabberwocky still loomed.
CHAPTER 43
S URPRISINGLY, BIBWIT Harte did not have a pair of gemstone fire crystals tucked anywhere in his scholar’s robe, so they had to build a fire the old-fashioned way, with the suns and a pile of dead branches. The Volcanic Plains were behind them and they had made camp next to a wide river en route to the Valley of Mushrooms.
Dodge wrapped a dampened leaf around Bibwit’s burn and tied it with strong vine. Bibwit tested the movement of his arm, grimacing and perhaps making more of his injury than was necessary, because Dodge, with a quick glance at General Doppelganger, said, “We might have to cut it off.”
Bibwit fell still, too horrified to speak.
“You can tutor just as well with one arm as with two, can’t you?” Bibwit’s mouth opened and closed, but nothing came out.
Dodge and General Doppelganger sputtered with laughter. “I’m just teasing, Bibwit,” Dodge said. “You’ll be fine.”
“Oh. Ha ha,” Bibwit said uneasily. “A bit of levity to ease the burden we’re under. Yes. Ha ha.” But he hugged his injured arm close until Dodge and the general settled into sleep. Regaining his usual composure, he took a seat next to the princess. “Now, Alyss, we shall have that lesson of ours that keeps getting put off. Lucky for us, I have memorized most of the necessary books.”
Alyss nodded, but she was in no mood for a lesson. The day itself had been a lesson-in survival. “I will close my eyes for a moment,” continued Bibwit, “to file through all that’s in my head for the
appropriate material. It’ll just take a moment.”
But as soon as the tutor shut his eyes, he began to snore, his ears opening and closing with each breath. Alyss smiled a tired smile and pulled the ends of his robe about him as a blanket. She moved to the other side of the fire to let him sleep undisturbed. As it had long ago, on that first night with Quigly and the orphans in the London alley, her mind was plagued by too much to allow her any rest. How did it work when I was young? Her ability to conjure objects from the strength and depth of her imagination. How had it worked? She’d been lucky with the muzzle. She hadn’t intended to conjure such a thing, had only tried to imagine Dodge safely out of the spider’s sticky clutches.
Hatter sat beyond the fire’s glow cleaning his weapons, his top hat beside him. He removed first his left wrist-bracelet and then his right, and set about wiping their blades with a leaf. Alyss had never seen a Milliner without his bracelets. He looks so much like an ordinary Wonderlander. Indeed, especially now, as Hatter paused in his work to strip off his long outer coat and lay it on the ground beside him. Without his coat and the tell-tale weapons, there was nothing in his appearance to distinguish him from any normal, adult male Wonderlander. He must have hopes, dreams, loves, and sorrows outside his duty, as anyone does. Strange that I should know so little about him when he’s devoted his life to protecting my family. He caught her looking at him. She smiled in apology, as if she had been intruding. Hatter went back to his cleaning.
The thing about when she was young…she didn’t remember her imagination having to work. It just was.