Alice (14 page)

“Because Hatcher—if it’s the same Hatcher—was once called Nicholas, and he fought a man called the Grinder in the ring,” the rat said. His eyes willed Alice to understand.

Alice pointed at Hatcher. “He fought the Grinder.” “The Grinder never fought again after that day,” Nicodemus said. “The Grinder is now the Walrus.”

“He wants revenge,” Alice said.

“What’s it saying about the Grinder?” Hatcher asked. “You heard him,” Alice said.

“I heard him, but I didn’t understand him,” Hatcher said. “Only you.”

This must have something to do with magic, Alice thought, but there wasn’t time to think about the whys and hows. Besides, there was a more important question.

“I’ll explain later,” she said to Hatcher. Then, to Nicodemus, “What is the Walrus’ interest in me?”

“Do you know a girl called Dolly?” Nicodemus asked. “Dolly?” Alice asked, her face blank.

“Dolly?” Hatcher said. “That silly serving girl? The one you made me give money to?”

“Oh, Dolly,” Alice said, and remembered the flash of cunning she’d seen on the girl’s face. “She went straight to the Walrus and told him I was a Magician, didn’t she?”

“Yes,” the rat said. “Although it didn’t do her any good. The Walrus took a liking to her right away.”

Alice shuddered, for she knew what that meant. Dolly had met the fate she had so feared.

“The Walrus very much desires the flesh of a Magician. He knows so many but has no such power himself.” Nicodemus gave Alice a meaningful stare.

Alice decided then and there that she would ask Hatcher to take her head from her neck before she would be brought before the Walrus.

“How is it that you know so much?” Alice asked. “The Walrus speaks freely before us, for to him we are only dumb creatures, exotics for his ring,” the rat said. “Most humans do, so we hear many things. Our smaller kin know every secret, for they live inside the walls and under the streets and men do not hide their worst actions from us.”

“May I ask . . . if it’s not impolite, may I know how it is that you are so much larger than others of your kind?” Alice didn’t like to say “rats.” They might prefer to be called something else. “Magic, of course. An elixir sold to the Walrus by the Caterpillar.”

But not, I think, made by the Caterpillar,
Alice thought. That was Cheshire’s magic, a cake to make you small and a drink to make you tall.

“What would you have done if I were not a Magician and could not speak to you?” Alice wondered aloud.

Nicodemus flashed his teeth at her, and it was not a smile. “If you did not speak, we would have fed you to our children.” Alice was very glad that Hatcher could not understand the rat, for she was certain he would have taken the rat’s words as a threat. “Thank you,” Alice said, nudging Hatcher to one side. He went, but very reluctantly. “Thank you for warning us of the Walrus’ intentions. I wish you and your family well.”

The rat bowed his head at Alice. “I hope you do not cross paths with him. He is not so kindly as the Caterpillar.”

The Caterpillar was not kindly at all, so Alice took the remark in the spirit it was meant. The Walrus was worse.

Alice and Hatcher pressed against the cave wall to allow the rats to pass by. The passage was so narrow that several animals brushed against them. Alice held her breath, trying not to smell the musky animal scent of them, trying not to shudder at the swipe of their fur and their tails.

Finally, they were gone, their chittering and claw scrapes fading in the distance. Hatcher gave her a questioning look. Alice sighed, and started walking in the direction the rats had come from. As she walked, she explained what she had heard. “The Grinder is the Walrus,” Hatcher said. “That’s not good for us at all. I made certain, the night I fought him, that he would never grind anybody ever again.”

“What did you do to him?” asked Alice.

“I broke his hands,” Hatcher said. “And his wrists. Someone— the Rabbit, I think—told me later that they never healed right, that the bones are knotted and twisted under his skin. You can talk to animals.”

“I suppose I can,” Alice said, not in the least surprised by the sudden change in subject.

“That’s a useful gift,” Hatcher said. “Without it we would have had to fight those rats.”

“And we might not have survived.”

“We would have survived,” Hatcher said. It was not arrogance, just assurance. Hatcher knew he would always find a way out. “I wonder if they would have liked to return to their normal size,” Alice said. “We could have given them some of Cheshire’s cake.”

“We could have except that the cake is no longer in my pack,”

Hatcher said.

“Oh, that’s right,” Alice said. “Still, the Walrus must be very frightening in his current state to scare creatures like that so badly that they would hide in a dead-ended tunnel.”

“He was not a pleasant fighter,” Hatcher said. “He would cheat if he could get away with it, carry things like nails and pincers in his palm to use when nobody was looking. He had no honor.” “And now he eats people. Girls,” Alice amended.

“And Magicians.”

“Can it be that all the territories are controlled by Magicians?”

Alice asked. “All except the Walrus’?”

“I don’t know that all of them would be,” Hatcher said doubtfully. “Bosses rise and fall. Anyone with magic would rise without falling, unless another Magician removed him. And the Old City is large, larger than the New City. Most of the streets are controlled by petty criminals, men who own a few streets and have a few thugs to enforce their will. No, they can’t all be Magicians. But the ones who have a lot of power, a lot of territory—they are Magicians.”

“I wonder if Mr. Carpenter is a Magician,” Alice said. “Even if he is, he won’t like us. We killed two of his sentries,”

Hatcher said.

“He doesn’t know that,” Alice said. “And he’s the Walrus’ enemy.” “We’re not going to get involved in a war between the Walrus and Mr. Carpenter,” Hatcher said.

“I think we may already be involved,” Alice said. “I would rather take my chances with Mr. Carpenter than face the Walrus.

Hatcher, don’t you think it’s strange that everyone we’ve met has known who we were before—before the hospital, I mean.” Hatcher appeared unconcerned. “We drew the attention of important men, before and after. Our paths keep intersecting with theirs. And, though I know you dislike to hear it—that scar on your face was put there for a reason.”

“So that anyone who saw me would know what the Rabbit had done. So that I would never be able to hide from him,” Alice said, touching the long ridge that ran down one side of her face. She’d hated the scar at first because it made her ugly. Now she hated it because it revealed her story to everyone she met, everyone who knew of Alice and the Rabbit. Even after the Rabbit was dead and gone she would still have his mark. She would never be able to forget him.

But he was never able to forget you either. You marked him too.
She wished she could remember all of it, remember sinking the knife into that blue-green eye. She wished she could remember the pain she’d given him and not only the pain he’d given her. Alice was thinking hard on that memory, trying to recall, so she wasn’t really paying attention to where she was going. She stopped when her nose struck wood.

She blinked, stepping back. Hatcher was frowning. “Well, Cheshire did say there would be three,” he said.

CHAPTER
14

Before them were three wooden doors, all painted in pink and white candy stripes like the creature’s house on the island in the maze. There was no indication where the doors might lead.

“One goes to the Rabbit,” Alice said. “The Caterpillar told us that. One must go to Cheshire, because the mermaid said she was taken this way when she was first traded to the Caterpillar. What about the third?”

“The Walrus?” Hatcher guessed. “The rats had to come from somewhere.”

“The rats. Right,” Alice said.

She peered at the ground, looking for signs that the extra-sized rodents had entered through one particular door. But the dirt was scratched and mashed by the passage of many feet, and there was no way to tell from which door they might have come.

“I’m not comfortable with guessing,” Alice said. “The wrong door would take us straight into the Walrus’ arms.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not,” Hatcher said. “We don’t know exactly where these passages lead. They may lead to underground entrances to the Rabbit’s and the Walrus’ and Cheshire’s lairs. Or the tunnels may lead us to the streets, close to them but not directly to them.”

“I’d still rather not take a chance,” Alice said. “As long as the Walrus knows he is looking for a tall girl with a scar on her face, I’m at risk.”

“I told you, I won’t let him take you,” Hatcher said.

Alice sighed. “Even you can be taken by surprise, Hatch.”

She reached for the knob of the middle door. Hatcher positioned himself next to the doorframe with his axe in his hand, flattened against the cavern wall. If anyone tried to rush through when Alice opened the door they would not have an opportunity to regret it.

The entrance swung open to reveal . . . nothing. On the other side there was simply a continuation of the same kind of cave they’d passed through already. Alice was disappointed. She’d hoped for some indication of the passage’s destination.

Her nose twitched as she reached for the handle to pull the door shut again. “Roses,” she said. “Cheshire is this way.”

Hatcher sniffed the air. “Yes. Roses.”

“I never want to smell another rose again,” Alice said, closing it hastily.

They checked behind the other doors, but there was no sign to tell where they might lead.

“Use your magic,” Hatcher urged.

Alice stared at him. “I’ve no idea how. What am I supposed to do, hold my finger out like a divining rod and hope it sends us in the direction of the Rabbit?”

“You’ve got magic inside you,” Hatcher said. “You talked to the rats. You set the roses on fire.”

“I did those things without thinking.”

“Then don’t think now,” he said.

That might be logical to Hatcher, but it didn’t make much sense to Alice. Still, she walked in front of the left-hand passage and did the only thing she could think of to do. She put her hand on the door, and thought of the Rabbit, the picture of him that she had in her head. The long white ears, the blue-green eyes (
eye
, she corrected), the tall hat.

“A hat!” Alice exclaimed. “He always wore a tall hat.”

“Who?” Hatcher said.

“The Rabbit,” Alice said, narrowing her eyes, trying to picture his face. “I remembered. He was tall too. Tall like you.”

“We’re a lot of giants,” Hatcher said. “You are the tallest girl I’ve ever known. The Caterpillar was bigger than both of us. And the Walrus, well—if he is the Grinder, then he’s bigger than you and me and the Rabbit all put together.”

“Hatcher,” she said, realizing something. “You’re a Seer. Why don’t you try?”

“Seeing’s not like that,” he said. “Visions just come to me without my thinking about them.”

“Then don’t think now,” Alice said tartly.

She hadn’t gotten anything from touching the door. The image of the Rabbit had emerged from concentration on the past. Still, she tried the same method on the other door, with no results. She sat cross-legged in the dirt before the three choices and looked at each in turn. Hatcher joined her, tracing patterns in the ground with the handle of his axe.

“What’s that?” Alice asked, pointing at a coiled symbol he had carved in the ground. It looked like the pattern of a snail shell, spiraling inward.

He drew four stars around the spiral, one at each point of the compass. Something about the symbol was familiar to Alice, though she couldn’t remember where she’d seen it. She touched the center of the spiral with one finger.

And suddenly she was not there in that cavern with Hatcher. She was in the top of a high tower, and all around her potions bubbled and dusty books sang with knowledge. Her hands were not her own anymore, but the hands of a man much, much older than she. He held a blade as long as Alice’s forearm, and just as wide. It shone silver in the firelight, and the handle was glittering and black. Just under the hilt was the coil with four stars around it. She stared at the blade, and her heart was heavy, for she did not want to do that which she must. She did not wish to destroy her friend. But he was no longer her friend. He was the Jabberwock now, keeper of dark magic, and dark magic had no place in this world.

“A lice?”

Hatcher’s voice, coming from far away, like he spoke to her through a tube. She’d played that game when she was young, talking to her friend (
Dor, but Dor wasn’t her friend anymore
) through a long hollow piece of wood they’d found after a violent storm. It made their voices strange, gave them heft that their girl-chirps didn’t ordinarily have.

“Alice?” His hands were at her shoulders, shaking.

“I saw the blade,” she said, and opened her eyes. Hatcher’s face was before her, and behind that, the cave ceiling. “What happened?”

“You touched that coil, and there was a spark,” Hatcher said, helping her sit up. “And then you went white and fell backward.”

“I saw the blade,” she repeated. “The one we have to find, the one the Rabbit has. We have to get to it before the Jabberwock does. All these other things happening made me half forget. We’re here underground, and the Walrus might be rampaging but the Jabberwock is stalking, stalking, stalking. Once he finds the blade he will destroy it, and take his lost magic, and then we won’t be able to stop him.”

Hatcher nodded. “Yes. We need to think of the Jabberwock and not our own troubles.”

“Though our own troubles seem to mesh with our quest for the Jabberwock, at least a little,” Alice said. “Still, the blade is the important thing.”

“Then which way to go?” Hatcher asked.

“I still don’t know for certain,” Alice admitted. “Let’s try the left. And go cautiously.”

“And if we catch a whiff of the Walrus, then I finish the job I should have finished long ago,” Hatcher said.

They entered the left-hand door. As with the middle door, Alice was disappointed to find there was no guard. A guard could be persuaded to give up information. It was almost as if all those who used the passages completely trusted the other three.

That may have been so, Alice considered. The Caterpillar and Cheshire were friends, as were the Caterpillar and the Rabbit. The Rabbit tolerated the Walrus for the sake of the Caterpillar.

But the rats had said that now that the Caterpillar was gone, the Rabbit would side with Mr. Carpenter against the Walrus. If that was so, then a direct passage to the Walrus’ place seemed like an easy way to rid yourself of an enemy.

After another long walk (
all we do is walk and fight to break up the walking,
Alice thought) they came upon another door. This door
was
guarded, though on the other side. Alice and Hatcher heard voices through the wood, though they couldn’t make out what was said.

“Which?” Alice whispered in Hatcher’s ear. “The Walrus or the Rabbit?”

“We’ll have to take a chance,” Hatcher said. “It sounds like there are two of them. You silence yours, and I’ll question the other one.”

What a terribly civilized way of putting it,
Alice thought.
“Silence” him. Not “cut his throat open with your knife,” which is what Hatcher is actually asking me to do.

They opened the door quickly, surprising the guards. Both men were at their ease, eating a meal from pails. Alice was upon her man before he was able to reach the spear that lay at his side. She silenced him, as Hatcher had asked her to do.

The second man was quicker off the mark, and gave Hatcher a moment of trouble. The result was that Hatcher lost his temper and the guard lost his head, and they had no one to question.

Alice wrinkled her nose at Hatcher. “I thought you wanted to question him.”

“I saw—”

“Red. I know,” Alice said. She pushed the first man’s legs out of the way with the toe of her boot. That was when she noticed the way the guards were dressed—exactly like the men who’d attacked in the tavern. “These are the Walrus’ men.”

Hatcher swore. “Damn. It’s a long walk back to the other doors.”

Alice hurried back to the door and pulled on it. It wouldn’t budge. She turned the knob again, tried pushing. It still would not move. She stared at Hatcher, her eyes wide.

“We can’t get out,” she said.

The first thrumming of panic had started in her chest. She did not want to meet the Walrus. He frightened her much more than the Rabbit, whom she felt, somehow, she was able to best. She had beaten him once, escaped him once, and she had survived much on this journey already. The Rabbit was a bogeyman, but an old bogeyman, familiar and comforting in the predictability of his evil. The Walrus was a horror not yet seen, a nightmare that she did not want to experience.

She did not want to be eaten alive.

Hatcher nudged her to one side, put some force into the door. Nothing.

“If I break it down it will make noise. That might attract others,” he said.

Alice nodded. The tunnel curved almost immediately to the left after the small entryway where the guards had been eating. She cautiously approached the curve and peeked around the corner.

There was a set of steps that led upward a few feet from the turn. She tiptoed along, wincing each time her boots scraped the dirt or knocked tiny pebbles against the cave wall. At the top of the steps was a trapdoor.

She returned to Hatcher and described the situation.

“You’d best stand just past the bottom of the stairs, where nobody can see you,” Hatcher said. “You might be able to take one or two by surprise.”

“Just how many soldiers do you think I can fight on my own?” Alice asked.

“As many as necessary,” Hatcher said. “I believe in you, Alice.”

She felt for the first time that she wanted to kiss him, that she wanted to know what it was like when she chose it. So she did.

His lips were soft and she could taste his surprise, and then his pleasure. He did not put his arms around her, or try to hold her to him. She put her hands on his shoulders to steady herself as she pulled away, for she felt dizzy from her toes to her eyelashes.

Hatcher smiled at her, and she smiled back. It was nice, Alice mused, to remember that there was a purpose to living besides madness and death. Then she took up her place at the bottom of the stairs, and Hatcher set himself to work.

There was a great deal of noise as Hatcher threw his body against the door with increasing amounts of force. With every blow Alice was certain that a dozen men would stream down the steps with murder in their eyes, but no one came.

After a time it became clear that Hatcher was not going to break the door down. Alice went to him, put a hand out to stop him.

Hatcher next took his axe from his jacket. The first blow left no mark on the door but took a chip from the blade. Hatcher tucked the axe away without a word. Alice knew he wouldn’t risk any more harm to his favorite weapon. “We can’t get out that way,” she said.

She saw that he had come to this conclusion already but that he still tried, perhaps driven by the thought of what might occur if the Walrus discovered their presence.

“We have to go up, Hatch,” Alice said. “We have no choice. We can’t stay down here and wait for the changing guard to discover us.”

“How did the rats get out?” Hatcher said, panting from the exertion. “They couldn’t have come this way. But this way is the only way that we saw.”

“We must have missed something,” Alice said. “A secret turning.”

“Rats that size did not crawl from any tunnel that we missed,” Hatcher said.

Alice was inclined to agree. Still, the mystery of the rats’ escape hardly mattered. Their own escape was paramount.

Hatcher took the lead up the stairs. When he reached the trapdoor he listened hard for any sound of movement above. Alice didn’t hear anything, and after a moment Hatcher slowly opened the trap.

The smell hit them first, so overwhelming that Alice coughed, bile rising in her throat. She hastily covered her mouth with her arm. Hatcher’s lips pressed together as he slowly eased the door up and climbed out. He hurried away from the exit, waving his hand to show that Alice should stay. She presumed he was checking the room for people who might object to their sudden appearance. As always, his boots made hardly a sound. For such a large man he walked very light.

Soon enough he returned and gestured for her to follow him.

“I’m not certain you want to see this,” he said. He looked as though he wished to unsee it himself.

“I can hardly walk about with my eyes closed,” Alice said as her head cleared the trap and she saw what was in the room.

The stench hit her harder then, and she ducked her head under so she was sick on the stairs.

Well, if Cheshire did poison the sandwiches, then they’re out of me now,
Alice thought. She was trying to desperately to think about anything other than what she could see.

Alice had killed four times now. Always it was in defense of herself or someone else—to save Hatcher, to save Nell and Dolly, to stop a guard from sounding the alarm. She did not think she would ever enjoy it, as Hatcher seemed to, but she’d quickly grasped the necessity of it in the Old City. Here, you made someone else suffer before they did you.

What was in this place was not done in defense of a life. It was carnage, pure and simple.