Alice In Chains (25 page)

‘Oh, I see,’ Juliet said, looking more subdued.

‘So that’s why we must be ready to escape the first chance we get.’

‘But what about getting rid of your feathers?’

‘I’ll just have to put up with them until I find another cure somewhere. Anyway, you see why we’ve got to be prepared for anything? Do you know what this guardian of the crown square is?’

‘No, sorry. The Queen did go to a library while she was in Brillig and she came back looking very thoughtful. She talked to Albinous afterwards about an “it” as though he knew what she meant, but they didn’t give a name. There was something about the barrier round the next square even keeping the locals out because they were so afraid of what was inside.’

‘Which is why only girlings, being outsiders, can get them through I suppose.’

‘I think so.’ Juliet looked at Alice with a rueful smile. ‘Maybe you’d have been better off waiting for your Red Queen. She certainly won’t cure you if she finds out you’ve been helping the other side.’

‘I wasn’t counting on it much anyway. Tell you the truth, the more I’ve found out about these chesspeople the less I trust any of them, Red or White.’

‘Oh, I think Sir Blanche is all right,’ Juliet volunteered unexpectedly.

Alice gave her a searching look. ‘How can you tell? You’ve only known him a few hours.’

‘Sometimes you just can,’ Juliet said defensively. ‘He’s different. He’s a sort of old-fashioned gentleman.’

Alice gazed curiously at the armoured figure ahead of them. It was true that in the story the White Knight was one of the more sympathetic and often comic characters. He had become obsessed with making impractical inventions and kept falling off his horse, as she recalled. Though Alice could see some extra baggage slung about his huge war charger, Sir Blanche rode with a stiff back
and
she knew he could fight and kill if required. How close was he still to his fictional precursor?

She looked back at Juliet. ‘So you like him, then?’

Juliet blushed. ‘I’m only saying it because it’s true. Listen for a bit. He keeps arguing with the Queen. Albinous does everything she says like a robot, but Sir Blanche sounds pissed off with this whole war thing, only he wouldn’t say it quite like that. He’s too polite.’

They passed out of the wood and onto a bleak open plain, dotted with scrubby trees and low hillocks of withered grass. It was the largest stretch of unused countryside Alice had yet seen in Underland. Did nobody want to live here? Beyond, like a vast backcloth, was the shimmering wall of the final barrier. Alice shivered. It looked ominously dark and foreboding. What else was in there apart from the Crown?

As they rode deeper into the desolate landscape, Alice heard Sir Blanche say to the Queen, ‘Need we involve these poor girlings, Majesty? To fight against a worthy foe on sporting terms is one thing, but to employ such methods. There are so many better uses for such pretty things.’

The Queen’s retort was sharp and unsympathetic. ‘I will hear no more about it, Sir Blanche. I believe you have spent too long amongst the natives.’

‘Any time I have spent down here has been at your order, Majesty. As to the natives, they are merely rebuilding their land with energy and invention. You admitted you yourself travelled on one of their trains, Majesty. Wonderful things, aren’t they?’ He added wistfully, ‘I just wonder why everything changes around us but we do not.’

‘Then you will be pleased to learn that this will be the last battle, after which there will be great changes, I assure you.’

‘But at such a price, Majesty?’

She did not answer him.

* * *

They stopped in the shadow of a scrubby group of thin trees and dismounted to water the horses. After he had seen to his animal, Sir Blanche brought his canteen over to the two girls and allowed them to slake their thirst as well.

Close to, Alice saw he was not quite as old as she had at first imagined. It was the white moustache that gave the impression of age, she decided, and the weary lines about his eyes. But otherwise his face was firm and he certainly carried himself well, moving easily in his armour.

He looked her up and down admiringly as she drank but otherwise did not touch her. As it would do no harm, she said, ‘Thank you, Master,’ when he took the spout of the canteen from her lips, and received a slow mild smile in return. Juliet beamed at him brightly when he watered her, and received a pat on the head when she thanked him.

‘Enough of that, Sir Blanche,’ the Queen snapped. ‘Albinous, I want both the girlings roused and sensitive. Shaft and strap each, but don’t allow their pleasure to peak. They must be primed, not satiated.’

‘Yes, Majesty,’ Albinous said.

He pushed Alice and Juliet down to their knees and then forward onto their faces so, with their hands still bound behind them, their breasts scraped on the dry hard earth and their bottoms were raised in unwilling invitation. Albinous took up position behind Alice and methodically laid a dozen strokes across her pale buttocks with a leather strap, until a rosy blush spread across their soft curves. Alice bit her lip but willed herself not to respond. In between blows Albinous felt her pubic pouch and noted its unexpected dryness.

‘Warm up, girling. Don’t tell me that beast drained you.’

But Alice submitted to the strap with evident lethargy, waiting patiently.

Finally Albinous put the strap aside and knelt between her spread legs, freeing his erect penis which was already anticipating its release, and drove it into the cleft of her pudenda. Alice let herself go loose, so he had little friction as a reward. He thrust harder and faster, working hard to rouse her.

Suddenly Alice moaned as though caught up in the throes of an orgasm, clamped her internal muscles down on his jabbing penis and squeezed it tight, even as she vigorously ground her hips back and forth. Albinous panicked, trying to pull out of the warm lovemouth that now seemed to be intent on sucking the life from his member.

‘Stop it, you bitch, I … no, no … ughhh!’

Helplessly he came inside her, finally pulling free of her clutches in time only to send the last of his sperm splattering in hot spurts across her reddened buttocks. Turning her face to the ground as though also spent, Alice secretly grinned in triumph.

‘I told you to rouse her, not relieve her!’ the White Queen said angrily as she strode over, alerted by Albinous’s angry cries. Albinous looked up at her in acute embarrassment.

‘Sorry, Your Majesty. I … er, couldn’t help myself.’

‘Well riddle the other one with more care.’

Albinous blushed. ‘I can’t, Majesty. Not for a while. This one’s … drained me.’

‘Men!’ the White Queen exclaimed in exasperation. ‘Tend to my horse then.’ She turned to Sir Blanche. ‘You see to Juliet. Strap and shaft her.’

‘Me, Majesty? Must I?’

‘Yes! And don’t take too long about it! That is an order!’ And she turned about and stomped off.

Alice was looking at Juliet as the command was given and saw a strange look in her eye.

Juliet glanced up at Sir Blanche and, with a shy smile, eased her legs wider apart and pushed out her bottom a little further. The ripe peach of her sex pouted between
her
thighs, a glistening dew appearing on its deep cleft. She was blatantly encouraging him to carry out his orders.

After a blink or two, understanding seemed to dawn on the knight. He picked up the belt Albinous had cast aside and swung it across Juliet’s proffered buttocks. There was a smooth crack and the girl flinched as a red stripe appeared crossing the swelling fullness of her two nether hemispheres and a shiver ran through her flesh. But though the blow had been firmly delivered she held her posture of abject surrender. By the third crisp smack tears were filling her eyes, but still she held steady. Alice gazed at Juliet in surprise. She was smiling.

When Juliet’s bottom was an even rosy red, Sir Blanche put down the strap and knelt between Juliet’s spread knees. How is he going to manage with all that armour? Alice wondered. But a small hinged panel over his groin was raised, the knight reached inside and drew out a good-sized erection which he fed into the plump pink-lipped cleft before him.

Juliet sighed as he slid into her. As he began to shaft her with a steady rhythm her face became blissful and her eyes took on the glaze of mounting arousal. In a minute she was wriggling and moaning happily.

‘Oh, yes! That’s so nice. Oh … I think … I’m going to come. Please finish me … please!’

‘Sorry, my dear,’ Sir Blanche said, pulling his now glistening cock out of her. ‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished … but not this time, I’m afraid. Perhaps later.’ He frowned. ‘We shall see.’

The Queen looked over at the helpless frustration written large on Juliet’s face and nodded with approval. ‘That’s the state I want them in. Now to your horses.’

The party mounted up again. The girls scrambled to their feet as their leash chains grew taut and followed in their wake. As they went Alice gave Juliet’s still flushed and excited features a searching glance.

‘Did you know what you were doing?’ she asked softly.

‘I think so,’ Juliet said, as though still surprised at herself.

‘And how much was acting just to make Albinous look more of a fool?’

But in answer to that question Juliet only smiled.

In another hour they reached the edge of the Brillig square. Before them the edge barrier hung out of a bleak sky, with the normally pearly Underland light dimming through sticky yellow into purple grey gloom. The slight breeze had died, leaving a heavy sense of anticipation, as though for a storm that would not break.

They reached the very edge of the square bounded by the last brook that separated them from the Crown. The Queen dismounted and for a minute walked up and down a length of the narrow channel in silence, peering intently at the shimmering translucent wall that ran along it and the dark and blurred land on the further side.

Finally she nodded to herself. ‘Bring them here.’

Albinous unclipped their leashes and dragged Alice and Juliet over to her. She pinched their chins in her stubby strong fingers and forced them to look into her eyes, which now shone with a new and dangerous inner light. When she spoke her voice held such an undertone of malicious glee that Alice shivered.

‘Now, if you’re the perverse little girlings I judge you to be, this will excite you. You will need all that masochistic longing for suffering to pass through into the last square, because in there you will face the most depraved creature in all Boardland. I found it mentioned in a little cautionary rhyme during my researches. I suspect Magenta has been attempting to discover more about the Crown itself, but what good will that do her if she cannot get past its guardian? Do you want to know its name?’

She recited:

‘Beware, fair maid, the slavishing beast,

Vilely tongued and blazing eyed.

Upon girlings does it hungrily feast,

Who first have been well sodomised.

On claws that clack and wings that flap,

The tulgey wood it prowls.

In a snip and a snap a girl it will trap,

Careless of how she howls.

Clutching her tight it begins to test,

The plumpitiousness of its new find.

By sticking and pricking her titiful breast,

And prodding her bouncy behind.

But bestially worse a girl has to fear,

From its gnurlious twice-pronged cock.

Quick as a leer it will rend front and rear,

So beware the cruel Jabberwock!’

The White Queen beamed at them as the image of the Jabberwock from the book knotted Alice’s stomach. It was the one true monster in the story. And in Underland it liked girls …

‘A fitting guardian for the Crown of Auria, don’t you think?’ the Queen said. ‘It’s large and vicious, preying on any people or animals that enter its lair. However, as the rhyme suggests, it has a special affection, call it a weakness, for girlings. One might say it likes to play with them. Nothing you have ever experienced before can prepare you for what that means. There will be pain and torment and, yes, perhaps, a few moments of the most exquisite rapture so intense you may not survive.’

Juliet was looking deathly pale. Alice spoke, trying to keep her voice level. ‘And while it’s playing with us, you’ll be sneaking round to steal the Crown, I suppose?’

‘Exactly. I promise, if I achieve my goal in time, I will do all I can to save you. Think of it as another reason to keep the Jabberwock amused for as long as possible. In any case it would be unwise to let it get bored with you.’ As she spoke she dropped her hands between their legs, thrusting stiff fingers up into the depths of their vulvas while grinding her thumbs down on their clitorises. ‘How long do you think you can last while such a creature ravishes you?’ she asked as she toyed with them. Juliet whimpered and Alice felt her body responding in the only way it knew; meeting the prospect of depravity head on with uplifted nipples and a slippery crotch.

The Queen lifted her hands to inspect the intimate dew they had deposited upon them. ‘I see girlings are such slaves to your natures that you cannot help becoming aroused, even when the prospect terrifies. Good, I knew you would not let me down. Now open the way for us!’

Extra leashes were fastened to their collars and, with Albinous holding one set, they were made to climb down the bank and wade out into the middle of the brook. For the first time Alice felt some resistance as she pushed though the barrier curtain until it rippled through the middle of her body, teasing her senses and trying to insinuate itself up her cleft. Tilting her head she glimpsed tall dark trees on the other side of the divide. Juliet took up position facing Alice with a gap between them large enough for a horse to pass.

Sir Blanche guided his nervous mount between them, leaning into the barrier as it resisted his passing. Alice felt it stretching and tugging at her, but their presence must have weakened it enough, for knight and horse suddenly slipped through. She felt Sir Blanche pick up their second set of leashes on the other side and draw them tight. There would be no last-minute escape after the others had passed.