The Hidden Library (29 page)

“Men.” Mary rolls her eyes. “Their feelings get hurt over the stupidest things.”

A sharp pain in my lower back erupts. Could I arch off the bed, I would, but as it is, I simply release a keening cry that’s impossible to contain. Blinding pain tears through me, unlike anything I have ever felt before. Colors swirl my vision until I am consumed; ringing fills my ears. Breathing turns laborious.

Pain saturates every inch of my body.

I think—I think people are in the room. Hands might be upon me. I fear I’m crying or screaming or both. I cannot see, cannot do anything but sink into pain.

Madness is a funny thing. One can live with it for ages: embrace it, fall into it, lose their inhibitions with it. Priorities shift. Realities change. Understandings transition. Madness, in a lot of ways, is a comfort. Madness allows soft footing past harsh truths we yearn to flinch away from.

Since my surfacing from madness, I’ve embraced logic. I’ve craved reality. And in return, I was handed a new kind of existence that asked me to let go of everything I ever knew and accept my world, and that of others, is not what was thought. That life was, in fact,
more.
That the surface we walked upon was thin and the depth below vast.

And now, ironically, madness is here to claim me again. Pain, blistering, consuming pain, is its own form of madness. And it has come for me, at long last, from the hands of one of my greatest foes.

The Queen of Hearts has found her way to slay me, and I am no longer even in Wonderland for her victory to take place.

I
GUESS THE GOOD thing about traveling with people who are technically insane is that they don’t really question things. Alice was different once she settled into the Society and began to trust me. Alice asked about the mechanics of everything. How do pens work? How does editing work? Why these books? Where does the door come from? Where does it go when it disappears? What about catalysts? Why are certain things picked for catalysts and not others? Why does a Timeline disappear when a catalyst is destroyed? Do we have, in fact, proof that the people are gone?

She’s asked me all of these things over the last year. I did my best to answer her based on what I know, but I kind of loved that she never seemed satisfied with just the bare bones. She always wants to know
more.

But she is not with me right now. She’s back at the Institute, and I am instead trudging across a windswept bluff in Wales with a Wonderlandian King, a talking cat and spider, and a lethal pikeman, none of whom is asking me any details other than how long it will take us to get back to this New York City I hail from. Our journey from the encampment back to the rabbit hole wasn’t exactly filled with a lot of talk, either. Attacked twice, once by a squadron of Hearts soldiers three times our numbers, we’ve all pretty much hit our limits. Bloody, bruised, and a pair of us running on nothing more than fumes, it’s a miracle we came through as we did.

“It seems,” the Cat said after the last fight, licking blood off its paws, “you can’t throw a stone and not hit a Heart nowadays.”

Let us hope that is true, because I’ve got a bone to pick with a very specific Heart.

I write us directly into the medical wing. We have no time to lose, according to the Cat. And the moment we all step through and the door vanishes behind me, screaming reaches my ears.

It’s Alice.

I’m immediately pushing myself into the small room she’s been staying in off the wing, fighting past the people already crowded around her bed. She’s screaming, her eyes rolled back so far all I can see are the whites. My brother looks up and says, “Thank God you’re back! Alice started screaming about an hour ago, and now she’s not even responding to any of us anymore. I have no idea what’s happening. I was just about to call an ambulance.”

The Cat jumps up on the bed. Its amber eyes impossibly widen even more. “Pray we are not too late. Clear this room.”

I don’t stop for the questions people are throwing out at me, the ones wondering about why in the hell there’s an oversized, talking cat on the bed or why a spider has just climbed out of my coat. I say, clearly and firmly, “Everyone but Victor and the people I’ve just brought with me, get the hell out of here.”

This pisses Mary off big time, but I don’t care.

The Five of Diamonds stations himself at the door. Victor notices him and frowns. “What in the bloody hell did you go and get that wanker for?” But I ignore him, too.

“Help me turn her over,” the White King says. He looks just as close as I am to losing his shit, listening to the woman we love scream like this. She’s stiff as a board, every muscle in her body elongated and tightened to the fullest, and all I’m thinking as we’re doing our best to carefully roll her over is:
I can’t lose her.

“You won’t,” the King says quietly. “I will not allow it.”

Did I say it out loud?

“You there,” the Cat says to Victor. “Fetch us a sharp knife, a bowl of water, some towels, bandages, and a jar with a lid. Be quick about it.”

Thankfully, Victor doesn’t give any crap to being ordered around by a cat. He’s out the door, rummaging through cabinets and drawers.

The King spreads open the back of Alice’s medical gown. He traces a long, pale finger down her equally pale back until he comes to a bulge at the base of her spine. It pulses gently, glowing silver.

The King looks up at his advisor, his pale eyes wide with terror.

“I don’t not think it has fully molted,” the Cat says. “Her Majesty is not yet showing signs of such. But we must be quick of it.” It looks up and through the window; Victor is running water in the bowl. “Sire, do you have what is necessary?”

The King digs into a small bag he’s brought along. “Yes.”

“Then begin the poultice. It must be ready to go as soon as we pull the boojum out, and must not have cooled past inefficiency.”

Victor comes back into the room with all the supplies loaded onto a rolling cart. “Shut the door,” the King orders the pikeman standing guard. “Allow none in.”

The pikeman steps outside and shuts the door behind him.

As he extracts the items from his bag, the King looks up at me. “Snarks are nasty beasties, but the worst of all the species are the boojums. Many ages ago, these beasties were used to torture and terrify my kind. Inserted into the spine, they paralyze their hosts until they molt. At that point, they snap the host’s spine and then proceed to devour them as a first meal. In essence, they cause their victim to disappear. The boojum then grows to its host size and often will molt once more and assume the host’s shape. They could not talk, though. They only could eat. And eat they did—villages were ravaged by these beasties, families torn apart. The only way to kill an adult boojum was to burn it alive. The Courts banded together and forbid their use. Anyone caught using one would be put to death. The beasties were eradicated as best as possible. We have not had a case of boojum infestation in hundreds of years. To think that Hearts tracked one down, cultivated it to the point it was viable . . .” He cracks open a small, bright-blue egg and dumps it into a silver-lined bowl. “It is unspeakable.” His voice wavers. “The Queen must be in unconceivable pain right now.”

The Cat is standing on Alice’s back, hissing and swatting at the bulge. “You, physician.” It flicks its stubby tail toward Victor. “Are you good with cutting?”

“Very,” my brother says firmly. He’s a bit calmer, thank God, but it’s obvious he’s still take aback by a talking cat who can’t seem to decide what size it ought to be, or what transparency.

“Be prepared to slice above this mound at my command.”

The King sprinkles gray powder into the egg mixture. “Your hand, Finn. Please present it to the Cheshire-Cat.”

I do so, and it immediately slashes me so strong, blood drips down upon Alice’s body. And then the Cat calmly licks the remnants off its paw like it’s nothing more than spilt milk.

The King grabs my hand and squeezes more than a fair amount of blood into the bowl. “I do not know if our tulgey leaves are fresh enough,” he murmurs to his advisor. “I fear they are not.”

“Make them be, if you must.”

Two velvety, dried leaves are crushed into the mixture. “Part of the problem with boojum infestations is that it took the blood of a monarch for the poultices,” he tells me quietly. “Many monarchs were not willing to provide their life blood to save those who were of lesser means in these early stages.” He holds his hand out for the Cat to slash him just as deeply as it had me. He doesn’t even flinch or seem grossed out that his advisor is lapping up his stray blood, either. “As I said, boojums, once adult, must be burned. In its larvae stage, it can carefully be removed and a poultice applied to the site of its infection.”

Alice’s screams turn hoarse, muffled by her new position. Grymsdyke, sitting on the pillow next to her head coughs that weird cough of his. “I do not like the way her eyes look, Your Majesty. You must hurry.”

The King adds a crushed flower to the mixture and then mashes it together with a pedestal stone. The Cat growls. “Now, Dr. Frankenstein. Make sure you do not cut the boojum’s body. If its blood spills inside the Queen, all will be lost.”

Victor does exactly as asked. A thin line is cut over the mass until a silvery, mottled body appears. Two tiny eyes shift our way and stare up at us. Incredibly, the little fucker hisses.

The King shoves the bowl into my hands. He leaps onto the bed, straddling Alice’s legs as he bends down to face the beastie. In between two fingers is a thimble.

What the hell? He’s going to fight that thing with a . . . a
thimble?!

The boojum’s scream matches Alice’s in strength despite being no larger than two, three inches across. It scampers out of her back, recoiling at the sight of the thimble. The King shoves the jar that Victor brought in over its body. Once upright, he tosses the thimble inside and screws the lid on.

He climbs back off the bed. “Quickly, Finn. Spread the poultice upon her back. Make it thick, and if possible, spread it below the edges, across every spot you think the boojum could have touched or infected. Use your finger, the one the Cat cut.”

I do exactly as he asks. In my cut, the poultice burns like a motherfucker. But I spread and spread some more, even digging my finger underneath the flap of skin until the entire area is one large, right mess. And then, miraculously, Alice stops screaming. Her body goes limp beneath my hands.

“Her eyes have closed, Sire,” Grymsdyke reports. And I think it’s the first time Victor has really taken notice of the enormous spider, because he takes a giant step away from the bed.

“You must sew her up now,” the Cat tells me. “Make each stitch count.” It nods its head toward the King. In his hands are a needle and golden thread.

I have no idea how to sew. None. But this is Alice, and if I had to lay my life down for her right now to live, I would.

I climb onto the bed and straddle her just as the King did, ensuring my weight does not bear down upon her legs. The King and Cat chant something in a language I cannot understand, but the tones they use leave the hairs on my arms standing on end. Slowly, slowly, I lace the needle in and out, in and out, making the ugliest set of stitches ever across her beautiful back. But, by the end, the hole is closed nice and tight.

“Now,” the King says softly, “apply the rest of the poultice.”

I glob it on until it forms a mound on her skin. From there I’m instructed on how to place the bandages over it, covering the entire area.

“We’ll need to make more poultice, enough for several days’ worth of treatments. Just in case.”

I crawl off the bed. The King is holding the boojum up for me to see. It has either passed out or died of fright, its body pressed up against the side of the jar and as far away from the thimble as it could possibly get.

Its face looks almost like one of those cats with a smushed-in nose. Pretty, my ass. This is the stuff of nightmares. Ones apparently terrified of thimbles, though.

“What happens now?”

“Now,” the Cheshire-Cat says, “we wait. If the treatment takes, Her Majesty will recover fully within a few hours. If not . . .”

I wait, but he does not finish. Instead, he licks the area around the bandaging on Alice’s back.

I round the bed and sit next to Alice, my chair so close my knees bump up against the bed. A tiny snore wrinkles her nose, and for some dumbass reason, it makes me want to both laugh and cry.
She’s snoring, just like normal.

Victor touches my shoulder. “I’m going to go call Dad to tell him what’s happened. Would you like me to take a look at those cuts you two got?”

I shake my head. It doesn’t even hurt that much anymore. The White King does the same.

“Call me if you need me.” And then, my brother lays it true. “You look like shite, Finn.”

I let out a small laugh.

“I’m probably talking to a wall here, but get some rest. You’ll be of no use to Alice when she wakes up if you’re on the brink of passing out.”

The Cat jumps off the bed and follows Victor out the door, vanishing as it passes the Five of Diamonds in the hallway.