“Why, yes, it…” Catherine paused, one hand reaching for the squishy brim of her hat, the ridiculous macaron. She realized with a start that her mother, who should have thrown a fit at the impropriety of her daughter wearing such a garish thing, had said nothing. Had not even seemed to notice it.
What had Hatta said? Something about capturing charisma in headwear—but what did that mean?
She thought of Margaret Mearle at the King’s tea party and how she looked almost pretty in her rosebud fastener. She thought of Mary Ann’s burgeoning dreams. She thought of the chef’s hat she’d picked off the hat shop walls, when Hatta had mentioned unconventional decisions, moments before she thought to offer her macarons as proof of her talent.
Cath’s mouth twitched with delight, with the marvelousness of her discovery.
Hatta was selling exquisite, magical hats.
Mary Ann hauled Catherine into the grandstand tent. All of the seats were full, with countless more guests standing at the back. Five judges were seated at a draped table on the stage—the King and Knave of Hearts, the Duke of Tuskany, Mr. Caterpillar, and the Turtle that Cath had loaned her handkerchief to. Before each of them was a blue-frosted cupcake with raspberry-pink sugar crystals being dug into by the forkful. With the exception of the Turtle, that is, whose plate held only blue-frosted crumbs. Most of the sugar crystals had stuck to his pointed upper lip.
The White Rabbit stood at a podium on the side of the stage. Once all the judges had sampled the cupcakes, Mr. Rabbit bellowed, “The judges will give their scores for the berry berry cupcakes made by the Vine and Flower Society!”
Three potted plants had been set on the contestants’ stand at the front, holding one another’s leaves.
“Berry good!” yelled the King.
“Berry gone!” yelled the Turtle.
“Could have used some ground pepper on top,” suggested the Duke, to which Catherine traded wary glances with Mary Ann, and Mary Ann mouthed back to her, Pepper?
Mr. Caterpillar removed the hookah from his mouth and blew a cloud of smoke across the table. The other judges coughed politely and leaned away.
Jack, the Knave, threw his fork down beside his cupcake, having tasted only a single bite. “Rubbish,” he muttered.
The potted flowers bobbed their blossoming heads at one another—pleased with the judges’ scores. Three footmen came forward to carry their planters off the stand, while another group of courtiers brought out the next dish—squares of right-side-up pineapple cake from Lady Margaret Mearle.
Margaret took her place on the competitor’s platform and squared her already-rather-rectangular shoulders. From his seat at the judging table, the Duke’s pink-tinged skin turned flaming red. He tried to smile at Margaret around his protruding tusks.
Margaret sneered and turned her chin haughtily away.
The Duke deflated.
Trying to still the fluttering in her stomach, Catherine looked out at the crowd and spotted her mother and father in the front row. They would have no idea that she’d submitted an entry into the contest, and she wasn’t sure how they would react.
Behind her parents sat Peter Peter and his wife, whose pallor was only slightly improved from when Cath had last seen her, though her eyes remained glossy and ill-looking. She was staring hungrily at the case that held the contest desserts.
Cath peeled her gaze away before Sir Peter could notice her, hoping he wouldn’t be suspicious over her spiced pumpkin cake. But why should he? He was by no means the only pumpkin grower in Hearts. He had no reason to suspect she’d stolen one from his patch.
She hoped.
Her eye drifted farther back and landed on Hatta himself. He loitered at the back of the tent, the ribbon from his top hat whipping in the wind from the beach. He noticed her, too, and cast a nod in her direction, indicating the macaron hat. But he turned away before she could return the nod, his whole demeanor changing. In a moment he’d dropped the broody stance and smiled his rare, friendly smile. Then Jest was there, too, squeezing Hatta’s shoulder in greeting.
Her heart twinged, still too raw from their recent encounter.
The White Rabbit cleared his throat and Catherine forced her attention back to the stage. “What have the judges to say on Lady Mearle’s entry?”
“Pineappley pleasant!” yelled the King.
“Pleasantly gone!” yelled the Turtle, scraping up the last bits of cake.
“Would be better upside down,” said Jack, tipping back in his chair and staring at the tent’s ceiling.
“Upside down is a fine way to be,” agreed the Caterpillar. He had taken off one pair of house slippers and was pressing the bottoms of his bare feet into his cake. “I’ve spent quite a bit of time upside down myself.”
After a nervous clearing of his throat and a scratching of his ear, the Duke said, “Well—I thought it was splendid. Just the perfect amount of pineapple and … turned upward-downside just the right way, if I do say so myself. Well done, Lady Mearle. I could not have asked for a more satisfying dessert!”
Catherine rolled her eyes, but Margaret had developed a tiny grin as she was ushered away from the contestants’ stand.
“Next!” demanded the White Rabbit.
Cheshire’s floating head appeared, and slices of a tuna tart were presented to the judges. Cath blanched and turned away. Her gaze latched back on to Jest.
He was watching her across the tent.
They both quickly looked down, and she hoped she wasn’t the only one blushing.
“It’s fishy fa-fabulous,” stammered the King, his face looking a little green.
“Fabulously gone!” yelled the Turtle, revealing yet another empty plate.
The other three judges refused to try it, and within minutes of the tart being removed from the table, Cheshire was gobbling down his own creation offstage.
“Next up,” said the Rabbit, “is a spiced pumpkin cake from Lady Catherine Pinkerton of Rock Turtle Cove.”
Mary Ann’s fingers laced through hers, squeezing tight.
“Come with me,” Cath said, pulling her forward. “We’ll win it together.”
They marched between the rows of onlookers to take their spot at the front. Five slices of the cake were brought to the table. Cath risked a glance at her parents—her father’s bushy eyebrows were raised in curiosity, while her mother was red-faced with borderline betrayal. Cath smiled weakly before facing the judges. The King was beaming at her, and the Turtle’s face, too, lit up in recognition.
“The macaron girl!” he whispered excitedly.
Catherine tipped her macaron hat to him.
The Turtle leaned to the side, bumping into the Knave with his hard shell. “I’ve had her baking before,” he said. “She’s wondrous. And also brave … so very brave.”
Her skin tingled. Though her most prominent memories of the Jabberwock attack revolved around the tragic loss of the Lion, she took a moment to be proud that the Turtle, at least, had been spared. She had helped save his life.
Not noticing her pleasure, or not caring, Jack snorted. His face turned cherry red. “Wondrous seems a bit excessive. She’s adequate. Maybe. On a good day.” His scowl deepened as he peered at Catherine and her hat. “Don’t know what anyone sees in her, what with her delicious tarts, or her big doe eyes or unnaturally shiny hair.” He folded his arms over his chest and turned his nose into the air. “Lady Pinkerton is highly overrated, if you ask me.”
Mr. Rabbit cleared his throat. “We ask that the judges refrain from previous biases on the contestants.”
Ducking his head, the Turtle shoveled his first bite of pumpkin cake into his mouth, but the King was distracted, gazing starry-eyed at Catherine. She shuffled her feet.
Beside him, the Turtle moaned in sweets-filled ecstasy, his bowler hat tipping on his head. The other judges had just picked up their forks when the King pushed back his chair and stood.
“I cannot call myself an unbiased judge, your honorable Mr. Rabbit, our mo
st thoughtful master of ceremonies!” His eyes glistened with barely contained joy.
Cath’s stomach sank. She started to shake her head, but the King continued, “I am full of bias. I am the definition of bias! For this very pumpkin cake set before us was made by the ever-charming Lady Catherine Pinkerton, a girl that is someday to be my bride!”
Ice blew over Catherine’s frame, freezing her feet to the platform, plastering her panicked smile onto her cheeks.
The King looked at her with pride that should not have belonged to him. “So you see, for any contest in which she is a participant, I will say to you, yes! She must be the winner! She wins it all, my heart, my joy!”
Catherine felt a hundred eyes boring into her, but she was petrified, unable to look away from the King.
This was a nightmare.
“What a queen you will make, Lady Pinkerton, cake baker and happiness maker! Oh, oh, somebody write that down! Jest—there you are! Write that down! I shall include it in my next poem!” The King clutched his stomach, overcome with a bevy of giggles.
The crowd stirred. Their whispers flooded the tent. Cath sensed her mother’s overzealous glee. She could imagine how quickly the gossip would spread outward from this little festival on this little beach, like a pebble dropped into a pond.
Mortification washed over her.
I haven’t said yes, she wanted to tell them all. I haven’t accepted him. I’m not his bride, despite what he says.
She had opened her mouth, her body pulsing with denial, when a scream cut through the tent.
CHAPTER 29
CATHERINE SWIVELED, SEARCHING for the scream, as chaos erupted—chairs crashing, paws and wings scrambling away from someone, something …
Her attention fell on the Turtle, that adorable, most enthusiastic of judges. He had fallen off his chair behind the table, and if Jack hadn’t accidentally tripped on the tablecloth in his haste to get away, yanking the cloth and all the cake-filled dishes away with him, Cath would not have been able to see the Turtle at all. As it was, he was on full view to the startled onlookers. Upended on his back, exposing the softer underside of his shell, his arms and legs flailing. He was still groaning and pressing his flippers to his stomach, his voice hoarse with pain, his eyes wide and frightened.
From her perch on the contestants’ platform, Catherine had a perfect view of the Turtle when he began to change. His skin bubbled beneath the surface, shifting and undulating. Some of his scales sloughed away and new skin stretched along all four limbs. His screams turned gargled as his head, too, began to morph into something strange. Something horrid.
Cath pressed a hand over her mouth to keep from heaving. Someone suggested carrying the Turtle down to the sea so one of the Sturgeons could have a look at him, but nobody dared to touch the poor thing.
No one could look away, until the squashing and twisting of the Turtle’s limbs gradually stilled and his screams dwindled into sobs. A puddle of tears had formed beneath his thrashing head.
The head that was no longer the head of a turtle.
The pointed beak and sunken eyes were gone, replaced with the contorted face of a baby calf, complete with flared pink nostrils and soft tawny fur.
Though his shell and belly and front flippers remained intact, the Turtle’s lower legs were now hooves, and, with one last painful shudder from the creature, his reptilian tail stretched and curled and sprouted a tuft of fur on its end. His tail, too, was now that of a young cow.
“It’s impossible,” someone said, and the word sent a chill down Catherine’s spine.
The crowd could not stop gawking, though some of the children had been coaxed away from the horrific sight. The Turtle continued to cry enormous blubbering tears, still trying in vain to roll himself over, and it dawned on Catherine how vulnerable he was. Embarrassed and in pain for all the crowd to see, and having no idea what was becoming of him. Words formed beneath his sobs—What happened? What’s happening to me? What’s going on? Help me, help, help …
Unfreezing her legs, Catherine rushed forward. “Someone help him!” she cried, dropping to her knees to crawl beneath the table. She knelt at the Turtle’s side and laid a hand on his leg, just above the new hoof. It was covered in a fine layer of fur and damp with sweat.
“You’re going to be all right,” she whispered. The Turtle continued to blubber nonsense and hiccups. “Or at least, mostly right. I hope. We’re going to roll you over. Just hold still.”
She looked up at the stunned faces. The King, pale and shocked, the Knave, disgusted, the Duke, looking on the verge of illness, and the Caterpillar, eyeing the Turtle like an unexpected result of a science experiment. The White Rabbit had fled from the stage and his pink eyes now peered over its edge. Mary Ann had removed her bonnet, maybe confused to see her dreams of the baking contest so quickly turned to a nightmare.
“Help me!” Cath yelled.
No one moved, and it was a startling sight that snagged her attention in the crowd. Two piercing eyes watching her from a livid face. Peter Peter’s expression was twisted in fury, one lip peeled up to reveal gritting teeth. And he was looking straight at her.
Cath shrank back under the force of his loathing. She couldn’t comprehend the fear that curdled in her gut as she glanced up at the judges’ table and the five plates that had been set there.
Four untouched pieces of pumpkin spice cake—and one plate showing nothing but crumbs.
Bells jingled, mockingly cheerful, and the crowd parted to let Jest and Hatta through. They both looked as appalled as anyone, but concerned, too, as they climbed onto the stage and knelt beside the hysterical creature.
“It’s all right, chap,” said Hatta, picking up the bowler hat that had fallen off during the Turtle’s transformation and tucking it under his arm. He laid his free hand on the creature’s shell. “Calm yourself, now. It can’t be as bad as all that.”
But his creased brow and Jest’s thin-pressed mouth said otherwise. The Turtle blubbered on and on.
They rolled the Turtle back onto his stomach, but the position was no longer natural, what with the hooves jutting from beneath his shell. Instead, with a gasp and a sob, the Turtle pushed himself onto two knobby legs, his flippers hanging dejectedly in front of him.
“I’m a turtle,” he whimpered, looking down at the abomination he’d become. “I’m a real turtle. Y-you believe me, don’t you?”
Catherine shivered. “Of course you are.”
But it was a lie.
The poor creature was changed. Disfigured. She couldn’t fathom how, but he had become a Mock Turtle, right before their eyes.
* * *
THE FESTIVAL THAT HAD BEGUN with so much spirit and joy ended darkly with the memory of the Mock Turtle’s sobs on everyone’s minds and recent threats of the Jabberwock still plaguing them. Festivities that normally continued far into the night were over before dusk could fall. The baking contest was left uncompleted, a handful of entries still untasted and unjudged, but everyone having lost both their appetites and their sense of merriment. Cath could not bring herself to be selfish enough to ask about the prize.
She climbed into the carriage with her parents. The ride was suffocating. Catherine stared out the window, seeing again and again the furious expression on Sir Peter’s face. She felt guilty, but not because she’d stolen a pumpkin from him. She couldn’t help feeling responsible for what had happened, but how could that be?
It was only a pumpkin cake. And while she had heard of sweets that made a person shrink and mushrooms that made a person grow, she had never heard of anything disastrous happening as a result of a pumpkin.
With trembling fingers, Catherine reached up and pulled the macaron hat off her head, settling it on her lap. It no longer brought the delight it had hours before.
Her father sighed. He had not stopped sighing since they had left the beach.
“They’re already calling it the Mock Turtle Festival,” he said as the carriage rounded onto their drive. “I
t’s a travesty. Soon they’ll be calling me the Marquess of Mock Turtles.”
“Don’t be melodramatic,” said her mother. “This whole catastrophe will be forgotten in a matter of days, you’ll see.”
But she seemed unconvinced of it herself, and the fact that she didn’t mention the King once during the drive suggested to Catherine that she was more concerned than she wanted to let on.
The annual festival was their family’s great contribution to the Kingdom of Hearts—in some ways, their place among the nobility rested on the festival’s shoulders, and it had been their one notable distinction for generations.
Yet, knowing how much this could affect her family’s reputation was barely a passing thought to Catherine. It was the poor Turtle who would suffer most of all, the pitiful, devastated thing.
As soon as they arrived home, Catherine escaped down to the kitchen. The fire had long gone out, so she kept her shawl tight around her shoulders.
Setting a lantern on one of the tables, she grabbed a stack of recipe books and laid them out before her. She began flipping through, scanning the names of dishes their cook had made for them over the years. There were plenty of notes jotted in the margins—“Clarify the butter first or it will confuse the rest of the ingredients,” or, “Don’t let the tomatoes stew for too long as they’re like to become bitter and resentful.”
Finally she arrived at the recipe she was looking for.
Mock Turtle Soup.
She bent over the brittle, broth-stained pages and started to read.
Begin with a medium-size mock turtle, the recipe began. Using a sharp butcher knife, remove the calf head. Mock turtles die slowly, so be aware that the head will continue to mewl and the body may try to crawl away for some minutes after decapitation. Once body is no longer mobile, submerge in a large pot of boiling water. Meat will naturally separate from the shell as it cooks. Remove the mock turtle from the water and peel away the skin and shell before—