The wall that had held the girls’ drawings was gone too, opened wide to reveal the entrance to a hedge maze, with walls that towered three times Cath’s height.
Hatta let out a weary sigh. “Thank you, loves,” he said, sounding truly grateful, as though he doubted each time if they would let him through or torment him forever. He approached the entrance to the maze without half as much bounce in his step as before. As he passed by Catherine, she heard him muttering beneath his breath, “Though if I go mad, we’ll all know who’s to blame for it.”
Cath wanted to smile, but her nerves were still frazzled. She followed behind Hatta and, thinking it would not do to be impolite, she whispered to the empty glen, “Thank you very much.”
Only once she had stepped past the first wall did a ghostly whisper, three girlish, ghoulish voices, brush across her earlobe.
“You are welcome,” they said, “Your Majesty.”
CHAPTER 44
THE MAZE WALLS WERE MADE of entwined dead branches and tight-packed laurel leaves and the occasional bare spot of ancient stone wall. Catherine felt a sense of helplessness the moment they’d stepped through the entrance and peered down the first endless stretch. The maze continued in each direction as far as she could see, fading in a swirl of fog in the distance. The path itself was padded in a white-flowering ground cover that was soft and damp with dew.
“Well,” said Jest, clearing his throat—the first sound to break the miserable silence that had engulfed them in the Sisters’ absence. “That was not exactly like the first time you brought us to meet the Sisters.”
“No? I’ve passed through so many times they all start to feel the same.” Hatta smirked and started undoing the buttons of his coat. “What was their price before?”
“Raven gave them a recitation of a classic Chessian poem,” said Jest, “and I gave them a lemon seed.”
Cath startled, thinking of the lemon tree that had grown over her bed.
Mistaking her surprise, Jest gave her a nonchalant grin. “I’d had some lemon in my tea that day—the seed was stuck in my tooth. I’d been working at it all afternoon, but the moment they asked, it popped right out. I was glad to be rid of it.”
Cath was still mulling over the lemon seed and the dream, wondering whether it could be a coincidence, when she felt the heavy wool being draped over her shoulders. She looked down, her free hand grabbing the lapel. The coat was impeccable, not a speck of lint on it.
She turned to face Hatta. “What is this for?”
“It is a long, damp walk, Lady Pinkerton. I do not wish for you to catch a cold.” Hatta turned away and started walking down the maze’s first wildflower-dotted path.
“Thank you,” Cath said, somewhat uncertainly, as she and Jest hurried after him. She slipped her arms into the sleeves. The lining was silken and warm and smelled of herbal tea.
“Yes, that’s kind of you, Hatta,” added Jest, who had no coat to offer her himself.
Hatta waved a hand at them without looking back. “I wish she’d taken a hat before we left the shop. How I find myself in the company of such an unadorned cranium, gallivanting about mazes and wells, is ever the mystery.”
The corners of her lips twitched.
Jest offered his elbow and she took it gladly, the warmth of Hatta’s coat and Jest’s company driving back the chill the Sisters had given her.
They had not gone far when shadows began to close in around them, reminding her that it was still nighttime, despite the golden light of the meadow. Jest removed his hat—its new silence disconcerting—and found an oil lantern inside, already lit. It shed a welcome circle of light onto the maze walls and flickered in Raven’s black eyes.
“Did they draw such horrible pictures when you came across the first time?” Cath asked as they traipsed after Hatta.
“They drew, yes, but I didn’t think much of the drawings at the time.” Jest pondered for a moment, one finger trailing over Cath’s knuckles. “Do you remember what they were, Raven?”
Perched on his far shoulder, Raven ducked his head to peer at Catherine around Jest’s profile. “A merry-go-round was cast in ink, a monster sketched on stone, and a messenger who would go mad for mistakes he must atone.”
“That’s right,” Jest mused, his voice turning low. He was no longer smiling as he stared ahead, watching Hatta pull farther away from them. “Hatta was the messenger. I remember that now.”
Cath’s feet stalled beneath her. “And they drew a monster, like the Jabberwock? And a merry-go-round? Like the hat the Lion was wearing when…”
Jest fixed his gaze on her, filling with the same thoughts, the same horrors.
If they were prophecies, those two at least had come true.
The Sisters’ words spun through her head. Murderer, martyr, monarch, mad …
“Do not go through a door!” Hatta yelled back at them. He hadn’t slowed his pace and was fast disappearing into the maze’s shadows. “They gave us their warning, now we have only to heed it.”
Cath shuddered and traded a concerned look with Jest, but it was too late to turn back now, and nothing had changed, besides. They were still going to Chess, and every step brought them closer to it.
They hurried after Hatta before he could desert them, the lantern’s light skipping and swaying over the walls. Though there was nothing joyful about the maze, Hatta began to whistle, twirling his cane as if he were leading a marching band. The first turn was easy enough to find. A break in the hedges on their left. Hatta skipped and clicked his heels together as he turned beneath it.
Catherine, feeling no such glee, approached with more wariness. The hedges had grown together overhead, creating an arched doorway that looked as though it had been there for a thousand years.
“How long will it take to pass through the maze?” she asked.
“Why?” asked Hatta. “Are you late for an appointment?”
Jest frowned apologetically. “He’s insufferable when he gets like this, but never mind him. When we came through before, the walk lasted most of the night.” He glanced down. “If your shoes begin to hurt, I can carry you.”
She shook her head, not wanting to be a burden on this journey. “I’ll be fine. I only want to get through as quickly as possible.”
Jest laced their fingers together and brought her hand to his mouth. The kiss was wistful, the touch a comfort—but his eyes were still shadowed when he looked up again, and she knew he was thinking of the drawings. His own headless apparition. The hooded figure standing over him, ax in hand. And her, the Queen of Hearts he’d once been sent to find.
She couldn’t shake the memory, no matter how she wanted to. She would be grateful when this journey was over.
“Do tell me if you change your mind,” he said. “After that spectacle at the well, I’m in the mood to be chivalrous.”
“Are you?” she said, forcing her tone to be light. “Perhaps we’ll have to find you a suit of armor.” She reached up with her free hand and tugged on one of the points of Jest’s hat. The lack of a jingling bell caught her off guard. “Do you think there might be one in here?”
Jest laughed. “We’ll have to ask Hatta. He made it.”
Cath looked ahead. Hatta was barely in the circle of their lantern’s glow, still whistling, though she suspected he could hear every word they said. Maybe he was trying to ignore them, though.
“And what does it do? All of his hats do something, don’t they?”
Jest’s fingers tightened around hers. “I hope you won’t be disappointed if I tell you that the hat is what makes me so impossible.”
She raised an eyebrow at him, thinking of the way he kissed her, and the way he made her laugh, and how he had battled the Jabberwock to protect her. She smirked. “Perhaps that was the intention, but I can’t believe that it’s true.”
He twisted his mouth to one side and nodded sullenly. “You’re right. I suspect it’s actually just a glorified storage closet.”
After the dreary,
dramatic evening they’d had, the joke was so unsuspected that Cath snorted in laughter before she could stop it. Up ahead, Hatta stopped whistling and glanced back at her in surprise.
Cath covered her mouth to stifle the laughter that followed and elbowed Jest hard in the side. He grunted, but only gripped her hand tighter.
“I mean it,” he said. “You found the Vorpal Sword in there, after all. It wouldn’t surprise me if there was a suit of armor.”
She cast him a playful glare. “That isn’t what I meant. I assure you it isn’t the hat that makes you impossible, Sir Jest.”
His eyes twinkled at her and their brightness was welcome after the haunted expression he’d had in the Sisters’ meadow. Up ahead, Hatta started to whistle again, louder this time.
Jest ducked his head closer to Cath so she could hear him when he whispered, “I cannot tell you how I look forward to a lifetime at your side, and all the impossible things I’ll have you believing in.”
Cath’s heart was beginning to patter when a disgruntled sound came from Jest’s other side, startling her. She’d forgotten Raven was there.
“Such happiness I hope you’ll make, but these flirtations I cannot take. I wish for you all the joy this darkened world can employ, but you’re still giving me a stomachache.” With a squawk, Raven tossed himself into the air and went to join Hatta instead.
Cath’s cheeks flamed, but Jest only chuckled. “It’s difficult to interpret him sometimes,” he said, “but I think what Raven means to say is that he likes you.”
They continued on, the lantern’s ring flickering against the hedge branches. The glen’s reddish glow had faded long ago, leaving them to make their way through the middle of the night. Jest’s fingers, strong and lithe, stayed entwined with hers. Raven made himself comfortable atop Hatta’s top hat, though Cath wondered why he didn’t fly up above and look on ahead. He would have made an excellent guide, she thought.
But maybe not. Maybe there weren’t enough words that rhymed with right and left for him to direct them all the way through to the end.
Besides, Hatta believed he knew the way, and he showed so little hesitation Cath had to believe him.
One hour became two, then three, then four. Cath couldn’t imagine how anyone could have traversed this maze and remembered the way, but Hatta never seemed in doubt. Left and left and right and left again. Every straightaway looked exactly like the others, and though she looked for landmarks—an extra cluster of flowers here or a branch that stuck out there—there was nothing. She soon became convinced they were going in circles.
The night dragged on and grew cold. Cath pressed herself against Jest, seeking his warmth through the lining of Hatta’s jacket. His arm wrapped around her shoulders, rubbing the wool sleeve to ward off her shivering.
She stumbled more than once. Her toes were cold as ice inside her boots. Her feet began to ache. She felt a blister forming on her left big toe from the rub of stockings and dress shoes.
Hatta’s pace never slackened.
Her eyelids grew heavy and she wondered if she could fall asleep while walking. Or perhaps she was already asleep and this was another dream and she would wake up to find that the mansion at Rock Turtle Cove had been overgrown with laurel.
As their meanderings dragged on and began to seem endless, Jest tried to distract Cath with banter and jokes, flirtations and riddles. She did her best to be amused, and his attempts warmed her from the inside out, especially as his own weariness was showing around the edges of his composure.
At some point, even Hatta stopped whistling. Raven, it seemed, had fallen asleep on his hat.
Cath’s adrenaline had fled. Her body dragged forward, step by stumbling step. She grew thirsty and her stomach rumbled. The night must be near its end, she thought, but the world remained pitch-black beyond the halo of the lantern.
Then, unexpectedly, something new.
Jest halted first and she drew to a stop beside him.
They stood together on a set of moss-covered steps that dropped down into a little glen. A glen full of wildflowers and the sudden golden glow of twilight.
In the center of the glen was a well, smelling of sweet, sticky treacle.
Hatta firmed his shoulders and inhaled a long breath. “Welcome to the beginning of the maze.”
There was a sullen pause, a heady silence, before Catherine shrieked, “The beginning? But we’ve been walking all night!”
“Or has the night just begun?” Hatta mused emptily, then he turned back and shot Cath a weary smile. “Worry not, love. I haven’t led you astray. Not yet.”
His gait was uncoordinated, heavy with exhaustion, as he approached the well. Cath and Jest followed, her hand tightening around his with every step.
Only once she stood over the well did she see that it was no longer a well at all, but a spiral staircase leading down, down, down into the earth.
CHAPTER 45
THE WALLS OF THE WELL were dripping with treacle and Cath’s heels kept sticking to the steps. The air carried that same sickly-sweet aroma. Normally Catherine would have been dreaming of treacle biscuits and treacle-nut cakes, but the smell was so encompassing it turned even her stomach with its syrupy thickness. She imagined it filling her lungs, drowning her.
After such a journey as they’d been on that night, she couldn’t guess what would greet them at the bottom of the well. A treacle fountain? A sailboat made from her old boot? A fox, an owl, and a raccoon inviting them to tea?
She was not expecting to reach the bottom of the well and find herself in a circular room with a black-and-white-checkered floor and a small glass table at its center. The room was expansive and tidy and … familiar.
Catherine turned in a full circle.
They were in the Crossroads, the thoroughfare of Hearts, and they were surrounded by doors. Nothing but doors everywhere she turned.
Her palms started to sweat, her pulse roaring in her ears.
She paced the room’s edges, sure there must be a mistake. There must be something she wasn’t understanding. Through one enormous keyhole she could see the beaches at Rock Turtle Cove. Through a tinted peekaboo window she recognized Main Street—the cobbler’s storefront now abandoned. One heart-shaped door, she knew, would lead to the drawbridge of Heart Castle.
Her heart sank. “This isn’t Chess.”
“Quite the riddle, isn’t it?” said Hatta, leaning against the rail at the bottom of the stairs, one leg crossed in front of the other. “Choose a door, any door—they all lead to some horrible fate. Then they drop you down into a room full of doors.” His voice was humorless.
Cath spun on him. “They dropped us back into Hearts. I thought you were taking us to Chess!”
He smiled at her, but it wasn’t a kind look. “I said I would take you to the Looking Glass, and so I have.”
Catherine shook her head, her insides roiling with anger, with frustration, with exhaustion. All night they’d wandered. Humored those awful girls, looked at their awful drawings, listened to their awful poetry. Her stomach was empty, her feet were blistered, and her future was as uncertain now as it had been the moment she and Jest had run from the castle.
This was supposed to be a new start. Her and Jest, escaping into a new life together. And Hatta dared to taunt them.
“Cath,” Jest said, quiet and calming. He settled his hands on her shoulders and pulled her away from Hatta. Perhaps she’d looked on the verge of murder to worry him so, though Hatta seemed unconcerned. “It’s all right. Like he said, it’s a riddle. The answer will seem obvious once we figure it out.”
She grit her teeth and jabbed her finger at Hatta. “He already knows the answer! He’s toying with us!”
“I’m making sure that you’re worthy,” said Hatta.
“Worthy of what?”
“Everything,” Hatta snarled. “Life is made of sacrifices, Lady Pinkerton. I had to pass their test to enter the lands of Chess, and now you expect to go into Chess and be crowned a qu
een, without any trials? Why should it be so easy for you?”
“Sacrifices!” she screamed, not realizing she’d thrown herself at Hatta until she felt Jest holding her back. “I’m leaving everything! My home! My family! My whole life behind!”
“Because you have no other choice.”
“No. Because I love Jest. I chose him. Who are you to judge me, to doubt me? Who are you to think you have any dominion over our lives?”
His grin turned wry. “Dear girl, I’m the man with the answer to the riddle.”
She let out another outraged scream and leaped for him, but again Jest wrapped his arms around her and held her back. She found herself engulfed in his arms, feeling the loud thud of his heartbeat against her back.
“Fine,” she snapped, planting her feet on the ground and forcing herself to take long, steady breaths. “We’ll figure out this stupid riddle. Jest and I.”
“You might recall that I did guide you through the maze. A little appreciation might be warranted.”
She wriggled out of Jest’s hold. “You’ve done nothing but lead us in circles.”
She tore off Hatta’s fine coat and threw it at his feet.
Hatta scowled. “You’re welcome for that too.”
Snorting, Cath peered back up the spiral staircase. There was a wooden trapdoor covering the top, blocking out any sign of the golden world above.
Another door. All doors.
“You didn’t have to solve this puzzle when you came here?” she asked Jest.
He shook his head. “We met the Sisters and traveled the maze, and at the end of it—or, the beginning, whichever it may be—was a Looking Glass, like the one in Hatta’s shop. We went through it and were here in the Crossroads, in Hearts. There was no riddle, and no warning about doors.”
“Sometimes they make it easy, when they want you to succeed.” Hatta sighed. “And sometimes they don’t want you to leave. The Sisters are not selfless creatures.”
Cath clenched her jaw and scanned the room again.
Raven had taken up a spot on the round table at the room’s center, like a regal display piece. The table was made of solid glass—even the legs, so it seemed as if the bird were standing on air.