“I—I came for Mary Ann,” she stammered, wishing she could have sounded courageous, but her words came out a squeaking rush. “P-please let us go. We don’t wish you any harm … We just…”
“Where is it?” Peter said, ignoring her pleas as he thumped his big hands down Cath’s hips, pressing down the voluminous fabric, searching. “Where’s the sword?”
Cath squirmed against the wall. “I don’t have it, I swear. I just want to get Mary Ann and leave, and you’ll never see either of us again, I promise!”
“Give it to me!” Peter yelled, spittle flicking against Catherine’s cheeks.
A black shape appeared in the corner of her eyes, then a roar as Jest flung himself toward them and locked his scepter beneath Peter’s chin. “Let her go!”
Whether it was the command or the scepter or mere surprise, Peter did release her. Cath slid down the wall, grasping at her bruised shoulder.
No. No, Jest couldn’t be here.
The charcoal drawings flashed through her thoughts.
Peter was a head taller and twice the girth of Jest, and with a snarl he had grabbed the scepter with his free hand and tossed Jest over his shoulder.
But Jest—blithe, magical Jest—turned the movement into a cartwheel, landing easily on his feet.
Hope fluttered through Cath’s rib cage, but then her eye caught on another shadowy figure. Someone large and unfamiliar, each step built upon a threat. It was a man, tall and lean and wearing a black hood that hung low, concealing his face. A leather belt was strapped over his black tunic, and tucked into it was a massive, curve-bladed ax.
The inked drawing. The hooded figure. The ax brandished over Jest’s headless form.
Cath screamed. “Jest! Look out!”
Peter loped forward, preparing to swing his ax.
Jest ducked away. He glanced at the hooded figure stalking toward them. “It’s all right, Cath,” he panted, tumbling away from Peter again. “It’s only Raven.”
Her heart sputtered, and this did nothing to alleviate her panic. Murderer, martyr …
Jest snatched his scepter off the ground where Peter had thrown it and danced out of reach. It occurred to Cath that he was leading Peter away from her. Protecting her.
“He won’t hurt you,” Jest yelled again, his eyes glued to Peter. “He just looks threatening because, well…” He ducked. Spun. “He used to be an executioner for the White Queen.”
She looked back at the hooded man. Watched as he set his enormous hand, cloaked in a leather glove, atop his ax’s handle.
It was not her fate she was worried about.
She forced her feet to move away from the cottage wall and stumbled toward Raven, intercepting him before he could get too near to Jest, before he could interfere. Jest was quick and agile and clever. Peter was crazed and slow.
She had to believe that Jest would be okay. But if the Sisters’ prophecy came true …
“Raven!” she cried, clutching his arm. She caught a glimpse of ink-black eyes glinting in the shadows of his hood. Otherwise, she could see nothing of his face or form. Just an empty hood, dark eyes peering out of dark nothingness.
“Raven,” she said again. “Please—you have to help Mary Ann.”
The hood shifted, and she felt, rather than saw, his attention latching on to her.
“Peter has her trapped in a pumpkin and I don’t know how to get her out. But with your ax … you could … Please, Raven. He’s going to feed her to the Jabberwock!”
His attention shifted to Jest. Pondering. Calculating.
“Raven,” Cath whispered, desperate, “think of the Sisters’ drawing. We can’t let it come true. You shouldn’t be here. Neither of you should have come back.”
His chest and shoulders rose with a deep inhale, and the hood fluttered with a nod.
Cath slumped with relief. “She’s behind the cottage.”
He pulled his hood farther over his face and retreated, disappearing into the mist.
She turned back to the brawl. Jest was crouched on the ground, his face contorted and his hair matted to his forehead. His jester’s hat had fallen off during the fight and now sat atop one of the Jack-O’-Lanterns. He was gripping the scepter, but it had been splintered in half, making for a pathetically short stick, while Peter still held his ax in both fists.
Jest looked like he was in pain—from what injury Cath couldn’t tell—but he was also alert and composed. While Peter, larger and better armed, was panting heavily.
Cath’s gaze dropped again to the hat. A single thought ricocheted through her head.
The sword.
“This isn’t necessary,” Jest said, disarmingly polite. “Let us go and you’ll never see us again. We’re only here for Mary Ann.”
“You came to kill her!” Peter roared.
Jest frowned. “Who?”
With a battle cry, Peter rolled toward him and swung, but Jest dodged to the side and shot to his feet a safe distance away, holding the broken scepter like a shield.
“I won’t let you touch her!” Peter yelled.
“We don’t wish to harm anyone…”
Peter’s back was turned to Cath. Her gaze attached to the three-pointed hat. She clenched her jaw, grabbed her muddied skirt in both fists, and ran.
The mud slopped and slurped, dragging her heels down, but she didn’t stop. Her focus was on the hat and the weapon it might have inside it.
A sword. Jest had a better chance of defending himself with a sword …
A screech spiked in her head and Cath stumbled, throwing her hands over her ears. Dead leaves and withered vines fluttered beneath a massive pair of wings.
The Jabberwock crashed to the ground, blocking her path.
Cath staggered backward.
The beast curled its serpentine neck toward the sky and snorted, its nostrils steaming. Her nostrils steaming, Cath thought, picturing the frail woman. A victim of too many poisoned pumpkins.
The Jabberwock’s right eye had healed over, sealing it forever shut, but the left was still an ember of coal. The beast tilted her head to the side, eyeing Cath as her massive claws scraped across the ground.
“Cath!” Jest screamed. Then, louder still, with an edge of hope—“Hatta!”
His yell was cut short by a thump and a groan. Cath’s head swiveled around in time to see Jest collapse onto his side. The pumpkin Peter had thrown shattered on the ground beside him. Cath cried out, horrified. In the broken shell pieces she could see a single triangle eye.
Jest was all right. He had to be all right. He was groaning, one hand pressed to his head. Cath took a step toward him but the Jabberwock snapped, sending her stumbling backward again.
She spotted Hatta now, running toward them at full speed, his colorful shirt too vibrant for the gloomy patch. His gaze flicked to the Jabberwock, to Jest, to Peter, more horrified with every heartbeat.
Peter spotted him and snarled. His grip tightened around the ax handle. “You!”
The Jabberwock prowled closer to Cath, tongue slithering between razor teeth, leaving a trail of saliva in the mud. Cath stumbled backward.
“Hatta,” she said, her voice warbling. “Jest’s hat. It might have the sword.”
Hatta was shaking his head, as if denying that any of this were happening, as if wondering why he’d ever left the comfort of his hat shop. “We should not have come back,” he murmured, but in the next moment he was sprinting toward the hat, scooping it into his hands.
The Jabberwock swiped at Catherine. She screamed and jumped away. One claw caught on her muddied gown, drawing a great tear across the front of the skirt and into the heavy petticoat, barely missing her knees. Catherine wondered whether she was lucky, or whether the beast liked to toy with its food before devouring it.
Hatta cursed, still digging through the hat. A pile of assorted joker’s tricks grew around him. Bright juggling balls. A deck of cards. A bundle of scarves knotted together. Silver hoops. Fireworks and sparklers. Smoke bombs. A st
uffed rabbit. A single white rose, its petals turning brittle. “It’s not here!” He pulled out his arm and bunched the hat in his fist. “It has to be you!” His eyes pierced Catherine beneath the Jabberwock’s outstretched wing. “It answers only to royalty, love.”
“But I’m not—”
He threw the hat. It landed a couple of yards away. She couldn’t get to it without edging closer to the Jabberwock.
“YOU!”
Peter’s howl was so sharp and loud even the Jabberwock swiveled her head toward him.
Seizing her chance, Cath darted toward the hat. She snatched the hat off the ground and thrust her arm inside, still running. As before, her fingers curled around the bone-studded handle and the sword emerged, gleaming.
Cath halted and spun back to face the monster.
The Jabberwock snarled and hunkered her head in between muscled, scaly shoulders. She took a step back, her single burning eye studying the sword like a lifelong enemy.
Cath raised the weapon with both hands. It was heavy, but determination strengthened her arms. Resolve pumped through her veins.
The beast took another step away.
Cath dared to glance at Jest, afraid it was already too late, that she would see the vision from the drawings …
But no, he was alive, and had managed to get back to his feet. One hand was pressed to the side of his head. He seemed dazed. His feet kept stumbling out from beneath him as if he couldn’t hold his balance. If he noticed Cath standing there with the Vorpal Sword, he showed no sign of recognition.
“How dare you show your face here?” Peter yelled. His face was flaming red, his nostrils flared with rage.
“Such a pleasure to see you again, as well,” said Hatta, seemingly unsurprised that the pumpkin grower looked ready to tear him apart. “How is business?”
Peter swung the ax at the ground, disconnecting another Jack-O’-Lantern from its vine. With a guttural scream he lifted the pumpkin and heaved it in Hatta’s direction. Hatta ducked away. The pumpkin splintered against the ground.
“This is your doing,” Peter said. “You and those damned seeds. They were cursed!”
Hatta’s jaw tightened and Cath knew, without any idea what they were talking about, that Peter’s accusation was not news to Hatta.
“You know each other,” she said. Her arms were trembling and she allowed herself to lower the sword, just a few inches. The Jabberwock blew a puff of steam at her. “How do you know each other?”
“This devil brought me bad seeds,” said Peter. “I didn’t even want ’em, not knowing the quality, but he threw them away in my patch and now look what’s happened. Look what you did to my wife!”
He pulled the ax from the mud and pointed it at the Jabberwock.
Hatta released a hearty guffaw. “You don’t honestly expect us to believe that this … this creature…” He trailed off, his smile fading, his eyes widening as the Jabberwock looked back at him and her one eye blazed in recognition, not unlike how she had recognized the Vorpal Sword. “It can’t be.”
“You brought him seeds?” Cath stammered. “From Chess?”
The pumpkins.
The Mock Turtle.
The Jabberwock and Jest and the Vorpal Sword.
It all started on the other side of the Looking Glass.
And the connection between them?
Hatta.
This was Hatta’s doing.
But Peter was the one who had captured Mary Ann. He was the one trying to keep a monster as a pet and feed it innocent lives.
“I’ll kill you for what you’ve done to her!” Peter shouted. “I’ll post your head on my gate!”
Cath’s fists tightened around the sword.
“Stop this,” said Jest, breathless. “Whatever Hatta’s involvement, it was a mistake. How was he to know what the seeds would do? And this … this creature is no longer your wife, Sir Peter. I’m sorry, but you have to see that.”
“Isn’t she?”
It was Hatta arguing with him. Cath snarled, “Hatta!”
But he shrugged, his gaze scraping over the beast’s scaly dark skin, wide-veined wings. “Is the Mock Turtle no longer the Turtle? How can we know Lady Peter isn’t still inside the body of this beast?”
“She’s been eating people!” Cath screamed. “If she is still in there, she’s a murderer!”
“You turned her into this,” Peter said, swiveling his gaze back to her. “I destroyed those cursed pumpkins. She was getting better. But once she saw that cake she couldn’t stop eating it. And now she won’t change back. She’s my wife, and you did this to her!”
“She’s a monster!”
The Jabberwock reared back on her hind legs and sent a piercing scream into the sky. Her claws returned to the ground with a thump that rattled through Cath’s teeth.
It happened fast.
The venom in the Jabberwock’s eyes.
The way she reared her head back like a poisonous snake.
The way she opened her enormous mouth and Cath saw the light glinting off row after row of teeth.
The way she dove for Hatta.
The Sisters’ voices were there, in Cath’s head. Murderer, martyr …
Hatta stumbled back—
Pudding and pie, he was going to die.
A scream was ripped from Cath’s throat and she charged forward, swinging the sword as hard as her arms would allow it.
The blade made one fast, clean cut. Easy as slicing through a pat of butter.
The Jabberwock’s head disconnected from her slithering neck. Her body crashed onto the rows of abandoned pumpkins. Her head dropped and thumped and rolled toward Hatta’s feet, who leaped back with a cry. Dark blood splattered across the ground, like ink from a broken quill.
The world paused.
The fog swirled around them.
Peter’s face slackened.
Cath stared at the sword edged with blood, her heart thud-thumping inside her chest. Stunned. Horrified. Relieved.
She had slain the Jabberwock.
She raised her eyes and sought out Jest. Air began to creep back into her lungs.
She had slain the Jabberwock. She had done it. The monster was dead. Hearts was saved.
It was over.
They would take Mary Ann to safety and leave Peter to mourn his wife. In the morning, Cath and Jest and Hatta and Raven would be far, far away from here, and none—not a single one of the Sisters’ prophecies—had come true.
Jest watched her, bewildered and proud. His eyes began to refocus, though he was still weak from the fight.
In the stillness, Cath forced herself to look at Peter. His arms slumped. His face was twisted with anguish as he stared at the dead monster.
Cath’s heart filled with unexpected sympathy. There was devastation written on the plains of his face. Agony flooding his eyes. He was a breath away from collapsing into the dirt and weeping over the body of the beast he had loved.
But the moment passed and he stayed standing. His upper lip curled. His eyes sparked.
He looked at Catherine.
With disgust. With murder.
She gulped and adjusted her hold on the sword.
Peter adjusted his hold on the ax.
He moved toward her. One step. Two. His muscles undulating, his body strung with tension.
“Please,” Cath whispered. “This can end now. Just let us go.”
To her surprise, Peter did hesitate. His attention caught on something in the distance and Cath dared a glance over her shoulder.
Raven was there, stalking toward them. Mary Ann, too, but she was an afterthought to Raven’s ominous approach. The gleaming ax he held was like a mirror to Peter’s. His dark cloak whipped around his shoulders, the hood hung low over his brow. The White Queen’s executioner, Jest had said.
He looked like a threat, or a promise.
He looked like justice.
Cath turned back and Peter’s expression had changed again. Now there was fear and a
shadow of indecision.
He looked once more at Catherine with a hatred so pure and transparent it sent a shock of terror through her. She could see his desperation. She sensed his resolve.
With a guttural scream, Peter turned and swung the ax.
It was over and done before Cath knew what was happening. In between the space of a gasp and a scream, there was the sound of blood splattering across the ground. Like ink from a broken quill.
Like a drawing made on stone.
Before she could make sense of it, Peter was running away. He had dropped the ax. He was gone, into the forest. There was the distant sound of flapping wings—Raven dissolving back into a bird and chasing after him. A flurry of black feathers. A cry of heartbreak and rage. Then, silence.
Cath held her breath.
She waited for the vision before her to turn into an illusion. One more magic trick. The impossible made right again.
Because this was not real. This couldn’t be. It was a nightmare she would soon wake from. It was a drawing done in ink, executed down to every horrific detail. It was …
Jest.
Mutilated. Severed. Dead.
She took one step forward and collapsed. The sword slipped from her fingers.
“Treacle,” she breathed. Medicinal treacle. Life-giving treacle. “Bring him treacle. Go! Hurry! Treacle will … Treacle will…”
“No, love,” came Hatta’s ragged reply. “Nothing can save him.”
“Don’t say that!” She dug her hands into the mud, squeezing it through her fingers. “We have to save him! We have to—Jest!”
A hand brushed the hair back from her forehead, and Mary Ann’s voice came to her, painfully gentle. “Cath…”
“Don’t touch me!” she raged, tearing away from her. “I came back for you! If you hadn’t come here, if you hadn’t gotten yourself caught, then we wouldn’t be here. This wouldn’t be happening, but for you!”
Mary Ann drew back.
Cath ignored the look and tried to crawl forward, dragging her skirt through the mud. “There must be a way. Something we can do. Something in the hat that can save him, or … or … the Sisters. Fate. Time. There must be someone who can…”
Her hand fell into something that wasn’t cold mud, but warm and wet. Something that felt real. Too real.