Red Queen (10 page)

She felt desperately sorry for those three boys, parentless, starving, only doing the best they could and failing at that. And
still she knew the worst was yet to come, for she rode the shoulder of a malformed giant instead of walking alongside a man.

“When we lost the farm I went out looking for work, but since I had no trade there was no work for me, though I was more than willing to learn and to put my back into the day. But time and again I was turned away.

“Then, one day, I'd had enough of begging and pleading and was ready to go back to my brothers and propose we cross the plains and try to find work in the City. My da always said the City was no fit place for a human, but we were already living like dogs, sleeping out in the open, begging for scraps from the kindhearted. Just when I'd made the decision to tell my brothers we'd go to the City, a man tapped at my shoulder.

“He told me he'd heard me asking for work and said he might have a job for me. Well, Miss Alice, this fellow looked too good to be true, and what he offered was too good to be true too, though I was too foolish to see it at the time. I thought him a heaven-sent angel, though you'd never seen anyone who looked less like an angel.

“He was tall and thin, though a crook in his back made him appear shorter, and his face was just as long and bony as the rest of him. He was dressed like a lord in silks and velvets, and in one of his hands he had a bag of gold—a bag of gold for me if I only agreed to what he asked. I should have turned and run from him soon as I saw his hands. Unnatural, they were, the fingers twice as long as they ought to be.”

Long fingers reaching for her hair, almost brushing through it.

“The goblin,” Alice said. It burst from her mouth without warning.

“So you know him, then,” Pen said. “I'm not surprised, though I am surprised he didn't stuff you in a sack and take you to the Queen. You're just the sort he likes, with that golden hair, even as short as it is.”

Alice did not ask what the goblin did with “the sort he likes.” She had seen enough in the City of what men—and monsters—did with girls they took away.

“At any account,” Pen continued, “he was in disguise then, though he couldn't hide those hands no matter how much glamour
she
put over him. He offered me the gold, and a cottage to live in here in the forest, and all my brothers and I could wish to eat.”

“And what did you have to do?” Alice asked.

“Patrol the wood and make sure no one poached from the Queen's herd of white deer. It seemed easy enough. Not many hunted here, and few ever saw a white deer. I'd killed an ordinary deer or two myself in my time, when one had wandered onto our farm. We would eat well then,” Pen said, and his voice faded away into a place of pleasant reminiscence.

Alice imagined him remembering sitting around the table with his brothers, back when their hands and teeth were small, a platter of meat piled high between them.

She was reluctant to interrupt those memories, partly out of politeness and partly because she thought she knew how the story would end.
It seems too sad that one small mistake could change the course of one's future,
she thought and then realized she
might easily be thinking of herself. One different choice, a choice to stay home like a good girl instead of following Dor to a place where she was not supposed to go, and her life would have been something entirely different.

She might be married now to someone respectable and approved, someone whose eyes never gleamed like a wolf's but who never made her blood race, either. She might live on a clean little lane where cherry blossoms bloomed on the trees and golden-haired children played in the garden, turning blooms into butterflies and terrifying their mother.

“As you may guess, Miss Alice,” Pen said, his rumbling voice bringing her back to the here and now, “I took that goblin's gold and his cottage and promised to keep the poachers away from the Queen's white herd. My brothers came to live with me and for a time we were happy and content.

“Content, that is, until Cod saw the white stag drinking from the stream that runs down from the mountain. He was out on a walk one day, not hunting or doing anything in particular, and he saw the king of the herd. He told us the stag's hide gleamed like the moon in winter, and that it had looked on him without fear, such as no other animal ever had.

“From that day forth he spoke of nothing but the animal he'd seen, how such a creature was suffused with enchantment and how anyone who ate the flesh of the stag would gain its power. He'd never spoken like that before, about enchantments and magic and such, and his talking frightened us. Nothing Gil or I said or did turned his mind from the stag. He started to
waste away in his obsession, wanting no food unless it was the meat of the white stag, and no drink unless it was that animal's blood.

“Still, we thought the madness would pass. It seemed impossible that it would not, for you have to understand, Miss Alice, that none of us had ever seen real magic before.

“Of the three of us, Cod was the only one who had seen even one member of the herd. I walked these woods from dawn to dusk and never saw so much as a sliver of white in the trees. So we thought he would forget, for how could it be that he was so cursed as to see the animal twice?

“One night, as Gil and I snored away on our mats, Cod rose up and went out into the forest. I would hardly have thought he'd have the strength for such exertions, for no morsel of food had passed his lips for seven days, and the only water was that which we'd forced him to drink. We had not anticipated, though, the strength his obsession gave him, the way his need drove him out to fill the hole in his heart.

“Me and Gil woke only when Cod returned at dawn, the white stag slung over his shoulders, his hands and mouth soaked in blood.

“‘What have you done?' I cried, but it was too late.
She
appeared, her horrible creature beside her, and I tell you, Miss Alice, it was almost as though they expected it to happen—or worse, had hoped for it, though I don't know what purpose it would serve other than her own cruel amusement.

“She cursed Cod into a deformed giant for the crime of killing her stag, and she cursed Gil and me for not stopping him.”

“That hardly seems fair,” Alice said. “You were asleep when he left, and anyway had warned him many times before.”

“I don't think fair comes into it. The White Queen, she wanted three giants in her wood, and she was going to make certain she got them.”

“Then why not turn three snails into giants and be done with it? Why all of these machinations?” But even as Alice asked she knew the answer. Why did any Magician do such things? For their own pleasure, as when Cheshire had set her and Hatcher against his maze, or to fulfill some ancient and unknowable law of magic. Or simply because the Queen had wanted to see what would happen if she tricked three farmers into breaking her rules.

“The worst of the curse isn't even looking like this,” said Pen, gesturing at his body. “It's the craving.”

Alice shifted a little, her hand automatically reaching for the little knife Bess had given her so long ago, in the heart of the City. It wasn't there.

A little spurt of panic jolted through her. It must have fallen from her pocket when Cod or Pen dangled her upside down. She was fortunate, really, she hadn't lost the pack (
and the Jabberwocky
) too, but without the knife she felt vulnerable. That little blade had done more than its fair share of work defending Alice's life, and what magic she knew how to use was hardly adequate for a dangerous situation.

Pen grunted, and Alice realized he'd been silent for a long time, almost as if he'd been waiting for her to ask about the “craving” he mentioned.

As soon as he'd said that, though, Alice had thought of her knife. She'd thought of the knife because she didn't need Pen to tell her what he craved. Cod had nearly eaten her, after all.

“It never goes away,” Pen said. “It doesn't matter how many sheep or deer or fish I stuff in my gullet. I never feel properly full unless I've eaten some travelers.”

Alice looked at the nearest tree branches, tried to gauge whether she could leap from Pen's shoulder to a tree without plummeting to the ground.

Pen, correctly interpreting Alice's movements, held out his hands in reassurance. “But you have nothing to fear from me, nothing at all. For the White Queen's laws say we can only have the wicked—murderers and poachers and thieves. And you and your man, you were the first folk to pass through the village who paid for what you took. So we weren't allowed to eat you and Cod knew that. He's just never been able to help himself, when he sees something he wants.”

Pen trailed off, seemingly aware that this explanation hardly sufficed.

“And the Queen will punish you all if one of you breaks her laws again,” Alice said.

“Cod says he doesn't know what she could do worse than she's already done, but I'm sure she could think of something.”

“She might kill you next time,” Alice said.

“Death would be a relief, Miss Alice, and that's the truth,” Pen said. “I've been alive for about eight hundred years, I'd say. In all that time I tried throwing myself off high cliffs and sinking to the bottom of the lake and even slashing my own throat.”

He pointed to a thick scar Alice hadn't noticed. It ran like a giant ridge from the top of one collarbone to the other.

The wound must have been fearsome,
Alice thought.
Or he tried more than once.

“It doesn't matter how much I bleed or break,” Pen said. “She'll never let me—let any of us—die until she's done with us.”

Alice felt anger, quick and hot, in her veins. This White Queen was no different from the Caterpillar or the Rabbit or Cheshire, using people for sport.
And she is certainly a Magician, as is the goblin.

Alice's path was leading her to the Queen just as it had led her to the Jabberwocky. Hatcher had seen a vision of what he called “Lost Ones,” and Alice dreamed of a palace filled with children's screams. Yes. She was going to the Queen.

She was going to the Queen and she would try to free the children, and perhaps, too, she could free Pen and Gil and Cod. Though how she was to do such things, she did not know. She didn't have her knife or her Hatcher, and she had some magic but no notion of how to use it.

Still, Alice knew she must try. Just as she must find Hatcher and they must find Jenny and then, at long last, perhaps they could find peace and a quiet place to live a quiet life.

“Pen, where are you going? Are we back to the path now?”
Alice thought they must be, for though she had run ziggetty-zaggetty through the wood, she didn't think she'd run this far, and a giant's steps were much longer than her own.

Pen paused, scratching his head. “Well, Miss Alice, to tell the truth, I've been following my nose. I caught the scent of your friend and thought I would deliver you to him with a bow on, so to speak, but now . . .”

He trailed off, sniffing the air and shaking his head. “I've lost it.”

“He disappeared?” Alice asked.

“No,” Pen said slowly. “More like his smell got mixed up with something else, but I can't tell what.”

“Well,” Alice said, still feeling slightly like a meal-in-waiting despite Pen's assurance otherwise. “I appreciate all you have done, and tried to do, for me. Perhaps it's best if you leave me here. I'm certain I can find him on my own.”

In truth, Alice felt no such certainty, but she wished to be about walking on her own two feet again and to feel once more like her own mistress. Besides, while Pen seemed kind enough and probably would not eat her, there was no guarantee he wouldn't hand her over to the goblin or the White Queen if ordered to do so.

Alice knew she would have to face the Queen, but she wished to face her as an equal, not a prisoner.

“Oh, I couldn't do that, Miss Alice,” Pen said. “This forest is much larger than you think. You could wander for hours without finding your friend. But me, I know these trees backward and forward. I'll get you to him, right enough.”

And that,
Alice reflected,
was that.
She couldn't get off Pen's shoulder without assistance, and the only assistance he seemed willing to provide was the kind she didn't want.

Still, she supposed she could let him help for a time. Sooner or later he would wish to return to his brothers and then he would leave her alone. She hoped. Everything here looked the same to Alice anyway. She'd no idea how Pen could tell one part of the forest from another.

After a while the gentle rocking side to side lulled Alice into sleep. For once, she did not dream, so when she awoke she was quite startled to discover it was dark, and she was no longer on Pen's shoulder but cradled in his hand.

“You nearly fell to your death, Miss Alice,” Pen said. “Lucky thing I caught you in time. I've never seen anyone sleep so soundly.”

“I was tired,” Alice said, stretching her arms overhead.

She ought to feel alarmed, she supposed, by her brush with death, but mostly she felt refreshed. Alice couldn't recall when she'd last slept without dreams. It was a lovely feeling to wake up without the tangled edges of clinging nightmares.

“Where are we now?” Alice asked.

“Near the place where the forest ends and the mountain begins. There is a village at the foot of the mountain, about a day's walk. But I can go no farther,” Pen said.

“Because of the Queen?” Alice asked.

“No,” he said, and some quality in his voice made Alice sit up straighter in alarm. “My brothers are calling me.”

She peered closely at his face, trying to make out whether he was thinking of eating her or not, but all she could see was the gleam of starlight reflected in his enormous eyes.