The Crown (4 page)

Great heaving sobs escaped her lips, and she was grateful, for once, to have no servants nearby. Here, it was just her and the dirt. She gradually calmed, the darkness like a heavy blanket draped across her wide shoulders. Dinah wiped her eyes and looked around. All was silent. She decided to wander farther. The tunnel grew colder as it went deeper—the air blowing around her had a bitter bite to it. Thick black roots, twisting like snakes, grew overhead. They reminded her of witch’s bones, and more than once, she swore she could see them moving and reaching toward her when she looked away. This was a place of dark things.

Dinah stopped a minute to catch her breath. A single lantern lit a passageway in front of her, the flame sputtering in the darkness. She walked through the opening, and in a few steps she came to a round patch of dirt framed by three archways. Each led into a tunnel, and standing in the middle of the circle, Dinah couldn’t remember out of which one she had just come. They all looked the same, each lit by a single pink torch. There were symbols etched into the keystone above each opening: a heart, a tree, and one that she didn’t recognize—a triangle with a wavy bottom. The sea? She peered at it again. It must be a mountain, she thought. The Yurkei Mountains.

Dinah ran her fingers over the symbols. They were thinly raised up from the stone, almost invisible to the naked eye. Her heart pounded in her chest, and the thought of her father discovering her decomposed body when she couldn’t find her way back brought Dinah a surprising rush of joy. She furrowed her brow and stared back at the carvings. After a moment, she bent down and peered into the heart tunnel.

Yes—she could see her footprints in the dirt. She let out a sigh of relief. That was the way she had come. It made sense, after all; she was the Princess of Hearts. Dinah ventured into the archway that featured the tree symbol. It was even more crooked than the way she had come, and the tunnel kept shrinking, until Dinah had to crouch to fit into it, her head brushing the dirty ceiling. It compressed again, and she found herself crawling. The tunnel wound down in a seemingly never-ending curve. White moss began creeping across the walls, and all sounds of palace life ceased overhead. Then, when Dinah felt she could possibly crawl no further, it opened up into a thick stone wall, held in place by bolts as thick as her arm. A dead end.

Dinah stood and wrapped her arms around herself, attempting to halt the shivers that shook her shoulders. How long had she been in these tunnels? Time had somehow become irrelevant. Days? Hours? Cold air wafted around her, twisting down from above and shifting the dirt under her feet. She raised her hands above her head and felt fresh air kiss her fingertips. Dinah’s eyes followed the bolts upward until they rested on a faintly outlined circle far above her head, its dusty handle barely visible.

A door
. Her eyes widened.
Those weren’t bolts, they were a ladder!
Dinah climbed six bolts before her feet caught on her dress and she tumbled violently to the tunnel floor, scraping her knees and palms.

On her next attempt, she left her dress behind. Grunting and sweating with the effort and wearing only a slip, Dinah pulled herself to the topmost bolt and pushed against the door. Dust showered her as the door creaked with resistance. Using all of her strength, Dinah bent her head and pushed with her shoulders, praying that her feet would not slip from the bolts. Once she did that, the door easily opened, mud and grass raining down on her from above and coating her eyelashes.

With strenuous effort, Dinah heaved herself out through the hole. She sneezed a few times and looked around in wonder as she lay on the ground, feeling her ribs contract. Above her, the Wonderland stars twinkled and, if you watched closely, inched through the sky ever so slightly. Constellations in Wonderland were never constant, and Dinah loved seeing the changing patterns from night to night—circles, spirals, lines, clusters—the stars never formed the same arrangement twice. And here they were, her stars, so bright their light lit up all of Wonderland. She was outside. Never had she been so glad to feel the cool breeze on her skin. She only now realized that she had been afraid in the tunnels. Her rage had made her blind. Crisp night air caressed her body, which was covered only by her thin slip. The night breeze dried her tears and cleared her mind.

Once her breathing returned to normal, Dinah stood up and took in her surroundings. She was outside the palace gates, maybe half a mile from the perfect circle of imposing ornamental iron walls that surrounded her home. The infamous iron walls were made of thousands of sharp iron hearts, twisting together in a dance of beauty and defense that warned intruders to stay away. She was facing east now, and if she squinted, she could see the outline of the Twisted Wood, many, many miles away from Wonderland Palace.

She looked down at her toes and wiggled them in the wildflowers blooming around her feet. Somewhere nearby, just inside the gates, the great Julla Tree creaked in the wind, and then a high-pitched wail rippled through the air, alive and intense all at once. It seemed to be laughing at her. Dinah faced the castle and willed herself not to fear what lay unseen in the open fields behind her. She began walking slowly away from the tunnel.

She had never been outside the gates of Wonderland Palace, and she gazed upon her palace now in wonder. It rose out of the fields of red flowers like a beacon of blinding hope. Its golden spires twisted and pierced the sky, the turrets and raised rose gardens adding beauty to its numerous walls, white bridges connecting one tower to the next. Dinah knew that below the turrets, stretching out from the Royal Apartments, was the Croquet Lawn—an endless expanse of green turf, perfect for picnics, croquet, or ostrich riding. Parallel to the Croquet Lawn on the other side of the castle was the Checkered Courtyard. This was where the Spades and Heart Cards lined up for training, and where traitors were executed, their blood spilling across a long, white marble block.

From where she stood, she could barely see anything except the gates and the towering heights of the Royal Apartments. She spied her own bedroom balcony and waved, thinking for a moment that maybe Harris could see her. But he could not. No one knew where she was, and she certainly couldn’t tell them about her secret tunnel to the outside. Perhaps, she thought, perhaps Cheshire didn’t know about the tree tunnel that led to the outside. It was hers alone. There had been no other footprints inside that tunnel, and dust didn’t form overnight. There must be another tunnel down there, she thought, one that led to the Royal Apartments. That’s where Cheshire had been taking her.

With a smile, Dinah took in the view of the palace one last time. Her castle was a beauty, a fierce and formidable fortress, lovely and dangerous all at once.
One day,
Dinah thought,
this would all be hers.

I will be the Queen of Wonderland. I will be the Queen and Vittiore will only be the Duchess.
The thought was enough.

Her knees gave a shake as she stared up at the castle, and Dinah realized that she was exhausted. Her bed chambers seemed very appealing, and the low moan that rose from the Twisted Wood sent shivers down her spine. Dinah took a few steps back to the tunnel entrance, only this time, she couldn’t find the opening. She knew it had been near some herb plants and a thick, gnarled bush, but it was gone.

Dinah grew more and more aggravated as she paced the area, scuffling dirt and wildflowers aside, until she resorted to searching with her fingers through the low grass, illuminated only by the light of the stars. Finally, her fingers found an unnatural groove in the grass and she gave a yank. Nothing happened. Using all the strength left inside of her, Dinah heaved. The door didn’t move. A trace of fear flashed in Dinah’s brain. Something was wrong. She pulled again. Her fingernails cracked and broke as the door shuddered and snapped back into place. It wouldn’t budge. It was locked. Dinah stared at the door. The wind died down just for a moment, but it was enough. She heard a faint sigh followed by a ragged breath. Light from a torch flared between the door cracks—a tiny sliver of light escaped. Someone was down there. Someone had locked her out. Her breath caught in her lungs. Someone was waiting for her. The Twisted Wood gave another loud moan, the sound carrying for hundreds of miles. Dinah backed away from the door slowly and ran as fast as she could toward the palace gates.

Two years had passed since that dark night, and Rinton and Thatch, Heart Cards in the King’s service would—when bribed over wine—tell the tale about that evening. The evening when Dinah, the future Queen of Hearts, was found outside the palace walls, dressed only in a lady’s slip. She had no recollection of how she got there, no answers for how she escaped through the palace gates without being seen. She was in shock, shivering and deeply afraid. It was the night, they recalled, that the King had introduced the lovely Vittiore, and pondered whether it was a coincidence that it was the night that Dinah, Princess of Wonderland, proved to be a little odd—just like her brother, the Mad Hatter.

Chapter Three

Winter in Wonderland was Dinah’s favorite time of year, aside from her father’s yearly departure for the Western Slope. Pink snowflakes circled down from a gloomy gray sky as Dinah walked quietly across the snow-covered courtyard. Her fur boots left behind huge footprints as the wind blew tiny swirls of the rosy snow around her ankles. Dinah blew out a breath of cold air and watched it freeze in front of her and fall to the ground with a soft tinkle. A seventeen-year-old shouldn’t find such simple things amusing, she told herself, but then she did it again with joy.

Two Heart Cards bowed low as she walked past them, but she saw the mocking smiles that played across their faces. She didn’t care—not today. Her black wool cape snapped in the wind as it billowed out behind her. The scent of horses entered her nostrils, and she began to hum happily.

The circular Wonderland stables lay between the iron walls and palace on the southwest side, housing every kind of steed imaginable. Despite the stable being immaculately clean, you could smell the manure and wood shavings upon approach. Out from a large, reinforced, center hub stall, circled more stalls with spoke-like channels between them. Horse after horse slept, ate, and trained in the labyrinthine maze of stalls, indoor riding rings, and tack rooms filled with weaponry and gear. It was designed to keep horses from escaping, and the maze provided a deterrent to those who would attempt to steal any of its pampered inhabitants. Dinah sniffed the frosty air again as she made her way through the maze of stalls. Men, hay, and horses—her favorite smells, because they reminded her of
him
. At the center of the wheel, there was a palpable change in the air as she neared the center stall. This stall was unlike all of the others, with three-foot-thick wooden doors towering over Dinah’s head.

She looked up with a shudder as she passed and saw the three Hornhooves staring at her, their apple-sized eyes filled with a thirst for death. She kept her head down and stepped as quietly as she dared. The Hornhooves scared her; they scared everyone. More a creature from hellish depths than a horse, Hornhooves stood head and shoulders above the other steeds, the height of two horses combined, with leg muscles thicker than a man’s head. Their deadly hooves were covered with hundreds of spiked bones, each one unbreakable: instruments of a painful death for anyone who stood in their way. They were the King’s pride and joy, especially Morte. Morte—the bringer of death, was her father’s favorite steed.

It was Morte who stared down at Dinah now as she passed, steam hot enough to burn skin hissing out of his nostrils. Generous muscles danced under his shimmering black hide—so black it was almost blue. He was larger than the other two white Hornhooves and was rumored to be a particularly bloodthirsty beast—relentless and crueler than most of his kind. The Yurkei tribe had tamed them for generations, and they were bred to be fearless soldiers—the ultimate war horse, virtually unstoppable and very rare. Many a man had died under their hooves, either torn to pieces on their unbreakable spiked hooves or crushed by their awesome weight. They were so massive that Dinah’s spread hand could be swallowed by one of Morte’s cavernous black nostrils.

Morte walked to the end of his stall as she moved past, his heavy hooves shaking the ground beneath him. The Hornhooves made Dinah nervous, and she walked faster toward the stables’ outside rim where the lame and the weak horses were kept, still useful for plowing or load bearing. She clicked her tongue and waited for Speckle to come to the edge of his stall.

As a child, Dinah had named him—her black-and-white spotted gelding—Speckle, for he reminded her of a speckle of rain upon her window. He was a kind and gentle horse. Rarely did he do more than trot happily, eat heartily, and bestow sloppy kisses across Dinah’s hand. He gave a joyful whinny upon her approach, and she produced an apple from under her cloak. Speckle snatched it up with a happy neigh, his soft horse lips dancing over her hand.