Page 41 of Wondrous

“If it helps,” he said, picking up the teapot and settling on the branch beside me, “I’m a bit of a coward myself. I’ve wanted to leave the Jabberwoods for a long time, to travel the world. Instead, I stayed where I was and took my sorcery lessons, even though I hated them.”

“Really?” I wanted to ask more about his sorcery lessons and his life in the Jabberwoods, but from his moody expression, I could tell I would have to proceed carefully. I waited to see if he would go on.

At first it seemed he wasn’t going to. Then he said, “My father would never let me leave the Jabberwoods. Not after—my mother. I don’t have any brothers or sisters, and my father always said that I’m all he has left of her.”

He fell silent. When he went on, his voice was quieter. “But I’ve always wanted to be like my grandfather. He traveled the entire world when he was younger. I used to curl up under the bog moss and listen to his stories—so many stories! Father always said he exaggerated, so I don’t know if they were all true. But it didn’t matter. I’d fall asleep sometimes with his stories in my head, and he’d pick me up and carry me up to my bed in the canopy. Grandfather died not long after my mother did, but I can still hear his voice, mixed with beetle song.”

He let out a long breath. “Every day in the Jabberwoods is the same. And keeping to our woods didn’t help my mother—that hero still found her, and killed her. If I end up like her, then I’d like to have seen—” He stopped, seeming to search for words. In the end, he merely shook his head. “Something. Maybe not the entire world. But something.”

For a moment, I couldn’t speak. Had Jack truly spent his life imagining that he would one day meet the same fate his mother had? The thought was almost too sad to bear.

Many people hunt jabberwocks, a voice reminded me. I thought of the two knights I had met and how they had boasted about their hunts. While I strongly suspected they had exaggerated their prowess—after all, the White Queen’s knights couldn’t even move diagonally—it didn’t mean that others weren’t more successful.

“I know how you feel,” I said, then added quickly, my face heating, “not about your mother. I’ve never lost family, not like that. But I wanted to come to Wonderland for the same reason you wanted to leave the Jabberwoods. I didn’t want to follow the path that was in front of me. I—I want my life to be mine.”

“Who would tell you what to do?” Jack said, staring at me. “You’re a hero.”

I gave a quiet laugh. “Maybe I am here. In my world, I’m nobody’s idea of a hero.”

He shook his head in disbelief. “That’s their loss, then.”

I was stumped. Never had I thought about leaving my world as a loss to anyone other than my family. And even to them, a daughter, especially a second daughter, simply wasn’t of much consequence.

And yet here I was, trying to rescue an entire world. Clearly even a second daughter could have a great deal of consequence, if given the chance to show it.

My head spun a little. I still wasn’t quite convinced, but I filed the thought away to mull over later.

Jack had been gazing at me with a furrowed brow, but when I met his eyes, he blushed and looked away. He lifted the teapot and refilled my cup. He’d chosen cinnamon and peppercorn this time, which I could only ever bear in small sips. Those small sips were worth the burn of the spices, though; the tea warmed me as much as our campfire did.

I realized abruptly that I could simply release Jack from our bargain. We could go to the Hare’s now, and I could let him drink from the antidote teacup. And then I could go after the mock dragons alone.

But I knew it wasn’t possible. And it wasn’t just because I wanted to be the Alice—I needed to save Wonderland. Even if the Queen of Hearts cast me out and the rabbit holes were barred behind me, I would rest easier knowing that Wonderland was still there, like the distant promise of spring at midwinter.

I sighed. I was doing the wrong thing for the right reasons. Was that any better than the other way around?

I wish I could ask dear Hare, I thought. The Hare was always good at answering philosophical questions, even if he wove his answers with odd tangents about seafaring.

For a moment, I missed the Hare’s house so intensely I couldn’t breathe.

“Alice?” Jack said. He’d been watching me for several minutes as I chewed over my moral conundrum. His expression was confused, almost as if he were afraid of me, as he’d sometimes seemed after we first met.

“Yes?” I said too loudly. I realized we were sitting very close together; the branch was only wide and flat enough for a seat in one small area. All I could see were his starlike eyes and the shadow beneath his lower lip, which was fuller than the upper one. The middle part was the fullest and dipped down in a permanent pout.

Good grief—it’s just a mouth, some small irritated voice inside me griped. Stop staring at it like you’re planning to draw a map. Also, have you forgotten all those sharp teeth he had until quite recently?

“I—” Jack stilled, and his gaze drifted to one side, as if he’d heard something in the distance.

“What is it?” I said, noticing that I’d leaned even closer to him, though I couldn’t remember doing so.

“We’re being watched,” he said. Then he leapt off the branch with impossible grace, sending me sprawling rather less gracefully onto my face as the branch rebounded. He vanished into the shadows, which abruptly filled with screams.

Chapter 21

Jack came forward, dragging someone by the arm. Their hair obscured their face, and their tunic was muddy and snagged with leaves and needles, as if they’d tried to camouflage themselves. A second stranger floated ghostlike behind them, feet dangling just above the ground.

I choked on a shriek and scrambled to my feet, tripping yet again in my haste. At first I couldn’t tell which out of the three of them was more of a fright, for it seemed as if Jack’s handsome human face had been overlaid by a monster’s, wolfish and all teeth. It was only visible for a second, however, his human face surfacing as if through deep water.

“Jack,” I cried, “what have you—”