“Hello, Charles. Is that your tooth?”
Charles blinked several times, his green eye staring at her while his blue one wandered to the right. His mouth was bloody. She gently wiped his lips with the sleeve of her dress as he grinned at her. “Two tooths too many to bite.”
She shook her head. He leapt up, and Dinah steadied herself on a twisted wicker railing that looped overhead.
With wide eyes, he stared at her. “Do you know what the whispering mountains cry? They scream for their freedom! Then it’s goodnight, goodnight, goodnight, all of Wonderland in a steaming pile.” Charles flung his tooth off the ledge and danced down the stairs before her. As they reached the bottom, his face went from enchantment to hysterics. “Tooth! I need it, I need it, fiddle dee, tooth for tooth!” He began to search frantically in a pile of hats, which flew overhead as he tunneled beneath them.
“It’s here, Charles.” Dinah had seen the tooth land on a pile of spotted teal feathers. She plucked it up and scrubbed it with a piece of sunrise-colored silk. He snatched it out of her hand and held it up to the light. “Ivory. Bone. Black on black texture with the teeth of different animals. A hat for a horde. A hat for a—” he did a little jig, “a warrior! A man that carried heads in a bag!”
He wrapped his hand around Dinah’s. It surprised her a little. Charles reluctantly let her touch him sometimes, but he was never the instigator. His mismatched eyes looked up into hers. “Come and see. Come and see,” he whispered, repeating the phrase over and over. He led her under the maze of staircases into a small backroom. This was where he usually stored buttons of every size and make, but the room had been cleared, and it was empty. Empty except for a crown.
It sat on a wooden stool, and an open window filtered in just enough light so that it glittered and shimmered in the sun. Dinah felt the air whoosh out of her lungs. It was magnificent, a work of art of the highest order, unlike anything she had ever seen. The thick base was of brushed silver, inlaid with thousands of tiny white diamonds, all in the shape of hearts. Individual tree branches rose up from the hearts, leaping and twisting into a solid second circle that finished the top of the crown. The detail became more incredible the closer Dinah looked. The branches, when inspected, were patterned into tiny faces, their flowered mouths open in a scream. Stars, flickering in the light, hung from thin bands of silver among the creeping branches. Four Card symbols connected the vines from the sides of the crown to the top, where a diamond heart inlaid with a bird in flight sparkled in the light. The heart, she could see, had been cut in half and reassembled so it sat a tiny bit askew.
She was speechless. It was not only ten times her crown; it was ten times her father’s crown. Nothing like this had been made in Wonderland, not ever. It was the most astonishing crown she had ever seen, truly a combination of art and extraordinary skill. It blazed in the sunlight.
“Charles . . . I cannot accept this. This is. . . .”
She looked over at her brother. He was still, for once, watching her with puzzling sadness. She gave him a kiss on the forehead. He made a face.
“Thank you. I shall wear it every day when I am Queen.” Her own crown, a tiny ring of rubies, now seemed sad and pathetic by comparison. She reached out to touch the diamond heart.
“No!” Charles screamed, throwing himself on the floor, where he began flailing. His body gave a jerk and a spasm rippled up his legs. Dinah knelt on the floor next to him, wrapping her arms around his painfully thin frame.
“Charles, breathe. Charles, calm down, I won’t touch it, not yet.”
She shouted for Lucy, and Quintrell flew around the corner. His face dissolved into fear for the little prince. “Hold him tight. Here, put this in his mouth.” He gave Dinah a stick of hard wood. “I don’t want him to bite off his tongue.”
Dinah gently placed the stick into Charles’s mouth and held him until the seizure passed.
“I’ve got him,” she told Quintrell.
He gave her a gentle smile. “What do you think of your crown?”
Dinah looked back at it. It was no less beautiful from below. “I can’t believe he made that. I knew he did metal and gemstone work sometimes, but this. . . .”
“He’s been working on it for years,” Quintrell whispered. “We never wanted to spoil the surprise. The day it graces your head will be a glorious day for us, for Charles, for Wonderland. I have faith that you will be a great Queen.”