After the negotiations were signed and sealed, four swift horses bearing Yurkei riders were sent to store the documents in the four corners of Wonderland, so that there might always be one treaty that remained safe, even if the rest were destroyed. After the documents were sent on their way, Dinah nervously prepared for the ancient Yurkei sealing ritual. Wearing little more than a few feathers, Dinah stood perfectly still for hours as the words of the treaty were painted on her body with white paint by silent Yurkei women. The words trailed down from her eyes in straight lines to the edge of her toes, and by the end, there wasn’t an inch of her skin unmarked with white paint. The words of their treaty trailed from her cheeks, her belly, her fingertips. Mundoo had the same treaty inscribed down his immaculate body, and when they were done, both Dinah and Mundoo were led into a ringed circle of fire, a subdued crane tied to each of their wrists. The Yurkei rose in song, an unnerving wail that resonated through the narrow valley.
For hours they sang as Dinah and Mundoo stood perfectly still until their legs trembled beneath them. Finally, with a desperate shout, the two parties neared each other as the stars swirled above. When they were close enough to touch, the cranes leapt from their wrists and flapped toward each other. Mundoo and Dinah were yanked together as the strings holding their cranes twisted and tangled while the birds fluttered and fought. The warm words written on their bodies smeared together, the melting paint mixing with their sweat and tears as they struggled against one another. Finally, a Yurkei priestess gave a shout and they both released their birds into the sky. The words were now one, their sweat was one, and their heat was one. Dinah’s black eyes met Mundoo’s shimmering blue irises as they stood silently, surrounded by the roaring fire. What she had seen in them both reassured and frightened Dinah. Mundoo was hard, resilient, and she saw a passion blazing in his eyes that was not unlike her own. She was a queen and he was a chief. They were the same. A pact had been made, a promise sealed. Dinah had never felt more alive and gave a shout to the sky, her head thrown back in glory.
After she had cleaned up, she joined the Yurkei for a celebratory feast alongside Bah-kan, Sir Gorrann, and her two Yurkei guards. It was a feast to put all others to shame, even the endless feasts she had known at Wonderland Palace. Birds of every type were paraded in on the backs of Yurkei warriors. Each bite tingled with rich spices, woodsy and full of flavor, each taste manipulated by Iu-Hora, their local medicine man. Dinah was given piles of edible mushrooms, each one producing a unique effect—some made her sad or melancholy, while others made her jubilant or silly. Some produced a feeling of intense passion that climaxed in seconds and left her breathless, clutching the table. One gave her a hallucination of the palace, filled with thumping red hearts and fluttering peacocks. Another showed her a river of blood, soaking her feet. The effects weren’t lasting—most were no more than a minute—so Dinah eagerly awaited what each new mushroom would bring.
Dessert was a towering concoction of berries and edible plants, along with some hearty honey bread of which Dinah couldn’t seem to get enough. When the bread was broken open, a tiny flame that somehow burned inside the loaf extinguished, leaving warm bread dripping with hot honey. It was incredible, and Dinah happily licked the honey off of her fingers, aware that perhaps a queen shouldn’t engage in such behavior. She hardly cared. The Yurkei didn’t care, either.
Cheshire sat beside her on one side and Sir Gorrann on the other; and while Cheshire was constantly trying to engage her with compliments or observations, she couldn’t bring herself to be kind to him, not yet. She did find herself staring at him when he wasn’t looking, taking in his jet-black hair and eyes, so like her own, a mirror image really. She imagined him with her mother, laughing and touching, finding every spare moment to be together, caught up in the danger of their forbidden passion. She couldn’t picture it, and at times the idea made her sick. Since he had arrived, Cheshire had given her a number of gifts—a lovely diamond brooch in the shape of a cat, a heavy purple riding cloak, a new set of dark-red leather boots imprinted with a heart on each heel. She pulled on the boots immediately and shoved the other presents into her bag. He could not buy her loyalty or love, not yet, but she needed new boots and so allowed herself to slip into their rich soles, her sore feet rejoicing.