Jeb struggles under the vines now roped around his waist. “Al, run,” he mumbles.
“Yes, run,” the dandelion mutant taunts. She cups my chin with mossy fingertips and tilts her head to see me with her three remaining eyeballs. “Run or be eaten.”
A fresh wave of terror trickles through my spine. I shake it off as a flash of knowing comes to me: The netherling boy from my memories once taught me how to defeat this flower.
It’s as easy as blowing tufts in the wind.
On impulse, I reach up and pluck off what’s left of her seeds, leaving her blind. A white, gooey liquid dribbles down my hands from the exposed eye sockets. She shrieks and droops to the ground, incapacitated.
I’m peripherally aware of Jeb fishing the knife from his pocket beneath the greenery binding him. If I can provide a distraction, maybe he can get us out of this.
I hold up the dandelion seeds. The sticklike eyeballs writhe in my hand, trying to stare at me. I toss them down, stomping them. “Who’s next?” I hope to sound tough, but my voice quavers.
The zombie flowers howl and fling their vines around my ankles. Ivy snakes around my legs and torso and up my chest, sealing me within a leafy cocoon so thick only my head and upheld arms are free. Then two strands cinch my wrists together. With a yank, they flip me onto my stomach. I can’t budge.
Jeb and the incapacitated dandelion are all but forgotten as the others surround me.
Misshapen hands, green with chlorophyll, skim across me—cold and rough like leaves shaken from trees after a storm. Dizziness clouds my head. The vines are too tight. I can’t jerk away. I can’t even get enough air to scream.
Hot gusts blow over me. Eyes clenched shut, I sob. Slobber drizzles along my nape from someone’s mouth, glomming strands of my hair together.
“Wait!” one of them shouts close enough to my ear that it rings. “She’s wearing the gloves!”
Sliding my cheek against the gritty ground, I peer up at hundreds of eyelashes blinking in rapid succession.
“It is true!” a white-rose-headed freak gasps. “Do you have the fan, as well?”
Neck craned, I nod. My left nostril fills with dirt at the effort.
“We should celebrate!” They pass the bucket of aphids around among them.
“Do you think it’s her? After all this time?” a flower with pink petals asks, munching on her snack.
“She does look rather like you know who.”
“Even more of the devil’s seed in this one, to be sure,” Pinky adds. “The eyes of a tiger lily she has.”
“Just think of it.” One of the flowers pops a screeching aphid into its mouth as the bucket passes by. “We’ll soon be connected to the heart of Wonderland once more!”
The rose-head leans low, intent on me. “So, are you here to set things right?”
My gaze drifts between their body stems. Jeb has almost sawed his way out of the vines. Just a little longer. Over the fear nested in my chest, I force myself to talk. “Yes. Set things right.”
“About time. We can pick up roots, but we can’t traipse across the water, even in a boat. We must stay connected to the soil. The path to Wonderland’s heart has to be opened to us. For that to happen, Alice’s tears must be dried up. That’s your job!”
“Hear, hear!” they all say in unison. “Your job to fix her messes.”
The rose snaps two thorny fingers to silence the rest of the garden. “You must go across the ocean and onto the island of black sands. Inside the heart of Wonderland, the Wise One waits. He has been here since the beginning. He smokes the pipe of wisdom. He knows what must be done.”
“Pipe? You mean the Caterpillar?” I ask.
Wicked laughter erupts among my captors.
“The Caterpillar,” Pinky scoffs. “Well, I suppose you could call him that. That’s what the other one called him.”
“The other one?” I ask.
“Your other,” the rose says. “The one whose tears formed the ocean that now isolates us from the rest of our kind. High time a descendant came down to mend things.”
Before I can respond, an orange monstrosity steps up to speak. Spindly fronds fall from her mouth, where they cling to her drool. Stinging nettles tip her fingernails. “We could ask the octobenus to take her across. We’ll use the elfin knight as leverage. His blood alone is worth all the white gold in the Ivory Queen’s palace. The octobenus can trade it for a bevy of clams. He’ll never go hungry again. He cannot refuse such a bargain.”
“This boy is no knight,” the rose says. “He came down with her.” Orangey shakes her petals. “He was sent to escort her. He has emerald eyes, and the blood droplet beneath his lip has crystallized to a gem. He’s indubitably and undeniably an elfin knight of the White Court.”
I try to calm my racing thoughts enough to analyze their conversation. They think Jeb’s garnet labret marks him as one of the netherlings. I shoot a gaze toward him to see if he heard, but he’s no longer trapped by vines.