The shore stretches as far as I can see … an endless, inky desert of shimmery soot. It’s not at all what I expected the heart of Wonderland to look like, if that’s what this really is. There’s no flora or fauna anywhere except for a lone tree standing taller and wider than a redwood just a few feet ahead of us.
Familiarity lures me closer. Jeweled bark covers the entire tree, from the gnarled trunk to the branches that twist hundreds of feet into the air. It glimmers in the sun like a million white diamonds. At the end of each branch, rubies well up like liquid and dribble to the ground, as if the tree is bleeding jewels, the way elves do when their skin is pierced. With the black sands as a backdrop, the scene reminds me of my cricket mosaic back home—a beauty both mesmerizing and bizarre. I tamp down a surge of panic, remembering how the crickets seemed to be alive and kicking the last time I saw it on my wall.
“Winter’s Heartbeat,” Jeb says from beside me.
I nod. “You see the resemblance, too?”
His jaw spasms. “You’ve been here before.”
I shake off my unease and step up to the tree, kicking a path through the fallen rubies. A spot at the base of the trunk pulses behind the diamond-bark like a heartbeat. With each thrum, it lights up in red lines the same shape as the birthmark on my ankle. The image sparks a memory of me and the winged boy, fuzzy yet unmistakable.
Jeb moves closer and I turn to hold his shoulder for balance, lifting my left leg to unlace my boot.
“What are you doing?”
“Following instructions,” I answer, peeling off the boot and hiking up my leggings to expose my ankle. Jeb grips my elbow as I crouch down, pressing the maze on my ankle against the glowing lines of the tree.
A shock of static electricity leaps from me to the trunk; then a loud cracking breaks the hush. Jeb yanks me back as the trunk splits, the glittering bark rolling open like a scroll to expose a doorway. A soft red glow throbs and beckons from within.
“The pulsing heart of Wonderland,” I whisper, shoving my foot into my boot again.
The red light reflects off Jeb’s labret. “Okay, I’ll buy that you came here as a kid and are having some kind of repressed memory flashes. But how is it you have a mark on your body that unlocks anything in this place?”
I hesitate, then tell him what I read about netherlings talking to bugs, and what I suspect about my family curse: that we share some characteristics with the creatures here, including freaky magical marks on our bodies.
Jeb stares at me, and I wonder how much more of this he can take without going crackers.
“You okay?” I ask, biting my lip.
Swallowing, he slides his fingers through his hair. “It’s you I’m worried about. So how do we break this ‘curse’?”
My heart bounces when he says “we.” He’s in this with me to the end. Not just because he’s stuck here, but because he’s the Jeb I grew up with. My Jeb. “I have to find someone inside. The one from my past … the one who used to bring me here.”
Jeb frowns. “Okay. According to the flowers, this is also where the portals are. Right? The doors that will take us home?”
“Yeah,” I answer, half expecting him to try to talk me into waiting outside while he checks things out. Instead, he holds me back only long enough to get out the flashlight, reposition the backpack, and take the lead. We descend a winding stairway through a dark tunnel that seems to spiral down forever.
“Don’t look down,” Jeb says.
Why do people say that? It only makes it impossible not to. My gaze sinks to the steps thudding beneath our boots. Bones, interlocked and bound with some kind of shimmery gold twine, make up the stairs. Most of the bones are deformed in size and shape. Others look humanoid. I press my palm over my mouth.
“What are they from?” Jeb whispers. “Ancestors? Human captives?”
I scan my foggy memories. “I don’t remember ever learning about this …”
Jeb picks up his pace. We leap off the last step and duck through a curtain of vines. Instead of finding ourselves deep underground, a vista opens in front of us underneath a dark purple sky. The sun and the moon are twisted into one, the moon a blue tinge next to its brighter brother.
The combined light turns everything an ultraviolet hue. Plants of all kinds—bushes, flowers, trees, and ground cover—are neon beneath the blended rays: pinks, purples, greens, yellows, and oranges.
The paler shades of our clothes glow, too. No wonder I always felt so at home in Underland’s activity center. On some subconscious level, it reminded me of this place.
A cool gust, thick with the scent of loam, greenery, and flowers, blows across us. Then I catch wind of something else—a fruity incense drifting our way. I know that smell. “Follow the smoke,” I say, abandoning the path.